Love What You Do, Do What You Love

Welcome 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 your 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 that you and I both know it’s gonna take to win the game.

Thank you guys for tuning in again to another episode. This episode was born out of a little bit of pondering, a little bit of contemplation, quiet contemplation that just felt so delicious that I wanted to share some of these findings, some of these conclusions with you. Back in the 80s, there was a powerful song by Huey Lewis in the news, power of love. And in today’s episode, what I want to talk about is the inclusion of love and how it relates and how it integrates with what we do and how we do it. And that can be career, that could be a passion project, that could be any project that gets our attention, but ultimately, we want to love what we do and do what we love, and believe that there is a renumeration and the value that the marketplace or the populace can return.

So without further ado, let’s get into it. Love what you do and do what you love. Let’s go. It’s that song was from DJ Jazzy Jeff off of his magnificent album. I think it came out around 2006 but that chorus, that chorus, used to speak to me. I didn’t even know who sang it, but it got lodged in my head, and I’d find myself repeating that part of the chorus over and over to myself. I eventually found the author the song, and I put it in my playlist. And anytime that I lose sight of what I’m here to do or how I’m here to do it.

I play love what you do and do what you love. Our society has created these demands that come natural during our pedagogical process of becoming the boy, turning into the man. And as we, as we navigate time, and I know for myself, we are all at different stages. Some are at the beginning of the race. Some are a little bit into it. Others are in the middle of the pack, in the middle of the heat of life, and others are in varying quarters. And so across our life, we’ve heard phrases, some phrases that we can probably deem as cliche, but there’s a paradox in cliche.

They are both meaningless and also the most meaningful statements, but it requires a little bit of life and a little bit of perspective to fully appreciate the meaning within the cliche. We hear it so often, we see it so often it doesn’t ring our bells and it doesn’t mean what it meant to those who who haven’t fully embraced the essence of it. One of the cliches that we hear is, follow your bliss. Follow your bliss. Another one is find what you love to do, and you’ll never work another day in your life. Now, depending on where you are, if you’re disoriented or if you’re going through something, these phrases are just you.

Uh, you know, on a nothing, they mean nothing. But time has granted me a gift. Time has allowed me to see what Joseph Campbell, one of my favorite philosophers and comparative mythologists, who devoted his life to understanding the parallels between spiritual and mythological systems across this earth. Follow your bliss with his phrase. What happens when you put yourself on the road with bliss being the orientation point of your compass? Where will it lead you? What will it show you, and how can it transform you? It may be cliche, but it’s meaningful for now. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt as we explore this idea even further.

Another phrase is, find what you love to do, and you’ll never work another day in your life. Now it’s challenging because the people who are espousing these ideas are successful, but it doesn’t show the in between steps of how to reconcile this idea into your life, what I will contend to you, especially as it relates to career and occupation, that there is clues. There are clues within our language that actually give us a little bit more insight and understanding into why love for what we do is the key. Now, typically, like I said, when we begin our venture into a space, the label that they put on you is amateur.

But at the root of amateur is a more is love itself. When you’re doing what you love. Let’s look at another word. Another word is professional. If you deconstruct this word, there is this notion of profess. Now Amour and profess, profess what to stand on the edge of the stage and profess what the importance, the significance of what you love so inextricably tied within these two words, or an embodiment of an penultimate ideal of love, even the word vocation, A calling, something that you’re called to do, a compulsion, a force in and of itself that is meant to be shared. I contend to you that within these words, how we engage in the marketplace, how we see ourselves bringing value to the world, how we see ourselves calibrating our skills, technical and soft skills, how we’re shaping our mind, how we’re orienting ourself with the dominant part of the proportion that we give to the World is based in love.

The words begin to reflect it. You know that Huey, Huey Lewis in a new song, the power of love, right? There is its own power, but it requires something of us before it can give in kind. It requires a commitment. A commitment to me means no matter what I’m gonna stick with you, it requires an investment in spiritual systems across the world. Some call it tithe. Some call it a tribute. Some call it an offering. And I would even flip it a little bit and ask you, who are you willing to be in order to let this thing into the world? And what happens is.

As we engage in a domain of our interest, of what we love, we begin to see something emerge. The domain itself opens. It opens itself to you. It provides energy limit. Let limitless energy, where you stay up, where it feeds you, where you drift upon the wings and and the clouds of inspiration, where you are given secrets to the depths of the domain that some may not have access to loving. What you do creates its own gravity in your life. The secrets of the domain will be revealed to you. Energy and time itself will seem to transform before your eyes. You can stand in the face of discomfort in pursuit of this love longer than those who haven’t made its commitment.

And that investment, as we caution, to try to draw out the dividend immediately, where we don’t try to force the outcome into coming too soon, we allow our investment to mature like amortization, it begins to build, it begins to grow, and the dividend accompanies that commitment to love. I want you to think back to the time when you were young and you were in love with anything, and at that age, it was most obviously a hobby. It was a extracurricular activity. Do you remember what it did to your curiosity. Do you remember when there was a feeling of nothing but open road ahead of you?

Do you remember how you felt is you began to put the pieces together as your skills came into place, as you demonstrated a facility of ability, a faculty of ability that as your skills came into place, as you demonstrated a facility of ability, a faculty of ability that was equal to and better than anybody around you. Something inexorably happens where we get to the end of our high school and we’re asked to choose a career, and nowhere in that is love. We turn our back to that love, and we scroll our finger down, and we look at salaries, and then we scroll it all the way down the line to see what occupation it is associated with and that it that begins the departure of love.

I pursued a degree in marketing. I went to college. I was steeped in it. I was halfway through my experience, and then I remembered, I love design, and outside of all of my coursework, I found myself in a library never having taken a class in design or never, never will take a class in design. At that point, I had the manuals for Photoshop, and I was studying them. I couldn’t take them out of the library, so I took notes and went to the computer lab and practiced. I’d go to libraries, I go to Barnes and Nobles, and I get magazines, and I would write down notes, and I would get better.

I would walk around with a billfold of flyers and ask myself, how did they do this? What I’m describing is behavior that doesn’t make sense, but when somebody tells you, Oh, they’re in love, you’re given the benefit of the doubt. Love created within me, a natural curiosity, an unquenchable thirst, and enough fuel to take me in any direction I wanted. I continued. I got better, my skills of all, and eventually, guess what happened? It became my profession, my love, my vocation. It still fuels me to this day. It’s just so interesting, as we see, what came natural to us. We. What is capable of delivering.

You know, I used to always look at the idea of genius, and we all have it. And where is it? Always expressed in a domain of interest and in a domain of love. The clues are there. So often, everything else creates an environment of dissatisfaction, of resentment, of doing a should. And then, as our light begins to dim, we begin to doubt the possibility. We begin to constrain our options, but I challenge you to open up your areas of interest, begin as a hobby in the evening. Are you willing to commit to something? Are you willing to invest in something. Are you willing to invest in you?

Are you willing to commit to yourself? Because this power that I describe as love is capable of feeding you, nourishing in you, sustaining you, and building a version of you that you’ll be proud to look at each day you stand before the mirror, no matter how much perception of time you think you have remaining. I’m not asking for you to quit your job. I’m not asking for you to do a complete about face in a life, but I am asking you to carve, carve a space for yourself, and as you carve a space for yourself, you’ve also taken the first step in carving a space for love.

And as you allow it to bloom and blossom, that attention in this one area can ignite all areas. It can allow that essence of you to radiate in all directions of your life. It’ll give you the fire to stay up late and to wake up early. It will give you the passion to find and be curious and look for the answers that seem to escape you. This is what following your bliss is the sacrifices that you make and love are no longer sacrifices the commitments that you make to love, and loving what you do and doing what you love is a transformative commitment, and you are no longer the person that you began as, because the road itself has shown you versions of yourself that you’re so willingly and will apply.

There’s been another episode of Hatton Talks. My name is Rahim Russell. Thank you for listening. Make sure you go listen to our other episodes in the vault, because they’re evergreen, and you know, you’ll never know what you need until you see it? So go look through the list, and hopefully you’ll see something until next time, be bold. Be true and be you. Peace. You.