Meet The Jonses

Hi, guys. My name is Donny Rouse, and you're listening to the podcast One Life. Meet the Joneses. Whose life are you living? Before we can live a happy and fulfilling life, it is imperative that we ask ourselves this exact question. The reason is because success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And before you could change your life, you must first become aware of the things that are controlling it. The things that are telling you what you should do, what you shouldn't do, what your preferences should be. In short, it involves waking up. I'm going to share with you an experience that I had, because it's not something. It's not something that happens once in our life and disappears. There's always influences at play whenever we are around other people, right? Because there is this need to be a part of a group. It's part of our human nature. But once we actually become aware of it, become aware of its influence, and step back and say, okay, well, where is this guiding me? Is this where I want to go? If it is, then proceed. If not, change your course. Years ago, when I was in college, I had the desire to be a stockbroker. I had this. This glorified image of what it was probably from the movies with. I can't remember, I think one was called Wall street or whatever it was. It was one from the 80s. And then I think Cruel Intentions was another movie. I saw this movie and like how Ryan Philippe in that movie portrayed this, you know, affluent person. Very confident. Well, actually, he was very arrogant in the movie. But at the time, that was what I. That was like the image, like I thought I wanted to portray. So I started studying the series 63 and the series 7, thinking that I wanted to become a stockbroker. That changed once I realized that I had a first world. I had experience. I went to work for a small investment bank. During my last. The last year of my college career, I spent nine months working for an investment bank and realized really quickly that that was not the environment that I wanted to be in. Also, after that, I went to work in corporate finance, doing corporate accounting. The time dragged on. Minutes felt like centuries, not even like years, like centuries. I was so unhappy, I was so unfulfilled that I asked myself the question. I was like, there's got to be something more to life than this. Before, I was sold the whole bag of goods. This is how life is supposed to be. You go to work, you come home, maybe you go to the gym, you eat, you sleep, and you do it all over again. Waiting for that weekend that didn't really jive with me. Well, not didn't really. It didn't jive with me at all. It was at that moment I said, all right, well, what do I really want to do? I want to work in coffee. I want to start my own coffee business. So I began the journey of doing exactly that. I left corporate America and having not traveled after college, I first took a month off. I said, alright, I'm gonna go travel for a month. Actually, this was before I took the corporate job. I said, I am gonna go travel. My family, everyone was saying, no, no, no, no, don't do it. What are you doing? You're wasting time, you're wasting money. You should get a job. You need to start working. That's what everybody told me. Something in me had that desire I wanted. Well, I've never really been out of the country. I want to experience the world. So I booked a trip with Texas A and M, a bunch of Aggies, and we toured around Europe for 21 days. And that was the gateway drug, so to speak. That was what opened my eyes. Say there's a lot more to this world than I had known previously. A lot. So many different ways of living. So that was the taste. When I left the corporate world and I started pursuing my coffee again, everyone was making commotion. What are you doing? You know, I was, at the time, I was making less money than high school students with a college degree. I know my father was up in arms about it and my girlfriend was definitely up. My girlfriend at the time was, she's like, what are you doing? I want to get married in three years. What's going on? And that's when I had a step back and I said, well, what is it that I want in my life? Right? Like, my parents had their own idea for what my life is supposed to be like. My girlfriend had her own idea as to what our life was supposed to be and had no idea. She never even consulted me on it. She had this image in her head and I was supposed to kind of go along with that story. Thankfully, I was conscious of it. Thankfully, I asked myself, I said, well, what is it that I want? 2006, I end up going to Rome, Italy. That was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back on the relationship. She ended up breaking up with me, thankfully. And I ended up going to have one of the best experiences of my entire life. It didn't always start that way though. The first three weeks of that trip were very hard. But nevertheless, the life I live now, now Travel is such a priority, and it doesn't say that it doesn't come with. Without its challenges. I'm still influenced, or I'm still tempted to be influenced by my surroundings, but what my siblings are doing, what my friends are doing. But when I check in and say, all right, well, what kind of life do I want to live? What is aligned with my spirit and the people who I am looking at, the people who I feel I am judging myself against, are those the lives I want to emulate? Would I be happy in their shoes? The answer was always no. So why compare? It doesn't make sense. It's stupid. So it's so easy to fall in the trap where you see everyone else doing a thing and think that you're on a timetable and that if you don't do those same things, if you don't get the dog, if you don't have the two kids, if you don't have the giant Range Rover, whatever heck it is, and you're not doing those things that somehow you're behind, I want to tell you and give you a little friendly shake and say, wake up. What is it that you want? Don't look at what everyone else is doing, because they might have all that too, and maybe they're in a shit ton of debt, right? In which case, what's the point of maintaining an image if you can't really maintain it and it's causing you stress? What's the point of maintaining an image if it's not fulfilling to you? What is fulfilling to you? So the point of this is I want to. To give you kind of like a base, a point to say, okay, well, where am I in life? What is it that I want? What has been guiding me up until this point? I say up to this point because right now you can make a conscious change to step back to realize, how have I been living my life? What have I been doing? What needs to be done to change? This way I can course correct and start living a life that is aligned with my values, with my desires, with my goals. Hopefully that involves a lot of travel and ton of coffee. In which case, make sure you give me a call and I will gladly coach you through that. So let's ask a few questions. Who are you comparing yourself to? Right? There's the community we belong to. There's always a basis of comparison. If you're not living your fullest life, who are you comparing yourself to? Whose life are you living? Is it what your father or your mother thought was your best life? So you're fulfilling because maybe they didn't have the opportunity because they were immigrants, that they wanted you to live a better life that didn't involve any kind of manual labor. So they wanted you to go into the working world, get a white collar job and stay in an office. That was partially my story. What is it for you next? What do they say you should do, right? Should you be having kids? Should you be married at a certain age? Should you have a certain amount of money saved up? What are the shoulds? Write them all down on a sheet of paper. Next. Is their life one that you want to emulate? I'll say that again because this is probably the most important question of this series. Is their life one that you want to emulate? Because I'm willing to bet 9 out of 10 times, maybe even 10 out of 10, it's probably not right. Because if you're in this uneasy place and you're not feeling good about it and you know that you have the stressors of trying to keep up, chances are it's probably not really aligned with you. And then the last and second, or maybe it's the most important, what are the last two? What is it that you do want? What is it that you want to experience? What is it that you want to feel out of life? I for one, think that I value experiences over any kind of physical possession. Except for maybe a couple of my coffee makers. But for the most part, yeah, actually, there's one that I really, really like. It's called a Giannini. It's a little Stove Top. I am infatuated with the thing. It is one of my favorite things in the entire world. But I value experiences over things because when I look at the greatest moments of joy, it's always been with experiences. I've had people, I've shared them with sites that I've seen, and I continue to do that because it's also one of the strongest cornerstones in my life for growth. Because I experience all these things, I develop more compassion for people. I'm able to relate to people more and able to kind of give the little shake to you who are watching this to say, listen, there's so much more out there. All you have to do is open your eyes or give me your hand and let me guide you there. There's so much more the world has to offer, but it's so easy to get kind of caught in the little box that we live in and to say, all right, well, I'm not sure if anything is outside of here, you know, yeah, I see other people are doing it, but that can't be me. Let me show you the way. If you have any questions, you can feel free to send me a message via Instagram. Onny D O N N Y R A U S if you have any questions, comments, any personal experiences regarding this topic of keeping up with the Joneses, or as I call it, meet the Joneses, then please send it there or comment on. If you're watching this on Facebook, please comment in the box below. And then lastly, if you have that desire, if you know that there's more you want, maybe you want to start that business, but if you want experience, you want to take that first solo trip, but you're afraid, maybe you don't know if you're going to meet people. Maybe you think that it costs way too much money and you don't have the resources to do it. Maybe you just don't have the plan on how to even save up a little bit of money. Because I promise you, it doesn't cost nearly as much as you would think. Maybe you just need that hand to kind of guide you and say, listen, it's okay. I have been there and chances are I may be going again when you're going. So ask me anything and we can set up a call. Again, guys, God bless. Thank you so, so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this post and I will see you again soon.