Welcome And Week Finale

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Man, oh man, we are here on Sunday. Can you believe it? We did the entire week, sweet spotter. You and me together, we rode this week together. We were playing ball in the game of life. And yes, we're in the final quarter of this week. We're on episode 77 of It Takes What It Takes, a book by Trevor Moad that we've been unpacking here in The Sweet Spot. For those of you who have never listened to The Sweet Spot, welcome. Glad to have you. Come on in, grab a chair. We're gonna rock and roll today. And for my sweet spotters, my sweet builders, welcome home, welcome home. So I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm a born certified psychiatrist. I work in high performance, but as many of you know, I'm your teammate. I'm your teammate here in the game of life. Yes, it's Slowdown Sunday, and this is the last episode of the week, and the last episode of our It Takes What It Takes series. Yes, I hope you've been having fun. I've been getting wonderful, incredible feedback from you, many of you, and I gotta tell you, it warms my heart to know that this book, written by Trevor Moad, who unfortunately left us to be with the Lord at age 48. But what an amazing human being, what a powerful brain trainer, mental performance specialist, what a guru. And this book, it takes what it takes, is a very fast read, it's a great read. It's it's the kind of phrase that many of the elite performers I work with, some of them are playwrights, you know who you are. Some of them are basketball, football, hockey, uh, some of them even play tennis and golf, and they are single, single-oriented sports that they feel like there's nobody else there for them. And you know what they tell themselves, you know what each and everyone has in them? What it takes. Yeah. So when you get up in the morning, sweet spotter, and then you don't feel like it, you just say it takes what it takes. And when they ask you, what do you do? How do you do no no, you always respond, whatever it takes. So before we go anywhere today, I want to do something, and I want to do it with you. Let's step outside for a moment in our minds. Or if you can go to your window, if you have your headphones on, or you're listening, and you can walk to the window, and I want you to look up even for 30 seconds. If you can't, let's visualize it. The sky is doing something right now. The light is at a particular angle, the clouds are moving at their own pace, something out there in the universe is happening that has nothing to do with your inbox or my inbox, has nothing to do with our schedule or our week or anything you left unfinished on Friday. That's where I want to start today. As you know, on Sunday in the sweet spot, we always get into some astrophysics, not that we're astrophysicists, but we love to learn from the universe, and this is the day that we've chosen to look up into the sky, learn from the stars, and allow the universe to speak to us. We've covered a lot of ground this week, my friend. And before we close this series, I want to bring it all back together for you. Because I read the book so that you don't have to. You can if you want to, but you don't have to. I read it for you. So I want to bring it all back together because Moad, the author, he had seven great ideas in this book, and none of them are isolated, they form a system, and if you understand it as a system, you can run the system. Those of you who work with me know I love that line. Run the system. And on Sunday here, slow down Sunday, with some quiet around you. Hopefully, this is exactly the right time to see the whole picture from this book. So here's a recap. Seven things in this week that we learned. One, we learned to audit our words immediately. We never say anything about ourselves, we don't want it to be true. Language, we learned, shapes neurological reality, especially when we're under pressure, so we don't talk down to ourselves or talk negatively about ourselves. Number two, stop chasing a feeling before you perform. You don't need to feel great to execute. Feelings follow your behaviors, not the other way around. You don't need to feel it to do it. You do it, and then you feel it. Sometimes doing it, taking the first step is the most important thing you can do to get the feeling you're looking for. Number three, cut the negativity diet. This is one of the most powerful things I've read in this book. Not just to add all these positive affirmations, because a lot of them don't work. They last until something doesn't work, right? You can say, Yeah, I'm gonna hit 15 points, I'm gonna hit 15 points, and when you don't, all of a sudden you're deflated. So, yeah, it's not, it's Moad said that you gotta stop adding more negative stuff. More than putting positive stuff in, stop adding more negativity. He himself, this author, was broken down. He was broken by constant exposure to negative media and toxic environments. He talks about that in the book. How the media and the toxicity of his environment was just bringing him down. And he said, what you consume mentally becomes your performance environment. And for those of you who are athletes and artists and writers, and those of you who are in business, just think about that. What you consume mentally, the author said, becomes your performance environment. So be super careful. So that was number one audit your words. Number two, stop chasing a feeling before you perform, perform, and the feeling comes. And number three, cut the negativity diet, and then here we are at number four. Use the law of substitution. You can't just stop a bad behavior, you have to substitute it. One less destructive habit opens the door for one better action to take its place. Number five, focus only on what the very next action is. Remember, the past is irrevocable. You can't change the past, so stop replaying it, stop living in it. Ask only what is the next right thing to do. That single shift is where performance is won or lost. The best players, clutch players, they ask what's next. You missed the shot, you blew it. Don't wallow in what happened. Don't worry about what people think. Ask yourself, what's next? What I do next. Okay, it happened. So what? What's next? What's the next thing I can do? Focus only on the very next action. Number six, behave like the version of yourself you want to become. Behave like future you. Winners behave like winners before the results are in. They don't need the results to tell them that they're a winner. Let that land. Build your routine around elite behaviors now. Hold your head up, square your shoulders, take a breath. Do it. I'm telling you. This will let your prefrontal cortex know what time it is. Okay? Build your routine around elite behaviors now, regardless of where your confidence is today. And number seven, the final one, make excellence non-negotiable. Make excellence non-negotiable. Stop debating whether to take the hard action. Don't negotiate with yourself. Remember, we talked about Kobe when it's raining outside and something says maybe I shouldn't uh go out, you know, there's like a thunderstorm, there's a snowstorm, you know what he tells himself? I don't negotiate with me. Make excellence non-negotiable. Stop debating whether to take the hard action. The best performers make fewer decisions because they've already committed to the process. There's nothing to decide. You know why? It takes what it takes. Remove the negotiation entirely. Don't negotiate with you. I speak to myself. So that's the week in seven ideas, one framework, and a man who built it, Trevor Moad. He closes the book, he doesn't close it with a battle cry, but with something really quiet, something that sounds a lot like Slowdown Sunday. Here's what he wrote. But it's what's next that matters, not what was. What's next is the only thing you can still influence. What's next is the only thing, sweet spotter, that you can influence. And then this, perhaps the most grounded line in the entire book that I want you to grasp. We've we've we've said this line already, but I want to repeat it for you. When something occurs and it doesn't work out, and you're really wondering what to do, here's what he says. What happened, happened. Okay, fine. What happens next has nothing to do with that. You missed the shot? Okay, it happened. What happens next has nothing to do with it. You don't be afraid to take another shot. You don't be afraid to try again. What happened happened. It's in the past. Where it belongs. What happens next has nothing to do with what happened before. You get to make a decision. That is Sunday in a sentence. Release the week, my friend. Get still and then ask yourself, what's next? You've been listening to the sweet spot. We've been unpacking. It takes what it takes. You're in slowdown Sunday. You're in the seven breath reset that Moad gave us with what I just went over with you. So today on Slowdown Sunday, here's the thing: go somewhere quiet outside if you can, or go by the window if you can't, or find a place where you can be still and take seven slow breaths. Four counts in and six counts out. I want you when you breathe in for four, breathe out for six or seven. Because when you have a longer exhale, your body relaxes. Don't rush them. Don't rush them. Don't rush them. And do what's right. Relax. Slow down. Let go. Learn from the universe. It rains, the sun shines, and the universe teaches us something that we need to learn here on Slow Down Sunday. The sun doesn't get twisted because of a sunset. It doesn't mourn the fact that it's not going to shine here today. The rain comes and it goes. The universe is not complaining about anything, it understands that things are temporary, and that's sometimes bad news, and sometimes the good news. Yeah. And you know, the author adds this beautiful quote that I want to share with you. He said that the best day of your life, quoting his dad, he was quoting his dad on this, and dads are so special. I miss mine so much. Oh, I miss you, Hamel Sweet. Anyway, he quotes his dad. Um, the best day of your life, the author writes, is the one in which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses, no one to lean on, no one to rely on or to blame. The gift is yours. It's an amazing journey, and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. Think about that on Slowdown Sunday, with the sky above you, with the week behind you, with the knowledge that two trillion galaxies have been doing their work through every difficulty that you've ever faced. That the sun will still shine, that the moon light will be shining tonight, that the ocean waves will crash and go back in. You and I are so small in this universe, and that's not a problem that we're such tiny specks. That's not a problem, it's actually a relief. It's a relief that you can look out the window and you don't have to be the one to raise the sun in the morning. You don't have to set it, you don't have to determine the seasons. The universe carries what you cannot. The universe gets it done. Thank God. That we don't have all those responsibilities, too. We don't have to feed the birds and the squirrels. Hey, you know, one time I bought this bird feeder and I had no idea how much work it is to actually own a bird feeder because it was cool in the beginning because I put the seeds in and the birds all came, and it was cool. I'm like, wow, look at those birds, they're so amazing. This is so nice. Until I realized that the seeds were gone in like half an hour, and the birds were uh standing around, like flying around, like what's next? And then the squirrels were coming, and they were eating the seeds and competing with the birds, and then everybody was kind of expecting me to do this every single day, and that's when I got present to the fact that whoa, God is amazing. I don't know, this universe is amazing that so much gets done because guess who's not feeding the birds every day? Ah, love and blessings. What a relief that the universe carries what we cannot. That you're my job, our job is to carry what we can. Yeah, to carry what we can, to slow down and recognize that it's gonna be okay, that everything is gonna be okay, that the stars still twinkle, twinkle at night, that the stun, the sun still shines. Yeah, and all we have to do is carry what we have to carry, to chop wood and carry water, if that's all we have, and to show up on Monday, show up tomorrow with the next right behavior already decided. You see, it takes what it takes. God bless you. Thank you so much for this week. I really enjoyed unpacking this book with you, and I'll see you for Making Moves Monday tomorrow. Be blessed, and be sure to share the sweet spot and subscribe.