Rest Versus Restoration Explained

The Emotional Thermostat Metaphor

The Brain Science Of Regulation

Self Care As Thermostat Maintenance

Protect Your Dial From Others

Emotional Contagion And Mirror Neurons

SPEAKER_00 0:07

How did you do it? How did you get here? You made it to Saturday, and I'm so proud of you. You are my partner in the game of life, and I am proud to be yours. Together, we're gonna win. We're gonna win. I guarantee you, we've got a winning team. Me and you in Self-Care Saturday here on the Sweet Spot. Welcome! Welcome back! I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm a board certified psychiatrist, but more than that, I am your teammate. And sweet spotters, we've been in a wonderful series this week where we've been parsing and dissecting and unpacking wonderful statements that resonate with us all week. Have you had fun? I know I have all week. It's self-create sadly. And today I want to do something a little different before we get into it. I just want you to stop for a second, chill, relax, take it easy, take a breath. Nothing fancy, nothing to think about. Just stop and breathe. Take a deep breath in. Take a deep breath. Go ahead. In through the nose, nice and deep. Come on, come on, do it. Nice and deep. And then slowly out through the mouth. You know when you do that? When you take a deep breath, you are sign not only you're bringing wonderful oxygen to your red blood cells, your mitochondria, all the powerhouses of the body, not only are you refreshing the body, you're signaling to the parasympathetic nervous system, your rest and digest system, that everything's gonna be okay. And you're controlling a controllable. Your breath is something you can control. And that's a great message here for self-care Saturday. It's a wonderful reminder here on the Sweet Spot. Every now and then, on the sweet spot, we stop to take a deep breath. And you know what I've realized in talking to some of you? It's the only time you've taken a deep breath. Wow! So here it is. What is the phrase we're going to be looking at today? Because self-care sally is not just about rest, it's about restoration, and there is a difference. There's a difference between rest and restoration, and the difference is, sweet spotter, that rest is passive. Restoration is a little more intentional. Absolutely. So let's look at what restorative phrase we're going to enjoy with each other today. And this and the phrase is this I heard it on the internet, cool dude, he was just sharing it, and I'm like, oh my god, that really resonated with me today. Treat your emotions like a thermostat. Every day set the temperature and don't let anyone else turn it up or down. Because only you are responsible for the bill. I'm gonna repeat that, sweet spotter, and I want you to hear it. Treat your emotions like a thermostat every day, set the temperature, and don't let anyone else turn it up or down because only you are responsible for the build. Hmm. Wow. Let's sit with that for a moment. Let's really sit with that. Your emotions like a thermostat. Every day, set the temperature. Don't let anyone turn it up or down. Because only you are responsible for the bill. Wow! I want to take each one of those pieces and just hold it up to the light. Gently, honestly, quietly, because every single line here, every single part of this seeing has something important for us today. Let's start with that thermostat. Let's unpack that. Think about how a thermostat actually works. You set a temperature, and then no matter what happens outside, no matter how cold the wind blows or how hot the afternoon sun gets, the system works to maintain that temperature. It doesn't panic when the temperature drops, it doesn't spiral out of control when there's a draft. It simply consistently returns to the setting you chose. Wow. That's a message. Okay, absolutely. That is emotional regulation 101. Imagine we could learn all this from a thermostat. Yeah, it's one of the most powerful skills a human being can develop. And you know, here on the sweet spot, we're about science, we're about soul and success. Let me drop some science to you because I know you love that. What I'm talking about here, this emotional regulation. You know what part of the brain controls that a lot? Oh, yeah, the prefrontal cortex, the seat of what researchers call the executive function. We know it here on the sweet spot as the CEO of the brain. Yeah, the planner, the executor, the rational thinker, the decision maker. The one that gives us the ability to pause between a stimulus and the response, to feel something without being immediately consumed by it, and to notice the temperature dropping in a conversation and choose, consciously choose how we're going to respond, and just rather than just react it, the CEO, the PFC, the prefrontal cortex, gives us control. But here's the rum, here's the problem, here's the issue. Wow, when it gets hijacked by stress, when we're overwhelmed, when we are depleted, when we're running on empty, when we didn't sleep, we didn't eat right, we've been grinding, we're burnt out. You know what happens? The thermostat doesn't work well because the system is overloaded. And that, sweet fathers, is exactly why we have self-care sadly. Does that make sense? Makes sense to me. Yeah, self-care is not about being indulgent. Self-care today is about thermostat maintenance. We all are mechanics today. Because we've got to make sure our thermostats are working, that our emotional thermostat is being handled. It's how you make sure that making moves Monday is really gonna start right for you. Because you know what happens on Monday, the phone calls come in, the emails start coming on in, the demands stack up, the world starts pulling at you from every direction. You've got appointments with the doctors, the lawyers, the business folks. Yeah, be if you before you know it, you could be having a room full of different temperatures just coming at you. So treat your emotions like a thermostat. I just want to say it again. Every day, set the temperature. This is the first act of self-care. Listen, the bubble bats are great. The face mask, of course, when you put it on, put the oxygen mask on. We we've heard that a thousand times. Yeah, get sleep. Critical. But this first act of self-care that I'm talking about today is about thermostat maintenance. It's about you setting the emotional temperature you're gonna live at. It's an intentional decision. Before the day is a chance to decide for you about what is gonna happen, you're gonna decide who you're gonna be today. You're gonna decide what energy you're going to carry through the day, what internal climate you're going to live in and set yourself by. Set it absolutely, sweet builder. Set it on purpose before anyone else gets a chance. You set the temperature. What kind of day you're gonna have? Alright, so we got that first part. Treat your emotions like a thermostat. Every day you set the temperature. Let's tackle the next part of this phrase. And I love the second layer. Don't let anyone else turn it up or down. And I want to be real gentle here with that one because this is the part that takes a lot of practice. It takes grace, man. It takes self-awareness too. Because the people in our lives are going to reach for the dial. They don't always do it on purpose, and they're not really also being malicious, most of them. Sometimes it's just somebody who else who's dysregulated or who has like a hot temperature running on them, or they're super cold, or they're anxious, or they're loud, or they're aggressive, or they're down, or they're just consumed. It may not even be a person that's trying to dysregulate your temperature. It could be the news cycle. You ever turn on that TV and put it on the news channel? Oh my goodness, you don't even realize it, but that thing's messing with your thermostat. Social media could do it too. Doom scrolling, I speak to myself. When you do scrolling, don't do it. It could be a comment from somebody that changes the temperature in the room. That somehow has you operating at a temperature that you never even chose. And that's what psychologists call emotional contagion. Yeah, that means that emotions can just jump on us like viruses. Emotions can spread. Your nervous system is constantly reading the room, it's constantly picking up signals. We talked about mirror neurons the other day. How the mirror neurons in our brain can match the neurons in somebody else's brain. That's why you gotta be remembered we talked about why am I buying a ticket to the clown show? Why am I surrounded by clowns? Because you're at the circus. Okay, and the emotional climate in there is for clowns. That's where you're there. Don't blame them. So come set your temperature at the place that's right for you. Because without awareness, your thermostat will get set for you, and you'll spend most of your day living at a temperature that somebody else chose. Yeah. Now, when I say set your thermos, thermostat, right? When I say set your th your thermostat, I'm not saying get cold. Because some people do that, right? You tell them set the thermostat and then they they come back and they tell you like they just cut everybody off. They were like cold, they had no emotions. You're not trying to be like data or spark on Star Trek or something. You're not trying to have like zero emotions, you're human. It's not about building walls or shutting people out or pretending that nothing affects you. We're human, of course, things affect us. It's about having a home temperature that you return to, knowing your baseline. Because the thermostat doesn't stop the weather from changing outside, it just makes sure that no matter what happens out there, that inside stays regulated, inside stays livable, inside stays yours. That's what the thermostat is there to protect. So if you're an athlete, you want to be the kind of athlete who stays composed when the game is chaotic, because your thermostat has been set pre-game. During the game, knowing that a game can change, knowing that mistakes can happen. You're a leader. You want to stay grounded when the team is panicking. Nobody wants a leader that's panicking because everybody else is gonna panic. You're a pilot, you can't come out there and be all freaked out. The whole plane's gonna freak out, right? Even if you're a parent and you're at home and things are going chaotic, you are the parent. Your thermostat really does have to be set. You ever see sometimes the parents uh are remonstrating with the kids and they look more out of control than the kids when they're doing it. Even if we're in grief, even in our hardest moments, we've got to be careful that the thermostat doesn't get all the way up or all the way down. We have to find a thread of stillness to hold on to so we can regulate ourselves. We're not saying be detached. We just have to set the thermostat with intention today on subcare Saturday. Yeah, so we're not gonna let anybody else turn it up or down. Notice. Well, you wanna today. I want you to just notice who's been reaching for your dial all week long. Think about your week and think about who was trying to turn my thermostat up or down. Don't judge them, just I want you to just be aware, right? Because you can't protect what you haven't first identified. You gotta know that you have a thermostat, you gotta know that your emotions are on this thermostat, and you gotta know that you've been reacting to various temperatures all week, and you wanna know who or what is pushing for you. Is there somebody that's like not responding to your text messages? Or vice versa? Is there somebody who is calling you every 15 seconds? How does that affect your thermostat? Are you still in control? And now, yeah, let's turn to the line that ties everything together. Because you see, sweet spotter, it doesn't matter what that temperature is or or if it's up or down. Guess who's paying the bill? His yeah, it's you and me. Because the last part of this phrase said this because only you are responsible for the bill. It doesn't matter if your guest comes over and they like the house really cold and they drop your temperature and they are there for like a week, and the bill comes back, and it's either too because they liked it cold, the air conditioning bill went up, or because they liked it warm the the bill, uh the heating bill went up, or whatever, you're still responsible for the bill. Like when the um electric electrical company, the electricity company sends the bill, they're not sending it to the guests, they're sending it to you. You, you and I are gonna pay that bill. And this is where the saying stops being a metaphor and starts being a mirror. Because here's the truth, sweet dreamer. Here's the truth that nobody likes to say out loud. When you and I outsource our emotional temperature to other people, or to circumstances, or to things completely outside of our control, we still pay the bill. Think about that. When somebody dreams you, when somebody upsets you, when they anger you and they change the temperature around you, all of that, you still pay the bill. It's your bill, it's my bill. The anxiety that built up all week, the exhaustion that has nothing to do with how much you slept, the resentment that you're quietly accumulating because you kept absorbing everybody else's temperature all week without ever resetting it to your own. That's the bill, and guess what? You are paying it, I'm paying it, and it shows up in our bodies, it shows up in the relationships, it could show up in your capacity to be there for people and work and perform in a way that's the highest level for you. You're not accountable to others, you're accountable to you. And accountability in self-care isn't punishment, it's a gift for you. It's the recognition that you are the one with the power here. It's kind of like we've got to reclaim the thermostat. We've got to reclaim the power. You've got to go in the house of your mind and your body and your soul and your spirit and figure out where is the thermostat here? I'm gonna set it, and that's who I'm gonna be this week or today, right? The other difficult person in your life, that's not the one who sets the thermostat. Don't let them, don't let a stressful situation set your thermostat either. Yeah, anybody that's reaching out for your dial without asking permission, don't let them do it. You are the one who sets the temperature today, and you're the one who maintains the system, and we're all mechanics, we're all in charge of our emotional thermostat. Because, look, you're the one who either pays the bill, or you're the one that's gonna build a practice that keeps the bill manageable, or somebody else is gonna just handle it. Yeah, I read a poet, his name is Rumi. I've talked about him a lot here on the sweet spot, and he had a line that I thought made a lot of sense for today. He said, Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I'm wise, so I'm changing myself. Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I'm wise, so I'm changing myself. You know what that told me? That the thermostat has to be pointed inward, not outward. He decided to change himself. The thermostat's always been pointed in. So here's your self-care Saturday assignment, and we're out. Check your current temperature, do an audit on your current temperature right now, in this moment. I want you to think about what your temperature should be. What is it? Where did this week leave you? What temperature did it hand you? Are you exhausted? Are you anxious? Do you feel scattered? Do you feel drained or tired or worried? Or maybe you're just grateful or you're feeling really good. Whatever it is, I want you to be aware of it because we can't reset the thermostat, we can't reset what we haven't first acknowledged and identified, right? You gotta know what's going on. And then, second, I want you to set your intention for the day. For today, what is your intention for today? Yeah, absolutely. What temperature do you actually want to live at today? Right? What internal climate do you want to inhabit on this Saturday? Do you want to be peaceful? Do you want to be more present or playful or restored or joyful? Choose it. Uh if you want to be more studied or meditative or reflective or silent, whatever it is, just make sure that you're the one setting it. And you know, sometimes you have to do something for yourself. Like take a few minutes of silence in the morning before the rest of the house wakes up. Go for a walk without your phone. That's always a tough one for me. Go for a walk without your phone. Maybe find the person that genuinely makes you happy and fills you up and have the conversation with them today. Right. Or say no to something that you know doesn't uplift you. Just do one thing for you, and then the last thing is notice who is reaching for your dial today. Don't be guarded, don't be suspicious, just notice, and you'll feel the temperature shifting, and you'll know that this person is somebody you have to pay attention to because you have to be able to return to your setting, and anybody that takes you away from that setting, you have to pay attention to that because guess what? You're responsible for the bill. So, one last time before we end here on self care saturday, sweet dreamer. Treat your emotions like a thermostat every day. Set the temperature and don't let anyone else turn it up or down. Because only you are responsible for the bill. This is what self-care is about. Not just rest, it's not just about recovery, it's about intention, it's about awareness, it's about a daily practice of selling your thermostat and returning to yourself before the world has a chance to take you somewhere you didn't choose to go. Alright now, sweet spotter. For signs for soul and success, you've been listening to the sweet spot. Set your temperature today. I'm challenging you to do it. Doctor's orders. Goodness. And protect it like it matters because it really does. It really does. And come back to yourself today. Take a breath and relax. And uh I'll see you tomorrow. I'll see you tomorrow for Slowdown Sunday. Thanks for spending all this time with me here on the Sweet Spot as we've been unpacking some great phrases. And uh, if you want to subscribe, please do. There's no fee for subscribing and becoming part of our Sweet Spot family. And clearly share this with someone who you believe needs it. For love and for life. This is the Sweet Spot.