Bad Day, Good Life: Rediscover Joy in the Everyday

Have you been so caught up in your day-to-day that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to live your day, not just get through it?

In this episode, we explore just it is to let stress and routine distort your perspective, making a hard day feel like a hard life. But what if the truth is, everything is actually okay… you're just zoomed in too far?

In this episode I'll share my own story of nearly hitting a breaking point, then finding surprising peace, not by fixing anything, but by stepping out of the cycle. One impulsive decision to chase a sunset led to perspective, presence, and the perfect Shanghainese dumplings. It’s a reminder that a bad day doesn't equate to a bad life, that zooming out gives perspective to life's stressors, and that life’s magic moments rarely show up in your planner.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Are you zooming in on your life's problems?
• If you zoom out and look at the big picture, how is your life really? What really matters?
• What can you do to invite more of the "feeling of aliveness" into your day?

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Most people spend their entire life stressed without ever giving a single thought as to what it is they really want and what's important to them. See, I'm here to cut through all that noise connecting you to yourself and the life that you were meant to live. I used to live away the cover job and I hated. But I broke through the social norms and pursued my happy. As a result, I own my own coffee company, and the customer, and I get to travel. You too can live a life that you want, but it starts with the inquiry about what you want. It starts with a new decision. I'm your host, Donnie Rams. You are listening to the podcast. One life. So as the season, the summer season progresses, it kind of stacks until there's a point where I feel like there's a breaking point. Granted, I try to, you know, take these breaks, go see sunsets and watch sunrise, which I haven't done many this year, and hit the gym. But even with that, it's not enough to kind of offset the emotional like uh heaviness of feeling like there's not enough time or that there's too many things going on for me to control. So the real problem here is really my my focus was just too focused on all of the the immediate things that needed my attention, that I wasn't putting the right planning into my day, and and I wasn't giving myself the credit for and and panning out to see just exactly how much stuff I have to be grateful for. So the story takes place. I had just finished a uh a market, and I was just feeling really, really stressed in the sense that like my body was just, if you looked at me, you can tell that I was feeling it, the like the just the stress from doing the production, like you know, the carrying, uh all the physical labor of it. And so I I came home from doing one of the markets, and I said, you know what? I'm just gonna take a nap. So I slept for half an hour, woke up, I felt completely different than I did uh, you know, the 30 minutes previously. And I said, Well, what am I gonna do now? It's actually still early normally. Like I'm I'm cleaning, I'm getting everything ready for the following day, but I got some time right now. I'm not gonna worry about doing the other stuff. Let me do something for me. So it was around uh probably around like 6:30, 7 o'clock. I say, I am gonna go watch the sunset. That to me sounds amazing. So I was going towards the place I normally go to. I normally go to Cove Island Park and watch it uh sling a hammock and then watch the sunset as I'm eating my dinner. This time I I had this aspiration to go to the top of the mall parking lot. It's one of the higher buildings, I guess, that you have access to in the downtown Stanford. So I uh I took my my dinner as a last-minute decision. I turned towards the mall. Going up the mall parking lot, you know, I kind of there's this nice spiral thing uh that brings you all the way up to the top. And I was trying to drive to the roof, a security guard right next to um right next to the ramp that went up. And knowing that I'm not supposed to be there, I just kind of like pretended like I was looking around with it, and then just kind of went up and then jumped the uh jumped the chain fence, and then now I'm on top of the roof. So I'm sitting on the roof, and there was this, you know, this um there's a light pole there with a giant concrete base, and it's positioned away, so it's almost like in a diamond shape, I guess, depending on how you look at it. It's always a diamond shape, right? But where the sunset was, it was almost like the the the square was pointing in that direction, right? So it's not really comfortable to sit on. And so I was like, all right, well, let me let me sit somewhere else. Let me so I sat on this platform and I watched it, and it was everything was still. The only thing up there was me and the seagulls and a lot of seagull poop that was literally just scattered everywhere. You look at there was like a thousand of them, and they all just like bombed the uh the top of this parking garage. But I managed to find a small spot that was poop-free, and I sat there and I opened my you know my um my dinner and I just started to eat, enjoying the beautiful view. Everything seemed calm, everything seemed quiet. One of my favorite parts of the day for that exact reason. As I was sitting there appreciating, I was just like, man, like I want to see what the view like I my view to give you uh a visual of it, like so because I'm sitting on the ground, there is a barrier at the end of the garage. So I what I was seeing, and I was a little bit set far back. So what I was seeing from my view was mostly like the parking lot, although I did have a nice view of the buildings in the background with the sun, but I like you know, if you if I look just straight, it was all parking lot. So I had the idea. I was like, let me let me go walk around the the the mall, you know, the uh the parking lot perimeter. So this way I could I want to just see what it looks like. But then I was like, well, you know, maybe that's not a good idea because one people have been known, there have been people who had jumped from the top of the parking lot to commit suicide. And the last thing I want to do was kind of draw attention to myself and get caught being up there when I'm not supposed to. So I I kind of sat there and I was just like, all right, well, let's scratch that. I'm just gonna stay here. I was staying there and eating, and then I was thinking to myself, I was like, well, I would never jump, right? I love my life, and I started to pan out of you know, of my current situation and the stresses that I was feeling in that day. I started to pan out and look at the bigger picture. And looking at that bigger picture, I realized that everything was good, that I yeah, I did love my life. I got to do my passion, I got to travel the world. It was everything was great. But isn't that true of life? Sometimes you're so focused on the things that's going wrong, the stressors in your day or in that moment, that you say, you know, bad moment, bad life, bad day, bad life, bad week, bad life, bad month, bad life, bad year or years, bad life. When it's just not true. One thing that's guaranteed in life is pain, right? And and and you're gonna get challenged, you're gonna have to grow. But that doesn't mean that life is bad. Just because you have challenges doesn't mean that life is bad. Just because things aren't going your way in this moment doesn't mean that life is bad. So sitting up there, that was like the big realization. I was like, huh, that's pretty freaking cool. And then so I sat down there with this new kind of outlook, and then you were just sitting there waiting for the sun to come down. Shortly after, the security guard, I hear something like a thump, and like, what the hell is that? I look, I turn my head and I see a guard coming up, and I was like, oh shit, here we go. I'll just pretend like I he obviously he's gonna tell me to leave, so I might as well just wait until he comes, you know, right there rather than just kind of see him jump up and then like scatter away. Came near me, he goes, Hey, do you know you're not supposed to be up here? I was like, uh no, but thank you. I was like, you know, this is the best sunset in the city. He's like, Yeah, you still can't be up here. I was like, Well, lucky you, you get to enjoy it. I was like, Well, thank you. See you later. And I went to I went back downstairs to my car. I by that point, you know, whether I saw the sunset or not, the benefit was already there. So then I uh I was about to leave. And again, like life happens in those small moments, right? Life doesn't happen in the in the planning and like that. Let me do this, let me do that. It happens in those moments that you're not planning. The moments that you take to step outside of that routine. So I was going down, I was going back down to my car and I was getting ready to leave. I was like, you know what? There is like a there's a Chinese place there. It was a Shenganese dumpling place. I was like, that place looks kind of cool. Let me just stop in and see it. I stopped in. I mean, the place was packed. It was uh supposedly they have a I think a restaurant in Flushing, and I think they have like some, I don't know if it's Michelin rated, which I don't know if that means anything, and it's not a Michelin star, but they might have a mention in Michelin. But anyways, this the restaurant was packed. So I looked around, I was like, well, I'm not waiting in that line because there was the line was all the way outside. But I saw one spot at the bar between two people, and so I kind of went over there, hey guys, are this seat taken? They, you know, they were like, no, it's free, and then but it was like it was really crammed. So both parties made space for me, and I ended up getting a a um uh a uh dumpling sampler, and so it took a while for it to come, and I was ended up talking with uh a gentleman there who um uh I mean this is kind of like a side story, but he they were talking, he it sounded like they were kind of drunk, but in my mind, I'm I'm hearing them, but I'm also judging them. And then but in my but I have this habit of saying, well, no, rather when I catch myself doing that, I'm like, don't judge, everyone's experience is unique, appreciate. And so we ended up having a conversation. He started the conversation with me asking uh about like my dumplings because I had all these like different different colored dumplings. And turns out this gentleman traveled all around Asia, so we started connecting about uh about travel and where he's been. And uh he was a big proponent of Macau. He's like, You gotta go to Macau, it's amazing, Portuguese, blah, blah, blah. And I haven't been there yet, but he made it so interesting that I I think I might stop there at some point. And um long story short, well, one, the dumplings were amazing, they were very, very delicious, and it was exactly what I needed in my day to kind of to like kind of add on to what I had just experienced at top of the roof. Because, you know, having done that, I was so grateful that I just took a moment to step outside of my day and to experience something that I wanted to do, but it wasn't ready, I wasn't gonna make the time. But I remind myself, you know what? No, why not? Right? Like remembering that it's the moments that you don't plan that are the ones that are that are meaningful and that are you'll remember. Those are the ones that take you out of that pattern of just living mindlessly. One of the things why I love traveling so much, because when I'm there, there is there's no freaking plan. Well, for the most part, there's no plan. But I go and I explore and I experience new things, and as a result, I'm my my senses are wide open. And I'm open to receiving whatever the universe got, whatever they want to throw at me, here I am. So why do I tell you this? I tell you this for uh several reasons. One is to just get perspective on your life. Imagine this. Imagine you are, you know, you're in your body, but all of a sudden, like there's a little string that kind of pulls you out, and as it pulls you out, you're rising higher and higher and higher, and things are getting smaller and smaller and smaller. You still see yourself, but now you have perspective of everything else around you. You see the house, and as you pull away, you see how small everything is. And here's what happens when you do that. Like you try that out right now. One of the things that I notice is that you feel you realize that your problems are even smaller. You get perspective on everything, you realize that it's just it's just life. But it also helps you align to what's really important to you. And in the second part of the story I told you about stopping at the dumpling is just making time to step out of that routine. You know, when someone says, Hey, do you want to meet for a cup of coffee? and you're like, ah shit, I don't really have the time. Uh just do it. Because more likely than not, you probably have a few minutes to spend time with a friend, even if it's only a few minutes. But the reason you're telling yourself you don't have time is just because it's spiraling in your head. Take the moment, you know you'll appreciate it more, and it'll add tons of value to your day because you'll be more present, you'll feel connected to someone, and you know, happiness has more to do with the connections and the people that you interact with on a daily basis than whatever it is that you're achieving. Remember that. And um, so that's it. Enjoy life, right? Get perspective. Realize that things aren't as bad as you seem, but it's just the perspective, it's just the lens in which you are seeing it. So change the lens in which you're seeing the world, and then your life will change. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, please give it a thumbs up. Uh, leave a comment uh or review for the podcast. It helps get the podcast out there. And as always, guys, if you need if you have any questions, you can send them to me via my website at donnierouse.com, d-o-n-n-y-r-a-us.com. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. And 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.