Hello there, how are you? This is Dr. Sweet here, and you're listening to the Sweet Spot, and it's Slowdown Sunday on the Sweet Spot. So, beautiful souls, sweet spotters, warriors, we've been in a series here called Facing Giants All Week Long.

And as you know on The Sweet Spot, we blend neuroscience, ancient wisdom, and today I'm going to throw in some cosmic wisdom to help us rest, reflect, and rise here on Slowdown Sunday. You know, in my work as a board-certified psychiatrist functioning in high performance environments, rest and recovery are just as important as the actual performance. And that's why today on Slowdown Sunday, we're going to make this our final stop. Our rest and recovery stop in the Facing Giants series. You've done it all week, you've named your challenge, you've moved with clarity, you've reclaimed your strength, you've charged the battlefield, you finished strong. Yesterday, self-care Saturday, you rested your spirit. But my friend, here's what most people miss about the story of David and Goliath that we've been looking at all week. It's easy to miss this because the story of David and Goliath is all about the pebble, the giant, the fall of the giant, overcoming the big monster. I get it. Very important that we understand that part of it. But do you know that David didn't really win with force? He didn't. You know what he won with? Faith and focus. He won with the stillness and the peace that was inside of him. Crazy, right? You could look at the battle on the outside and you can see the fight. But the forces within, the invisible forces, that's what I'm talking to you about today. The stillness, the peace, the focus. They're weapons too. And you have them, my friend. You have them, you got them. Let's zoom out for a second. On the sweet spot on Sundays, we don't use the neuroscience as much. As you know, we go into the astrophysics just a bit, and I'm no astrophysicist by any stretch of the imagination. I know just enough to talk to you about it to give you some insights. Let's zoom out for a second, way out. Did you know that when we look at galaxies billions of light years away? Let's say you could get one of these amazing telescopes and you can see a galaxy that's billions of light years away. You know what you see? You're seeing time itself move in slow motion. It's called cosmic time dilation. The farther back we look, the slower time appears. That's so amazing to me. The early universe moved differently than we do today. And you know what? That's your invitation today. Slow down intentionally. Learn from the universe, learn from astrophysics, shift out of panic mode and get into perspective mode. David didn't have panic, he had perspective. He had a different perspective than Saul, the king, who didn't even bother to fight. He had a different perspective than the warriors and the people around him who were so afraid of the giant. Yeah, he didn't have panic. Everybody around him had panic. Because when you realize that the universe itself is in no rush, you remember this. You don't have to rush either. And you can shift from panic mode to perspective mode because things are just not moving as fast as they seem. This is true when you're an athlete or performer and you're in the zone. Suddenly the clock with 10 seconds feels like a lifetime. But if you're in panic mode, you can turn the ball over, you can drop the ball, you can make errors and mistakes because you're rushing. And so, what I'm trying to get across to you today, my friend, is that the universe has a certain stillness, a certain slowness, a certain deliberateness. And I want us to float above it, access it, and put it into our spirits. Now drop back down to earth for a second with me. Basic science tells us that when we listen to birds, or if we go stand by the water, we hear the raindrops, or even observing nature, the forest, the trees. You know what that does? It resets your nervous system. Remember, we talked about the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and recovery system, the rest and digest system. That's the one that gets us to relax. That's the one that changes our stress chemistry. And part of the problem with today's world is that it's moving so fast, and we're getting all these hits from our cell phones, from the television, from the news, from Fox, from CNN, from wherever we get our information. And it's jacking up our nervous system, it's co-opting our nervous system. Part of our problem is that the giants around us are really overwhelming our nervous systems. And what David had was more of a parasympathetic nervous system, the one that's more relaxed than the sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight and flight one, he had the one that was more relaxed. And we have that too. We just have to access it with prayer, with deep breathing, with mindfulness, with taking five minutes to chill, to access God, to access our inner strength. When you allow your nervous system to reset, to align with the universe, with the messages that the universe is trying to give us. Do you notice the trees don't rush? Did you notice that the seasons don't rush the change? The sun doesn't rush its rise, the sunset doesn't rush down. Everything is happening as it should, in its own time, with deliberate purpose. And there's a peace that sort of surpasses all understanding in the universe. And you can trace that back to ancient wisdom too. There is a peace that surpasses understanding, and the neuroscience also tells us that when we get there to that level of peace, that our parasympathetic nervous system and oxytocin and serotonin and other kinds of neurotransmitters are privileged and we feel better. It all lines up. Your stress chemistry softens, your breath deepens, and your awareness expands in stillness, in meditation, in prayer, in being grounded. You know what that is in the story of David and Goliath? That's your slingshot. That's the slingshot, just like David, that you're going to use to slay your giant today, taking care of you, slowing down to understand all that God has put in you. And just like David, we don't need size or spectacle. We just need to be focused. We need sharpness. We need to center ourselves. We need the kind of calm clarity that comes from connecting to the deeper rhythm of creation. We are so disconnected from our universe. So disconnected from the lessons of nature. In Psalm 23, where does God lead us? Beside what? Yes, exactly. The still waters. Where does He make us to lie down? Exactly in the green pastures. Wow. Wow. Wow. You see, this story of David and Goliath has so much in it, and we've been really blessed by it all week. It's been guiding us. And today we're reflecting. We're reflecting of David's example. He was able to find rest in the middle of the fight. He didn't wait for everything to be perfect to rest. That's a lesson for you and me today. You take some time off of you, my friend, and you rest. You rest and recover. Because when you rest and you recover, you get insights and you come back stronger and you come back ready. David didn't wait for everything to be perfect to find rest. His strength came from trust. Do you understand what I'm saying? Your strength comes from trust. What are you putting your trust in? Put your trust in what's going to help you. His strength came from trust. He trusted the Spirit of God. He remembered his past wins. He meditated on divine promises. Those are cues for us. And when we do the same thing, when we remember the lines and the bears that we have fought, when we remember other giants we have faced, when we remember our victories, when we reflect on the times that God has brought us through, on the times that we found unexpected solutions, when somebody was so kind and helped us, when we scored that winning basket. Wow. When we made the right decision and the right call, when we averted the big accidents because our intuition helped us, all that. All that, all of that is what makes us winners. Yeah, stillness is not weakness today, my friend. Connecting to the universe is not some far-out hippie type crazy nonsense. This is all real. Connecting to our universe is real. Being still is super real. There's a command in the ancient wisdom to be still. Being still. Maybe you're not. But listen, if you are, you've got to walk towards that danger. You cannot run from it because it will not go away. You've got to make that decision. Deep in your heart, in your mind, align yourself with the power within you, that which is greater than anything that's in the world, and take this on. David walked towards Goliath without panic. He understood that he was going to win this battle and that he was going to take it on. That's your energy today. That's what you're taking on today with a certain peace. Just as David overcame Goliath, not with brute force, but with focus and faith. You too can face your giants by slowing down and reconnecting with the awe of the universe, with what's bigger than you. Taking a minute to zoom out and understand that you are but a speck here. And yet you're divinely cared for, and you have divine power flowing through you. Your stillness is a weapon. Your walk today, if you go walking for five-ten minutes, that's your weapon. Oh, if you pray and that's what you're into, oh my goodness, that prayer, another slingshot for you. A deep breath that you take in right now. Staring at water, listening to the to the universe, whatever it is that you do to connect. These are not passive escapes, you're not wasting time. They're sacred strategies, and that's your challenge today on slow down Sunday. Step outside even for five minutes and reconnect to this wonderful grand universe so that you can derive its power. Do you know that people who are ill when they go into the sun for short periods and they find themselves in nature or they go by the beach or they're around things that are notric and beautiful? Do you know that helps them? It helps their chemistry. Let nature remind you that stillness is strength. Let nature heal you and ask yourself where do I need to slow down today? So I can allow my parasympathetic nervous system to take over, so that I can allow my blood pressure, my pulse, my blood vessels, my muscles to just relax. Where do I need to slow down so I can face the next giant with more clarity and less chaos? Because here's the truth, beautiful soul. David's real superpower wasn't just his sling, it was his stillness. The calm that came from trust, the rest that came from knowing who he was and who walked with him. This week I want you to know who you are, whose you are, and who's walking with you. I've said this on the sweet spot before. If we only knew and could feel and understand who was standing beside us as we faced any giant, we would never back down. We would be able to access David's strength, his fortitude, and his resolve. Okay, this week you're facing a giant, or you faced a giant, or you might have a giant coming at you at some point in a week or two. It doesn't matter. New ones always come. But guess what? You'll be stronger. Not just because of what you've done, but because of how you've rested today. So take this slow down Sunday message. Don't rush a thing today. The stillness inside of you is stronger than the storm around you. I'll say it again. The stillness inside of you is stronger, actually stronger than the storm that's around you. Remember Jesus on the boat in the storm? What was he doing? Everybody was bugging out, wilding out because of the storm. What was Jesus doing? Sleep? Get to wake him up. Do you know what kind of peace you have to have to be on some little rowboat somewhere in a storm? That's the kind of peace I want you to have. That's what we have to access. And in David and Goliath, you don't slay the giant unless you have peace and you've resolved in yourself that you have won, already won this battle, and that Goliath is going down. Alright, my friends, this is the sweet spot. I'm Dr. Sweet. You've got this. I believe in you. We have done it. We have concluded an entire week of strategies of facing giants. And I'm delighted that it was me who got a chance to interact with you and have this conversation. I was truly blessed by your listening. And those of you who've commented and spoken to me, I've been blessed by that too. Let's all refresh ourselves, root ourselves, and ready ourselves for next week. Love and blessings, and don't you back down from any giant?