Welcome To Self-Care Saturday

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hey, happy self-care Saturday. How are you doing? Welcome. Thank you for dropping into the Sweet Spot. For those of you who are coming back, so good to see you. And for the first time listener, welcome home. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet, I'm the host here on The Sweet Spot, where science, soul, and success come together so that we can have revelations, insights, and just a pathway to living the best life ever. So, sweet spotters, it's Selfcare Saturday, and we've been in a series, an incredible series here. A series that has been unpacking nursery rhymes of all things and converting them into adult rhymes. This is the adult rhyme series, and we find ourselves today in episode six of the seven episodes we've done or we're doing this week to unlock information, wisdom, insights, revisitings of little childhood moments that we've shared. So today we're going to start with a small correction. Something most of us have been getting wrong since childhood, and once you hear it, you won't unhear it. The nursery rhyme is not row, row, roll your boat. It's row row row your boat. Same word I know, but say them both out loud for a second and feel the difference. The first one is a task. The second one is a rhythm. The cadence, a practice you return to again and again. Row, row, row. Not once, not when you feel like it, not when the conditions are perfect. Row, row, row. Again and again and again. That repetition that I just did there, the idea of rowing and rowing and rowing, that repetition is the whole teaching for today. Because you see, self-care, real self-care, isn't a one-time event. It's not a spa day you schedule when you're already running and empty. It's a rhythm you build into the stroke of your life. Something you return to so consistently that it stops feeling like an interruption and starts feeling like the thing that makes everything else possible. That's what this episode is about. Let me take you through the whole rhyme line by line because every single line in this little ditty is carrying some weight. It's one of my favorites. Row, row, row your boat. Three things in this opening line that I want us not to rush past. First, row. It doesn't say drift. It doesn't say wait to be carried. It doesn't say watch other people rowing from the shore. Row. There's a bit of agency here. There's intention here. Self-care is not passive, sweet spotter. It is something you actively do. Consistently, deliberately. Even when the water is calm and you feel like you don't need it, you have to do it. The second part is your boat. Row, row, row your boat. Now, not somebody else's boat. Not the boat everybody expects you to be in either. And not the boat that looks the most impressive from the shore. It says your boat. The one that actually fits you, the one built for the life you're actually living. Your boat. So many problems in our lives come up. When we're in somebody else's boat, we wish we had another boat. You get it. You get it. And here's where the neuroscience enters. You know, we always do neuroscience here on the sweet spot. Yeah, we always do. Yeah, you see, self-care, when people engage in self-care, genuine self-care, the brain responds by rewarding them with dopamine, the reward chemical. It gets activated. Yeah, and you feel good, and it helps your motivation. But when you start rowing somebody else's boat long enough, or if you're in the wrong boat and you stop or you stop rowing, your dopamine levels drop. You start feeling depleted, you start feeling like you're grinding, you start feeling burnt out, tired. So this triple repetition of row, row, row your boat is not accidental. Not at all. It's a reminder. We've got to engage consistently in the self-care. You know, in the actual rowing technique, the correct stroke ratio is one to two. One beat of effort in the drive phase for every two beats of effort. Well, in the recovery phase. So basically, let me repeat that. One beat of effort in the drive phase for every two beats of recovery and glide. So it's this sort of uh pull and recover and glide kind of thing. And elite rowers don't fight this ratio, they trust it. They let the boat run between strokes. The glide is not a waste of time. The glide is where the distance happens. That glide is your rest, that glide is your sleep, it is your stillness, it is your Sabbath, it is to be still and know that I'm God. The Psalm 46. So, yeah, the the idea here with this is to be still, and the stillness is actually in the stroke, the recovery is in the work. That's the part that's so interesting about roll, roll, roll your bowl. When you think of the technique of pulling and glide, and then it goes gently down the stream. Two words in this line deserve all our attention. Gently and down. Let's tackle the first one gently first. The rhyme doesn't say powerfully down the stream, it doesn't say grinding down the stream, it doesn't say urgently or efficiently or relentlessly down the stream. What does it say? Gently. Gently down the stream. And that word gently is doing something profound. As you know from the ancient wisdom, gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. Right? It appears alongside other fruit like love and joy and peace and patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. Think about those things. Isn't it wonderful if you could live with these things? Wouldn't you want to have this? Even if you're an athlete, don't you want to perform and have a place that you go to where you have joy and you have love and you have peace and self-control? These are all wonderful things to have. You know, most people read this gently down the stream and they miss that, and there's a fruit of spirit in that. Most people read that and and they think of gentleness as just quiet, soft. Maybe the least oppressive thing in the in the rhyme. Yeah. But you know, the Greek word protes, right, for this gentleness, it doesn't mean weakness, it means strength under control, bridal power, the kind of force that knows exactly just how much pressure to apply. And applies only that. You see, a gentle roar is not a weak roar. A gentle roar is an efficient one. He or she isn't wasting energy fighting the water, they're not white knuckling the ore. They're working with what is and not against it. It's what the ancient wisdom says, take my yoke upon you. Learn from me. I am gentle, I'm humble in heart. And you will find what? You will find rest for your soul. Do you know there was so much in this little row, roll, roll your boat gently down the stream stuff? It's amazing to me. Yeah, this is down the stream. Let's look at that. Down the stream. Very powerful, right? So roll, roll, roll your boat gently. We knock that out. Down the stream, not up the stream. Don't fight, don't swim upstream, don't fight it. Go with the current, not across it, not upstream, not against it, but down the stream. This concept is found even in Eastern philosophies and Taoism with the Wu Wei, remember? We talked about Wu-Wei before, this idea of effortless action. Action that moves with the nature of things. Rather than forcing what isn't natural, roll your boat down the stream. So much of our stress in life is because we are we've turned the boat around and we are paddling and grinding upstream. No, no, sweet spotter. The idea is to go with the current, to use Wu Wei, effortless action. Yeah, move with the nature of things rather than forcing what's not natural. Lao Tzu says, the supreme good is like water, which nourishes all things without trying to. It flows to low places, loathed by awe. In this, it is like the Tao. Water doesn't argue with the riverbank, it doesn't insist that the stream should run a different direction, it just moves with what is. You ever notice that about water? Bruce Lee, be like water. And in so doing, it gets where it's going with grace. That force could never produce. Be like water. Self-care is alignment with what you actually are. I just want you to let that breathe with yourself for a minute. When you're caring, and I'm caring for myself, we align with who we really are meant to be here on Self-Care Saturday. Not the version of yourself you perform for other people. That's a whole other thing. Right? This I'm not talking about the version of ourselves that we're trying to become next year or next month. I'm talking about the actual you, the current you, the one that's flowing with the current, the one that's rowing her boat, his boat, downstream, going with the current. Because when we override that going downstream, the nervous system gets fatigued. When we start overriding our hunger, overriding the body's signals, going upstream against what the body wants, you know, not going to sleep. I speak to myself, not going to sleep early enough. Right? You're ignoring the signals, and your sympathetic nervous system, the fight-flight-free system, stays activated, your cortisol stays elevated all because you're not rowing your boat down the stream. Does that make sense? You see, the body interprets you going upstream and fighting against the current in life as a sustained threat. And here on Self Care Saturday, we are telling you that real self-care is a parasympathetic nervous system practice. What do I mean? It means that you're literally telling your nervous system, the one that's the relaxed portion of it, that's what the parasympathetic is, that the danger is past. I'm going to reset myself now by taking a deep breath. I'm going to restore and refresh myself, and I'm going to start going with the traffic. I'm going to go with the current. I'm going to row my boat downstream today. And how am I going to do that? What am I going to be like when I do that? Well, here's the answer. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Four times that appears in this rhyme. I think it's the only thing it's like four times. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Four times, not one time, four times, merrily. So I'm gonna talk to you about why this is probably the toughest, hardest slime in this rhyme, and the most important one, probably. Because you can hear everything I've just said about rowing gently, about moving with the current, about trusting the rhythm, and still do all of it grim, hard, bitter, mad. You can take exquisite care of yourself with a kind of joyless spirit. You have no joy. Joyless compliance. You ever been in that situation where somebody's just doing it? Like you ask your kids to do the chore, and they just you can see they're just doing it, but no joy. And it feels more like maintenance than self-care. This merrily is the word that separates self-care as an obligation from self-care as a kind of almost defiance. Think about what the rhyme is asking. Row your boat on a stream that you didn't choose, in a direction that was established long before you arrived, inside a life that is, as we're about to hear, a dream. There's a mystery here, this thing called life. There's uncertainty in this thing we call life. There's an undeniable fact that you are not fully in control, neither am I. And the rhyme says, do it merrily. That's a kind of that's a kind of the uh a spiritual act of will, isn't it? Like it's it's not really yeah, it's like you have to choose the frame through which you're gonna experience this journey that you may or may not have chosen. It's kind of like when you hear that phrase, today is the day the Lord has made, let's rejoice and be glad in it. And you go, Sounds good. How'd I do that? Yeah. The Apostle Paul in the ancient wisdom wrote from jail, he wrote this, rejoice in the Lord always. I'll say it again. Rejoice. Always from prison? Not when circumstances warrant. You want me to just have this thing always going on? Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, four times. You see, Paul is not describing a feeling here in the ancient wisdom, and I think he's trying to hint something to us that this isn't this is a decision, this is a choice, this is a practice, this is a decision we make in advance about how we're gonna meet whatever comes to us in life, whatever we run into on the stream in the stream. Yeah, yeah, and the science bears this out that people who are positive, people who are able to like manifest this joy and get into this positive emotional state, literally broaden their cognitive resources. They they have they see more options, they they they build more connections, they recover faster from stress. This is true. This is what the science shows that joy is not a luxury on top of a good self-care routine, joy is a mechanism. So, this thing about merrily, merrily, merrily is not a decoration, sweet father. The merrily is the medicine. Tik Nyat Han, the great Buddhist teacher, says, the present moment is the only moment available to us, and it is the door to all moments. Merrily is how we have to walk through that door, sweet spotter. Not dragging our feet and holding our breath and sucking our teeth and complaining and sighing, you know. Yeah, I've been there, you know how it gets in life. But the real wisdom here is to be present, to be joyous, to be open, choosing to find the good in the moment you're actually in. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily cultivate the merriment, the joy. How is that for an attitude as we're in this boat rowing, hopefully in the right direction, with the right technique that allows a little recovery in between? Merrily is how you walk through the door. Merrily is the medicine. And we come to this line because life is but a dream. And this is the line that stops us, right? Because it sounds like it might be saying nothing matters, that life is an illusion, that you should float through it without attachment or without investment. But I want to offer you a different perspective. I want to give you three different perspectives. Like the Christian, in the in the in the contemplated Christian tradition, life is but a dream is compared to eternity. The apostle Paul in the ancient wisdom says, look, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. Since what is seen is temporary, and what is unseen is eternal. So if this life is a dream, temporary, passing, incomplete, then the things that feel most urgent and permanent right now deserve to be held more closely. Whatever pressure you're carrying this Saturday might be real, but it's not the whole story. There is always a larger context, an unseen dimension. And in that context, the exhaustion that made you feel like self-care was more of a luxury and you don't have any time for it, it becomes an important signal worth listening to. Nothing is permanent, including the problem that felt so overwhelming at 2 a.m. on Thursday, including the version of yourself that felt like it was failing, including the worries that you're dealing with right now, the dream quality of life. Life is but a dream. It's no reason to disengage, it's a reason to be present fully and be gentle with yourself as you experience it. Recognizing the impermanence that the only thing permanent is change, right? And you know, the third part of this is that dreams have their own logic, right? In a dream, you don't control everything when you're dreaming, the scene shifts, unexpected things appear, the rules change, and yet the dreamer who The dream, who insists that it should be different, who wakes themselves up in frustration, they miss it entirely. The wise dreamer moves through the dream with curiosity, wanting to know what's going on here, and with presence. Yeah, they let the story unfold. They are, in a really deep sense, in the stream rather than fighting it. And that's the final teaching here for self-care Saturday as we look at this little ditty. Row, row, row your boat. Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. Life is bigger than your plan for it. The stream goes where it goes. You didn't design the current, you didn't choose every circumstance, but you're you're in the boat, and the boat is yours, and the way you row it, the rhythm, the gentleness, the joy you choose, that belongs entirely to you. And the ancient wisdom puts it this way: As you are on this boat, be like the master teacher, the Christ who slept during the storm. Imagine that. You're on a boat and it's kind of choppy and you're sleeping. You because guess what? God's got you. Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart. Since as members of one body, you were called to peace and to be thankful. I want to leave you with that today on Self-Care Saturday. It's not about adding more to your week, it's about coming into alignment with the rhythm that's already designed into you. Your body has a one to two ratio, like the rowing technique already built in. One beat of effort, two beats of recovery. Your nervous system was designed with an off-switch. Your brain has a default mode network that does its best to integrate the work for you. Sleep is where you restore everything. Theologians call this break Sabbath. The rhyme that we just listened to is the little glide between the strokes. Are you rolling your bolt or are you rolling someone else's? Are you in the right bolt? Are you moving gently with the current of your actual life or are you fighting a version of life? Are you doing any of this merrily with something that at least leads towards joy, even on a really hard day? Because here's what I know from over 15 years of working with some of the highest performing human beings on the planet. The ones who last, the ones who sustain excellence over decades without breaking down, are not the ones who rest when they have nothing left. They're the ones who built a glide into their stroke. They're the ones who understood that taking care of themselves was not retreating from performance, it was the engine of it. It's it's truly rowing their boat, rowing your boat gently, with the stream, merrily, as many times as the week asks you to. And remember that the life you're rowing through, sweet spotter, this beautiful, uncertain, sometimes vexing, temporary, astonishing, unpredictable thing we call life, this mystery. Well, it needs a rower who shows up for it with full presence, full care, and ready to go where it takes us. And that's what I got for you today on self-care Saturday.

SPEAKER_00 26:15

Row row row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily. Merrily. Life is but a dream.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Alright, sweet spotters, we did it. I'll see you tomorrow for slow down Sunday. Y'all didn't know I could sing like that, did you?