Full Purpose Living Series Setup

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Welcome back. Welcome back to Take Action Tuesday here on the Sweet Spot. And if you've been listening, you know we're dealing with purpose. This is a series called Full Purpose Living, and we find ourselves in the second episode. You can't navigate a map you refuse to read. That's the title of our talk today, Sweet Spotter. I hope you're ready. Yesterday, yesterday we wrote something down, right? Remember? The thing you would show up for even if no one was watching and nothing was working yet. What is it? And if you answered that question, you know your passion. I hope you still have that answer close, whatever your passion is, because today, sweet builder, we're going to figure out together why we haven't moved fully forward yet on some of the things that we know we have to get done. I'm Dr. Derek Sweet, I'm your host here on The Sweet Spot. I am a born-certified psychiatrist. I work in high performance, but more than that, I'm your teammate in this game of life, a game you and I have been playing, and we're winning together. And I want to start by telling you something personal. I've sat with my own version of the question of that question I asked you last time for years. I knew what I was called to do. I could feel it. And I still found ways to stay just close enough to it without ever fully committing to it. I told myself I'm being strategic. I told myself I'm being patient. I told myself I was being responsible. But if I'm totally honest with you, sweet spotter, I didn't fully understand myself yet. I didn't understand what was quietly running underneath all of my very solid explanations for why I didn't go the full distance on the thing that I was passionate about.

The Beliefs Behind Hesitation

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Yeah, and what I realized I needed was understanding. And that's our word today. Yesterday our word was passion, and we tied passion into purpose. Today we've got to tie understanding into purpose, not understanding of the world or your industry or your career, or not even of other people. Understanding of you, of ourselves. That's the key today. How do we tie understanding into purpose? Because to live a full purpose life, to do full purpose living, you've got to have not just passion, but understanding. Because you've got to know what's in your head that drives the bus. And there's a verse from the ancient wisdom that has been traveling through the centuries on the same bus with us for a reason. And that verse, we did a series on this, as a man thinketh. And it's in Proverbs. It's in Proverbs. For as a person thinketh in their heart, so are they. Whatever they're thinking is who they are. What you believe about yourself in your quietest, most unguarded moments, that is the life you're actually building. So let me make that feel more real. Think about the last time a door cracked open for you. A conversation you could have started, uh a move you could have made. An opportunity that had your name on it. And you didn't take advantage. Something held you back. You hesitated. You probably gave it a good name, like I did, like a reasonable name. Ah, wrong timing. I need to I I need to be more prepared. Someone else is better at doing this than me. Let Lester do it. Let George do it. Let let uh Lisa do it. They're smarter, they're better, they're taller, they've got more money. I don't know. We always have a reason when we hesitate and we don't jump on the opportunities that we're given. And underneath all of that, there is a belief that makes that kind of decision for us. A belief so old and so familiar that it doesn't it didn't feel like a belief at all when we were doing it. It just felt like like ourselves. It felt like you. That this is who I am. That's how deep these things can run.

Meaning Shapes Your Life

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Epictetus, another stoic philosopher, you know we love science, soul, and success here, and part of what we do is we look at stoicism. Epictetus, a man who spent years in slavery and still chose to master his inner world, and that's why we like to quote this stoic philosopher here, Epictetus. He said, People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them. In other words, the situation is not the problem, sweet spotter, the meaning you've attached to it, that's the issue. What did you make it mean? The story. What's your story? What story did you create? The story you decided that this whole thing said about who you are, the story that you set in your head about what you think you deserve or don't deserve. What's available to someone who came from where you came from maybe the story. What you didn't have growing up could be the story. You get it? So I want to ask you something, and I want you to really sit with what I'm asking you. Think about the passion you wrote down yesterday. Yesterday the word we talked about was passion fueling our purpose. And I want you to now think about the moment, the specific moment when you started to pull back from that passion in some scenario or circumstance. What does it feel like in your body when you do something like that? Do you begin to breathe a little shallow? Do you suddenly feel a little tight? Do you get kind of busy all of a sudden? Do you start running a list of everything that could go wrong? These are the kinds of practices that tell us that

Tracing Fear In The Body

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we're backing off of the thing that we are passionately attached to, but are afraid or hesitant to do it. And that feeling, that behavior, whatever it is for you, whenever it happens for you, that has a history somewhere along the way. Your nervous system and mind learn to treat that feeling as a warning. Maybe someone told you that you weren't good enough, and you believed them. Maybe something didn't work out, you made a mistake, and your brain filed it away as evidence that you can't do this or you're not good enough or something's wrong here. Maybe you learned early that wanting too much was a dangerous thing. Whatever it is, the script that you took in, the story that's running in your head, the limiting belief, the ceiling that you've created or that was put around you. Yeah. That we have to understand that. This today's word is understanding here on Take Action Tuesday. We can't take action until we understand what we're gonna do and what action we're gonna take. We should act from a place of understanding. And here's what I want you to hear. All of that hesitation stuff, all of that, not getting what you are. That's yesterday, that was then. You're not that person anymore. You're not that person now. Even if you have the feeling about it, it's not you. Because you have evidence now that you didn't have then. You have survived it, you have outlived it. You have survived things that a lot of people may not have been able to make it through. You've built things that a person didn't think were possible, and you got it done. You have come through many dangerous toils and sneers, as they say in the ancient wisdom. Through many dangers, uh toils and sneers have already come. Amazing Grace, I think, is the song. Yeah, you've had the grace to come through it. And the moment you can look that old feeling in the eye and say, I see you, I know where you came from, but you don't get to make this decision for me anymore.

You Are Not Your Old Pattern

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The moment you can do that, sweet builder, something in your brain actually changes. Once you get that understanding, when you look, every time you pause before running the old pattern, every time you choose a new response instead of the old response you always give, you are physically building new brain pathways, new neural pathways, new wiring is actually occurring in your brain. Your brain begins to restructure itself in real time around the choices you're making right now, the actions that you're taking right now that are different, that are bolder, braver, more designed to take you to your next level. In spite of the fear, you feel the fear, but you do it anyway. Great book. We gotta cover that one. There's a book called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. That kind of behavior, when you whistle, sing a song, and you let you put on your big old faith boots,

Rewiring The Brain With New Choices

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and you start walking forward, you're actually creating new brain patterns, and that's called neuroplasticity. We've talked about that here on the sweet spot where science, soul, and success come together. Neuroplasticity can occur when you start doing new things and taking a new place, a new purpose, a new position on the old stuff. You're never stuck with the version of yourself that fear built. You can build a new one. One conscious moment at a time, one action at a time.

Understanding Yourself As Love

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Tignyat Han, the Buddhist monk, said something I keep coming back to. He said, Understanding someone's suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love's other name. If you don't understand, you can't love. Wow. That land. Understanding someone's suffering is the best gift you can give another person. Understanding is love's other name. If you don't understand, you cannot love. And then he said, begin with yourself. Holy macaroni. Begin with yourself. You want to start understanding? Hmm. Start with you. Look in the mirror. Do you know you? Do you understand you? Or have you been fooling yourself all along? The version of you that hesitates at the door. The version that says yes when you mean no. That complicated person, the version that works twice as hard as everyone else, because somewhere deep down, you still feel like you have something to prove. The version of you that smiles and fakes it when you're in deep pain. That version, it's not really holding you back on purpose. That version is trying to keep you safe and protect you the only way it knows how. And you know what? We've got to unpack it. We've got to understand that version before we can figure out the direction we want to go, before we can go deeper in our purpose. Yeah. Yeah.

Genius And Knowing What You Carry

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Yeah. You see, Jay-Z, who built an empire from a Brooklyn housing project by uh understanding exactly who he was and and exactly what he had to work with, he said this out of his understanding. I believe everyone in the world is born with genius level talent. Apply yourself to whatever you're a genius at, and you can do anything in the world. I believe everyone in the world is born with genius level talent. Apply yourself to whatever you're a genius at, and you can do anything in the world. That's Jay-Z right there. Apply yourself to whatever you're a genius at, sweet spotter. But here's what that requires. Real talk. You've you've kind of gotta know what you're working with. Yeah. The experiences that shaped you, the strengths you've been underestimating because nobody named them for you. The wounds that have been quietly steering your directions and your decisions long after they stopped being relevant, the wounds aren't even really real or there anymore, but they still have an effect on you. For some of us, the voice underneath says, Hey, you're not smart enough for this. Hey, you're not strong enough to withstand this. For others, the voice says, You're you're too much. You gotta play small. For some of us, it's the fear of being truly seen, truly discovered. For others, it's the fear of succeeding and then losing it. For each of us, there's something that fear tries to cloud our understanding. Whatever it is for you, sweet spotter, it's been in the room for a long time. Hasn't it? It's been in the room for every decision you've had to make. And you know what? The moment you can finally see it clearly, that's the moment it stops running the show. When you look it in the eye and you say, hey, I see you, I caught you, it stops running your show.

The Assignment That Builds Clarity

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So here's your assignment on Take Action Tuesday. I want you to think of this not as homework, but as the moment you stop carrying everything alone, something alone. Yeah. Take the passion that we talked about yesterday, and we we wrote that down yesterday, whatever you're passionate about, and underneath it, just finish these sentences honestly. I want you to finish the sentence. The moment I start to pull back from this is when blank happens. And what I've been telling myself that means about me is blank. That's it. The moment I start to pull back from this is when X happens, and what I've been telling myself this means about me is whatever. That's it. That's it. That's the honest assessment. Because the moment you start to pull back from something is when what happens? What happens for you when you start pulling back? You start avoiding. And what do you tell yourself that means? Because that's where the money is. See, that's understanding. Yesterday you found the fire. Yesterday we found the passion. Making moves Monday, we were like, this is what's gonna keep me in the game. This is what I keep coming back to. Today, you have to pick up the map, the map of understanding, so you can see who you are and what's been holding you back, and then choose a different path and decide in your mind I'm not gonna do that anymore. I'm not gonna play small. I am not gonna set myself on fire anymore so that you can keep warm. I'm not gonna play small because it doesn't serve the world when I play small. I'm not gonna buy a ticket to the circus and then complain about the clowns. You get it? It's Take Action Tuesday.

Closing And Share Subscribe CTA

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Time to figure out purpose, to have full purpose living be a part of what I do. And I do that when I have a great understanding of myself. I figure out what my passion is, and then I add understanding about anything that either stops me from getting to this passion or slows me down or detracts from me, and I move on. For science, for soul, and for success, this is Take Action Tuesday on the Sweet Spot, and you've been listening to Dr. Derek Sweet, your teammate in the game of life. I'm in with you. This is Take Action Tuesday. We're going in. I'm here with you, I believe in you, and I want you to take action. Stay in the sweet spot. And if this spoke to you, share it and subscribe. You know what tomorrow is though, right? Tomorrow. Oh yeah, it's Wednesday. But not any Wednesday. It's when it all Wednesday. And we're going deeper. See you tomorrow.