High Five Habit: How to Show Up For Yourself Every Single Day

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. Hello, everybody. Donnie Rouse here. And today I want to talk to you about showing up for yourself. One of the most important things that we can do in our life is to show up for ourselves. But in order to know how do we show up for ourselves, we have to understand kind of what gets in the way of showing up for ourselves. And this is all to piggyback on. I'm in the middle of a challenge, a Mel Robbins challenge called High Five. And to give you just kind of like a brief synopsis without going into the actual. Well, I haven't read the book. It's just a challenge right now. It's about acknowledging yourself, giving yourself a high five in those tough moments to say, you know what? I see you. I'm giving you presence. I'm giving you the acknowledgement that you're going through something hard and that you can get through this. So what I was saying was what gets in the way of doing that? And a lot of it is patterns that we get stuck, that there's this old self that is afraid of what can possibly go wrong. But when you show up for yourself, similarly, when someone that you admire and put confidence in, when they show up for you, how do you feel? It gives you the will to move forward. So instead of someone else doing it, the goal of this episode here is for you to start doing yourself also. But to check out the book High Five, or at least engage in the challenge that you could subscribe to on the Growth Day app. Just go to the App Store and hit Growth Day. So let me go into my experience with this, how it applied to my life. This way you can see maybe if it's something that you want to incorporate into your own life. So with regard to just showing up for myself, one of the hardest things in this challenge is, say, like, looking in the mirror, like when you look in the mirror. What are the emotions that you. That you see or what do you say to yourself when you look in the mirror? Like, most people probably look in the mirror and they start to rip themselves apart. I was no exception of that. I would look at, like, you know, my hairline and, like, wrinkles in my face. I'm like, man, you look tired, man. What is. Is my right side reced more than my left. What's going on? And I would start to beat myself down to the point where it was difficult to look into the mirror and almost like I was looking with disgust and disappointment. So then I. When I started doing this challenge, when I started doing the high five, it reminded me of a experience I had when I was looking in the mirror. And every single day, I had to pick something out about myself that I love and admired. All of a sudden, when you're looking in the mirror, instead of looking at the faults, right, and things that are wrong and what you've done wrong in the past, you're looking for things to be grateful and appreciative about yourself. So with this high five, it was giving yourself a high five in the mirror and stating, giving the intention of how you want to show up in your day. Because this is being done at the beginning of the day, and as a result of doing that and giving yourself the high five. And this is where the science behind the whole high, it gets really interesting because while you may have these feelings of, like, you know, like, man, I feel I failed in the past, and this is wrong. That's wrong. The moment you give that high five, you trigger something else. And it's to say that every single movement in our body, every physiology, has with it a corresponding emotion. When you think of someone who's sad and depressed, new shoulders slip in, head goes down, they start to talk. Talk quietly, and you know how it goes, right? But think of someone who is excited, someone who is passionate about life. How do they conduct themselves, right? Shoulders back, they speed with. They speak with a faster cadence. They're excited. So you get the point, right? So with that, right, with those physiological changes, there are reactions that happen within the body. Just like when someone smiles like you, you can't dance and be upset, right? Because it's like dancing is. Triggers a response that is happy. So the same thing is true when you're giving a high five. When you give someone a high five, what are you basically saying to themselves or to the person? You're saying, you know, you got a good job, you got it, you got this, continue, keep going forward. So when you do a high five to yourself, that is the acknowledgement you're giving. And as a result of doing that, even if you feel like crap. And this is, oh, man, like, I don't know, if I go, you give that high five and it triggers it. Different response. So I did this and I was noticed while I was doing this. You know, at first it kind of felt funny, but I already noticed a difference in kind of like going through my heart and putting the intention how I want to show up and giving the high five. One of the things I noticed was that when I was looking in the mirror, when I was looking at myself, I felt like I was looking at my younger self. Like the child Donnie, who was hurt from. From the upsets, the disappointments, the failures in life. So when I looked in the mirror, it was about being kind and loving and compassionate to him and letting him know that I've got him. And so when I think about how I wanted to show up, I wanted to show up in life playful, I wanted to show up life confident. I wanted to show up in life in control. Meaning I was the one that was moving the levers to move my life forward. And when I put that intention and I was, would go around my day, there'd be moments where I would kind of get sucked back into. Like, I might hear a negative thought come in, but all of a sudden the higher part of me would come in. It would chime in and be like, hey, no, no, I'm going to be confident for you. Right? So it was like me standing in and up for me, which is kind of weird, right? But all this stuff was going on in my head. So it was creating new neuro associations. My task for this morning. So if you guys had been following me, I had been speaking about my journey with cold Roman. My intention for cold ramen is to bring. To bring the beverage national. While, you know, I'm far from it now, I am taking those steps to move forward. And one of the most recent challenges, or I guess challenges I had to take was I was talking with formulator and, you know, shared my information, my did my formulation and we were going to move forward. And they wanted to move forward without a agreement, right? They're like, oh, you're protected under the NDA. But my, like, I knew, like, I'm not, I'm not protected on the NDA. There's no agreement that's protecting formulation or any improvements to it. Why the hell would I be affected, right? And then so this company, they, they said that and then it took two emails and a follow up video call for me to get a different agreement that somewhat protected me. There were still things left up for that could be potentially harm me in terms of any formulation they do on my behalf that pertains to their processing equipment and that would be theirs. So just a bunch of bullshit, right? And the fact that they had sent, given me this after two emails and a requested video call, rather than doing it right up front when they requested me to send them product samples and start working on formulation was a, was a big flag for me. And that's just not how I'm going to do business. So the standing up for myself, you know, a lot of people, they think courage is this big, big, you know, action you got to take. Courage is not. Courage is a small thing. It's where you feel that fear, that little apprehension because you're nervous about something, but you continue to move forward regardless. So I just, my intention today was to one send him an email saying, listen, it's done. You, you know, like you violated like my trust. Like I can't trust you because of X, Y and Z and we're going to terminate this agreement here and you're going to just, you're going to destroy all of the notes and intake forms and here's my lawyer. So here you go, respond to her. So that was the action that I wanted to take and there was no compromise. Like my NDA was good, right? But thereafter I knew I wasn't going to go into business with these people because I couldn't trust them. They already violated my trust. But the courageous action, what I want to highlight here was that I took that even though it felt uncomfortable and I gave myself the high five. I mean, I was gonna do it anyways, but it felt better doing the high five, acknowledging myself for stepping into that fear and for moving forward. Now I'm at talks with someone different and the process continues. But there's a difference here. Right before, my old language that I was giving myself was like, ah, it's never gonna, it's never gonna happen, it's never gonna happen. Like I just would just keep saying that. And as a result I felt stress because I'm like, it's never going to happen, right? But now it's different. Now when I look at it, I realize that I've already committed, I've already committed to my outcome and I just have to keep taking the steps and give myself some deadlines, some hard deadlines. This way I can Move forward faster. But I've already committed to it, so it doesn't matter. If it doesn't happen today, tomorrow, next week, it's freaking happening, man. I've already committed in my mind, and so I've took new steps to work with a different formulator. We'll see how that goes. But what I want to touch upon here is the courageous action and how that's standing up for yourself. Because every time you step into courage, you are giving yourself like, a good pat on the back. And you should be encouraging yourself and acknowledging that win for stepping into that discomfort. So this way, when other, when other situations come in, you know how to respond, right? And you get the confidence for responding in such a way rather than, you know, think like, acting in a way that you should have but not really acknowledging it. So there's a couple things. One is when you notice fear, you step into the fear, right? Stepping into fear, even if you're nervous, doesn't. It's not like you're not supposed to be nervous when fear is present and you're nervous about taking the action. Taking the action regardless, is growth. Taking that fear is growth, right? So you say, I'm afraid. This, like, fear wants to pull you back, but growth is moving forward. The second thing is that you may not have all the answers. One of the, and I've heard this before, is that, you know, when you don't have an answer, it's not a, it's not a cue to stop. It is a cue to get help to find the answers for the questions you have. Right? You're stuck. Because, you know, like, I'm not, I'm roasting coffee. Well, I'm not really sure what this lengthening, I'm speaking coffee terms with you lengthening out this part of the coffee roasting phase. Like, if I should do that or not, what should I do? Or, you know, like, I'm my coffee roasting is. When I was roasting, I wasn't sure how I should adjust my flame on one of my espresso roasts. Because when the, when heats up really quick, I'm not getting the development times that the, the certain I'm not hitting the stages I want in the timeframe that I want it. And here's the thing, I know the freaking answer. Like, I know exactly what to do. But I needed someone else to just kind of give me that little voice of encouragement and shed some light to things that maybe I didn't see. So I, I, I look for other professionals. They give me the, you Know, they give me the advice, the confidence, and I move forward. So remember, anytime you're stuck, it's not a. It's not a cue to stop, but rather to get answers, to seek out new answers so that you could continue moving forward and not staying in that stuck position. So all of this stuff that I'm saying is really just to. Basically, what I'm saying is you take courageous action, yes, but acknowledge yourself, look at that person in the mirror and let them know that you see them, that you're standing up for them, that you are with them. If you want, check out the high again, the High Five challenge, then the Growth Day app. Growth Day in. If you go to the App Store, hit Growth Day, it'll pop up and enter that challenge. I highly recommend it. It's been really, really even transformational in, like, the three days that I've been doing it. But again, just being able to see and step into your day with intention as to who you want to be, but giving yourself the, you know, the credit, the compassion and the encouragement to move forward. Because all of this, like, life could get tough sometimes, right? And even when it's shit, it's still important to really, really encourage yourself to keep moving forward. Because life's not shit forever, right? There's highs and lows, but the thing we want to do is we want to stay and keep raising our levels so that maybe, you know, the lows aren't as low, but they kind of dip a little bit higher or life, the whole roller coaster moves up. So now the lows are. They might be, but it's a different level of low, right? Your low now is where your highs were before. So that is all I've got for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed this episode here. I hope that, again, my intention for you was one just to give yourself some compassion. Love. To look in the mirror and to stand with the person you see on the other side, right, is usually like that. That. That fearful, hurt child part of you. Acknowledge that. Stand with them, give them love, give them a high five. And then also to notice when courage peeps its head out in your day, when those fears peep their head out, right? Because sometimes it's this discomfort, this nervousness in your body when that happens. It's not. You don't shrink from it. Acknowledge it, and then you move forward anyways, realizing that it is an opportunity for you to grow, and it is the path you are supposed to take forward. So I hope you enjoyed this episode here. If you did, you could give it a thumbs up. Share it with some someone whom you feel could benefit from listening to this. Hit that subscribe button. Leave a comment. Whether you're an Apple podcast or Spotify, either one is going to be a tremendous help if you do that for me. And I thank you guys for showing up for listening to this again. If you have any questions, you can send them to me via my website@donnyrous.com d o n n y r a u s.com that is all I've got for you guys today. Hope you enjoyed this episode and 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.