Welcome And Series Context

Welcome back. Welcome back to the Sweet Spot, where science, soul, and success hang out and just wait for you. Absolutely, Sweet Spotter, you're back. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet, I'm a board-certified psychiatrist. I work in elite high-performed circles. But more than that, I enjoy being your high-performing teammate next to you because you're a high performer too. We're both high performers in the game of life. And together we've been unpacking this amazing series here on mastering the mind. Yes, the idea of we are not allowing thoughts to control us. We are the thinker, and the thoughts submit to the thinker. Wow. So we've been looking at James Allen. He's the author of this incredible book that was written back in 1902, 1903, where he wrote As a Man Thinketh. Now he died, he passed, I think, in the 1940s. He had no idea this book was going to blow up into being one of the biggest selling books of all time in the self-help industry. It's an incredible book. It has influenced every major self-help writer, including Norman Vincent Peel and others. This is an incredible book. I read it when I was in college. It was a great book to read. It was built off of a ancient wisdom in the book of Proverbs. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. It's in a powerful, powerful revelation about the power of the mind. So yeah, we are doing it. We have been doing it on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. If you haven't heard the series so far, go back and check them out. You're gonna love it. You're gonna love it. We find ourselves though. We find ourselves planted here in Trust Yourself Thursday. Nothing like Thursday to remind yourself that you've gotta trust you. You've gotta trust you. Here's what the author said doubt and fear are the great enemies of knowledge. And the person who encourages them, the person who does not slay them, defeats themselves at every single step. Let that land. Doubt and fear are your enemies. And if you do anything to encourage them, if you don't slay them, you're defeating yourself at every single step. James Allen wrote that, back in the 1900s. Let that land. If you entertain doubt and fear, you're gonna destroy and defeat yourself at every step. So that's why we talk about trust. Not about trusting others, but in trusting in you. Self-trust. Because in you is something that's greater than what's in the world. So you gotta put some trust in what has been put in you. Does that make sense? Self-trust is not about arrogance, it's it's not about blind optimism. I'm talking here about a quiet, settled knowing that you have what it takes to face whatever is in front of you right now. Even when you cannot see the outcome. Key word here, yet. Always add yet when you cannot see the outcome. It changes everything, doesn't it? Powerful word. We haven't won a game yet. I haven't written my book yet. Do you get that? One of my favorite authors, Ralph Walter Emerson, said it in one line that has echoed for over two hundred years. Trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string. That iron string? That's the athlete before the championship game. The iron string, it's the executive before the board meeting. It's in the grieving mother getting out of bed before the first spring and she has lost her loved, her beloved child. It's in the student walking into a really tough exam they studied for and feeling a little shaky. Every heart has it. Every heart has an iron string. The question is, are you and I listening to it? Are you and I really accessing it? Or are we allowing distractions? Are we allowing doubt and fear to turn us away from the iron string? Yeah. That's the thing. Doubt is a thought, it's not a fact. But here's what your mind does, right? It generates doubt like a machine, and then here's the trap: it presents that doubt as evidence to us, and we start to believe that doubt is the truth about whatever it is that we're doubting. Shakespeare saw this 400 years ago. He writes, our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we often would have had to win by making us afraid to attempt. Hmm, that's in measure for measure. Doubts as traitors, making us afraid to even take a try or an attempt. Think about that. So many scenarios come to mind as I think about this. An executive who has gotten passed over for a promotion or a bonus, an athlete who didn't get drafted, an artist whose work just never seems to reach the level that they want it to reach, the level of rejection that they feel. Somebody feeling stuck in a job that they can't get out of. Every single one of them is losing something real, not because of their circumstances, but because they have doubts. Doubts. And the thing is, the only way out of doubt is what uh the only way out of it is to actually trust yourself. Trust yourself out of it. You've got to trust yourself. As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live and how to move forward. It's that simple. You can't wait for circumstances to improve. You can't wait for the grief to lift. You've got to trust that you can put one foot in front of the other, that you can take a breath, and that you can get through today and trust yourself for the moment by moment by moment reactions. You've got it. Because here's the thing: doubt loves in action. Duh, doubt loves us to be still. Doubt wants us to crouch in the corner and not move. The cure is not more thinking, it's actually movement. Movement towards the thing you're afraid of, actually. Dale Carnegie, another great author, great author, he put it this way. Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get up and get busy. This is where athletes typically have an advantage, right? They've been trained to act under pressure. But here's the thing: every person listening to me right now has been an athlete in some arena of your life. The parent who holds it together for the family and is the one that everybody comes to and speaks to and is keeping everybody together, that's an athlete. The student who's studying for the grade under pressure, you're like a fourth-quarter athlete. You're a professional and you keep showing up. That's a consistency of the athlete. You've done hard things. That's your evidence. You're in the game. Remember, I started this off with you and I are teammates in this game of life. We're high performers. So running away is not an option. You don't see teams, the best players, packing up and going to the locker room because they're afraid of the fourth quarter. Not coming by, not coming back after halftime because they're afraid. That's not happening. You can't run away from the danger. Helen Keller said avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bow. Can't run. Or you can run, but you can't hide. However, you want to put it. Yeah. Absolutely. And if you can't trust in yourself, for those of you who come from a faith tradition, trust in something bigger. Trust in God. Because trust in yourself and trust in God are not opposites, they're partners. Because greater is that which is in you than what is in the world. God doesn't fill a vessel that's collapsed on itself, he fills one that stands upright. And if that's not for you, let's run into the stoicism. Marcus Aurelius, the warrior philosopher, he wrote that look, look, it is not death that a man should fear. You know what he should fear? Never beginning to live. Read meditations, it's powerful. Look, and and if you're grieving, and God knows we've all grieved, that we all have levels of grief, and and for if you're grieving, you're hurting, like if you feel like you've just lost your footing. Another one of my favorite authors is E. E. Cummings. And he said that once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, we can risk wonder, we can risk spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals our deep human spirit. We can still live again, even though we won't be the same again, we can still live again. And look, we don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to believe in yourself and trust yourself enough to take it one step at a time. Yeah. So remember James Allen, our author. His whole thesis is that thought that's linked to purpose creates an unstoppable forward momentum and motion. So I want you to name one area where doubt has been the loudest voice for you. Write down one action, no matter how small you're going to take today, and say this out loud. I trust the person I've been built to be. You can be an athlete, you can be an artist, you could be a grieving parent, you could be a retired executive, a student. I don't know what you are, who you are. You were not built to shrink. Yeah. You were built to rise. And I'm with you. I'm standing with you. I'm right here with you. I'm right here with you. Absolutely, you're not alone. This is the sweet spot. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. If you enjoyed this, if this spoke to you, I'm asking you to please subscribe and become part of our community as we build a community based on authentic trust. If you know someone who could benefit from this, I'm asking you to share it with them. And trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. You can do that. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny flames of trust back into your soul.