Welcome To Self Care Saturday

Rule 8 Love The Passengers

Why Love Sustains Performance

Connection Chemistry Oxytocin And Stress

A Breathing Reset For Calm

Ancient Wisdom On Love And Duty

Rest As Fuel Not Weakness

Boundaries Choose Your Passengers

Closing And Subscribe Share

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Greetings and welcome. You did it. You did it. You got to Saturday. Wow. You are in self-care Saturday, and what a week you and I have been having. If you've been listening to The Sweet Spot, you've been along with me, Dr. Derek Sweet, your host here on The Sweet Spot. You've been along with me for the bus ride. Yeah, we've been on the Energy Bus, written by John Gordon. A great book that we've been unpacking and reading all week together. We've been looking at the various lessons from the book, the various instructions from the book, helping us maximize our energy, figure out our purpose. It's been amazing. And I hope you've been having a good time. I know I have. So you're on the sweet spot. You're here. If you're new to the sweet spot, this is the place where science heals the body, soul restores the spirit, and success is measured in more than wins, right? Today is the Sweet Spot Self-Care Saturday look. And this is day six in our series here as we review this book, John Gordon's The Energy Bus. So today, Self Care Saturday, Sweet Spot, as we slow down enough to feel what we've been building all week. The rules we've been looking at all week. Today we're going to look at Rule 8 in this book by John Gordon The Energy Bus. Just a quick recap Monday you took the wheel, choice. Tuesday you filled the tank direction. Wednesday, you packed the bus, attraction. Thursday, you protected your bus protection. And Friday you found your Y, the fuel. That was five days, nine rules. And one question remains before Sunday, before slowdown Sunday tomorrow. Now that you're driving with purpose, are you loving the people riding with you? Are you loving the ride? Yeah. You see, rule eight in this book, The Energy Bus by John Gordon, the book says that rule eight is you've got to love the passengers. Yeah, it's not just good enough to bring them on the bus, you gotta love them. I'm gonna tell you exactly what it says. Love your passengers. Your positive energy and vision must be grounded in and fueled by your love for your passengers, the people on your bus. Now that's the rule many of us kind of skip over because it sounds kind of soft, it sounds kind of like a hallmark card to be real. It's kind of sandwiched between boundaries and burnout. This love your love your your passengers on the bus. But the fact is, the author is making a very hard clinical claim here on Self Care Saturday. Yeah, we've got to slow down and think about this. Why would he say you have to love the passengers on the bus as Rule 8? Just to recap, if you haven't been with us all week, this book, The Energy Bus, is based on a bit of a parable. The author here, John Gordon, he takes this guy, George, who's having the worst like life ever. His marriage sucks, his job sucks. You know, he's he comes on Monday or whatever, his car has got a flat, it's broken, can't get to work, whatever. He takes this bus, he's in a horrible way, and he meets Joy. A woman named Joy. I think she's driving the bus. And she gives him these 10 rules. This is all accidental for living the best life, for being his best self. And we have been packing, unpacking these rules, and we're up to rule eight. And rule eight is about loving the passengers. The first rule, of course, was you've got to start driving your own bus. If you're not driving your own bus, we've got a problem. And you gotta go back and listen to Make Your Moves Monday and make sure you're you're driving the bus. And then if you didn't get to Tuesday about the clean fuel, make sure you look at uh listen to Take Action Tuesday as well. Just a little plug to go back. But anyway, we're in rule eight right now. This idea of loving the passengers on the bus. I guess what the author is trying to say here is that you can't sustain high performance without a genuine investment in the people around you, the camp around you, what you've built around you. Yeah, it's not about your management style, it's not about your ability to delegate or your strategic plan, it's about love. Do you have love? Is love a part of it? And this is self-care Saturday. Here's what most people miss about Rule 8: Loving your passengers and to love them well requires that you're restored enough to give. You can't pour from an empty cup. And Saturday is where you refill right here, right now, on Self Care Saturday, is where you make a decision to restore and refill your cup. Put some love into you so that you could give the love to the passengers on your bus. And I know you got some passengers on your bus. There's some people that love you, and some people who ride along with you. Absolutely, and they do need you to restore yourself so this way you can give them the best parts of you. Yeah, in sports psychiatry, we talk about what researchers call the tend and the friend. Tend and befriend. It's a documented biological response that comes up under stress, where humans restore themselves through connection, through care, and through community. Yeah, this research is real. It was uh Dr. Susan Shelley Taylor at UCLA pioneered this research, and she found that when you have meaningful social connection, it triggers the release of something called oxytocin. We haven't talked much about that. That's like the love hormone, the fee, you know. People talk about dopamine as the reward and feeling good uh as a neurotransmitter, but oxytocin, right? When when you are in good social connections and good with good social vibes, yeah, these meaningful social connections trigger oxytocin release, oxytocin release, and it lowers your stress hormone, your cortisol, and that means your blood pressure goes down and you're able to recover physically and emotionally faster. Yeah, so self-care is not only about the bubble bath. For those of you who are into the bubble bath and you know who you are. Look, that's important, but what I'm talking about is a deliberate act of restoring yourself here so that you can have something real to give the people back on your bus. The bubble bath is important too, okay. But rule eight and self-care are not two different conversations here, they're the same conversation. You love your passengers on your bus best when you've taken care of the driver, and you're the driver. Where you're not taking care of you, you're not taking care of them. Yeah, Whitney Houston, one of the greatest voices in history of recorded music, she said something that belongs directly on your bus, on my bus. In that song, the greatest love of all, George Benson does a great job on it too. Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all in that song. Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all. The greatest love of all was happening to me. I found the greatest love of all inside of me. That's in the song. If you listen to that song, you will hear it because the greatest love of all was inside of me. The greatest. Wow, and you know the ancient wisdom isn't too far off, right? The ancient wisdom says, greater is that is the spirit which is in you, greater is he who is within you, greater is that which is within you than whatever is in the world, and we know God is love, so greater is the love in you than the whatever is in the world, because everything else, sweet spotter, every relationship, every act of service, every passenger you carry flows from that foundation. Your love. And when you don't have love, when love is absent, oh, you feel it, you know it. Absolutely. The author of this book, The Energy Bus, says you've got to love your passengers. Whitney Houston says it starts with loving yourself first and the greatest love of all. And Dr. Sweet, right now, right here, is saying Saturday, self-care Saturday on the sweet spot, is where these two truths meet. Love your passengers, but love yourself first. And you know who's backing me up today, right? You know who's backing me up? The stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius. And this is one of the most complete thoughts in all of meditations. Accept the things to which fate binds you and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart. That's Marcus Aurelius. How did these dudes know to write all this so many years ago? Wow! But do so with all your heart, he says, not reluctantly, don't do it out of obligation, don't run on empty, don't do it on empty, don't fake it either. Do it with all your heart. That is the standard rule eight sets in this book. The energy bus that I hope you go by. Listen, I don't get any royalties from I'm not trying to sell this man's book. Like, I honestly, I don't get anything out of this other than the joy of telling you it's a good book. So that's the standard rule eight sets in this book. And self-care Saturday is the day for you to restore your heart. This is self-care Saturday. Self-care Saturday is the day for you to restore the heart that has to do all the loving of all the passengers on your bus. That's why I want you to care for you. That's why we've made Saturday self-care Saturday so you can take a deep breath. Let's do that right now. In through the nose slowly, and then even more slowly out through the mouth, in through the nose really slowly. Now, of course, if you're driving or operating heavy machinery, maybe don't do that right now, but in through the nose, and then slowly out through the mouth. You know, when your exhale is slower than your inhale, you send a message to your neurological system, your neuro, your neuroanatomy understands this, your parasympathetic nervous system understands this, your vagus nerve understands it, and you begin to rest and digest, and you begin to take it easy. Your prefrontal cortex says, Okay, he or she is trying to relax. Your amygdala, remember the threat detector? We haven't talked about the amygdala in a while. Yeah, they all calm down. Your ACC calms down, the default mode network gets into like relax mode. Yeah, all the great fun neural and neuroanatomical friends that we've made here on the sweet spot like it when you take a deep breath, and that's a way of sending the message to you that it's all gonna be okay so you can pour into others because you're pouring into yourself. You know, Tekniathan is a Buddhist monk, he's a peace activist and one of the most widely read spiritual teachers of the last century, and he said something that is the perfect bridge between self-care and this rule number eight, which is to love your passengers. He said, if we do not know how to take care of ourselves and to love ourselves, we cannot take care of the people we love. That's Buddhism. He didn't say it's gonna be harder to take care of the people you love, he didn't say you'll struggle to take care of them. He said you cannot take you cannot take care of them, and that's what Tik Not Hunt, that's what he's saying. He's not giving us permission to rest on Saturday, he's telling you that it's a prerequisite, you have to rest. So Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic, says, Love your passages with all your heart, right? In his own way. This Buddhist monk is also telling you, start with yourself. That's incredible. They're echoing, they're echoing what the author of this book, The Energy Bus, is saying. It's amazing. It's so amazing to me that look, if you're a caregiver, if you're a leader, if you're a parent, you're a coach, you're you're a student, what are you an attorney, you're a cop, what do you do? You've been driving all week, you've been working hard all week. Today is Saturday. Today is not a stop sign for you. I know you're busy, it's just a fuel station. Rest is not weakness, my friend. Restoration is not indulgence here. Receiving care is not selfishness, it's not weak, it's a good thing. You've got to pour into you to be even stronger. It's how you stay on the road with your bus. Yeah, to love your passengers, as it's said in the ancient wisdom. Look, even the the Bible says, love your neighbor as you love yourself. That ancient wisdom put it all together. It's saying love your passengers, okay, and love you. Like, I don't know how much plainer it needs to be that this rule number eight about loving your passengers is echoed by Marcus Aurelius, is echoed by Tikniad Hahn, it's echoed by Jesus. I don't know. Who else do we need to call to convince us that we've got to slow down, we've got to take care of ourselves, we've got to love our passengers. Yes, love your passengers, but you know what the ancient wisdom is also saying? You know what the word of God says? Love the driver too. Love the driver too. You're the driver. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. You cannot love your passengers well from an empty tank. Self-care, that's the key. It's the act of restoring yourself so that you have something real to give. Love your passengers. But today, love the driver too. You've been listening to The Sweet Spot. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm so excited that we're getting close to sort of wrapping up this book, The Energy Bus by John Gordon. It's been amazing. It's been an amazing journey with you. Absolutely, neighbor. I'm calling you neighbor because you know what? I gotta love my neighbor like I love myself. So, I hope you've been enjoying this series. I hope that you're putting it into action. I the bus is yours, sweet spotter. The bus is yours. That's right, don't let somebody come in here and try to drive your bus. No. And the passengers on this bus, your bus, are chosen. You decide who's on this bus. They don't just come in here, grab a seat, and and be negative and drain you. No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. You got somewhere to go. You got places to go, people to see, and things to do. Alright? So today we restore the driver. This is the sweet spot. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. Rest well, restore fully, love deeply. Sweet spotter, I love you. I hope you take some time for yourself, do some deep breathing, go outside if you can, look up at the sky, take it easy, and come back to see me tomorrow. Tomorrow we're just bringing it all home. Tomorrow is slow down Sunday. And if you liked what you heard today, if it registered with you, if it resonated with you, I I ask you and I implore you, please subscribe. It's absolutely free. Yeah, get on my bus. There's room. I want you on this bus. You know, look, if you get on the bus, we are every day gonna have these conversations. And share it with someone. The more, the merrier. We have plenty of room on the bus for everybody. See you tomorrow.