The Year of Acceptance

Hello, everybody. My name is Donny Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life. So first, I want to start off by wishing everybody a very happy new Year. We are on January 7, I believe, if I could read my watch correctly. And one of the things I started doing maybe a year or two back was assigning a word to the new year. It's almost like an intention for the new year. And this year's word is acceptance. So in a moment, I'll tell you kind of how I arrived at that word for my 2020, as well as what it means to me. So I was at a friend's party. I went to visit one of my really good friends who I hadn't seen in literally a couple years in Philadelphia. And while we were in Philadelphia, he's showing me around the city. And my first judgments of the city were like, this is Philadelphia. No offense, Philadelphians out there. First impression. But my first impression was like, it looked very industrial. I mean, judging some stuff to, like, New York or other cities I've been in. It didn't look like anything. And so in the beginning, I had these harsh judgments about the city, about maybe even, like, the people who live there. Everything. It was. All these judgments were rushing. In New Year's Eve, I was invited to stay over at his place for a few more nights. So I ended up spending New Year's in Philadelphia. And while I was there, his neighbor invited us over. They were having a party and he was having parties. So we kind of were going back and forth between houses. And while we were next door at his neighbor house, I noticed that I was judging some of the people there. I had judgment on the host there because she was kind of being very anal about the house. And, you know, one little thing dropped all of a sudden. You'd run over with, like, a little spray gun and spraying the carpet. I judged someone who was openly Wiccan. I don't even know anything about the. And I guess you call it a religion, Wiccan. I know nothing about it. And yet I saw these prejudgments going on in my mind. And then at some point, I was. There was like a pause in my head, and I was looking at what was going on, observing what was going on in my head and saying, you know what? I'm having this experience right now because I'm judging everyone. I'm judging the place I'm in. I'm judging the people who are around me. What if I just accepted everything the way it was? And I kept saying it over and over and over, like, what if I just accept this person? What if I just accept this city the way it is, just being different? What if I accept A, B, C, D, E, F, G? And I started going down the line and it started to change my experience of my new year and how I experienced that party. And this wasn't something that I just kind of done accidentally. This is something that I had done maybe a year or so back. I had met a girl through one of my travels. And at first it was kind of physical. And then we were talking and there were a lot of things. Normally we all have these kind of. These checklists as to what this person, what the significant other must have in order for us to be kind of to count them, like, even eligible. So she was very playful. I loved her personality. Beautiful, beautiful girl. There were a couple things that didn't really jive for me. One was that she smoked. I pride myself on my health, and that was usually a big, big. Probably one of the biggest deal breakers there is. And then secondly, she had very unhealthy eating habits. Again, going back to health. And I'm like, in between the energy drinks she put in her body, I'm like, oh, my God, I would never put this stuff in my body. And I was starting to judge her for putting it in hers. But then at some point, I said, you know what? I'm focusing on all this negative stuff, and it's really making me feel ill towards her. What if I just focused on the positive things that I liked about her? What if I focus about things that made me smile? What if I focus about just that? Like, even the first interaction we had with one another and how that made me feel, so I started to do that instead. And as a result of doing that, every time, like, one of those negative thoughts would come in. Oh, because she's smoking. And I would say, you know what? I'm not going to focus on that. I'm going to focus on the positive stuff because that's what matters. And then all of a sudden, that voice would kind of get dim out and I would be focusing on the positive. And what I found from doing that over a period of several weeks was that it actually made me more connected, made me, dare I say, in love with the girl. So there was a distance gap between the two of us, and as a result, things just kind of dimmed down. So it was tough for me because as I was kind of buying into the relationship and buying into everything and kind of like shedding whatever would have held me down from engaging in this, it started to fade away. But is connecting the dots, looking back, everything for a reason. So after that happened, I thought to myself, I was like, all right, well, I need to make a change. I need to do something for myself. I need to do something for my business. And I enrolled in a coaching course. And the irony in all this was one. Well, I mean it seems to be a theme with me. Like in one of my other relationships where it was after that relationship when we broke up, it pushed me into personal development. And then this was kind of the same thing. But in the courses that I'm doing now, I'm doing one on self worth. And I'm finding that this entire thing is kind of coming360 so we talked about, I mean I just mentioned acceptance of other people. Acceptance of things is also something when you have. When you're constantly judging the way things are around you, you're in a state of resistance. You know, if you're constantly, if you're judging what's going on, judging where you are, judging the experience you're having, you're holding yourself back from accepting. You're holding yourself back from taking that step forward. And this is what I noticed in my life. I mean it's happened in my living situation. It's happened being in my hometown, which is like had always been one of those things that was kind of like the. Kind of like twisting that knife in my side. I'd always wanted to move in Europe, try some other things. But the fact that I was still here, I had this resistance to it. And as long as you have resistance to anything, to a person, to a thing, as long as you have that resistance, it's going to keep on coming. It's not going to stop. And what is one probably one of the biggest things and where I was going to with this whole personal development coaching thing that I was getting to was acceptance of yourself. So this is probably the hardest for many, many people and it definitely has been for me as well. And it's funny because when we look around the world, we look around the people that we surround ourselves with every day, we think that we're the only ones having this issue. We think we're the only ones with issues of self worth and negative talk in our hands. When the truth is that everybody has it, some people overcome it and it might always be there. Some people just choose not to listen to it. So now that it's kind of come360 so after this relationship, I went to this coaching program and Then I found myself enrolling into a personal growth personal, I'm sorry, a self worth program. And it was interesting because we're looking at the habits of self worth and reading a quote, she goes, you don't find self worth and value in the external, you find it in acceptance of yourself and by self love. I'll do it one more time. You don't find self worth and value in the external, you find it in acceptance and self love. So that was really powerful for me because I started looking at some of the things, I started questioning some of the things in my life that I'm currently undertaking and why am I doing these? So you asked, I asked myself, well, am I doing this for myself or am I doing it for others? See, when we're younger, we all pick up some garbage. We have this when we're born, we're pure, there's nothing attached to us. All of a sudden the world comes in and starts putting rules, expectations, all these ways of how you should be and to cope, to get the attention, to get the love of others. You develop a coping mechanism. For me it was a people pleasing. I find myself doing it. I'm being more conscious of it now, but for the longest time it was something that was a strong part of my life and it's kind of balanced. Sometimes I'm like, well, you know what? No, I'm just, I like to play the nice person, I like to do the good thing. And that's true. But it's also true that it was definitely part of a people pleasing aspect that was developed in my personality. So what I started doing was that I started looking around at my life, looking around at the things that I was partaking in, the people I was with, and then asking myself, well, why am I doing this? Am I doing this for me? Am I doing this because I want to? Am I doing it because it's an expectation of somebody else? I haven't dove too deep yet, but in the few things that I'd written down, I found that they were because it's so if we're going to live a true life, we have to start with acceptance of ourselves. So I had mentioned that as long as you're in a state of resistance, you can never push forward. And the reason why you can't push forward is because you're fighting against something that you're saying, no, this should not be this way, this should not be this way, no, no, no. And you're fighting. It's almost like you're just beating your head against A wall. By accepting it, you start to say, okay, you know what? Maybe it is you're overweight. So rather than be disgusted by the weight you put on, say, you know, I accept myself with the way I am. And I realize. I accept that everything up until this point has brought me to where I am right now. But now I have the power now. I can make the decision to do something different. Now. What I found from doing posts for YouTube and one of the aspirations I have for the 2020 year was that everything just takes a small step. So for the longest time, I just kind of. With many aspects of my life, I had this kind of, like, utopian dream that, you know what? Everything should be perfect. Everything, you know, there shouldn't be any struggle in the world. Things are just supposed to work out. And that was me in resistance. But then after sitting here and just saying, all right, how can I just accept this? I started noticing that I was in that resistance, and I said, accept it. I accept that, you know, it's a journey. I accept that it takes step by step. And then I started being able to take the steps. That was a few days ago. I've kind of battled with it a little bit now because my mind's been up and down, up and down. But I did start meditating, and I've been doing that consistently for about at least a couple weeks, maybe even, like three weeks now. So it's been pretty good. But that is what I wanted to share with you today. Acceptance. And I want you to just kind of take that blanket and drape it over yourself and apply it to your own life. Where are the areas in your life that you haven't accepted yourself? You haven't accepted the things or the circumstances or the events around you, or you haven't accepted people around you. One of the powerful things is with my. Even with my father sometimes we always, you know, like, your parents want the best for you. Of course, whether it be my travels, they have very, very different opinions of what I do. And at times, it almost feels like you're resisting. You're kind of bumping heads with them. But it's a different world. It's a different world. He'll probably watch this and be like, what are you talking about? Different world. You're crazy for traveling and going all these places by yourself. But again, I accept, yes, accept it then. But I accept it, and I realize that it's a different world and that I can't judge him for having a different belief, a different rules about life than I do. Because he's a completely different person than I am. And by focusing on that, what you're doing is you're damaging the relationship. Even if they don't accept it, even if they still hold those feelings, you don't have to. You can let it go. So really, for any change to take place in your life, I came up with this, I like to call it, you need the three A's. You need acceptance, you need appreciation and you need action. So just doing a quick rewind. So acceptance, we'll go through the three of these. Acceptance is seeing things for the way they are and being okay with that. And from that acceptance, develop an appreciation for it. Because life is a journey. Things that you are where you are for a reason, right? God doesn't play favorites. I was watching Joel Olsteen. He just, I was walking by the TV and he was on and he said that everyone, you know, everyone is born perfect, everyone is born with gifts. And I'm going to paraphrase that. I might be butchering it, but actually I lost my train, I lost the train of thought there. But again, it kind of rewound back to self worth and acceptance and then appreciation, when you're able to appreciate it. Because there is, there's no every scale, it's balanced, right? There's no good, there's no bad, there's an equal. It's like yin and yang. There's always a counter. So if you look at what that position say you were born with poverty, it's easy to say, I can't do this because I don't have the resources. But you could also look at it and say, well, wow, for me to develop those tools that I need, it takes resilience, it takes effort, it takes, it takes. What's the word I'm looking for? I mean, it takes substance. And you could look at that journey and probably from looking back, it's definitely a lot more difficult looking forward. But looking back, you can look at it and say, you know what, I was at an advantage here. You hear it often in personal development. They say the person who's the hungriest will strive. So the problem with people being born with privileged is that they take it for granted. So if you take a step back and just to start to accept and then appreciate, then you get to the final step where you can take action. And action is that non judgmental move where you're able to break down all the components into the small details, the small steps that you need to do over every single day to make that progress there. So that is all I have for you. That was kind of my rant. I have a few notes jotted down on a piece of paper, but everything I do here is kind of free flowing. I like to think that I get this inspiration and I'm sitting here and I'm sharing it with you. So I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. I hope you will choose acceptance as your word of the year. And if you have any questions, you could shoot me a direct message on Instagram. Donny D O N N Y Rouse R A U S Or you could also choose to follow me if you like coffee. I make amazing coffee. Rous Coffee is my handle for Instagram for my business. R A U S C O F F E E and then also you could shoot me a friend request or join the Facebook group One Life Podcast with Donnie Rouse. That is it guys. Thank you so so much for tuning in. I wish you all happy and prosperous New Year and I will see you again.