It's a Choice

Hi, guys. This is Donny Rouse, and you are listening to the One Life podcast. So I wanted to touch again about the reason for even starting this podcast. This past week has been somewhat of a whirlwind. So I recently went to this event called Mindset Retreat. And what Mindset Retreat is, it's pretty much a way of looking into your limiting beliefs, your past beliefs, and the life that those have created, because everything responsible in your life right now is literally has been created by a belief system that you've had in your life and a belief system that's been set up way before you even conscious of it. The years age 1 to 7 years old. So it calls me to kind of get into perspective because my world was kind of shaken. The things I wanted and fears and a lot of the stuff that I'll get into in a little bit. But it really came down to this. It really came down to I want to inspire people to live life with joy, passion, and excitement, but I also wanted them to recognize the beauty that's present every single day. And part of the things that I cover in this podcast in getting them to see the beauty in each day is getting people to realize that they're not alone, is that we're all having this same experience, although we may think we're alone, and just how much of an impact we have on one another, as well as, like, these simple little tools that we can use and implement in our life to create a better day and eventually a better life for us. So, first, so never underestimate the power of an interaction. So on my way into this podcast room, I see I ran into somebody. They said they looked like they were a little bit frazzled, looked like they hadn't. Weren't having that good of a day. So my kind of, like, my default way of being is kind of be this energetic, being this upbeat person and to try to change people's mood for the better. So I just kind of joked around with them and said, you know, how are things going? He said, you know, well, you know, they're kind of going. I was like, well, you know what the good thing is, right? He's like, what's that? I was like, you're here with me. And that brought a smile to his face, I think, just exuding that kind of energy. Whenever you're around somebody who might feel down. And as long as you have that certainty, as long as you have that determination, that purpose to lift them up, they will feel that because it's energy, it literally is contagious. So when they feel that you can lift them up. So never underestimate a single interaction you have with someone else. Secondly, everybody thinks that everyone else has it figured out, right? If you look at your own life, if you're honest with yourself and you look at everyone else and you look at yours like, oh my God, they really have their shit together. Ah, I feel so frazzled, I don't know what I'm doing, yada, yada, yada. And I'm here to tell you that that's a lie, right? There's always. And the reason why it's a lie is because first of all, we are always growing, right? We are always going from one stage to another. When we've kind of hit a plateau, there's another edge or another ceiling that we have to push against. And that ceiling kind of creates this kind of, this tension in us. So there's always room for growth and people are all, I mean, we are all born with the same workings of the mind. So if there's one thing I learned this past weekend when I was in Florida again, the event was called Mindset, and I'll go into that in two seconds, was that unless you're conscious of the programming that happened early, early on in your life, you're continued to be, not controlled, I want to say, guided by these thoughts that were set up long before you were even conscious of it. Thoughts that you wouldn't believe if they were presented to you now. So what I'm gonna get into is how do you become aware of those thoughts as well as how do you reverse them around? Because that's really when you think about life. What is life, right? Life is nothing but emotion. It's the emotions we feel on a given day, it's emotions we feel consistently. That is life. So when you think about the equality emotions, you got to think about what kind of emotions do I want to produce on a daily basis? But also be honest with yourself to say, well, what have I been producing in the past? Because unless you get real with yourself, unless you see where you are on a day to day basis, you're never going to get to that. You're never going to get to that ideal state or be able to change your mind to see that bigger picture and what's possible. So Mindset retreat. So I was in Orlando, Florida with a bunch of amazing women and a few good men at this thing called Mindset. So Mindset, it's a part of what is called Bold Heart. So boldheart is a group I belong to. It's entrepreneurial. A bunch of entrepreneurial men and women with purpose in mind. So it's about making the world a better place, about leaving our impact, using our gifts, our purpose to make that impact. So when I was down to mindset, I started becoming, I mean, it was literally an emotional roller coaster. People were like, well, when I came back, some people had asked me, well, how was mindset? I'm like, oh my God, I don't even know where to begin. I mean, some days I felt like I was on Mount Everest and other days I felt like I was, you know, on the lowest point on earth, maybe even below that. And it was just, it was an eye opening experience. So a lot of people, they might see or they might have these stirrings being filled up and immediately try to block them because they don't see them as being favorable, they don't see them as being beneficial. Well, they are very, very, very uncomfortable at times, but they're always beneficial. Right? Because these emotions, these thoughts, these beliefs that kind of come up over and over again, they're trying to get your attention, they're trying to shake you, to say, hey, listen, listen, there's something here that needs to be worked on. There's something here I want you to pay attention to. Please change this, change this so this way we could all move forward happily. That's really, that's at least that's what my belief is. And that's the belief I adopted after coming back from this retreat is because I was like, oh my God, where is my mind going with all this? And then I stopped and I kind of retract and I said, you know what if this is something that keeps coming up, this is something that needs work. So rather than kind of try to push this away, this is something I should be grateful for. So again, going back to the retreat, I had all these different thoughts and beliefs coming up from childhood and literally were frazzled and everyone was experiencing a whole range of emotions. Some people were ecstatic and exceed because they might have uncovered a limiting belief that was holding them back for years. Other people might have had this look of uncertainty because maybe there was the first time they'd been exposed to things like the law of attraction and understanding where their belief system comes. So for those people, they might have been in a very, very frazzled and chaotic state. It wasn't my first time hearing about this kind of material. Although I want to say that as much as I thought I knew, to hear it over again kind of shook a lot of things up in me And I'll kind of go into something, but I want to. I guess what I want to do today is I want to share with you. How do you deal with emotions? How do you. When you. When these thoughts come up, what are some great ways to just kind of work through them? What are some great ways to not really attach yourself to that emotion or that belief, but to kind of just like observe it and then just watch it go by? I guess, though it all starts. The first thing is, is to start to become aware of what that emotion. And in starting, that awareness comes with quieting the mind. Because when you quiet the mind, then you're able to hear it. I mean, we all have voices in our head. I'm not the only crazy one here, right? Although, you know, sometimes everyone thinks I used to hear them. Like, what the hell is going on in my head? But it's, you know, when you. When the lights are out and no one's around, it's only you, right? You're listening to yourself. You're listening to that monkey mind. So the first thing is to become aware of what exactly is being said. What exactly is going on in your mind. For me. So one of the techniques I learned from this retreat was the simple act of writing it down. So when we write these emotions down, we start to put them on paper. Otherwise they'll continue to spiral in our head and we continue to believe them as true. So I was writing down beliefs around money, beliefs around a bunch of different things, and I'll give you an example of it. So a belief around money was that money was unholy. And I'm looking. You look at the programming that's been on televisions, you know, all these TV shows kind of pointing you towards the middle class. But I also went back to my faith and my upbringing, being brought up as a Roman Catholic. So you have this notion that in order to be holy, you have to be poor. You have to denounce everything. You look at Mother Teresa, you look at St. Anthony, all these people, they gave up everything to serve the poor. So in my mind, that was like a big aha moment for me because I was like, oh, my God. Wow. This is what I was linking on. Mother Teresa was a big icon of mine. I had read her books and I really felt this emotional attachment to her. But then when I went back and looked at it, I'm like, oh, my God. And this is definitely something I felt. I felt like if I had something, I had to give it away, because that was the way towards a Holy life. But then the comparison they did, they looked at Bill Gates and they looked at Mother Teresa and it was, I mean, we can argue back and forth. Some people like vilify Mother Teresa. I personally don't believe it. I think anyone who gives their lives living in poverty and especially what she did, living with the poorest of the poor, I mean, I see so much beauty and value in that. And the value I see is that we are all part of humanity, we're all the same. And being able to just be with someone at the time of death, just to be able to comfort them, that to me was like, that's one of the things that kind of connected me on a, directly to Mother Teresa. But they showed a comparison between Bill Gates and Mother Teresa in terms of what their contributions were to society and how again, this is, take this with a grain of salt. It's not meant to compare the two and what they've done, but it was showing how many people Bill Gates helped with through his foundation as well as how many, you know, Mother Teresa has helped doing her hands on work. And I, there is something for me like I like doing the hands on work because I believe like me helping someone with my hands and being there, it's just more gratifying for me and I really enjoy that aspect of it. But with that said, there's so much work, I mean really, what, what can make a difference in the world? It's money, right? So it was, I changed that belief system that, and I mean there is still is some, there still is a little bit of a tug of war going in on in my body, in my mind about this belief around money. But now it's, it's, I'm more conscious of it. So you see that in order for change, in order for like these significant things to happen, money is a big part of it, right? In order finding cures in order develop, like delivering these things to the people, money is a big thing. So that was an eye opener for me. And so, yeah, so that was. And so when you write down whatever that belief is, whatever that thing you hear going on in your head when you write it down, you're able to kind of analyze it and say, well, you know what, is this true? And a lot of the times you'll find that it probably isn't. Someone told me something along the lines of what we see, what we visualize with our eyes in our everyday world, the meanings we put behind the events of our life, only 50% of them is true, right? Because we have this lens in which we see the world. But again, this is our lens. It's the way we see our world. And that world that we see is based on our experiences. It's based on our upbringing, based on. Mainly on our parents, because we have to learn this way to adapt to survive in that environment. And by adapting in living in that environment, we take on the emotions, the beliefs, everything of our parents and our immediate circle. So we write them down and we kind of are able to kind of say, well, is this true? And just by the mere fact of seeing it on paper, and let me put it this way, so you might say, I am not successful. And you might look at it and say, you know what? This is true. This is true. I am not successful. And you might really, really try to support this negative belief that you've been holding onto. But then I like to ask the question, someone can't be successful or unsuccessful and successful at the same time. Right? It's just not possible. Just like you can't be. You can't have two emotions at the same time. So think that I used a tool that I used was like, I can't be successful and unsuccessful at the same time. So if I thought that I was not successful, then that means I've never had any successes. And that was false because I looked at the things I'd done between becoming a spin instructor, between doing my physique contest, between. I mean, the travels I've had between starting my business, and these were all aspects of my personality or even college. College. I almost failed out of college, and I did a complete 180, and I ended up getting a 3.83 in the School of Business at UConn. That was a huge success for me. So we kind of like, we focus on those things that aren't working, forgetting the things that are. So I really believe that in order for you to be unsuccessful, you always have to be an unsuccessful person. Right? Or at the very least, you have to look at the thing and say, an unsuccessful person isn't unsuccessful. An unsuccessful person doesn't look at where he failed or maybe the path that he's going down. Realize that this is just one means to get to an end. You just found a way that didn't work. So going back to the belief system, so when a belief comes up, how can we deal with it? So I was thinking, I was in the car yesterday, I was on my way to the gym, and I parked my car, and again, all these things were stirring around in my mind, and this guy got out of the car next to me. And you were listening to the first podcast I had mentioned about how sometimes there's this trigger where I see someone, they might have, like, this look, and all of a sudden it makes me feel small inside for some reason. Well, now I know the reason. So I was sitting in my car and I was ready to get out. I don't. I was kind of poking my phone, putting everything in my bag. And then when I was in my glove compartment, because I was cleaning out my guitar, my guitar, my car, at the same time I was looking at my glove compartment, I had this little yellow book from a monk. And I was, you know what? Everything for a reason. We were always guided. There are no accidents. Let me just skim through the pages and pick whatever, you know, put my thumb in there. And whatever entry that I read, whatever entry that I stop at, that's the entry that was meant for me in that moment. So I was open up the entry, and it spoke about these beliefs, these, like, these feelings that come up and how to deal with them. So it says, whenever a feeling comes up and we struggle with it, we fight it. We try to, like, push it aside. The more we do that, the more we solidify, the more we intensify that feeling. And that was interesting to me. It's kind of like the. There's a saying I had heard from Tony Robbins. Like when you say no to a. When a kid asks for a cookie and you say no, how much more does he want it? It's very similar, because when you say no, that emotion screams even louder and louder. And pretty soon what we're doing is literally, we're embedding it deeper and deeper and deeper into our psyche. So what is the alternative? So as I was reading this, it says, what you are supposed to do is become present with that emotions, because the emotions are all good things. The emotions are trying to tell us something. So after reading this, the, you know, this guy pulls up. And I went through that. I had that habitual pattern kick in. And having just read this, I took a deep breath and I was like. And I was breathing through it, breathing through it, and it lost its intensity. But then I did something. I asked a question. So any question that you ask your mind, it will find an answer or it'll has to find answer. It won't rest until it doesn't, you know, until it's found that answer. So I said, what is causing this trigger? What is it trying to tell me? And what came to my mind, the answer was I was thinking about when I was in elementary school, I used to get. I was a very happy kid. My mother told me I was always smiling. And I don't know why, but I always used to get picked on. I used to get bullied. And, you know, people used to make fun of me. People used to always pick fights with me. And that's what came on. So it was this reaction that, you know, that people were gonna. That was the memory that it evoked. It was that people would want to fight me for no reason. So I always have this reaction. And I remember things like that happening, but I never linked the emotion with that experience together at that moment. I did. So it was a big aha moment. And then there's. I mean, there's other things too. And then women, for example, in my dating life, you guys might be interested in this. So my dating life, I had this. Sometimes I get intimidated by women. And I remembered. And then I asked that same question, and I remembered it brought me back to an experience in elementary school where this girl that I really, really liked, we said we were dating because she lived kind of like close to my house, so I could walk through the woods and meter. And I went back to school, like the following day or something like that. And I told a friend, and somehow it got back to her and she denied it. And then again, as a result of that, people started making fun of me and wanted to fight me. So it was just kind of like this mind trip, man. But I'm aware of it now. And I also started questioning things a little bit differently, because when you look at it, the people who were making fun of me, the people who were picking fights with me, where's the problem lie, right? If they're making fun of me because I'm happy is because I have this energy. Whose issue is it? Right? Because as kids, we tend to think that. We take on these things and think like, wow, there's something wrong with us because people are picking on me or people are making fun of me. The problem is not with us. The problem is with the outside world. The problem is the way other people view themselves, that they. They project on you. They try to knock you down in order for them to feel good. But the only thing is, when we're younger, we don't know how to dissect our thoughts. So we take it as if something's wrong with us. So how do you implement something else? How do you change a belief? So again, going back to this mindset retreat, I was going through some of the law of attraction stuff about where your focus goes. And one of the things I noticed, one of the big aha moments for me was realizing that where I thought my focus was going, like, I might say, okay, I want to have a successful business, but in my mind I was saying, oh, well, but I don't want to be tied down to this. I don't want to be tied down. You know, I don't want to have this. I don't want to have this. So rather than focusing on that end outcome that the result that I wanted, I was actually focused on everything else that I didn't want, which I thought was part of that result. Like, I want this, but I don't want this. And what it was doing, it was creating a conflict. And when I became aware of that, like the. The second day into the retreat, I felt like I was on a high. I felt like I was just floating. And it's because I. That. That. That that lesson clicked and I realized that all my thoughts had been going towards the things that I didn't want. Even though I thought that I was focusing the thoughts on and my energies on the things I wanted in my life, I actually wasn't. So how do you change a belief? So belief is nothing but something you've heard or something that's happened repetitively over and over and over again. So one of the simplest way to do it is affirmations, or if you're in the part of the Tony Robbins world, it's incantations. What's the difference between the two? So an affirmation is a repeating of words or a new set of beliefs that you're saying. You say I am. When you say I am, you evoke that you whatever that which you want to become. And when you say it, you want to say it with this conviction that it's already happened, Right, With Tony Robbins. And one of the things I really, really like about his methodology with this was that you have to put emotion to it, because emotion is what embeds it deep inside. Emotion is what creates and solidifies that new identity. So when you say I am confident or I am worthy, you're shouting, you're making it become part of you, and you're putting it into your body. So affirmations are one. There are a number of different therapies like EFT and hypnosis that also work. I've done EFT this past week. My friend Jackie Sinek did a group eft, a group EFT session for a few of us there, and it was this tapping technique, and it was kind of funny. So we're doing this tapping technique, and you're supposed to do these light kind of taps. Tap here, tap here. And. And my philosophy, or what I thought was, all right, well, if I tap harder, maybe it'll work better. So I'm over here, like, you know, like, pounding away on my head, pounding away at my eye. And at the end, like, dude, what the hell were you doing, man? You're like, you're gonna give yourself a concussion. And no, you know, it literally is nothing but, like, just a minor touch because these are all little energy points that you're tapping. But nevertheless, after doing that session with her, that was when I felt that high. So there was probably a release of some, like, negative energies that were built up. And the second in the last thing, I mean, and there, again, there's many. The last thing was using visual visualizations. So at the event, they has. They want us to make a mind movie. And it's kind of funny because when I think about the use, my use of visualizations, visualizations, usually it's all been around travel. So if you look at the desktop of my wall of my computer, I have this video that I have done where I kind of put together all these experiences that I want to have in the world, again, related to travel. And the emotion is so high that literally it'll make me cry. And when I watch this video, there's not a single doubt in my mind that all these experiences that are on that video are going to come to fruition. Not a single doubt. Not my mind. It's kind of like the idea that, like, I'm going to be part of the 100 Country Club, where by the time I'm in age 50, which is 12 years, I'm 38 now, I want to hit 100 countries. And that. That's gonna. It's already. It's already happening. Like, again, that's fixed in my mind. I know that that's gonna happen. There's not a single doubt. But I also condition myself with these. These visualizations. And this. This. This movie reel that I made has this very emotional, intense music. Like. And when I say intense music, I mean, like, it's this kind of building up of excitement and like, you know, the up and down. It's just very, very emotional in a good way. So visualizations. But ultimately, if you want to bypass, you know, the belief systems, if you want to bypass everything, there is a way. Press the bypass button. So what is the bypass button? Bypass button is changing Your state, if you're part of, like, the Abraham Hicks world and all that stuff, they call it the vortex. So what changing? And let me see the philosophy behind it. The philosophy is that however you respond in a situation is all based on the state you're bringing to it. All right, I'll say it again. How you respond to a given situation or the actions you're willing to take is all based on the state that you're in. So the idea is that if you change your state, you change the way you respond to the world around you. And so how do you change your state? All right, let's go back to the Tony Robbins world. So Tony Robbins says you change your triad physiology, language, and focus. If you change any one of these, you change the way you feel. Because every physiology, every. Every kind of like if you're depressed, you kind of slouch forward. If you're confident, you exude this confidence. You have like this. This very tall posture, shoulders out, chest out. There's a. Every emotion is linked to a physiology. So if you hold that physiology long enough and you start to change the focus, you start to change your language. If you change all three, you're there. Me, and my favorite one is I like to do the focus thing. I like to look at pictures, travel. That's just me. But what it ultimately comes down to a choice, right? Because I'll give you another story just to kind of give you an example of this. So I was at the farmer's market this past week, and someone was poking fun at me for something. I don't even remember what it was. And I found myself starting to make myself small again. And then when he. We, like, we kind of, like, spoke again, he. He brought up again. And then there was this little trigger that went on my mind. I was like, you know what? This is a choice. Everything in life is a choice, right? And I said I could choose to react to this and give him that energy, or I can choose to stand up for what is right for me. I could choose to say, what's more important, the way this person sees me or the way I see myself. And at that point, I kind of like, my attitude literally changed in an instant. I chose me. So you could do that at any point in your life and realize that you were always in control. You were never not in control. So, all right, I kind of went off on a tangent. There was a bunch of stuff that I wanted to talk to, but I kind of say wherever I flow, that's where I'm just Going to go. So the next thing I want to talk about was I have an upcoming trip coming up in about 19 days. I'm going to Vietnam, Singapore, and Thailand. I had done a post, and this. I mean, this is kind of related, right? Because it goes back to the Focus. This morning, I did a post on Facebook, just asking my friends who had been to this country. He's like, all right, I need some guidance, especially in Vietnam. So in Vietnam, I'm going to be there for 11 days, and there's a shit ton of experiences I want to see. It's not enough time. So I'm trying to figure out, like, well, what do I do? What don't I want? You know, what do I skip? And so I put a question online and had all these friends from around the world kind of chiming in, giving me their suggestions from their experiences. And it was just like a hi. And I got, like, very euphoric in a way. Like, Matt, this is what life is about. And I was always watching a video by James Blunt. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend the song. It's called Bonfire Heart. It's kind of like the theme. It's been, like, one of my theme songs from my life, but going back to that experience. So Vietnam is a very, very long country, and I kind of go, like, I wanted to go there and experience the different coffee things they have going on in Vietnam. Like, one thing they do is they do this, like, egg yolk coffee. Another thing is they roast coffee with, like, butter and salt, and then they poured over condensed milk. But then I was going, what other experiences do I want from my trip to Vietnam? And one of the experiences that I really wanted to build was do a motorbike. So I have a friend who went from the north all the way down to the south via motorbike. Very dangerous. Well, yeah, it's dangerous. I had to backtrack because I know my parents watch this, and they're always like, oh, you better be careful. And they try to talk me out of a trip. They did it once, never again. So that was one of the experience that I really wanted to have. But the amount of time I'm spending there, it's just not possible for me to do all these things and, you know, and do them well and really take it in. I don't want to just kind of rush the experience. So what I'm going to do, I kind of have, like, a little bit improvised. I think I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to start in Hanoi, Do Ha Long Bay. So that's probably going to be around three days. Then I'm going to go to, if I'm pronouncing it right, Hue H U e and rent a motorbike to go one way towards Da Nang or Da Nang. Again, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing this right. And there's this thing called the Hai Van Pass that is supposed to be spectacular. And one of the things that has been playing over in my mind is kind of like doing this little motorbike. And it doesn't look like it's as busy as the city, so I think I'm going to be pretty good. And then after that, go to Hoi an. From Hoi an, go back up to Da Nang and then fly to Ho Chi Minh before I head over to Singapore and Hong Kong. And, yeah, that was pretty much it. So I was riding this high. And then the only other experience that I really, really, really, really want to see is I want to go to Victoria, Hong Kong and watch a sunrise. So again, I have. So I just downloaded. I'm using the app called Anchor. So Anchor is. It's an app for my phone, which anyone could download. It's free. You can do a podcast, start a podcast yourself. But what I'm going to do when I'm abroad is I'm going to start making these podcasts. I'm going to try to do video as well, if I can. I think I could do the same thing I'm doing now, download that video and then just kind of convert the audio to the podcast. But I want to kind of take you on that journey with me. I want you to feel the emotions that I'm feeling and also just kind of stir that emotion to maybe get out and travel and do your own thing and see the world. Yeah. So 19 days. It's funny, no matter. I've planned this trip for.