Isn't this a great day to trust yourself? Of course it is. You know why? It's Trust Yourself Thursday here on the Sweet Spot. That's why. Thursday is a great day to trust yourself. And that's why we're in this series. Trust Yourself Thursday built for this. Yes, you're built for it. We've been talking about that all week long. It's a series we've been doing here on the Sweet Spot. And I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm your host, your fellow partner, your sojourner on the road of life that we're traveling together. And today we find ourselves following up on a series that we're doing here called Built for This. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, we've looked at different aspects of how you make a move, how you take action, and how you win. Today we're moving into a more human, even more tender part of this series. Every one of us was built to trust. As kids, as kids, trust was by default, right? When dad threw me up in the air, I was really not even aware that he could make a decision to not catch me, right? As a kid, you you're young, your baby, you don't know, you're just trusting. And we trusted our parents to protect us. We trusted that everything was gonna work out. We trusted that when we reached out, someone would be there. And then as you grow up, right, and as you go into the world, life happens, right? Life happens, and we get introduced to things that were not as palpable and present to us when we were this little tiny baby, right? We learn, we have um other friends like pain, other issues like heartbreak, other challenges like betrayal, other friends like failure. I can't I call them friends because eventually you have to make friends with these things because they don't go away. Uh, moments when people didn't show up, moments when things didn't show to be true, and slowly what happens is that our trust becomes more complicated, it becomes more nuanced. And for some of us, we learn not to trust other people. Some of us learn not to trust situations, and many of us quietly lost trust in ourselves. Not because we're broken, but because trust always involves something that there's no course in school that teaches you this risk. Maybe in law school they teach you risk assessment, or maybe in HR or something, you learn risk, but really risk, the risk that's involved in trust is not really taught. And at its core, trust is choosing to move forward, even though you could be wrong. Nobody ever told me that. I had to learn it kind of like the hard way. Because I used to love to just trust everything and everyone. I I just trusted. But at its core, trust is really being able to move forward even when you may be wrong. It's a belief that someone or something will act in a way that's reasonably safe and consistent with what's promised, but that they couldn't, that they may not, they may not do that also. And as a result, you can't have trust without being a little vulnerable. Yeah, that's kind of heavy. Because from a psychological standpoint, trust is not a feeling, it's not just a feeling. Cognitively, there's something going on in the prefrontal cortex in our brains, and not just the prefrontal cortex. I'm gonna get into a couple other regions of the brain that are involved in trust that we need to know about, but cognitively, when we think about trust, we're asking a couple of questions. Number one, what's the risk here? The brain is always asking that. Remember, we said that the brain is a survival organ. Number two, what happened before? The brain always wants to kind of see have I been down this road before? Has something bad ever happened? Has this person ever betrayed me or done something wrong? Or it's checking. And the third question is, hmm, what might happen if I move forward with this? That's true in business, it's true in relationships, it's true everywhere. Emotionally, my friend, you're always managing vulnerability. The minute we step outside our house, sometimes we ain't gotta leave the house, just running down the steps or walking on a wet bathroom floor, whatever. Emotionally and and physically, and any other adverb I can think of, we're managing vulnerability. Hope, fear, the memory of past pain. Yeah, all of those things are involved in trust. And when it breaks down, it doesn't disappear, it just fractures. Trust doesn't disappear. You don't lose trust completely. When people say, Oh, I don't trust anymore. No, what it is is that your trust is broken, it's fractured, it's there, it's just broken. And this is where forgiveness becomes essential. Forgiveness is not pretending that nothing happened. Don't get me wrong. Forgiveness is not pretending that nothing happened, it's not forgetting. And it doesn't mean putting yourself back in harm's way either. Right? It's it's more about repair, if I had to put it in words, right? You don't forget things, you don't put yourself back in harm's way, but you do have to do the repair work. It's the decision not to let the pain permanently harden your heart, to rebuild you in a way that you don't have the heart now to allow anything or anyone else in, period, not good. Because bitterness is not protection, my friend. It's an armor for sure, but eventually it's exhausting. It doesn't protect you, it's just too exhausting to be bitter all the time. You know it's true. Think about when you hold on to your anger, when you're really mad at somebody else and you're keeping that anger in. It's you that is playing out on. It's your heart, it's your arteries, it's your brain, it's your body that's being eaten away by this thing. So bitterness is not protection, it's it's exhausting. And here's where the brain comes in, right? I want to remember I told you about the prefrontal cortex? Okay, there's another part of the brain that's involved in trust that we have talked about here on the sweet spot. It's called the ACC. You remember the anterior cingulate cortex. Okay, okay. Think of it as a part of the brain that helps you stay with something even if it's uncomfortable. It's activated and it's always looking for conflict. Remember, we talked about that? When see, when a part of you wants to quit and another part of you wants to continue, or if a part of you is afraid, but you also want to go forward because you feel a sense of purpose, that's the ACC. And it's always trying to balance these conflicting feelings, it's always looking for the error issue, and when it's overwhelmed, you shut down. A lot of times when people are shut down, it's that their ACC, their anterior cingular cortex, is overwhelmed, so they start avoiding things, or you know what else? They become rigid, or they disconnect. They're not bad, you're not a bad person for doing these things. Just know that your brain is trying to protect you. But when the ACC feels supported, you adjust, you engage. When things like love and trust and forgiveness come in, it reduces your internal conflict, and guess what? Your ACC, your brain, that anterior cingulate cortex, gets a better signal, and it says, Okay, I can go, I can go chill now, and it gives you a chance to relax, and that's a neurological reality. So there's a when they tell you there's a benefit to forgiveness, there's a benefit to walking in love, it's biological, it's neurological, it's good for your brain and your heart. Yeah, and you've got to remember that, and that's inside of us. You never lose that. Your trust might be fractured or broken, but it's not gone. Because you also have something else in you, you have love in you. Most of us, if not all of us, have something or someone we love. Remember that song Whitney Houston sang it? Because the greatest love of all is the song, the greatest love of all. The line I want you to remember, I want you to play that song today. Okay, the greatest love of all. And there's a line that's gonna come up, come up in that song that I want you to spend some time with. Uh, this is Trust Yourself Thursday exercise. We're listening to a song. The song says, Because the greatest love of all was happening to me, I found the greatest love of all inside of me. That's not ego, that's about like having some internal permission to love yourself again. Because when love is a clear signal in you, trust has somewhere to land. Okay? We when love is absent, trust has nowhere to land, it collapses under the pressure. Love, my friend, stabilizes trust. And the first place you got to find the love is in you. Because without love, your trust could be reckless because you start looking for it in other people. Without loving yourself, your trust becomes cheapened. But with love, you know what else your trust can become? Not just strengthened, resilient. So that when you face a re uh a setback, a betrayal, something goes wrong. The love can help you find your way. It can help you heal, it can cover the multitude of wounds that it's it's facing. You know, I worked with a boxer once who had reached a point where his trust was shaky. He didn't trust anybody else. You know, he didn't trust anything. He didn't even, he really didn't even trust himself. He actually started off with this whole idea that he didn't trust anybody around him, he was complaining about his sparring partner, he was complaining about his coaches, everything was a problem with this dude. And the thing was that he didn't see that it was himself that he didn't trust. Yeah, he was not trusting himself, he was afraid of the rounds of that when he may lose, and all that he was hiding. And all of this pain was accumulating inside of him, coming out as a lack of trust for others, but he started doubting himself, and that's where he needed to focus. And we had to finally go there in the conversation. Because what the dog was whispering was that maybe you're not built for this anymore. And that's a whole series here this week, right? We're talking about built for this. A lot of times when people are having trust issues, love issues, failure issues, worry, anxiety, stress is that there's a secret whisperer in their minds, in their brains, maybe it's even the ACC, saying, Hey, maybe you're not built for this anymore. But here's what we discovered. One, he was not afraid of pain, he's a boxer. Two, he had always known that boxing hurts. But life can hurt even more. What was eroding in him was his connection to why he loved boxing, and what was he loving in life that could infuse his thinking. That's what was missing. Once we went back to love and we started figuring out what do you really love? Tell me what you love about boxing. Tell me what you wouldn't give up with all of that, and we started looking in life, your kids, your family, all of that. Where's the love? He remembered that choosing boxing was his choice because he loved the discipline in it and he loved the honesty in it, he loved the competitiveness, he loved the demand. He was able to realize that you know, yeah, I love this. I would never give this up. I would do this for free. I would do this for free. And you know who he had to forgive? Not all the people around him. He had to learn to forgive himself for getting jaded, for getting tired. It's okay. You're human. Forgive your body for feeling the pain, forgive yourself for doubting. Yeah, forgive yourself for sometimes feeling like yeah, you don't want to do it. That's okay. Once we let forgiveness in and we learn to use it on ourselves, we reduce the internal stress on the ACC. And the ACC stopped battling him, stopped trying to make him feel guilty, stop pushing everybody away and making everybody mad and making everybody wrong. And he realized that he was built for this. Even the stress, even when you get tired, you're built for this. The road is hard, you're going to run into obstacles and challenges, but you were built for this. Take a breath, step back, relax. You got this. This happens on the road sometimes. Sometimes you gotta take an exit and go to the rest stop. Sometimes you gotta put gas in the car. Sometimes the GPS is wrong. Sometimes you gotta flat. These things happen. You're on the journey, and you love it. This is when you sign up for it, you signed up for all of it. And you're not alone for those of us that have a belief system. The ancient wisdom is sitting right there in Proverbs 3. You can trust in God with all your heart. You don't have to lean on what you know, you don't have to just depend on your trust. Trust in something bigger than you. Acknowledge it. And you know what? The path gets even clearer. Because you're not just working on your with your trust, you're working with something bigger. What if there was something bigger than you, stronger than you, more powerful than you, that you can anchor your trust in so that you can just let go and trust the process, trust the moment, trust your God, your higher power, whatever that is for you. That doesn't mean you're ignoring the harm or shutting off your thinking. It doesn't, it means that you're not letting fear drive the bus. You know, yeah, it means not letting fear-driven interpretation dominate your decisions. That's the bottom line. You don't want fear-driven decisions, you don't want those kinds of decisions because they don't elevate you. Forgiveness straightens the path because it frees energy that bitterness consumes on a daily basis. Bitterness is con will consume you, man. You don't want that. So trust is not rebuilt by pretending nothing happened. Don't get me wrong. It's rebuilt by repair. You've got to do the repair work, and forgiveness allows you to stay open without being unsafe. Nobody's asking anybody else to put themselves in a say unsafe position. Love allows you to stay committed without being naive, also. So don't get it twisted. I am not, Dr. Sweet is not telling you to go back into something that's going to be harmful. But practicing love and forgiveness, they're very powerful. That's your resilience. Sometimes that has to be done from a distance, sometimes that's a slow walk back. Sometimes it means just accepting a new reality without the bitterness, without the without the the need to retaliate. All of that. All I'm saying is guard your heart. Guard it's a short ride, this thing we call life, right? It's a short ride. Who wants to stay in bitterness? Who wants to stay in unforgiveness? Who wants to stay mad all the time? It's such a short ride. And love and forgiveness are available. They're right there for you today. Nobody's saying you gotta do it all but start with you. Love you. Learning to love myself is the greatest love of all. This is the sweet spot. Ending this Thursday, this Trust Yourself Thursday, with an invitation for you to subscribe. It's completely free. Trust me on that. And if you know someone whose heart has been hardened, who's been betrayed, who's working it out, whose nervous system is just protecting them from being hurt again, understand this. They're not wrong for that, they're just protecting themselves. Open them up with this particular episode.