Story Stop

Hi guys. My name is Donnie Rouse and you are listening to the podcast One Life Story. Stop. What are stories? Stories are those things that we tell ourselves that control our lives. Said differently, a story is a belief. It's something that we heard over and over and over again. Either through could be through the culture, through our family, through, through religion, through teachers, something we had at school, through friends. And what happens is as these stories are told over and over and over through repetitiveness, we start to take them on as beliefs. So then why is it important to understand the story and to stop the story? Because the stories are what's controlling your life. Whether you think you can, whether you think you can't, whether you think you're a flunky or a loser, whether you think you're on top of the world, God's gift to everybody. It's all the story. So the power in understanding with the story and understanding how to stop and create your own stories is the power to shape your life. But for the intention for this podcast is just to start to make you aware of those stories that you're in your head. So this way you can kind of press that pause button. And by doing so, what happens is you start to create space. When you press the pause button, you start to bring awareness into those bullshit stories that you tell yourself. And as a result of having that awareness, there's separation of thought. I've been in my amual in Florida. I'm in Palm beach currently, but I've been in Florida for the last month and a half or something like that. I don't even know. Time has been going by. It could be two months, but not really sure. And during that time I was jumping around, moving around different hostels, going to friends places. And as a result of that, the routines I had just kind of fell away. The meditation stopped, the schedule I had for doing the podcasting, for doing the work on my one life courses and stuff in my coffee, everything just kind of fell to the wayside. And it fell to the wayside because I didn't have, I wasn't using, I hadn't had my routines in place. So those habits, without those habits and routines in place as you let go of them. So if you, for instance, say you are going to the gym, right? You've been going to the gym for every day for the last year, but then all of a sudden you take six months off. It is that challenge, it's that difficulty in getting back into the groove. Can you do it? Of course you can. But it's that struggle of getting back in. Now all of a sudden you have to go through that, like that jungle again. And that jungle is just the thoughts in your head saying all the reasons why you can't do it, all the reasons why you don't want to do it, the reasons why you should start tomorrow. Those are actually, those in and of themselves are different types of stories. But that is what we're trying to conquer. Those are the things we want to overcome. So I hadn't been doing many of my habits and as a result, my brain or my head was getting very active. The monkey mind was getting very active. So then it was just telling me, like it was just swirling around in all different directions. So if you ever think you're alone and the thoughts are going on in your head and you're like, why am I thinking these things? What's wrong? Everybody has them. It's just whether or not you choose to believe in them. See, a thought is only a thought unless you believe in it. So I had all these things kind of swirling in my head. And then when I came to visit my friend Maritza, I started to get grounded again because I wasn't moving around. I didn't have to worry, okay, like, where am I going to go now? And as a result of being here, I started to do meditation again. And in the meditation, I was doing vipassana and vipassana, at least the basic stuff that I've been doing because I've only been watching YouTube videos, I've done meditation before. But then the, the vipassana was about monitoring where the breath comes in and out, where you feel it, the sensation. And then every time a sensation comes in, you could, in one video that I did, the vipassana they do, they say whenever you have a thought or feeling, identify it as a thought or feeling, right? So this way you become the observer. And so a thought would come in, I'm like, thought. And all of a sudden, like I, my focus would go back into the breath. All of a sudden I would get this feeling, maybe something like tension or something somewhere in my body. And then I would identify, say, okay, feeling. And then it would kind of go away and I would go back into the meditation, another thought would come in, I'd identify a thought and then all of a sudden I would go right back into the meditation. So the beauty in doing this over and over as a daily practice is that when you're, you start to bring it into your real world, you start to bring into your life. Yesterday, actually last night, I had woken up in the middle of the night, hence the inspiration for this. And there were thoughts swirling in my head, as typically do when you wake up. Whatever is in your mind when you go to sleep is usually there when you wake up. There's no escaping it. But I woke up in the middle of the night and there's thoughts. I don't even remember the thought, but I remember them not being positive right then, just kind of erratic thoughts. And then I, in my, like. In this, like, lucid state, I said to myself. I said to myself, thought. I'm like, thought. It just. It kind of struck me as funny because I wouldn't, you know, the fact that I was identifying it as that thought, all of a sudden it went away. And then, like, another one came in. And I said, thought as it came in, and it went away. And then I brought. It brought me back to this tranquility. It brought me back to this, like, this peaceful state. And then I went back to sleep. So again, in this. Why am I telling you this? Because unless you. If you identify your. With your beliefs, you are controlled by them, and it's not a bad thing, right? It depends. Is the belief empowering or is the belief disempowering, right? So you have to be conscious of what are the beliefs that you're allowing to control your life. And when you find those negative ones, identify the pattern. See the thought, separate the thought. The fact that you're observing it means there's someone else. There's two people in you, right? There's the mind going, and then there's the spirit. And the spirit, when you observe it, you realize that there's a separation there. The fact that you could even if you ever hear something in your head, right, you hear someone like your head, somewhere in your mind, you hear you're a loser. And you hear that and you're like, wait, I just heard myself say that in my mind. That is a separation right there. So you know not to believe it because it's bullshit. So the more you can create that separation, like, right, maybe the first time you do it, you might not, you know, you might catch it. But you still have the repercussions. You still have the feeling of that in which you're vocalizing your head. But then after doing it maybe 5, 10, 20, 200 times, you're creating space every time you notice it. Every time you break away from that thought, you're creating space and you're disidentifying with that thought, with that belief, with that story. So the Intention here is just to make you aware of those stories and not to identify with them. Identify with the positive ones, the things that are going to move your life forward, but throw away the ones that were disempowering the stuff that was given to you by someone else. And here's the thing, those things that were given to you by someone else, chances are they were in a bad place, right? So they're just bringing their frustration. And as a result, when we're younger, we take on these things because we don't know any better and it's just bullshit. So my instruction to you, be aware. Like, if you've never practiced meditation, I encourage you to try meditation. You could literally just search on YouTube. VIPASSANA V I P A S S A N A meditation. I don't even know if I spelled it right, but it'll come up. Put on Vipassana meditation and just start doing that practice every single day. And what you'll know is that one, it's going to slow you down, it's going to bring you inward. And secondly, do it enough and you're going to start to hear and you're going to start to separate those thoughts. You're going to see the thoughts kind of floating by in a way like in your mind and bring that into your real world. Allow that practice to bring it to your real world. But if you could at the very least start to see your patterns in your day. When you get frustrated and you say something negative to yourself, realize catch yourself saying it like, oh wow, I just said that. And then just say thank you to yourself. Thank you for the awareness that you have that you've caught something that you need to change and do that enough. And that change will come. I promise. Guys, thank you so, so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the One Life podcast with Donny Rouse. If you did, please give me a thumbs up. Give it a share. Check out my coffee company. So Rous Coffee company is how I start my days. It's why I love life, especially in the morning. Because the coffee ritual for me is all about taking that moment, to savor life, to enjoy the moment and to be here. Because really this is all we have, right? Every day is a blessing. If you're breathing, it's a blessing. And the coffee ritual is one of those rituals for me that reminds me of that and reminds me of all the things that I want in my life. Because life is happening now. So check it out. Www.rous r a u s coffee.com. i promise it's gonna be some of the best coffee you've ever tried. I try to recommend the Laotian coffee is very unique. It has like dried cherry, olive, like spice. It's like a Syrah wine in a cup of coffee. Or the Ethiopian and the Sumatra. They're all good. They're all great coffees. I only select good coffees. And if you have any questions, you could please send me a message via instagram@donny-o n n y r a u s.com d o n n y r a u s dot com if you want to share some of those thoughts that are going on in your head, I promise you that you will not be alone because everyone has them. Just nobody talks about them. I will love to hear what your thoughts are, your, your experiences with this and that is it. And I'll see you again next week. God bless guys and I will talk to you soon.