Guiding Light - How to Break Conditioned Patterns of Thinking

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. This is a story about a friend who almost went into infidelity to quote, unquote, get even with his spouse. And the lesson I'm going to teach you, or the lesson I'm going to tell you in this story is something that you could apply not just when you find yourself falling back into old habits of patterns of ways of thinking throughout your day, but something that you can use to literally guide every category, every area of your life. Guiding Light do you ever find yourself falling back into habitual patterns of thinking? And you know they're habitual because you're conscious of it, right? You know, I typically fall into this pattern of thinking, act this way, but it's not who I want to be. Like, I don't like being this person. If that is you, the first thing I want to do is congratulate you because you have the consciousness to know that there is a way you've been acting or reacting that doesn't jive with the person you want to become. So I'm going to tell you a story today about a friend of mine who was literally on the cusp of being infidelity because he and his wife had this interaction. He called Jun something suspicious and it started to snowball from there. But after a quick talk, we kind of aligned. But I'll tell you the story and you can see how if there's any patterns that you run in your own life and how it relates to you. Because what I want you to walk away with from this story is having one, having a guiding vision, something that's pulling you towards, and two, calling a higher part of yourself to your day based on who you want to become. So I got a call from my friend yesterday and he, I could tell already in his breathing, he was panting, breathing. And I hadn't heard from him in a few days. And I Was like, well, what? I was ready to send him a text saying like, what the hell, man? You know, why haven't you responded? It's been a week and, you know, you still haven't even responded to the text that I sent you. So I was ready to text him, but then I ended up receiving a call and he was very kind of like, you could tell his speech patterns were a little bit thrown off. And just expressing it to me was a little bit troublesome for him. He was going on to tell me that he was away for a while. And while he was away, he ran into someone, I guess his wife knew when she was living in her home country. And it was a guy that was interested in her that she had met at a cafe. So they had met and they had taken a long period of time and they were doing a long distance relationship. And in that time, you know, she's going about her life, he's going about his life. So he's in her hometown and they see this guy, this guy comes over and the interaction, he's like, oh, that's interesting, you know, why is she talking to him? And then there was a message on Instagram and when he asked her about the message, she said it was this gentleman. And then he said, keep the message. He ended up deleting the message. So what would go through your mind in that instance? You would get suspicious. You would think that the person was cheating on you or they're doing something wrong, otherwise why would they delete the text? So he went into a personality that he doesn't like to display. He started putting her down and being condescending and saying things not because he wanted to. It was a habitual pattern that was on that he probably saw from his parents. But he was angry because he felt betrayed. He was angry because he thought that there was something else going on. So he called me, asking me, well, you know, what should I do? Should I? I told her that I will do the same thing and then we'll call it even, then I'll forget about it. I'm like, you're not going to forget about it if you're Italian. You know what? I'm spotting what I'm talking about. Italians have a very hard time at forgetting things, especially when it's something they feel like there was wrong done against them. It's just, it's something I think is specific to maybe, maybe it's not that specific to Italian culture, but it definitely exists. And it's not something that you have to use the story to Say that you're locked into it. You can let go at any time. So as he was telling me this, I said, well, you know what? First of all, you're not even sure what happened, right? You're guessing in your mind. Did you have. When you have the conversation with her, what'd she say? You're building an image in your mind as to what exactly happened, when it may not even be true. How often do you do that in life? Do you try to anticipate what the future is, what's going to happen, when you can be. I mean, we're very shitty at predicting the future, right? So you can be trying to predict the future, and you are completely wrong. And most of the time, when we do predict the future, it's usually not in our best favor. We're usually looking at what could possibly go wrong because that's how our brains are built, right? We try to identify where the dangers are. So he was going on about this, and then he started to express to me. He's like. He's like, I know. I was. This way. I was putting her down. I was. You know, I was putting her down. I didn't want her to. You know, she said something that was trying to fluff herself up, and I. And I put her down. He's like, and I don't. But I don't like acting this way. I don't. That's not who I am. One of the key things right there, he said, was that that's not who he was, and it's not who he wanted to be. So immediately I said, well, all right, well, who do you want to be? Like, what are the virtues that you want to display? Like, how do you want to act in this situation? Because you have a choice. You don't have to habitually respond how you have in the past. You can choose right now to live up to a higher standard for yourself. As I said that, he thought about it, and he's like, yeah, you know, I want to. He's like, I want to be better, right? I don't want to respond this way. I don't want to put it down, because that's not who I am. Again, he's reinforcing the identity of who he wants to become. Then he went on to say, well, I told her I could go meet somebody, text them, and then we'll call it even, and then I'll forget the entire thing. He goes, well, what do I do? How do I move forward from this? I was like, well, you have two choices, right? You have the conversation. You say, okay, listen, this is how I'm feeling. Because there is no. We don't know what happened, right? He's telling me the story. We don't know what happened in this interaction or if anything happened at all. I said, explain how you feel and how her actions made you feel distrust in her. And then after that, you know, after you've said your piece, you have a decision to make. You state what your boundaries are, but you have a decision. You can choose to forget it and move on and move forward with your relationship, or you can break up. Because if you don't forget it, if you keep on holding on to it, then eventually it's going to tear apart your relationship. Because a relationship that doesn't have trust is not really relationship. So he applies. She said, you know what? You're right. I'm gonna have a conversation. I'm gonna talk to her. I'm gonna tell her I feel and I'm gonna forget this thing. Whether or not he forgets it, I know it. Likely he's even admitted. He said, very likely. When I. When I. It's gonna come up again. I'm sure you know, these feelings are gonna come up. I said, that's fine. If the feelings come up, as long as you express it and you share your feelings of what you're feeling, there's not going to be any harm in that, right? Because you're expressing the way you feel. There's no wrong in that. You know, what's wrong is harboring all these feelings and not letting them out, because then they fester into other areas of your life and they start to literally break your relationship apart. So that was the last I heard from him. I don't know what happened. Maybe I will give an update when I do speak with him, but let's talk about your life. From the story. This was based on a relationship. But from the story, what can you pull into the other areas of life? What can you pull into the areas of, say, your finances, of your work, of your family, or your health? There were two big two major lessons that I had mentioned at the early in the start of this episode. The first was having a standard, having a vision for where you want to be. As I said with my friend, he said he wanted to act more kind, he wanted to be more empathetic, and he wanted to be more understanding. He had an image of where he wanted to be. And when I evoked that, when I called that forward from him, now, all of a sudden it changed his response to it. Now all of a sudden, he changed his reaction, he changed his action by going to speak to his wife versus if he would have probably spoken to some of his other friends, his other friends would have been like, you know what, she probably cheated, go cheat on her, call it even, and then move forward. They would have said something like that. That's what he told me. But he came to me because he knew I would steer him differently. And I wouldn't, you know, that I would be a sounding board. I would kind of give him play devil's advocate and give him different scenarios because rarely do we ever know, like, we see our perception of what's going on. Rarely do we get the truth right out of the starting gate. And then secondly is having a vision. I mean, it's kind of tied with the, with the first of having like an identity or like a role or like, who you want to become. The vision for your life right now. If you're, you can apply this to anything, right? It could be the vision for your business. Like, how do you want to run your business? What is the purpose behind your business? The more specific you can get on this, the more likely you will follow through because it pulls and it evokes more emotion. If you don't have a vision for your life, the chances of you getting there are slim to none. You're literally going to be bouncing around, around the world, one thing to another, and never really fully moving forward. There are some people, and I am including one of those at times, where it could be challenging to know what that next step is, right. We try to look forward like, oh, well, I need to anticipate what's coming up next, what's coming up next. But sometimes we can't see what's right in front of our eyes. There's a story I heard about a vision. It's like, it's like driving at night in the fog with your headlights on. You could only see as far as your headlights, but if you keep following just that distance between you and your headlights, you'll eventually get there. So what does that mean? It means that you, you do have to know where that end destination is, but you don't have to have all of the steps, all of the plans, all the actions planned out in advance just by knowing where it is you're going. Your mind has a way of knowing what's relevant, what's irrelevant, what it needs to do. It's your RAs, your Ticular activating system. It knows, it filters out. It's operating in you right now. It knows exactly what to filter out to get you to where that destination is. The problem though, is that not many of us are conscious of what that destination is. We have these images in our mind that are not even conscious, but yet they are guiding our lives and sometimes to a place where you don't want to be. The only way around this is to mold and sculpt that image to identify where you want to go. So this way you can direct your ship, AKA you can direct your life. I'll give you one example. Close your eyes. Imagine a person at the age of 90. What do you see? How do they stand? What kind of health are they in? What is their physiology look like? What are their muscles like? What does their brain function look like? Once you have that image, I want to tell you this. This is where you are driving towards. So if you saw someone who was healthy, active and still getting around and enjoying life, that is the destination that you're driving towards. If you saw someone who was could barely move, who's in a walker, who can't even think straight, formulate a thought and has to rely on all these other people, that is where you're moving forward. So you have to become conscious and take the reins of where it is that you're putting your focus, where it is that you are driving towards, because that is the only way that you're going to take control of your life. The problem is that so many people, they don't have the time. Right. God, half an hour. Oh, 10 minutes to journal and think about what I want for the rest of my life. Oh, you know, it freaks people out. I know because I was there and there was a shift that happened where I realized that all the other stuff that's going on around me is not the important stuff. The important stuff is put in the consciousness, into my life and designing my life. So if there's one lesson, I mean, it kind of envelopes. Everything I spoke about just now is taking the time to consciously craft your life and decide where it is that you want to steer your ship, because that is the only way you're going to get there. I hope you enjoyed this podcast, guys. If you did, please give it a share. Give it a thumbs up like my Instagram onnyrous.com D O N N Y R A U S thank you so, so much for tuning in today. I hope this episode in some way inspired you to start to put some thought into the vision you want for every category of your life. If you want some help with that, you could feel more than you're more than happy to message me through my website. There at my website, you could subscribe, you could comment, you could ask a question. That website is www.donnyrose.com. again, www.d o n n y r a u s dot com. Remember, guys, your life is meant to be lived. Your life is meant to be the most passionate expression of you. Follow your heart. Don't listen to all the other outside influences because they don't know you. You know you. Remember, you get one life. Live it. God bless and I will see you again next week.