Rewards of Reps

Welcome to another episode of Halftime Talks. My name is Rahim Rasul, and you’re listening to the podcast where we recognize that in a military game of life, whether you’re up by 10 or down by 20, we all need halftime talks to uplift us, inspire us, and even challenge us to bring that level of performance you and I know it’s gonna take to win the game.

And we’re back. If you listen to this, you’re quite aware that I’ve taken the longest hiatus up to date in all of these 190 plus episodes so far, but I’m here, and I don’t want you to think that I forgot about you. I just been working on some stuff. 2020, early. 2021, it’s not just you, it’s the world, and the world includes me. So we’ve been up, we’ve been down, we’ve been all around. But through it all, we remain right here together. So hopefully you’ve been enjoying some of that evergreen content that’s available in the feed. And without further ado, let’s just get into this episode.

This episode is going to talk about the reward of reps, getting out of the delusion that our natural ability is enough to be considered mastery, or enough to fashion expertise in the reps, we discover ourself. We discover new abilities, technical abilities and psychological abilities that help us, aid us, assist us in navigating toward our ultimate vision. But a lot of times, we feel that discomfort, we feel that pain, we feel humbled by life, that we hesitate. So in this episode, I want to share a story, share some examples and share some challenges for you. How you can get the reward out of your reps? Let’s go to begin this episode, I want to make some simple things clear.

What I am speaking about, especially in reps, are when you have a transformational aspiration, be it skill, psychological, financial or the development of any ability that you can see providing your life value, not as a means to an end, but an end unto itself, something that You can continue to go back to the well at later stages of your life because of the training and investment that you put in now. So a lot of times our ambitions are, are transactional. There should there are means to an end. They’re a facilitator that stands in between where we are where we want to be. But those true goals, those everlasting goals, those transformative goals, require training, require a climatization, an acclimation, a stepping up of self in order to be The requisite match to the version in our vision.

And in that we experience reps, we go to bat over and over again and experience some resistance, some discomfort, feelings of overwhelming when nothing It seems that you’re doing is setting you on the trajectory toward your preference, and that’s due to so many things, a lack of conceptual models. Uh. Or an inability to catch the rhythm of the pace, and oftentimes, this early resistance is also the cause of parachuting out of something that will ultimately benefit us. How many times have you started something, and when the going gets tough, you start seeing some other viable, easier options now for these transformative, aspirational goals of becoming, of development of abilities, something that you can see projected into the future.

You use any skills you’re going to have to face them, or you’re going to quit, ultimately, on yourself. There is rewards in reps, and it’s these reps that we have to invest in, it’s the scenarios. It’s the stepping up to bat, and some will call this deliberate practice, and there’s value in it. For example, I want to tell you a story in 2009 I acquired, I purchased my first DSLR camera. Now, at that point in my life, I thought I loved cinematography, and so one of the aspects of cinematography is understanding how cameras work, how they create different vantage points, through positioning, through composition, through lens, and all this other behind the scenes, things that cameras can do.

And so I acquire that camera, and Hmm, it punched me in the face on day one on day one, it showed me that my natural ability with a camera wasn’t as far as I thought my vision could go. And so these early moments humbled me. I understand that it was a lot more than just point and shoot, the artistry, the styles, the the emotion, the storytelling was were skills that I didn’t I didn’t have at the time, and it came to an acute point when I went to my first South by Southwest. I have this camera. Have fresh batteries, I have what I think is a cool lens, and I’m standing in front of talent, I’m standing in front of artists, and I’m standing in different scenarios, and I’m looking at my photos and what I see with my eyes and what the camera is capable of capturing, it didn’t translate.

It went from photo after photo to 10s of photos to hundreds of photos to a few 100 photos, and I could only pull out a few viable photos, time would later tell me that those viable photos were still trash. It comes to the point now, 10 years later, after that day, I had to develop a different strategy, a different strategy to become the version of the photographer that I meant to become. It required me stepping up to the plate a lot more often than felt comfortable. It challenged me to orient myself in that discomfort differently. I didn’t change the results, but I changed my attitude toward the results that I was getting, I put my continuum on a spectrum of development.

I put myself on a path toward progressions, because there’s rewards and reps. And I bought a journal, and I wrote in that journal all the things that I was learning so I could take the camera off a manual and increase beautiful photos. And now, even over 1112, 13 years later, my photography is through the roof. I can confidently access my ability without the cognitive load, without a scenario stumping me, without really having to get too far into my head and not know how to solve a scenario as you persevere, as you. You withstand the feelings of discomfort as you withstand the feelings of overwhelming you are in a rarefied company.

No matter what ambition, no matter what goal, no matter what trial you set before yourself, you are in the game, whereas a lot of other people would have opted out, would have looked for an easier route. But the beauty of the reps is because it gives you real world scenarios. It gives you a library of skills. It gives you access to solutions, methods, approaches that have worked for you. It gives you a chance to get some real life understanding of your relationship outside of a cool idea, but now a practiced understanding. So what I challenge you first with is understand that this is all a game within a game within a game within a game of life.

At its core is life, and there’s learning all across each stage that we progress through. And as we progress, our progress is measured in our ability to embody the skills on the leading edge of who we’ve become, to have access and facility of what we have trained for. And make no mistake, this training is an investment a lot of times at the earlier stages, we don’t see it and as we don’t see it as an investment, and a lot of times at the earlier stages, we don’t see it and as we don’t see it as an investment, and we tend to want to cash out before the investment of ourself has matured.

But along the way, with these reps, the more you show up, the more you have faced, the more you have faced, the more you understand, the more you understand, the more you’re able to readily apply these skills to a moment that springs up. And a lot of times our ROI may be invisible, and by ROI, I mean our return on investment of the time, of the feedback, of the reflection, of the acquiring taste, of the mapping the domain, of becoming intimate with this domain and subject matter. It may sometimes feel invisible and subtle until a moment that it all clicks in, and in that moment we sometimes to diminish.

We diminish the road that it took to get there. But there are rewards and reps and some of the ways that we can feel a little better. We can take the load off of ourselves while we are doing it is as I’ve mentioned. View this view this time. View the reps, view our participation in this worthy goal as an investment. And if you studied investment, you put your money in and you let it grow. But this, I’m asking you to be a little bit more engaging, more mindful, more participating in the process. Also gamify it. Have fun with it. Enjoy your fumbles, and be curious about how you fumbled, why you fumble, because the reps are not just to share with you the technical skill, but it is also to demonstrate your psychological skills that might be necessary to get to where you want to be, observe how you feel in those moments where discomfort rises, and what were those triggers?

Because all of this game within a game within a game life is here for your own personal growth and actualization in this time and space. Understand that there are rewards and reps. Look at it before a game and. Any game, football game, basketball game, they’re taking shots. They understand the value of these shots. They understand the value of training, and they understand the value of investing in their self. Because when it clicks, it doesn’t click small, it clicks big. And what you learn here in these reps, I tell you, can be transferred to the other areas of your growth and development. Thank you for your time.

I appreciate it. I’ll hold you in a great space of reverence for trusting me, not just with your time, but the inclusion of some of my ideas into your burgeoning worldview. So my name is Rahim Rasul. This is halftime talks. Make sure you go subscribe. Make sure you also check out our evergreen content and until next time peace you.