Following Inspiration: 3 Steps Process to Manifesting Your Goals

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're listening to the podcast One Life. What is going on, everybody? Donnie Rouse here. And today I want to talk about manifesting those dreams. Said differently, I want to talk about where you get caught up and what cuts you off from those dreams that you have or attaining them or feeling like you have that excitement and momentum to them. So let me ask you a question first. Have you ever got inspired, saw a different vision for an area of your life, or maybe it was a trip or something you wanted to experience only to have it fall off and all of a sudden you've lost all emotion and all connection to that desire? This usually happens around January 1st or December 31st, where you get inspired, you see the possibility for something new, and then you, you start moving towards it. But then what happens after a few days, maybe a few weeks, is those dreams become a distant memory. And now all of a sudden, you are back into that, the rut that you found yourself in. It's just because you didn't follow these three simple steps. So in the steps here, and I'm going to share these steps with you because I realize it that in doing my travels, when I'm planning a trip somewhere in the world, these are always the three things that I do and the reason why I kept booking these trips year after year after year after year. And you'll see that in the story how sometimes my inspiration is there, sometimes my inspiration wanes. But there is a key aspect of what I do that locks me into it and against me to have the experiences that I want. So let's talk about the trip. So this coming, this coming November, I'm heading to Laos and Sri Lanka. And to give you a little background on this trip, so I don't really like, sometimes I don't know where I'm going the year before. I just have this goal of saying that I want to travel to four new countries a year as a result of that. How I select my trips, it's usually looking at Google flights, looking at the time that I'm thinking about traveling and seeing that place I haven't been to. And the flights are cheap. And sometimes when I'm booking those flights, the flights are cheap because there's like a military couple or there's some kind of like virus outbreak, in which case I just got to be careful. But the flights are cheap and it means that there are going to be less tourists there. So fast forward. So this year I was looking at a place that I wanted to travel and Laos had always been, for the last couple of years, Laos had been on my, my list of places wanted that I want to visit. But it wasn't this. It wasn't this, like this, this drive, this pull towards me and to give you a little bit of a backstory and what was going on in my life. Like in my life, I was just focused on doing the work of my business. The season was starting to speed up and as a result of the season speeding up, it just meant I had less or I was devoting less time to dreaming and thinking about the things that I want in my life and what do I want to experience at the very least in this year. So I, I would put it down, but I, I know that from one thing that I learned is that I always travel in November. It's always a big trip. It's like my break or a gift to myself as a result of going through the entire market. And also I know that when I commit to those states and I commit to booking a flight somewhere, once I do that, then it's locked in place. And then I could start to build that excitement because I am going to start going into what the first step is, is the inspiration. How often do you capture the inspirational moments that you have in your life? As I mentioned before, a lot of people do this on the 1st of January. They see this new image of their body, their health, their relationships, and they get really inspired. They may even take some action. And then shortly after that, what happens? Shortly after that, it starts to wane. The picture that they had in their mind, that inspiration starts to look murky and foggy to the point where they can't even make out that picture anymore. And that's what most people do in life. And I'm not saying I'm not most people because I'm guilty of that in some areas of my life. Other areas, I am very good at it. Right where I always Know exactly what I want. And I have that clear, clear sight. So the inspiration. So I booked the trip, and I started to get inspired. I booked the Laotian trip, and I'm like, all right, I need to start looking at some of this stuff. I need to start getting excited about this stuff. So as I started to look and research, watching videos, and this is kind of happening not in the steps that I'm going to tell you it, but one of the things I started doing was I started just feeding my mind. I started feeding myself, like, inspiration, watching videos, the top places to visit, top experiences, where to watch the sunset, where to go spelunking, where to get the best coffee. As I'm looking at all these videos, all of a sudden, like, the sense of excitement is stirring inside of me, and I can't even contain myself to the point where I was having some of the best days of this year just because I was so excited about the trip I was going to have. I want to talk about that because that is a very important part of this entire process. When you have things that you're looking forward to, how do they impact your day? Do you feel better? Do you feel worse? When you have something to look forward to, it tends to bleed into all the other areas of your life. And as a result, you feel excited about this trip. You start to feel excited about your relationships, your finances, your business, everything. So I was looking at this. I kept. Every morning I turn on the YouTube, I go into, you know, search Laos, you know, Laotian coffee, Laotian experiences, motorbiking, you know, and I started to build those experiences. And as I'm watching this, I start to get excited, because what I'm doing is I'm envisioning myself experiencing the thing that these people are experiencing on YouTube. And all of a sudden, like, I've lived the experience before it's ever even happened. And that's what the law of attraction is, right? I know I put the law of attraction into the title of this because that is one of the things that grabs people attention. But really, the law of attraction will work when you start to work with it. And so as a result of this, now it was a matter of the third step, which I had already done, was feeding myself with different, you know, images of this. But what I had done before that was I booked the trip. Now, booking that trip, what it did was it locked it in, it cemented it into my schedule, it cemented the experience into my life. So I knew it was going to happen. I took a massive action and as a result, the only thing for me to do was to just prepare. I mean, I could have not prepared. I could have gone into the trip and not looked at anything which I've done in the past. And it's yielded good results. But often I would miss out on some great experiences just because I didn't do the planning. But the point of mentioning this is with the three steps were one, inspiration, follow your inspiration. Number two is take an action step when you get inspired, when you notice that you are in an inspired state, capture it. What exactly is it that's making you inspired? And take a step towards it. And as you take a step towards whatever it is that you say that you want, you just have to keep feeding your mind images of this. So this way you're constantly living in that state of anticipation, or not even this, you're living in the state of already having experienced it. And now when you meet that experience in the future, there's nothing left for it to do but to match up to the experiences that you've already lived in your mind. And so how do you bring this into life? Let's go into the dreams that you have, you know, for, let's say your physical health. So many people, yours including yours truly, have these desires to have like, you know, the great health, the energy, the muscles, all of these, you know, the however you want to define health. They go about it a little bit and then all of a sudden it drops off. And what I found because of what happens in my own life is whenever I feel like I'm disconnected from my dreams, what is really going on from it is that I'm not focusing on it, I'm not looking at it, it's not at the forefront of my mind and as a result it seems distant. It's not even distant, it's not even there. Right? It's not there. So how can I take action towards something if I don't feel any connection to it? Because it's like taking action towards something, you don't even know where you're going. And so the reason I tell you this is I want you to start to make a practice to set your goals and put them forward facing every single day. And then also as a result of having them forward facing, is to just play around with the idea of having whatever it is that you want. And it is this anticipation, this the emotion feeling the emotion before the actual event which is going to pull you forward towards that event. Life is, you know, it's so short and so much of our Days are wasted doing things that aren't going to pull us closer to our goal. And without going off on a tangent, on a different tangent, I do want to touch upon one thing and this is perhaps one of the. This could be an episode in and of itself. And it is one of the biggest distinguishments I have made probably in the last, like few months. Because prior to this I would just, whenever I had a goal, I would just move towards that goal and be like, you know what? This is where I want to go. And I'm feeding my mind with images, videos, watching stuff on TV and I'm just going there 100 at 100 miles an hour. But then there were also those times where I felt like I wasn't making any, any significant progress towards it. And the reason was, was because my days were getting so crowded, I had other things crowding in. And as a result, the goals that I had were getting pushed out. And then that's when the planning come in. When I started to plan my days, which I've been doing for the last few weeks now all of a sudden now even I always make it a point just to put things into my calendar and to, you know, to say like 9 o' clock tonight, spend one hour researching the trip and just getting excited about it. And the reason I book it in there, because once I book it in, my alarm goes off on my phone and I know that I have this block time to sit there with my goal. Now that's an easy one, right? Like the goal, the sitting there with watching like a YouTube video of a trip is that, that's easy. But do I always do it? I don't, right? Because sometimes that like, I'm like my day gets pushed back. I get back from the gym late, I'm eating late, and the last thing I want to do is be on the screen when I'm ready to go to sleep because I don't want to wake up. But the point of it being in my calendar, even if I don't watch the video, it is still a reminder saying laoshantrip, Sri Lanka, it's coming. And it reminds me to, to, to get back on track and to start doing the planning process. Like right now, what I'm going to do right when I hang up this phone, the phone right when I get off the video here is I have to talk to a company about getting my motorcycle license because I plan on doing some trekking via motorcycle and never done that before. It's going to be a completely new experience for me. Well, I'VE done it illegally because I didn't have an international license. But this time I'm going to do it legally. And. But the reason why I'm saying is, again, this is just an action step and I'm putting it in my calendar because my trip is not that far out. And right now it requires me to really, really start paying attention, putting the steps in place to ensure that I have the maximum experience that I can. So let's bring this all back down to the day to day and how you could incorporate this into your day. Like, first and foremost, let's get inspired, right? If you are doing the same thing day in, day out, you're running the same routines, you're not going to get inspired. You need to be around inspiring people. You need to be in new situations and to get into new situations. How do you do that? Just say yes. New things are coming your way. Hey, do you want to go out for a drink? Someone asks you from the gym. Sure. Someone asks you from work, hey, do you want to go out and grab dinner later? A few of us are getting together and normally you're like, ah, no, I got to go watch my, my rom com. Sure, I'll go out to dinner. Whatever it may be, you have to start saying yes. Because by being in new situations, what you do is you throw your brain for a loop. And now the brain, your brain's like, all right, I'm not going to run that same pattern of thinking that we've been running every single day for the last 10 years. Oh, something new now. Now you have some variety in it, and all of a sudden your brain has the, the window to go out of and, and try to think bigger. And plus, how do you get inspired? Normally, it's usually from being around other people that they feed your inspiration, give you new ideas, new possibilities. Secondly, when you do, when you get inspired, notice what is happening. Notice what it is that is inspiring you. It's so easy to let things just fall away, like feeling the intense emotion, feeling great for about 10 minutes, and then going back to your everyday. This is robbing you of all of the joys and happiness that you could be experiencing your life. And so knowing that you have this peak motion wouldn't make sense. Wouldn't it do you justice to capture it, to know, like, all right, well, what was so magical about this? Like, they were talking about, you know, I heard Donnie talking about Montenegro and the city of Budva and how beautiful it was, and he was talking about, like, the trek around the entire coastline of the Budva Riviera. And it just sounded amazing, like seeing the trees, the ocean, the cliffs. And like, I really want to experience, right, Capture that, whatever it is, capture it and then start to take an action towards that. And then action could be something as simple as you don't really have to book the trip right now, but the action could be as simple as watching a YouTube video. Which brings us to step number three is feeding. Constantly feeding that inspiration. Because as you start to feed that inspiration, it's just like everything else in your life, right? You, you have a cookie every day after lunch. All of a sudden, what happens after the, you know, after the, the three months of doing this, you might have a few extra pounds, but you notice that like you don't even know why you're reaching for the cookie, right? You're like, oh, I don't want a cookie, but here it is in my hand, yum, yum, yum. And you start eating it. It's just because you literally, your brain turned off like your consciousness and you're just going on automatic pilot, you're going on autopilot, automatic pilot, you're going on autopilot. So you can do that same thing with any desire that you have by training your brain to go into that, that space, the inspiration. So now all of a sudden, anytime it clicks on, you could start to feel those good emotions and have it pull you forward rather than have you just looping around the same day to day emotions that you are experiencing. And lastly, again, how do we just incorporate this in our day? This is going to happen when you break the routines. And you may say, donnie, but you don't understand, I don't have, I can't break the routines. I got to work, I got to go to work in the morning. There's not much time there. Then I have my, you know, I have to come home, the kids are crying, just stop, right? You have the moment to get inspired, right? Maybe it's the morning cup of coffee that you have in the morning where you take yourself some, you give yourself some moments just to ask a different question, saying like, well, you know what, what do I want to experience in the next five years? And maybe you start with gratitude. One of my favorite questions that I start with in the morning is what can I acknowledge and appreciate or what, bless it, what are the blessings in my life that I could appreciate and acknowledge that I haven't? All of a sudden like everything starts popping up and immediately I start to feel good. But going back to finding time that you could find time on that morning commute to work by just putting on a different freaking. Putting on a podcast, right? Something that is going to put you in a different state rather than the radio or watch or listening to the political news, which is doing nothing but sucking the life out of you, literally. So I hope I'm saying this because I want you to experience all that you can from life and to have the emotions that you want because you deserve it. And everything out there in the world right now is really trying to pull you away from your life and move you towards whatever the desires they have for you. And usually it's not your best interest at heart. So I hope this helps. I hope this inspires you to just start to create some space in your day to get inspired, to find moments where you can take some joy. And then when you capture those moments of inspiration, to really, really feed your mind and start to take some action steps towards those. That is all I've got for you guys. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope this in some way gives you a little bit of way of reframing how you look at your day as well as the experiences you want to have in life. Because every moment is a blessing, every moment is a gift. Every moment. And not a single moment should be taken for granted. Hope you enjoyed this episode here, guys. Thank you so, so much for tuning in. Remember, you only get one life. Live fully, live passionately, and most of all, live now. God bless you guys and I will see you again soon.