So here we are. It's Sunday, not just any Sunday though. This is not just any Sunday. First of all, it's a Sunday that you and I are here. What a blessing, right? What a blessing to be able to participate in Slowdown Sunday. Welcome, beautiful souls. Welcome. Welcome to The Sweet Spot. Yes, it's Slowdown Sunday where we synthesize science, soul, and success here on The Sweet Spot. But before we slow down, let's gently gather what this week has been teaching us. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet, I'm your host here on The Sweet Spot. We've been in a wonderful series called Built for This. You were built for this. You were built for this moment, you were built for this week. You were built for everything, and you're gonna get through it. That's the promise. We're gonna do it together. So let's recap. Let's recap gently. Monday, Making Moves Monday, we learned something essential, didn't we? We learned that uh the stress signals that you feel or that you perceive aren't proof that something is wrong with you. We recalibrated that. We said that those stress signals are just information, they're data, not doom. Your nervous system wasn't panicking, it was just trying to help you when you get those signals. On Tuesday, take action, take action Tuesday. We talked about movement, about how nothing changes until something moves. We quoted Albert Einstein: nothing changes until something moves. Just let that land for a second. If nothing moves, nothing's happening. Yeah. We said that thought, prayer, intention, even hope all need action to come alive. We were reminded that our bodies and our minds and our willpower, everything was built for motion on Take Action Tuesday. Well, when we jumped into Win It All Wednesday, we reframed what it meant to be a winner. Remember that? We yeah, we reframed winning. Not someone who avoids pressure, but someone whose brain stays online when the pressure rises. Winners don't eliminate stress, they train for it, they prepare their self-talk for it. Remember, I told you I overheard the great Alan Houston telling someone we prepare for the chaos. That's what great closers do. The best winners prepare for the chaos. They anticipate it and they prepare for it. So they're able to keep their clarity, their clarity when things tighten up. What a secret I stole there, right? I don't know if I stole it, I overheard it. It was just great to hear Alan say that. That was powerful. And I got something that I can share with you, right? That you and I should be preparing for chaos for when things don't go well, so that we can be calm in the middle of that chaos. You know, that even reminds me of Jesus on the boat, right? Like when you think about the storm and the boat going nuts, crazy, and Jesus is sleeping on the boat, and they're like, Jesus, why are you sleeping? Right? So that's the idea of having this level of calm to be an executor, to be a closer on Thursday. On Thursday, trust yourself Thursday. We talked about how we were born as trusting beings, right? How life then enters and sometimes fractures that trust through pain, illness, failure, or worse, betrayal, abandonment. So many things happen, loss, and how learning to trust again, including learning to trust yourself, is an act of courage that has to be rooted in love and forgiveness, not naivety, but in strength, the strength to love again, the strength to risk again. On Finish Strong Friday, we looked at finishing strong, not as a last minute surge, but as staying regulated when fatigue, when urgency, when emotions collide with us. We realized that finishing strong meant preserving our judgment, not forcing heroic action, not playing hero ball in the moment. How we had to hold our shape, hold our configuration, who we are, when the margins disappear, when things get um hard to understand, that we're gonna stay consolidated, and that's a way to finish. Well, self-care Saturday yesterday. We we we uh we remembered something crucial that we were built to recover. That self-care is not a luxury, it's part of the design. The body, the brain, the spirit all need a space to reset. Even the cell phone needs that. Or they break down. Strength doesn't come from endless output. We weren't built to be endlessly active, it comes from renewal. We talked about getting seven hours of sleep. And today, today, beautiful soul, today is where it all comes together. Slow down Sunday in the sweet spot, where we dabble in a little astrophysics, not because we're astrophysicists by any stretch, but this is the day we try to look to the stars and the universe to guide us a bit, to see what lessons they have for us, or maybe revisit the lessons they've already taught us. Because the universe has been teaching this lesson long before we ever tried to hustle. And this is the core truth I want to share with you this slowdown Sunday, my friend. The universe does not hurry, yet everything gets done. The universe doesn't hurry, yet everything evolves. The galaxies don't rush to form, stars aren't frantic about their timelines. Expansion happens, rest happens, transformation happens, it just happens. But it's always in some kind of a rhythm. There's no sense of panic in the universe. Astrophysicists remind us that even light takes time to travel. Do you know when you look at the night sky, you're seeing delayed information when you look at those lights and the stars? That is old light that's just now arriving years and years later. Fascinating. And that matters for us. There's a lesson there. Why? Because because this, because so many of us judge ourselves too early. We evaluate our lives based on old light, old data, old effort, old seasons, old memories. Slowing down keeps you from making permanent conclusions about temporary phases. Because when you're rushing and you're too busy and you're too fast, everything feels like it's correct. But that's not always so. Do you know in a moment of reflection? My mom always does this. She always tells me, listen, I'll sleep on this and then tomorrow I'll talk to you. Because she has figured out that when you slow down and you sleep, you get much more information, you have more wisdom, you're able to sort things out, and the science bears her out because that's that REM sleep that she's getting there. Oh boy, that's where memories are consolidated. That's where creative thinking actually is occurring. So, yes, mom, forever the scientist, forever the leader. I love it. Oh man, slow down Sunday is one of my favorite times. No agenda. We're talking astrophysics, we're talking the universe, we're talking how the universe is built, and what lessons does it have that it can give us. Astrophysicist Stephen Hawkins often reminded us that time and space were finite, but they didn't have any sharp edges. Meaning that what I think he meant is this you have limits, yes, we have limits, but within these limits, we have lots of flexibility. Even though we have these limits, the edges aren't sharp, so we don't need to sprint to any boundary, right? We our performance, if you're a performer, whatever you have to do lives inside, lives in how you move inside your lane. And Arthur C. Clarke, another one, puts it this way: science demands patience. If you're a scientist, you understand that you've got to be patient. Science demands patience, is his quote. And you know what? So does growth. The body grows at its pace. Plants and trees grow at their pace. The oak tree didn't just shoot up, and look at how huge it gets. I keep telling you all this. In the back of my parents' home, there's a mango tree and an avocado tree. And I'm telling you, I I can't even remember when my parents planted the seeds back there. I can't even tell you the rate that those trees grew at, but they're huge right now. Patiently growing and growing and growing. You know what also takes patience? Healing. Healing takes patience. If you're struggling with an illness or an injury right now, grow your patience, trust in the process, do what you have to do, build in patience. Don't let anxiety, worry, and and wanting it to happen fast create more stress for you and slow down your process by increasing more inflammation in your body because you're so worried and stressed, right? So there's a there's a almost a medical reason not to worry and be so anxious and to trust the patience. You know what else demands patience? Becoming a master, mastering your craft. If you're an athlete or a performer or you're a painter, you're a student, and you want to master what you're doing, it takes patience and practice. Sometimes you have to fall down seven and get up eight. That's okay, that's part of the process. You see, in astrophysics, precision requires stillness. Even if a think of a telescope. What I was told when I was looking in the labs there was not to shake the telescope. Because even the slightest shake of a telescope can blur what you're gonna see in terms of if you're trying to find a galaxy. Every little movement of that telescope matters, and you know what? Our mind works the same way. When you rush, when you stay flooded with urgency, cortisol and adrenaline, those hormones they they rise. And the thoughtful parts of the brain, the reflective, thoughtful part go quiet because you're with the stress hormones now. And you're gonna be more reactive instead of reflective, and you're gonna move fast, but you're also gonna make some errors. And when you flood it like that, if you're a basketball player, a football player, you're a hockey player, soccer player, whatever it is, tennis, whatever you do, when you're moving too fast, you can make errors. Slowing down steadies the lens of the telescope, and it steadies you too. It brings the prefrontal cortex, your CEO of the brain, back online. It restores your perspective and it allows insight to surface in you. That's why you want to have some control. That's why pauses improve your decision making. Taking a breath, taking a step back. It's the final seconds of the game. You don't want to be frazzled in panic. This is where you want your prefrontal cortex online. This is where you practice for the chaos, like my good friend Alan talked about. Right? You want, yeah, you want uh to be somebody who has slept enough so that the sleep that my mom tells me all the time helps her memory and helps her to be such a first-rate thinker. You want that sleep to consolidate you, you want stillness to bring answers that don't come when you're forcing things, stillness, silence, surrender, sleep. The S's they all work to help you. They all work to help you because they restore you, and you were built to be restored. Yeah, you were built to be restored, and the ancient wisdom does not fail us. In the book of Isaiah, it literally says that in returning and rest you shall be saved, in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. Notice what that verse doesn't say. I like to do that when I'm reading the ancient wisdom. What are they not saying, right? Because that's also because that's probably where I am. All right, it doesn't say strength comes from grinding harder, Dr. Sweet. It doesn't say that salvation comes from being fast, that your answers are gonna come because you're the fastest thing. It says quietness, it says trust, it says rest. You see, I'll read it again. In returning and in rest, you shall be saved. In quietness and in trust, there's where you're gonna find your strength. That's what it's saying, right here in front of me, and I'm looking at it. Wow, and I've read it several times, and I had to read it several times to understand what it's not saying. Don't grind, don't rush past things, find a quiet space, trust, return to rest, breathe, relax. And since it's a spooky slowdown Sunday where we go into astrophysics, uh a star cannot burn at maximum output forever. That's the that's the corollary. The universe is teaching us the same thing the ancient wisdom is saying if a star tries to burn at maximum output output forever, it explodes. It's beautiful when you watch the explosion, yeah, but it's short-lived. And you know, high performers who never slow down, they do the same thing, they can explode, short-lived, short career. So slowing down doesn't mean stopping your life, it means shifting from explosion mode to creation mode. Do you understand what I'm saying? Do you get that? Because it's really important to understand that that's where you can become more creative is when you slow down, when you get that sleep, when you get that recovery, and you get that rest. It's not wasted time, it's part of how you win. So if you keep bumping the tripod on the telescope in the lab, they're gonna kick you out, especially in the astrophysics lab, because they get it. They get it. That tripod, that telescope to see Andromeda, whatever that is. If the telescope is pointed at Andromeda, you know, you and you keep bumping the tripod, you're just gonna see noise, you know. And but it's only when things are still that the faint light will appear that you will see the other things that you need to see. And that's why slowing down is letting your inner telescope settle down so you can see. My friend, as we close out this week, remembering that we were built for this, as we slow down on this Sunday. Tonight I challenge you. Don't fix anything, just don't optimize anything, don't chase anything, just look out of your window for a minute, look up at the sky, breathe, take a second to let it down, slow down, let your system remember that it's part of the universe and that things have a way of working out because the universe is not in a hurry, and neither are you meant to be. You don't lose momentum by slowing down, you refine it. And when you move again, you're more aligned, you move in more alignment once you've reset, recalibrated, refreshed, renewed, once you've taken time to do that, and if you're not doing those things, this is a great place to start. If you know someone who could benefit from just slowing down a bit, share this with them. I would love to connect with them. And if you yourself haven't slowed down enough to subscribe to this podcast, I invite you to subscribe. There is no charge, there's no hidden fee, there's just connection. Well, my friends, that's it. We have done yet another week together. I'm just reminding you that you're built for this. Whatever you're going through, you're built for it. It could be a job issue, it could be a health issue, it could be a relationship issue. I don't know. We all deal with various kinds of challenges, it could be anything. What I want you to know is that you're built for it. You're built for it, and that you are not alone in this. I'm with you. This is Dr. Derek Sweet. Blessings and love to you. Go forward.