Be Like Coffee - How To Turns Life's Unexpected into Joy

 Let's explore how the unexpected detours in life—those frustrating, off-script moments—may actually hold the key to more joy, presence, and growth than we realize.

After reflecting on a conversation with his friend Diego and a past travel experience in Montenegro, Donny unpacks how his mindset while traveling—open, curious, and flexible—was drastically different from the rigidity he sometimes felt at home. So what changed? Not the circumstances… just the story he told himself about them.

You’ll hear how shifting your perspective can transform your day, your mood, and your impact on the people around you. And you'll be reminded that the same flexibility that makes travel feel like an adventure can be applied to your everyday life—if you choose it.

By the end, you’ll ask yourself:
 – How do I react when things don’t go as planned?
 – What story am I telling myself—and is it helping me grow?
 – What would change if I approached today like an adventure?

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. I used to live the way the copper job and I hate it. As a result, I am my little coffee company. I'm just coffee company. You can live a life that you live. It starts completely. One life. Donnie Rouse here, and today we are going to talk about dealing with life lemons. Said differently, dealing with the unexpected things that pop in your day and tend to throw you off course. So let me ask you a question. How do you respond? When things come into your day that are unexpected, or how do you respond? When you are driving towards a specific goal that you that you want, and all of a sudden things don't go your way. Maybe you you you're moving towards uh a specific direction, and all of a sudden you hit a dead end. And then you go in a different direction and you hit a dead end. And it seems like every turn is a dead end. How do you respond? Now I'm willing to bet that the way you respond is you're probably getting really, really frustrated. And if this is you, I want you to take a step back and I want you to just first and foremost think about how that frustration, how when you hit that wall and how you react after that, how that affects the family that you interact with, your friends, how you were able to show up into the community. Then I want you to imagine for a second that you were you had the fortitude, you had the mindset to really bounce back and see anything, everything as a gift. How would you respond differently? What kind of impact would you have on those around you? The story I'm about to share with you is really one from my own experiences. I had a conversation with my good friend Diego, and to kind of give you the uh give you the details prior to it, every time I would go on a trip and I would travel, uh, I would come back and I would feel like I was a different person. Meaning, like when I was traveling, I felt like I was I was living life one way, but then when I came back to the United States, I feel like there was a shift in how I approached life and how I saw the world around me. And for the longest time, I was like, you know what, it's it's it's because of travel, right? I just need to get out to the world. I need to go out there and do more. And the funny thing is, whenever I was traveling, whenever it's not that I've traveled to 62 countries so far, and it's and it's not that the experiences I have are always go as planned. If anything, it's quite the contrary. If anything, the there's actually quite a lot of unexpected that pop up when I am traveling, such as missing flights, uh, getting, you know, the the train striking and have to get off at some random stop and then figure out how to get back to your you know you know your where you're staying. That happens in Italy a lot. They just strike for no reason. But how I was would respond in instances like that, I the way I would see the world was like, oh, great, an adventure. I wouldn't let anything that happened knock me off kilter. And instead, I would use it as a way of uh experiencing the moment even more. To give you another example, I was when I was in um when I was traveling in Matagori when I met my friend Diego. We had been uh we had met in in Budapest, but we hadn't really traveled in Budapest. We were just kind of going our own our own way. And then the one of the last nights we just started talking again, and we're like, hey, where are you going after this? And we ended up booking a trip to Montenegro last minute. It was like the most, you know, talk about fate, how things happened. I was ready to book a trip to Malta, and then he texted me, he said, I booked Montenegro. I was like, all right, well, scratch that. I'm going to Montenegro as well. When we got to the capital, Montenegro, and we were we got to our hostel. The hostel was like kind of not really in the middle of nowhere, but it was kind of far out there, right? It was like felt very rural. And in order to get into the center town, we would have to walk about a half an hour. And with, you know, and then pile on that, that one that the the town had very, the city had like a kind of a a Cold War, um, kind of like a cold war vibe to it. And then we also had bad weather. It was raining, it was overcast. So just made to like really, really turn the experience into something that was not what we had expected. That night, uh, everyone at the hostel, we all ended up making dinner, having drinks together, ended up being one of the best nights. And it's funny because Diego and I, we talk about that. How even one of my our another mutual friend, our friend Harry from England, and how that one night, which seemed like it was gonna be, you know, had everything to make it horrible, right? Like bad weather, you know, in the middle of nowhere, all of a sudden it turned out to be a gold nugget. Like we we we mined a diamond there, and we all went out and and ended up being good friends, and a bunch of us ended up going and meeting up in Budva, another uh one of the coastal cities, and having an amazing time there. So, fast forward, I'm talking with my friend Diego, just catching up, saying, Hey, how is everything? How is life? And he was mentioning to me, he said that his um he was living back at home, he's putting money away because he has the intention of going to Japan to study and get his master's program. And how he was there, I was like, Well, how was that going? I mean, God, it it's got to be really difficult. Like speaking from experience, I know exactly how you can fall into old habits, patterns, routines being around like your family because they know you as you know that old that the old person that you are. And there's no doubt in my mind from the travels that he had just experienced, being three months abroad, he's he came back a very different person. And so he had mentioned that he had been meditating uh a little bit like more frequently and had slowed his mind down, even when he found it challenging that he was still doing the meditation, and slowing his mind down allowed him to be more present. And what he found was that he was able to shift the way he responded when at home, and if anything, actually uh be a uh more of a positive influence to his parents. And he was telling me how his his habits, like things that he once did for and found joy in, he didn't find joy anymore. Like he might go out to like the bars and dance, but it was only to meet, go out there and and meet girls. But then he realized, you know what, I really don't like dancing. So why am I gonna go out there? So he decided he he just got a lot more aware. And it was because of this experience that he was able to see that how he showed up at home and how he showed up and when he was traveling, that he could he could bring that same part of himself to where he's at home. So as he's sharing this with me, it really struck me as I mean, this is something I've knew and and thought about, but for some reason, sometimes when things are mirrored back to you, they just they just hit differently. So he's sharing this with me, and I was thinking about it. I'm like, because people, my friends are always like, Well, why don't you just bring the same Donnie from abroad and bring him back home? And I was like, Oh, yeah, sounds easy, but the world is you know, United States is X, Y, and Z. And you tell yourself a bullshit story that locks you into this fixed mindset and way of being. So as a result of hearing him, his story, instead, now instead of someone else suggesting, hey Donnie, why don't you respond by acting the same way? By hearing him tell his story, I was giving myself a different story, right? Isn't that what the power of stories is that when you hear someone tell your story, you are pitching yourself in their shoes. And as a result, you're able to apply that to your own life. So as he was sharing this story, I was thinking it to myself. I was like, well, wow, it's so freaking true. Like when I think of, you know, a setback here, when I'm when I'm traveling a setback, I'm like, fuck yeah, man, an adventure. Yeah, this is unexpected, but it's gonna be fun. I'm gonna make the most of it. When a setback happens here, I'm like, this is not what I planned. I'm like, this is not going the way I wanted it to go. You know, it can't be. And I will literally resist and fight the present reality, trying to manipulate or make it mold it into what I want. But the only things it ends up doing is put me under a lot of stress and frustration. Can you relate? So I had been thinking about what if I approached life that way? Right? What and then in a lot sometimes it happens that way. And I was thinking about the the present circumstances with my business in terms of uh my bottled espresso and how it's really been, you know, like the entire 15 years I've been doing it, I've been really wanting to scale it for quite a while. And every time I would hit a snag, I would be fixed on doing it my way until all the options ran out. And I'm like, all right, well, I guess I have to go this way, you know, and I would go in that new direction. But I could have saved so much time and energy if I had just had that flexibility and adopted that mindset, like, oh, well, something, there's got to be a gold nugget here somewhere. Let me just find it and go off in that different direction and just realize that you're guided in every step. And really the the meaning is up to you, what you give that moment, right? I could be home and say, Oh, it sucks going out here because everyone's young, everyone's old, everyone's married, I'm single, there's no one my age that it I could tell myself that bullshit story, but there's only one thing that it's gonna give me. It's gonna give me staying home, not really going out and doing a whole lot. Or I could tell myself a new story, but you know what? This is an adventure. Let me go out, let me just start meeting people. Are there people my age? Are there well let's go, let's let's think about it from the opposite. Like, are there a lot of married couples here? Yes, of course. This is, you know, Fairfield County, a lot of people move out. I could say that's that's relatively true. Are there a lot of young people here? Yes, you know, Yukon Stanford's down there, a lot of younger people crowd the downtown. Is that true? Sure. Is it true that there's no one my age or no one single? Is that true? And you might be like, well, I could try to justify and be like, well, yeah, you know, most people my age are probably married, they don't have the like the lifestyle and desires that I have, but it's bullshit. I know it's bullshit because I can go into the city, I could find a lot of people who have similar interests, who have similar desires as I do. Even today I had a conversation with a gentleman who is looking to start a beverage business. And realizing that there was just so much in common in our stories. But if you don't get out of that bubble, if you don't shift the way you see things, you're gonna be in that fixed, you're gonna be in the tunnel vision. You're not gonna see all the other opportunities, all the other possibilities that are around you. And I'm I'm referring to, I feel like I'm I'm going into the uh, you know, the experience of travel and bringing it back home. But it what I'm really talking about is just bringing the mindset and knowing that life can be an adventure if you choose to make an adventure. Life can be whatever you want it to be, but no, notice that you are the one that's in the driver's seat. You are the one choosing your story. Now, it might sound triggering, and I know you'd be like, Well, what do you mean I choose my story? Like, I didn't choose to be to be sick, I didn't choose to have, you know, to be in this financial situation, I didn't choose to, you know, to lose my job, whatever it may be. That's fine. You didn't choose that, but you can choose how you respond to it. You can choose the story you tell yourself about that circumstance. Because if you tell yourself a shitty story, you are gonna be in that shitty place and you are gonna move from there until you tell yourself a better story. Just like I wasn't able to see that there were other options being here. I I told myself the story that I need to leave. And if I have desires to move somewhere else and and live somewhere, that's totally fine. But that is not helping the current reality. If anything, it closes you off creatively uh creatively from living a life that's in more alignment, living a life that's more joyous, living and creating a life that is that is unique to you. So in closing, I want you to just to uh notice how you've been showing up. How have you been showing up in your day? Like, do you and you could say how are you, how do you respond when you're not in your present day? Right? You may how do you respond when you're on vacation? You'd be like, well, on vacation, huh, I feel so free, right? I and when a problem arises, I feel X. And then how do you respond when you come back home? When that's it, when those problems arise. Like sometimes the problems that arise when you're abroad or on vacation or something, that could be even bigger, right? You break a leg and you're like, ah, whatever. I still can't get it wet, but I can still hop in the water. You know, you you figure out ways to make it work. What if you brought that same mindset back home with you? How would that affect your day? How that would that affect your family? How would it affect your work and your community? There's no doubt that if you bring that better part of yourself, the entire world around you is gonna feel its benefits. So I encourage you to be like water. Uh the last little story rand I'll go on to. So as I was having this, this uh after having this conversation and this thought being like kind of in my mind, right? I was sitting down for meditation this morning and I was just meditating, and all of a sudden, Bruce Lee's voice came in, but he didn't say be like water, he said be like coffee. So I was like, be like coffee, fluid. And so and the whole point of it is to be flexible. Because uh there's saying this like the person who's most flexible is the one who wins, meaning the more flexible you are to life, realizing that you cannot control the events around you, the more you free yourself up to respond, to enjoy and experience more positive emotions. So be like coffee. You put coffee in the pot, it becomes the pot. You put I don't don't remember the rest of the quote, but you get the pain. So that is all I've got for you guys today. I hope this helped you just kind of maybe think of how you're approaching your day and say, well, how would I approach it if I were living in this mindset or if I had this belief? Because the truth is that we get to choose who we are in every single moment, and we also get to choose the filter in which we look at life. And if you would just try that on, say, if life were a dance, how would I look at this? If life was a put it, you know, the the the new lens on, if life was a party, how would I look at the situation in front of me? And then choose to just maybe dabble with it and try it on to see how you respond differently to the events of your life. That is all I've got for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I hope it helps you realize that you don't have to be so rigid, but that you can be fluid and try on and have a completely different experience in your day-to-day. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share with someone whom you feel could benefit from it. Please share this with one or two people if you know anyone who could benefit, but also just leave a um some feedback. Let me know how you enjoyed this. So this way I know what resonates with you, and we can get the podcast out to more people. So that is all I've got for you guys today. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Remember, 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.