So most people think rest is what you do after everything is finished. But after pressure, rest is how you put yourself back together. Hey, hey there, beautiful souls, sweet spotters. Welcome back to the sweet spot. Yes, I'm Dr. Derek Sweet, and yes, you are in the right place. Yes, you're in the right spot, and yes, it's self-care Saturday. Let's take a breath, shall we? And remember where we've been. Monday, we talked about how pressure changes who we are. Diamonds are made out of pressure. You're a diamond. Maybe you're a diamond in the rough, but you're still a diamond. Tuesday, we said that movement doesn't need you to be certain in order for you to move. All you have to be is aligned, move, take the first step, and clarity will come. Clarity sometimes comes out of the movement. And then you know what? On Wednesday, we followed that up with winning. How winning can look different if you don't just focus on the outcome. Trust yourself Thursday, we talked about trust and how it gets quieter and more discerning after you've been through a few pressurized situations, and how you begin to learn to look for patterns now and not just for what you hope and wish. Yesterday, yesterday we said that fatigue isn't failure. You know what it is? It's information. And that, beautiful soul, brings us to where we are today. Today is about what comes after all that stuff we did all week long. This series we've been doing has been amazing, hasn't it? Who you become after pressure. Learning how to rest without losing yourself. Because recovery is not about weakness, recovery is about integration. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because once we stop pushing, and once we stop bracing, there's often a strange emptiness that people that we just don't expect, right? Most people just rush to fill the emptiness. We as a society, I believe, this is just me talking about this, like this may not be true, but it feels like we don't have any empty spaces anymore just to be empty. It feels like being empty or having emptiness is a bad thing, that every moment has to be filled by doing something. Do you do you do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. We actually feel pressure when there's nothing to do. When in fact we should be taking the time to breathe, to reset, to relax, to surrender the moment and meditate, pray, uh, get in touch with what's really going on. We fill those moments with TikTok or Instagram or LinkedIn or TV or radio or restaurants or phone calls or something. Gotta be busy, gotta be busy. It's I speak to myself. Look in the mirror, Dr. Sweet. Here's the truth: most people don't say out loud. Rest is like, it gets a kind of like a sense of weakness, right? It feels dangerous after pressure, actually. Because pressure gives you an identity. When you're under pressure, you're like, okay, this is who I am, this is what I'm doing. Pressure is giving me urgency, it gives me a reason to keep going. I feel best when I'm under pressure. I don't say that, but that's what's going on. It gives me an identity. And when that pressure lifts, I'm not just tired. Some days I'm just disoriented. And I'm wondering, well, if I'm not like under pressure, what am I now? Who am I? Instead of resting, I distract myself, I stay busy, I move on to the next project, the next thing. Not because I'm weak, because stillness just feels unfamiliar to me. It's very hard to be still. I have to work at it. I have to work at being still. Do you have that issue? Can you sit for like 20 minutes and do nothing? Maybe take your shoes off, take a few deep breaths, turn your phone off, and just spend a good 20 to 30 minutes doing absolutely nothing. I'll tell you, feels unfamiliar to me. And if you are, hit me up, DM me, and give me some tips. Oh, yes, yes, yes. It's self-care Saturday. What's happening beneath the surface when we are facing prolonged pressure? You know, under prolonged pressure, the nervous system narrows life down because it's trying to help us survive. We've said this a few times. Yeah, yeah. The nervous system gets jacked up and action takes precedence over reflection, and urgency becomes more important than finding meaning. Rest isn't the absence of effort. Rest is when the brain actually integrates what you've been through. It's a really important thing. It's kind of like sleep. When you don't sleep, your brain doesn't get a chance to consolidate memories, your immune system doesn't get a chance to regenerate and fix itself. Your your um your your testosterone, your human growth hormone, all the other things that are secreted during sleep uh don't get a chance to refresh. So, yeah, rest is when the brain integrates what you've been through. As I said, emotions can get stabilized, memories can settle, and experience can turn into understanding. These things sound soft, but they're important. Your memories, your emotions, and your experiences they define you, they determine who you are, they determine the kind of person you're going to be. And rest is an important place for these things that I'm talking about to be integrated. Without this integration, your pressure doesn't become wisdom, it just stays lodged in the body. You know what it becomes? Illness, sickness. That's a problem. So, yeah, you can you can say you stop doing something, but you don't feel restored. You can stop the movement, but don't reclaim the parts of you that are lost. And the ancient wisdom, remember, the sweet spot is about what? Science, soul, and success. For your soul, the ancient wisdom says this in the message Bible. Okay, this is it. I promise my KJV people, I know I've gone, this is probably my seventh day without it, or the eighth day without it. Tomorrow we're gonna do some KJV, I promise, okay? Tomorrow, if you tune in for uh Sunday's slowdown Sunday, you'll get some KJV. But right now, for the message Bible, here's how they handle, here's how the ancient wisdom handles this idea about the rest. Message Bible, Matthew 11. Are you tired? Are you worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me, get away with me, and you recover your life. God loved Message Bible, doesn't mince words, not poetic, but hey, you get it. Alright, come to me, get away with me, and you'll recover your life. Wow. Jesus is talking right now. That's Jesus. JC. Yeah, JC is saying, look, look, JC is saying this, right? What he's saying, yeah, come to me. I'm the way you're gonna get recovery. Notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say come to me and I'll make you productive again. He doesn't say come to me and you'll synthesize everything and you'll become like you know, the the top CEO or the top dog. He says you'll recover your life. And that distinction matters. Because here on Selfcare Saturday, what we're talking about, rest. Rest isn't just about getting your energy back, it's about reclamation. Under pressure, we give things up, and you've got to reclaim these things. That's what reclamation is about. You've got to reclaim the parts of you that you gave up under pressure, the things that you didn't even know you gave up, your natural pace, your curiosity, your emotional range, even your sense of meaning, your ability to have awe and wonder about things. No, you and I, we sometimes get into this narrow place. We're just surviving, we're moving, we're getting work done, we're under pressure, we're not even breathing with deep breaths. So, reclamation is what happens when that narrowing begins to reverse when you rest. You start reclaiming. It's when the parts of you that were put on hold start to come back online, they start to come home. Yeah, energy starts returning in a way that can keep you going. Reclamation when you rest helps you remember who you are. Outside of this pressure, outside of this deadline, outside of this urgency, outside of this performance, outside of this survival thing that you're doing. That's the rest that Jesus is talking about. A deep one. Not to collapse, not to just escape, but to recover your life. There's an ancient Buddhist teaching as well that echoes this beautifully, and I'm gonna include it. It says this, and it's a great quote. You're gonna love this quote. These Buddhists, man, some of them they they got some great stuff. You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes every day unless you're too busy. Then you should sit for an hour. Let's try that again. You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes every day unless you're too busy. Then you should sit for an hour. That's not punishment. The Buddhists they get it. That's a diagnosis. It's saying that when life is too loud or its loudest, stillness is more necessary. It's not about escape. It's to help you see clearly again. After pressure, rest looks different than it used to. Yeah. It's not numbing, it's not collapsing, it's not filling every quiet moment. Rest looks like getting silence, getting a walk, letting your body finish a sentence. You're not lazy when you do that. You're just allowing completion to happen. So for today's practice, if you can spare 10 minutes, I don't know where we'll find it, but look, if you can find 10 minutes, do one thing without having to improve. Nothing to fix, nothing to optimize, nothing to document, nothing to analyze, to evaluate, to judge. Just try to spend 10 minutes with yourself. Just being present with the moment. Being right here, right now. I told you last week in one of the two of the locker rooms that I've been in, they have this big sign up right here, right now. That's to keep the athletes in the moment. It works for us too. Right here, right now. And when your mind says this is unproductive, I'm wasting time, gently respond. This is integration. This is integration. This is where I integrate things. That language matters because it tells your nervous system it's safe to soften, it's safe to calm down, and it's safe to allow the parts of you that need to be reclaimed to come together. That's what rest does. Rest doesn't weaken who you are, it reveals who you've become. You're not losing edge, you're gaining depth. That's what the best athletes do, that's what the best performers do. They build in recovery, they build in rest because they understand that when they sleep and when they rest, they are allowing parts of their brain to recalibrate, renew, and refresh. I'll drop this to you. Do you know that you have something called the gymphatic system in your brain? Little signs, because you know this is the sweet spot. We do signs, soul, and success. Let me tell you this: one of the reasons you want to sleep and rest is that your gymphatic system, G L Y, right? It's a lymphatic system that cleans the body, but for the brain, it's the gymphatic system. And do you know when the gymphatic system is most active to clean your brain of toxins? During sleep. During sleep. And with all of the brain diseases going around right now, sleep is critical. Rest is critical. So I'm not just telling you this for spiritual reasons, there are scientific reasons. Look up the gymphatic system and you'll see. I'm not uh making this up. This is real. You need this, you need to rest your brain. It's important. I want your brain rested because I need you whole so you can listen more and we can talk more and we can be friends. Why can't we be friends, right? If I could sing, I'd break out of the song right now, but I can't. Alright now, you're listening to Slow, you're listening, I'm not sorry. Tomorrow is Slow Down Sunday. You're listening to Self Care Saturday. Tomorrow is Slowdown Sunday, and we're gonna step back a little further. You know, on Slow Down Sunday, we go into the astrophysics a little, we get a little spooky, but it's in a good way. It's in a good way. Oh, beautiful souls, sweet spotters. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for being a part of Self Care Saturday. I hope, I hope that you've been getting something out of this series. And if today gave you permission to rest without guilt, subscribe, it's free. And share this with someone who keeps apologizing for being tired, someone who won't give themselves permission to rest. You're not behind, you're reclaiming, and that's sacred work. That is sacred when you rest. It is sacred. Beloved, I give you rest. You've gotta rest. Your dopamine, your serotonin, all of the neurotransmitters and hormones in your body want to recalibrate through rest. I'll see you tomorrow, beautiful souls. This is Dr. Sweet, and I'm out.