Eye on the Horizon - Release Stress by Focusing on Your Vision

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. What's going on, guys? Donnie Rouse here. And this one is about setting your eyesight on the horizon. Isn't it true where sometimes you're going towards a goal, but you seem to get in the thick of it, and all of a sudden now, instead of feeling fulfilled and enjoying the ride, now all of a sudden your journey is just literally filled with stress? And sometimes you feel like you can't even see two feet in front of you. When this happens, it's important to set your eyesight at the horizon, meaning remember what it is you're setting out to do in the first place. Doing so puts the entire journey into perspective and allows you to start to embrace the ride, because chances are what you're setting out to do. If you're getting caught in the thick of it, there's a lot of steps between you and that end goal. And so to allow yourself the grace to say, okay, well, you know what? I know this is a journey. I know there's many things I'm going to have to do in order to get there, and I'm willing to fix my sight at the vision, the thing that I'm working towards, and then just trust that things are going to unfold and develop in a way that is most beneficial for that vision. This podcast is going to come as a different. A different approach. I'm not going to ask the questions, but rather I'm going to share a story with me. And this was a session I had recently with one of my coaches, and we were doing an evaluation. We were looking. We just started a new term, working together. So we were looking at all of the areas of my life, and we're saying, okay, well, how do you feel in terms of, you know, you're caring for people? How do you feel with regard to connection? How do you feel with regard to living your purpose? We went through all these categories to measure, and in that measurement, I was initially, I wanted to give myself a low score. I'm like, oh, you know, between a 1 to 10, I like, my first inclination was to say, oh, I'm a five here, maybe a six. But then upon some probing from my coach, she's like, well, that's odd. And because I'd work with her in the past, she recalled to mind some of the advances in a lot of the things that I have been working on and a lot of the visions, the goals that I currently have set in motion. And then it was because of that taking a step back and being reminded of what it is that I'm moving towards. All of a sudden now, when all the ones that followed the categories that need to be measured, all of a sudden I was rating myself in nines, you know, like, not like almost near 10. And what changed, right? Like, why? Why was I all of a sudden scoring better or giving myself more grace? What changed was that she set my eyes towards the horizon. That is what I am working towards and put things in perspective. Me, because I have. There are a lot of big things in play right now. One being a move, another one being a trip, another one being the launching of my one life blueprint, and the third being the scaling of my espresso business. All of these happening now at one time. So it is, you know, it's easy to see why I could feel overwhelmed and how there was too many things going on for me to kind of grasp. But that's also because my sight was fixed on this moment. Of course there are demands of everyday life coming at me. And because of that, it seems like, well, I'm not spending the time, I'm not making the progress that I want. But when I look at the goal, I realize that all these little steps, that there actually is indeed progress being made towards those goals, but also just honoring the size of these and how I am moving towards my visions for the different categories of my life, how I am living and creating at the same time, my one life. And I wanted to come on here and share this today because I know that I am not the only one who is their own biggest critic. Right? Isn't it true if you were to ask those people who are closest to you or say, hey, John Doe, relax. I mean, don't you see all the stuff that you're doing? And you may look at it and you're like, yeah, but it doesn't feel like enough. And they may put things a little bit More perspective and they may set the goal in front of you and you're making progress and you're like, oh well, you know what? I guess I am making progress. And all of a sudden now you're giving your grace, you're seeing yourself through their lens and all of a sudden you're seeing being more subjective with how you're viewing your progress. The reason I bring this up, the reason why I'm even here talking about this today, is because so much of, I mean your day, your life is all around feeling, right? It's all about feeling the emotions you want in life. And a lot of those emotions come by, like what I just said, feeling life. Feeling life means like taking the moment to like to enjoy the small things. And if you're always going, right, if you can get, you can be successful and not feel fulfilled. And that happens when you're constantly going, going, going, doing. You're chicken off all the marks, you're doing all of your to do's. But then at the end of the day you just feel drained because you didn't give to yourself first. You're so fixated on getting the things to do that you're failing to look and remember what it is you're working towards, who it is you're becoming and realizing that the whole point of setting out on the journey in the first place was so that this way you could enjoy it, right? To have the impact, to grow yourself. But sometimes you don't always live it like that. And I'll raise my hand because there's always this constant reevaluation and measure, like okay, man, it feels really tough right now, like what is going on? More often than not I'm being a little bit more critical and I'm not allowing myself to enjoy things that I enjoy and allow myself that downtime to literally first love and care for myself. It's kind of like go, go, go, go, go. Because if I stop now, oh, it's only going to pile up. More stuff is going to come on my plate. But that is true of life. There's always going to be stuff trying to pile it on you and your goal, your purpose or the main objective here is not to let it pile on, right? But only to allow the things to stick to you that are important and that are going to move you in the direction. But in moving in that direction is making sure that you're taking time to enjoy the process. So let's look at your life. I wasn't going to go into the question, but let's look at your life. What is it that you're working towards? Actually, before we even go to what you're working towards, where are you feeling stressed? Where you have an outcome. You're doing the steps and you just feel like, what the hell's going on? I don't have time for anything. If you were another person looking at you and they knew what exactly it was that you were working towards, let's get clear about that first. What is the big vision? Without clarity, you can't move towards anything. Without the clarity, you could be spinning your wheels and going around in circles, and it could be because you don't have clarity. You may have some clarity, but if you're not taking the steps and constantly get more clear about what it is you're moving towards, you're literally just going to go around and you're going to spin, and then eventually you're going to burn out. So let's make that the first thing. Let's always aim, always seek clarity. A, S, C, always seek clarity. So what is it that you're working towards? Where have you been feeling stuck? And if you imagine yourself coaching yourself, pretend that's not even your goal. Let's pretend it's somebody else. But they're doing all the actions you're doing, how would you coach them? What kind of encouragement would you say in terms of the efforts that they're already giving? What advice would you give that person on how to just live each day going forward and how to focus on these tasks? Once you do those, then I want you to follow your own advice and start living in congruence to that. It can be tough to try, you know, to coach yourself because when you put that mirror up, sometimes you don't want to see it. Like, I. I know for myself, when I was looking at how I was living in my life and seeing that I was living congruently, that I was living in integrity to my own values and how I wanted to live, I started to get emotional, and part of me just felt so grateful. And on another note, almost like I was almost afraid to acknowledge that I was living this, the life that I want to live. I felt like the emotion, like almost my eyes were getting teary, but it was in that. In that recognizing that, I took a step back and realized, like, where the stress just, like, left, like, my. I noticed the physiology. My body changed all of a sudden. Like, my vocal tones before on this call, I was like going a million miles an hour. All of a sudden, the cadence of my voice slowed down. And even after the post call, I noticed my whole posture was just relaxed because I allowed myself to focus on what it was going and I was allowing myself the grace of seeing. Listen, hey, Donnie, you've made a lot of progress here. Let's be kind to ourselves. Let's acknowledge your successes. And I say this to me, but I'm speaking to you. Let's acknowledge where you've come from. Let's acknowledge the effort that you've been getting. Let's acknowledge that you're still in the game, right? Because that is what counts. It doesn't matter. I mean, you can give up at any moment, right? But as long as you're continuing on that journey, you're always. You're still in it. You only fail when you give up. But again, let's not focus on, like, the constant doing and the failing and trying to strive for it. Let's focus on just enjoying life. And enjoying that means doing something that is fulfilling to you, something you find speaks to your purpose of being here on this earth and then just being okay with the progress, how you're making it. Because once you let go of that resistance and you think, you know what, I'm just going to. I want to enjoy the ride. Let's make the ride the purpose of this life. Take away that resistance, and all of a sudden, now you can get into the flow of things, and then things start to feel good. So to close this conversation up, let's go back to what it is that you really, really want. What are you working towards? We can look at it like the grand vision of life, your purpose. You can look at your body, whatever it is, what is it that you're working towards? And then what are the feelings you've been experiencing day in and day out? If it is, you know, where you feel like it's constant fight. I'll give you an example. You know, for instance, like my meal prep, like, when I was doing my competition, it was very easy to. I mean, it was like another job, too. But, like, staying on track with the meals was easy because I had that outcome. But now sometimes I don't feel like I even want to eat that many meals. But I just did my meal prep last night. I'm like, no, I must continue. Yes, there have been a lot of days in the past where I've been missing the meals. I haven't been getting the calories I need. But that doesn't mean I stop doing my meal prep. I still do the meal prep, and I just work on getting better and Staying on track and moving forward towards that goal. There was a quote I had heard when I was doing Toastmasters, and one of the attendees in Toastmasters said this. He says it was, I don't have to do with a janitor who was sweeping the room and he was gets the dust into like, you know, the pan he dumps in the garbage. And he equated it, you know, and tomorrow, like, you know, again, he has to dust, he has to, he has to clean the floor again because more stuff, statter, more stuff accumulates and he has to pick it up and he has to throw down and every day more stuff accumulates, right? And you have to clean it up, dispose of it, and just continue. So the same is true of life. So I hope you enjoyed this episode here. I hope it gave you just maybe take a step back and say, hey, well, what is it? What do I want? What is it that I'm working towards? And if you don't know what you're working towards, get a little bit more clarity on that. Clarity is power. And then looking at your journey and just being like, you know, like, if I'm honest with myself, what would someone who's next to me, who loves me and supports me, what would they say about my efforts? Like, take that perspective and then just give yourself grace by being kind and saying, well, how can I continue on this journey and enjoy the ride? So I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, please share this. Excuse me. Share this post with five people. Hit that like button. Throw a comment in there, Ask a question. I'm here for you to give you more clarity, to help you live your one life. That is the purpose of this. That is the purpose of everything I'm doing. Because I believe to my soul that life is meant to be lived with passion. Life. You were meant to follow your own path, not the path others have defined for you. But the whole reason we're here is to feel alive, to feel all of those positive emotions, to feel abundance, to feel love, to feel joy, to feel excitement. And it's going to take getting rid of the stuff that's not yours. This way you could focus on the life that is. So I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for tuning in. Remember, give yourself some credit. It is a journey. Life isn't easy. It requires you to grow. It requires you to make some changes and just be okay with that. Remember, you only get one life. Live your one life. Live fully. Live passionately. Live now. God bless you guys. Thank you. So much for tuning in. I'll see you next week.