The Missing Ingredient

Hi, guys. My name is Donny Rouse and you are listening to the podcast One Life. The Missing Ingredient. What do you get when you juice a bunch of lemons? That's right, you get lemon juice. And what happens when we add sugar to that lemon juice? We get lemonade. So you often heard the saying, when life throws you lemons, when life throws you lemons, make lemonade. It's kind of like this cliche saying, but nobody really, you don't know, how do you make lemonade? Right, Everyone, there's different ingredients, there's different recipes for it. But how do you make a lemonade that tastes good? And making lemonade that tastes good is, I mean, literally just adding sugar to it, right? But how do you. Where do you add the sugar? Take life, for example. In life, we have these experiences where we don't know, we can't predict with. Well, God knows we can't predict anything. But things may happen in life that don't or fall outside of the expectations we have. And as a result, how do we deal with that? Because when we understand that nothing, there's no meaning other than the meaning we assign to something with that, with that understanding, that means that we have the power to interpret and to morph whatever happens in our life to make it for better or for worse, or at the very least, we could control the emotional meaning, the feelings we feel around this specific event. I'll give you an example of this and more than. It's just a reframe of how we think about the things that happen in life and how by reframing things and how by seeing things through a lens, by sprinkling the sugar on it, we could actually start to make the events of life more enjoyable and find the joy in it. In 2006, I was in Rome, Italy. It was. I had just broken up with a girlfriend that I dated for six years. And the. The trip to Italy was part of the breakup, to be honest, but things were going pretty bad. So I had booked a trip to Italy. We broke up. I went to Italy, I quit my in corporate finance and I was in Rome alone. Leading up to that trip, I was so stoked. I was like, oh my God, I can't wait. Yes, freedom. Woo. You know, waving my flag that I was a free man now and I could go out and have fun. And while I was in Italy, I felt incredibly alone. I had 27 girls in my class and I was the only guy which would be a dream for any man. But that wasn't the case for me. All I really wanted was a friend at that point. But I had adopted this mindset that everything happens for a reason. And another way of stating it is that life is happening for you. We can't always understand what the future is gonna bring. But when we have trust and when we believe that it's for our best good, then it changes how we show up. It changes how our outlook is. Because in order for things to be in our best interest, then we got to think that, like, whatever happens, it's there to develop us, it's there to benefit us in some way. So it's kind of like that sprinkle of sugar that happens as a result. When I was in Rome, I was. I would go to class and the bus was always late. Every time I. Every time I would wait at my bus stop, I'd be looking at my clock. I'm like, what the hell is going on? It said it was going to be here at 3 o' clock, and it's like 4 o' clock now. What is going on? And I would, you know that one day I was like, well, you know what? Life, when life throw you lemons, make lemonade. This is something that's going on for me. So I went, I got on the bus when it finally came, and I decided to just kind of take it all around, take the entire route just to see what happens. And I. We do one half the route and. Well, not, not just that, but we were driving to like the first half of the route and there's a car literally parked in the center of the street. And it was so comical because we're in the center of. In the center of Rome and literally there's no, there's no one to. There's no one in the car. It's literally parked in the center of the street. Traffic's backing up. The bus driver is just looking at it, you know, like trying to scratch in his head, figuring out, well, what's going on here? What can I do? Everyone's staring at the situation. And the guy who was in a cafe, in a cafe comes out, gets into his car and walks away as, like, drives away as if nothing happened. It was the most bizarre thing I've ever seen. So we get to the. Finally make it to the first. The half. So he completes half of his half of his route. The bus driver gets out, lights up a cigarette, smokes it, and we're there for like a half an hour. Mind you, it takes about half an hour to do one part of the route, or an hour and 15 minutes I timed, and he gets out, has a cigarette with his friends, gets in, continues the route again, goes all the way around to the second half, gets out, has another cigarette for half an hour. Like, what the heck? So he just spent more time. He spent just as much time driving as he did having a cigarette with his buddies. So it was just kind of like this funny. I thought it was. It was so outrageously funny that, like, I, you know, the stress I felt around, I was like, you know what? It's just, if there's one thing that Italy taught me from, like, the three months I was in Rome was that, you know, to let things kind of roll off you. And it almost sounds like, how does that make sense? Like making lemon, like a lemonade out of lemons. Because I looked at it differently and I started to laugh. I started to look at life from. From a different standpoint, where it was. It was funny because when you think about everything we go through, we could find humor in everything, right? You know, you miss, you. You arrive on the train platform to go to New York City and then the door shut right in front of you and, like, it takes off, you throw a fit. But if you look at it, it's kind of funny, right? I would. I mean, it's easy for us to laugh at someone else in this situation. We got to look. Find the humor in it for ourselves because life is not. Life is not that serious. And the things we worry about now, the things we make big in the grand scheme of things don't mean a thing, right? I mean, what is important? You know, it's all relative. What's important, you know, missing a deadline at work. Well, relative to what? Right? Relative to, you know, to. In a car accident. All right, well, yeah, that's pretty shitty. What's, you know, that's a. That's horrible. Getting in a car accident on your way to work. Well, yeah, that's. That's really bad. Well, relative to what? Well, what. What if you're, you know, you defaulted on your house and now your house is going to be taken away? Or all of a sudden now, like, the car accident doesn't really seem like a big idea, a big deal, and then all of a sudden, now a family member is sick. So what seemed bad about getting your house repossessed pales in comparison to now worrying about a family member and then being diagnosed with cancer. See, you. Do you see how the perspective can shift in an instant depending. Depending on what's going on? So that is. I mean, that is the. The Mindset we have to look at is like, well, relative to what I mean. I am not saying to say like always look at, you know, to compare it to something. Well, you know, you. You're late for work and you'd be like, well, at least it's not cancer. It's not what I'm saying to look at, but just to kind of sprinkle the sugar on and try to find the sweetness in it, you know, Be like, well, you know what? At least if you're late for work, at least I made it in one piece, you know, at least I got to spend more time outside. It's a beautiful day. Normally in the winter, I'd be pissing and moaning about having to drive in the cold. At least now it's warm out and the sun is shining. That's nice. I get an extra half an hour. There's traffic, but I get an extra half an hour in my car listening to the brand new Taylor Swift album. Not that I listen to it, but it is a good album. But you know what I'm saying. So there are so many things for us to be grateful for. We just kind of have to search from and seek them out and start to develop a different question in our minds and train ourselves to look at the world differently. Because life is beautiful. And I'll reiterate it and say it again and again because it's so important. The meaning of something is what you bring into it yourself. We get to decide the meaning of what something means to us. There is no meaning. Nothing has meaning. No event in our life has a specific meaning other than the meaning you give it. This might be, like, mind blowing for some of you. It was for me when I first heard it. And then when I remind myself of this, it really takes away the emotional intensity of these things. Like, even if, you know, if I approach a girl and I get shot down, you know, and it doesn't mean anything, like I could be terrified of doing that, but at the same time, like, all right, well, it doesn't mean anything. And if I take that, that if I remember that before, it takes the pressure off and it's just like, you know, what if I approach a girl and she shoots me down? Well, that's fine. That's, you know, that just. Besides, she's not for me. Because if there was once, if the girl was for me, then we would mesh. And that's the truth. That is it, guys. So how can you just start to incorporate that into your own life? To incorporate it? It's Just a matter of asking a different question. What is good in this, maybe? Or how does this serve me? What can I appreciate about this? When you start looking for those things, you start to immediately slash. Like, imagine you have like a machete and you're slashing through, like the negative. Meaning once you start to look for the positive and you start to find the positive in it, because there's positive and negative in everything the matter. The only difference is what do you choose to look for? Once you start to notice the positive, it'll change your life. And then when you make that a habit, oh, it'll change your day and your mood. But once you make it a habit, then it'll change your life. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode. And I really, really hope that you apply. And I'm saying this to you because I also do need the reminder to do this on a daily basis. Those times that I do do it, when I like to ask the question to myself, like, well, what is life about? Like, if I were to die this year, tomorrow, or if I had a year to live, what would it be about? What would I do? And that puts things in perspective because then I think about all the little, the small shit that I wouldn't sweat and then what I would appreciate about life on a daily basis. And it takes. It take out of my head and I started looking at the trees outside. I start, you know, looking at people in the eye and connecting with them deeperly, deeper. I mean, that's what it's about. So just ask yourself a different question. Hope you guys enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions, you can message me via Instagram at Donny D O N N Y Rouse R A U S Again Donnie D O N N Y Rouse R A U S I am now. I've been doing coaching and if you have any kind of questions, if you want to just kind of brainstorm some things, give me a call. I'd love to. Or shoot me a message. I'd love to kind of brainstorm. I am really, really passionate about getting people to live their best life, but not to put off life. Because life is not. Life is meant to be lived now. And I understand that there are preparations that you must make, especially when you have kids in the mix. But even then, it's not that you should put off life. And what we're craving, what we're looking after, and it's going to be a new post, is that we're looking for these experiences. A lot of time we're going after things when it's really the feeling we want. But we don't necessarily have to have the million dollars or the dream vacation or, you know, the brand new Cadillac Escalade in order to get these feelings, in order to just let ourselves be. That is it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you have any questions, shoot me a message again via Instagram. D o N Y R A U S have an amazing week. God bless, and I'll talk to you soon.