Take Action Tuesday Mindset

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Greetings and welcome. Welcome back. Welcome back, sweet spotters. You are listening to the Sweet Spot. It is Take Action Tuesday today, and I'm your host, I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm a board certified psychiatrist at Working Sports, Psychiatry, and Mental Performance. The tagline for what we do here at the Sweet Spot is science, soul, and success. Yes, indeed, it is Take Action Tuesday, and here's what Take Action Tuesday is really about. It's not really about motivation or feeling being ready and all of that, it's about action, the decision to move. Even when the conditions aren't perfect, even when you're tired, even when the last week that you've been grinding through didn't go the way you've planned. Even if life just hasn't worked out for you exactly the way you wanted it, this is still Take Action Tuesday, and it's for you. Yesterday, sweet spotters, yesterday on Making Moves Monday, we talked about neutral thinking. Remember? Getting to a place of clarity so that your next move is grounded and real. Today, today we're gonna build on that because here's what I've learned in years of working with elite performers. Most people know what action to take, they know the call they need to make, the conversation they need to have, the work that needs to get done. They know it, oh absolutely they do. The thing that stops them a lot of times isn't knowledge, right? It's in it's it and it isn't even strategy, it's it's in what they're saying, especially to themselves. So today, today we go into two connected con well two connected concepts from this book we've been unpacking this week called It Takes What It Takes by the author author Trevor Moad. It takes what it takes. And the two concepts that we're gonna talk about today on Take Action Tuesday are these. The first is the verbal governor. The verbal governor, and the second is what Moad calls the non-negotiable price of greatness. Just to be clear, we're gonna unpack two topics within this short time we have together. We're gonna look at the verbal governor from this book, It Takes What It Takes, and then we're gonna look at the non-negotiable price of greatness. Because these two ideas, in my view, they absolutely belong together. And by the end of today's episode, sweet spotter, you'll understand exactly why I put both of these together and why the author emphasized them both. You ready? Let's unpack concept one. The verbal governor. Moad, the author, had a stated mission. He said it directly in the book. He wrote, My goal, my aim, and my dream was this. What if we could get people to just stop saying stupid things out loud? That's right. That's exactly what he said. I'm quoting him. My goal, my aim, my dream was this. What if we could get people to just stop saying stupid things out loud? That's it. That was the whole verbal governor concept in one sentence that I just gave you. I read the book, so you don't have to worry about it. I'm telling you what it said. Stop saying the thing that costs you out loud. Now, in some of the locker rooms that I've been in and some of the scenarios that I've been in, they uh don't just say stop saying stupid things, they use much more expletives um explicative language that um I can't say here. But safe to say, stop saying stupid stuff out loud. And that's not as easy as it sounds. It really isn't. Because what the author found is that the human mind absorbs negativity, according to him, seven times more easily than it absorbs positivity. Seven times. That's not a metaphor, that's the baseline asymmetric or asymmetry of the brain, of how the brain works every single day, that it absorbs more negative than it does positive. And I think that makes sense. I think intuitively all of us could agree that that kind of makes sense. But then he found something else that kind of stopped him cold. That when you say a negative thought out loud, when it comes out of your mouth, it becomes ten times more powerful than when you just think it. So that's let's do that math. So that's seven times the absorption and ten times worse when you see it. So do that math. Negativity is already seven times more potent than positivity in the brain. And you you can agree with me on that. Somebody, you could be wearing the flyest clothes in the world. You could be looking a sharp, uh, as they say, casket sharp, right? Been hand around these substances too much, and that's what my friend Marcus tells me, you know, you look at casket sharp today. Um, but then somebody tells you something negative. Even if you have 15 positive compliments and they find one thing wrong, doesn't the brain stick on that? I know that you kind of agree with me on that, right? Yeah, so negativity is already seven times more potent than positivity in the brain. You say it out loud and you multiply it by 10, according to Moad, the author. And he wrote it this way: the human mind absorbs negativity seven times more easily than it absorbs positivity. Thinking about my struggles is nowhere near as powerful as verbalizing them. When it comes out of my mouth, it affects me tenfold. I'm quoting him. That's 40 or 70 times more powerful than positivity, sweet spotter. That is what you're doing to yourself when you say the wrong thing out loud on a Tuesday morning before you have actions to take. He called it a subconscious plant. Every time you verbalize a fear, a doubt, a limitation, you're planting something. And we all know that plants grow. They don't stay where you put them, they take root and they grow. So we really have to be careful about what we plant and what we say. So this idea of the verbal governor having some kind of a governance over what we say, what we plant into our minds in the universe, extremely important point in the book. So the author Moad tells a story of Bill Buckner. Most people remember Buckner as the first baseman who had that tremendous error in a game six of a World Series. I think it was 1986, the World Series, where he let the ball roll through his legs and it cost the Boston Red Sox the championship. According to the author, what most people don't know is this that years before this event happened, Buckner, that first baseman, had given an interview. And in that interview, he said that his greatest nightmare would be what? To let the game-winning run score on a ground ball through his legs in the World Series. He literally said that out loud. And lo and behold, it occurs. Now the author was very careful to say that he is not implying that it that because he said it, it literally happened. But what he said in the book was that it increased the probability by 40 to 70 times that something would happen because this baseman was going around saying this thing. Or maybe the c in this case the cost of not having a verbal governor. So the brain listens, the brain hears what the mouth says, and it files it. And more than that, it builds an identity around repetition. The author writes this when we say something over and over again, we've created a part of an identity. Absolutely. So, sweet spotter, here's the message. The brain is always listening, the universe is listening. So for take action Tuesday, we've got to keep our mouths clean. Not perfect, not artificially positive, just clean. So you don't have to pretend that things are great. I'm not asking you to go around just saying all this positive stuff that has very little meaning. You just have to stop saying the thing that makes them worse. Let your verbal governor stop you from saying things out there that are going to hurt you. As you also put it, don't say stupid stuff. Okay? Stop saying stupid stuff. Right. There's a quote from the book that I keep coming back to that I want to share with you. It's very simple, it's very direct, and there's no way to misunderstand it. Literally, this is the quote. You can do what you feel, or you can do what you choose. You can do what you feel, or you can do what you choose. You see, the verbal governor is the right choice every time. Do you have a verbal governor? Is your verbal governor working? Are you letting things slip through that are negative about what you're doing or trying to accomplish? Those are questions that you want to tackle on Take Action Tuesday before you take the action. So remember I told you, I told you that there were two concepts. One was the verbal governor, right? And the other one is the non-negotiable price. The non-negotiable price of being great at what you do. And you're connected. Moad, the author, says that greatness has a price. And the price is non-negotiable. You don't get to renegotiate it. You do not get a discount. And you do not get an easier version of the same outcome. He wrote it this way: winners win only when they behave like people who win. Now it's very important that you let that land. Winners win only when they what? They behave like people who win. I said it twice. Because it's important to understand that you are a winner. We want to be winners. But to be winners, winners behave like winners. Not just when they feel like it, not just when the conditions favor them, not just when like uh not like not just when motivation is high, they're consistently behaving like a winner. It doesn't matter whether you won the game or lost the game, it doesn't matter what's going on, it's an identity. The behavior is the identity. The behavior, I'm gonna repeat it. The behavior, how you behave, how I behave. That's the identity. We want to walk in this behavior so that it's part of our identity. The action is the evidence of your winning behavior, your winning identity. It's the action. Today is take action Tuesday. I'm saying it's not in what you say, it's in what you do. So this is the non-negotiable price of greatness. I've said this before uh here on the sweet spot. Kobe Bryant said it this way: I never negotiate with myself. And that's the price. It's non-negotiable. You don't get to renegotiate, you don't get a discount, and you don't get an easier version of the same outcome. You've got to behave and act like a winner every single time. That is non-negotiable. And here's where the verbal governor and the non-negotiable price that we're talking about are the same thing, just coming from two different directions. I'm gonna show you how these two things, your verbal governor and this non-negotiable price that's in you that you have to pay, are connected. The verbal governor says this stop the language, stop the words that are undermining the actions that you have to take before you even start. Stop with the negativity, don't say the stupid, you know what. S T-U-F-F. Don't say the stupid stuff out loud. The stuff that's going to undermine your action today. The non-negotiable price, part two of this. Action has to happen regardless of how you feel. Is it raining? Don't negotiate with yourself. You're getting outside. Okay? So the verbal governor is going to stop the negative language, and the non-negotiable price says that you're gonna take action regardless of how you feel. It's not up to whether or not you feel motivated this morning or this afternoon, or if you're feeling like it, you're going to do it. That's non-negotiable. That's what makes you great. Together, when you put the verbal governor and the non-negotiable price together, they produce wow, one of the most powerful operating identities you could have. Yeah. You can do what you feel, or you can do what you choose. That's the quote that I want you to think about. The feeling might not be there, beloved. The words coming out of your mouth might actually be working against you some days without you even knowing it. But you know what cannot change? What's non-negotiable? That behavior, that action that is always in your control. And the author, Moad, talks about um Russell Wilson, who he worked with, right? The quarterback. And he said that Wilson was very careful about the language that he used. And in the book, he put it this way: Russell Wilson doesn't speak in ifs when it comes to his performance. He doesn't use if. He speaks in I. I will do this. Not if I do this, I will do this, I will get this done. Because he knows the impact of his own language on him and on others. You see, when he uses if, it implies that there might be a choice. But he knows there are no choices for leaders in the big moments. If gives your brain a way out. I is about making the commitment. It takes what it takes. If I do this, gives your brain a way out. Or I am doing this is your commitment. That shift from if to I is the verbal governor speaking to your prefrontal cortex, your brain's CEO, telling the amygdala, the brain's threat detector, to calm down today, okay? So that I could take appropriate action. And it doesn't matter what's happening outside, it doesn't matter what forces are against me, it doesn't matter what circumstances are saying, it doesn't matter what people think, I am doing this. That's who you are today. That's who you are today, and this is available to you right now, and it's available every day, not just on Take Action Tuesday, before you walk into any action you have to take. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And the last thing I'm going to leave you with is this this quote. Alright, Moab put it this way: no matter what situation you find yourself in, there's almost always a behavior you can easily identify that if you eliminate it, it will set you on a better path. But the reverse is also true. There's almost always a behavior that if you easily identify it and you take it, it will move you forward if you take the action. Today, set a timer for 20 minutes. No phone, no multitasking, just set a time for 20 minutes. And I want you to identify one thing that you need to do, and this 20 minutes, non-negotiable, you're gonna do something within this 20 minutes to make it move forward. Today is Take Action Tuesday. You're listening to the Sweet Spot. It's about science, it's about soul, and it's about success. If this moved you today, please share it with someone who could benefit from the message. And if you haven't subscribed, take action today on Tuesday, and join the Sweet Spot family. I'll see you tomorrow, sweet spotter. I'll see you tomorrow for wow, win it all Wednesday. We've already made the move for Monday and we took action today, so of course tomorrow is about winning. It's about winning all Wednesday tomorrow, sweet spotter. I will see you then. Take care, Dr. Sweet.