Lessons From a Toddler - Make Your Distant Dreams a Reality Starting Today

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 Lessons from a Toddler. Quite often in life, we have goals that can be acted on in that exact moment. For simplicity's sake, we'll call it a trip. Because that's what the story is about. You have this trip that you want to take, but in this moment, as it so often happens, you can't act upon it. So what do you do? I had a conversation with a friend of mine. She was telling me about her trip, a trip she wants to plan to Thailand, and how it wasn't really actionable right now. And she asked me, well, when you want to do something like this trip, but you can't action it, what do you do? So before we get forward, we always start with the end mind. Let's start first with what is it that you want that you are unable to experience in this moment? Secondly, write down a list of just five steps, small steps that you can take to actually move towards that. And it doesn't have to be immediate, right? Small steps you can take. Thirdly, how can you keep that in the forefront of your mind? Meaning how can you keep that front and center? So this way you never really forget about it. You don't allow this inspiration to dull. Quite often in life, you get inspired and then this inspiration starts to wane because you're so far away from the thing that you want. So without reminding yourself of what it is, the experience you want to have and why you want just dulls. And pretty soon you forget what you even. You don't even know what you want. And then the last thing is keeping that, after you've kept that goal front and center is just taking that first step. Take one of those steps from your list that you just created and to move forward with it. So to go into the story. So I was talking with my friend Zhu. She was mentioned that she had just listened to one of my podcasts, she goes, I have a question. Yes, live your life and all this, I understand, but what happens when you have kids? What happens when you want to go to Thailand, but it's just not an option right now, right? You know, I was like, well, how old are your kids, right? How many. How much longer do you have them in the house for before they all head to school? And she said, the number of years, I don't remember. I said, okay, just because you can't action it now doesn't mean it is not real. Meaning just because you're not taking the trip next week doesn't mean that you can't make this. Take the steps now to bring it to fruition, to make it real. I don't know about you, but more often than not, it's the anticipation about a trip that really excites me. Right? It's when I go on the trip. Yeah, the trip is awesome. But so much of it is just like that. There's a month left, and you're like, oh, my God, I cannot wait. And you're romanticizing about all the experiences that you're about to have. And by having these visualizations, by having this mental imagery in your mind, all of a sudden now it plays out the way. It plays out the way you planned it in your head. I've had many trips where the mental imagery in my head was not very clear. It was very vague, and my mood going into the trip was probably not the top mood. So as a result of that, the experience I had in that trip wasn't the top experience. Right. It matched the mood going into it. But then I've had just the. I've had the exact opposite. Where I've had trips where I romanticize, I knew, like, once I take this trip, it is going to be amazing. I'm going to have the time of my life, and then I go on that trip, and it supersedes anything that I could have ever imagined. So I was explaining to my friend, I was like, you might not be able to take the trip next week, but what are some of the steps that you can do this week, next week, a month from now, a year from now? Likely there would have to be some budget involved, right? So you could start planning. All right, well, how much do I need to put away? What is this trip going to cost you? Planning the budget? Where am I going to go? What am I going to see? What am I going to eat? What do you want to experience? Maybe you want to take a ride down One of the Spice rivers, where the markets are on the rivers in Thailand. I don't know. But it's a good time to start planning it this way. You could start to experience it without having to already be there. Then by the time it comes around, then you're ready. So looking at that time horizon of five years seems like quite a bit of time, right? Five years is for me. If I had to think about a trip five years out, I'd be like, what, are you kidding me? I'm not going to think about it now. It's five years out. It won't register for me as being real unless I surrounded myself with the things as I mentioned, to bring it into the forefront. So if I knew that I needed to budget $10,000 for a trip, right, Thailand will no cost, nowhere near that. But let's just say that you had a budget $5,000 with the flights. Flights could be $1,000, you know, $2,000. And I guarantee that a week there, they wouldn't even be able to spend $3,000. So, okay, well, how much do you need to put away every single week or every single month? And you start to break it down in chunks and then say, okay, well, what are some weekly activities or maybe even once a month activities? Weekly is going to be better because the more you're thinking about it, it just keeps the excitement going. But what are some of those activities that you can do that are constantly going to remind you and keep you excited? I mentioned a few of them. Like, one was visiting the Spice river, where there's a market on the river and everyone's selling spices, maybe the street food. You're looking up different types of street food, but it's taking chunks of it and spacing it out and constantly revisiting it and maybe talking about it with your spouse, just romanticizing about the experience you're going to have and keeping it alive. And once, you know, a culmination, once you do all of this stuff, when the time comes as the two years, one year, all of a sudden, you're going to feel the anticipation start to build. And then when you take the trip, you're going to come back. You'll come back and you'll tell me how amazing it was. So that was my advice to her. And by the look on her face, I could tell she understood what I was saying. So let's bring that back to your life. It doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be the trip, although I would like it to be. Maybe it's the business you want to start. Maybe it is the relationship you want to have. Maybe it is, you know, maybe it is that trip. I hope it's the trip. But whatever it may be, the same rules apply. What is it? Start with the end. What exactly is it that you want? What do you want the experience? If it's going back to the trip, what do you want the experience to be? Like, what kind of people do you want to meet? What kind of foods you want to eat? Get as much detail as you can about what you want to experience. And then you don't even have to go to the limitations. We're just going to in terms of the time horizon when you could actually do it. If you don't have the financial resources at the moment or you can't take it, you know, the time at the moment, that's fine. You could still write down. All right, well, when would you want to take this? When you start to think about it, it gets real. When you start to plan it, it gets more real. And then when you schedule it, it is real. So then put down on the calendar, just say, you know what, five years from now, I'm just going to pull a date out of the hat. March 5th, right? Because, you know, the kids are off on spring break or. No, the kids. You won't have the kids anymore. But you know that that's a time that will be convenient for you. So you just throw that on the calendar. It doesn't matter what date. You just pick a date. The next thing is, what are the experiences you want? Like, what are some of the things that you want to experience? But then what are the steps you can take now? Like, just start saying, well, you know, I could call travel agent. I can get brochures. I could start doing Google searches to see what kind of street food they have there. I could, you know, I could start, you know, just looking at a map and going through Google Maps and like, you know, walking through streets, pretending like I'm walking through the streets there. I could start studying the culture, whatever it may be. And then a matter of once you have those steps, taking some of the steps, like literally putting it on a calendar and say, okay, well, let's schedule time. We're going to do once a month, we're going to go here and we'll just start to plan this. Or maybe once every two weeks. The more often you do it, the more fresh it's going to be in your mind, the more excited you will be because you're constantly bombarding your senses with that of this trip. And then let's not forget the imagery. As I, as I mentioned, like I was saying, it's one thing to talk about it, it's another thing to literally have images around your house, things that remind you of the experience you're going to have. When I travel, I mean, I'm usually on my computer fairly frequently whenever I book a trip, the first place, the first picture I see of that place, it goes on my desktop. It's my wallpaper. And I have traveled to every single place that I've put in that wallpaper because I'm staring at it all the time. So it just like, I'm like, okay, I'll get there, I'll get there. And I'm not even consciously thinking about it, but it's there and I've always taken that trip. And then lastly is just again, taking the steps, plotting the time, taking a step, committing to it. Because the only way you're going to get there is if you start following these baby steps. If you think that you're going to say, okay, five years from now, you may do it. But if you're five years from now and you haven't done any of the work, I mean, your expectation, the anticipation is going to wane, your excitement is going to wane. Or maybe you're like, well, you know, I'll just worry about it four years from now when I'm near that. But what if you don't have, you know, what if you didn't fail to save the money you needed to do it? Or something else unexpected comes up, who knows? There's a million things that could happen, right? One of the reasons why I always preach that when you have the opportunity to do it, do it in that moment. If you want to take a trip somewhere, take the trip. Don't put it off because, oh, well, you know, now might not be a good time. Because there's. I mean, there's always going to be uncertainty in the world, right? If anything, the world has become less certain. So don't put off your dreams at the cost of comfort. So that is the podcast for today. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope in some way that inspired you to think about some of those desires that you have inside, as well as how to bring them to fruition, how to make them real. Because every single one of those everything goal you have, every trip you want to take, it all starts with taking the small steps, moving towards the thing you want. So, again, that's all I've got for you. Today. Hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, please give it a Like if you know someone that might benefit from this, or, you know, if you are benefiting from this and you want to, and you're starting to plan your trip, message me. Leave a comment on itunes. It helps the podcast. Believe it or not, it does help the podcast. And send me a message. I'd love to know how you're benefiting from this. So that's all I've got for you guys today. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you need to ask a question, subscribe or leave a comment, you could do so by visiting www.donnyrouse.com again. Donnierous.coM-O-N n y r a u s.com God bless you and I will see you good soon. And remember, you only get one life. Live it. Thank you so much.