True Reflection

Hi, guys. My name is Donny Rouse, and you are listening to the podcast One Life Today. I want to talk about writing a book, or not really writing a book, but the title of this podcast is called True Reflection. And as I go into this podcast, you'll kind of get what I mean. One of my aspirations in life is that I want to write a book. I enjoy writing. Some of the biggest changes, the biggest lessons that I've learned in life without having had to go through has been through reading. And it's a shame, because it's such a simple thing we could do to improve ourselves. And yet every moment or every day that passes by, I feel like we're getting further and further, and we rely so much more on the Internet or videos and streaming, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But for me personally, I find that my mind develops differently as I read a book, as I'm reading words on a page. And it's because as I'm reading those thoughts, I'm really internalizing. I'm reading it. I'm kind of having that internal voice in my head, as if you read in your head. I can't remember what the name of it is, but you're silent, but you hear the voice going on in your head. And while this is not good because it makes you read at a slower pace than you would if you weren't internalizing that voice, it is beneficial, I believe, because it's almost like the voices that are going on in our head every moment of every day. And by internalizing that voice, we're kind of embedding it and pushing it further into the subconscious and taking those lessons that we're getting from that book. So in this column I was reading online, the column suggests, in searching for a topic, choose a topic that you wish someone else had written about. And I thought about it. Well, that could be taken one of two ways. You can look at it from one perspective, saying you went through some hardship, and as a result of that hardship, you have this wealth of knowledge now, but you wish someone had kind of warned you or told you about this. So this way you didn't have to experience it firsthand. But then if you look to the other side, you look at something a little bit more aspirational, maybe something you don't yet know, but you want to learn. And as a result of not yet knowing it, maybe start the process of learning these tasks, these habits, these skills in order to develop your life and help others develop theirs. For me, when I was posed, when I gave that Question to myself. I wanted people to become more aware of the things going on inside. I find it. It's been one of the major areas of focus in my own life right now. And I feel like not that many people are yet aware that they have forces going on inside of them. There's voices telling them they're not good enough, or maybe they are perfectly aware of it, but yet they don't know that they're in control. And that is one of my purposes, is to tell people, one, how do you identify that? How do you get past that? How do you form new beliefs? But the second one is to get people to live life rather than waiting and putting it off. I've had the privilege of traveling to 49 different countries, and I have the goal of doing 100 countries. By the time I'm 50, I'm going to turn 39. So it's almost 10 countries a year. And if I think about why I would write a book about that, because I really started traveling at the age of 27. 27 is when I really started stretching out those countries that I went to and traveling multiple times a year in order to see all these things that I want to see. And why do I want to see them? Because I believe that life is this beautiful tapestry, that there's so much beauty in the world, but yet we get caught. We get caught in this habitual way of thinking that keeps us marching in that same. That same route over and over again. Living in this box and never fully stepping out. And the only way to step out is to put yourself in new surroundings, new experiences. And all of a sudden, you see the thinking was small yesterday. While you're listening to this, it's probably going to be. This is going to be released a week after the recording. So you would have heard that Kobe Bryant died in a tragic accident. His helicopter crashed, killing him, and I believe it was nine others. As the news developed, one thing I noticed that everyone around me, they felt this deep sorrow and this internal quietness. And that following morning, I woke up, I'm like, I was thinking, just thinking to myself, as I often do, why is everyone upset? Not that I'm not upset, but what is it about Kobe Bryant that touched so many people so much, where they have this sense of mourning over his death? Because I don't know Kobe Bryant. I know from seeing that tv, and I would think that many of you have never met him before. So what is it about this man's life that has touched so many of us? As I thought about That I was thinking about what Kobe Bryant stands for. Kobe Bryant stands for something that's in with each of us, something that we notice in him, that we know is intrinsic to ourselves, and is that pursuit of excellence. We see a man who is at the top of his trade, at the top of his skill or profession, whatever you want to call it. And deep down inside of each of us, we know that that is also available to us. And so while we mourn for. For Kobe Bryant, what we're really doing, I feel like, is we're mourning for ourselves. We're mourning for ourselves to wake up, to claim that same drive, that same excellence that is in each and every one of us. I see death as kind of a yin and yang. Death can be looked at as a captor, or it could be looked at as a liberator. Now I'll explain what I mean by that. I know a lot of people, especially in my inner circle, who look at death and it shrinks them. It shrinks them in the sense that they become afraid of the outside world and all of the possible dangers that are surrounding them. That is their captor. For me, I look at death as a liberator. When I hear of something tragic like that or someone passing away, it makes me reflect on life and to realize, you know what? There's so much more to life than the petty shit that I deal with on a regular basis, the petty stuff that I put my thoughts and my attention to. And it gives me a glimpse of a future. Forgetting that and saying, well, what is it that I really want out of life? What is it that you want out of life? Kobe Bryant had. I'm going to paraphrase. I'm not really sure what the quote was, but it was something along the lines of, when you feel that resistance, when you feel that fear, that's when you know you're on your way to excellence. I'm paraphrasing. There it was something along the lines. In hearing this, I thought about my weightlifting competition. I did my first physique contest a year ago, and it brought me back to that experience. In that experience, I was working out five days a week, putting in about three hours a day at the gym. Some of those days, I didn't want to be there at all. My body ached. I felt like there was no energy left in the tank. But yet there was something internally that was saying, just push on, push on. It doesn't matter if this workout is not good. It doesn't matter if you feel like it's not living up to your expectation as what you thought that workout was supposed to be. I had trained myself in the habit of just completing the workout because no workout was going to be better than. I mean, a workout was going to be better than no workout. And then as a result of completing that workout, probably halfway through, all of a sudden I got this burst of energy because I broke through this psychological barrier that was trying to hold me back. And I broke through it. And by the time I was finished with the workout, I was exhausted. Sometimes I would fall asleep on the stretching mat. But there was this self, this feeling of gratification from knowing that I pushed through. I pushed beyond this fear. I pushed beyond this mental limitation, this limitation I set upon myself. And it made me think of that. But in order to have this, we must have a vision of what it is that we're going towards. If I had not had that competition that I had coming up six months down the road, or a friend of mine who doubted that I would ever even compete, telling me that I couldn't get that body, that couldn't get that physique, if I didn't have that pulling me, it would have been very, very difficult. As well as the help from friends who were holding me account. So what is your book about? If you had to write a book or if there was a book that you had wish that you wish had been written, what would it be about? And how can you start living that today? That's really in. You could be looking at that. It's kind of like a purpose in a way, kind of like your purpose statement. I was part of this coaching community and one of the coaches, Fabian Fredrickson, says if there was only one message that you had to get out into the world, one message, and you had one year to do it, what would that message be? And that message for me was don't wait to live. So many people wait. They put off time and before you know it, you blink your eyes and you're 100 years old, God willing. And all that time had passed by because you were just so caught in the day to day that you forgot to look, you forgot to experience the beauty of life. I hope you guys enjoyed this little rant. I hope it inspired you in some way to kind of reflect. The point of the name of this podcast was called True Reflection. The reason I named it True Reflection is because that excellence, that enduring quality that we see in all these stars like Kobe Bryant, the people who had pushed their own limits, that's available to each and every one of us. They are our reflection. They are the part of us that we've forgotten. And it's time we remember. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I have not yet made an Instagram with regard to this podcast, but I have been answering questions. I do everything through my personal Instagram page. So if you want to message me, it is O n n y R a u S. I'd love to get your thoughts and your opinions on this episode. Thank you for tuning in and I'll see you next time.