Measure of Greatness

Hi guys, my name is Donnie Rouse and you are listening to the podcast One Life. So what does it mean to be destined for greatness? I think when we ask ourselves the question, what does it mean to be great? We often conjure up images of athletes taking on awards and actresses and actors taking home Grammys. But what exactly does it mean to be great? What I see is that there are three kind of pitfalls that we fall to when we think about greatness. The first is we think of greatness as a destination, as a place that's way so far off in the future that we have to kind of climb and go to reach to. The second is that we take on society's beliefs, society's standards for what greatness is. So we might say, oh well, greatness is having X amount of dollars in the bank or having the perfect family of two kids, one dog and a giant SUV for those who live in Fairfield County. Or maybe it is this failure to just keep score on life because sometimes you could be winning the game of life and thinking that you're failing because you're not keeping score. So I'll dive into each of those right now. Let's start with the problem of thinking that it is a destination. So in order to be great, greatness is not something that just happens over time. Greatness is the result of many actions taken consistently over a period of time. I had done an email series to my Rousecoffee, my clan, my Rousecoffee followers, my Rousecoffee lovers, whatever you want to call them. I call them different things every different day. Every day that I send an email and I'd gotten a response back and some of the responses had stated, well, wow, this is exactly what I needed. Because I think people fail to recognize that they're actually achieving greatness in their day. Maybe it's not so much like maybe you're not performing on a Grammy Award winning song or whatever title of a movie. Maybe that's not what you're doing. But maybe you're showing up as a great mom, maybe you're showing up as a great co worker, or maybe you're showing up as a great boyfriend girlfriend. So what is it that you're measuring to show up? And when you think about greatness, you have to kind of shift the questions that we ask ourselves. So what does it mean to be a great? I mean, because our lives are very dynamic, our lives are not one dimensional. There's many aspects of ourselves that we bring forward into each day. So what does that mean? What does it mean to be a great spouse, a great sibling or family member, a great business owner, a great friend? Hopefully, as I'm saying this in the computer, like I said, as I'm speaking this in the mic, you're sitting there with a piece of paper and you're. Or at the very least making a mental note of what that is. Because until you know what that is, you're starting from, you're taking one step forward and two steps back because you don't know what the standard is that you're measuring yourself against. And greatness is taking those steps day and day in and day out and taking those actions with purpose. That's where greatness starts. So when we take on, we'll go to the second point. Taking on society's norm or society's definition of greatness. I find myself kind of bumping up against this very, very often. More so in the areas of relationships, in the areas of business, in the areas of just life in general. I had this belief, disempowering belief that I still struggle with. It's funny, I struggle with it when I'm here in the United States, but when I travel, it's a completely different story. Funny how we kind of. We shift beliefs depending on the environment that we're in. So when I'm in abroad, what does it mean for. What is greatness with love? For me, greatness and love is to love the person freely for who they are, to be very present in that moment, to have a degree of playfulness, that relationship. What does it mean when I'm here? For me, very different. It's a very different. When I'm home, there was a different mindset shift and I had this negative belief that greatness or success in a relationship meant that first and foremost I had to be financially secure because everything hinges on finance. I always hear people say, ah, the stress of, you know, financial stress is the number one cause of, of marriage decay. I mean, maybe, or maybe we just didn't ask a better question. Maybe it's, you know, relationships who didn't focus on the beauty and the things that they had and they weren't supportive of one another. And maybe that was the result of, you know, them not being able to get through financial hardship. I mean, whatever it is, we don't know what the answers are. But that shouldn't define what we think of as greatness, what we think of as success in a given area of our life, what society, what the movies, what the media, not just that greater outside, but even our family. What's so unique. What's so interesting is that everyone has their own definition of success. So your parents were born in a different era. What they see as success, what they see as greatness, is going to be very different from what you see. I think that children, in a lot of ways, we're kind of spiritual guides for our family, for our parents especially, because we will one day, we'll get caught in this kind of tunnel vision, this way of seeing the world. Hopefully we won't, but for a lot of us, truly probably will. So our kids are a way of seeing beyond those tunnels, breaking down these norms, breaking down these biases that we've had that we've set up in our life. And I think children are invaluable for that. So how do you divine greatness? And you don't do it by someone else's standard. By doing it by someone else's standard, even when you think you're achieving that greatness that was set up, you're going to fail. And failure to keep score. I touched upon this in one podcast. This is kind of. I feel like I'm going through this. These points fairly quickly, but I'll do it anyways. Everything I do on these podcasts is very ad hoc. There's no script. I'm literally just speaking from the heart and spitting into the mic, and that is what comes out. So what does it mean to failure to keep score? I'll give you an example of my own life. So I would look at myself. People would say, oh, are you successful? A lot of time I would look at myself and be like, no, I'm not successful. Because my measure of success was distorted. I looked at my measure of success as having to achieve a certain financial threshold in order before I would consider myself successful. Oddly enough, being in coffee, there was this belief that I had to have a brick and mortar. Why would I ever want a brick and mortar? First of all, I love to travel. I love being out in the world. So the idea of trying to plant myself in one location, it just. It's not congruent with me. But yet in my mind, I had this structure of what it meant to be successful as a coffee company that didn't fit who I am, didn't fit who I wanted, but yet was causing me a lot of stress. So the measure I was failing, I was keeping score by someone else's scoreboard or by someone else's scorecard, not remembering, not forgetting to remember that I am the one who gets to decide the rules in my own life. And what success means to me. So what does success mean for me? If you know me at all, you could probably guess. Success for me is freedom. I love to travel, I love to experience the world. So success for me is having that freedom to go out, to be in the world, to experience life to the fullest. Success for me is to have friendships that are playful, that are fun, that are accepting and true. And true accepting of people by who they are, not by what they have or what they make. Friendships that are uplifting rather than pulling down. Friendships that are look for, that are optimistic and just life giving. Yeah, I'm never sure I was going with this, but you get the gist. And for a while I wasn't. I was looking through my, looking at my life through someone else's lens and I was forgetting that these are all these things that I would want in my life and would consider successful. I'm already doing. But then why am I looking? Why would I not be fully present, enjoying what I have? Because I had different beliefs that were not my own. I had different standards that I was trying to meet that were not my own. So I encourage you to look in your own life and kind of ask the same questions. Well, what are you doing? Why are you doing it? And what is greatness? What is success for you in given the different areas of your life? Because when it comes, usually people have this like this freak out moment in their life because they realize that all of their life they've been doing things for other people but never doing what it is that they wanted. And there might be degrees of this. There might be degrees in your life or maybe in your family life you realize that you still kind of, you know, you let your mother in law or your father or whoever it is you kind of let, you know, you kind of bend to their will because you don't want to rock any boats. But it's something that bothers you. You don't really voice it. Maybe that is the one area where you're kind of bending, but the other areas are fantastic. But first, in order to know what a life of greatness is, we have to define it. So let's do that. Now, what does a rich, full, great, successful life mean to you? In the area of your finances, in the area of your family and friends, in the area of your relationships and love? We'll go down the line. Contribution. How about for your emotional health? How about adventure? I like to add that one. That one's my personal one. I like to add in. And finally your career I don't know if I mentioned spiritual, but we'll put that in there, too. That's very important. Define what exactly that means to you, because once we do that, then we can move forward. Then we can start creating the reality that's in line with our heart. It's as simple as that. Guys, this is one of my shorter episodes, but nonetheless, I think it's very impactful. I hope you could hear in my voice how important, how much I feel that I want to convey this message to you is that you are in charge of your life. You are in charge of your own happiness. You are in charge of designing this beautiful movie called your life. And it only takes discipline, a few steps, but knowing what you're going to do and how you're. How you're measuring yourself because we tend to be unfair to ourselves. That is it. Guys. Thank you so, so, so much. So, so, so much for tuning in. If you want to DM me, send me your. Your questions or maybe something that resonated with you in this podcast, you can do so by sending me a private message at Donny d o n n y rouse r a u s on Instagram again at Donny d o n n y r a u s one word. And that concludes this episode. Take care, guys. God bless.