Meet Dr. Sweet And Cam Clark

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Okay now, welcome back. Welcome back. It's Wednesday, but not just any Wednesday. Around these parts here on the Sweet Spot, we call it Win It All Wednesday because indeed we are winners. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. As you know, I'm a board certified psychiatrist. I work in sports and I work in high-performance environments, high-stakes environments. I get to sit across from people who are in mission-critical, mission-sensitive, high-stakes sorts of positions, like my friend here, Cam Clark, who's been with us all week, who knows something about performing in front of thousands and thousands of people, who knows something about winning. And today, beautiful souls, we have the privilege of hearing from Cam. Cam, welcome back, brother.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Thank you for having me, Dr. Dr. Sweet.

Everyone Is A Winner: Biology Frame

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Oh man, what a joy, what a joy, what a joy. We're gonna dive right in here to winning. It's Win It All Wednesday here on the on the on the sweet spot. Hey, look, Cam, the way I look at it is that, and I've said this on the sweet spot before, and I want to get your thoughts. Everybody's a winner. None of you really likes me when likes hearing that, but it's true. As somebody who has studied medicine and studied biology, I take it right back to the sperm and the egg. We are sitting here because we want a race, Cam. We won a race, a biological race, that resulted in us being born. Millions and millions of sperm compete to meet the egg, so that this blastocyst or this whatever they want to call, I forget all the terms, so that we can have life, so that conception can happen. What are the chances with millions and millions of randomly trying to connect to this egg so that we could have a fetus, so that we could be born. And then for nine months or whatever, however many months we were in the womb where anything could have happened, we made it through. So we were already winners. We're born to win, and we are winning. Doesn't it feel like that when you get into the world, obviously, and then the world does its thing and it sets up. I mean, in sports, you know better than most. There's a winner and a loser.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

And that is in some ways a parallel to life. Where they are quote unquote winners and losers. What we try to work on on the sweet spot is trying to have a winning identity. And I'm wondering, as an athlete, somebody who's had to deal with literal winning and losing, how have you made sense of that? Or where are you on that?

Injury, Identity, And Balance

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Yeah. Winning is interest is an interesting topic to me because it's more about the result than it is about the process. And I try not to be as result-driven as pro as as possible, but it's inevitable, especially in my line of work, to not think about the results, right? So for me, part of winning that I think I've I've attempted to make peace with, and I think is something that I achieve to do every day, there's two different types of winning in my life, right? So there's the external, the external battle, and then there are the internal battles, right? So a lot of, you know, we're in a day and age of social media. It's easy to look like you're winning externally. And in care, and not even in it's not easy, but even in career, a lot of people can have success, have a multitude of success, and even be able to scale it and whatever it may be, but they might not be winning that internal battle, right? And then there are other people that are just 100% comfortable in their world and the way that they think and the way that they feel, that they could care less about perception or the result or the end, the end goal, right? Which is more of an external type factor. So for me, my my goal and my journey is to win win both of these battles, right? Because I've I've been at a point of my career where I felt like I was on top of the world, and I was I was this NFL player, and then I had this career in an injury, and it revealed to me that I had been winning a ton of external battles, and I hadn't been winning internally, right? So to me, that's what comes to mind when I think about winning, is and both are important, right? You can't just be the person that I'm just 100% content with where I am. I don't need to change, you know, God is good and I'm grateful, and you know, all of that is great, but there has to be something else driving you as well. But you also can't be the person that's just it's all about what it looks like to other people. What is my perception? What is how do others view me so much to know where now internally you're really cheating yourself? And to me, that's when I think that's when you lose, right? We're talking about winning. Let's talk about the the opposite of winning. We talk about losing, that's that's when you lose, right? I think when you don't have that balance, that that sense of homeostasis between the two.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Homeostasis, man. That's what I like talking to intelligent brothers. Things like homeostasis.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Wow. You are who you hang around. Continue to listen to the sweet spot, you'll learn more words.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

All right. Okay, you know what? I deserve that one. All right, but yeah, homeostasis, the balance, the balance between winning and losing. And there's just so much in what you just said. Uh, the idea of being winning internally and externally, like just that split of even realizing that you have a couple of kind of races that you might be running. You might be running an internal race with yourself and the external race that you run with the world. And I would say, Cam, based on what you just shared, that's possible. Is it possible to be a winner and a loser?

Define Your Own Win

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Not to be cliche, but I think that's the sweet spot. I think that's the sweet spot because all winners, what makes you a winner is you have to be comfortable losing. You know, oftentimes we talked about, you know, this is our third series we've done together. We talked about making moves Monday. We talked about take action Tuesday, right? Now we're talking about winning on Wednesday. To win, you have to be comfortable with defeat. You have to be comfortable with loss. But many times it's not the it's not the guy whose hand is raised at the end of the fight who's the only winner. It's the guy who decided to get in the ring and fight. Mm-hmm. So, and that's another point, too, that just when you know we could think of talk about this all day about winning, is we want to make sure are we, you know, it's a question to ask yourself, and I ask myself, am I winning to me or am I winning to someone else's standards? What's a win to you? I think it's I think it would be good to define that before you even compete, right? What is a win to you? What is a win? What is a loss? We talked about starting with small habits and taking action Tuesday and taking the small steps, right? Not overanalyzing, but taking the small steps, right? Maybe it's going and sitting in the parking lot at the gym. That's your workout for the day. Well, that's a win, right? So, what's a win to you, right? We want to make sure that we're winning, not just to mom, dad, boss, or these set of unrealistic expectations. Are you winning to yourself? Are you keeping the promises that you make to yourself?

Detaching Identity From Outcomes

Strong Opponents And True Sportsmanship

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Wow. And self, that that's another word that comes up with winning and losing. I feel as if self and identity, if I'm listening to you carefully, get tied up into winning and losing. And the sweet spot, not to not yeah, to to uh boy, you really got me laughing on that one. The sweet spot is maybe understanding that winning and losing is not who you are. Maybe there's no such thing as a winner and a loser. You maybe you win and you lose things, but that doesn't change who you are. You can lose your keys. Doesn't mean that you're a bad person or you're no good. You could lose the game. That's just the nature and the reality of sport. I think when you take on an identity as a loser, or you see yourself as a loser, or behave as a loser, that's a whole different thing than winning or losing. Some winners walk around with their chest puffed up and thinking that because they scored more points or they won the prize, that they're the winner. But sometimes that behavior is like losing behavior in its own way. And sometimes it's fragile behavior. I've seen, I've been in sports long enough to see that when you're so tied into the stat line and the bottom line, and that's all you can see, and you're defined by your wins and your losses. Well, when the losses come, you're crushed. Because your identity is not that of a winner. A winner, a real winner, is not worrying when they lose a game. You look at Jordan, Kobe, you look at uh staff, all of the greats, they've lost games. But they're not moving, they're not walking around with their shoulders slumped as losers. They're still who they are. And I think that that's the message is that am I a winner inside? I've already won. I've already won. And when you're a real winner, you don't really, in my view, you don't you don't just want your opponent to be weak, and you want a strong opponent. You want to test what you have. And you love the game so much. You love what's going on so much that you know if you lose, you'll get better for the next one. You're not worried about it. There was some, hey, there was some race. Somebody told me about this, and I may botch it up, but apparently there was some race where two runners were running, and the guy in front mistook the uh, he mistook the the finish line or uh or something like that. He thought that he wasn't gonna make it to the finish line, or he mistook where the finish line was. He mistook where the finish line was, and the runner behind him, who was going to lose the race, could have overtaken him. And the guy who was running in front of him stopped prematurely thinking that he had crossed the finish line and he hadn't. The dude behind him came up behind him and pushed him over into the finish line and let him won. And when they interviewed him, I'm telling you this secondhand, when they interviewed him, he said, Well, no, I don't want to win a race like that. This guy clearly would have won the race. This is really his race. Now that, I don't know how many people would have done that. Like most people would have passed that dude and then be like, all right, you fool, right? But that taught me a lot about who this guy's the character and destiny and who he is as a winner. Because when you're really comp there's a book called Inner Excellence written by Jim Murphy, and he talks about warriors who are like warring. They they love the game so much, they they actually don't mind if the other person wins. You know, they're not trying to let you win, don't get me wrong, but they're not gonna be destroyed because they know they can get better. And they actually want their opponent to be at their very best, because they don't want to win as some kind of handout. And that's winning mentality that you know that even if you have lost, even if it hasn't worked out for you, even if there was disappointment, that you wake up a winner anyway, fall down seven, you get up eight. In fact, that might be more the definition of winning than having a winning record all the time. How resilient are you? Can you face adversity and overcome it? And to your point, Cam, to your point, well-taken point, you don't get to be a great winner unless you've lost and you know how to handle losing. And that's part of the issue. We don't know how to handle losing. We don't know how to lose graciously, we don't learn the lessons. All we try to do is win, win, win, win, win without any consciousness about the value of losing, what losing can teach you. We don't want to lose for losing sake. We don't definitely don't want that. What we want is to learn the lesson from losing. We want to get better, not be afraid of losing. Because when you go into a game and you know this is an athlete better than me, better than all of us. You if you're going just not to lose, you've already lost.

Resilience And Learning From Loss

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Yes. Yes. And I love everything you just said to drive the point home that I made earlier, and just to circle it up with the with the story you told about the track athlete who mistook the finish line and was pushed across because the guy said he would have won anyway. And he the guy who won, who mistook the finish line, he wasn't happy about that, right? But he wasn't happy about that because he won or because he lost, but it was because before he competed, before he even started, he had his own set of standards of what winning and losing looked like to him. So he won externally, he won the race. We talk about that external, internal wins. He won the race. But because he already had a set standard before he even competed of what winning looked like to him, meaning that it wasn't a guy that's going to push me over. I'm going to win the race. It's going to be because I was faster than the other guy, right? I was better. I trained more. I all those different kinds of type things. It wasn't going to be because someone just kind of handed it to me, right? So I think it just kind of, I just wanted to circle that up as far as having the internal and external benchmarks of what is winning and losing to you, and make sure that while you are winning to others, you're also winning to yourself.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Beautifully said, brilliantly said. Thank you so much for this, Cam. I really appreciate you drawing that distinction for us, getting us to go deeper about winning and not just stay on the surface, not just stay on who won or lost. So, so that's that's just powerful stuff. You know, the ancient wisdom puts it this way. You know, we have to always throw the ancient wisdom in, that the race is not for the swift or the strong, it's for the one who can endure to the end. Something about your and my ability to endure. If you're listening out there, you are enduring things. And your endurance helps you be a winner. The fact that you've been through trials and tribulations may not have won them all, but you're still in the battle. You're still in it. And the ancient wisdom also goes as far as to say that every runner runs and prepares to win the race. You run as if you are going to win the race. You don't get in there to just say, well, I'm comfortable with losing. We're not talking about that. Don't get this twisted. This is about who you want to run to win. That is a spiritual directive. You are a winner. So you act like a winner and you do the things to win. And as Korea Bryant once said in an interview, if you didn't win, don't suck. Just figure out what you need to do better. And on that note, we are going to say that we have closed out on the Win It All Wednesday. Is there anything you want to say to our listeners, Cam, on winning before we uh shut this down? Because we got to go into Trust Yourself Thursday tomorrow. And I want to make sure you have a good night's rest so you can come back.

Setting Standards Before Competing

SPEAKER_00 17:17

We've been really pushing you pretty hard this week. Yeah, no, no worries, man. I appreciate you all listening as always and look forward to being back tomorrow. All right. Thank you. Bye bye.