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Greetings and welcome. Welcome back to the Sweet Spot where science meets soul. I'm Dr Derek Sweet. Today is Trust Yourself Thursday. It's not like any Thursday. It's Trust Yourself Thursday, here on the Sweet Spot. It's not like any Thursday. It's Trust Yourself Thursday, here on the Sweet Spot.

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And for those of you who don't know me, I'm a board-certified psychiatrist. My background is in sports, psychiatry and high performance, and all week long we've been exploring, facing fears and building tools and developing all of the mindset that you need in order to handle and confront uncertainty and the unknown. Today, on Trust Yourself Thursday, we're diving into self-trust, which, by the way, is the cornerstone of peak performance. You can't have great performance if you don't trust in yourself, and you can't be the best you, the best version of performance if you don't trust in yourself. And you can't be the best you, the best version of yourself if you don't trust in who you are. Sometimes we work on so many external factors to deal with the fear of the unknown and we forget the most important one, and that's ourselves. And the neuroscience that we talked about yesterday in Win it All Wednesday. The neuroscience showed us something fascinating. It told us that the brain has this capacity to make new pathways in order to deal with the unknown, that if you practice things and you start trusting yourself to do more and to go with the things that you know control the controllables you will actually be able to face the unknown with a degree of control. The neuroscience. It also tells us something else about trusting yourself today that gut instinct that you have. That's not just a metaphor. Having a gut instinct, that intuition, that's your enteric nervous system, that's your GI tract, that's often called the second brain, quote unquote. And your second brain, according to current science, has over 100 million connections, quote-unquote neurons gut neurons, if you will that communicate directly with your brain through a nerve called the vagus nerve, the 10th cranial nerve. So you have a brain in your nerve that connects directly to your gut. And when you say I feel it in my gut, I have a gut feeling, you're describing a real neural pathway.

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My friend, and in my work with elite performers, I've noticed that those who trust their instincts tend to perform better under pressure. And that's borne out by brain study after brain study that shows these functional MRIs that show that there's reduced activity in a particular part of the brain called the ACC, the anterior cingulate cortex, which essentially is like the brain's doubt center. Right, athletes who trust in their training. They have reduced ACC activity. And guess what? You can too, remember I said yesterday if you practice and you work on things, if you're not good at something and you keep practicing it and you start getting better and better, your ACC starts to calm down, it starts to have less doubt and athletes know that you play to the level that you practice. You perform to the level that you practice. You could be a student and you need to do better on exams. You need to do more practice questions period. When I was in med school, I had to do more practice questions period. When I was in med school, I had to do more practice questions to score higher on board exams and I needed my acc, my interior cingulate cortex, to calm down. Right, that's the brain doubt center. So just sharing that with you you understand that you have to begin to trust your second brain, trust your instincts, and that's a big part of being able to handle the unknown.

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All week long we've talked about how our ancestors had to live between this dynamic tension, between being curious in the face of uncertainty and being able to adapt to things that they would have to meet when they faced the unknown or the uncertain. And you know, if you're curious and you have adaptive skills, you're in this man, you could win. So ancient Greek philosophers right. What can they tell us about the state of being fearless in the unknown? Well, they had a particular term that I'm going to butcher, called eudaimonia, which is a state of living in alignment with your inner truth, your values. They believed that when you live and walk according to your values, what you firmly believe, you end up performing well, you end up being better able to adapt and be resilient when you faced opposition or you face the unknown.

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And modern neuroscience confirms the same thing that when we act in alignment with our values, we actually see increased activity in the brain's CEO center. Remember that from yesterday we talked about the prefrontal cortex being the CEO. That's the part of the brain that does all the planning, the thinking, the executing, the judgment. Well, yeah, when we act in alignment with our values, the brain's prefrontal cortex, its CEO, starts to light up and you end up having less stress because you feel a greater degree of control. So today's challenge I want you to write down three times that your intuition was right Three times, yes, when your gut instinct was right. And if you can remember, remember what you felt like when you were trusting your gut, notice the physical sensations that accompanied those moments, the emotional feeling that you had. That was you trusting the inner compass, the inner spirit. Some call it the Holy Spirit. Yeah, that's what it is. You've got to trust yourself in the middle of uncertainty, because that's what you're certain about is who you are, okay.

Speaker 1: 6:57

So I would recommend a book. It's called the Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk. Okay, it's called the Body Keeps the Score Great book. In this book, the author explains how our bodies tends to store wisdom and stack it and how learning to trust our own physical responses can lead us to better decision-making. In sports, we call this interoceptive awareness, body awareness, listening to your body and trusting its responses. And in this book, the Body Keeps the Score, the author tells us that trauma can disrupt self-trust, like when you face traumatic things. Sometimes it can make you not trust yourself, but he shows us also how to rebuild it. So I want you to go and get that book. It's a great book, an easy read, and it really teaches you how to rebuild it. So I want you to go and get that book. It's a great book, an easy read, and it really teaches you how to practice body awareness All right now.

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So look, we've talked a lot this week about facing the unknown.

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Today is Trust Yourself.

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Thursday.

Speaker 1: 7:59

We have looked at the neuroscience of self-trust. We are now looking at having your gut instinct be its own neural network that you're going to trust, that You're going to practice strengthening that, and I'm going to leave you with this. I'm going to leave you with some scripture. The Proverbs say that we have to trust in God with all our heart and lean not to our own understanding Sometimes.

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What has to happen is that you have to have enough faith that all you have to do is take the first step. You don't have to see the entire staircase, as Martin Luther King said right, you just have to take that first step, submit to God and trust that he will make the path straight. As you walk, you create the path and the obstacle. It's not in the way. It becomes the way. Okay, my friend, alright, we are doing it here with uncertainty and the unknown you're in. Trust Yourself Thursday. I'm Dr Sweet. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow as we tackle Finish Strong Friday. Join with me on LinkedIn and on Twitter. Join with me on threads as well, and Instagram Take care.