On The Suite Spot, sports psychiatrist Dr. Derek H. Suite, MD brings together neuroscience, performance psychology, spiritual wisdom, and lessons from elite sport...practical tools for the people who can't afford to choke when the pressure rises.
Built for athletes, executives, military professionals, first responders, coaches, clinicians, and anyone carrying real weight, each episode sharpens focus, builds resilience, and helps you manage pressure, recover well, and sustain momentum.
This is where the conversation moves beyond motivation into the habits, mental skills, and deeper questions that shape performance across mind, body, and spirit.
For science, for soul, for success...this is The Suite Spot.
It's Slow down time--We connect self-care to mental strength, clear thinking, and calm power, using James Allen’s wisdom as a guide for how the inner life shapes everything we do. We push back on the idea that self-care is indulgence and treat it as protection, restoration, and a practice that helps everyone around us.
Suite Spots: • self-control as strength and calmness as power • the inner life as the source of outer results • serenity as something we cultivate on purpose • guarding your heart as a self-care framework • restoring yourself as a long-term strategy for teams and families • stillness as a path to clarity, healing, and connection • self-talk under pressure and speaking to yourself with kindness • self-care as self-preservation rather than indulgence please subscribe and become part of our self-care community.
You made it. Yes, indeed. You made it. You made it to Self-Care Saturday. Congratulations. We are delighted to see you here in the Sweet Spot on Self Care Saturday. Now, as you know, the Sweet Spot's all about science, soul, and success. That's right. We blend science and soul and we cook it up into something called success. Whatever that looks like for you, science and soul are a part of it. And in the sweet spot, we examine these things and we unpack life so that we can be the best versions of ourselves every single week. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm your host here on The Sweet Spot. I work in elite performance circles as a board-certified psychiatrist, sports psychiatrist, but more than that, I am your teammate, your high-performing teammate, both of us high performers
in the game of life. And Sweet Spotter, we've been in a series here called Master the Mind. Mastering the Mind. Our foundational text came from a book or comes from a book called As a Man Thinketh, written by James Allen. If you haven't heard the previous series where we summarize some of the insights from this book, it may be worth you going back to check it out. Today on Self-Care Saturday, we're diving in to see how this book, As a Man Thinketh, even apply to self-care. The quote that I want to pull out is a quote that we explored this week, earlier this week, that James Allen wrote that I think still makes sense. Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power. Say unto your heart, peace, be still. Self-control is strength. Right thought or thinking is mastery. Calmness is power. Say unto your heart, peace be still. That's what James Adam wrote back in the early 1900s in this book, As a Man Thinketh. And I think it's a wonderful, wonderful reminder for us here on Self Care Saturday, that before we do anything else today, you and I acknowledge that we have strength when we have self-control. That when we're thinking right, we have a certain kind of mastery. And when we stay calm, we're accessing power. And that we have the ability to say, peace be still. It might be Vanessa Bell Armstrong. I'm not sure. But the there's an old gospel song in the ancient wisdom, and I'm gonna mess this up, but ultimately the song says something like the wind and the waves obey his will. Peace be still. There's something about when you say peace be still, you are moving in some kind of a powerful thing. And James Allen wanted us to think that way. Yeah. He didn't write a chapter on self-care in nineteen oh three, but he planted the seed of it in every single page.
You see, this author's thesis is that the quality of your and my inner life determines the quality of everything you produce and I produce outwardly. It's what's inside our heads that's generating what's happening on the outside of us. You cannot think great thoughts from a depleted, tired, worn up, broken mind. It's just hard to do that. You cannot give great effort from an exhausted body, period. You cannot love others from a wounded, neglected, bitter, angry, unforgiving soul. Period. That's why we got self-care Saturday today, so we could examine ourselves and pour back into ourselves. The author James Allen put it this way A person becomes calm in the measure that they understand themselves as a thought evolved being. They cease to fuss, they don't fume, they don't worry, they don't grieve and carry on over small things, they remain poised, steadfast, and serene. That's what he wrote. And that word serene stuck out. Because serene, it might sound passive on the surface, but it's not passive. Serene is not passive. Serenity, sweet spotter, serenity is what you build through intentional, consistent self-care. It's not stumbled into. You cultivate it like a garden. This author, if you remember our Making Moves Monday talk, this author likened the mind to a garden that you have to cultivate and the thoughts have to be cultivated. And you and
I are the gardeners. We determine what our garden, what the garden of our mind and body and soul will look like. So to get serenity, that's intentional. You don't just become serene. To get the peace that surpasses understanding, you cultivate that. You cultivate that. Absolutely. You have an understanding that your body and your mind are like a temple, and that you have to honor the divine with them. The sacredness of who you are. And when something is sacred, you don't just sit up there and say, oh, it's beautiful. You got to guard it too. Things that are precious to us, don't we have to guard them? That's why you have locks on your door at the house, I would imagine, or on the car. We guard things that are important to us. And the mind, your mind, and my mind, our bodies, our spirits, our soul, our peace of mind, we have to guard that. The ancient wisdom actually advises us to go ahead and do it. You know what it says in the ancient wisdom? Above all else, what do you have to guard? Your heart. Correct. Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it. Ancient wisdom just is the truth. It's just the truth. That's
just so important. Has your heart ever been broken, disappointed, betrayed, stepped on? I don't know. But Proverbs, Proverbs 4, that verse, verse 23, wow, yes, guard your heart. Not just your schedule, not just your performance metrics, guard your heart. Because everything, your relationships, your your work, your creativity, your resilience, everything you are flows from that. So when you when we are talking about self-care today, that's not indulgence. Self-care is a way of guarding your heart. Literally, your cardiac, your physical heart, and your psychological heart and your and your spiritual heart. Self-care is guarding what everything else flows from. Does that make sense? Because long before modern wellness culture even discovered this whole self-care thing, guess what? Ancient wisdom, even back in the East, Eastern philosophy, they were already doing this. They were already teaching it. Isn't it interesting that whenever we look at ancient stuff, they always look like they were into peace and
calm and relaxed? The Dalai Lama, right? The Dalai Lama is one of the most compassionate and productive human beings alive. And has he is the Dalai Lama said this about burnout and exhaustion, and I'm quoting the Dalai Lama here. In dealing with those who are undergoing great suffering, if you feel burnout setting in, if you feel demoralized and exhausted, it is best for the sake of everyone to withdraw and restore yourself. The point is to have a long-term perspective. That's the Dalai Lama saying, did you catch it? For the sake of everyone, to withdraw and restore yourself. Your self-care is not just for you. When you're an athlete and you're facing injury and you recover and you take care of your recovery, your whole team feels better. When you're a parent and you take care of yourself, you show up more fully for those children and your spouses or whatever that, whoever depends on you. Look, you could be a professional and you honor your limits and you know when it's time to step back and go refresh yourself. You know what you do when you do that? You produce better work for the whole organization. Absolutely. And maybe you're grieving today. We all grieve. There's so much sometimes to grieve about, but as you allow yourself to be restored bit by bit, literally, you bless everyone around you, and you're blessed because your wholeness is a gift to the world, and healing comes. Joy can even come in the morning.
Stillness is the key. To the mind that is still, says Lao Su. To the mind that is still, the whole universe will surrender. Stillness is not emptiness. Sometimes taking a moment to be still is to be receptive. Information comes to you when you're still. Divine connections come when you're still. In the ancient wisdom, it says be still, but it doesn't stop there. It says be still and know. But it doesn't stop there. You can be still and have a knowing. Absolutely. But it doesn't stop there in the ancient wisdom. It says, be still and know I'm God. Something about finding your divine connection, your higher purpose comes out of being still. It is where your best ideas come from. It's where healing happens. It's where God speaks. It's where you remember who you are. This is why we have self-care Saturday. So that you and I can take a minute to be still. Have you taken a minute to be still? I know I didn't. I'm doing it now because I'm talking to you. But I'm going to practice it. I promise you. As soon as I'm done here, I'm going to go and sit for like two to three minutes in stillness so that I can know, so that I can be present, so I can be with God, so I could really center myself and get that wisdom and peace. Absolutely.
Absolutely. Because part of it is that you and I have to not only be still, we have to make sure we're having the right conversation in our heads. Remember, this whole week is about mastering the mind. And if the mind goes unchecked and you just let it run rampant, it'll think all kinds of crazy things. And it's not, it's like a racehorse sometimes. You've got to help this thing get under some kind of control, right? So you've got to be careful what you say to yourself. I work in high performance. So I work with stage performers and I work with athletes. I work with high-level executives. A lot of it is like, what do you say to yourself in moments of pressure? What's the conversation in that person's head as they take the game-winning shot? What is the conversation when a surgeon is about to do a big time surgery where life and death is on the line? What is the conversation when you have to do a huge presentation and you're not sure? Self-talk. What is the conversation when you get a diagnosis that's not favorable? What is the conversation if you don't pass an exam? Or if you get rejected? A rejection letter. What is the conversation? You have to be careful what you say to yourself. Brene Brown, whose research on vulnerability and wholehearted living has transformed millions of lives, this is what Brene, this is how Brene Brown puts it. Talk to yourself like you would someone you love. That sounds so simple, but if you really spend time listening to yourself, you might find that there are times when you're more self-critical than you should be. Yeah. So you deserve your own kindness. How are you talking to yourself? Are you offering yourself the same grace you would offer a friend? Because you do have to be a friend. Yeah. Sometimes we're more patient and kind and we say all the right things to our friends, and we're so soothing and all that. But then when it comes to us, we're like the opposite. So be careful with that. Take a look, do an inventory about how you speak to yourself.
Audrey Lord, poet activist warrior, framed self-care as a radical act, saying, caring for myself is not self-indulgence. No, it is self-preservation. And that is an act of political warfare. Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. In the times in which we live, perhaps self-care is the most radical thing we could do in the fight. You've been listening to the sweet spot. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet.
If today you felt connected to the message about self-care, if you're feeling that self-care is critical and important to who you are and what you want to accomplish, and you want to know more about that, please subscribe and become part of our self-care community. And if you know someone, if you know someone who could use a message today around caring for themselves, if you know someone whose compassion has to include themselves, because you know, if your compassion doesn't include yourself, it's incomplete. Jack Cornfield said that. Amen and amen. All right, so self-care Saturday in the sweet spot. James Allen, okay, we've been unpacking the book. Absolutely. So do one thing today that genuinely restores you. Say no to one thing that drains you. And say this, say this to yourself out loud with me. I am worthy of taking care of myself. My wholeness matters, I matter. For science, for soul, and for success, you've been listening to Self Care Saturday on the sweet spot. Go have some fun.
