Okay now, welcome! Welcome to the sweet spot. It is Monday. Not just any Monday, my friend. This is Making Moves Monday. And you're ready. I'm ready. I've got the coffee, and I know you got either tea or coffee, or maybe it's some OJ, whatever you got, whatever your fuel is, maybe it's a piece of fruit or something. But we're going in. This is Making Moves Monday on the Sweet Spot. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet Beautiful Souls. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. If you've listened to me in the evening instead of the morning, okay? That's cool. I don't matter what I don't really care when you listen, it doesn't matter. As long as we're together. As you know, I'm a board certified psychiatrist and I work with athletes, executives, first responders, and people who are expected to perform when the stakes are real. And like you, I'm a fellow traveler learning how to stand steady in the middle of real life. So we do this together every single day on the Sweet Spot, and it's my absolute pleasure to meet with you again. This week, my friends, we have a new series. We did the a great series last week. We talked about the ceilings you don't see. So that was really cool, and I kind of hated to see that series end, but hey, you know, new series now. And this series is about how you stand under pressure. It kind of fits with the ceilings you don't see because once you get to the ceiling and you hit it, the question is how are you gonna stand under pressure? So today's episode, how you stand under pressure when you're not sure what to do. First, what do you have to do? And that is, my friend, the question that we're going to deal with today. So, we're not talking about avoiding pressure here, we're not talking about how to overpower it, but what we mean is how do you stay grounded when the moment actually matters for you? And I don't know, maybe today you're facing a moment, maybe this week you're in the middle of a moment. It's making moves Monday. And this episode is for those moments when everything feels urgent, everything matters, and you're not sure exactly what you're gonna do first, or even if you are sure, you feel a little anxiety on the inside. But before we talk about tools and what to do, how to stand up under pressure, we need to clear up a confusion that causes a lot of unnecessary panic. Stress versus pressure. Stress and pressure, believe it or not, they're not the same thing. We use them interchangeably, I know I have, but technically stress and pressure are different, and I'm going to explain it to you. Stress is when when the demands you're facing feel bigger than the resources you believe you have to cope with it. So when you're under stress, it means that the demand is big on you and you don't feel like you have enough resources. There's like too much to do, there's too little time, there's too little energy, these are resources, right? Too little support. So that's what I'm talking about. When you feel super, super, super stressed out, it's because your demands are overwhelming, but you have the resources to give. Pressure, pressure's a little different. Pressure is the perception that the moment you're in matters and it matters hard. Pressure is the perception that this moment matters, and how you show up in this moment really counts. So it's the same kind of situation in a way, but there's like a different internal experience. Right? One is when you feel like you don't have enough resources, and the other one was when you feel this need to have to meet this moment in a big way. Same situation, different internal experience. Stress can scatter your attention when you're under stress. Pressure, on the other hand, can sharpen your focus if you know how to stand inside of it. And many of the performers I work with, many of the individuals I work with, they're under pressure. So there are three things you can do when you feel overwhelmed, regardless of what you're facing, and we can go over these right now. It's Makey Moves Monday, so we're diving in, alright? The first is you've got to know the difference. Ask yourself bluntly, plainly, just look in the mirror and ask yourself: is this stress or is this pressure? If it's stress, the move is not to take action right away. The move is to find support, to recruit resources, maybe rest, to get internal resources up, or to reduce the load so that you can meet the demand. Does that make sense? Because that's what stress is about. Your demands are outweighing the resources that you have to meet it. So that's the way to handle stress. If it's pressure though, the move is not to panic, the move is to ground yourself, and that's what we do with athletes. We do it with performers, stage performers, actors and singers and dancers and athletes. They are under pressure. Police officers, law enforcement, moms, dads. A lot of us are under pressure. But the move with pressure is to now find your grounding. A lot of people suffer because they treat pressure like danger or stress like a performance test. You gotta get clear first on what it is that you're facing and what you have to do. So that's the first thing. Get some clarity, know the difference between stress and pressure. And now we got that. The second thing is to shrink the moment. This is where you can control the controllables. We always talk about that, but what does that mean? Control the controllables. I always hear it. A big way of controlling the controllables is to shrink the moment. Pressure makes everything feel big and immediate. When you're under pressure, everything is magnified, and a lot of times it's not that big, but it feels that way. So you should know that that's what pressure does, and then and then you don't ask, how do I fix it all? That's the worst question you could ask when you're under pressure. How do I fix all of this? That'll just make it more and more pressurized for you. Instead, ask, what is the next right thing I can do without rushing the outcome here? What is the next right thing I can do without needing everything to be fast to fix it? Not being a perfect person, not having a perfect step, not having a final answer, just what is the next right move I need to make? That's how clutch players think. They think in the moment and they think about what's next. They're fully present. This keeps your brain in the present moment, which is where you have to be. That's where performance happens, and that's where you make a difference, is when you're present. If you're in the future or you're in the past, you're not here, and that's a problem. You don't fix things in the future, in the past, because you can't physically be in those places, but you can be right here right now. In some locker rooms that I've worked in in the past, I love, I saw a phrase, it's right here, right now. Very powerful, very powerful. Author James Clare, uh, a great author, put it this way: you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. I believe he's the author of Atomic Habits, a great book. You don't rise to the level of the goals you set. What happens when you face pressure is that you fall to whatever system you have running. So when the pressure hits, you don't suddenly become wiser and calmer, you don't become this big savant, right? You actually just default to the stance that you've been practicing. You default to whatever gets you out of like a dangerous situation. You ever want to learn about somebody? Put them under pressure, you see who they really are. So that's the second thing, right? So we talked about the first thing is one, do I know the difference between stress and pressure? Bong. Two, can I shrink the moment? Because pressure tends to make everything big. What can I what is the next right thing I can do as opposed to taking a thousand steps with this? And third, my friend, third, is to stabilize your stance. Remember, this series is about the stand that you're gonna make under pressure. How you stand under pressure. That's the name of this series. And that's the third step here. After you've shrunk the moment and you figured out the right next step you've got to make, the third thing you want to do is stabilize your stand. And stabilizing your stand or your stance doesn't mean getting calm and confident, it means getting steady enough that fear and anxiety is not going to drive your next move. You want to be in your stand. And let me show you what that looks like in real life. I think about an athlete late in the game who's just missed a shot. The crowd is loud, they're jeering, they're saying stuff. The instinct would be to rush and make up for that missed shot, to force something that isn't there at the next opportunity. An unstable stance looks like chasing redemption on the very next play. But if you are more stable, my friend, your stance doesn't go there. It just balances it out, it lets go, it gets quiet. You take that breath, you plant your feet, eyes up, you return to your fundamentals. Next play, you do what you have to do, same game. You're not rushing, you're not rushing the outcome. I think about somebody who's grieving a loss, not the first few days when everybody understands, right? Everybody always understands after you've lost a loved one in the first five to ten days. But weeks later, months later, when the world expects you to be fine and you're still carrying the weight you didn't ask to carry. An unstable stand will look like you telling yourself, this should be over by now. That's not stable. Stabilizing your stance is looking like you're giving yourself permission to move as slow as you need without having to explain yourself. One gentle task for the day and letting that be enough. Stability. Maybe you're living with an illness, a chronic illness, the kind that changes your energy and your plans. The ability to go out and do things is not there like it used to. An unstable stance looks like fighting your body every hour, resenting its limits, being angry, bitter, upset, which you have a right to be, but it makes you more unstable if you're gonna live there, right? So stabilizing your stance looks like listening instead of battling, pacing yourself, choosing care over self-criticism, being kind to you, standing with your body, allowing the grace of God to enter it instead of fighting against it. It takes time, but that's the idea. And think about when you're in a big moment, right? The pressure that comes. I have a presentation, I have an interview, some big decision is coming up, and it could change everything. Everybody's looking at me. The unstable stand is when you start rehearsing and rehearsing, imagining what could happen, getting all twisted about, and your hands are cold and numb, and you're feeling fear and anxiety. It's kind of natural to feel that at times. Most people do, we do, but practicing stabilizing your stance could look like coming back to center, taking a breath. Remembering that you are not your actions, that you have an identity that's separate from what you do. Taking it one step, one breath at a time, and controlling what you can control. Across all of these examples, I gave you the pattern is the same. You're not trying to control the outcome. You cannot control the outcome. We just can't. You're choosing how to stand whatever unfolds. How are you going to stand whenever or however this thing unfolds in front of you? And the scriptures, the ancient wisdom speaks of this as a learned skill. I love the ancient wisdom, it always guides us right into like what we should think about. When we face pressure or stress, the ancient wisdom puts it this way in Philippians 4 11 message Bible. I'm not saying this because I'm in need, for I've learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I'm not saying this because I'm in need, for I've learned to be content whatever the circumstances. You know what word sticks out there for me? And I had to read this several times to get it? Learned. Yes. Paul is saying that he feels calm because he has learned. Learned how to be that way, no matter what circumstances he faces. He isn't saying he feels calm automatically. He's saying he trained himself to stay steady before he acts. And that, my friend, is exactly what you're doing when you name stress versus pressure. When you shrink the moment and then you stabilize your stand. So when you're not sure, I want you to do this first. Don't rush the outcome. Stabilize where you're standing, stabilize your stance. How are you standing today, my friend? That's it. This is Making Moves Monday. And we're not going too far. Before we jump into moves, we're going to make sure we have a firm stand. Does that make sense? Alright now, you've been listening to the sweet spot. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm with you on this journey. We're going to stand together this week. Whatever it is, we're standing together. I'm standing with you. Tomorrow is Take Action Tuesday, my friend, and we talk about how to do the next right thing without panicking, without freezing, and without forcing. I can't wait to dive into that tomorrow with you. But until then, I want you to keep practicing your stand. How are you going to stabilize your stand? That's all we're going to do today. So if this gave you something you could actually use today, my friend, sweet spotters, please subscribe. It's absolutely free to subscribe to the Sweet Spot. We love you and we want you to stand with us. We're standing with you. And believe me, there's a lot to stand about this month. Okay? All right now. Tomorrow, I'll see you beautiful ones. You be strong, you be powerful, you keep standing. Don't back down. All right, bye bye.