Sip More, Live More: The Ritual of Presence

In this episode of One Life, Donny Raus shares a deeply personal and powerful reminder: life isn’t something to survive—it’s something to savor. Using the ritual of coffee as a metaphor for presence, Donny explores how most of us rush through our days, consumed by pressure, obligations, and mental chatter. But what if your morning coffee could become a sacred pause—a gateway into feeling more of life?

Fresh off a trip to Europe and the whirlwind of returning to everyday demands, Donny opens up about the struggle to stay grounded. He recounts quiet moments in Montenegro, reflections under the stars, and the healing power of daily gratitude. This episode invites you to slow down, reconnect with yourself, and reimagine ordinary rituals as profound sources of peace, clarity, and joy.

Whether you drink coffee or not, Donny challenges you to anchor your day in something that brings you back to your center. Because when you show up for those small moments, you begin to change your life.

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

Transcript

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Most people spend their entire life, every single one. What's important? So, what's going on, guys? Donnie Rouse here, and today I want to talk to you about tasting more of life. And I'm using that metaphor around taste because we're going to talk about your morning cup of coffee. What if you could experience more of life, or I should say, feel more of life, through the simple ritual of your coffee? How do you think that might change the approach and how you go about your day? The reason that you are not feeling your day has nothing to do with whether or not you have so many things on going on in your life. It all revolves around the mindset. One of my favorite mentors, Tony Robbins, talks about the the uh the ritual of gratitude. And he would say, if you don't have 10 minutes for your day, you don't have a life. And I like to reframe that and say, if you don't have the time to sip and enjoy your cup of coffee, you don't have a life. So before we go into sipping and enjoying that cup of coffee and feeling life, let's get let's try to highlight what gets in the way of feeling more of life. One of the things could be demands from others. Sometimes there's so many demands being made on your life that you put the most important person to the sideline, and that most important person is you. You neglect yourself, you neglect your needs, and as a result, it is this well that slowly starts dwindling, dwindling, dwindling down until it's dry, and then there's nothing left to give. So they have the demands of others, you have the demands on yourself, right? That you should be a certain at a certain point in your life at it by a certain time. And all of these shoulds really, really weigh you down and they don't move you forward as much as you would like to think, right? We think that by putting more pressure on ourselves, that it's going to move us far faster forward. But in fact, it does the exact opposite. And to prove that point, the only thing you need to look at is think about a time where you didn't perform or you didn't do something to the way you wanted, and you put more pressure on yourself. Did you enjoy the process? Did the process did you complete it? Maybe yes. But it was it at a satisfactory, did it feel good doing it? Likely not. So you have demands of others, demands on yourself, and also in the most important one, is just the the chatter that goes on your mind, the stories you're telling yourself as to why you can't stop and enjoy the moment because of the the first two that we mentioned. So the good thing is that by knowing this, we have a way of reconnecting by realizing, well, one everything will kind of everything gets done. Like the most important thing is always get done. And the second most important thing is that you don't have to do everything in order to get your result. And then the thirdly, and the most important, before I go into a little story about telling you how this um really played a part in my own life, is that these small moments, such as a cup of coffee, can have such a profound and impactful point in your life or on your day. So much so that it transforms the entire day. I had recently gotten back from Europe where I was working with a copy consultant and traveled a bunch of different places, and then right when I came back, I was literally like I felt like I was just I imploded because everything was just stacking up on me. I had to get ready for the the start of the market season, I had to do production because I was out, accounts needed, uh, deliveries, and then there was a lot of family stuff that was going on. So as a result, I just felt like everything was piled on and that the burden was too heavy for me. And I would notice, I would be in my car and I would be driving around, and you know, I might a thought might come in and maybe like, oh wow, wouldn't it be nice to go sit by the beach there and just look out? It's a beautiful day. Wouldn't it be so nice just to go sit there and admire the the view for five minutes? And then my mind would come like, no, no, no, no, you don't have five minutes. You know, you have to keep on going. And then so I would keep on going. I'd I would be feeling stressed and overwhelmed. And then I would go about my day, and oftentimes I would get back home and I'm like, you know, it's such a beautiful night. Wouldn't it be great just to sit outside and have a cup of tea, or not even have a cup of tea, just to look outside and just enjoy those stars? And then I'm the you know, my mind would chime in and be like, no, no, no, no, you don't have the time to do that. You need to get to sleep, you need to plot your day for tomorrow so you can you know start with one foot forward. Here's the thing by skipping out in those moments, do you think that it made me feel more connected or less connected? Do you think that by skipping out on those moments I felt more more uh had more momentum going forward or had less? If you answered less, then you're correct. Because often the busyness that is in our life is really just the busyness in our minds. Last night, I I I turned a new stone, and realizing that I had been going into I had been kind of cycling in anger, worry, overwhelm, that something needed to change. But like so many things, like the change in in the when you first start doing the change, it doesn't feel good, right? It doesn't feel natural. So I was doing my gratitude, I'm like, this is shit, I don't feel it. I mean, I kind of feel it, you know, but it's not having the the impact that I wanted to have, and then I would just kind of go to sleep and like okay, I'll try it again tomorrow. But as I kept doing it, one of the things I noticed is that I was starting to feel it more, and as a result of feeling it, I started to to uh it started to change my state and how I woke up and just went about my day. Taking a cue from that last night I was um it was evening, I I came home from uh visiting my my brother and and sister-in-law. They just had a baby. So I came home, I was like, I'm tired. I wanted to do a little bit of journaling and I just wanted to hit the bed. But as I was walking in through the back door, I looked up and I was like, it is beautiful. What a beautiful night. And I'm looking up at the stars, the moon, I think it's like somewhat of a full moon, and I'm looking at it, I'm like, oh my God, I would really like to have a cup of tea here. I'd just like to just sit outside and just be for a little bit. Ah, but I can't do it. I can't do it. So I went inside, I made my cup of tea, and I was sitting at my desk doing my journaling. And I was like, this is stupid. Like, I did my journaling. I was like, no, I really want it would bring and add so much to my life just to go out there for five minutes. I can do five minutes. So I was like, you know what? Screw it. I I I did my I did my journaling. Rather than going straight to bed, I decided to take that cup of tea and I went outside. And sitting outside, everything was nice. I my two favorite times in the day are I like the morning and I like the evening. Like early, early morning, late at night, because it is silent. The world is still, and as a result, it brings that stillness inside. So I was sitting there and I was just having my cup of tea, and I felt like a calming peace come over me. One because, you know, it was calm and peaceful all around, although I could hear is like some some noise, there's some ambient noise from cars passing, planes going overhead, TVs from the you know, upstairs. But it was still there was a still a stillness. Now the stillness did come from the moment, but most of all, the stillness came from within me. Because I took the time to just do something that brought me that much enjoyment. Same thing came from this morning. I I woke up and rather than just kind of go about my day, I I I first thing I did was gratitude. I I started 10 minutes of gratitude, and I did, I'll give you like my little wasn't gonna go into this, but I will since we're here. I was doing a gratitude flush, and I was sitting there thinking about like, you know, first some simple things that I was grateful for, then going into, you know, something a little bit bigger and something bigger, and then going, doing all, look, thinking of all the experiences that I've had just over the last few months and pulling them, imagining myself pulling them and incorporating them into my heart. And the crazy thing is, as I was doing this, what I noticed was that I started pulling these ordinary moments in and then bringing them in. And what I realized in that was that all of the moments were blessings, all of the moments were beautiful, right? Because this is just everything that's going on, this is just life, right? It's just life. The positive and negative emotions that we apply to things are exactly that things that we are applying. And the reason I well, then I went into my you know my ritual of uh I had a tea this morning instead of a coffee, uh, just because I couldn't sit down in the coffee to have that at that time because I had to ring my father for uh uh treatment. So I I decided to have a tea, and then I would come back later, and then I enjoyed the coffee sitting down, slowing down. But going back to what I said, like that every single moment made me realize that every moment is beautiful and that every moment is a gift. Right? And then in contrast, that by when the mind starts getting busy and you start labeling everything, then all of a sudden you're you're not you're you're not happy with with life, you're not happy with the circumstances. So that was just uh one thing that came from making sure that I took the time, right? Ten minutes with my cup of coffee, ten minutes gratitude, they have the same effect. When I'm doing my cup of coffee in the morning, I'm normally journaling. So my coffee coffee, uh my cup of coffee, my cup of coffee is exactly that is it's a trigger to start that ritual. When I was in uh Budva Montenegro, every morning well while I was there, I was there for three days, three or four days. I don't I don't remember. I think four days maybe. And when I would wake up in the morning, my friend who was in the same dorm rooms as me, he would be sleep, he would sleep a little later than I would. I would wake up, and the first thing I would do without waking anybody up, so I made sure that I was alone, I would jump up and then I would kind of you know put my shirt, my pants on real quick, and then I would run outside and I would run to if you've ever been to Budva, there's this old kind this old town, this walled town. And in this wall town, there's a bunch of restaurants, little shops, and in that through the walls, there's all these little kind of like doors that go out to the exterior of that. One of these walls, doors left to a beach. And in that beach, imagine all of these cafe tables scattered on the beach. But in if you've known the atriotic, it's they're not like sandy beaches like we have here. The beaches are rocks, right? So the the rocks you you would look out, you see guys picking up large rocks, throwing them out because the waves had brought them in from the prior day. So I would sit literally right at the foot of the water. And I would sit down there, and George, who was the gentleman who worked at the cafe, knew what I every time I sat down, he knew to bring me a double espresso. So he'd bring me the espresso and I would bring out that journal. And it was the best start to my day, and it was the best experience that I had in that trip. We found this place because when my uh friend Diego and I, we were in the capital of uh Montenegro, and it wasn't my favorite, it just wasn't warm, had a very Cold War-esque kind of feel to it. And both of us didn't say anything. We're like, oh crap, if this is the primer for the trip, oh man, this is this is gonna be one hard destination. Maybe we made the wrong decision to come here. So we didn't say anything to either to one another, and then we get on the bus to go down to Budva. So we're coming down the bus, and all of a sudden there's a point where we we go over the uh we cross the crest and we go down, and you're looking at Budva down at the water, and both of us, I'm saying it to myself, he was sitting behind me. We're just like, holy crap, this is beautiful. Getting it, the excitement's building up. And then when we get down to uh the bus station, we're both saying the same thing. We're like, man, I thought that what we experienced in the Capitol was gonna be it. And then we're we were so ecstatic to be there, and we literally echoed the same thing. It was hilarious. We we thought a lot, we would often find our thoughts kind of intermingling, and like I would say something, and he was like, Oh, I know I was thinking that, but I felt funny saying it, and then we would just go back and forth. One of the cool things about when you meet someone who just drives with you on your trips. So we get to the old part of Buddhva, and we're sitting there, and like we can't check into the hostel because the hostel doesn't um open until nine, no one's gonna be there until nine o'clock, so it's about 8:30, and we decided to just kind of do a little exploring, and I said, Let's go get a cup of coffee. So we went to this place that became my ritualistic spot for espresso, and they did also do a good espresso there, otherwise I wouldn't have gone back. And we were sitting there and we're like, we just were both just smiling, finally seeing like the water, and we're sitting there, we're like, Well, what can we get for breakfast? The guy said, Well, everything's closed, but I could bring you some some cheese. All right, that works. Bring us some cheese. So we had I had little cheese sticks with my coffee with these pillows of fried dough. So almost like a pizza frita, if you've known, if you know what that is. And he would bring that, and we were just eating that, sipping our espresso, and we were ecstatic. And um, so again, like I always bring it back to that coffee ritual because the the ritual of coffee is really the invitation to experience life for me. You often know, like I I know every time I'm sitting down with a cup of coffee, it's often to take in the environment there that's around me, to to meet somebody, to get to know someone better. Um, so that is the why I use coffee and how I use coffee to enhance and enrich my experience of life. And the whole point of me coming on here and doing this episode in in the first place was to make you aware, to bring some consciousness to this ritual rather than just brainlessly making your cup of coffee, dumping it down the hatch, and going about your day. To make you think differently about it. So this way, when you're sitting there and rather than you may have to take your cup of coffee on the into the car or onto the train, right? Who gives a crap where you're consuming it? But allow it to be that trigger, allow it to be that point in your day where you're you're looking at it and you're like, with the sip, you're like, wow, what's great about right now or about this moment? What can I appreciate about this moment? What is what is great about my life? Use it to anchor in more empowering rituals and habits into your life, more empowering ways of focusing about the blessings in your life. Do that over and over and over, and your coffee ritual will start to change your life. Really, it's you changing your life by just by anchoring it to the coffee ritual, but it'll start to become second nature because coffee, happiness, coffee, happiness. You start to anchor that to it. So that is what I had that that was my intention. That's all I have for you guys today. I hope you get a little bit of that um of just even doing the gratitude and realizing that every moment is a blessing. Um, so to give you a little bit of homework, think of how you use your coffee ritual, right? And the coffee ritual could be maybe you don't drink coffee, maybe you drink tea. But what what do you how do you use the rituals in your life? And how do you show up? When you wake up in the morning, are you in a pissy mood, which is okay, right? It's I it's I've been there many, many times. Sometimes I've been there longer than others, but it's not okay to stay there. Because it starts to take over and ruin your life, and you don't want to make that your habitual state of being because it'll it's gonna it'll ruin everything. Just get the awareness. Notice where you are. And then when you know where you are, now all of a sudden we could, with that awareness, we say, is this a place we want to stay? Do I want to stay here? Do I want to be miserable and pissy like a like a scrooge when I wake up in the morning? No, great, right? What do I have to do? Pick something. Let it be your cup of coffee, your cup of rouse coffee. Rousecoffee.com. But let it be something that you do every single day so you can start to anchor a new pattern, a new feeling. It's not gonna be easy, right? In the beginning, it's gonna be hard. In the beginning, you're not gonna anchor it, it's gonna feel awkward, but keep doing it. By doing it over and over, you'll start to notice that there are gonna be small changes, and that those small changes that you feel in your being and your state are changes that you created because you consciously made the effort to focus your mind in a direction, and as a result of constantly pulling your focus in that direction, that all of a sudden is now where the mind is going, where it is pointing. Nothing in life, well, things it's easy, but difficult in application. Right? If it were easy, everyone would be if it were easy in application, everyone would be doing it. Everyone wants the great body, no one wants to work out. They want the great body, they don't want it. Sacrifice eating like you know, the shitty food that's filled with fat and grease. You gotta do the work. Right? We all have to do the work. And you could do it, you've done it a million times over in your life. Maybe not with one of the things that you're having the challenge with now, but in other areas of your life, you've done it. You have to have done it. There's no way you could survive and be here right now if you hadn't. So get in a more empowering vision. Realize that life is happening right now, that every single moment is beautiful. So long as you just stop and take that moment to appreciate it. Do it once, it'll feel good. Do it twice, it's gonna feel even better. Do it three times and more, it's gonna transform you. That is all I got for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed this episode here. Uh, if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Share it with somebody whom you feel like can use this, and really everybody can use this, right? Who doesn't need the reminder to stop pee and just enjoy the moment and to move their focus into the things that matter to them? I'm raising my hand here because I constantly need that re uh refocusing, because otherwise my mind and my eyes are looking, I'm going all over the place. I constantly need to come back to my center. And so do you and everyone you love. So share this with them. If you have any questions or comments, you can send them to me via my website at www.donnyrouse.com, d-o-n-n-y-r-a-us- dot com. And please, please, please, please, please, if I say it three more times, maybe I'll do it. Please, please, please. If you enjoyed this, please leave a review on this podcast and Apple and Spotify, because it helps get the message out. That is all I've got for you guys today. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Remember, you'll only get one life. Live fully, live passionately, drink lots of coffee, and most of all, live now. God bless you guys, and I will see you again soon.