Round and Round: Getting Off The Hamster Wheel of Life

In this heartfelt solo episode, Donny Raus reflects on what it means to live intentionally rather than getting caught in the never-ending loop of daily routines—the metaphorical “hamster wheel.” After a recent trip to Europe, where simplicity, meaningful connection, and less noise opened his mind, Donny returned to the U.S. only to feel the familiar pull of distractions, pressures, and societal programming.

Through stories of travel, conversations with friends, and honest insights into his own struggles with burnout and self-doubt, Donny offers an invitation to slow down, reconnect with your heart, and ask: What do I truly want? This episode is a raw, real reminder that we’re all creators of our lives—and we must choose presence over pattern.

He also shares the power of daily gratitude, how to mentally design your day before it unfolds, and the impact of making even one small step toward your dream. If you’ve ever felt stuck, busy, or uncertain, this episode will help you pause and reset.

To subscribe, comment, or ask a question visit www.donnyraus.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Most people spend their entire lives dressed without ever giving a single thought as to what it is they really want and what's important. Connecting you yourself and the life that you have meant to live. I used to live the way to come up with that, but I hate it. As a result, I am my own coffee company. What's going on everybody? Donnie Rouse here, and uh today I wanted to talk about the hamster wheel. So in life, when we go through the the same things day after day, we go through the um same habitual patterns. Sometimes we get on this hamster wheel where we start to shut off all the other options around us because we're just in the habit of doing the same thing over. Now, compound that with the fact that you have all of these different things coming at you, making demands on your time. And all of a sudden now you've lost track of yourself. I just got back from a trip to Europe. And um while I was there, I was I was doing some coffee work. I was uh working with a consultant over there on developing some espresso blends. And in developing those espresso brands, in the beginning of my trip, my mind was very, very busy because I was trying to uh grasp like a lot of different concepts, things that related to my coffee, and I was still very much in this mode of thinking that I had kind of brought with me uh from back home. But as time went on and I was started to have different experiences, going to different adventures with people in that, I started to let go and kind of step off that metaphorical hamster wheel. And as a result of that, it opened me up to life to different possibilities to see things differently. And as a result, new options became available. When I came back home, all of a sudden now I was hit with a bunch of different uh different things, like things from uh family members of mine having to deal with health issues, and all of a sudden my world started spinning again, and I was right back where I started. And the reason I tell you this is because I want you to make space in your day. I want you to realize that you're more than just the day-to-day routines that you are doing over and over and over, and that when you give yourself that little bit of space, that is when you open up the possibility. I was uh just yesterday, I was doing a delivery to one of my accounts, and I was having a talk with one of the gentlemen there, and we were talking about uh, you know, like life just getting out of the day-to-day rhythm. And he was telling me that uh a guy who had a storefront next to him was telling him, he's like, you know what? We'll call him John. John, you are on the hamster wheel. He's like, What the hell do you mean I'm on the hamster wheel? He goes, You are on the hamster wheel. You come in, you make money, you pay it out, and then you just keep repeating that thing over and over. Now, John is an amazing person. He uh big heart, has a great presence in his community. But he even he said, he's like, you know what, I've been doing the same thing over and over for literally about 24 years now. And he's like, and the time flew by like that. He's like, it's true. Sometimes he's like, I don't even know where the day where the week goes. I come in, I do the work, I leave, and then it's it's it's rinse and repeat. And you're saying how he hadn't experienced much of life and how he wants to get out there, but then at the same time, he's also afraid of getting out there. And the hamster wheel that I want to refer to in this in this example here is just that repetitiveness because you just get in the process of doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over. And the mind loves patterns, the mind loves habits because it knows exactly what it has to do. The mind likes to predict, it knows the past and goes, okay, well, let's make this efficient. I know that I've been doing this for the last week. Let's just keep on doing that. Now it's easy to go down that, but when you stop changing, you start to experience pain. Because deep inside your heart, you know that you were made for something more. So as I was talking to him, he was telling me that he wanted to experience more things, but now he feels like it's too old, which is just a bullshit story. I'm actually contemplating inviting him on one of my trips to Italy because he's Italian and I know that he would have a I would have a good time showing him, uh having showing him an experience. Uh, but then we would just be, he would be a good person to travel with because his eyes would be wide open. Fast forward yesterday, I was in uh yesterday or two days ago, I was at the gym and I saw a friend of mine that I hadn't seen in a while. And we were we were talking about the experience of uh of traveling. I was telling him how I was abroad, how I loved being in Europe because everything is just so simple. And he went to he reiterated back to me. He's like, you know what? I work one month in Italy, one month in the United States. He's like, every time I come to the United States, he's like, it's amazing. He's like, I when I'm in Italy, I work earlier in the day. So this way I have the rest of the day to myself. And I and I try to end my day before the United States starts their day. Otherwise, I get sucked in and then I just start, I have to work, I end up working more than I have to. And he was saying how when he comes back to the States, it's amazing how he feels like he's doing the same work, but he has no time and he feels just very scattered and pulled in many a million different directions. And so, well, yeah, of course, right in the United States, the first thing I noticed, well, it's pretty not, it's the one thing that hits me every time I come back from a trip is just the amount of noise that is present in our everyday experience. It's noise from the TV, noise from your own mind telling you as to what you should and shouldn't be doing. And I and I use that with the uh air quotes because a lot of that is just bullshit that's fed to you from the media that you're consuming, from the your you know, the peer pressure, the you know, the your neighbors. All this stuff contributes because it's it's kind of like a a uh a you like a I don't know what not a universe. It's like you're you're in this little ecosphere where you're all feeding into that same thing, but you gotta step out. And he was telling me, he's like, I I have no clue why that I I could get so feel do the same work and feel so much more productive and have more time for myself when I'm in Italy. And I told me, yeah, because there's no noise. When you're in Italy, there's no like you can't go to the gas station in the United States without being assaulted by a freaking TV that's sitting in the gas pump. Can't go to the gym without watching, you know, having TV blaring. Everywhere you look, you're being assaulted by media. And like, why do they show? Why do they show TV at the gym? Why do they show TV at a freaking gas pump? Because they know that they are you're being programmed throughout the entire time. They know what the power is, and as a result, they probably give incentives to gas stations at the gyms in order to keep that programming going. The easiest way to do that is just to step away from all of this stuff, right? Step out of your day-to-day routine, go for a walk, be in nature, or practice some gratitude at the very, very beginning of your day. The reason I'm here right now doing this live with you, because I haven't done a live in quite a while. And to be honest with you, it was making me anxious the thought of doing it. Now, if you're hearing this right now, you're like, Well, what do you mean, anxious? You used to come on every single day and every week, used to post a podcast. Yeah. But then I broke that pattern. And all of a sudden I started to get anxious. The thought of doing it made me like, uh, I don't want to do it. Because I was like, it's not gonna be perfect. And I was just being very critical of myself. But then um I started practicing more gratitude. When I was practicing my gratitude, it made me reflect on the things that I'm grateful for in life, right? Which which makes you more heart setter and present, but also it makes me made me focus on the gifts that I wanted to give, the impact that I wanted to have. And one of those impacts is to inspire people to go out there and to live their one life, to live a life that is in line with their values, with their desires. And one of the best ways for me to do that is through the medium of doing video and audio. And to be honest with you, I love doing this. And when I do do it and I come on here and I speak with you, I feel very fulfilled by it because I know that I'm speaking my truth. I know I'm doing something that gives me a sense of purpose. But if I stayed in that that that rut, that habitual pattern, that busyness, and I paid attention to all the noise, which I was literally, when I say moments ago, like right before I got on here, right before I did a little bit of a gratitude flush, my mind was spiraling. I was like, oh my God, I have this thing here. I gotta look up prices for coffee bottles, I gotta do and I was like, stop. Stop. First of all, I don't need to do any of this stuff right now. Secondly, my intention at the start of this day was to do things that are in alignment that gave me a sense of purpose. Not just, you know, running around all the things that need to be gone done, because those demands are always gonna be there and those demands are always gonna grow if I let them. So I said, let me focus on what it is that I want. One of those things today was to be on here, to be a voice of inspiration, to encourage people to not only just go after dreams, but just stop the craziness. To stop like the the distraction and to listen to what your heart is speaking. So, with that, I guess that's the perfect segue. What is your heart telling you? One of the best things and most powerful things you could do at the beginning of your day is to decide how your day is going to transpire before you've even lived it. When you think about like how do you want to live today, like what emotions do you want to experience? Or how do you want when you're imagining yourself at the end of the day, how do you want your day to unfold? And you think of all these things, like, oh wow, you know, I really want to have my family feel my impact and my presence. Oh, wow. It's Mother's Day today. I really want my mother just to feel appreciated and know how much I love her. What can I do to do that, right? And you start to brainstorm and literally create your day, and your mind doesn't know the difference. Your mind is like, wow, I'm living, I'm thinking of all these things, I am living it. Let's just recreate it because it's already happened, right? And it you put your mind in that path of least resistance. And um doing that at the start of your day, as well as doing that for every area of your life, is extremely powerful because now instead of just following through the motions and the next thing that's easiest, right? You're like, oh, well, it seems like this is the next path because it's the universe pushing me there, and you keep going down a path that may lead you nowhere. Now you're directing your focus into a place where you want to go. This is this will be my last tangent before I sign off here. I was in the car yesterday and I noticed my like I was just like, my mind was just beside itself. And and it doesn't make really much sense as me telling you this here now, but I've been going through a kind of a feel like a whirlwind because of health issues and family members of mine and having to help them. And as a result, my freaking it just made me spiral, right? Because and then and it would, there was anger, uh, there was worry, there was fear. But what was the real emotion I was feeling? The real emotion I'm feeling was worry and in love, right? Because I I love the members of my family, and as a result of whatever other kind of like surface emotion would come out, and a lot of the time it was anger because I want someone to take a certain action to help themselves, at least what I thought was the right action, and and then not doing it, it would put me in anger. But the real underlying reason was love. I love them and I worried about them, and so I was going through this uh this spiral feeling very, very drained. Um and uh and as a result, and then I started thinking about like this is this is stupid. Like, why am I going down this path? And I started first, I started to focus on gratitude, and I started to think about the smallest things that I could be grateful for, and then kind of gradually stepping them up a little bit. And then the next thing I thought about was well, what do I really want for my health for my relationships? And this was actually, I was doing this while I was stuck in traffic on the 95. There's a shit ton of traffic, so much traffic. But I was sitting there and I was like, Well, what is it that I want? And as I was sitting there thinking about what I wanted, now all of a sudden I started to just by speaking it, by thinking about it, I started to feel better, and it made it completely changed the way I was showing up in that moment, and um and as a result, again, it it's also pointing to why I'm here right now because I realized the impact I want to have. I mean, coffee is what I do for my my day job, right? And and it coffee is one of my passions. And I guess mingling the two and with regard to the perps I want to have is kind of been that's been my own personal challenge. Um but the point I'm trying to make is I'm here now because I wanted to share a message with you, something that I felt was aligned with my purpose and what I wanted to give to you and the greater, the greater good, the world. And it all just be it all came because of a thought that I had and uh a way of directing my focus. But I had a choice to make. I could have I could have directed my focus the way I did, or I could have just kept spiraling the way I was doing it that I literally did for like the last week, and that wouldn't have gotten me anywhere. So, in order for anything to happen, you have to make a change. You have to direct yourself. You can't say I want the great body, but I'm not willing to put in, I'm not willing to go to the gym every day and eat good so this way I could develop that body. You it is gonna take you to step up, it's gonna take you to take new action. And so, with this, I guess, I guess wanna just want to challenge you. Decide what it is like pick something that you want, something that you maybe you told yourself you couldn't do or you couldn't have long ago, and commit yourself to just going after that. There was a great YouTube video I saw yesterday. It was uh I Can't Do It by Casey Neistat. It was just going through the things that people told him that he couldn't do and then how he accomplished them uh by literally focus and figuring out ways to go about it. Father told him that he would never have a T sh uh TV show he did, he father told him he couldn't make it in New York City, he moved there and made it. What is it that you want to do? Now I want you to just imagine that you could not fail. What would you go for and what would you begin right now? Let that just kind of let take the the the the the box around off of yourself that you put on and just start to spir experiment. Take one step today and then slowly take the next step. Things will compound and when you get fearful, lean into that fear, realizing that once you lean into it, really there's nothing there. That the fear disappears. And I'm gonna share with my commitment here is just because it'll hold me accountable. My intention when I'm here today was just to start getting comfortable coming live again, coming here, speaking when you set giving you something positive to bring into your day. But then also was to get on here and well, not on here, but like on my computer and just start going through some of the coffee content that I've created from all of my travels around the world with the intention of creating of being a coffee blogger, right? To me, you might be like, of course, you're already freaking doing it, dude. Like you're you're traveling around the world, you're posting coffee content, you're doing it. But there was a disc there's a disconnect in my own mind. And so this step of reviewing the content, at the very least, I'm gonna start with Morocco because I feel like I have uh quite a bit of content from Morocco, and just start playing around with some ideas and doing some posts. And you it may seem like it's common, like it's natural, but there's actually something in part of me that is afraid and maybe a little bit apprehensive, but I know it's what I want to do. So I'm gonna take those steps and do that. And I encourage you and I challenge you to do something similar for yourself. So I hope this little rant here uh brings some positivity, some inspiration, and opens up a window for you in your day. And of course, if you have any um questions or comments or anything whatsoever related to this podcast or coffee, travel, whatever it may be, you're always free to reach out to me directly. You could do it via my website at donnyrouse.com, www.donnyrouse.com, d-o-n-n-y-r-a-us.com. So that is all I got for you guys today. Hope you enjoyed this little rant, and this will not be the last because I will commit myself to showing up here more regularly, at the very least once a week. Um, that is it. God bless you guys, and I'll leave it off with my my little catchphrase you only get one life. Live fully, live passionately, and most of all, live now. God bless you guys, and I will see you again soon.