Too Old to Travel - Choose Your Inner World

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. You are listening to the podcast One Life Too Old to Travel. It is our inside world, our inner worlds that create our outer worlds. So if we are ever experiencing dis ease, the first place we should be looking is what's going on in that thing between our ears, our minds, because that is what's shaping the experience we're having in the outside world. There was a quote I heard. It said, we aren't experiencing the world. We get to experience ourselves. So the way we change that experience is by expanding our mind, by taking in new things. As a result of that, when we change our inner world, our outer world changes. So let's think of where are you? Where do you have a negative belief?

Right.

Well, how do I identify that negative belief? I mean, those things literally, they come and go as easy. Well, sometimes they like to stay longer than they like to take off. But think of an area where there was some emotional distress, where you felt like there's a belief system in place where you may not even be conscious of it. Now I'm about to give you an example from one of my most recent trips. And then maybe it'll become easier for you to understand. And then when you found that thing, say, well, what is the belief here? And is it true? And is it true 100% of the time? Is it true? Absolutely. And then open your mind and say, well, what if it's not absolute? What if I adopted the opposite belief? What if I believed something different? And then again, I'll go into my story, it'll all make sense. So you're probably wondering, too old to travel? Where is this title even coming from? Most recently, I was in Ireland. I went there for my birthday. I travel every year for my birthday. And this year I chose to do Ireland and Northern Ireland. Flying into Dublin, I landed on my hostel. And one of the first things I noticed at the hostel was that it Was extremely young. This has only happened one other time when I was in Italy traveling in Bologna.

The.

There wasn't in Bologna. There was a lot of college students, but there wasn't enough housing to house the students. So as a result, students would stay. They. Maybe they would come into the city for three days. They would stay in hostel before going back home and then repeating it the following week for their classes. I suspect that that was the same thing that was happening in Ireland while I was there. I feel like I would check in, and all of a sudden I was just around like a dozen youths. I'm like, all right. Well, the first thought that I thought I was like, man, all right, I'm 41. Am I getting too old to travel? And it was when my experience is shifting here. But I'm not really sure that was true, at least when I was first experiencing it. I'll tell you how the belief changed at the end of the trip and then how it changed post trip. So I was starting to ponder this. I was like, all right, well, it's very young here. Spent a couple days, and I ended up going up to Belfast. In Belfast, it wasn't as bad there, and actually, but the hostel was smaller, so there weren't as many people. So it wasn't as shocking as it was in Dublin. So from Belfast, I'll kind of take you through the journey. I went to Belfast, to Derry or Londonderry, however you want to call it, down to Galway, and then from Galway, Killarney, Ring of Kerry, over to Kinsale, up to Blarney, up to Cashel, back to Dublin, making a bunch of stops in between. And the entire time I was there, it was. It was frustrating for me because one, I was expecting to meet some fellow travelers where I can invite them into my. Into my. Into my car and take a road trip. I'd had those experiences in the past, and they were some of the best experiences I'd ever had. But when I was in Galway, when I was in. Where else did I go? Well, mainly like Galway, I just noticed that there was. There was packed with students. And every time I had to make a. Every time I had to make plan my itinerary and book accommodations, the combinations were always booked. Like, I couldn't find a place. It was very frustrating. It was one of the most challenging times I've had traveling because of that. I like to go. I like to go on a whim. I like to say, okay, here I am. What do I want to do today? Oh, let's go. Here get inspired. Go there, like, well, what's next? I don't really like to plan everything because, you know, then all of a sudden I'm on a time schedule regress. So I'm in Galway. And I experienced very much the same thing. And then I went back to Dublin. And as I was. When I was back in Dublin, I remember checking into one of my rooms and, like, I check in, it was. It was a pod hostel. And, you know, there's a bunch of. If you've ever been a pod hostel, it's not like they're just open beds. They're literally cubes, Japanese style, where you have a cube. It's almost like a little mini room. And I go into the room and there's like six college girls. And I'm like, all right, this is kind of weird. And, you know, started talking to them. They were actually getting ready to go out that night, and they were all like, yeah, they're cracking bottles of wine. I was like, I remember those years. And when I came back, I was telling people the story of my trip. I was like, yeah, you know, I felt. I felt. You know, I felt older when I was there. And after having some time to reflect on it, I was like, well, all right. Well, what was like, I was looking at my experience. Is it really that I'm just old and that is what's happening and maybe I should stop traveling. Thankfully, at the time, I was reading the book Psycho Cybernetics, and it had me question a lot of beliefs. And I started questioning one, the belief of age. We say age, you know, age, every 12 months, you're a year older. What if it was 15 months? Right, so, all right, so I'm 41 now. If it were every 15 months, that would make me 31. And just having this small change in perception. Literally, I felt lighter. I'm like, oh, well, wow. If I'm 31, there's a lot more energy to go around. Yeah, I could do a lot of things that, you know, I could do things that I couldn't do at 41. Which brings the second point. Beliefs about where you are in life. Like, we have these beliefs around, like, where we should be, what we should be doing at a certain age, when it really is all just shit. It really is all just shit. It's stuff from the culture saying, this is what you should be doing at this time. You know, you should have the car, you should have the house, you should have kids. It's just crap, right? There is no. Every single person's life is Completely different. So when I was looking at these, you know, these shoulds that I have and when I had this like this idea of shedding off literally 10 years of my life, I literally felt the change happen physiologically without anything happening.

Right.

It was just thinking differently about my age. When I made that distinction, I looked back at the trip, I was like, yeah, well, literally the entire time I was there. Excuse me, the entire time I was there, I was playing this over in my head that like, oh, I'm older and when I recognize the mind, the processes that were going on in my mind, there's no reason. I mean, I understand now how it was being portrayed in my outside world because that is what was going on in my inside world. I've been on many trips where that was never, it didn't matter. Like I would hang out with kids all ages. I would hang out with kids who were 18. You know, people who are 18, we won't call them kids because I think some 18 year olds are more mature than 50 year olds. I was hanging out with people from all different ages, from 18 up to like 50, mid-50s, 60s, whatever. It didn't mean anything, right? But now I was putting this unconscious, I should say unconscious thought into being too old. And it shaped my experience. So where do these things come from?

Right?

I mean sociological. Like I look at people around me. Comments from friends, oh, what are you doing? You should, you know, you should really start to settle down. Comments from my parents. These are all people's inputs that are coming in that have nothing to do with your life path. Nothing to do. They are putting their experiences on you when it's not their life, right? You're the only one that could decide your experience. You're the only one who knows what is right for you, nobody else. But if you allow them to literally layer, layer, layer, all of a sudden you realize that like you have all these little blankets on you and you can't move because all of their layers on there that you can't even recognize what's inside because you've just been you, you've been stifled. So how do you get out of that? You get out of that by first becoming aware. And what are the shoulds that you've been following? Whose opinions, whose advices have you been allowing to impact your life? As I just mentioned, I was thinking of my parents, inputs, friends of mine who would say that stuff and then cultural beliefs, right? Because I don't know many people who are my age who are traveling and doing the things that I'm doing right. So there was a cultural aspect to it too. But if I look in hind like, if I'm honest with myself, this is how I want to live. I don't want to live any other way. I mean, yeah, wife and kids. Do I want a wife and kids? Yeah, maybe someday. And I realized there's still work I have to do on myself around the belief systems and the emotion about like even relationships that'll come too someday. But right now I'm living the way I want to live. Why am I so. I'm telling you this because I want you to become aware of those areas of your life where maybe you're being influenced. Maybe I mean the most, one of the easiest ones is like, oh, get a job after work, work up the corporate ladder, save your money and then go experience life. I have a big problem with that because you may spend all your time trying to build and trying to build this, this, this security, this foundation, but sometimes it's at the cost of your health. Is that the cost of your freedom?

Right.

And this is not an absolute statement, but if you have wife, kids, all these other responsibilities, not to say that you can't do all those things you want to do, but it does add a layer of difficulty. Like I have one of my friends, she'll say, well, I don't believe in that just because you have kids. I was like, no, but it makes things more difficult, right? If I'm traveling with a mortgage, if I have a house and I can't just freely pick up, now I got to figure out like, alright, well, I have to make sure maybe I have the money set aside to pay for my mortgage, to pay for my car versus, you know, if I don't own anything. And she's like, alright, well I'm just gonna get up and leave, right? So that is what I'm trying to hint. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Not so much that because you're in a situation that you're doomed. That's not the case.

Right.

I also truly believe that whatever you are focused on, whatever you're 100% committed to, you can make happen. But it makes it difficult, right? If I want to go out, if I want to eat out every night, but I want to have like the most amazing body of a God, like of an Adonis. Put that don in there. You can't ha. You can't have everything. Maybe when I was 20, right, I could eat anything I wanted and I could literally burn instantaneously. So there's sacrifices that have to be made as well as conscious decisions. So what I want you to do is I want you to just wake up from what society has been telling you, what your family, your friends, your religion, everything's been telling you. But tune it all out and tune inward to say, what is it that you want?

Right?

And then look at the beliefs that you have around the things you want. If something brought you joy, but now all of a sudden, it's changing. Maybe it is a real life change. Maybe you're growing as a person. As a result, what you desire in your life is changing. But maybe, maybe it's what other people have been telling you, allowing these little drops to slowly build up to. All of a sudden, now it's a pool and you're drowning in everyone else's thoughts, everyone else's beliefs. If that's where you are, I want you to start to tread, to rise above the water and get out of other people's pool. Make your own pool. So let's get back to it. What is like a thing that you. A belief that you've been struggling against, like I gave you my story. You understand what I mean by this, right? Is that something that you've been piling it on, it doesn't feel good. And when you step back, you realize it's just because you've been living through someone else's belief system and not following your own heart. Whose belief was it? What is the scotoma, Right? The scotoma is the thing that we can't see, right? It's out of sight. Sometimes it's because we told ourselves something so often over and over again that it could be right in plain sight, but we still can't see it. Tony Robbins always gives example at his seminars. You know, if your parent asks you, you know, grab me the salt, you're like, I don't know where the salt is. I don't know where the salt is. You open the cabinet, there's no salt here. And literally, you know, your father or mother comes over, it's right here, and they show you. And it literally was right in front of your face. But why couldn't you see it? It's because you told yourself that you couldn't see it. And as a result, your mind said, okay, I can't see it. And even though it was there, it said it literally skipped over it because you had to believe that you couldn't see it. What are those scotomas? And the way I want you to look at this katoma is what Are the belief systems that you're allowing to run unconsciously about this thing that you want or this thing that brings you joy? This could also be like, you know, believing that you have to have kids by a certain age and that life has to be a certain way. There is no formula for life. You are the writer of your own lifebook. And then lastly, how else can you see it isn't absolutely 100% true if it's not absolute? What if you chose the opposite viewpoint.

Right?

If I said, all right, 41, I'm too old, travel, I can get along with anybody. I enjoy seeing the world. There are people who are my age and older who are adventuring and traveling the world and having these amazing experiences. I choose to do that, too. Choosing to do that, choosing to have a different viewpoint changes how you see how you color the entire experience. So that is what I want to give you guys today. I just want you to look at the beliefs all around your life and just start to question. Questioning makes it fun, right? Because life could get pretty rigid when you don't stop to question your beliefs because they're just this layering again, this layering on of all these influences. Question is, is it absolutely true?

Right?

You may say, oh, that's wrong. What the person's doing, is it. For whose life is it absolute? Some people like doing it, living this certain way and realize that it's just a belief system you chose consciously or unconsciously to adopt. And also just take a moment to see, well, how could life be differently if I chose the opposite? Life happens on the inside, not on the outside. It is our internal world that creates our external. That is hilarious. Wow. Crazy. What's going on, guys? So. Oh, boy. So I just literally did probably like a half an hour podcast episode only to realize that I never pressed the star button. And so it never streamed. It was a pretty good one, too. So I'm going to. But I do believe in everything for a reason. So I'm going to do it again with the intention that it's going to be even better, even more focused than it was the first time around. And again, if you're watching this and you're wondering, like, what are all these posts? These are all posts that end up going on to my podcast, One Life with Donnie Rouse. Again, One Life with Donnie Rouse. You can get it on Apple, Spotify, any podcasting streaming platform. So without further ado. Oh, my. I can't believe I just did that. Hi, guys. My name is Donnie, and you are listening the podcast One Life too old to travel. It is our internal world that creates our external experience. It is the beliefs that we hold that shape and color the world around us. How have you been experiencing life? What has been your experience? Has that been one of struggle and fighting? Has it been one of excitement and joy? What has been your experience? What I want you to start to do is to take a look inward at what's going on internally and how one small shift, how you look at things, can change your entire life, your entire world. Change happens when we change our internal world because we experience. We're here on this earth we're experiencing. We don't experience the world, we experience ourselves. And in this, I'm going to share an experience. I had Ireland when I was most recently traveling to drive home that point. But before I go there, I want to leave you with a few questions to ponder. How have you been experiencing life? What have you put some words to it, like, what has been your experience? What have been your beliefs that you've outwardly spoken about an area of your life or your life in general? Is that absolutely true? When I ask you the question, is it absolute meaning? Is that an absolute truth? Or are there other people who are living a completely different life? Because what I want you to realize is that, yeah, it might be true, but it's only true for you. And that if other people are having a different experience and maybe they're happy, right, you might be stuck in an experience and feeling miserable and like. Like the weight on your shoulders, but someone else is doing it and they're extremely happy. The point is to show you that there is another way. And then thirdly, what if you adopted their view, their lifestyle, or said differently? What if you adopted the opposite belief or view of this particular area of your life? Most recently, I was in Ireland for my birthday. I travel every year for my birthday. It's one of the several trips I do a year visiting to new countries, because that is just what I do and what I like and what brings me passion and joy. When I landed in Dublin, one of the first things I realized was that, well, one, it was cold. It was kind of cold when I landed, early morning and it was chilly. But that's not what I was going at. I went to Dublin, I stayed in a hostel. And first thing I noticed was that it was very young. Everyone that I met, it seems like the majority of the people that were staying at this hostel were probably in their 18 to 20. Now you're probably saying, well, of course you stayed in a Hostel. That's what hostels are. No, they're not. They're not like that. I've only experienced that one other time. I was in Bologna, Italy, and I was staying at hostel. And, like, it was very difficult to find anything in Bologna because there was a housing crisis with college students. Right, College students. There's a big university and students come in, but there's no housing, or if there was, it was very expensive. So students would stay at the hostels, they'd come into the city for two, three days, do their classes, and then they would get back out and they would head back home. So as a result, there was a lot of college students there and come to realize that Ireland was very much the same way. So I experienced that in Dublin. I was like, man, I just feel so old here. I'm 41. That was the thought process that was going in my mind. I went up to Belfast and then went over to Londonderry and then down to Galway, and the experience was almost uniform across the board. I mean, I couldn't even find a hostel. I got a bed and breakfast when I was in Londonderry. But when I went to Galway, it was amplified, too. It was like, all right, well, I was in this hostel, and everyone was like, they're all youth. They're all like young college kids. I was like, well, what gives? I didn't connect that. Like, all right, well, that's what it was, because I didn't know. I didn't know. So I was making these false beliefs, these false assumptions in my mind. Left Galway, went down to Killarney, to the Ring of Kerry, went over to Kinsale, up to Blarney, up to Castle Rock and back to Dublin, making a bunch of stops in between. When I got back to Dublin, it was the same experience again. All young kids. And thankfully, I did meet some great people when I was there, as I do in all my trips, I always meet at least one person that I can call a friend for the rest of my life. And I got back home, and so people were asking me, well, tell us about your trip. How was your trip? And I would start the story when I said, I'm putting the emphasis on story, because really, how you portray things is really like a way of how you're processing internally. It's a story, and you could change that at any moment. So I started by telling people, well, it was okay. And, like, I felt like I was the oldest person in Ireland. Yeah, the Guinness was amazing in Dublin, better than anywhere else in Ireland. But, yeah, I felt Like, I was just older. Something felt different. It felt off. As I was telling this story, I was kind of like, the more you tell a story, it's almost like the more ingrained it becomes in you. So I was starting to tell my story that I was too old to travel. I started. I picked up, like, I'd been reading the book Psycho Cybernetics, and one of the things I had to touch upon was the belief system about age. It was like the last chapter in the book. And they say in America, we say, all right, every 12 months, you are a year older.

Right?

So I'm at 41 years by the American standard or whatever standard it is. But is that real age?

Right.

Isn't age something more biological? Yes or no? And then he asked the question. He goes, what if we changed? He said, you know what? We made a new discovery. Age a year is really 15 months, not 12. 15. When I said that, I was, well, how old? If it were 15 months, how old would I be now? 15 months. Oh, that would make me 31. Literally the moment I made that distinction, the moment I literally felt lighter and younger because it put me in the mindset of when I was 31. Coincidentally, that was also when I really, really started doing, like, these big solo trips, Right. So it changed my mindset instantly. And then I thought about my most recent trip. I was like, huh? What was the belief system that was guiding me when I was in Ireland that was shaping my experience? Was I older than some of the people? Like, the majority of the people who were in the hostel? Yes, I was. Should that have impacted my experience? No, it shouldn't have. I've been traveling around 40. That was my 45th country. I'm about to make my 45th country. I'm sorry, my 44th. My 45th is about to be Portugal coming up in two weeks. In all those experiences I've had, relationships and experience had great times with people of all ages, from 18 all the way up to, like, mid-50s and above.

Right.

I mean, most recently on this trip, I mean, I met a couple that was. I don't even know how old they were. They were probably, like, maybe 70, but I had a great time. So age was never a factor until I made it a factor in my own mind as I was reading this, and I realized, all right, well, if I am the age I am, biologically, yes, experiences shape us, but how would that shape everything? How would that have shaped my experience in Ireland? It would have completely shifted, would have completely changed what I was willing to do. The activities I was willing to partake in, even when I go out, I probably would have had a couple extra Guinness beers or maybe a jmo.

Right?

So I was allowing this belief system from. To shape my experience. And where did that belief system come from in the first place? This is what I want you to realize more than anything is where do these belief systems come from? My parents, my friends, the culture, right. I mean, I don't know. My parents, my friends, my friends, oh, you should get married. When are you going to have. Settle down, have kids? You need to start worrying about your life, friends. Oh, my God, dude, you're getting older, you're gonna have kids. And everyone. Questioning my own decisions for my life. When the only person who has a complete authority in the ability to decide is really me on what is right for my life. No one else can tell you what is right for your life. Only you can decide that. And then let's get to the culture, right? No one in the. I don't know anybody really. I mean, with the exception of, like, my travel friends that I've met, but no one here, home. Like, there are very few people I can say who are like, go out, travel, experience the world the way that I like to experience it. They're all married, kids, and I'm not, I'm not downplaying any of that.

Right.

I mean, they have their, they have their lives, they have what is right for them, and I'm doing what is right for me. But they have no problem putting their influence and saying, ah, they, they admire me in many ways. But then they're like, oh, well, yeah, you're getting older, man, we got it. And they start pooh, poohing on, like, on the things that I'm doing, realizing that they're really just projecting their own lives on me. Do you have people who do that on you? So the intention here is I want you to realize that sometimes the things you can enjoy literally can shift because people poo pooing on your dreams, the things that you like, because they're portraying their own beliefs about life and they're layering it onto yours. And all of a sudden now you, you have the stack of like, blankets and weights that are holding you down, and none of them are yours, none of them are yours. So the only way to really start to peel back these layers is to become conscious and open yourself up to new perception, new ways of thinking. And those new ways of thinking were kind of what I. It's mentioned in the first few questions that I answered and I'm going to go to those now. But in closing, I wanted to go back to like the idea of age, like when I shifted my perception on. All right, well, what does it mean to be 41? Well, do I feel 41? No, I mean, I have. I mean, I take care of my body really well. I don't feel 41. I don't look 41.

Right.

But once I, like there was that shift saying, all right, what if 15 months were a year? What if 20 months were a year? How would it be? I'd be all right. At 15 months I was like 31. At 20 months, I'd probably be like 20 something, 25. I don't even know. But what we think changes the way we see the outside world. And when I realized that that belief system was what was shaping my experience in Ireland, it was enough to say, you know what? I don't have to live this way. I don't have to believe that I can choose. I can have a good time regardless of who I'm with, however old I am or think I am. So let's bring it back to your own life, to your own belief system. Think about some areas. Maybe it's an area where you enjoyed once, but now your feelings about have changed. What is causing that shift? That. What is causing that change? Maybe it's an evolution. Maybe you've evolved and you're no longer that person, so your preferences have changed. Totally understandable. But maybe it's because other people's belief systems have infiltrated your psychology and now all of a sudden you're taking on their belief systems, their shoulds, all that stuff. What is the belief system guiding this emotion, this feeling? Next, what if. Is it absolutely true, right? Is it absolutely true for everybody? Are there other people who having a different experience than you with regard to the same topic? Lastly, we'll throw this in there. What if you were experiencing it like them? What if you were living in their shoes? How would that feel? Try that on.

Right?

The cool thing about our minds that we literally try on anything without having to experience it. Try it on. How does it feel? What emotions come up? What I want to make you aware of is what is being? What is your own, what is your own guidance, what is your own desires versus what other people are dumping on you. Because the only way you're going to experience a life that is fulfilling and joyful and exciting and all the things you want it to be is by taking the reins and steering it in the direction you want. But we have to be mindful of those pitfalls, those ditches, because they can break one of our wheels on our wagon. Right? We have to be mindful those things are literally lurking us subconscious. So we have to stop to see, to look out sometimes and say, what is guiding this journey? Because sometimes it's an outdated map and it's a map that was given to you by someone else who has no idea what the journey even entails. Anyways, you are the map maker. You get to determine your end destination, how you get there, how you enjoy it along the way. That is all I've got for you guys. I hope you and thank you so much for tuning in. I hope this in some way connected you back to your heart, to your core center, maybe uncovered some of those unconscious beliefs that you had about something that you gave up because you thought you were supposed to or you should. Hopefully it sparked that little bit of desire to say, you know what? Yeah, it's not too late for me to do this. I'm not too old, that time hasn't passed. I can still do this. There is no time limit. And that you go for it. If you want to say if you enjoy this, if you want to subscribe, comment or ask a question, you can do so by visiting me at www.donnyrouse.com again, www. O n n Y-R-A u s.com again, guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. God bless you all. And remember this, you get one life. Live it.