Trust Yourself Thursday Setup

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Welcome back. Wow, I've been reflecting on this fun week we're having, looking at adult rhymes here on the sweet spot, and thinking, wow, it's amazing how much you can extract from a simple nursery rhyme. Holy cow, this is amazing stuff. I hope you're enjoying yourself because I know I am. This is the sweet spot, and it is Trust Yourself Thursday. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I am your teammate here in the game of life. And uh, you know, you've passed me the ball today, and I'm gonna try to hit the shot for you as we continue our series here, Sweet Spotter, on the Adult Rhymes series. So I work in elite performance circles, but boy, is it amazing that we get to be in elite performance in life together? Because that's what we're doing. And here on the Sweet Spot, we've been going through these nursery rhymes and retrofitting them or reverse engineering them, probably a better term, to us as adults. Amazing. I I I'm just blown away. Uh, today we're doing uh self-trust, and I had to think through which uh which nursery rhyme fits with self-trust. You ready for this one? Humpty Dumpty. Oh yeah. It's Humpty Dumpty today. So Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. Now that is real. Humpty was on the wall, he had a fall, the king's horses and the king's men came by, and they could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. That's it, that's the whole rhyme. And uh you and I know what you're thinking. What on earth is Dr. Sweet gonna do with this nursery rhyme? And what does this have to do with me, my life, uh, with the things that I'm dealing with right now in a serious world? And um, how does this relate to self-trust? Trust me, I'm a psychiatrist. Trust psychiatrists, we always have a way of figuring out the story, figuring out what's going on. That's what we get paid to do. Oh goodness. So, yeah, most people hear that rhyme and stop at the ending. He fell, nobody can fix him, done. Which honestly sounds like the worst possible story you can tell somebody who's trying to build self-trust. But here's the thing about most of the stories we've been told since childhood. The real lesson, it turns out, isn't in the ending. It's in what the story quietly exposes along the way. So let's slow this Humpty Dumpty thing down a bit. Humpty chose, let just to pull back for a second. So, Humpty, Humpty is choosing to sit on a wall. Now, the wall might have been stable, it might have felt stable, it looks solid, it's elevated, obviously, and from up there on high, Humpty could see everything. You can see everything. And not only that, you look significant up there on the wall. You actually look safe sitting up there on the wall. But here's what the neuroscience tells us about that kind of position. You know we're about science, soul, and success here on the sweet spot, so we're gonna jump into some neuroscience. We always do. And yeah, and I don't know how we got to neuroscience with Humpty Dumpty, but we're gonna give this a shot. This is what the neuroscience tells us about Humpty Dumpty's position on this wall. When you are relying, when you are relying on an external structure for your stability, your nervous system is actually working overtime. It's working harder. You're doing something called, and I'm gonna get geeky here for a minute, isometric holding. This constant muscular and neurological effort that you're putting on your body to stay still as you sit on this wall. You're actually working, even though you're sitting up high on the wall. The body's actually working hard, but it's looking very quiet and it's silent. And fatigue from silent effort doesn't announce itself. It never does, it accumulates slowly and quietly. It builds, and then one moment, one micro shift in balance, and the fall is sudden. That's how physics works, and psychology works the same way too, it's not about weakness. So here's the thing that Rhyme never answers, and I read it several times. Why did Humpty Dumpty? Why did Humpty climb the wall in the first place? And I think the Rhyme is intentionally silent about that because the answer is almost always the same. He climbed it because it's natural for us to it felt natural, it was expected. Maybe when we're climbing and we're getting to our high place in life, it feels rewarding. Nobody questions it. He didn't question it, nobody else did. Do you question it? As you go higher, as you get promotions, as you stack up degrees and you stack up uh accolades and awards. That is something we trust and we don't examine. And that's what unexamined trust looks like. It's not dramatic, it's not overconfidence, it's just a kind of an autopilot we all go on. We go on this autopilot. You see, unlike what Marcus Aurelius taught us from the Stoics, and I know I c I know I quote him too much, but he talked about an internal wall that you have to have. Like you have to have power over your own mind, not outside events, Marcus Aurelius says. And and he says, once you realize this, you will find your own strength. You see, the Stoics understood something that Humpty didn't. It said the only structure that you can genuinely rely on is the one inside of you, your judgment, your values, your awareness, your internal strength. Everything external that we rely on or we sit on or we lean on is borrowed stability. Humpty borrowed his stability from that wall, I'm telling you. He placed his weight outside himself. You see, and and and when the wall couldn't hold Humpty, when it couldn't hold him, he had nothing internal to catch his fall. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. And Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Yeah, there was nothing to catch his fall. He had put his trust in this wall. He misplaced his trust. It's not really about a bad wall, it's about misplaced trust. Yeah. And here's where this story gets really interesting in a way that I think a lot of us skip past. It kind of sounds cool. All the king's horses and all the king's men. All of them. They came. That's not a small response. That's big. You're talking about all the king's horses and all his men. That's a show. That's like the institution mobilizing for you. Resources getting activated. The people showing up with the full intention to help. And it still wasn't enough? Yeah, it wasn't enough. All the king's horses, all the king's men, they couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Let's sit with that for a second. What does that mean? What is that all about? Have you been in that position? You've been on you've been the person on the ground. The one who the bad thing happened to. And the people who showed up with all the right intentions, mind you, right? All the right credentials. All wearing their white coats or their ties or their jackets. All the resources they had still couldn't help you, really. Still couldn't put you back together the way you needed. Listen, I'm not blaming those folks. This is not their failure. I'm just trying to reveal a structural truth that's going on here in this nursery rhyme, quote unquote. Some repairs can only happen from the inside. That's what this is telling me. Yeah. Some repairs can only happen from the inside. And I gotta tell you, a thousand people around you when you're really hurting when things aren't going well. Sometimes that's the worst thing. Because they all have advice, they all want to know how you get up, why you climb up on the wall, what's wrong with you, and and they're kind of blaming you. You know, you're down, you're hurting, you fell off your wall, whatever your wall was. Okay, it didn't work out for you. Now there are a thousand advisors, each with a string of advice that you never asked for, and none of it is helpful. All the king's horses and all the king's men, and they couldn't do anything for you again and again, right? Tik Nathan, the the uh the mindfulness guru, said the most precious gift you we can offer anyone is our attention. Beautiful how he put that. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers. That's his quote. The most precious gift you can offer anyone, especially when they're down, is your attention. Because when you embrace them with that, they begin to bloom. Notice what he's pointing to. Your presence is what's needed. Your attention, not the fixing, not the rescuing. Real care creates the conditions for someone to do their own blooming, their own healing. You see, the king's men were trying to fix Humpty. But no one was helping Humpty find himself. No one was trying to help Humpty be Humpty in the middle of what Humpty was going through. They were all trying to fix it. Yeah, and they were robbing Humpty of the privilege, the power, and the capacity that he had to heal, of his own internal architecture that could help him get better. What about what was in Humpty's brain? Let me bring some science in here. You know, I had to I had to transition into the science. You know, here on the sweet spot, we do not sacrifice science, right? Because we're about science, soul, and success. Right? So the body has a system. It's called, and it's a big word, proprioception. It's your internal GPS, your nervous system's ability to know where you are in space, what's shifting, what's moving, what's adjusting, your own GPS. Elite athletes they train this constantly. It's the difference between someone who feels their knee kind of going out of them or compensating weeks before it becomes injured, and a person who doesn't know something's wrong with their knee until they're flat on the ground because they don't have an awareness. They're insolent, they're part of the brain. Let's stay out of that. They are the appropriate exception. They're not aware of the appropriate section, and that's available to all of us. Psychologically, self-trust, this is self-trust Thursday, works the same way. Self-trust is the emotional equivalent of your appropriate section. You it is your internal sense of where you are, of your own values, your limits, your real needs before a fall happens. Yeah, but when you're ex when you're only like focused on external validation, on and you're looking for claps and applause, and you're you're only worried about other people's opinions, and only worried about being seen and having external structures around you and external definitions of success, and you don't have an internal locus like we talked about a couple of days ago, you actually lose the sensitivity of your own internal signals. You don't even know when you're off balance because you're so busy being around other people or being seen, or you know, you're so tied into the opinions of others, it's exhausting. Worrying about what other people think and worrying about being seen, that your brain starts to tune out the quiet information that you need for your own positioning in favor of just making sure you get feedback. In other words, the longer you sit on a wall, the less trust you have in your own legs. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're gonna trust in something external, maybe trust in your divine power, trust in your higher purpose, don't trust in the wall, don't trust in other people and what they think, right? The ancient wisdom tells us to trust God with all our heart and lean not to our own understanding and all our ways submit, and we will our paths will be straight. Even that, like, is a better way to go. You can't be ego-driven all the time because that's what sets up the fall. And the wall is what we lean on when we stop trusting ourselves, we start trusting the wall more. And here's a part of this story, this Humpty Dumpty story that's so surprising. The rhyme, it says he couldn't be put together again, and it sounds like a tragedy. You kind of hear it as like, wow, that's it. All the king's horses and all the king's men could not put Humpty back together again. Wow, that's sad. But what I want to offer you as a psychiatrist is a different frame. What if being unreparable by others is not the worst outcome here? What if that's actually okay? What if it's a necessary thing? What if it's the necessary thing that we need? Why? Because think of scar tissue. It's often stronger than original tissue and it forms on its own. A bone that fractures and heals correctly is actually denser at the break point than it was before. You see, the body keeps a score, it has its own intelligence, it knows something internally about this that sometimes we resist and we think that we have to do something externally. Yeah, you don't go back together again, you go forward differently. You actually go forward differently. And yeah, humpty is represented as an egg sitting on on this wall, I guess to speak of fragility, but actually, eggs, an egg is not the right model for Humpty. Eggs, they're either gonna restore or they're gonna shatter for good. But you're not an egg. You and I are not eggs, we're living systems. And and in the Japanese um model, kick kitsugi, I think they call it, is the practice. You know what they do when something is broken? Like a piece of pottery is broken. You may have seen this, they repair the crack with gold so it stands out. So think of a vase with a crack, and instead of trying to put it back together again with like to make it look perfect like it was before, this Kensugi approach in in this Japanese art form actually fills that crack with gold. And if you've ever seen this on the internet, you should look it up. It they look they look amazing. The cracks become a thing of art because the philosophy behind this kind of repair is that the break is not something to hide, it's not something to fix in the traditional sense of making it look exactly like it was before. It is the part, it's now part of the the vases history, it's not part of the broken thing's history. The repair actually makes it more valuable because they're filling it with gold than less valuable. Think about that. What if that's what's needed for Humpty? Our good friend Humpty. Hey Humpty, man, I'm trying to help you here. So Kins Kinsugi, this Japanese approach, teaches us that the crack is where the gold goes. Now hold that thought with what the ancient wisdom tells us, which is God's grace, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness. What is that all about? This ancient wisdom, it won't quit. It always knows what to say. Power made perfect in weakness? What do you mean? Strength revealed through a break? That is just like the deepest operating principle of human resilience, isn't it? To be stronger from the brokenness? Where's that in the Humpty Dumpty story? This is not just wishful thinking, this is a real thing we're talking about here. The people who develop the most durable self-trust, and we are self-trust thirsty people, the people who develop the most durable self-trust are really the ones who never fell. Yeah, they're the ones who fell. The ones who stayed present and worked through the rebuilding, and then they learned something about themselves. Have you ever done that in that situation where you've fallen, you've made a mistake, things went south, it didn't work out, and you were grinding and you're trying to figure it out, and you learn how much stronger you became through this. You learn something about yourself that the wall could never teach you. The ones who yeah, the ones who are able to rebuild, they have a knowledge, they have a wisdom. Something that a wall doesn't give you. So let me ask you something directly right now as we as we wrap this up, right? Where are the walls in your life? Now, I don't mean metaphorically in a vague way, I mean it specifically. What position are you currently in that looks very stable from the outside? Looks like a great wall to sit on, but it's requiring a lot of internal effort for you to maintain. What role, like what reputation, what expectation are you perched on today? On Trust Yourself Thursday. Were you high enough for people to see you? And high enough that a fall could be witnessed. Because here's what I've observed for over 15 years working in high performance. The walls almost always look like success. A title, a record, a relationship, a public identity. The wall isn't obviously dangerous. Trust me. And that's precisely why it is dangerous. It's what Humpty missed being up there on that wall. You have to be careful. Epictetus, another one of my favorite stoic philosophers, you remember him, the slave, the one who was born into slavery. And he look, Epictetus built his entire philosophy from this constraint. Seek not the good in external things, seek it in yourselves. That's the self-trust internal wall perspective and imperative. He's not talking about finding yourself, he's talking about building yourself, cultivating the internal resources that will not and do not depend on the structure beneath you. You don't need anything to prop you up. That's what self-trust is about. And then ask yourself, what would it look like to practice trusting myself and not any wall I'm leaning on, anything that's outside of me. So that when crisis comes, when something goes wrong, I have practiced resilience. And I know I have something to lean on. I know greater is that which is in me than what's in the world. I have a deeper sense of who I am and my identity. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I want to close with something that I find genuinely encouraging every time I think about it with this Humpty Dumpty thing. It's a depressing thing. The guy falls off the wall and nothing can put him back together again, right? Humpty falls, the king's horses, the king's men, and nothing can put Humpty back together again. Full stop. And it ends there. But here's the thing. You and I are still here. Listening to the sweet spot today. Listening to this podcast. Hmm. Having already survived our own versions of a fall. That fall Humpty took, we've fallen like that. I have. Maybe more than once we've fallen like that. And you are the evidence that the rhyme is incomplete. The missing verse in Humpty Dumpty is you. It's me. You are the missing verse. The fact that the king's men couldn't fix Humpty is not a tragedy. The fact that things didn't work out for you 100%, it's not a tragedy. It's the setup for the real story, the one that where you found out what you are actually made of, that you don't need the wall. And that you found out that you had everything inside of you that you needed, whether the wall was there or not. And that you found out that even when all the pieces were broken around you, you lost your loved one, you lost your job, you lost the game, you lost the identity that you used to have. Things didn't work out. You figured out in the presence of all of that brokenness that you could still stand, that you didn't need all the king's forces and all the king's men, that you had away. In the presence of the person you discovered when you had to stand on your own. Psalm 46, the ancient wisdom, always talks about that. God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way, though the wall falls, okay? Though the earth gives way, and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. Yeah. The mountains fall, sweet spotter. The walls break, yeah. But there's still something deeper in us as sweet spotters, okay? That still holds. That's the invitation this Thursday to trust ourselves, not to become invincible, not to climb higher walls, but to go deeper into ourselves, into the awareness that there is a greater force in us than what's in the world. Humpty Dumpty didn't know himself well enough to know that the wall was the wrong place to put all his trust. He put all his eggs in that basket. But you and I, that's not who we are. That's all I got for you today. Did you like it? It's sort of cool, right? To take these nursery rhymes and go on this journey together and to think of all of what's in there. Now, I would not tell kids this story this way. This is really for adults. I know what I'm listening. Let's let's as let the kids have fun with Humpty Dumpty falling and breaking and understanding that, you know, that life can be kind of funny and um that we can be broken, but we can be put back together again. But I wouldn't go too deep. This was a really deep one. For science, for soul and for success. Please subscribe to the sweet spot and share with your friends. Tomorrow, sweet spotters. Oh boy, tomorrow is Finish Strong Friday. And who knows what nursery rhyme, what adult rhyme we're going to rock with tomorrow. Be blessed, and I'll see you soon!