Blessings, greetings, and welcome. Welcome to the sweet spot. Happy Monday. How are you doing? It's Monday. It's Monday morning. It's Monday morning. But maybe when you're listening to this, for you it's Monday afternoon or Monday evening or even Monday night. It doesn't matter what time it is. It is Monday. It is not just any Monday. It is Making Moves Monday. Time to get up and get cracking, to get moving. That's right, here on the Sweet Spot, we don't just call it Monday. We call it Making Moves Monday. And I'm your host, I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. As you know, I'm a board certified psychiatrist. I work in elite performance, but at the same time, I am your teammate in the game of life. And I've shown up here, I've come by to let you know I've got you back. Okay? I've got you back all week. If you're gonna listen to this all week, you're gonna get something that's gonna get you going. All right now. So it's Monday, it's making moves Monday, and we have a new series. Listen, we had a fantastic time. I don't know if you heard the last series about breaking through barriers. I'm not sure if you heard this other series about holding the line. Did you ever hear the series about the ceilings you don't see? These are all series that are amazing. Built for this is another one that I really liked. And so I'm advertising them for you to go back and listen. Um, you don't have to listen to them all, but you can listen every now and then to one that makes sense. We are now in something called the inner edge. That's going to be our series this week, the inner edge. So, yeah, what is this series about? Okay, so it's not about uh it's not a it's not a big emotional, loud, sort of aggressive series. It's really about the quiet edge that you have to have. If you want to be powerful, you want to be a closer, and you want to finish what you started. So you're not looking for highlight reels right now. You just want to have that edge, that edge that gets you through. It's about what separates the athlete who steadies after a mistake from the one who spirals, or the executive or the business person who thinks clearly when the numbers don't add up, when the numbers tighten from one week to the other. Maybe it's a parent who stays grounded in tension as opposed to one other kind of parent who just blows off the handle and loses their temper. Ever been in that kind of situation where you've lost control? That's what the inner edge is about. That the environment changes, but you've got to have this inner edge so that your wiring does not. I'll say that again: the environment changes, the wiring doesn't. So, across this week, we're gonna explore how the nervous system shapes performance before you can even think about anything, before conscious thought can even enter the room. That nervous system is already working that you have in there. We're gonna explore how identity quietly drives behavior. Yeah, there's this link between who you think you are and who you say you are and how you behave. We're also gonna explore this week how discipline is more than just regulating yourself, and how emotional maturity can become a competitive advantage if you would only access it. And we're gonna revisit this idea of invisible ceilings, right? We're gonna talk about and explore how invisible ceilings are often internal before they become external, before you can see the ceiling that somebody's wrestling with, it's been internal all along. Yeah, invisible ceilings are often internal before long before they become structural. So we have a lot to do this week. And this is just Monday, okay? We're gonna look at what happens to you after pressure. Remember that series, Who You Are in the Middle of Pressure or After Pressure, right? We yeah, we're gonna revisit that. We're gonna look at what happens after pressure because who you become after you face stress or strain is the clearest indicator of whether you truly have an edge or not. Do you have an edge? Do you have that edge that you need? This is the series for you. So that's a lot that we have to cover this week, beloved. And look, this is not depending on any particular philosophy or framework or anything. It doesn't, there's no book or anything. We're just gonna, this is what we got from living in spaces, in locker rooms, and boardrooms, and treatment rooms, from quiet conversations that I've had with with friends and family and and colleagues, the the conversations that happen after a loss or a win, right? By the end of the week, the word edge, sometimes it doesn't feel so dramatic. And and and um it's it's not even in the game. That's why you and I have to purposely and intentionally today on Monday say, I'm going to keep my edge. And the edge, my friend, the edge starts inside. Yeah, the edge starts inside. You may think the edge is in your schedule or in your preparation or even in the opportunity that you have in front of you right now. Maybe you think the edge is in the competition across from you. It's possible, but it's not. No, external performance follows internal alignment. That's the nuance you have to understand that it's inside. Whether you're stepping onto a court, into a negotiation, or onto a stage, or into a difficult conversation, whatever it is that you have to step into today, your body, trust me on this one, your body responds before your strategy even organizes itself. Pressure doesn't create your reaction, it reveals your pattern. It tells you who you are. You want to know somebody, watch them under pressure, especially when it comes on suddenly. Pressure does not create your reaction, it reveals your pattern. So many people, many folks, they confuse performance and intensity, right? So many people believe that performance is about intensity. Intensity can produce a short burst of output, yes. But without internal alignment, like I was saying before, it burns through your capacity very quickly. If you had just have intensity and you don't have any kind of internal alignment, you're gonna break apart. Especially when the speed comes, especially when things rise, especially when the pressure hits. What separates those who hold it together from those who fracture is internal stability under the load that you're gonna face. And you will face a load of some kind. We all do. We all get up and face stress of some kind. So you want to be internally aligned so your edge is there, right? Your nervous system is either regulated or reactive, and you and it's time to understand that. Like, we got to know what kind of nervous system we're running with. Your nervous system is either of one of two things, it's a regulated one or a reactive one, and that wiring shows up before you do. Because when the stress rises, the brain doesn't invent new behavior in real time, it's not doing that. The brain does not invent new behavior when it's under stress. You know what it does? It defaults. Yeah, it defaults, it goes back, it reverts to what has been rehearsed. I'll say that again. Your brain and my brain is not trying to invent new behavior in real time, typically when we're under stress or load. It's not, it's defaulting to what it knows, it's defaulting to what it's rehearsed. You see, that amygdala, and I know you you probably say, oh my god, does this man ever not talk about the amygdala? Well, I have to talk about it because it's the threat center of the brain. We you have one and I have one. And this amygdala is in there trying to help us survive, but sometimes it goes buck wild and it just starts making it'll make a bus or a garbage truck make you afraid that it's gonna hit you and it's all the way across the street. The amygdala is just like that, it's just trying to protect us. Anyway, I digress. The amygdala, the amygdala, when the stress rises, what my point is is that the brain is not inventing new behavior. Let me get back on track here. The brain is not inventing new behavior, right? It's defaulting to what it's rehearsed, it's defaulting to what it knows. And the amygdala, your threat center, registers the threat before your conscious reasoning in the PFC catches up. And the body moves towards what's familiar and it only does the familiar patterns of response. So, my point: you have this thing in your brain, it's called the amygdala, it's a threat detection center, it's fast, it's quick, it doesn't ask you for permission when stress rises, when things get um hectic, if you're not conscious of it, the amygdala is just going to register the threat and give you a reaction. The amygdala registers the threat before conscious reasoning in your prefrontal cortex, the brain's CEO catches up, and the body just is gonna move to the familiar pattern. It's like almost like a reflex response. If your baseline is one of being scattered, you will perform scattered, especially when there's stress, because that's the pattern that the brain knows, and if your baseline is one of being steady, you perform steady, and you've seen it in different people, maybe you've seen it in yourself. Sometimes under stress, some people they spaz out, they're like they're diffuse, they're like all over the map, and then some people are like crystal clear. In end of games, you can see it in various kinds of performers, right? When the game is on the line, the guy with the ball, the one that usually that the team is trying to give the ball to, is usually a very steady baseline. His baseline is steady, it's not scattered. So if your baseline is all over the map, when the stress hits, you will feel a kind of a pull to be all over the map. That's not motivational language, this is just physiology I'm talking about. The the shift that changes everything is this you don't rise to the occasion, you're defaulting to your conditioning. That's why coaches push practice. That's why the trainer pushes you hard when you have to do reps. That's why you learn disciplined responses if you're in military or in law enforcement. So you don't do crazy things when you're out there on the street. Imagine if you're a law law enforcement officer, and unfortunately, we have some that are like that, but not not everyone. When and and everything scares you, or you're megalicus going buck wild out there because you know, every time you see something, you pull out your gun and you shoot. What kind of craziness is that? You have that's why they teach regulation. You default to your conditioning, so you have to get up every day and figure out what are you conditioning? How are you conditioning yourself to be a closer? How are you conditioning yourself to be disciplined? You know, uh an athlete that I worked with once told me I don't lose focus in the big game, I lose it on the first bad call. Yeah, that's the moment. The first unexpected friction, right? That's where he was losing his way. It's not about the big, it was really that he couldn't handle like when the breath makes a bad call. So that's where his baseline showed up. So today the question for you I have is not how I'm not asking you to be an athlete. What I'm asking you is, okay, what is it that you're reinforcing internally that keeps showing up externally for you? Notice your first reaction to inconvenience. I don't know. Everybody has something that's their thing. Could it be a delay like you did, like, or a mistake that somebody made? Maybe it's to your reaction to criticism, your reaction to people not talking, silence. Maybe plans change. How do you react to that? Somebody changes a plan last minute, they miss a shot, they say something that sounds edgy, they miss the deadline, you're running late. How do you respond to that? Do you escalate or do you regulate? That's the question that you want to live with on making moves Monday. Do I escalate or do I regulate when things don't go my way? Your first reaction is your resume. I'm telling you, that's what it is. It's your resume. I've come to understand that in life. That the first reaction you see from folks is usually the resume. They're just handing you the resume with that reaction. You see, elite performers, from what I've seen, don't train only for the visible moments. You know what they train for? They train the reaction that happens before the visible moment. They they practice returning to their center so often that steadiness is what they look like under pressure and by default. That is practice and rehearsed. Your edge is not effort. You know what your edge is? Your edge is pattern. It is the speed at which you return to your center. That's the goal for you and me this week. Something throws you off, it pulls you to the left, it pulls you to the right, you didn't like this thing or whatever. Are you gonna escalate? You know what? Are you gonna do here? Are you gonna come back to center? Are you gonna regain self-control? Because that's under your watch. You control the controllables, that's you. And that's where we begin this week. That's what this week is all about. This is the sweet spot. It is Making Moves Monday. We have been talking about the inner edge, how your external performance follows internal alignment. Literally, what are you aligned with? You may think your edge lives in your schedule or in something outside. No, but your edge is inside of you. That's where your edge is, and trust me, it is real. The edge starts inside. You don't rise to the occasion, you default to whatever your wiring is, and you do not let your amygdala run the show. Okay, absolutely, absolutely, do not let your uh uh survival brain override your thinking brain, which is your prefrontal cortex. You have a choice here, you have a choice, and you can do it. So, sweet spotters, if this meant something to you today on Making Moves Monday, and you're gonna really protect your edge with me this week, I'd like you to subscribe. Subscribing is completely free as we build a community of folks that have an edge that protects. And if you know someone whose nervous system needs a boost, share this. I'll see you tomorrow for Take Action Tuesday, and we're going in. We're going in tomorrow. We look at how small and big this how small decisions can lead to big directions, how your micro choice, your micro uh choices build a macro identity. All right, so discipline is identity and motion. We're gonna look at that tomorrow. I'll see you tomorrow for science, for soul, and for success. This is the sweet spot. It is making moves Monday. You've got this, you can do this. I believe in you.