Bringing Maximum Effort

Welcome back to another episode of Halftime Talks. My name is Rahim Rasul, and you’re listening to the podcast where we recognize that in the middle of our game of life, whether you’re up by 10 or down by 20, we all need halftime talks to uplift us, inspire us, and challenge us to bring that level of performance. You know it’s gonna take to win the game. Shimmy, shimmy off. Give me the mic so I can take her away for my average car. Yeah, we’re the home of the squad, the Broncos squads. So guess what? Guys, we’re here. It’s another episode. Really happy to be here, really happy that you are here.

And if you know anything about this podcast, you know the first place that we begin is with a little bit of appreciation. The place I want to begin is this idea of appreciating the abundance that we currently live in. No Just think about this. Over 150 years ago, there was only a billion people on the planet. Now there’s 7.5 or seven point something, something significant, and unemployment has been a relatively consistent thing. Over that time, there’s been enough food, there’s been enough education, there’s been enough jobs, there’s been enough resources for everybody. So thinking that we’re living in this abundant time of information, this abundant world of wealth, and this abundant world of ideas, knowing that we are capable, we are having that capacity to fulfill the needs of an ever expanding demand that we’re putting on it, and it’s keeping up.

I appreciate our 21st century abundance, and that is an appreciation. I’m really excited about today’s episode. It comes straight from my journal. I love the word journal. If you think about it, it’s like the word day in French is jour, and so it’s the writing of the day. And I don’t know how to put this, I recently examined some of my behavior as awesome, and I saw that there was an inconsistency, so it forced me to sit back and and take inventory, and I want to share those ideas with you, because I know I’m not alone. I know we all have our ambitions and aspirations, and so I’m here to share that today in this episode.

So sit back, take some notes, open your mind, and let’s rock. I really can’t speak for you, so I am going to speak for myself. Me. Rahim, I can get a little bit obsessive. And one of the things I love, absolutely love getting obsessive about is the gym, like I’m in there four or five days a week. I’m lying maybe about six ish, sometimes five, right? So I’m in there killing it. And one of my constitutional personal values, especially with the gym or most things that I am deeply obsessed with or passionate about. I love the word obsession, but that’s a whole nother episode. Is if I’m there, I’m here to kill it, right?

I don’t want to just show up and check off that I showed up. I don’t just want to phone it in, like, if I’m there, like, let’s bring the best at us. The best of us, excuse me, to the forefront, and that has been playing a bigger role lately than ever. Like obviously, early on in your workout regimens, showing up is a trophy. Showing up consistently is the next trophy. And then you start working on your form, you start working on your technique, you start looking at the transformations going on in your body, and then something changes, and it changed for me as well. I could not live with myself if I didn’t give maximum effort.

And I see people on a treadmill just jogging like they’re running away from a three legged Chihuahua, or you see somebody lifting weights, and you’re just like, What are they doing? And so I’ve begun to notice within my own personal Constitution are a few values that I can’t seem to shake and so when I’m on a treadmill, or if I’m running and I want to quit, I have to ask myself a litany of questions, are you trying to leave some stuff on the table? Are you trying to leave it all out here on a treadmill? Are you going hard? Are you going. 100% are you about to quit on yourself, like man, like with that personal pressure and that personal peer pressure?

So there’s been days when I’ve doubled the length of my run, and there’s been days where I was in the middle of a run, stopped, felt like I quit on myself, and then came back and gave two times my intended effort. And so one of my goals is to definitely not leave anything on the table, because if we’re going to show up, we are going to show up with purpose, volition, intention, intensity, flow, focus, power, maximum effort. That is what we’re here to do. One of my other mental constitutional parameters is, are you listening? Are you constantly improving. Are you learning? Are you seeing where your holdups?

Are you listening to the stories that are going on in the back of your mind while you’re either lifting, while you’re while you’re running, while you’re doing core work, any kind of thing that we’re focusing on? Are you listening to the stories that you’re telling yourself? Because it is an inevitable consequence that if I stay on this road and believe in the progressive realizations of this dream, this desire, this goal from our body, which is not just an immediate dream, it’s not a summer thing. It is not a this year thing. It is a 25 year plus engagement, and as I surrender to that long term strategy, it affords me the ability to relax, be present, stop becoming outcome centric, and allow these progressive realizations of strength or speed or vitality or endurance to naturally begin to take root.

And so these two are the primary culprits that I’ve been really present to lately. The challenge, the challenge that I have thus discovered are the other aspects of my life which I am as passionate about I don’t have these same rules and constitutions in place. And so in my journal, I could feel the incongruency of that. I could feel the hypocrisy of that, the paradox of that at play. And so now what I’m challenging you with is the way that you go about those things that you’re intense, you’re immersive, you’re obsessed with and passionate about, how can we add that blueprint, that understanding, that clarity that we’ve achieved in these great peak areas and other places, and transfer them over?

And that thing that you want to build, that you want to grow, that you see the outcome, but you just don’t know how to bridge it over. Can you be as passionate? Can you not quit on yourself? Can you ask yourself if this is just discomfort or pain, and give it 200% can you leave here tired knowing that you gave it your all in any domain you want to grow and build the skills in. Can you get a little less outcome centric, right? Can you surrender to the inevitability of your realization of this worthy desire, and will that surrendering to the big picture, the inevitability of that rendezvous allow you to take in more in the present and be kinder and more compassionate to yourself as you traverse through this field and acquire the conceptual models, the thinking, the techniques, the nuances, the learning your own body, the stories that will serve you along the way.

And as I sat with this as it relates to not just this podcast, but the other projects that I have in the works, I am challenging myself. I’m challenging myself on one front. Can you be as intense at peace and committed to bringing about the long term, lasting change, which all of this implies. Can you give yourself to compassion, compassion to learn along the way? Can you give yourself the compassion it takes, not only just to listen to your body, discover more about your process, to learn new techniques along the way, and allow those techniques to not just be intellectual, theoretical, but to be an experience?

Financial leap into an understanding of possibility and potentiality that you hold, the congruency that we look for in the world, we must also demand from ourself. Sometimes, the congruency that we look for in the world, we must also demand from ourself. Sometimes, when we listen to others talk about their dreams or what they’re going to do, or what they plan to do, or what they learned in school, we ask, How is this reflective in your life? And so I ask you, Rahim, I ask you audience, I ask any, any whose ears are listening, does the work you do pass the eye test, past your own inner critique, the standards that you put for others, can you hold yourself to that same standard, not in one fragment, one fraction, one dimension of your life, but all around so these are the challenges that we’re facing.

I don’t know the per se challenges that you are meeting on a day to day basis. I don’t know if right now you are in the middle of the fourth quarter of the last series of your playoffs, smelling, tasting and capable of touching, if you only just reach out that desire, or if you’re at the beginning of the process where everything right now may feel overwhelming, but I challenge you to understand that you are Not solving for just an instance. You are not solving for this this alone. You are acquiring the capacity to approach this and all things like it, which will come along your path.

And that comes with a process, that comes with evolution, that comes with experiences of understanding how to cope with life as it unfolds. We can all hope and dream and pray that it will unfold to our delight. But guess what? Sometimes it doesn’t go down like that. So this episode, I’m asking you to challenge yourself in the way that you challenge yourself in those things that you’re obsessed and passionate with, and challenge yourself to that same degree on those things that you want to bring to that future state as well. You got it in you. You’re full of possibility and potentiality. And while we may not directly speak or know each other or talk to each other in a very intimate, personal way off this podcast, I tell you I believe in your dreams, because your dreams are like mine.

Sometimes we feels like we have to cross this cavas to reach them, but they are still possible. My name is Rahim Rasul. Thank you for listening to this episode of halftime talks. If you have any questions, just reach out to us. Where I am at Rahim rasul.com, you can go on halftime talks. You can leave us a message in iTunes, leave a comment, a rating, a review, share with a friend. The more who know, the more we grow. And guess what? Man like despite all that’s going on in the world right now, we definitely want to grow, because the more who know, the more we grow. And it has been my distinct pleasure of sharing this with you today and until next time halftime talks. Rahim, peace, you.