Who Should Not Be On Bus

Rule Five Energy Is Finite

Rule Six Spot Energy Vampires

Run A Social Energy Audit

Social Contagion And Your Biology

Stoic Armor Through Clear Values

Guard Your Heart Set Boundaries

Mantras And Closing Call To Share

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Greetings and welcome. Welcome back to the sweet spot. This is Trust Yourself Thursday here on the Sweet Spot. I'm so grateful that you are in the Sweet Spot with me here on Trust Yourself Thursday. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet, I'm a board certified psychiatrist. And it's been my joy and privilege to be in this series with you as we have been exploring a wonderful book, The Energy Bus, written by John Gordon, leadership expert. We've been tackling the five or six principles that we've seen so far around maximizing our energy, around being optimistic, about being positive. And trust yourself, there's a what a what a great place to get into a deeper understanding of the energy bus. So we've been unpacking John Gordon's classic book. It's one of the most widely read books in professional sports, locker rooms across corporate boardrooms and in championship programs across the country. It's a kind of a one rule at a time, one day at a time, seven days to change how you drive approach that we've been using here on the Sweet Spot to benefit from this book and from the feedback that I've been getting from some of you. This has been working. Unpacking this book has been working. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm a born certified psychiatrist that work in high performance. As I've said to you many times, that's only part of what I do. The real job is to be your teammate here in the game of life. And we've been doing it. We've been on the winning side. Yesterday, yesterday, on What Italy Wednesday, we went in, didn't we? Oh, we went in, we went in. We invited people on the bus. Oh, yes, we did. Monday, let's go, let's go way back. On Monday, you took the wheel. You were the driver. You are the driver. Your circumstances aren't driving, your history isn't driving, your problem isn't driving, you're driving. On Tuesday, you filled the tank. Remember, desire, vision, focus, clean fuel. And the destination got locked in. You knew where you were headed. On Wednesday, you packed the bus. Yes, you shared your vision. You led with enthusiasm. You became the CEO of your space. And remember, we said CEO was chief energy officer. Three days. Oh, and three powerful moves. And we find ourselves, sweet builders, in Trust Yourself Thursday today. And Thursday is asking the question nobody wants to answer. You know what that question is? Who should not be on your bus? Oh, you heard me right. Who should not be on this bus? Yes, we're tackling rules five and six in this book, The Energy Bus. I hope you pick it up. It's a great book. Yes, rules five and six are the most countercultural lessons in this book, The Energy Bus by John Gordon. Rule five puts it this way: Don't waste your energy on those who don't get on your bus. I'll put a hallelujah and an amen right there. Don't waste your energy on those who don't get on your bus. Bong bong as they say. And then rule six. Post a sign that says no energy vampires allowed. That's right. Post a sign on your bus that says no energy vampires allowed up in these parts. The up in these parts is my addition. Yeah, this is a good one. These two rules. Rules five and six. They're for the people pleasers among us. The fixers. The empaths. What are you? The high empathy individual. The the the the one who's always the go-to person that everybody comes to to get it done. Well, these two rules are for you. Oh, they're for us. I'm in that group. Yeah, because they require something that does not come naturally to most high-performing individuals. Boundaries. Yeah. Yeah, this is not about abandonment or cruelty or walls or anything like that. This is just about boundaries. And the author of this book is saying, Be compassionate about it, be empathetic, but be wise as well. Yeah, he's not saying be heartless. No, he's saying exercise judgment. Rule 5 says don't waste your energy. It says this: you don't have to be negative to not get on someone's bus. You just don't have enough positive energy to make the trip. I'll repeat, you don't have to be negative to not get on someone's bus. You don't you just don't have enough positive energy to make that trip. That's what the author says. Yeah. You just have to not have enough positive energy to fuel the journey, and you know you shouldn't be on that bus. That's where misalignment happens. The author's not saying that people who don't have this energy or that they're bad people, he's talking about misalignment, about people whose energy for whatever reason in this season is pointed in a different direction than yours. And what he's saying is that you cannot afford to spend your finite energy trying to convince, because remember, we only have so much energy, and you can't be spending it all trying to convince somebody, convert them, or just carry people who are just not ready for the ride. You don't have that much energy. Every unit of energy you spend trying to pull some person, some resistant, stubborn problem person or resistant passenger, let's call it, like onto your bus, that's energy you need, sweet spotter. That's energy you're you're not spending on your own destination. So sometimes we have to take a moment, breathe, and just do an assessment and an audit. Because why should you be spending all your energy pulling somebody onto the bus that doesn't really want to be there? So that's what this means with rule five. Don't waste your energy. And then rule six here no energy vampires allowed. It's a little bit straight, more straightforward. He's using the term energy vampires. Not not a term I would use, but I get it. Energy vampires, people who suck the life out of you, for lack of a better term, drain the life, the hope, the momentum out of everything you're doing. When they enter the room, you can feel dark clouds with them, the temperature drops. You ever been around those kind of folks? The author writes energy vampires will zap your strength, they will zap your enthusiasm and drive, they'll zap your drive to succeed. They'll be they should be avoided at all costs. And I totally agree. This is why people don't let anybody on their bus is that if you let the wrong people on your bus, they could make it so that nobody ever gets on the bus because they're just so negative and they just draw your energy. He's not calling these people evil now. Let's not go crazy. They're not evil. He's just saying that they're dangerous to be on the bus because they they deplete your energy. They suck the blood out of you, they suck the positive blood out of you. So your your sign no energy vampires allowed, it's not a weapon. You don't hit them on the head with it, you don't, you know, cut their throats with it or whatever. Um, you just don't let them on the bus. Yeah. Your bus has a culture, your bus has a standard, your bus has a frequency, it has a vibe. And you want to cultivate that. You want to cultivate what's on your bus. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, in our field in sports psychiatry and psychology, we have something called uh a social or energy audit. It's uh it's exactly what it sounds like. It's we examine the relationship of a client, a high performer, um, not for loyalty, not for history or for obligation, but for like one question. When they spend time with the people in their lives, are they energized or are they depleted? Because there's a pattern. There's a pattern, and that's data and information. Because if they're depleted, if they're negative, they're if I can always tell when somebody's around the wrong group because their energy, when they're with me, they're one thing. But when they come back from that group, they're completely different. And that's um, there's a theory called social contagion. It it was um, it speaks to emotions and behaviors and um that can be spread through your social networks, and it says that your happiness, this this social contagion theory says that your happiness is influenced not just by the people you spend time with, but by the people they spend time with. I want you to get that distinction that the people who you spend time with have people they spend time with, and sometimes the people they spend time with influences them and makes them difficult to be around you. It's so weird. The people on your bus are ultimately shaping your day, your mind, your biology. Do you know your cortisol levels, your sleep quality, your cognitive performance, your resilience under pressure? So many things are being shaped by who's on your bus. Literally. That's not just a philosophy, that's a physiology. Protecting your bus is not selfishness, sweet spotter. It's the highest leverage health decision you can ever make. Now, don't don't go around saying Dr. Sweet said you gotta get off my bus and kick him off the bus now. Like, just chill and make sure that you make the right decision. But I am asking you to make sure that you're not around people who are gonna drink energy vampires on your bus. It is important. Yeah, 100%. 100%. So you've been listening here to the sweet spot. We've been unpacking this incredible book, and we love it because this book has information that we need. This energy bus book is helping us, and even the stoic wisdom that we've often quoted here on the sweet spot mirrors this book. Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor of Rome, stoic philosopher, one of the most powerful men who ever lived, wrote privately in his journal what he would never say publicly, I think. When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. Well, they are this way because they cannot tell good from evil. But I've seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil, and none of them can hurt me. That's right. None of them can hurt me. This is from meditations. None of them can hurt you, not because Marcus built a wall or because he became cold or dismissive, but because he was so grounded in his own values on his bus with his own vision, with his own identity, that the energy of difficult people could not penetrate his core. Do you grasp that? This is an advanced version of rule six. This is an advanced version of rule six of this beautiful book that we've been looking at. And so I want to leave you with that idea. I want to leave with that idea. You're not allowing uh energy vampires, right? Onto your bus. You're driving the bus. And that's the hard truth. Are you exhausted? Are you exhausted from people, from a relationship that's taking more from you than it's giving? From the colleague around you who's complaining all the time, somebody who's not buying your vision, somebody who's been on your bus for years and has been draining your energy. I'm not asking you to throw them off the bus. I'm gonna ask you to kick them off the bus. I am not asking you to abandon people you love, not at all. What I'm asking you to do is to be honest and trust yourself this Thursday about what's happening on your bus. If there's an energy vampire, they don't always announce themselves. Sometimes they look like loyalty, sometimes they look like history, sometimes they look like family. You know, they they take on different uh disguises and forms, but you know them because you know how you feel when they leave the room. And that's not being disloyal, that's just data and information for you to make some decisions as to how you're gonna be. The ancient wisdom has the perfect answer for this, right? The ancient wisdom says in Proverbs, above all else, guard what? Guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Above all else. Above all else, guard your heart because everything, your vision, your fuel, your enthusiasm, your capacity to love your passengers, your ability to finish strong, even tomorrow, that's where we're going. Everything flows from that. So, rules five and six today are not just self-help principles dressed up in bus metaphors, they're the ancient wisdom dressed in modern language, guard your heart. This is the sign on the door. This is maybe the better sign, right? No energy vampires, but maybe we change it to guard your heart. That's the sign on the door. That's the boundary on the bus. That is the trust yourself Thursday message. Absolutely, absolutely. Say this out loud. I guard my energy, I guard my heart. I guard my energy, I guard my heart. I choose my passengers with intention. Yes, I choose my passengers, and yes, I choose them with intention, and I protect this bus. Oh, yes, I do. I protect this bus not out of fear, but out of wisdom. Remember what Marcus Aurelius said. None of them can hurt me because he was rooted in something no one could take. That's right. Above all else, guard your heart. The bus is yours. The passengers are chosen, the culture is set, the science is telling you to protect your energy. The soul already knows. You've been listening to the sweet spot. You're the driver, the tank is full, and the passengers are all yours. Trust yourself today to make the right decisions. And I'll see you tomorrow for Finish Strong Friday. Be sure to share this message with someone who could benefit from it, and of course, you're invited to get on this bus by subscribing. I trust you. Take care.