Welcome To Self-Care Saturday

Blessings and greetings. You did it. You found your way to self-care Saturday. And I'm really happy you're here. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. You're listening to The Sweet Spot. In the Sweet Spot, we call Saturdays Self-Care Saturday. This is a series we've been doing here. It's the sixth episode of a seven-episode series called The Inner Edge. And the title for today's episode is Protecting Your Inner Edge Before It Gets Tested. Yes. So let's slow it down, Sweet Spotter. All week long we've been really going in on the inner edge. On Making Moves Monday, you saw that when pressure hits, your wiring speaks first. Think about your week. What was your first reaction when something didn't go your way? That reaction wasn't random, it was rehearsed. It was already there. On Tuesday, Take Action Tuesday, you learned that what separates people isn't whether they react. It's whether they're going to recover fast. It's how quickly they recover. So the question I have is when something frustrated you this week, how long did it take you to recover? How long did the frustration stay in your body? Was it minutes? Was it hours? Or was it all day? On When It All Wednesday, you realized that the meaning you assign to an event determines how big that event's gonna feel in your life. Question. When something small happened, did you keep it small this week? Or did you turn it into a five alarm fire? On Trust Yourself Thursday, we saw that trust. Trust keeps identity from breaking loose, from fracturing. When yeah, when you made a mistake this week, did you say, hey, this is just one moment, or did you quietly question who you are? On Finish Strong Friday, you face fatigue. Didn't we all, right? Finish Strong Friday, yesterday, fatigue was what we covered. When your energy dipped this week, did you interpret it as a normal depletion? Or did you start telling yourself, I don't know, I'm falling apart? Did you start catastrophic making it something a little more catastrophic? Did you say things that were too big? Alright then. That was the self-reflection recap. Now it all comes together. Your wiring sets your first reaction. Your recovery and how fast you recover determines how long it's gonna last. The meaning you give things determines how intense the thing becomes. Your trust determines whether your identity is gonna stay steady under pressure. And your fatigue can make every part of what you're experiencing seem harder if you don't get a hold of it. So let me ask you, sweet spotter, when was the last time you intentionally restored your entire system? I know we always talk about run the system, but when was the last time you cared for the system? I'm not talking about distracting yourself, I'm talking about restoring yourself. Remember that quote from Epictetus, the stoic philosopher that we love to quote? No person is free who doesn't master themselves. No man is free who doesn't master himself. When you're exhausted, are you a master of yourself? Or are you more impulsive, more reactive, more grumpy, more irritable, less patient, more likely to say something snappy, getting frosty with people? More likely to avoid the things you should be doing because you're tired. That's why we have self-care Saturday. Self-care is not about comfort. No, that's only a small part of it, the aromatherapy and the candles and the bubble baths and all of the things. It's not it's spa, yes, but it's more than that. It's about self-care is about regaining mastery over yourself. Because if you don't reset, your impulses will take control. If you don't reset, your impulses will end up speaking faster than your mind, than your judgment, and you'll become less deliberate, and your inner edge, you know what happens? Your inner edge shrinks because uh there's your gap between your reaction time and your response time gets too narrow. Yeah, yeah. So that you have to replete and and and refill your discipline, you have to uh restore your self-control. All of these things are are like batteries that have to be um uh recharged intentionally. In the Dhammapada Buddhist thinking, they say this by sustained effort, earnestness, discipline, and self-control, the wise person makes for himself or herself an island which no flood can overwhelm. Sustained effort, earnestness, discipline, and self-control. That's what the wise use to make sure that things don't overwhelm them. Ask yourself, have you built that kind of island? An island which no flood can overwhelm? Or are you living under the constant flood of busyness, the constant flood of obligations, of things to do? Oh, pressure will come. That's not optional. The question is whether you're grounded when it does. Yeah. So remember the famous Psalm, Psalm 23, one of my favorites? In the message Bible, it's it's so weirdly different. They say things like, You've bedded me down in lush meadows to find me quiet pools to drink from. True to your word, you let me catch my breath and you send me in the right direction. Very powerful. Notice the order. Catch your breath, move me in the right direction. Are you moving in the right direction this self-care Saturday? Are you going so fast that you can't even catch your breath? When was the last time? Real talk, challenge question here. When was the last time you took a nice slow deep breath for recovery, for resetting your nervous system, for activating the parasympathetic nervous system that we always talk about here on the sweet spot? When was the last time you did it? Be honest, I'm looking at you. Alright, let's do it right now. You take a deep breath in through your nose. I'm waiting on you. You can do it right now. Come on, as long as you're not driving or doing an activity, okay? And then a slow exhale out, making sure that the exhale is longer than the inhale. Whenever you're free and you can do those exercises, try them. Because when you skip recovery, your interpretations of things in the world are usually through the lens of fatigue, and that becomes really distorted. Your patience will shorten. Your fatigue can make a small problem feel really big. And you begin reacting to things that normally wouldn't really bother you or move you, you start getting frosty about them, you start getting weird, and you start becoming jumpy and nervous and irritable. That happens when you're tired. So that's why we have to put the self-care in. And you don't want the fatigue and the busyness and the not taking the deep breaths and not helping yourself to recover to dull your inner edge because it can. So today I want you to do three things deliberately. This is deliberate self-care on purpose. Are you hydrated? Have you slept enough? Have you done the breathing? Because if not, you're not restoring your body. So the first thing is determine what you need to restore your body and do one thing. The other thing is reduce stimulation. That's the second. Reduce stimulation. Can you give yourself an hour without some constant input? Can you sit in quiet? I speak to myself. Can you put the cell phone down? I speak to myself again. Yeah. Can you let your nervous system settle? You know, we spend a lot of time here on the sweet spot talking about the nervous system. We talk about the brain. We talk about aspects of the brain. We talk about the prefrontal cortex, the brain CEO. We talk about the amygdala, the threat, the text detection center. We talk about the anterior singular gyrus and error detection. We talk about the insulin, interceptive awareness. We talk about so many things in the brain, the basal ganglia and your habit formation, even the HPA axis and this connection to cortisol and adrenaline, all that. For those reasons, you need to, we need to settle down and reconnect to who we are as our third thing, right? Just restore the body, reduce stimulation, and then reconnect to who you are. What kind of person are you becoming? What do you stand for when pressure returns on Monday? What are you gonna look like? Are you gonna be depleted on Monday or are you gonna be rested and ready to go for making moves Monday with me? Well, every time you take a moment and you care for yourself, you're protecting your edge before it gets tested. You don't want to let the edge get tested to find out that you're not rested enough. Finishing strong next week doesn't begin on Monday. It begins with how you recover today in self-care Saturday. So pause. Pause for the cause, right? Catch your breath and ask yourself where your system actually is today and what are you gonna do to restore it? That is how strength lasts, and that is how you build and protect the sweet spot. If this message made you feel like, okay, I'm gonna do something to care for myself today, great. Share it with someone who you think could use a message about slowing down and then and beginning to care for themselves, and also subscribe if you haven't. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet, you're listening to the Sweet Spot. Today is self-care Saturday. I believe in you, I love you, I think you're amazing, I think you're extraordinary, I think you need a recharge, I think you need to reset, and I want you to refresh and recalibrate so that we can have slowdown Sunday tomorrow. For science, for soul, and for success. This is the sweet spot.