In Your Prime - How to Attract Success to Your 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 in your prime. What is priming and should you do it? So let me just start by prefacing this. Priming is something that happens naturally in your day. And if you're not doing it consciously, then you could be setting your day up for failure from the very, very beginning. Do I have your attention now? So let's start with priming. What is priming? You've probably heard the term priming from when you. When it's referred to starting an engine, right? You prime the engine. What that does is it. It puts fuel into the cylinder. So this way the engine can start. So similarly with your emotional state, before you get in your day, what priming does is it puts you in an emotional state. So this way that emotional state carries into all of the other activities that you do throughout your day. So you should by now also start to realize how big of an impact that is. So let's look at your day. When you wake up, how do you normally feel in the morning? Are you feeling energized? Do you feel excited? Do you feel like you're ready to conquer the day? Or do you wake up and you're like, holy shit, I have so much to do and I'm already anxious. It's already time. I don't have time to even have breakfast. How do you wake up? And also throughout your day, what throws you off? So it's important to understand where you are and bring some consciousness and awareness to that. Because by knowing that now, you could actually start to put some tools there for. To increase your success. So let me give you an example of priming in my own life. So I'll give you a few examples. The first one is whenever I come on to do this, to do a live do an episode, I always prime myself. And the way I prime myself is I play one of my favorite songs, Will Lindley. And the song is Let Me See. I had just played it. Last Call is one of my favorite songs. And I play that because it reminds me of a trip I did to Asia when I was in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. And then in my mind, as I am listening to this, I'm moving my body up and down, jumping up and down, and I am, like, cascading these images of a trip that doesn't. Hasn't even happened yet. And I'll take, like, blips from, like, all around the world trips I've been on, trips that I want to go on, experiences I want to have, and I'll just flood my mind with that. And as you can imagine, when I do that, how do you think it makes me feel? I feel pretty static to say less. And as a result, when I come on here, I bring a different part of me to. To the podcast. And that's just one instance. I'm gonna give you another one from a doctor's office visit I just recently had. So I was going to the lab. I had lab samples that I had to drop off. And so the day before I went in, ladies like, all right, just take these, bring them back, and, you know, just bring them in. We'll. We'll process them. Next day comes, I go in there, and I'm like, I'm just dropping these off. They're like, did you sign in? I was like, I don't need to sign in. Just dropping off. The waiting room was packed. And then he. The gentleman behind the desk was like, you have to sign. It's just how we do it. I'm like, I'm not waiting in this line. I was told all I had to do was chop it off. So I asked. Told him to go ask the nurse in the background, and he went back there, and then he came and came back, and he said, you can go in and just talk to her. And I talked to her. I was like, you know, I just want. I'm just dropping these off. I was told I can drop them off. And, you know, I have to be in New York. I'm already late. And so she. She began to look in the computer to see if the order was there. So this way she can tag it and, you know, make sure it went to the right lab. The order was not in the computer. So then I had to go back to the front desk, have them print it, bring the order back, and it was a little bit of a process. But the point I want to make here is why she went through the trouble to help me out in the first place. And when she. She began telling me, she goes, do you know why I. Why I'm doing this for you? I was like, I have no clue. So she said, because your name is Donnie. I'm like, well, what do you. What. Why does that matter? She goes, because I have a nephew named Donnie. And it just made me. It reminded me of him. And I like, my mind. I was like, whoa, like, talk about crazy. I mean, my. The entire time I was with her, I knew she was. It's not something you normally do. So I was making jokes and just being playful. And then when she said that, it made me. It blew my mind because it's what priming does, right? We see something or we hear something or something comes into our senses, it makes us think of something. As a result of that, now we behave differently. So her thinking about her nephew actually made her kinder and more open to helping me. And I'm going to do one more example for you. And this one is probably the most important and one of the easiest things that you can do. And there are many ways you can prime. So this time of year, I typically will. I tend to get a little bit stressed out because I have farmer's markets, I'm producing for stores and doing everything myself. It just leaves very little time. And that's the one of the first lies I tell myself, right there, is that there's no time. When you're telling yourself there's no time, you have nothing else to be but stressed because you feel like you're going to one place or the other without a rest. So I was telling myself that shitty story. And I remember at one point I was like, I just need to stop. I need to stop. I can't go on like this. If I go on like this, I'm just going to burn out. So I did a couple things. One is I picked up a book and I just started reading because I know if I flood my senses, I flood my mind with positive stuff. Positive things are gonna come out of it, and they did. And the other thing. And one of the things that you can do every single day. And one of the things I practice is journaling. So by journaling, one of the things I do is I look at the day. The days end before the days even happen, right? So it's morning, and I'm looking at the. As if I completed that day and how I want that day to unfold. And then I would think about it. I'm like, well, you Know what would make today a success? What would make today. What would it have to happen for me to have lived, to make the day a beautiful day or to live to my edge? And I'm putting all these things down and I'm journaling. And one of the things I find is that journaling as if it has already happened. Like, as if I've had a successful day now all of a sudden puts me in a certain state and allows things to come in. So as I was doing this, I was like, well, I mean, I would feel present. I would feel like things would just flow. It would feel effortless. I would cherish every moment or every interaction I had with people throughout my day. As I went into my day and as, like, from doing this journaling exercise, all of a sudden, now I'm like, oh, my God, I feel so good, right? Because I was putting my focus on something positive. I was poking my focus on how I want to feel and how I want to make others feel in my day. And as a result of doing that, that is exactly how it transpired. So the point I want to make is that you are always being primed. You just might not be conscious of it. Before we end this episode, let's talk about some of the things that prime us that don't take us to a good place. If you're starting your day with the news and you wonder why you're always in a shitty mood, there you go. Bingo. And sometimes when we are in a bad mood and we bring. We have a state that is not empowering, and we see someone or we see an object or something, we engage in activity, we could link that activity to that person, to that thing, to that activity, to the person, to the thing, to the activity. And as a result of that, every time we encounter that person, that thing, that activity, it brings back that emotion of feeling stressed, anxious, or angry or whatever it is that you were feeling in that moment. So this is just fodder. It's food for thought to think about whenever you see something, right, Whenever you notice your emotional state change, to ask yourself, what just happened that made my emotional state change? And most of the time, you'll see that it was nothing. You may have. There may be a trigger there. And it was because you've allowed this trigger to become like a primer for you, but not in the positive sense. So when you are aware of it now, you can take back control. Now you can start priming yourself before your day for how you want to show up and how you want to Feel. Do that enough and it will transform your life. Consistency is king, right? It's not complicated, but it could feel complex in practice, right? Because we have to break down new. We have to create new patterns. We have to take this old way of living that we've just gotten comfortable with, and it's not even serving you, but you get comfortable with it and as a result, it just feels like home. But we have to break that home. We have to create a new emotional home. So when you feel that, get out of your chair, do whatever you need to do, however you need to prime, and you do that enough, and now you create a new emotional home, one that's based around gratitude, one that's based around presence, one that's based around love. So I encourage you to get out there and try priming. Maybe you want to turn this off right now. Maybe your day is already started and it's like, you know, like, this just sucks. You know, I'm here watching Donnie and I'm not even sure what the hell he's talking about with priming. Wherever you are, let's. I'm going to give you just a couple things to think about in terms of priming. One thing you can do is literally get a playlist of your. The happiest songs that you have that, that evoke positive memories. Maybe it's like five songs. Put that in your ear and just play that music and see how it makes you feel. 2. Do a gratitude list. Write down 10 things that you're grateful for. Write down why you are grateful for them. The power is in the why. Because you can say, well, I'm grateful. It's a beautiful day outside. But when you think of like, why are you grateful as beautiful? Well, because when it's a beautiful day out, I love to go outside for a walk, especially at sunset, because it brings so much peace and, you know, we've had so much rain that I just love being on tour, whatever it may be. Put the reason why, because that is where the emotional intensity is. And another thing you can do is literally move your body, right? I. As I'd mentioned before, when I prime myself to come on to do a recording, I'm jumping up and down. I have music playing and I have images floating through my mind. So I'm using three different modalities to prime myself before I come on here. And then it's also like the setting, intention. Like, well, how do I want to show up when I show up here? I want to show up presently and I want to come with an intent to give, an intent to be of service. So hopefully I am of service. So I hope you guys enjoyed this. I hope you will give it a try because I promise it will pay you dividends. If you have any questions, comments, or would like to hit that subscribe button, hit it, hit it, hit it. Send this podcast to five people whom you think could benefit from it. Again, if you have any questions, send them to me via my website@www.donnyrouse.com. that's d o n n y r a u s dot com. That is all forgot for you guys today. 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.