Welcome back. Welcome back to the Sweet Spot, Sweet Spotters. You've been doing really well this week. I want to thank you for your comments and for the feedback. It makes me feel so good to know that this series we've been doing here on Break the Barrier, that it really sank in for you. Oh, it makes me feel so awesome. Thank you. So, we have been in a great series here. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. It's a pleasure to be your host here on the Sweet Spot. You know, I enjoy coming on every single day to spend time with you, to grapple with you on this big stage where we exist, where each of us is playing a part in the wonderful mystery we call life, right? So break the barrier, episode six of seven. That's where we are. We're in the end stage here. The barrier you build by never stopping, right? Like when you never stop, you build a barrier. And uh that's why we have self-care Saturday. That's why we have self-care Saturday, my friends. Yeah, and so look, all week you've been breaking barriers. Monday we faced turbulence. Tuesday we rewrote internal code. Wednesday we walked into resistance instead of around it. Thursday, we trusted the signal under the noise. Friday, we executed when fatigue tried to take over. You built something this week, my friend. But here's the part most people miss. Most of us miss this part. Breakthroughs don't become permanent during effort. You know when they become permanent? During recovery. Yes, that's the thing. It's during the recovery that the breakthrough seals in. So if you don't rest today, really rest, what you built, it'll still be there, but it will be a bit fragile. Let me ask you something carefully. Does rest sometimes feel like a hassle to you? Like it's in the way? Maybe even a little dangerous. Like, hey, I don't got time for this. Not inconvenient, not boring, but like dangerous at times. Like if I do this, this isn't gonna be good for me. I need to be moving. Like if you slow down, what you gained might slip away. Like you won't be able to get everything done if you slow down. As if momentum might just evaporate if you stop and rested. Like the version of you that showed up this week might just dissolve if you rest. That's a kind of conditioning. I deal with it all the time. I feel like I have to stay busy, I have to be on it. I'm not afraid, it's not there's not it's not fear or weakness, it's just conditioning. It's a it's it's also the barrier, too. You see, that's why it's good to talk and have the conversation, to understand that sometimes the barrier can look like busyness. The barrier could look like you're afraid to rest. And even the neuroscience can reveal what's going on. When you challenge old patterns and you regulate yourself under pressure and you choose to be aligned in your action, yeah, your brain will lay down neural pathways. But that neuroplasticity that you're getting, all of the benefits of neuroplasticity, all of this changing of the old patterns and your brain doing all this fancy stuff, these new pathways they're pretty unstable when they form. They're pretty temporary, they they require consolidation. When you're learning things and becoming skilled at things, all those skills that you're picking up, all of those new, all of the studying that you're doing, everything that you're trying to absorb and integrate into your brain and become better at requires that you consolidate the information that's coming in. And that's something called neural replay, right? Consolidation happens during neural replay, during rest, and especially during sleep. Neural replay is just a fancy term for what I'm talking about. You see, it is during the neural replay, during the sleep and during the rest that the brain reactivates the day's patterns and strengthens what it learns. It consolidates it, it shifts them from short-term circuits into long-term architecture. You're trying to learn something, you better get some rest. You're trying to really master your craft and be the best of you, you better sleep. Without replay, learning fades. Without neural replay, with neural replay, learning stabilizes. That's how temporary change becomes permanent change is through rest and sleep. Even one night of sleep restriction can increase the amygdala's reactivity and weaken the prefrontal cortex. And you who have been on the sweet spot with me know what that means. It means that you're going to be more jumpy when your amygdala is reactive, your prefrontal cortex is going to be a little bit offline, you're going to be foggy, and your consolidation process of memorizing things is going to be disrupted. A lot of us don't realize that it's during sleep that we really consolidate our memory. We also get emotional control through sleep and rest. So rest is not the opposite of effort or anything like that. It's what locks your effort in, it's what locks your memory, it's what's going to cement. Think of wet cement. That's a better way for me to say it. Think of wet cement. You've poured foundation all week. If you keep stepping on it before it sets, you don't make it stronger. You prevent the cement from hardening. Rest gives you a chance to let the cement harden. Sleep does that. Rest is how the barrier stays broken. Does that make sense? Yeah, let's go deeper. If you if you've been operating in a high activation week all week this week, you've been in sympathetic mode. Your sympathetic, your fight or flight nervous system has been urgent. You've been in competitions, you've gone to a lot of practices, you're under stress at work. It's just been so much. Your nervous system has adapted to that state. Your cortisol feels normal to you. Stimulation feels safe. Stillness feels weird. Rest feels odd. You can't wait for the night to be over so you can get up in the morning and keep going. Your body just wants to keep working, working, working because you got all that cortisol in you. So what sat when Saturday arrives and you give yourself a space to rest and let your system downshift, you are helping your entire nervous system reset itself. If you don't do it, you stay in motion because motion makes you feel as if you're worthy, motion makes you feel like you're you matter, and stopping it makes you feel like you're losing your identity. Well, you know what happens? The permanence that you're looking for in your memory and in your mastery of skills, it doesn't work as well. You won't improve, you won't get to the mastery level. Yeah, if you cannot sit with yourself without distraction, you won't allow the consolidation process to happen, and from a neurobiological standpoint, you won't have the benefit of being able to master the craft because you're not going to lay in the memory, you're not going to have elite focus. So that's why, even in the ancient rhythms, in the ancient writings, there was Shabbat, you know, in the Sabbath and Shabbat, you know, all of these ideas of six days of labor, one day of rest, that's by design to help you restore, to refresh, to recalibrate. It's breaking and interrupting a barrier, an illusion that says your worth is equal to your output. Because if that illusion dominates, you will never allow yourself stillness so that you gain mastery. If you don't deliberately create cycles of restoration, sweet spotter, your physiology will eventually force one. And collapse is not what we're looking for. Collapse doesn't preserve what you've built. So this is the challenge. How are you going to care for you today? What do you need? Do you need to step out of the rat race? And or do you need to sort of be like the race car, come into the pit stop, get work done before you go back out? Even race cars have to do that. Your cell phone has to be plugged back in so it can be charged. When was the last time you rested, not as a reward, but as a reinforcement strategy? That's what I'm talking about today for you for self-care Saturday. Because you matter, your energy is important, and you've got to restore it properly. Are you afraid you're gonna fade if you stop completely? What is it? What stopped you from doing that? Do you feel guilty? Sometimes I do that too. I feel bad. I'm like, oh man, I can be doing more. I should be doing this, I should be doing that. Does it feel risky if you just took the day off to blow it off and do nothing? Well, that's what you need to do. There's a saying that if you don't have 10 minutes for meditation, then you need to do an hour. It's just that simple. So look, I want you to create a technology-free window today for yourself on self-care Saturday, long enough for your nervous system to truly downshift. I don't want you to take five distracted minutes. I want you to take the time with nothing around just to check back in with you. I want you to protect your sleep tonight as if it's going to determine how you're going to be all of next week because it really does. We're going to do a whole series on sleep. I'm actually writing a book on sleep called Sleeper's Performance Medicine. It's a medicine sleep. And you've got to guard your sleep because that's where consolidation begins. That's where you prime yourself, your immune system needs that. I've been telling you every week, every day, my mom sleeps well, and this is the secret. She has a great mind. I hope you didn't mind me putting you out there, mom, like that. I know I keep doing that. So, self-care Saturday is about recharging, resetting, recalibrating, and refreshing yourself because your cell phone needs that. Why? So it can actually serve you all of next week. Your body needs the same thing, your mind needs the same thing. People depend on you. I depend on you. I want you to be back here next week on the sweet spot with me. Yeah. So if effort is going to create the change, if you're working hard and the effort is going to change you into what you want, and by doing this hard work and by grinding and getting it done and going to practice and doing all the right things, if that's good for you and it's going to create the change in you, you know what's going to lock it in? You know what's going to make that permanent and make it last? Recovery, rest, and sleep. This is the only barrier you break by not moving. Every other barrier typically requires you to move. This one requires you to be still. Tomorrow, sweet spotters, tomorrow is slow down Sunday. Talk about stillness. We're going deeper into stillness. We go into the astrophysics tomorrow. We go into the universe tomorrow. We really go in. Now, if you want to bless someone with this message, send it to them today. Let them get into some self-care, challenge them, and also subscribe if you haven't. This is the sweet spot. Let's keep breaking barriers, but let's do so today by resting, recalibrating. You deserve these minutes of recalibration. I am giving you doctor's orders today to take a few minutes for you. Everything else can wait. We need you and we love you. For science, for soul, for success. This is your sweet spot.