Welcome And Series Setup

You Are The Driver

Direction And Fuel Matter

Desire Vision Focus Defined

RAS And The Science Of Focus

Positive Energy Versus Toxic Positivity

Stoic Purpose And Identity

Write Your Destination And Audit Fuel

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Greetings and welcome. Welcome to the Sweet Spot. This is Take Action Tuesday. You're listening to The Sweet Spot, and I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm your host here on The Sweet Spot. We've been in a wonderful series here. We've been recapping a book, a book called The Energy Bus, written by John Gordon. An excellent book. I hope you pick it up. It's very inspirational, very motivational, a fantastic read, and we are unpacking it, sweet spotters. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet, I'm your host. I'm a board-certified psychiatrist. As you know, I run in some pretty elite performance circles. But look, what's more elite than being your partner in the game of life? That's where we are, sweet spotters. All of us in this game of life, unpacking things, trying to make sense of it all. And I'm so grateful that you're here with me on the sweet spot. Yesterday, yesterday in Making Moves Monday, we started, we started with the most foundational truth in the entire book, The Energy Bus by John Gordon. You are the driver of your bus. So look, your coach doesn't drive the bus, nor does your boss. Um, your circumstances aren't really driving the bus. Guess what? Not even your history is driving the bus. Your diagnosis, your problem, your illness, your injury, nothing, not even the loss or anything that's wrong is driving the bus. You know what's driving the bus, or who? You. You and me were driving our bus. That's the revelation that was in the very first chapter of this book, The Energy Bus. We talked about the difference, the difference between having an internal locus of control. Remember that from yesterday? The internal locus of control and an external one. And how the single greatest shift I see in my clinical work with athletes and high performers is the moment a person stops waiting to be driven and takes the wheel themselves. We talked about Kobe Bryant yesterday. Not well, how he showed up early, how he didn't wait on crowds, he waited on no one. He made the decision that he was driving his bus and that was it. So if Monday landed for you, if making Monday, Makey Moves Monday worked, if you wrote down that one area that we talked about yesterday where you have been a passenger and you need to be committed to moving into the driver's seat of the bus that you're on, then today is for you. Today is the next natural question. Because here's the thing, sweet spotter. You can be in the driver's seat of your bus, but if you don't know where you're going, and if your tank is empty, you got another problem. You got a couple of other problems because the bus might want to make the move, but it can't take the action to go anywhere. That is exactly what this author was addressing in rules two and three. Remember, this book, The Energy Bus, has these 10 rules for being super optimistic, for being very positive, for just making it in life. And so, rule number one is that you're the driver of your bus. So, and yeah, in the second in rules two and three, he's going in, he's going deeper, and that's where we're going too. Yeah, because the energy bus is not a motivational pep talk book. The author structured this book almost like the ancient wisdom. He made it into a parable. Remember, we talked yesterday about the story of a man named George whose life was just falling apart, the marriage was not going well, the career was on the ropes, his car broke down. You ever have one of those days or weeks where nothing is working? And this poor uh fool was I don't mean to call him a fool, this poor dude literally had to take the bus, right? He because his car broke down, he accidentally gets on this bus, purely accidental. And on this bus, he meets Joy. Well, a person, a woman named Joy, the bus driver, who teaches him 10 rules that change everything. And that's the crux of this book. Rules two and three come very early in this book because the author, I believe, I believe the author understood something really critical. He realized that taking the wheel and seeing you're the driver is only the beginning of things. It's easy to say, alright, take the wheel, you've got to be the driver of your bus. Okay, you still need a couple of things to work for you. You need two things that most people treat as optional. You need a direction, which is where's this bus actually going? Where are you headed? Yeah, that's a really important question. And you need fuel. That's the second thing. What energy are you running on? Goodness knows I need to really pay attention to that question. So here where are we, sweet spot? Are we talking about? Yeah, you gotta take the wheel of your bus, but on Take Action Tuesday, you gotta know your direction and you gotta make sure you check your fuel. Most people have one without the other, they have the desire, but they don't have to focus. Or they have the focus, but they don't really have the fuel. And here's another one sometimes they have the fuel, but they don't have a destination. And you need all three, this author says, you need all three working simultaneously in order to get what you want out of life. So, rule two is desire, vision, and focus. Desire, vision, and focus move your bus. They move your bus in the right direction. Yeah, it's like a three-part ignition system for the human performance that we want to do every day. Desire is why you get out of bed. That's what we should be waking up every day with. A desire. It's the internal pull towards something that matters to you and to me. This pull shouldn't be it shouldn't be what you what it's not what should matter or not what your parents want or what looks impressive. You should actually want it. It should be a desire that wakes you up and pulls you up because you, you really, you really want it. So there's a desire, the vision, and the focus, the three-party ignition system. So you got a desire. What about the vision? The vision is what is the what. I think that's what the vision is. It's the what, the clear mental picture of where your bus is headed. Where is it going? Not what you're hoping. Sometimes the buses, some people are on a bus where it's just hope. Not a vague hope, a specific, vivid vision, a felt image of the destination that you're headed to. Do you have a clear vision of where you're headed and where you're going? Because that's part of this system. And then the focus, the third part of the desire, vision, and focus to move the bus in the right direction, that focus is how you stay on the road. Can't be driving and losing focus. You know how that goes. I bet that's the source of so many accidents. That lapse in concentration, that moment that you lose focus. So, focus is how you stay on the road. The desire gets you out of the bed, yes. The vision is the clear picture of where you want to go, and then the focus is how you stay on the road, the daily discipline of keeping your eyes on where you're going and not on every single distraction pulling you off course. It's really important because distractions can sometimes be the disaster. And because the sweet spot's all about science, soul, and success, let me drop a little science to you. Did you know that in your brainstem there sits a network of neurons called the RAS? The reticular activating system. Absolutely. It's uh it's like a gatekeeper. You see, what this system does, it filters all the information that's coming through. Your conscious mind can only process a tiny fraction of everything it gets every moment, and it gets millions of bits of information, sights, sounds, sensations, and thoughts. You would be shocked if you paid attention to how many symbols, how many sights, sounds, how many bits of information your brain is processing in mind every single second. And without a reticular activating system, we'd be flooded. It only lets in a certain amount. Yeah, it filters reality based on what your brain has learned to treat as irrelevant, and it's uh kind of shaped by what you focus on and what you repeatedly pay attention to. So when you set a clear vision, when you tell your brain this is where I'm going today on Take Action Tuesday, your reticular activating system, your RAS begins to orient itself to whatever you're paying attention to moment by moment. And the bus literally starts finding its way to the place. This is not mysticism, this is neuroscience. That's why I told you the brain region that's doing this. So, how does this work? So you're an athlete. You know, when an athlete visualizes the play before he or she runs it, what the research shows is that this mental rehearsal is activating the very same neural pathways as well as if they were doing it, they were actually doing it. Yes, the brain doesn't clearly or cleanly distinguish between a vividly imagined thing and a real one. So when you're an executive and you're writing down your quarterly vision, your attention begins filtering every meeting and every conversation towards that vision. You're a student and you decide what kind of professional you want to become. You start noticing the professors, the opportunities, and the mentors that match your identity. You want to buy a car and you're driving on the road, all of a sudden you start seeing the car that you kind of want. It's how it works. It's how it works. So, the author of this book, The Energy Bus, put it this way: where focus goes, energy flows. Your brain was built to take you where you direct it. The question is on Take Action Tuesday, have you given it a direction? So that second rule on this bus that George, the rider of this bus, got was your desire, your vision, and your focus will help move your bus in the right direction. And I want you to stop for a second and think about your own desire, your own vision, and your focus. Do you have all three down in your mind and are you using them? Because when you are conscious of stuff like this, this is how you go from good to great. So that's rule two. What's rule three? Fuel your ride with positive energy. Now I want to be really careful here when I tell you this, because when some people hear positive energy, I get it. They think toxic posity, you know, forcing the smile, saying everything is good when it's not, you know, pretending everything is fine when it isn't. That's not what this is. That's not what the author meant here. And that's not what we're talking about here on Take Action Tuesday. We're not talking about false positivity. When the author says fuel the ride that you're on with positive energy, he is saying don't deny the struggle. Be intentional about the choice you're gonna make in the middle of the struggle. It is the intentional choice of what you run on, what fuel you're putting in the tank when you could put anything in the tank. Think about it this way. A high-performance vehicle can technically run on bad fuel, but it really won't run very well, it won't run efficiently, and over time it breaks down. Your nervous system works exactly the same way because you, my friend, you sweet spotter, are that high performance vehicle, and so your fuel has to be the right fuel. This take action Tuesday. You can run on fear. God knows I've done that before. Many people do. You can run on resentment, been there, but that doesn't last, it's not good. You can run on resentment on the need to prove people wrong. Okay, that works for a time. You can run on anxiety, you can run on ego, and for a while, I'm not gonna lie to you, all of these things work for a minute. It moves the bus for sure, if that's the fuel. But you know what? It's kind of like dirty fuel. Yeah, it's dirty, it's dirty fuel, and it corrodes the engine, it burns out the driver, and eventually the bus breaks down, or the bus no longer is going in the direction it needs to go. And as a sports psychiatrist working with professional athletes in tennis, soccer, golf, uh, many sports, I see this constantly. You can be running on the fear, the fear of failure, and you perform brilliantly until the fear stops working for you. You could be an executive and you could be driven by the need to prove everyone wrong, and that works for a while and then you hit a wall. Negative fuel has a ceiling eventually, and ultimately you're gonna need that positive fuel, things like purpose and love and curiosity, genuine belief, that's the stuff that doesn't run out when you really cultivate it. Absolutely, and the Stoics, those of you who love Stoics, I have a lot of folks here who are into the Stoics. The Stoics, in their ancient wisdom, their philosophical wisdom, well before this author, John Gordon, wrote this amazing book here, The Energy Bus, man, they understood this fuel problem I'm talking about with extraordinary precision. Seneca, in his letters from a stoic, wrote this, and I'm quoting directly. There are only a few who control themselves and their affairs by a guiding purpose. The rest, they do not proceed, they're merely swept along like objects afloat in a river. Let's stop and really understand that. There are only a few who control themselves and their affairs by a guiding purpose, and the rest just don't proceed. They're just swept along like objects afloat in a river. Which one are you? Swept along like objects afloat in a river with no driver, no destination, no fuel? Just the current of what happens to be flowing in that moment, taking you left, taking you right, a social media post, another person's opinion, yesterday's failure, tomorrow's fears. What is it that's pulling you as an external locus? Something that's pulling you away off your course. Seneca, this stoic, is describing the majority of human beings. They don't lack intelligence, these human beings. They don't lack talent. They just never connect their daily actions to a true, deeply felt, like Kobe, uh, guiding, passionate purpose. And without a guiding purpose, even the most gifted will start to drift. Another stoic philosopher that I love, Epictetus, the former slave, remember him, we've quoted him here often on the sweet spot. Epictetus, the former slave who became one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived. He added even more precision onto where to aim with your purpose. He said, and I've quoted this here before on the sweet spot. First say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do. Yeah. First say to yourself, what would you be? Have a vision before your action. Know your identity before your execution. Colby knew he was the bomber, and that fed his behaviors, right? Direction before motion. This was the Stoics. Vision before action, identity before execution, and direction before motion. Do you have this down in your mind? Because if you don't have a vision before you take your action, you're kind of just spinning your wheels. If you don't have an identity before execution, you let other people's opinions and things start to just tell you what to think and feel. And if you don't have a direction before you start moving, you're just running in circles. This author of this book, The Energy Bus, in 2007 is echoing what the ancient philosophers said. Epictetus in 100 AD spoke the same truth. That's 2,000 years ago. Don't count my math. It's close. It's close. So, sweet spotters, here's your challenge today. Here's your challenge today. Write your destination down in one sentence. My bus is going where? Be specific and be honest and be bold. Where is your bus going on Take Action Tuesday? Check your fuel tank. Audit it. Ask yourself, what am I primarily running on right now? What is my fuel? Is it fear? Is it comparison? Is it genuine purpose? Is it joy? Is it freedom? Is it belief? What is your fuel? You don't have to fix it today. I just want you to name it and say this out loud. I want you to affirm this with me. I know where I'm going. I know what I'm running on. And today I am taking action with intention. Yes, sweet spotter, you've been listening to Take Action Tuesday, and you're in. We're all in with the energy bus. We're on the energy bus. Thank you for your time and your listening. I'll see you tomorrow for With It All Wednesday. We're gonna go deeper in this. I love you. I think highly of you. I want you to keep going. You drive your bus today, and I'll see you tomorrow. If you know someone who would benefit from this, please share it with them. And if you haven't subscribed, it's completely free. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. You're listening to The Sweet Spot, Science, Soul, and Success.