Welcome To Win It All Wednesday

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Greetings and welcome. Welcome back to the Sweet Spot. Sweet Spotters, I'm so glad you're back. I'm so glad you're choosing to go on the journey with me. Here in the Sweet Spot, I am delighted that you are sharing Win It All Wednesday here on the Sweet Spot. I'm your host. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. As you know, I'm a board certified psychiatrist. I work in high performance circles. But more than that, more enjoyable than that, even, is to be your partner in the game of life, your teammate on the same team and the same side with you. So good afternoon, good morning, good evening, welcome back. I don't know what time of day you're listening to this, but I need you to hear me when I say this. Wednesday is not just the middle of the week, it is literally the proving ground for most of us. Wednesday is where champions are made in the kind of work that I do. So this week on the Sweet Spot, we've been having fun, haven't we? We've been having a little fun with the adult rhyme series that we're doing. Where we take classic nursery rhymes and unpack the deep wisdom inside of them for real grown-up live adults like who we are. Of course, if you're a young person listening and you're not an adult yet, welcome. So Monday, sweet spotters, Jack got us nimble and ready to make our move. Tuesday, little Miss Muffet taught us the wisdom, the active wisdom of discernment, knowing when to stay and when to go. And today, today we talk about what it takes to win it all. After all, it's win it all Wednesday. It's not just any Wednesday, it's not just Hump Day, it is Win It All Wednesday, and we want to have the mindset of a winner. And look, winning it all, I want to tell you right now, is not about being perfect. It's not about never falling. It's not about never getting washed out. Quite the opposite, actually. Winning it all in high performance work is about what you do after you fall, after you have a setback, what you do after the rain comes down. And today's rhyme is three simple lines that contain one of the most powerful lessons about resilience, perseverance, and uh winning that you'll ever hear. Let's get right into it. What's our nursery rhyme for today? You're gonna love this one, sweet builder. The itsy bitsy spider. Remember that one? Now, some of you might be too young to remember this, or some of you may not have heard it, so I am going to recite the itsy bitsy spider for you so that we can go further into our dialogue this morning. The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water sprout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain. And the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again. That's it. That's it. That little spider got washed out. The itsy bitsy spider got knocked down, set back, and what did it do? And the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again. Not a different spout. The same spout. The same goal. The same direction. The same commitment. Just again and again. And again. That's what winning looks like on Win It All Wednesday. The part that nobody tells you. And who is this ity bitsy spider anyway? Just like Nimble Jack and Little Miss Muffet, the spider has no title. It has no name. It has no identifying marks. No profession, no gender, no age, is the spider is just the spider climbing towards a goal. When adversity hits and washes everything away. Have you been there? I know I've been there when adversity hits and it feels like everything is washed away. And here's what I like about this itsy bitsy spider ditty. Here's what I love about it. The spiders described as it'sy bitsy. Now that's real small. That's the kind of small you overlook. It's the kind of small you underestimate. The kind of small that nobody pays attention to. It figures out a way to climb again, to try again. Is that you? Maybe you feel small today. Maybe you feel like something's way bigger than you. Have you been there? I have. When the rain comes down on your plans, sometimes it's your health. It could be your career, a relationship that just won't get better, your season? I don't know. And you you feel like you're starting over every day, always starting over. But just like the it'sy bitsy spider, you are still here. And you know what that means, sweet spotter? You can climb again. That's right. That's right. That's right. Because your brain is equipped. It's equipped to help you. So when we face a setback, the brain registers it as a threat. And you know who lights up in the brain when there's a threat. Our good old friend, the amygdala. Sitting right there. It fires away, talks to the HPA access that we talked about weeks ago, and cortisol starts flooding your system. And here we go. The stress response hits us. And for some of us, this leads to what psychologists call learned helplessness. A state where the brain begins to believe, actually believe, that effort is futile, it's pointless. I'm not gonna do this anymore because I've failed so much, I'm not even gonna try. So this is the spider that doesn't ever climb again. You don't want to be that spider. Because the brain is wired actually to do something different. Here's what the neuroscience tells us about resilient people, about resilience. People who climb again, they've developed what the researchers call psychological flexibility. That's right, psychological flexibility, the ability to adapt to adversity without losing sight of your goal. You adapt to the adversity and you still have the goal in front of you and you still come back. And you know what part of the brain governs this? You guessed it. The brain's CEO, the PFC, our good friend, the prefrontal cortex. Working, of course, with its good friend, the ACC. You know, I've told you in the past that the PFC and the ACC they love to hang out together. So the anterior cingular cortex, which is kind of like your error detector, your safety cop, works in harmony with the prefrontal cortex to refrain any setback you feel or see. That's what you have the capacity to do using these two brain structures. You can refrain setbacks, and that's gonna help you climb again. You know what else they can do? They can regulate emotions, you can regulate your emotional response, you can not spaz out completely, you can feel it, but don't let it overwhelm you. So not only can the PFC and the ACC reframe a setback for you, it can regulate your emotional response, and then it can help you recommit. You can make a decision. I'm gonna go back up this ladder, I'm gonna try again, I'm gonna come back out even more committed. So that's three things. Okay, three things reframing the setback, regulating your emotional response, and recommitting to the goal. I bet ya, that's what the it'sy bitsy spider did when it sort of faced this disaster as the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water sprout, and then somebody turned it on, down came the rain and washed the spider out. All your dreams, everything went down the toilet, and out came the sun and dried up all the rain. And you know what? The itsy bitsy spider did. Yeah, yeah, you know what it did, because I just told you. It reframed the setback, it regulated its emotions, and it recommitted to the goal, and the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again. That's a neuroscience interpretation. Oh goodness, you gotta love it. You gotta love it. Oh man, we're fearfully and wonderfully made, good people. We're fearfully and we're wonderfully made. And I've just given you the reason that you can climb again, the reasons you're a winner. Real winners here on Win It All Wednesday. They are able to reframe the setback. This is not the end of the world. This is the reality, this is football reality, this is basketball reality, this is hockey reality, this is golf reality, this is tennis reality. I can come back, I can do this. It's not as bad as I think. And you know what? They regulate their emotions. Yeah, I'm disappointed, yeah, this sucks, but it's not gonna overwhelm me. I'm gonna use this as fuel to get me to go again. And then the third thing, in addition to reframing the setback, in addition to regulating their emotions, they recommit. Like the itsy bitsy spike. They recommit. You recommit to your goal. I'm gonna study harder if I fail that exam, and I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna pass it. I'm gonna perfect this shot until I get it down. I'm gonna make sure I can catch that ball, I can really execute a tackle, I can understand the plays, that I'll do the workouts that I need to do, that I'll take my medications regularly, I'll take my blood pressure every day until I get better. That's the power of building a resilient brain that will climb the spout again. Those are the neural pathways to resilience. That's the identity of a win it all Wednesday It'sy Bitsy Spider. Incidentally, this from a psychiatric perspective connects to something we call post-traumatic growth. It was traumatic for that spider to fall down the spout, it could have drowned. The itsy bitsy spider could have been devastated and may have been just so crushed. Well, the fact that it was able to work through the issues, it was able to experience this adversity and then emerge strong enough, more capable, more purposeful to try again. That is post-traumatic growth. It's growing after its trauma. That's possible. That's possible, and you know what the ipsy bitsy spider knew that the stoics also knew? You know, I've been quoting Marcus Aurelius in his meditations for quite some time now. Marcus Aurelius wrote, you have to power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. Let's breathe with that for a second. You have power over your mind. You don't have it over what's happening outside of you. But your mind you have power over. You decide what you think and what you feel, and you control the controllables, which is you, your mind. Realize this and you will have strength. The rain is an outside event. The ity bitsy spider could not control the rain. You know what the it'sy bitsy spider controls? Decline? And that's pure stoicism. Do you see how everything connects in the world? Did you think we could get here from the itsy bitsy spider right into the stoics? To Marcus Aurelius? We just did something amazing here. We connected the idea that wow, you can control the controllables all the way from being an itsy bitsy spider to a stoic philosopher, warrior. That's pure stoicism. Focus not on what happens to you, but on how you respond. The itsy bitsy spider shows us on Win It Lore Wednesday how to respond. Get up and try again. Do not wallow. It never said there the itsy bitsy spider went and felt all sorry for itself. Maybe it did, but it didn't make it into the text. The itsy bitsy spider waited for another opportunity and it came out again. It actually showed some intelligence, right? Because it said the sun came out or whatever, it dried things up, and that's when it came out. It figured it out and it tried again. Seneca, another stoic philosopher, said this: we're more often frightened than hurt. I'm paraphrasing, I don't know the exact quote. We're more often frightened than hurt. And we suffer more in imagination than reality. Think about that quote written thousands of years ago. We are more often frightened than we are actually hurt. Scared more than we're hurt. I've been there and no one is talking about. And we suffer more in imagination than reality. How many times have you thought things up that actually never happened? How many times have we been washed out by a setback and told ourselves the story that we can never recover from this? This is gonna be the end, this is it. When in reality, the path back up was always there. Just waiting for us to take the first step. Another favorite stoic dude that I like, Epictetus, the one who was born, you remember Epictetus, I always talk about him, he was born a slave and then rose to become one of the greatest philosophers of his era, also spoke powerfully in his discourses. Here's what Epictetus Epictetus said. How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself? Well, the Itzybitsi spider would tell him, I didn't wait long. No, the Itsy Bitsu spider doesn't wait long. The spider assesses, recovers, and climbs again. Period. No emotions, no story, no meaning. That is the stoic resilience in its purest form. Climb again. Just climb again. Patience patient endurance is a victory. Enduring patience is the highest form of austerity. It's the highest kind of power you could have on a win-it-all Wednesday to be patient and to come back up and to climb again. That's another Buddhist kind of Dharmapada level understanding that you uh have to have enduring patience. When you you take the stoic insights and what you get from the Buddhist thinking about enduring and endurance and patience, you actually, these two ancient texts actually tell the Itzibitsi spiders story perfectly. Endure and your victory will follow. Climb again, and you are a winner. Absolutely, absolutely, this is how you do it. This is how you do it, and I'll end on the ancient wisdom. Because the ancient wisdom never fails us. In Psalm 34, the ancient wisdom says the righteous person may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers that person from them all. Not some of them, it says all of them. The rain comes, but if you notice in the itsy bitsy spider story, so does the sun. Yeah, yeah, the itsy bitsy spider did get washed out, but the sun came out, and you know what? It allowed the itsy bitsy spider to climb again. And the sun is the Lord drying up every single storm that tried to wash you out. So, sweet spotter, we know from the ancient wisdom that look, suffering and hardships and being washed out produces perseverance and character and then hope. So the rain produces a kind of perseverance in the itsy bitsy spider, who I'm sure didn't read Romans 5, verses 3 and 4, but was acting it out by being persistent and perseverant and climbing again. Perseverance produces character. That's what the ancient wisdom says, and that's what the itsy bitsy spider was doing. And that's what you would like to do today. You see, a real winner is a perseverant person. A real winner has a character that's always hopeful. And the hope is what makes the spider climb again, and the hope is what's going to make you climb again. Because we are the champions, my friends, and we'll keep on fighting to the end. This is the sweet spot. We will keep on fighting till the end. We will keep on climbing to the end. We don't care if you call us the Etsy Bitsy Spider today. Nothing is gonna stop us. Because we're gonna keep climbing. Alright, we've had so much fun today on Wood It All Wednesday. I hope you get the message. I hope if you're a student and you know the rain might be your failed exam or a rejected application or a semester that didn't go the way you planned. Climb again. Climb again because you gotta keep showing up to the next class, the next professor, set up some office hours, do what you gotta do. You're an athlete and you're the it'sy bitsy spider because you have an injury or an illness or you're you're in a losing streak, or the coach benched you, or you didn't like how they spoke to you. Get back into the training room. Cut out the nonsense, just take on a beginner's mind. Start fresh and let's go. For science, for soul, and for success, you've been listening to The Sweet Spot. We'll see you tomorrow. Trust yourself, Thursday is waiting on you. Oh, don't forget to share and don't forget to subscribe. This is Dr. Sweet.