Okay now, you did it. You made it to the end of the week to slow down Sunday here with me on the Sweet Spot. Thank you, thank you so much, thank you so much for hanging out with this series that we did, Living in Alignment. Wow. Yeah, we explored a lot, beautiful souls. And here on The Sweet Spot, we always close out on Slowdown Sunday by recapping what we did and also delving into a little bit of the astrophysics and bringing it all together. So I want to start by honoring you for staying with me, Dr. Derek Sweet, your board certified psychiatrist and friend and fellow traveler here on this journey we call life. I want to start by honoring you for staying with it all this week. Not just listening, but staying present to it, letting it shape your thinking and letting this idea of alignment, living in alignment, interrupt your patterns, letting it challenge how you move through life, how we move through life. That matters more than most people realize. This week wasn't random and it was not disconnected. It wasn't just a collection of ideas, it was a progression. On making moves Monday, we started with the truth that misalignment isn't failure, it's an internal conflict, and it's when your values, your habits, your identity, and your behavior aren't pointing in the same way. And when that happens, the car doesn't move right. Life feels heavier than it should. You move, but you don't move well. You you're split. You act, but you feel scattered. Remember, we talked about that on Making Moves Monday. You live, but you don't feel whole. So we moved into Take Action Tuesday. We talked about how misalignment pushes us into this autopilot mode. We stop acting from intention and start reacting. Yeah, we react from stress. We stop choosing and we start coping when we misaligned. We stop leading ourselves and we start being led by other things like urgency, by pressure, and by impulse, bad habits. So action on Take Action Tuesday became about reclaiming our direction, not doing more. Please go back and listen to Take Action Tuesday. You'll like it. And on Win It All Wednesday, the focus shifted. Yeah, the focus shifted. It shifted to consistency to teach your nervous system how to rely on consistency because what you repeat becomes what you believe. So on Trust Yourself Thursday, we went even deeper. We name that real trust doesn't start in the mind, it starts in the body, in your signals, your breath, your tension. In a quiet inner sense, that's that this feels right to me before I can even explain it. Trust became something we felt, not something we thought. And then on Finish Strong Friday, remember? We reframed completion. We said we we reframe completion not as a force or a pressure, not as a grind, but as a kind of a regulation, as a safety, as an alignment. You see, as the systems feel calmer, they'll finish better. They don't feel overwhelmed, and so they don't go into avoidance. Completion became peace, not performance on Finish Strong Friday. On self-care Saturday, care stopped being indulgence and became a way of maintenance. We weren't trying to escape anything, we weren't rewarding anything, we were maintaining and regulating the work of keeping the system healthy enough so it can be aligned. And that brought us right here to slow down Sunday. This is not just another idea or theme, this is the truth that's underneath it all. None of this works unless we slow down. Alignment can't form in chaos. That's the first thing. Clarity, it can't come from noise. Trust cannot form properly when there's too much speed. And regulation cannot form in pressure. Coherence cannot come when there's constant distraction in motion. When we move too fast, everything fragments. Our thoughts are scattered, our attention splits, our nervous system, as we saw all week, becomes activated. Remember the insula, remember the anterior singular cortex, remember the prefrontal cortex, all the brain structures that we talked about, the basal ganglia, all of them. The body stays braced, your emotions stay reactive, your decisions become rushed, your life is loud on the inside. And man, I'm just exhausted talking about it. That's how fast we're moving, all of us, and we don't slow down enough. Which is why we call today slow down sundae. Yes, slow down Sunday. Because when life moves too fast and too loud, alignment is very hard to accomplish. We're not not because we're broken, but because our systems can't talk to each other, they can't even hear each other. Your biology can't talk to your psychology. How's that? Your body can't guide your mind. Because it can't hear it, your values can't lead your actions. Why? Because your values and actions are disconnected, or you're too busy to allow your actions to even align with your values, and your intuition can't cut through the noise, it can't discern things. Your purpose can't organize your pace. So you keep moving, but you don't have coherence. You keep acting, but you don't feel grounded. You keep succeeding, but you're not aligned. You don't feel aligned. So, so that's why we have slow down Sunday. This isn't about weakness, this is a kind of intelligence. It's how systems actually synchronize. Everything has to reset at some point, recover at some point. And this is where the universe gives us the greatest metaphor. You know, on Slowdown Sunday, we always dabble in the astrophysical. We go not because I'm an astrophysicist by any stretch. But in astrophysics, I know this alignment doesn't come usually from force, it comes from rhythm, from gravity, from timing, from natural synchronization, from systems that settle into relationship with each other. You see, the stars they don't rush alignment. And galaxies are in no rush to force structure, and orbits aren't chasing stability like it's running out of steam or something. They settle, things settle in the universe, they synchronize, they organize, and ultimately we are no different. We are biological systems, we are psychological systems, emotional systems, nervous systems, even spiritual systems. We also require rhythm. We also require stillness, we also require space. And like the universe, we require some quiet. So, beautiful soul, when you slow down, your systems, all of the ones I just mentioned, begin to align naturally. Where your biology begins to talk to your psychology, where your body begins to recalibrate, just take five minutes, sit still, breathe, let go, relax, allow your nervous system to regulate, it doesn't even need you to do anything other than be still. And doesn't the ancient wisdom say it? That alignment comes out of stillness. Be still and know. Knowing comes out of stillness. Be still and know I am God. Wow, even more divine knowledge emanating from alignment. Your mind settles, your emotions, they soften, your identity integrates. You've gotta give yourself a chance to do this. Put the phone down for a second, take a deep breath with me. Do it now, in through your nose, and slowly out through your mouth, letting the exhale be longer than the inhale. When you do that, you let the exhale be longer than the inhale. You send a message to your nervous system, to your vagus nerve, to your rest and tight chest system, your parasympathetic nervous system. I'm calling a lot of terms here, but just to let you know that there's a physiological psychological connection when you slow down, you take a breath, you let go, you relax. Yeah. Nervous system regulates, mind settles, emotions soften, identity integrates, you make a clearer decision, you waste less energy, you feel more grounded, you feel more present, you're more whole, you feel more yourself, you deserve this, you deserve this few minutes, these few minutes to align with yourself. It's okay. You don't have to always be looking at TikTok, you don't have to be always on Instagram. I speak to myself, you don't always have to be busy doing something, filling every minute with something to do. Again, I speak to myself. It's so important that you step back and that you align. Not because life becomes easier, but because your system becomes coherent. And here's the meta message of the entire week: alignment isn't about becoming someone new, that's not it. It's about stopping the internal war that's going on inside of us. It's about no longer living divided, no longer forcing your body to live at a pace that's not really sustainable, no longer building a life your nervous system can't rest inside of. No longer chasing success at the cost of your coherence. Alignment is when your life stops fighting you. Now there's a definition of alignment that I like to say over and over again. It's when my life stops fighting me. That's when I know I'm aligned. When your values and your actions agree, when your pace and your purpose match. When your body and your mind work together. Yeah. Isn't that cool? So that when your effort and your meaning align and your system feels safe inside your life, you're there. That's the work. Connecting those thoughts. It's not optimization, it's not perfection, it's not hustle, it's not discipline, it's coherence. It's wholeness and resonance. Coherence, wholeness, resonance. So slow down Sunday isn't about stopping your life, you're not wasting time. It's about letting your life settle into itself, letting your systems synchronize, letting your inner world reorganize, letting your rhythm return, and letting your alignment emerge, finding you, not through pressure or force, not even through strategy, but through just being present in stillness, through rhythm, through coherence. And if and if you stayed with this all week, you listened, you reflected, you let it shape how you see yourself, even a little, then something real has shifted for you. Maybe it wasn't traumatic, maybe it's not even visible, not instantly, but structurally you're in alignment and you know that. And when you're feeling aligned, oh you're so powerful, quietly so. That's how real change happens, not as a breakthrough, but as a reorganization, not as a moment, but as a rhythm. Not as a new identity, but as a coherent life, and that's how you're living now. You're living in alignment. You don't need a new version of yourself, you don't need a new life, you don't even need a new identity. You just need a life that stops fighting you and starts moving with you in alignment. That's alignment, that's the work, that's the rhythm, my friend. And beautiful soul, we just lived that together. So that's the whole deal here. We are at the end of this series on living in alignment. It's been amazing, it's been extraordinary, it's been a privilege to share it with you. I look forward to seeing you next week. Who knows what the good Lord has for us? And I am excited to go on the journey with you. Until then, beautiful souls, stay in alignment.