Welcome And Weeklong Recap

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Love and blessings, love and blessings, love and blessings. Welcome back to the sweet spot, everyone. Welcome back and happy Sunday to you. I'm so proud of you. You did it, you made it to the end of our week-long journey here on the Sweet Spot, where we've been unpacking and uncovering adult rhymes. We've been taking nursery rhymes and we've been converting them into adult rhymes. If you listened to yesterday, you actually heard me sing a little bit as we ended yesterday's episode. I was in the zone. And if you came back, wow, either you're a glutton for punishment or you're like my best friends. Either way, thank you for coming back. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet, and uh yeah, I'm a board-certified psychiatrist. I work in high performance, and uh this podcast is about me and you just finding a way to connect around science, soul, and success and to be teammates. Really, just teammates in the game of life. So, sweet spotter, here we are. It's Slowdown Sunday, and uh yeah, we uh would like to recap a little bit. We started this entire week off with various nursery wines. You've heard them all. Uh we've heard some good ones. You've had Jack Bee Nimble. Remember that? We started on Monday with that. We ended up with Little Bo Peep. Oh, It'sy Bitsy Spider. This has been so much fun here. We were kids again, and today, before anything else, I want to tea I want you to take one breath. Just take one breath. It's slow down Sunday. So we're gonna slow it down, and we're gonna take one breath in through the nose, and then hold it for a second or two, and then slowly through the mouth, let it go in through the nose slowly. I'll wait for you, no problem, and then out through the mouth, even slower. For some of us, this is the only deep breath we're gonna take for the day. Just think about that. And every time you do this, sweet spotter, every time you take a deep breath, you're helping your body. You're not just only bringing rich oxygenated blood to all parts of your body and helping your red blood cells carry these uh blood, uh your hemoglobin just sort of take this blood and oxygen to your brain and to your key organs. You are also suggesting to your nervous system that things are gonna be alright. Your parasympathetic nervous system is gonna be like, uh yeah, man, she's doing alright. Everything's okay. He's doing okay. So good. Now, now that we've oriented ourselves and we've had our deep breath here on Slow Down Sunday, I want to start the journey with yet another nursery rhyme. Yesterday we did roll, roll, roll your boat gently down the stream. Remember that one? And uh yeah, there's another one. Maybe this is even older than that. It's one of the first that we ever learn. And I want to ask you to hear it today. I promise you I'm not singing it today. Alright, I want you to hear it as I recite it, as if you're hearing it for the very first time. Twinkle, twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky. Four lines written in eighteen oh six by a young English poet, Jane Taylor. Thank you, Jane. And in these four lines, Jane captured something that astrophysicists, theologians, philosophers, and everyday wide-eyed children who anyone who's ever looked up at the night sky have they've been wondering and reaching for ever since. Wonder. The whole idea of being in awe. Not looking for the answer, but just looking up in wonder. How I wonder what you are. Not I know what you are, or I've looked, I've looked, I'm gonna look this up on Google, or uh yeah, or that I've I've seen it and I'm moving on. No, just standing there and wondering. That posture of genuine, open, unhurried wondering is what slowdown Sunday is built on. And every slowdown Sunday, if you've been a part of the sweet spot, you know this is not the first time we have dabbled in astrophysics. We reserve Sundays to learn from the universe because we have this great big galaxy, this universe, this multiverse that has so much in it to teach us. And yeah, today the stars themselves have something to teach us about how to live in it. And lucky for us that on a week where we're doing nursery rhymes or adult rhymes, we come across Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. How I wonder what you are! Up above the world, so high, like a diamond in the sky. Here's what Astrophysics tells us about that little star that Jane Taylor was twinkling at when she wrote this. When you and I look at a star in a night sky, remember we talked about this on the sweet spot. You're not seeing it as it is right now. You're seeing it as it was. The light left that star years, decades, sometimes millions of years ago. It has been traveling through darkness, the darkness of space, across distances so vast, they rarely can they can barely fit inside human language. We don't even have the language to describe how the distance this light has traveled. And it arrived at night to your and my eyes. That star has been trying to reach you for a very long time. And here's the part that gets me every time. The oxygen you just breathed and I just breathed, the carbon in our body, the iron in our blood, the calcium in your bones. All of it was forged inside of a dying star that exploded billions of years ago so that you and I could exist. You're not just looking at a star, sweet spotter. You're looking at your own origin. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, the ancient wisdom tells us. Who knows what the great creator weaved together? Carl Sagan, the astrophysicist, who spent his life making the universe feel personal, put it this way: we are made of star stuff. We are a way of the universe and for the universe to know itself. You are a way for the universe to know itself. Let that land. Fearfully and wonderfully made. You and I are not small potatoes in a big universe. We are the universe. Folded into a form that could look back up and wonder. Neil deGrasse Tyson, another physicist. He's a New York one. I think he's with the planetarium or something. Well, I did something down there. Big time guy, I love him. Yeah, he took it a step further. He says, Not only are we in the universe, the universe is in us. I don't know of any deeper spiritual feeling than what that brings upon me, he said. A deeper spiritual feeling from an astrophysicist. Because the science and the spirit, when you go far enough in either direction, arrive at the same place. Astonishment. Because you're listening to the sweet spot where we headed with this, the ancient wisdom. In the Psalms, the psalmist puts it this way. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, and the stars which you have set in place. What is mankind that you are mindful of them? What is mankind that you are mindful of them? The same wonder Twinkle twinkle. The same question How I wonder the same invitation to stop explaining and to simply stand in awe. Stand inside of the miracle that we are here at all. Twinkle twinkle little star. Yeah, that star gives us the scale, and Sunday, slow down, Sunday gives us the space to practice what I like to call the the five S's. And and folks that work with me, a lot of the athletes and performers I work with, they already know. Silence, stillness, solitude, surrender, and solace. Silence, not filling the space, stillness, not moving quickly through everything. Solitude, being alone with who you actually are, surrender, releasing what you were never meant to carry, and solace, receiving comfort from something larger than your circumstances. These are survival skills in my book. They're not soft ideas. Yeah, they're what the universe itself models, the silence between the galaxies, the stillness of deep space, the solitude of a star burning alone for billions of years. The surrender of matter becoming energy. The solace of light that keeps traveling even after the source has gone dark. Yeah, you know, it's kind of cool when you think about the universe, the galaxies, where we are on this planet. It brings you back to the ancient wisdom's sentence: In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength. The stars they don't work hard, they don't strive, they simply burn with everything they have, and then they rest. And in and in their rest, they scatter the very elements that make new worlds possible. That's what's going on. Your rest today is not something to just say it's not important. It's actual preparation. It's the quiet work that makes everything possible and comes after it. You must rest. You you your cell phone's designed to rest and be recharged. Everything has to be recharged and be reset. It's a principle in the universe. Yeah. So at some point today, if possible, this afternoon or tonight or whatever, go outside. Or stand near your window if you can and just look up. You don't need the telescope, you don't need to have all the constellations in front of you. You just need to look up and ask the question Jane Taylor asked in the 1800s. How I wonder what you are. Let the silence be something you receive rather than you just sort of grind through. Let the stillness be kind of a homecoming for you. Let the solitude remind you that the version of you that shows up when all the hoopla fades away is the most real version of you there is. Surrender what this week has cost you. Look, the universe has been recycling Stardust for 13.8 billion years. Trust me, it knows exactly how to take care of what's broken and make something shine from it. Let there be some solace in that truth. You are not small, you're not ancient, you're cosmic, you're a divine being having an earthly experience. You've been fearfully and wonderfully made. And you're known. Even though the universe is vast and it's huge and we're just one tiny speck in it, you're known. You're known by the one who set every one of us, every one of these stars in place. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? The ancient wisdom tells us. Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside of your father's care. And even the very hairs on your head are all numbered. The ancient wisdom. Wow, God. The creator, the mystery that we call God, who create who created actually four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone, and maybe even two trillion galaxies beyond it, I'm guessing, knows the number of hairs on your head. That is either the most extraordinary thing you've ever heard, or it sounds like total nonsense. Yeah, but let it land today that you're personally known. Why should you and I be here? Wow, it's amazing, it's powerful, it's extraordinary. And you know the thing about life, I've heard this once before. That you've gotta live it. And that even though you and I think everything is so urgent and so powerful and so meaningful, you come back out, and what do the stars do? Twinkle, twinkle. Yeah, that's all they say. You could have a big day, a bad day, a great day, a not so great day, and you come back out, and the stars go twinkle, twinkle. So I want to leave you with that. I want you to keep twinkling, alright? And you'll be a star today. Thank you for being a star all week with me as we took this incredible risky journey here to do some adult rhymes. It wasn't easy for us to take this topic, but we did it. And I'm glad we did. I learned a lot bringing this message to you and from your feedback as well. Alright, sweet spotters, this is the sweet spot. We are complete with the adult rhyme series. If this meant something to you, share the entire series with someone who might benefit from listening to it in their spare time. And if you haven't subscribed yet, it's easy. Just go up there and hit subscribe, become part of our community, and we'll keep on shining together for science, for soul, and for success. Much love.