Road to Paradise - Following Your Passion, Even When It Gets Tough

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. Hi, guys. Donny Rouse here. Have you ever moved towards a vision or have you ever taken steps towards something you wanted, but then you realize that it's not a straight road? How? Life can get pretty difficult. And as a result of that difficulty, sometimes you lose your vision, sometimes you lose your course. And maybe you forget what it is that you wanted in the first place, or you start retracting back. You start not taking the big actions that would get you to the destination you want. So the title, running title for this podcast episode here we was called Road to Paradise because as you. There's a quote that says something along the lines of the Raw. The road to. Oh, no, it was the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But the road to paradise is not an easy road, right, because it requires you to change. It requires you to grow into a new person, to reincarnate, to go from that caterpillar to that butterfly. And it's a painful process a lot of the time. Because why? Because it requires you to grow. And growing means overcoming beliefs, overcoming the. The beliefs of the culturescape as well as going deep within and growing. So the. I'll give you the reason for this episode here it happened. The inspiration came from this past week's farmer's market. I was wrapping up a market, and it. It was a pretty busy day, and I was tired. And then there was a couple that came to a mother and son that came to my. My booth, and he was sharing. We started talking about life. We started to talk about things like travel. And he was sharing his story and how he had just come back from Colorado because he got involved in some things that weren't beneficial for his life, to be respectful. And as a result of being back here, I was inquiring about what kind of work he was doing. He was doing carpentry, and he had Aspirations for. For. For becoming a tattoo artist, which I thought was awesome because he had some really, really nice artwork on his arms. And then as I was packing up, we were walking towards my car. I was bringing a bunch of my. My bins, my tables. Something in my mind clicked and I was. I felt like I had to share an experience. It was like I heard a voice in my head tell me, like, oh, share this experience. So I shared the experience, and I was sharing with them how when I first started out in my journey, when I decided to pursue my passion, how there was no support from anyone. I mean, some of my friends supported me, but the people I was looking to do to have the support from, mainly my girlfriend at the time and my father, they had a different life path for me. They had a different vision for me and how they thought I needed to live my life. And as a result of that, it caused a lot of tension and stress because I. I felt like I always had to. I was defensive, right? My father was saying, you need to go to corporate, you need to save. You need to do all this before you can go after and pursue your passions. I had different idea. My girlfriend, she wanted to get married, have kids, and she saw me getting involved in coffee as a fork in the road or a delay in that process. But then after the fact, after I made that decision, the main point I want to share with him that it's not an easy decision and it's not an easy path, right? When you choose to do the path less traveled, the path less traveled is not groomed really well, right? When you think of a highway, you think of a highway going from, if you live in Connecticut, Stanford to Westport, right? You can go that way and it's a nice, smooth ride. Especially on the Merritt Parkway, they're redoing the roads. But what happens if you take the back roads? Right? There are some back roads and I'm away that aren't really. Maybe they haven't seen the care, right? So there's potholes. All of a sudden, you're hitting bumps. They might throw your axle off or it might give you a flat tire. Got to change tire. You may delay the process, but you keep going. So the road to following and following your one life and following the vision for your life isn't paved like it is on that highway. The highway leads somewhere else, but it's the bumps, right? Because on that highway, you're gonna hit suggestion why it may be, you know, paved and it's very smooth. Guess what happens when you're taking that trip at 5 o' clock on a bit on a weekday, you're stuck in traffic and all of a sudden you're cursing your life inside out. And this is just a metaphor to say that there is going to be hardship, there is going to be challenges, but to be okay with those challenges. When I was sharing this story with them, I said I was there, you know, while I was pursuing my coffee, I was comparing myself to all my friends. I was looking at my friends who were making like upwards of like $70,000 and you know, their living situations. And I looked at myself. I was at the time I was making the, the wages of like a less than like a high school student because I had a college degree and I was started after some of these people and so I was making less money and I was being very critical and harsh on myself as a result of it because I'm like, what the hell am I doing? And I felt very small. And I told him, like, you're gonna have challenge like that where you're gonna say well what am I doing? But connect with your heart. I not once did I ever regret the decision to follow my passion. And as a result of sticking with it, 13 years later, well more than 13 years later, the first like seven years, almost like decade was like pretty much me learning. So two decades, right? And now I have a successful business, now I have passion, now I have expertise and even I have buy in from even my family, my father, who's like my one of my biggest supporters. But it didn't come right away. So I was trying to tell him like there was no regrets in me pursuing my path. And not once did I ever look back. And as I looked at him, as I was sharing this with him, he started like his eyes started well. And I was like, oh man, like what's going on? His eyes started watering and I felt touched because it's just odd how the universe works. I felt that there was a calling in me to share the story with him. And apparently it's exactly what he needed to hear because he started welling up. Why do I tell you this? Because you may be going after something that seems like it's tough or seems like it is the difficult path and likely it is. But when you follow your heart, when you follow and are true to your values, you'll never look back. You never regret when you're following your heart, right? The mind is funny because the mind will try to trick you up. It'll try to tell you all the reasons, all the Things that can go wrong when the truth is that's literally. It's an imagination. The only thing that is real is right now. We're not really good fortune tellers, right? We can't tell the future. I know I'm shitty at telling the future. So when you are telling a shitty story about the future, stop it and realize it is just that. And when you decide to pursue the life you are meant to live, when you decide to follow your passions, realize that the road isn't always going to be easy, it's not going to be without bumps and celebrate because you decided to take that journey as a result of taking that journey. It'll take you places that you never thought you would ever imagine. You would grow in ways that you never thought or could imagine. And that is why the journey is so much more than just the destination. So again, where is there an area in your life where you're doing something that maybe it's counterculture, but maybe you're choosing to follow your heart and you're realizing that you're hitting some resistance where it's not easy, maybe because you're not getting the support from the people around you. And I asked you just to connect what it is in the first place and look to the journey and realize that how few people really follow their hearts, how few people really follow the life that they were meant to live and rejoice in that because you will never look back, you'll never regret the decision to follow what's true to you. So this was really just a rant, but it was, it was one of the highlights of my weekend and I felt like it was a struggle that I went through when I was chose to follow my passion. And apparently it's a struggle for this young gentleman who was on the same path as me, following his passion but having the self doubt, having the, you know, the maybe the support, the lack of support, not sure of which way to go forward, but doing it anyways. So if you enjoy this podcast, if you know someone who is trying to follow their passion, they're, you know, they feel like they just need a little bump of confidence and to say, hey, pat on the back, you're going in the right direction. Share this in fact, share this with five people, hit that like button. If you have any questions, throw them in the comments section. I hope you enjoyed this. I hope in some way it enriches your life and just gives you a little push to follow your dreams and to make good on the life that you were meant to live. To make good on the passions, desire, the promises you made to yourself. So remember, guys, you only get one life. Live fully, live passionately, and most of all, live now. God bless and I will see you again soon.