Finish Strong Friday Welcome

Little Bo Peep Reframed

What A Good Shepherd Does

Wu Wei And Stepping Back

Your Brain Integrates In The Pause

Ancient Wisdom On Endurance And Rest

Letting Go Versus Avoidance

A Friday Practice To Release

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Wow, you did it. You did it. You stuck with me all the way through to finish Strong Friday here on the Sweet Spot. Holy cow, you're banging it out with me. And this has been a heck of a week, right? We've been looking at these nursery rhymes, converting them into adult rhymes, and grasping all the wisdom for us so that we can be the best versions of ourselves. Welcome. Welcome to the Sweet Spot. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet, I'm your host. I'm a board certified psychiatrist. I work in performance circles. More than that, I'm your teammate here in the game, in the game of life. Good, happy Friday to you. I hope it is well with you and your family. I hope it is well with your soul today. I'm glad you made it all the way here to the end of the week. And I want to start right in with a nursery rhyme. Just the first verse. It's almost uh the uh most famous of all nursery rhymes. It's one of the top ones, I'm sure. Uh Little Bo Peep, remember that one? Okay, let's let's dive in. Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep and doesn't know where to find them. Leave them alone, and they'll come home wagging their tails behind them. Alright now, most people hear that rhyme and smile for a moment and then move on. But if you slow down and you listen closely, sweet spotter, there's a line in there that almost nobody stops to defend. This whole idea of leave them alone and they'll come home. At first, hearing that it sounds like terrible advice, right? It sounds like you're missing the boat here. If something's important and it's missing, you don't just leave it alone. You search for it, you work harder, you chase it down until it's fixed, until you get it right. Yeah, for a long time I heard this rhyme exactly the same way. But you know, if you really listen to it, you can hear something else too. Especially at the end of a week, a week like this one, where so many of us are trying to figure out what it means to finish strong, right? Yeah, because the way we usually read that line or hear it assumes something about little Bo Peep. Something that may not be actually true. We assume, right, that leaving the sheep alone means giving up. But a seasoned shepherd would probably tell us something different. Yeah, they'll say that when sheep scatter, panicking is not the answer. Panicking doesn't gather gather them back. You see, if the shepherd runs across the field, yelling and screaming and grabbing and chasing, the flock will spread out even further. And every animal, each animal will bolt in a different direction. What gathers the flock from shepherding is steadiness. You see, a good shepherd holds the ground, she holds her ground. A good shepherd, she stays calm. A good shepherd will trust the relationship she has built with the flock over time, and the sheep know the sound of her voice, they know the path back. They return the sheep. The sheep return because she is a guiding, calming force, and the work that she had done as their guide stays with them even after they've wandered away. So leaving them alone isn't the absence of care here, it's the quiet confidence that the shepherd has that the sheep will come home. That's the idea in Dawa's philosophy that captures something like this, right? The idea of Wu Wei that we talked about, which is often translated as effortless action in Eastern philosophy, this Wu Wei philosophy is about effortless action, sort of a do nothing and accomplish everything approach. Now it doesn't mean literally doing nothing, it means acting in a way that fits the nature of things instead of forcing yourself against them. Lao Tzu wrote about this in the Tao Te Ching. He said, Do your work and then step back. That stepping back isn't failure, it's often the moment when the work is finally allowed to settle. You see, a shepherd who has spent the whole week tending the flock understands this instinctively: that there comes a moment when more pushing scatters your sheep, scatters the feed instead of gathering it. And if you think about your own week, you may recognize that moment as well. Monday begins with energy, doesn't it? Tuesday carries the momentum forward. By Wednesday, we're still moving, but the effort has been steady for a few days now. By Thursday afternoon, things start to get a little heavy, and by Friday, if you're honest, some of the work you've been doing may feel like motion, but not much progress. You're still pushing, but the return of that effort is starting to shrink. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The default, you know, the research is the the the science speaks to this. Researchers talk about a system in the brain called the DMN. We've talked about it here before, the default mode network. Remember, for a long time, scientists believed that this network represented the brain at rest. But is it is it really at rest? No. When someone stopped concentrating on a task, this network actually lit up on brain scans, and the assumption was that the brain had gone idle. Well, what they found as they looked more closely was very surprising. The brain wasn't resting, it was integrating. During moments when you stop forcing your attention, the brain begins connecting what you've experienced during the day, it organizes your memories, it starts building patterns, and it starts making meaning out of all the scattered information you've been gathering all day. And this default mode network is sort of like a daydreaming kind of thing that puts it all together for us. So some of the most important cognitive work in your and my brain happens after we read after we release the grip. Sleep is kind of like that way. We haven't done sleep here yet. We'll we'll definitely get to that. But sleep is not passive. Your and my brain is probably even more active while we're sleeping and resting, getting more done. That's why sometimes the answer will appear after you step away from the task in the shower, on a walk, on the drive home, when you're doing something completely separate from the task you were doing. The solution will just arrive when you're no longer pushing so hard. I told you my mom tells me all the time when she I'll sleep on it, and the woman sleeps, and the next day she has the most brilliant solutions, don't you, mom? You always do. Hopefully, you're listening. Yeah, your brain needed the release. Which means the instinct behind that old nursery rhyme, Little Bo Peep, might not be as naive and simple as it sounds. You see, leaving the sheep alone can create the conditions where things actually come together. And long before neuroscience mapped these patterns, the ancient wisdom describes something very similar about human strength. Remember Isaiah chapter 40 in the ancient wisdom? The passage that almost every Christian knows those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint. Most of us see that as like a ladder of effort. Soaring sounds like the strongest image you can see, right? Running comes next and walking, you know, there's a lot going on there. But another way to hear that phrase is that an eagle soaring isn't really straining, it's arriving the current of the air that lifts it higher. And running, running requires effort but can't last forever. Walking is the movement that carries someone across the longest distance. So that's why it says they will walk and not faint. Walking without collapsing, staying steady over time. Yeah, that's the quiet endurance that maybe the deeper strength Isaiah in the ancient wisdom was describing. And if you keep reading that ancient wisdom, the shepherd image will appear again and again. In Psalm 23, another classic one in the ancient wisdom, it literally has shepherd language. He makes me to lie down in the green pastures, he leads me beside still waters, he restores my soul. The shepherd doesn't simply suggest rest here. The shepherd is insisting on resting because the sheep that never lie down eventually break down. So that restoration isn't separate from the journey. It's part of what makes the journey possible. So finishing strong on a Friday often lives right in this kind of weird tension. In our imagination, finishing strong looks so dramatic, right? One final surge, one final push crossing the finish line, clearing every single loose end before the sun goes down. Okay, alright, alright, fair. Sometimes that happens. But more often, finishing strong looks a lot quieter than that. It looks like a shepherd scanning the field. A few sheep still need gathering. Maybe there's one more message to be sent. Another conversation needs to be finished. Maybe one more decision before the day closes. And then there are other things still out there in the grass, things that would not come home faster even if you chased them tonight. Here's the honest edge of this teaching from Little Bo Peep, because it's easy to misunderstand, sweet spotter. Leaving them alone, like Little Bo Peep did, only works when the work has truly been done. If the shepherd neglected the flop all week, stepping back now isn't wisdom. That's just pure avoidance. The difference is something you usually know inside of yourself. You've had to do the work with those sheep so that you could leave them alone for that little period, knowing that it's okay and it'll come together. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. In the ancient wisdom in Galatians, Paul writes, Let us not grow weary in doing good. For at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. You see, the harvest follows the sowing. You have to do the work. The harvest follows the sowing, the tending, the patient work that came before it. That's the part that we often miss. Bo Peep, little Bo Peep can stand at the gate because she spent a week caring for that flock, and that flock knows who she is. So don't get it twisted. You got to do the work and have the integrity to be able to let go and trust. So the Friday question isn't simply whether you can let go of something. The real question here on Finish Strong Friday is whether you have done what you could do this week with integrity. The real question is whether you have done what you could do this week with the time and strength that you were given. And if the honest answer is yes, sweet spotter, then releasing with peace isn't giving up its completion. Before this day closes, I want to offer you a small practice. It takes only a few minutes. First, pause and scan your field. Think back over the week and notice what wandered away. A task left unfinished. A conversation delayed or put off. A decision that's still waiting for you to make it happen. And it's sitting there in the background. You know what I'm talking about. Just notice what's wandering away, what sheep are scattered. And then sort them. One or two of those things may need a final act today. Maybe you need to send a message. Maybe you do make the call. Maybe it's a small piece of work that brings it home. If you can do that, do it. Be the shepherd who goes back for the one sheep that needs guiding, right? Then look again at what remains. Some of those things may not need to be forced tonight. Pushing harder now might scatter the field rather than gather it. And you've got to know that. Those are the sheep you leave alone. Not because you stop caring, because the work of the week has already prepared the path for them to return. Yeah. Finally, release the field without worry. Without a word. Maybe it's your prayer. Maybe it's a deep breath. Maybe it's simply naming the truth to yourself. I've done what I could this week. It is what it is. I'll put the rest in God's hands. I'll release the rest with trust. There's a season for everything under the sun, a time for labor, a time to gather, and a time for the field to grow quiet. So before Friday turns into night time, take one more look across your field, good shepherd. Bring in what still needs bringing in today. Then stand at the gate and let the rest come home in its own time. Yeah, little bo peep. Little Bo Peep. This is the sweet spot. You've been listening to Finish Strong Friday. Leave them alone, they'll come home. For science, for soul, and for success. I'll see you tomorrow.