Rewiring Fear: How to Identify Fear and Step Into Courage

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. Welcome back, guys. Donny Rouse here. And today I wanted to talk about courage, but since said differently, I want to talk about how do you know when those moments are where you have to act courageous? It's. I know in the past, I had fallen in the trap, and it's easy to fall in the trap to think that courageous moments are these ginormous moments that you have to take this massive action and, like, break through the wall. When the truth is, is that the biggest moments are the smallest ones where you have to take courageous action. But if you don't fine tune, I guess the definition of what a courageous moment is, you can miss out on these moments that are constantly calling you every single day. So let's start first with how do you identify these courageous moments? The easiest thing is you'll notice the feel first and foremost, that you're going to notice it in your body. Right. For example, I was doing a call yesterday. I was talking with a packaging company that does a process for bottled beverages. And in my relationship with this company, they had, I guess, behaved some ways that, in my opinion, were either negligent or intentionally there to cause harm to me. So as a result of it, I needed to confront this company, and I had to say, hey, listen, this is not okay. This is how I want to proceed. I want to proceed, or this is what you did wrong. But the thought of doing that all of a sudden stirred this emotion inside of me. I'm like, oh, well, what. What if they get mad at me? What if they, you know, what if they argue back? And I knew what the. What my fears were, right? Like, the fears were apparent. Like, it was what was making me hesitant to want to go on the call. But I've trained myself now is that when I notice these moments, when I. When I feel like, oh, boy, here we go, like, wow, I'm getting a little nervous. I know that that nervousness is. Is a call to action. And I've trained myself now to step into that action rather than to avoid it. Because action only takes three seconds. Three, two, one, and you go. And then once you take the movement, right, you're already in motion. So there's no other way to go but forward. So it was this stirring of emotion, this feeling of anxiousness that will, like, I'm gonna say this. What if I make the wrong decision? When. The truth is, when I checked into my heart, I knew that how this company and I were interacting and just the. I mean, I'll go in a little bit of detail and negligence. Insane. You know, we were talking about Formulation, and, you know, I had shared some details with them, and they wanted to take the next step, but there was no contract in. No contract to take the next step. So for those of you who are looking into the food or beverage or any kind of space, right, you have your NDA that. That protects you against the disclosure of your information. But then anything after that, you need an agreement, right? Because all of a sudden, if I were to move forward with this company, right, without the agreement, as they were suggesting, then any Formulation work done on my behalf would not owned. Be owned by me. It would be owned, property of the formulator. So. So having the awareness to. And. And the. And the wherewithal to understand this, thank God, right? Because if I would have proceeded with that and we would have done all this work, all of a sudden, now they have my. Then they could consult with other people. And then they're like, okay, this is what we do for this drink. And now all of a sudden, my secret's everywhere. So. So it. Going back, it was this. This emotion that I knew I needed to move forward and take the action. So that was a fairly big example. But let's go with a smaller example. Like, how do you know if. When it shows up in your day, sometimes the courageous action is having that difficult decision. Sometimes it is expressing a boundary that needs to be put in place. Another example of that is, you know, I was talking with a friend, and he wanted to. He wanted to have an espresso consult with me, right? He's like, hey, just come over. You know, I'll take you out for lunch, and, you know, let's do the espresso. I'm like, well, in my. I didn't say this way. I was like, yeah, sure, at first, right? But in my mind, I'm like, well, no, not really. I Mean well one of all, when I'm doing espresso consults, like those take like three hours and I really delve into like the details of extraction, how to taste, how to understand it. It's not like, you know, it's not a five minute introduction or even an hour. So there was a boundary there because like I felt like I needed to express my boundary because this is what I do for work, right. This is what I've spent my entire life devoted to. And so I going to express that boundary to him. Like I'm more than happy to help out my friends without a doubt. Right. And that's the kind of the, that's kind of like the, the, the line that I was going crosswise area. Well, how much do I help my friends versus what is right, what is wrong? Only you know what feels good for you, right? And that's really what it comes down to. You have to feel it in your body and know what feels good. Like I'm going to help him out, I'm going to, am I going to do the three hours? I mean he's a friend, but we're kind of in the beginning phases and so I want to be respectful to myself as well as respectful to the friendship. So. But that having that conversation is a courageous act. And so looking at all to go back into that. So that was just how you identify is that emotion that was going into it. And to give you just going back to my own life example, when I was looking at my day, I realized that I'd taken all of these steps and took action to, to move my business forward. And like there are some of the actions were making a call to a different formulator, having a conversation with someone who is been in the natural foods industry, you know, for they're a veteran in the industry and they have a lot of knowledge, right? But having that, just having the conversation, even though there was, there was no, you know, nothing was really going to come out of it, just having the conversation and being in the same room I thought was intimidating, but I did it anyways and as a result I've got some new connections from it. Now I have some different ways of moving forward. So how. The reason I tell you this is because I want you to identify those courageous acts in your day, not just to bypass them and think like these are small insignificant moments. Because they are not. These small moments are actually the moments that are calling you to step into that courageous, that courageous state to break through the fear. You may not think of it as fear, right let's not use fear, apprehension, nervousness, whatever you want to call it, it's still a call to act courageously. So let's look. In your day, where do you normally feel these little nudges for courageous action? Maybe you notice it when you have to have an interaction with somebody at work where you have to express a boundary. Maybe it is taking a step with your business, moving in the direction you want to go that you know you want to go, but you just haven't done it because you're afraid of how you might be perceived. You're afraid of doing it wrong. Those are all actions are. These are all examples of courageous action needing to be taken. So my assignment for you is one, just, you know, at the very least, just bring some awareness to where you are being called to act. And then when you know that once you know, like, you have to decide, Decide to act courageously, that you're going to be courageous, right? And part of it is, like, one of the things I love is that you can create a rule for yourself. Like, when you notice that it's 3, 2, 1. I haven't done this in a while. Actually. I should get back to this. So if there was a girl that I found attractive, right, I'd be at the gym or somewhere, and I would be like, three, two, one. And like, all right. On one, I go, like, I go in that direction. I'll give you one example. I was in a. I was in Miami Beach. I was with my good friend Fatih, and we were at this party at the Fiana Hotel during Art Basel. And we were. You were sitting there, we're talking, and I'm looking up, and there's this beautiful blonde girl dressed in white, beautiful smile, short hair about shoulder length. And she's staring at me. And smiling. I'm like, is she staring at me? And I'm looking at my friend. I'm like, yo, I think she's staring at me. Every time I look there, she's looking at me. So I'm looking, you know, look back, I'm like, I caught her again. All right, look, she's all right. She's still staring at me. And so my friend Fatih, he was like, oh, well, let's go over there. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't, don't. Don't go over there. So he sneaks up and he sneaks around, like, next, almost, like, right behind her. And in my mind, I'm like, I am gonna kill you. I am gonna murder you right here in front of everybody. And. But I ended up knowing that I was afraid. I followed him. And we were standing behind her, and we're talking, and we're talking, we're talking. And then the three, two, one idea came into my mind. I was like, all right, I gotta do this. I gotta do this. And so my friend Fatih is talking to me, and he's like. He's talking, talking, talking, looks off. And then when he looks back, I'm not there anymore. He's like. Because he's telling me this afterward. I'm not there anymore. And he's. And he's saying to my. He's saying to me. He's like, where the hell did you go? And then you looked over, and I was talking to this girl, because I did that. And it was like. I just said to myself, I was like, I was there. Like, I got to deal with this, right? I'm afraid of this. I have to go up to her and approach her. And it's not that I say that I have to approach every person that I. That. That I. I find attractive, right? Because I know that there's certain people that, like, I really feel a pull to. And this was one of them. And so again, I said, three, two, one, Whoop. Hi, how are you? What's your name? Where are you from? You know, because nobody. Nobody was from Miami Beach. And so just to kind of make the. The. The. The story, add a little humor to it. So she ended up being a very close talker. And. Which I didn't mind because I found her very attractive. And, like, literally, like, she was, like, inches away from my face as she was talking to Manobs. And that was kind of like, off. Not off putting, but it was just kind of like, I'm like, wow, she's really close. Like, I've never had someone this close into my personal space, but that was it. And so the point of the story, the point I wanted to make, is that when you notice those, there's two things. You can either fall back in fear, or you can move forward in courageous action. You get to decide, and the victory is stepping into that courageous action. Right? You don't. Things aren't going to always go as planned. But again, what we're doing here is we're celebrating the action that you're taking, not the effect. We're celebrating action because as you do that, you are going to reshape your entire life. You start taking courageous action and moving forward, taking these courageous steps. When they arise, you're going to notice you're going to be in a completely different place one week, one month from now. If anything, you are going to feel good because you are taking these actions and you know that you're going to feel good because of the discomfort or like that you would have felt. And when you move through, you realize it all just dissipates. It all disappears. So that is. That's all I got for you guys today. Again, three things for you. One, notice where those courageous moments are happening, right? Notice where you are being called, right? So notice the feeling, anxious nervousness. That is a courageous accent calling for your attention. Two, all it takes is three seconds. Three, two, one. The last thing is just freaking go do it right and celebrate your win. Celebrate the fact that you took that courageous action because it will transform your life. I hope you guys enjoyed the story. Hope it just inspires you to take some courageous action. And I hope you got a good laugh out of my Miami courageous act of approaching that girl. I thought it was funny, especially afterward, because I've never had someone speak that close to me. And I liked it. I'll be honest with you. She was beautiful, but that is it. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you did, please leave a comment, subscribe and share it with someone whom you feel could benefit from listening to this. And as always, thank you so much for tuning in. 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.