Breaking Through

Hi, guys. My name is Donnie Rouse and you are listening to the podcast One Life Breaking Point. What do you do when you violate your own standards? If you were like most people, you probably beat yourself up. But I want to ask you a different question. So this way, when this happens, you could respond differently. And that question is very, very complex. Well, not really. And it just kind of goes something like this. How does it make you feel? So often people, we have these such high standards for ourselves, which is good to have standards, but it's also good to have self love, to have compassion for yourself. So what happens is people will beat themselves up as a result of not being a certain way of not completely following through on something that they want to do, such as working out every day or passing up on that drink, whatever it may be. And the point of this podcast is I want you to come away with one thing. I want you to come away with two things. The first is that self love is the right way. Because when you're beating yourself up, when you're saying you should do this, you should do that, and you should all over yourself, you're bringing your vibration down, you're making yourself feel worse. And when you feel worse, what are the chances of you following through on an action? Less. Unless you hit that threshold. Unless you hit that breaking point. I am currently living in Miami, Florida. And when I first got here, I was staying at a hostel and I met this gentleman by the name of Jack. Changing the names to protect the innocent. But in this conversation when I met Jack, he was telling me how he was supposed to be in Ecuador. He was going there to. He's a skateboarder and he was going there to sell some of his skateboards at the border. He had gotten turned away because he had tattoos. They assumed that he was like part of a gang. And so he was in Florida and he was lamenting what happened. And as a result of that lamenting, he started drinking a little bit more than he typically would, being a little bit down on himself. And then he would tell me, well, you know, like, I had given up drinking and now I'm drinking. And just kind of, you could tell it was on a downward spiral. I shared this with him because I experienced something different. Maybe not with the drinking, but just with the going out. So when I arrived in Miami, Florida, I coming from Connecticut, in Connecticut, I was very, very, very regimented, perhaps a little bit too much where I had to wake up, I had this breakfast, I would go for, do a little bit of exercise, do a little Stretching, start my day, take a break, workout again, start my day again with work, finish up, eat, sleep and repeat. Wasn't much of a life. That's actually one of the reasons why I came down to Miami. But being in Miami, all of my routines were flipped upside down. And as a result of having all those routines flipped upside down and staying at a hostel, I started going out almost every single night. Not getting like completely trashed, but I would meet someone and you want to develop relationships. So it's like, hey, we're going to go here, do you want to join us? Sure. So you go out and all of a sudden 8 o' clock turns to 2 o' clock and all of a sudden now you're all hanging out at the beach and you're getting home at like 5 o', clock, 6 o' clock in the morning when the sun's coming up. Great for making friends, not great when you're trying to build a business, when you're trying to establish routines, new routines for a place you move to. So this was going on for. It happened for a week and then it was spilling into the second week. And at first I started to beat myself up. I was saying, well, man, people would ask me, well, how's your day going? How's your, you know, how's work? And I would immediately go into this dialogue of how I haven't been productive, I've been staying up too late. And as a result of going over and over and over and over. What do you think was happening as a result of repeating that story? I was just repeating it over and over and over again. But then I started to add, give myself a little bit self love. I thought to myself, well, what if by doing this, it's actually helping me build that routine? It's actually helping me to stop doing the stuff that I'm currently doing. And I'll explain what I mean by this. And this is what I told Jack. I said, listen, when I got here, I was going out almost every other every night or every other night staying up late. And as a result, the following day would end up turning like crap. Because I would be waking up late, yeah, I'd get some of my routines in, but I wasn't as productive as I wanted to be. But here's the thing. Rather than beat myself up over it, what naturally happened was I just kind of said, enough is enough. I hit an emotional threshold where all of a sudden I said, this is it, I'm not drinking anymore, I'm not going out, I'm going To make sure that I am in bed before 11 o'. Clock. This way I could do my morning things, I could be productive and I could do the things that are important to me and that are going to move my life forward. So I said, rather than beat yourself up over, you know, not, you know, not this trip not going well, and then beating yourself up over having, like having a drink, you just, you know, you just had gotten turned away from, you know, things, your plans got thwarted and now you're here. Give yourself some time just to relax, just to kind of unwind, let that not unravel and just be. And then from there then you could, once you've stopped beating yourself up, once you've shown yourself a little bit self love, then kind of tweak that and say, all right, well, what is it that I wanted? How do I want to structure my days? What do I need to do next? What do I want to do next? And I've been observing him over the last few days and I see the change happening in his psychology. I could see his mood lifting. I could see that he is just in a better state. It looks like the weight's been taking off his shoulders. And I believe that to be. I haven't confronted him with it, but I could see that he's. He looks lighter. So what is it for you? What is the thing that you beat yourself up over day in and day out? Because you're not doing it. And I want you to answer this. How does it feel? Does it feel good? Do you feel like doing more? Do you actually feel like getting on that horse and going full steam ahead towards that goal that you're setting out for, that you're not really doing because you keep getting sidetracked or whatever it is? What would happen if you showed yourself some self love instead? What would happen if you just kind of had that little autocorrect where you said, you know, okay, this is what's happening, what is really important to me, what do I want? And then realign when you catch yourself doing it again and say, okay, this is what I want. How do I realign? How do I make it so that I don't repeat the same mistake over and over? It's such a simple thing to ask ourselves, but I feel like nobody does it, and I'd be lying if I told you that I did it. All the time is to review your day, review your week, review your month, review your years, look back at them and say, okay, what did I get this year? What did I achieve? What are the things that I'm proud of, what are the things that went well? What are the things that did not go that well, what would I do differently? And as a result you realize maybe like in my circumstance that you're like, oh, well, you know what, I end up talking till 3 o' clock in the morning and I know that it ruins the day because I wake up and I'm tired. How can I prevent that going forward? And you start to give yourself ideas, you start to give yourself tools to correct it, to fix it. And as a result, now you know, alright, well, you know the alarm, now I set an alarm, alright, but when the alarm goes off, that means I have half an hour to get up to my room and start getting ready for bed. And this way I could prepare my morning going after. Now I try not to be too rigid with that because I also wanted to be a little bit flexible. And particularly on the weekends, I'll do this. But having that little reminder helps me understand and remember what is it that's really important to me? Ah, getting sleep. So this way I could wake up in the morning, do my run, feel at peace and be more productive in my day. Okay, perfect. Let me go. That is all I got for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, please give it a thumbs up. Please give it a share on your social media and if you have any questions, you could definitely email me at D O n N Y R A U S via Instagram. And I encourage you to sign up for one of my Live youe One Life workshops. You can do so by visiting donnyrouS-O-N-N n y r a u s.com and if you like amazing coffee as I do, please check out rousecoffee.com r a u s c o f-f e-e.com I have amazing coffees. I'm a Q grader and I take pride in selecting those coffees because I know how important the coffee is to your morning ritual. And I hope that by drinking my coffee, it kind of aligns you with the things that matter most to you. It aligns you with the things that are important to you. It aligns you with the feelings you want to feel on a daily basis. With the reminder that now is all we have and to do the things that matter to you. That is all I've got for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. God bless and I will see you soon.