Round and Round: Getting Off The Hamster Wheel of Life

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. What's going on, everybody? Donny Rouse here. And today I wanted to talk about the hamster wheel. So in life, when we go through the same things day after day, we go through the same habitual patterns. Sometimes we get on this hamster wheel where we start to shut off all the other options around us because we're just in the habit of doing the same thing over. Now compound that with the fact that you have all of these different things coming at you, making demands on your time, and all of a sudden now you've lost track of yourself. I just got back from a trip to Europe, and while I was there, I was doing some copy work. I was working with a consultant over there on developing some espresso blends. And in developing those espresso blends, in the beginning of my trip, my mind was very, very busy because I was trying to grasp like a lot of different concepts, things that related to my coffee. And I was still very much in this mode of thinking that I had kind of brought with me from back home. But as time went on and I started to have different experiences, going to different adventures with people I met, I started to let go and kind of step off that metaphorical hamster wheel. And as a result of that, it opened me up to life, to different possibilities, to see things differently. And as a result, new options became available. When I came back home, all of a sudden, now I was hit with a bunch of different things, things from family members of mine, having to deal with health issues. And all of a sudden my world started spinning again. And I was right back when I where I started. And the reason I tell you this is because I want you to make space in your day. I want you to realize that you are more than just the day to day routines that you are doing over and over and over. And that when you give Yourself, that little bit of space, that is when you open up the possibility. I was just yesterday, I was doing a delivery to one of my accounts and I was having a talk with one of the gentlemen there and we were talking about, you know, like life just getting out of the day to day rhythm. And he was telling me that a guy who had a storefront next to him was telling him, he's like, you know what? We'll call him John. John, you are on the hamster wheel. He's like, what the hell do you mean I'm on the hamster wheel? He goes, you are on the hamster wheel. You come in, you make money, you pay it out. And then you just keep repeating that thing over and over. Now, John is an amazing person. He, big heart, has a great presence in his community. But he even, he said, he's like, you know what? I've been doing the same thing over and over for literally about 24 years now. He's like. And the time flew by like that. He's like, it's true. Sometimes he's like, I don't even know where the week goes. I come in, I do the work, I leave. And then it's rinse and repeat. And you say how he hadn't experienced much of life and how he wants to get out there, but then at the same time he's also afraid of getting out there. And the hamster wheel that I want to refer to in this, in this example here is just that repetitiveness because you just get in the process of doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over. And the mind loves patterns. The mind loves habits because it knows exactly what it has to do. The mind likes to predict. It knows the past and goes, okay, well, let's make this efficient. I know that I've been doing this for the last week. Let's just keep on doing that. Now it's easy to go down that. But when you stop changing, you start to experience pain because deep inside your heart you know that you are made for something more. So as I was talking to him, he was telling me that he wanted to experience more things, but now he feels like it's too old, which is just a bullshit story. I'm actually contemplating inviting him on one of my trips to Italy because he's Italian and I know that he would have a. I would have a good time showing him, having, showing him an experience. But then we would just. He would be a good person to travel with because his eyes would be wide open, fast forward Yesterday I was in. Yesterday or two days ago, I was at the gym, and I saw a friend of mine that I hadn't seen in a while. And we were talking about the experience of traveling. I was telling him how I was abroad, how I loved being in Europe because everything is just so simple. And he went to. He reiterated back to me. He said, you know what? I work one month in Italy, one month in the United States. Every time I come to the United States. He said, it's amazing. He's like, when I'm in Italy, I work earlier in the day. So this way I have the rest of the day to myself. And I try to end my day before the United States starts their day. Otherwise I get sucked in. And then I just start. I have to work. I end up working more than I have to. And he was saying how when he comes back to the States, it's amazing how he feels like he's doing the same work, but he has no time, and he feels just very scattered and pulled in many a million different directions. I said, well, yeah, of course. Right in the United States. The first thing I noticed. Well, it's pretty. Not. It's the one thing that hits me every time I come back from a trip is just the amount of noise that is present in our everyday experience. It's noise from the tv, noise from your own mind telling you as to what you should and shouldn't be doing. And I use that with the air quotes because a lot of that is just bullshit that's fed to you from the media that you're consuming, from the peer pressure your neighbors, all this stuff contributes, because it's kind of like, I don't know, not a universe. It's like you're in this little ecosphere where you're all feeding into that same thing, but you got to step out. And he was telling me. He's like, I have no clue why that I could do the same work and feel so much more productive and have more for myself when I'm in Italy and told me, yeah, because there's no noise when you're in Italy. There's no. Like, you can't go to the gas station in the United States without being assaulted by a freaking tv. Like, sitting in the gas pump. Can't go to the gym without watching, you know, having TV blaring. Everywhere you look, you're being assaulted by media. And, like, why do they show. Why do they show TV at the gym? Why do they show TV at a freaking gas pump? Because they know that you're being programmed throughout the entire time. They know what the power is, and as a result, they probably give incentives to gas stations at the gyms in order to keep that programming going. The easiest way to do that is just to step away from all of this stuff. Right? Step out of your day to day routine, go for a walk, be in nature, or practice some gratitude at the very, very beginning of your day. The reason I'm here right now doing this live with you, because I haven't done a live in quite a while. And to be honest with you, it was making me anxious. The thought of doing it now, if you're hearing this right now, you're like, well, what do you mean anxious? You used to come on every single day and every week, used to post a podcast. Yeah. But then I broke that pattern and all of a sudden I started to get anxious. The thought of doing it made me like, ugh, I don't want to do it. Because I was like, it's not gonna be perfect. And I was just being very critical of myself. But then I started practicing more gratitude. When I was practicing my gratitude, it made me reflect on the things that I'm grateful for in life. Right. Which. Which makes you more heart centered and present, but also made me focus on the gifts that I wanted to give, the impact that I wanted to have. And one of those impacts is to inspire people to go out there and to live their one life, to live a life that is in line with their values, with their desires. And one of the best ways for me to do that is through the medium of doing video and audio. And to be honest with you, I love doing this. And when I do do it and I come on here and I speak with you, I feel very fulfilled by it because I know that I'm speaking my truth. I know I'm doing something that gives me a sense of purpose. But if I stayed in that rut, that habitual pattern, that busyness, and I paid attention to all the noise, which I was literally, when I say moments ago, like right before I got on here, right before I did a little bit of a gratitude flush, my mind was spiraling. I was like, oh, my God, I have this thing here. I got to look up prices for coffee bottles. I got to do. And I was like, stop, stop. First of all, I don't need to do any of this stuff right now. Secondly, my intention at the start of this day was to do things that are in alignment. That gave me a sense of purpose, not just running around all the things that need to be gone, because those demands are always going to be there, and those demands are always going to grow if I let them. So I said, let me focus on what it is that I want. One of those things today was to be on here, to be a voice of inspiration, to encourage people to not only just go after dreams, but just stop the craziness, to stop, like, the distraction, and to listen to what your heart is speaking. So with that, I guess that's the perfect segue. What is your heart telling you? One of the best things and most powerful things you could do at the beginning of your day is to decide how your day is going to transpire before you've even lived it. When you think about, like, how do you want to live today? Like, what emotions do you want to experience? Or how do you want. When you're imagining yourself at the end of the day, how do you want your day to unfold? And you think of all these things, like, oh, wow, you know, I really want to have my family feel my impact in my presence. Ah, wow, it's Mother's Day today. I really want my mother just to feel appreciated and know how much I love her. What can I do to do that, right? And you start to brainstorm and literally create your day. And your mind doesn't know the difference. Your mind is like, wow, I'm living. I'm thinking of all these things. I am living it. Let's just recreate it, because it's already happened, right? And you put your mind in that. That path of least resistance. And doing that at the start of your day, as well as doing that for every area of your life, is extremely powerful. Because now instead of just following through the motions and the next thing that's easiest, right? You're like, oh, well, it seems like this is the next path because universe is pushing me there. And you keep going down a path that may lead you nowhere. Now you're directing your focus into a place where you want to go. This will be my last tangent before I sign off here. I was in the car yesterday and I noticed my. Like, I was just like, my mind was just beside itself. And it doesn't make really much sense at me telling you this here now, but I've been going through a kind of a feel like a whirlwind because of health issues and family members of mine and having to help them. And as a result, my freaking. It just made me spiral, right? Because there was anger, there was worry, there was fear. But what was the real emotion? I was Feeling. The real emotion I'm feeling was worry and love, right? Because I love the members of my family. And as a result of whatever other kind of, like, surface emotion would come out. And a lot of the time it was anger, because I want someone to take a certain action to help themselves. At least what I thought was the right action. And then not doing it, it would put me in anger. But the real underlying reason was love. I love them, and I worried about them. And so I was going through this spiral feeling very, very drained. And as a result, and then I started thinking about, like, this is stupid. Like, why am I going down this path? And I started. First, I started to focus on gratitude, and I started to think about the smallest things that I could be grateful for, and then kind of gradually stepping them up a little bit. And then the next thing I thought about was, well, what do I really want for my health, for my relationships? And this was actually. I was doing this while I was stuck in traffic on the 95. There's a shit ton of traffic. So much traffic. But I was sitting there and I was like, what is it that I want? And as I was sitting there thinking about what I wanted, now, all of a sudden, I started to. Just by speaking it, by thinking about it, I started to feel better. And it completely changed the way I was showing up in that moment. And as a result, again, it's also pointing to why I'm here right now. Because I realized the impact that I want to have. I mean, coffee is what I do for my day job, and coffee is one of my passions. And I guess mingling the two and with regard to the purpose I want to have is kind of been. That's been my own personal challenge. But the point I'm trying to make is I'm here now because I wanted to share a message with you, something that I felt was aligned with my purpose and what I wanted to give to you. And the greater. The greater good, the world, it all came because of a thought that I had and a way of directing my focus. But I had a choice to make. I could have directed my focus the way I did, or I could just kept spiraling the way I was doing it that I literally did for, like, the last week. And that wouldn't have gotten me anywhere. So in order for anything to happen, you have to make a change. You have to direct yourself. You can't say, I want the great body, but I'm not willing to put in. I'm not willing to go to the gym every day. And eat good. So this way I could develop that body. It's going to take you to step up. It's going to take you to take new action. And so with this, I guess. I guess I just want to challenge you, decide what it is. Like pick something that you want, something that you maybe you told yourself you couldn't do or you couldn't have long ago, and commit yourself to just going after that. There was a great YouTube video I saw yesterday. It was I Can't do it by Casey Neistat. He was just going through the things that people told him that he couldn't do and then how he accomplished them by literally focus and figuring out ways to go about it. Father told him that he would never have a TV show. He did. Father told me he couldn't make it in New York City. He moved there and made it. What is it that you want to do? And now I want you to just imagine that you could not fail. What would you go for and what would you begin right now? Let that just kind of let. Take the box around off of yourself that you put on and just start to experiment. Take one step today and then slowly take the next step. Things will compound. And when you get fearful, lean into that fear, realizing that once you lean into it, really there's nothing there, that the fear disappears. And I'm going to share what my commitment here is just because it'll hold me accountable. My intention when I'm here today was just to start getting comfortable coming live again, coming here, speaking with you, giving you something positive to bring into your day, but then also was to get on here at, well, not on here, but like on my computer and just start going through some of the coffee content that I've created from all of my travels around the world with the intention of creating, of being a coffee blogger, right? To me, you might be like, of course you're already freaking doing it, dude. Like, you're traveling around the world, you're posting coffee content, you're doing it. But there was a disc, there was a disconnect in my own mind. And so this step of reviewing the content, at the very least, I'm going to start with Morocco because I feel like I have a quite a. Quite a bit of content from Morocco and just start playing around with some ideas and doing some posts. And it may seem like it's common, like it's natural, but there's actually something in part of me that is afraid and maybe a little bit apprehensive, but I know it's what I want to do. So I'm going to take those steps and do that. And I encourage you and I challenge you to do something similar for yourself. So I hope this little rant here brings some positivity, some inspiration, and opens up a window for you in your day. And of course, if you have any questions or comments or anything whatsoever related to this podcast, coffee, travel, whatever it may be, you're always free to reach out to me directly. You could do it via my website@donnyrouse.com www.donnierous.com d o n n y r a u s.com so that is all I got for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed this little rant and this will not be the last, because I will commit myself to showing up here more regularly. At the very least once a week. That is it. God bless you guys. And I'll leave it off with my little catchphrase. 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.