On The Suite Spot, sports psychiatrist Dr. Derek H. Suite, MD brings together neuroscience, performance psychology, spiritual wisdom, and lessons from elite sport...practical tools for the people who can't afford to choke when the pressure rises.
Built for athletes, executives, military professionals, first responders, coaches, clinicians, and anyone carrying real weight, each episode sharpens focus, builds resilience, and helps you manage pressure, recover well, and sustain momentum.
This is where the conversation moves beyond motivation into the habits, mental skills, and deeper questions that shape performance across mind, body, and spirit.
For science, for soul, for success...this is The Suite Spot.
Today, Friday we will use one simple question to break the 3 a.m. spiral and separate real action from mental noise. When a problem is fixable we move, and when it is not we release control and redirect our energy toward the next right step.
SUITE SPOTS: • the Finish Strong Friday mindset for closing the week well • the quote that sorts every problem into two categories • fixable stress in business, relationships, and health habits • why chronic worry creates rumination loops instead of solutions • “Fix It, Don’t Just Feel It” as an action filter • unfixable realities like diagnosis, grief, and loss handled with gentleness • redirecting energy toward response, healing, and meaning • the dichotomy of control and power over the mind • action for what we can change • acceptance and redirection for what we cannot
Tomorrow is Self-Care Saturday. Join me there. Follow me! cost ya nothing! lol
Greetings and welcome. Welcome back to the sweet spot. It is Finish Strong Friday. Can you believe it? We have gotten to Friday, sweet spotters. Thank you so much for being here with me, for joining me here on the Sweet Spot. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm your host here on the Sweet Spot. I'm your partner, your teammate in the game of life. And you and I are in Finish Strong Friday here on the Sweet Spot. Yes, we're doing it, Sweet Builder. We're doing it. We are in a series. We find ourselves in a series of just searching the search. That's what we've called it. The search. We've been searching, searching phrases, searching quotes, and just having a good time searching these sayings that are just imparting such insight to us. So it's Finish Strong Friday. And before we close out this week, before we cross the finish line and step into the weekend, I need to put something down in front of you. Because some of us are carrying something into this Friday that we've been carrying all week. And I want to help us help you sit it down for a second. Set it down. Not because the problem isn't real, not because the situation isn't hard, but because the weight you're adding to it by worrying and ruminating and circling it and spiraling at night at 3 a.m. I speak to myself. That part, yeah, that part, that part isn't helping us solve anything. And today, sweet spotter, today we're gonna see exactly why that worry doesn't help us. Here's the phrase that we're gonna unpack today. Man, have you been enjoying these phrases we've been unpacking all week? They've just been amazing. They're so simple, but they just give us such insight. So here's today's phrase for Finish Strong Friday.
If you have a problem and you can fix it, why worry? And if you have a problem and you can't fix it, why worry? Let's breathe with that again. I'll do it one more time. If you have a problem and you can fix it, why worry? And if you have a problem and you can't fix it, why worry? At first, it sounds almost too simple. Like someone just handed us a fortune cookie, right? And and now we're just supposed to do one. Just like read it, it's kind of cute, you boil it up and put it in your pocket, and you never see it again. But I want you to stick with me. Because underneath this very simple saying, sweet spotter, is one of the most liberating frameworks your mind can operate from. It's amazing to me how simplicity is the answer. You know, in a way, there are only two kinds of problems: the ones you can do something about and the ones you can't. That's it. That's the whole list of problems. And worry, in either case, is not the solution on the side of you solving the equation. It never is.
Let's talk about the problems you can fix first. Maybe it's the business. The numbers aren't where they need where they need to be. The team dynamic. It's been off for weeks. The pitch that didn't land the way you needed it to. Something crashed, it didn't fit, it didn't it didn't make it, it failed. The strategy that needs to change one more time before the quarter closes. When are we gonna get this right? Maybe it's the relationship. It's just not working. You don't feel it anymore. There's just too much tension here. The constant arguing, the bickering, the conversation you've been avoiding, the boundary you haven't set yet, and you keep being in the same position. The apology you owe someone, and you refuse to give it because you're just a stubborn old fool. I speak to myself. Or the apology you're still waiting for, not realizing that sometimes you're the stubborn old fool and you need to let go, right? It's really kind of weird how relationships work. Maybe it's a health problem, problems that you can fix now. That's what we're talking about. Maybe even putting the appointment to go see the doctor off. The habit that has been quietly working against you that you know you shouldn't do and you need to break. The sleep, the movement, the nutrition. What is it that you need to do? What's fixable? The basics that you keep saying that you'll get back to once things slow down, once you have more time. These are fixable problems. They're hard, but yes, they're fixable. Uncomfortable? Absolutely they're uncomfortable, but you know what? They're fixable. And here's what worry does to a fixable problem, sweet spotter. It paralyzes you at the exact moment you need to move. And science sold in success is what we're about here on the sweet spotter.
I'm gonna give you the science. Neuroscience shows us that chronic worry activates your CEO of the brain. And for you, seasoned sweet spotters, you already know the prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain responsible for planning and decision making. But when you worry chronically, this CEO starts to become a worry wart. It's not productive. All that planning and decision making is in the direction of worry. And a what if monster starts to show up? What if this goes wrong? What if that's going wrong? That's why you don't go get to see the doctor, you don't go get your lab test, you don't follow up on your health thing, or you don't follow up on the big plan. Worry doesn't generate solutions. You know what it does? It generates more worry. It's good at that. It creates what researchers call a ruminative loop. A ruminative loop. Your brain just cycling and cycling through the same problem without ever landing on a definitive action. Have you ever been there? Are you there now with something? You're not thinking your way through the problem when you worry. You're not. No, you're not. You are thinking your way around the problem over and over again. You're thinking your way in avoiding it. You're exhausting yourself without moving an inch. And remember, the first half of the saying we are unpacking today together is this. If you have a problem and you can fix it, why worry? You can fix it because the worry is not the strategy, sweet spotter. Sweet builder, action is the answer here. Worry is never the strategy. Action is the answer. If the numbers are off, build a plan. If the relationship is broken, have the conversation. If the health is suffering, make the appointment. If the strategy isn't working, change it. Here's the statement: fix it, don't just feel it. I wanna make that into a t-shirt, I think. I'm gonna put on the front, fix it, and on the back, I'm gonna put don't just feel it. Because that's what happens when you worry. You feel it and you feel it and you feel it, but you never fix it. And this is fixable. You know how many counseling sessions I have when I'm listening to folks and I'm like, ah, do you know this is fixable? I get how you feel, and I'm not diminishing how you feel, but this is fixable. Do you want to fix it? In the ancient wisdom, Jesus came up upon this dude that was sitting by some pool of water. I can't remember the exact phrase. My serious Christians probably already know the chapter and verse. And the guy has been sitting by a pool, he's paralyzed for like 30 something years, and he won't get into the pool, which can heal him. And when Jesus says to him, What's going on? He said, Well, you know, nobody's come to help me, whatever. It's like, and Jesus says to him, Well, do you want to be well? Do you want to fix this? Because you gotta want to fix it too. You can't just feel it, fix it. Alright, it's finished strong Friday, and you want to finish strong, right? This is how we finish strong is that we fix the fixables.
So let's talk now, sweet spotter, about problems we cannot fix. And I want to be careful here. Because these are the ones that carry real weight. These aren't inconveniences, these are the situations that stop you in your tracks and make you question everything. The diagnosis. The one that came back and changed the entire landscape of your life, or someone you love, the one thing you didn't see coming, the one that no amount of planning or preparation was ever going to prevent. The loss. Man, the person who's no longer here. The relationship that ended, the version of your life that existed before something happened that you cannot unhappen now. The grief that doesn't follow a timeline and doesn't care about your schedule. Something bad has happened. The situation that is simply, completely, absolutely outside of your control. Is that the economy, the decision somebody else made about something that mattered to you, the door that closed in your face, regardless of how hard you knocked. You can't fix some of these things. And I want to say that with all the gentleness in the world. Because acknowledging that is not the fee-law, it is wisdom. It is wisdom, and we will not diminish it. But here's what the second half of that saying that we're unpacking today is asking and challenging us to do. If you have a problem and you can't fix it, why worry? Because, sweet dreamer, if it's out of our control, it's gotta be out of our mind. It should be out of our mind. If it's out of your control, it should be out of your mind. Now, I know what some of you are thinking, so easy to say, and you're absolutely right. It's easier to say than do, especially when the problem is a diagnosis, especially when the problem is grief, especially when the problem is a loss that's so significant, it has rearranged the furniture of your entire inner world. I am in no way, having been someone who's been through some of these things, I in no way want to diminish that. So let me be more precise here on Finish Strong Friday with this phrase and what this phrase is actually asking.
It is not asking you and me to stop feeling, it is not asking us to bypass the grief or minimize the weight of what we're carrying. Oh no, no, no. It is not toxic positivity dressed up as wisdom here. No way, no way. What this phrase is asking us to do is redirect our energy. It is asking you, sweet builder, to redirect your energy from the thing you cannot change to the thing that you still have some agency over. Look, we cannot fix the diagnosis, but we can work on how we are going to respond to it. You can't work on the quality of the days inside of whatever timeline you think you don't have. You do have a timeline, and you can work on the quality of the days inside of the timeline that you've been given. I'll say it again. You can work on the quality of the days inside whatever timeline you've been given. And we each have a timeline, don't we? So you can work on the fear with the help of someone you love, somebody you trust, whatever you need. You cannot bring back whatever the loss took, but you can work on your healing. You can work on finding meaning in the aftermath of whatever it is that you've been through. You can work on building something new that honors what was without being imprisoned by it either. That's the whole key here. You know, we can't control what someone else has decided, unfortunately in life. I wish I had some superpowers and I could do that, but I can't. You can't control what somebody else has done or decided. But you know what you can control? Your next move. The same for every athlete. If you missed a shot, if you messed up, you blew the coverage, it's the next move. Remember when we talked about neutral thinking a few weeks ago? It's what's next. So it happened. Okay, fine. What's next? That's what great athletes do. Your next chapter, your next choice, your next move. That's totally under your control. What you're gonna do next? You could flip off the sweet spot right now. You know, that's a move, too. And go meditate. Like anything you need to do, you have a choice of what comes next. The Stoics
call this the dichotomy of control. And Marcus Aurelius, one of the most powerful leaders in human history, built his entire philosophy around this idea of the dichotomy of control. He wrote, You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. What you cannot fix, release it. But you can still shape, pour everything into that, sweet spotter, sweet builder. You cannot have power over what you cannot control. Period. You have power over your mind, not over outside events, and that's where you will find your strength. So both halves of this saying today are pretty important because this is where the full framework will really help us. If you have a problem and you can fix it, why worry? Fix it. Fix it now. Start working on it. And if you have a problem that you can't fix, why worry? Because you can still control your next move. Every problem you will ever face in your life, every single one falls into one of these two categories: fixable or not fixable. And in both cases, worry is not the answer. Action is the answer for what you can fix. Acceptance and redirection are the answer for what you cannot fix. I'll say it again. Action is the answer for what you can fix. You have a problem, it's fixable. Take action. Even if it's a small action today, one step, take it. Movement is the key. You have a problem, you can't fix it. Practice acceptance, that's not weakness, and redirection. That's not giving up. They're an answer. And that's how you finish strong. This is Dr. Derek Sweet. You've been listening to The Sweet Spot. Tomorrow is Self-Care Saturday. Join me there. I look forward to seeing you. Love and blessings. I want you to finish strong. And whatever the problem is, if you can fix it, you know what to do. And if you can't fix it, you know what to do. Love and blessings.
