Okay now, welcome. You did it. You got here. You got to Monday. You got to making moves Monday, and I'm proud of you. We are gonna go in this week. We're gonna go hard. We are built for this. This is what we do. Monday is what we do. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining me here on the sweet spot again. Sweet spotters, sweet builders, sweet dreamers, you're here. Alright, let's do it. So today is Making Moves Monday here on The Sweet Spot. And as you know, I'm your host. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm a board certified psychiatrist. I work with high performance. I write on sleep. I write on building capacity. I write on performance. I also enjoy sitting across the coffee table uh with you just talking about life, the mystery we call life. How do we unpack this thing? How do we maximize uh this thing we call life? And how do we get to be the best version of ourselves every single day? And that is why you're here, beloved. You're here because this is a divine appointment. Let's get right to it. This week we have a new theme. You're gonna love it. It's called Hold the Line. So we've talked about you don't need the new you. We've talked about you're built for this, we've talked about the ceilings you don't see. We have so many amazing episodes that you, if you wanted to, could go back now and just punch them up in your library and get some inspiration, motivation, or direction if you so choose. So I invite you to always go back and see if you can listen and imbibe some of the wisdom we've shared together here on the sweet spot. But this week we're dealing with hold the line because you know you were already built for the pressure, you know that you can crack through the invisible ceiling, you understand that you have faced giants. I'm just quoting series we've done before. Okay, um, and look, holding the line is the key thing. Our title today is Hold the Line, don't step back when it gets uncomfortable. Hold your ground. Period. That's it. I can stop right here, okay? You are not stepping back this week. You are not stepping back, you are not giving up any ground. So you're here on Monday. I already know something about you if you're listening to me right now. You don't avoid the week, you step right into it. That is what you do, and this week's theme, hold the line, is for you. So I wanted to tell you that the the idea of hold the line is a phrase that goes back to the 17th century, believe it or not. Yeah, in the 17th century, this was what the infantry, the battle-tested warriors, would do. They would stand shoulder to shoulder across an open field. We're talking 17th century. Look, that's the 1600s, y'all. Okay, the 17th century. So this is how they fought shoulder to shoulder, eyes locked forward. And look, they didn't have any advanced communication, they didn't have any safety nets, they didn't have satellites and drones, nothing like that, right? They they were on the ground forming a line. And if one section broke formation, the entire line was at risk. The entire line can could have collapsed. So victory back then depended less on aggression and more on a kind of steadiness that you had to have when you were holding your ground. Before you advance, sweet spotter, before you move forward this Monday, you must establish your ground. Look, I work in football, I work in yeah, and in football terms, before you a play develops, the line has to be set. Offensive or defensive line. Protect or push, but nothing moves until the line is stable. That is true in sports, that is true in football, but it's true in life. Absolutely, and that's where most of us struggle. We try to make big moves, I've done it. Trying to make a big move, trying to get this thing done. I'm writing a book right now. Sleep as performance medicine. I'm thinking, ah, you know, I'm Dr. Sweet, I'm smart, I can do this in 10 seconds. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have to set the line. We try to make big moves before we decide what we're unwilling to lose. See, I had to calculate how many hours I was willing to lose to write this book. Right? So that's what we have to be careful about. Before you make your move today, the point I'm trying to make here about holding the line is that today's about position. Let's be strategic before you get out there and fight or you defend. Today's about position. Your battlefield may not look like the field of the soldiers of the 16th of the 17th century. It may look like a diagnosis that you just got, it may look like financial pressure, it could look like one of these crazy relationships, and you know how the heck you got into it, and you're trying to figure it out. It could be performance pressure, that you're under so much pressure to win, to be the best. You can be on the front lines. That might be, you might literally be a police officer, a law enforcement officer, you might be a public official, you could be anything. And and the and healthcare, I don't know where you are operating, but I do know that there's a line there. Look, sometimes the line can be even loneliness, being alone, or having doubts. These are lines, different battlefields, but the same principle is going to come back to us, right? That holding the line requires more than you just being motivated, it requires that you have to do certain things to so that you can make the right move and get the result that you deserve to get. And you deserve it, brother. You deserve it, sister. You deserve it, friend. Absolutely, you deserve it. But sometimes you have to hold the line so that you can determine where you should fight, or how you're going to fight, or what you're fighting. If you don't have what are you protecting? What are you launching from, right? All that is important. Holding the line has some requirements. They didn't just stand there. It says hold the line, it didn't say just stand there. Okay. It requires certain things. You've got to regulate your emotions. That's the first thing that you have to do. If you're an athlete, you're a high-level performer, you're on stage, you're you're in a relationship where it's kind of tough and you're getting into arguments, you have to regulate your emotion. That's the first thing you must do. And you've got to understand what emotions you're feeling and how am I going to regulate them. I'm not going to let my emotions run me. So that when discomfort rises, remember the amygdala, the threat to center, the threat center of the brain? The amygdala. We talk about the amygdala here all the time on the sweet spot. We talk about the amygdala, which is in your brain, a threat detection center, because it's important that you understand that we understand our biology, our neurobiology. And the amygdala is our friend. It's not bad. It just detects a lot of threats. It prepares us to run, to retreat, or to react. But sometimes when it's going, when when we're afraid or we're anxious or we're not thinking straight, it can have us overreact. And then you can't calm your breathing down. You can't stabilize your body because your amygdala is overreacting. And then you can't hold the line. So if you want to hold the line, you have to understand I have a threat detection center in my brain. It sometimes fires just because it's trying to protect me. And I've got to understand, I gotta, I've got to control some of these emotions because sometimes there is no threat. Like sometimes you're walking down a dark street and the amygdala is firing because it's remembering that, well, it could be a snake down here, there could be a lion around the corner, it could be um uh uh somebody's trying to mug me or hurt me, right? So it's it's doing its job because it had to prepare our ancestors for these kinds of things, but more than likely there's gonna be nothing there, and you just have to be somewhat vigilant and you can control your emotions. You can't never go down the street, um, even from a spiritual perspective, you have to walk through the valley of the shadow, okay, and keep it moving. So hold the line by holding your emotions in check and understanding that you have to regulate your emotions. That's the first thing. The next thing you have to do, beloved, you have to have something called cognitive flexibility. You have to not be rigid in your thinking. Because rigidity, think about something anything that's super rigid. What happens to rigid things when pressure hits? Exactly, they break. So you don't want to snap under pressure. You don't want when you're holding the line that you're so rigid that you're gonna snap because the pressure comes. And trust me, pressure does come. It does come. So holding a line, in addition to regulating your emotions, requires that you have cognitive flexibility. Rigid thinking is not the move right now. You've got to be flexible. The brain, the brain, it needs to adapt without abandoning abandoning your core values, obviously. You want to be adaptive, you want to be able to shift, you want to abandon your values. I'm not saying be a pin cushion and then switch to please people just because you're trying to be flexible. No, you want to have a degree of flexibility like a rubber band, right? Like, you know, it always comes back to its shape. Like you can bend it, you can pull it, but it's gonna come back to this shape. It's almost like when you're a parent and you know, your kids are testing you. They want to see how far they can stretch you. People do that in relationships to each other, right? But you want to be cognitively flexible. I can bend, but I'm not gonna break. I can be shifting left or right, but I'm not gonna abandon my core values. Do you get that? I know you do. So, one, emotional regulation. Two, you have cognitive flexibility. You know what the third thing is? I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna tell you what the third thing is. You have to have, when you're holding a line, clarity. You got to be clear about who you are, what you want, and what you're not gonna do. That's it. Be clear. Learn this from my mom and my dad, they're very clear people, right? So it requires clarity of values. You've got to be clear. If you don't know what matters most, you won't know which ground to protect. And sometimes you ain't got to be protecting every single piece of the of the of the of the territory because some of it don't even matter. If it doesn't matter, you're not gonna fight that battle. Does that make sense? Yeah, it requires you've got to know what really matters to you, and that's the ground you're gonna protect. That's the line you're gonna hold today. You know what that does? It gives you the freedom, my friend. It gives you freedom not to have to fight every battle. Exhale, relax. I'm not even trying to fight that with you, dude. No. So, alright, we've talked about emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, and clarity. Clarity of values. Easy as pie. What else, Dr. Sweet? What else do I need to hold my line on making moves Monday? You know what else you need? You've got to understand that your energy is finite. I was talking with an amazing football player the other day, and we were discussing a book called Meditations for Mortals. Fantastic book. I'll get back to that. But in that book, we were discussing the idea that things are finite, nothing, you don't have limitless energy. So the fourth thing here is that it requires that you manage your energy. Energy management. Because for when you get when you're tired, you know what fatigue does? I see it in sports all the time. It exaggerates the level of threat. It makes the threat feel bigger. When you're not sleeping, and I'm writing this sleep book, Sleep is Performance Medicine, and I'm telling you, I'm learning so much just because I'm reviewing again all the stuff I know about sleep, and sleep loss makes everything feel catastrophic. When you're not sleeping well, when you're sleep deprived, when you're fatigued, everything is a 10-alarm fire. It feels bigger. Your patience is thinner, and you're gonna really make mistakes. That's why casinos love uh gamblers not to sleep, because they just sort of like are just literally, you know, their brains are are are are thinking bigger, but not necessarily in the greatest of ways. So you've got to manage your energy because you don't want to be making holding the line when you're tired. Look at football, look at any team. When they're tired, they can't always hold the line. Makes sense. So we talked about regulating your emotions, we've talked about being flexible cognitively, we've talked about having clear values, and then we've talked about managing your energy. That is like a bank. Your energy is yours. You sleep, you rest. My mom is really great at saying, let's sleep on that and get back to it tomorrow. You know what she's doing? She is putting money in the bank so that when she's about to hold that line the next day, oh, she's good. And I'm gonna tell you something about my mom. Mom, I hope you're not listening, but that woman, she can hold a line, she can hold a line. Probably because she's very rested. So the last thing is, well, there's a couple more things. Connection. When you're holding a line, you have to maintain connection. You really do, because you're not in life alone, and part of it is you don't want to fight the battle alone. I'm notorious for this. I I think we're just sort of conditioned. I think men maybe even more than women. I'm generalizing, but I feel like men we tend to want to do everything by ourselves. But when you hold a line, you're not by yourself, you're with your partner, you're with your teammate. You see, lines historically held because the soldiers trusted the person next to them. Modern resilience research teaches us the same thing. When we're stronger together, we're steadier together, find someone who thinks like you, who you trust, and let them help you hold it down. And if you don't have someone, you plus God, you plus your divine maker, you plus your highest purpose, if you don't believe in God, whatever that means to you, you plus that entity is plenty. So I've talked about connection, I've talked about energy management, I've talked about clear values, I've talked about cognitive flexibility, and I've talked about emotional regulation to help you hold the line. Now I'm talking about these things awfully fast, but I'm telling you, if you slow down and you think about these things, this applies in the physical realm, in the psychological realm, in the social realm, and even in the spiritual realm. These principles. So there's just a couple more. If you want to hold the line, this is Making Moves Monday. I hope that you've been enjoying me speeding. I've had a cup of coffee, and man, I'm my my mind is just flying right now. I feel so good. Okay, so look. The next thing you have to be able to do is tolerate some discomfort. Not my favorite one at all. I I don't like discomfort. I I don't know about you. I'm there people who love it. I there are some people they they they go into the cold tub, they push themselves beyond their limits. It's it's not who I am. Give me a five-star hotel. I'm so sorry. Alright. Okay, so look, discomfort tolerance is how you hold the line, though. You don't hold the line by being comfortable. The five-star hotel isn't gonna help you when there's pressure, when there's stress, and any coach will tell you, you gotta get up off your you know what, and hold the line. It requires discomfort tolerance because the more you expose yourself to what's uncomfortable, the more you face it, the more you'll build your capacity. Exposure builds capacity. You go to the gym and you work out and you you you tear those muscles down, they build up stronger. That's how it works. So be ready. Put in your mind, I can handle this discomfort. Say it out loud. You know why? When you say I can handle the discomfort, when you say, look, I've seen this before, when you say this tool pass, look, let me tell you what happens. Your mind, your PFC, your prefrontal cortex tells your amygdala, calm down, we can handle this. The next one is inhibitory control. That's a really weird term, right? Sometimes you gotta control yourself, don't react. I'm not saying quit. I'm not saying quit at all. I'm just saying, you know, just not reacting. Sometimes when you you can throw your opponent off by that, like you have a poker face, you just don't show anything. You are able to control yourself, right? You so you're not quitting, you're not escalating, you are literally just in control. And that means something that says dead silence. Dead silence. That's what that means. Dead silence. And so you okay, and the last thing is identity stability, right? You want to also have a stable identity, you don't want to be 15 different people, you don't want to be this person today, that person tomorrow. You want to be stable in your identity because if who you are is gonna shift with every single circumstance, your line that you're holding is gonna shift too. And you don't want that. A line that's shifty when you when the line is shifting and it can't hold, it's not holding. And you know why it's holding? Because you're not clear on who you are in this moment, you're not working according to your values and standing with your identity. This is who I am, this is what I'm about. I'm not saying be rigid, like obviously, if you have to make a shift, you will, but the identity stays stable. Think of the rubber band. I'm always gonna come back to this. So faith, trust, and resolve are going to sit on top of the things I just mentioned. The identity that you're gonna hold, the ability to uh control yourself, to uh hold on to not uh let discomfort uh make you run away, to stay connected to what you need to stay connected to, to manage your energy, have good value, have really clear values, truly understand that you have to have some flexibility in how you think and be adaptive so you can make you can respond to what's out there on the field or on the court or in life, and then just regulate your emotions. Yeah, don't let your make the run the show. Those those are some of the principles, uh, beloved, as to how you can hold the line. I know I said a lot this morning, it is making moves Monday. I wanted to give you the the principles of holding a line from a psychological, psychiatric uh sort of perspective here. I hope that's been helpful. And uh sometimes people ask me, well, Doc, what's a good book to read uh on this? One good book is The Obstacle is the way. I was talking to a football player, the same guy that we were talking about, Meditations of Mortals. He this this book, Obstacle is the Way, we use it a lot in sports, and there's a quote in that book, and I'll we'll probably end with this the quote in a book that says this the obstacle is the way. Don't run from the obstacle today. Hold your line, determine what the obstacle is, and understand that whatever's impeding the action is going to advance the action, whatever is standing in the way, in other words, is gonna become your way. When the obstacle appears, your threat system, the amygdala, is going to activate, but you're not gonna run. Because if you retreat, you're training your brain to run. If you stay steady, if you hold the hold the line, you will train your brain to control itself. Remember, remember, Marcus Aurelius. For those of you who love the Stoics, he says, if it's endurable, then you endure it. Stop complaining. That's his quote, literally. Okay, meditations. I think that was the book. If it's endurable, then you endure it. Jure it, stop complaining. He's not minimizing pain, he's calibrating it, right? That's what he's doing. He's saying that your brain might exaggerate the discomfort. Your training is what's going to correct it. And because we're the sweet spot, because we deal with science, stolen success, I'm gonna throw in the message Bible in here. Of course I will. I'm not afraid. Look, I'm holding the line, and sometimes you have to hold the line spiritually too. So in James 1:12, it says this anyone who meets a testing challenge head on and manages to stick it out is mighty fortunate. Alright, you know, the message Bible is not the it's not as beautiful as the King James, it doesn't have the poetic um sort of feel, right? So I'm probably cringing all the classically trained Christians out there, but look, I like it because it's straightforward. Anyone who meets a testing challenge head on and manages manages, manages to stick it out, is mighty fortunate. Nice, you know, because look, it says meet it head on, hold the line is directional, hold the line is face it. And if you and and and the the the Dhammapada, if you if you're a Buddhist out there, it this applies to you too. In the Dhammapada, it says, Um, you can conquer, you can conquer a million men, but if you don't hold your line, the noble you're not noble. The noble victor is that you have to conquer yourself. Most battles are internal. Alright now, you've been listening to Making Moves Monday here on the sweet spot. I'm so sorry I went long today, but I had to get this one out because holding the line is a super important thing, especially in the times that we live, especially in the moment that we're in. So I don't know what you're facing, I don't know what you're dealing with, but whatever it is, ask yourself this question as we close. What position am I protecting this week? Where am I gonna hold my ground? Where am I going to hold my ground? You don't need to dominate the week today, you just need to decide what ground you're not giving up. This is Dr. Derek Sweet. You're listening to The Sweet Spot. Today is Making Moves Monday. If you enjoyed today, if it meant something to you, please subscribe. It is completely free. Subscribe and follow, it makes a difference. And then, if you know someone, more importantly to me, is that if you know someone, please who who could use this message, send it to them today. We're building a community here. We're building a community of steady people who are gonna hold the line. Will you hold the line with me? I'm sure you will.