The Crowded Mind

Music. Welcome to another episode of Halftime Talks. My name is Rahim Rasul, and you’re listening to the podcast that recognizes that in the middle of your game of life, whether you’re by 10 down by 20, we all need halftime talks to uplift us, inspire us and challenge us to bring that level of performance. You and I both know it’s going to take to win the game.

Want to begin this like we begin all weeks with a sense of appreciation opportunity for us to take take a step back and evaluate our relationship with the things that we want and our approach to achieving it. Recently, I had a little abdominal strain or tear or something, something that sent my physical regimen off balance. So in today’s appreciation, I want to talk about health. You know, it’s all good when it’s good, but are we prepared? Are we maintaining our system? Are we trying to fleece this golden goose for all of its eggs? Or Are we maintaining and building a system that allows us to perform each and every week, step up to the plate of life, and be able to give our mobility, our freedom, our strength, in a way that we actually can and so being constricted and restricted, I saw how much my movement practice, my strength practice, allowed my mind to be at ease.

It gave it a corner to perform in, and settled everything else down. I love I love movement. I love fitness, not necessarily for the immediate results, but all the corresponding elements that are tied to it, the energy, the vitality, the focus, the drive, the dedication, the commitment, the showing up, the working through discomfort and all of that. And if I didn’t have health, I’d only have one dream, and that would be to have health.

In today’s episode. What I want to talk about is this sense of overstimulation that has become quite the norm. It has created an effect, an effect that I call the crowded mind. And we have so many things competing for our attention right now. We have our phones, we have our friends, we have our work, we have our ambitions, we have our health, we have our life, and it becomes sometimes muddied, watered, muddied waters. To the extent that there’s so many directions that we go, we take two steps forward and we take two steps back. We have all this movement yet no direction, no inertia, no propulsion.

It is that crowded mind where now we, if we’re serious about our intentions in what we prefer to create, we have to begin to delegate, to minimize and simplify. What we give our attention to. It is in everybody’s interest to have a piece of the real estate called our attention. It is of everybody’s interest to bring the most and best of our energy to their subject matter, but let’s take a second. Let’s ask ourselves, what’s important to us, what moves the needle? How do we begin to order our mind in the model for this exists. It exists in professional settings. We need a bouncer. We need somebody who has the criteria for what our mind will become exposed to often as even I turn on the TV and see the news on the way to sports triggered.

I’m triggered mentally, cognitively and emotionally, and I only have enough cognitive load and energy to distribute across the things that I’m passionate about bringing into the world. So the first thing we have to establish is. What is the criteria for what we will expose our minds to, no different than the bouncer in front of an establishment with the dress code or with certain people on the list. And it’s just like on our phone, our favorites you can you can get through, let him pass. He can get through. She can get through. And then with those that we do give our attention, how do we simplify that?

How do we take the complexity out of things that we’re so often used to? Do we systematize? Do we build? Do we establish an understanding of continuity of how we will flow through into our outcome? I think an overcrowded mind doesn’t give us a lot of flexibility and mobility to move and think and be creative. We become mechanical. We end up trying to micro, plan and micromanage and and multitask our way towards an objective that we are not in a position to achieve as we get overstimulated. There’s things that do occur as we get overstimulated. How are we tied into our purpose and our vision to the most fundamental cornerstones of any type of goal orientation.

If everybody has a vote and everybody is saying something differently, what is being said? Nothing, no different than early on with our email. We used to covet the emails, and soon that friend became an enemy. But yet that friend had such real estate advantage, because now our focus is turned social media has once been that friend, and now it is digging deeper hooks into our daily process. When you look at those who claim to be successful and actually show the success they have the same 24 hours as we do, but what’s different? How are they prioritizing what their minds are exposed to? How are they making common decisions?

Simple, how are they leveraging their time? How are they leveraging their attention? How are they leveraging their focus? And these are the things that in the next several years, we as a nation, we as a populace, a people of the 21st century, will have to reconcile the stimulus is burning. Our candle at both ends is overworked, is under stimulated, ultimately, in order for that level of acuity, of introspection, of thoughtfulness to emerge as a representation of not only who we are, but how we prefer to be in the world. We rise. We rise. Imagine being stimulated just enough. Imagine having enough information to make a decision.

A lot of times we delude ourselves that we think that more is better, different is better. If I had all a sense of understanding about what is exactly going on at the most granular level, I can make a decision. These are stories we tell ourselves to delude ourselves out of fear, fear that we’ll make a wrong choice, fear that soon the information will be brought to our attention that we wish we would have had. But that’s not how it works. The best, the most, the highest forms of creativity have constraint. Constraint breeds the creative genius to come out and work within the framework that you provide, but without that framework, we become drones toward experiencing infinity, and if you’re anything like me, it doesn’t take a lot for us to tell ourself a story that we are being effective.

We are being efficient. We are. Being prudent, we are being pragmatic with more when all along, we are hiding in the shadows of indecision, of clarity, of focus, and as we constrain and simplify and understand which variables are impactful, and surround ourselves with others who see the vision and understand that while every I might be dotted and T might be crossed, there may be things that get through, but it will not get through my pursuit of my outcome and vision that I want to create. So tell yourself a different story. All the things you say you need, all the things that you say are required, allow the criteria to be as simple as possible.

Allow the information that you procure to be the most effective, not by procuring everything, but by procuring what’s necessary, and it takes a discerning mind to discover what’s necessary and what’s not, what’s relevant and what’s irrelevant, what’s needed and what’s vanity. And together, as we move forward as a collective, as a as as citizens, not only of our nation, but of the world of this time and space, we are able to maneuver and navigate through conflict and contrast and be able to hold the vision for what we are creating higher than any of the things that we are experiencing in the day to day, and it gets ourselves through the crowded mind into an open space, a clear space that you have the flexibility, malleability and mindset to accomplish anything.

A lot of times, we don’t realize we’re bombarded or overwhelmed, until we begin moving away from it, and we begin to experience the delta. And I would say, in all likelihood, there’s an area of your life where you’re overstimulated. You have a lot of inputs, these inputs are filled with information that unless you have a system in place, doesn’t know where to go, doesn’t know how to discern between relevant and irrelevant, hasn’t established a criteria that allows it in to make itself feel at home. So I challenge you. It’s 2020. You all know what kind of year it is. And while we are moving toward greener pastures and the world which exists in our ambitions and our dreams, we must, we must be a match to the world that we want to see created first.

We must we must become the citizens that we hope to engage with. We must slow down the overstimulation and simplify a little bit each time at bat get better each time at bat, so that that exposure that sits before us doesn’t blind us to what we’re capable of. My name is Rahim Russell, and you’re listening to another episode of halftime talks. Thank you. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for coming back. Thank you for adding your two cents to a half time talks, not only is, but what it can be. So make sure you go to iTunes and Spotify and listen. Share with a friend rated let us know what You think until next time. Be blessed peace.

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