Count Down - The Antidote for Procrastination

Most people spend their entire life stressed without ever giving a single thought as to what it is they really want or what's important to them. See, I'm here to cut through all that noise connecting you to yourself and the life that you were meant to live. I used to slave away at a corporate job that I hated, but I broke through the social norms and pursued my passion. As a result, I own my own coffee company, I'm espresso sommelier, and I get to travel the world. You too can live a life that you love, but it starts with getting clear about what you want. It starts with a new decision. I'm your host, Donnie Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life the Countdown. When you, when do you follow through in life on. On something that you. A goal, you said, when do you actually follow through? It doesn't even have to be a goal. Like when do you actually follow through on something that your heart is calling you to do? It's so easy in the day to day of life just to get stuck, to get caught in those day to day routines where your mind goes on autopilot and all of a sudden now you don't even, you're not even consciously in your day, right? You're literally just running your habits because your brain has checked out. Your brain is like, you know what, we're going to make it easy. I'm taking off. Just go on autopilot. The intention of this episode here is to take you off that autopilot, but also give you a new way of looking at something that can help you make fast progress in whatever it is that you want to bring into your life. The point of this podcast here is to. Or this, literally the entire podcast is to get you to ask the questions that you normally don't get to ask in your day to day, right? Because you're too busy doing other things. So the first question is, well, what, what is it that you want? Right? We always start with the end in mind. What is it that you want? If you don't know, then you kind of, you know, you're literally pointing. You're pointing your target up in the air. But if you have a general sense of what you want, then you can slowly start to tune in. You can slowly start to get more clarity. So what is it that you want? And second question is, what is the urgency? You could use swap out the words and say, what is the necessity? But what is the urgency? Right? Urgency gets a bad rap because when you think of urgency, you think of stress, right? You wait too long to submit that project at work, and all of a sudden now there's a big sense of urgency and you're stressed out beyond your freaking mind. So. But I want to use those words interchangeably because urgency has a little bit more of a triggering effect, right? There's probably a little bit more of a stress response when you say urgency. But when you think urgency, it's like, I got to do this now. Like, if I don't do this now, there's consequences to pay, right? When you think of necessity, necessity is like, yeah, it's a necessity, but it just. The word lacks the power of urgency, right? Wouldn't you agree if you just say them out loud, Urgency, necessity. Like necessity. Kind of like even just the tone or urgency is like it's in your face. So I want to acquaint you with the word urgency, but not in the sense that the urgency where you literally. You procrastinated. And as a result of you procrastinating now, all of a sudden you, you know, now there's a shit ton of stress in your life, right? At least until this project's done. What I want to. The seed I want to plant is the right type of urgency. I want to plant the urgency that is like when you're looking at the end of your life and you're like, well, wow, this is something that I want to experience before I die, right? Death. Death, that's another thing, like a taboo thing. No one talks about death, but death is great because it puts things in perspective. It lets you know that your time here is finite and that whatever it is you want to do, you better get the ball rolling. So back to urgency. So the urgency we want, we want specific types of urgency. We want urgencies that will make us feel good, not stressed. And the stuff that makes us feel good are think about taking action. And you want to plan a trip, right? You can't do it right away, but there is a sense of urgency. You know, you want to go there before maybe before you have kids or maybe before, you know, before you get old and you can't do it anymore. There's a finite goal. There's a sense of urgency that's out there. When I was. I've traveled quite a bit, right? So I've been to about, I think, 48 countries now with my intention to visit every single country and to give you. Just to give you an example of the sense of urgency when I think of dying. The one thing on my mind, the one thing, one of my biggest I guess fears is not experiencing the things that I want in life. And as a result, when things arise, when opportunities arise, like when I get a small window of time and I see a flight to Colombia that is, you know, whatever, $400. I take that, right? Because there's this literally, it's like an overwhelming sense of urgency where I'm like, oh, my God, like, I've got to do this now. You know, who knows how long you live with. True. It's honest, right? Who knows how long you will live? So why not make good on those goals? So I would look at, you know, this. Literally, I'm giving you a little bit of an insight into my psyche. This is like the type of thing that would literally start spinning in my mind. And it's not always like that because that would be extremely stressful, right? Because then I wouldn't work. I would literally just keep traveling, which is nothing wrong with that. I would love to just keep traveling. But when it's there, it's like an alarm sounding. It's letting me know, don, this is something that is extremely important to you. You've got to take action. As a result, it's always in the forefront of my mind. It's always the, where am I going to go next? And I'm always. There's the thread that's constantly being woven as to what action am I going to take next. So let's go back to the word urgency, right? When you think of the word urgency, urgency is like, usually we make things urgent that are not important, right? So you have. There's like think of four quadrants. There is not important, not urgent, important and urgent. Most people make the unimportant things extremely urgent. A lot of people make urgency, important things urgent because they just waited too long. So the whole idea is to look at the things that are important but not urgent. But again, we want to use the word urgency just because it has. It has some emotional power. So we want to focus on important and urgent. But we're going to add, like, another quadrant to it, and we're going to say rather than, you know, important, urgent, important, but not, you know, not unlike some kind of timeline. This way, it's urgent because you know it has to happen, but you know, it doesn't have to happen all tomorrow. It's like, if I gave you this baby elephant, I'm like, here you go. You could eat that. You're like, oh, great. Food for the year. I don't have to go out hunting and gathering now. But like, yeah, but you know, the meat's gonna go. You gotta eat it by tomorrow. You're gonna what, Eat the entire elephant by tomorrow? But yet that's what you do to your life, right? You. All these things we pile on, right? And then it's like, oh, my God, you get overwhelmed because you feel like you have to do it all when it really could have been avoided if one, maybe just took off some of the things on your plate that weren't that important. And two, you didn't wait long. You didn't wait until the very, very end. So what is it that you like? What kind of things you want to experience in life? Let's put this into practice. Like, what? You always have to start with what it is that you want. Like, what do you want? Do you want to, you know, do you want to travel to every country in the world? Maybe not, right? Maybe you're like, shit, that is exhausting. I don't even like getting on planes. Fine. Maybe you want to start a farm, right? Maybe you want to grow your own produce, but you just keep putting it off because, you know, there's always something coming up. Your favorite series is on. Is on Netflix, right? You can't miss one of your. The new episode. What is it that you want? Get clear about this before anything else and then next. What if it never happens, right? What if it never comes to fruition? As I just shared with you, when I think of not experiencing life to the fullest, when I think of certain things that make me feel like I'm not living the fullest life, emotion dwells. It, like, wells up in me and it makes me, you know, it literally pushes me into action. Because there's a strong enough why. When I think, what is the why? I'm trying to think. I was asking myself as I'm speaking to this, to you, like, what is the why? I kind of think back to the. The book Heteronry about, like this. Like this childlike, you know, one wonder of the world, and it's like this innocence. I coincidentally, I also looked at my numerology last night, and I was looking at my destiny number, my life number, and all these things, and they were all around the area of 5. My soul urge is 5, if you know anything about numerology. Soul urges are this urge to be out in the world for adventure, for travel. So, I mean, it's funny, I don't, you know, I guess I do like to read those things, but when they describe me to a T, I find it rather fascinating. But that. That is My sole urge, like, to the T. And then my other thing, my life number was number nine. Number nine is a humanitarian and, like, inspiring and wanting to share something of value, which is go live your life. So what is it that's urgent for you? If you were to die tomorrow, what song would be left unsung? Like, what would you regret leaving on this earth unfinished? And then once you have that, I want you to really focus on the emotions of it. Like, how does it. How would it feel? Right. Don't just say, like, oh, well, you know, if I would. If I never got to bring my kids to a baseball game. Yeah. And just while they're so young. Yeah, that would really break my heart. Right. But don't just put that on paper. Let's think about, well, how would you feel? Right. And why would you feel it? Now we're asking questions of the heart right now. You're like, why would you feel it? You might say, like, oh, well, because these are cherished years. I remember when my father would take me to the baseball game and how much I bonded with him. And it was really one of the things that made me feel close to my father. One of my fondest memories. If it didn't happen, oh, my God, I would feel broken. I would feel like I was missing an opportunity to connect with the one little being that I love, to impact his life, to share one of my passions. Right. You see where I'm going with this. The power is in the why. The power is in the emotion. The more emotion you evoke out of a thing that you're going for, the more likely that you're going to move in that direction. So many people put their focus. And I'm guilty of it as well, but it's a conscious effort. You put your focus in the pain of not doing something, and normally it's. It's something that someone else is asking you to do, and it's not even. It may not even be that important to you. So focus first on the things that are important you before anyone else in the outside world has a chance to put their shit on your back. Right. We want to make sure the pack that we are carrying up that hill is. Is filled with the things that are necessary and important for our own survival. Said differently, necessarily, and important to our own life being filled with happiness and joy. So once you have that emotion, right, how does it feel? Do you feel a little bit better now about. Or maybe do you feel a little bit different? Like you can take some kind of action right now, right? Maybe you can't do using that baseball example. Maybe, you know, it's. They're not in season, right? Baseball's not, they're not playing baseball right now. But maybe you can contact like, you know, to see when the season tickets are available or maybe the schedules out where you can start looking out and blocking out the time. So this way you know that you're going to be able to take off, work on exit X a day or. You know what I mean? What can you do? Feeling this emotion, feeling that you want to take some kind of action, feeling that there is urgency. What action can you take now? Take that action. You have no idea how important that action is. Because action compounds getting out of your day to day rut. Your day to day routines is what all of a sudden now opens up the available for the things you want to flow into your life. Life doesn't happen. I'm spitting over here on the microphone. But life does not happen in a vacuum, right? You have to. You can sit there, you can pray, you can meditate, you could do everything you want, you know, everything ritual you have, it's not gonna do any good until you get out into the world. Because that is the only way all of these things start to make their way to you, right? Like you're God. Send me the perfect, you know, send me the love of my life. All right, I guess I will wait in my bedroom until she comes knocking at my door. I hope she knows where my house is. It sounds stupid, it sounds ridiculous, right? But yet you do that with every other thing that you desire. Get into not just stepping into discomfort. Don't even, I mean, because I don't. The one thing I don't want to do, I don't want you to feel like, anxious about this, but rather have fun, right? Look at, think of a possibility in life, something better might come along, right? I remember listening to an interview. They were talking to Oprah. They were like, did you ever, did you ever believe that, like, or think that this would be your life? She's like, I had no fucking clue. I had no idea. This I, you know, I imagine myself like right here, but all sudden I have all of this. I'm paraphrasing here, but she had no idea. So what does that mean to you? Meaning once you put yourself out there, right, the possibility, like, you might think, like, oh, wow, you know, it would be great to have this level of the thing, but in reality, like, there might be something so much bigger and better than you could ever have imagined waiting for you to just take that first step. So let's recap. Let's go back to our good old friend urgency. What did I teach you about urgency? Action taking urgency, atu, as I call it, is the urgency you want to take for the things that are important to you. But before you could take the action, you first have to know what it is that is important to you. Next is, well, what if it doesn't happen, right? What if that never comes to fruition? And it might be so easy again just to brush it off like, oh, well, if I don't go to the baseball game with my son, I don't go to the baseball game with my son. Not a big deal. But add some emotion to it, right? We want necessity, we want urgency. What will that mean for his life? What would it mean for your life if it's. Maybe I'll give you one more example and we'll just role play with this. Maybe it's taking a trip to Italy. I just got back from Italy for five weeks. So we'll go there. Maybe it's taking a trip to Italy, right? You've been wanting to go, but you haven't taken the action. What's the urgency? Right? You might be writing it down on paper. You might be like, well, you know, it would be great. I would love to have some pizza and try. I've heard the espresso in Italy is amazing. It's completely different than anywhere else in the world. It would be great to have like a great espresso. One of the cafes Donnie suggests in his podcast or on his Instagram page. Totally recommend it. You know that you put emotion to it, right? So now reading that, you're like, oh, yeah, you know, I guess I'd be missing out on coffee and seeing Italy, trying the pasta, seeing like the Coliseum. I love history, right? Oh, God, it would be awesome to see that. But, eh, how much emotional intensity is there? There's not a whole lot. I mean, unless you really, really love coffee, like me. I would do it just for the coffee. I would do. I would fly to Italy, just have one shot of espresso and I would fly back. No bullshit. I think I actually might have done short trips for that, but I'm getting sidetracked, right? So we're looking at that now. Let's ask a couple, let's ask a few different questions. All right, all right. Well, okay. There's not that much urgency there. What if, you know, you were, you didn't, you were going to live for one year, Would that make it more urgent. It's your first time traveling out of the country. What if you never left your hometown, your house, your room? What if you never left? What kind of effect is that having on your quality of life? What kind of effect would it have? How would it feel to actually step out and to experience that, to get into the world? What else would that do for your life? How would taking that trip impact your life? What other doors might it open up? What are the other experience that maybe you can even fathom that you might have as a result of taking that trip? Do you see what I'm doing here by asking, by taking something that didn't really have much emotional intensity at all and just asking some, some basic questions, really. Now all of a sudden you're building the case for like, you know what? Damn. Like, I mean, I have a, you know, I have a week in a week coming up, vacation. I. I'll go to Italy for one week. What the hell, why not? You start to build the emotion and you start to build the why. But it takes you, you have to ask some questions now all of a sudden there's some urgency behind it, right? You only start to think about urgency when you think about death. Well, I guess not just death, but like when you know that your time is finite on this earth. You look at things a little bit differently because you realize that the things that are important to you, you have to do now. The things that don't matter, like the shit people and you know, the little petty fears you have about comparison. All these things, right? I have them too. I have a lot of them. One day I'll do a podcast. Maybe I'll just go into all the fears and the comparison, all the things. But you want to take action anyways, right? Because life is finite, your time here. And the intention for you is to enjoy your time, to be happy. That's not to say that every day is going to be peaches and cream, because that's bullshit, right? There's the dichotomy of life. Life is happy, sad, it's good, it's shit, it's all, it's everything. But isn't it kind of cool that you can literally feel all those emotions in a single day? I know I have prioritize the things that are important to you. So that is all I have for you guys. I hope this in some way has made you look at that you word a little bit differently. Not the you you, but the you in urgency and that you may use just the example I gave to create some urgency in your life to follow through on your passions, to move forward in your goals, to take that trip, to start that business, to say I love you. That is all I got for you guys today. I hope you enjoy this podcast. If you did, please subscribe. Please share it with someone who is special to you, whom you think might benefit from hearing this message. If you would like to subscribe, comment, or ask a question, you could visit my website@www.donnyrouse.com. again d o n n y r a u s.com I believe in you guys. You can do this. You deserve to live a life that you're passionate about and love. As always, remember, you only get one life. Live it. God bless and I will see you again soon.