What Does it Mean?

Hi, guys. My name is Donnie Rouse and you are listening to the podcast One Life. What does it mean? At any given point in your day, any experience, it is you that gets to choose what that experience means. Said differently, that whatever the outcome is to an experience that you have, you get to determine what that experience means in the sense that is it a failure, Is it a success, Is it a learning experience? Does it mean to go forward? Does it mean to pull back? I was over friends this past weekend. My friend Cynthia, I'll give her, she loves when I give her shout outs on my podcast. So what's going on, Cynthia? I was over her house and I was sitting on her couch. And in that moment, I was a little bit of like a daze. I go through these funks sometimes, and if somebody knows me well enough, I mean, well, even if you don't know me well, you could probably look in my eyes and, you know, when I'm in one of those places. So I was over my friend Cynthia's and she's like, she was cracking all these different jokes and she would, you know, she would look at me and I would have, like, sometimes I'd have this blank stare. She's like, man, you're really out of it, huh? And when she made that comment, it made me kind of pull back and I started to get, like, self conscious and started to be hard on myself, like, well, you know, what's wrong with me? Why am I feeling this way? And it was sort of this downward spiral. This kind of like this. This feeling or this, this way of looking at things. Even that comment continued for the entirety of the time I was there. When I got in the car, I started to think about the experience inside. Now I was starting to go to a negative place because I'm like, well, why am I feeling this way? Why do I feel. Whatever the feeling was, I'm trying to think. I just felt off. I kept questioning, why was I feeling off? What happens when you start to question and focus on why you're feeling depressed down or whatever the experience is that you don't want to feel? What happens when you start to focus on that and you start to question as to why you're feeling it? You literally start stacking that emotion. All of a sudden. Now you're amplifying it because you're like, well, why am I doing it? You're like, oh, because I didn't accomplish anything today. All of a sudden you literally start stacking negative stuff. It becomes a negative stack. But something. I questioned it differently when I was in there knowing that we choose the meaning for every single aspect of our lives. I said, all right, well, what else could this mean? And then I thought of, like, well, what is. What is the real answer behind the question, behind her comment? And I said, well, she cares about me. Wow. All right, well, then, as a result of coming to that new meaning, all of a sudden the mood I was in started to soften. And now I started to appreciate the friendship rather than focus on. Rather than putting that energy and the focus on myself and what was wrong, I started to appreciate what was right and what I was grateful for. And it was in that moment that the lesson kind of came back up, really realizing that at any moment, we choose what something means to us. I had given the example in one of the last episodes. I was talking about an experience I had, coffee roasting. I love to try new ways of roasting coffee, like manipulating the curve, because I'm always trying to maximize the pleasure, the taste profile. But sometimes that isn't the case. Sometimes I might roast a batch of coffee and I end up eating it all because it didn't come out the way I'd intended. But going into it, when I take a step back and when I go into it, I'm like, you know what? But I knew that going in advance that if I were to roast this coffee, that there is the chance that it might not come out better than the curve I was just on. But then I ask myself, well, if I learn something, if I manipulate the coffee curve in this way, which I haven't done before, and I learned something, is it worth it? And I'm always like, oh, well, yeah, actually, it is. Totally is. Because then I know what not to do going forward. I know what to do, but I don't always focus there. I don't always go there first. Sometimes I'll get down on myself, and then it takes a conscious effort to reframe. And then when I see that, I'd be like, what does it mean? It means that I'm the freaking coffee man. It means I'm an extra. Because now I have a new distinction as a result of taking this new action that I wouldn't have done otherwise. I've started to take the approach that, you know what? If you want to learn, if you want to grow, it's going to cost money, too. If I end up dumping a batch of coffee in the name of research and learning, then so be it. Going back to the meaning, right? So what the meaning. Like, I could have. I looked at that. And at first I was down on myself thinking, well, you know what? It came out bad. I'm a bad coffee roaster. But when I stopped to pause. So we know. Well, no, that's not true. Well, first of all, people love my coffee. And secondly, the roast right before this was amazing, right? But I was curious, and I wanted to try something else. So is that meaning true? No, but what is the meaning? The meaning is I wanted to learn something new. And I did learn something new. I grew as a result of it. Right. So now I took myself from feeling, from literally beating myself up to feeling better about the experience that just transpired. What is it in your own life? For the homework, why don't we. Let's pull and let's pull something. Let's pull an experience, right? Let's think of maybe something that happened in the last week. Is there something that transpired where it left you feeling, like a little off or down, you know? Yeah. I mean, what was the experience? Once you have an experience, what is the meaning that you apply to that experience? Was it that, you know, maybe you were. Had a conversation with somebody and you was. You said something that upset them? You know, maybe you created the meaning that, you know, what, like you're a bad person or that the person doesn't. That they're mad at you and the person doesn't love you. Whatever the meaning may be, once you have that one thing, I want you to ask yourself a different question. And that question is, what else could this mean? If it were the case of, you know, getting in an argument with someone? Sometimes I know in my own experiences, I would have, like, I could have an argument with someone. All of a sudden I feel like this disconnect rather than, you know, applying the meaning and saying, well, you know what? The reason. Maybe I. The reason I feel so passionate about something is because I believe in whatever it is that maybe I'd gotten in, like, the argument about and the belief that maybe, like, it harmed the relationship? Well, maybe. What if the new meaning I gave it was, you know what? I could have these conversations with a friend, and because the friendship is so strong, I could have these and look at our differences and accept them, and it would only make our friendship stronger. Right. Two completely different outcomes on the same experience. On one side, you could look at the experience saying, well, it damaged a friendship. On the other side, you say, well, you know what? We have differences, but that's one of the reasons why our friendship is so strong. So take that experience that you just brought up what is the new and more empowering meaning you could apply to it? And here's the thing. You're going to know when you've found a more empowering meaning, because the way you feel about it is going to shift instantly in the snap of a finger. You're going to feel different about the experience. So it's kind of like one of those things where you kind of have to keep shifting through, what else could this mean? What else could this mean? What else can this mean? And you keep doing that and asking yourself the question, and then your mind is going to be searching for answers as what else can this mean? And then when you find something that's more empowering, you're going to notice there's going to be a shift in how you feel. And one of my prior coaches, she said there's a difference when you're modeling the way you feel. When something feels heavy, it's usually something in the mind, right? Because the mind will kind of lie to you. It'll try to bring you down. It'll try to make you associate with the ego. But when you're speaking from the higher yourself, the truth, the truth feels light. The truth doesn't feel heavy. So look for that lightness. When you find that answer, look for the way it feels when you feel that lightness, then that's the truth. That is the more empowering meaning that you lead with. So, guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you take away anything from this, I hope you take away just anytime you feel an event transpires and it leaves you feeling a little off kilter to stop and ask yourself, well, what is the meaning that I'm applying here? What does it mean to my life? And then if it is something that is negative, I want you to reframe and look for the better meaning. I promise if you do that, it'll literally transform your entire life. The challenge is always remembering to do it and making it a habit. I hope you enjoyed this episode, guys. If you did, please give it a share, leave a comment or a feedback on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That is it for today. I hope you enjoyed. God bless and I will see you again soon.