It’s Not About the Thing: How Hidden Frustration Reveals What's Really Going On

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. What's going on, guys? Donnie Rouse here. And today I am going to bring you a voice of encouragement. So let me. Before I even go into the motivation aspect of this episode here, I want to ask you a question. Think of a goal, something that seems so far out in the future to you, but you're working towards. When you have that thing, I want you to bring it back into the present moment. And in that present moment, I want you to tell me what has been your experience of it. See, it's not the. It's not the end goal where we are experiencing the result. It is in the process of doing it. So if you have a goal that you're working towards and you are literally, it feels like torture every single day, then there's something wrong with there. We need to do. We need to create a shift and bring some awareness to that part of your life or to that goal. So what is that thing? And then what is it that really, really frustrates you or gets you angry or gets you overwhelmed? Think about it. And the reason why I'm asking you to think about this, because likely what you think is the root cause is not really the root cause. Yesterday I was working on an online funnel for my coffee. And to give you an idea as to what I am working towards, I have this insatiable desire to be out in the world, to travel, but I have my coffee business. So I have things here that I feel are keeping me planted at the moment. And it's not to say that they have to always keep me planted, but it means that I have to do the work to free myself from these responsibilities. Likely means hiring some people, but also streamlining results and using technology. In using technology, one of the things that I'm doing is creating a online funnel, which is to get people who are interested in what I have to Say, and what I create in terms of my coffee to bring them and track them to me and then take them on a journey through the rouse experience. Well, it sounds so simple, but in implementing it, it was actually very, very tough. I'm in this course right now, currently, and I signed up for the course because I knew that if I had locked myself into the course that I would have to do it right. How many times have you done something like that where you're like, you know what, if I don't say yes now, if I don't commit to it now, then I know time is going to pass and I'm not going to do it, and then another five years is going to go by. So that's where I was in this. I knew what I wanted. I knew what I wanted was freedom of location. At the very least, just to be able to take multiple trips, not necessarily travel 100% of the time, because that gets tiring. So this opportunity came up and I thought about as, all right, I'm getting ready to go to Europe for a month. What am I doing? Like, do I purchase this program and know that I'm going to be a month behind, or do I just bypass it and then find someone else who teaches the concept? Being inspired in that moment, I decided to take the plunge and to enroll in this course. Now the course has been completed and I am still on module 2 of 8. And I was trying, I'm trying to implement, not trying. I'm in the process of implementing. And I realized that there was all these things that weren't lining up. Specifically, my email client wasn't speaking to the quiz that I was creating for my online. And then. So I built it in other email clients, but each of them, I'm sorry, other forms and quiz platforms, but each of them had their own limitations. And I was literally going to. I don't even know what I was going to do. I was going to not harm myself, but I was just at my end. So yesterday I was flustered and I rarely ever will call friends up and just start venting. Yesterday was one of those days that I did that. And I just started going on complaining about the freaking platforms, about technology, about no one wants to, you know, have support on the phone. Everything's this. Chatbots, which don't even give you the right answer you're looking for, right? And they just kind of spin you in circles and you never hear back. And now you're spending, like, instead of an hour, you're spending days, weeks, trying to resolve an Issue that could have been done in five minutes if the customer service was there. Still a little bit frustrated. And so I ended up leaving that night and I was like, I just gotta, I gotta get out. I gotta just clear my mind and step away from this. So I went to, I ended up going to yoga. It was so much traffic like compounded what I was feeling in that moment. I'm like, friggin traffic. Holy crap. And you know, my head was about to turn red and it was about to explode out the top. So I get into yoga like just on like maybe a couple minutes late. And the instructor sees me, you know, she's like, yeah, come in, come in, come on in. So I get, I'm sitting there, I'm doing my poses and my mind is going crazy. Like I can't, I'm in the middle of a pose, then I have to stop because I'm like, I can't even focus on the pose. That's how busy my mind or even move my body in the way she was asking. So I would take a moment, I would pause for five seconds and then I would resume. And this happened multiple times in, throughout this class. And then towards the end I started to quiet my like, my mind started to quiet and be still and I started paying more attention to my body and emptying all the shit from my day out. Fast forward. I ended up calling one of my friends, my friend Noel. I said, hey listen, let's go meet for, let's go meet for some tacos. So we went down to a place for Taco Tuesday. And while we were talking there, he was telling me about one of the conversations he had with his, with his brother. And he had asked his brother what was his, when was the last time he felt victorious or a moment of triumph. And his brother had shared something from like his like earlier years when he was playing football and he's a man, he's like, so you're telling me the last time you felt this, this feeling of triumph was when you were playing football so many years ago. He's like, you have a house, family, all this stuff. Now why don't you feel that now why don't you feel this, this sense of pride, accomplishment? And it's kind of off topic, but he got me thinking about it just got me thinking about when was the last time I felt that. Like you feel it? I felt it in periods of, especially over the, like last week. There's been periods where I'm like, hell yeah, but when do you actually really, really feel in Your body, where you're like, I am unstoppable. I always usually. I always go back to when I was doing my weightlifting competition, where I just was 100% committed. 100% committed. And as a result, you saw the. You saw the result in my physique because of it. Because everything I did was red mentioned disciplined between my meals, my workouts. So I went back to that moment and it just kind of stuck with me. And I was thinking about, like, how when I travel, certain decisions that I make and how it's so easy to fall back into the normal way of doing things, which is a different tangent. We're not going to go. So as I left the restaurant, right, this is just the reason I'm telling you this, I just started getting my wheels spinning and asking different questions. So as I left the restaurant, I'm sitting in my car, pulling around, and I'm at a light. I'm like, what is the real reason? Like, what was I really feeling? It's not the freaking. It's not the. It's not the. The application. It's not the technology. It's not the shitty customer service that these, you know, it's none of that. What is it that I'm really feeling? And the real frustration was that it should have happened already. It should have happened, right? It should have happened yesterday, right? Because I wanted to be free of the situation that I have, and I want to be able to live the life the way I want to live it. And I know that I'm being a little bit hard on myself, right? Because I look back on the experiences that especially I was just doing a photo import and I was, like, trying to export my photos from Mac Photos into a folder. And as a result of doing that, just, like, threw it, like, just threw all the photos in a folder. No organization whatsoever. So as I was looking through those folders and I was just clicking down, I was, holy shit. Like, I packed a lot of life into, like, into my ears. And I'm looking through the travels, looking through my experiences of coffee, and I'm like, holy crap. Like, this is amazing. And I started to think about how the scattering, I think Mel Robbins calls it, where your friends kind of dissipate. I noticed that I spend more time in solitude, working on my stuff, but alone. And that's not how I operate. And the reason I go back and tell you this is because I wasn't putting off life and I was being a little bit one. I was being very, very hard on myself. But when I look Back on the way I've lived. I didn't put off living in the best years of my life. Well, then you can say, well, what's the best years of your life? The best years of your life are doing the things where you feel like you should be doing them and following your heart and not the shoulds that everybody else is telling you should do or what society is telling you to do. Now, they may not even be telling you directly, but just by being a part of society, you are following a cultural norm. And there's nothing wrong with that, just what happens when people get together. But it's important to be aware of it. So this way you could carve out your own path and start living your own life based on what your values, based on what's important to you. So fast forward, I'm back in this car and I'm just thinking, like, what is the real. What was the real thing that was bothering me? It was nothing to do with technology, the customer service, or how long it was, how long it was, how long it was taking. That's what exactly was bothering me. Because I felt like my expectations was, it should have happened yesterday. When I just stopped to think about, I was like, why would I think that something this important to building this freedom lifestyle that I want is going to take a day? If it were just going to take a day, then everyone would be doing it and everyone would have it done and no one would be here, and everyone would be Italy somewhere, sipping coffee, and I'd be somewhere else. Because I don't like traveling with large crowds. So that was one little perspective. Shit, okay, and then I'll give you one kind of. Then I, later on, I started speaking with one of my friends, my friend Diego, who is living in Mexico. He's back in Mexico after doing three months of travel. This was his first big trip. And it's funny because having traveled many times now, 62 proud of it, and 62 countries, that is. And I was telling him about the experiences he's gonna feel as a result of being back, especially with the jet lag and coming off of this high and then being thrown back into society and how being there, like, will start to, like all the inspiration that he felt when he was abroad and all the desires that he created are gonna shift and all of a sudden they're gonna seem lackluster and dull. I told him, I said, listen, whatever you do, make a decision, take some big action right now, like, you know, because he wants to go back to school and study in Japan. So as they take action, because I'm telling you, like, all that passion you felt, it's gonna dissipate. But if you lock yourself in now, then you are gonna feel excited. You're gonna know that it's coming, and then there's only one way to go, and that is forward. So he shared with me how he, you know, he had already started applying to schools and started the process, which was freaking amazing. So I'm so, so happy for him because, one, because I. I know the types of experiences he's going to have going forward, and he loves Japan. I just. I'm happy to see him following his passion and. And going against the norm of everyone else around him, especially being in South America. He had expressed some frustration after being around. Around Asia and then going back there, how things just seemed like they were. It was a different world, which it very much is a different world. I mean, Asia to United States is a different world. Asia to Latin America, it's got to be like, not even a different world. It's like a different universe. So why do I tell you this? I tell you this for a couple of reasons. One is, as I had mentioned, know what it is that's really going on your mind? Like, what is the real frustration, right? So this way you're not taking it out on your spouse, your kids, your friends. What is the real frustration? And so you're enjoying fucking. Excuse me, but so you're enjoying life because otherwise you're going to dredge through it, and it frigging sucks, right? So you got to bring some awareness to it, and it's okay to dredge through it, but bring awareness into it. So this way you can free yourself from that and figure out what is really going on. And then one, when you're looking at. When you've realized and you've asked the why, like, what is it? Ask yourself, is this logical? Like, is this how long it's supposed to take or what it would typically take? Like, if I was thinking about making. If it were easy to make a life of location, freedom, everyone would be doing it, right? Everyone would be doing it. So give yourself a little bit of grace there. Next, what is it you want? What is it that you're moving towards? And I want to kind of caveat that we need to have a quiet mind. If your mind is noisy, the things you're saying you want, chances are they're not even yours, right? Let's be honest. It's gonna be like, all the things that people are telling you you should do. And you have to quiet that mind, because in the quiet of the mind, your heart speaks and you will be able to become aware of those influences. Then you'll be like, huh, that's bullshit. Not gonna listen to that one. This is what I really want. Know what you want. And then lastly, and most importantly, burn your bridges. Make a decision that is gonna lock you in to that result, because motivation's only gonna take you so far. But if you are locked into that result and now all of a sudden you're committed, like I did with this, this course, the marketing course, I'm like, damn, I'm in. I spent the money. I've gotta do this. Like, I could easily let myself off because the course is ending. And now there's like, I'm gonna lack some of that accountability. But I've got to keep on going because I know this is what I want. I know that already just from taking this course, that it's already given me a new way of looking at business in terms of how I market and offer my products and services. So I know it's going to be a tremendous value. So that is it. I hope I threw a lot at you, but I hope in, in essence, like, I'll give you again, I'll just kind of give you the. The extract of it all. Like, what are you feeling? What is the real cause behind the feelings that you're feeling? And then what can you do about it, right? Like, what can you do in the sense of to move, keep moving forward, to lock yourself in, to stay focused and on your desire? Because remember, you guys, you only get one life. Don't save the best of life for the years that matter least, or the. The years where you know you're wasting all the energy, the vitality you have, and then putting it off for later where later may not even come, right? So it's a fine balance of making sure that you're doing the things you want, enjoying life, but you're also planning for the future. So that is all I've got for you guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment. Comments help get the word out. Or you could also share it with somebody via social media or just mail the episode to a friend. If you have any questions or comments, you can send them to me via my website at www.donnierouse.com. that iS-O-N-N-Y-R-A u s.com that is it, guys. God bless you guys. I hope you enjoy 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.