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.
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Now, stay tuned for this weeks episode Trust Yourself Thursday !
Science Soul Success
In this episode we keep pushing deeper into mindset by tracing how trust and distrust shape the stories we tell ourselves under pressure. We challenge the reflex to assume betrayal and practice self-trust that stays wise, clear, and courageous.
Suite Spots: • mindset as beliefs, expectations, interpretations, and attention habits • trust as a mental story that fills in blanks • how distrust shows up in sports, leadership, relationships, and health • the self-fulfilling loop where guarded behavior creates guarded responses • self-trust as responding well when plans fail • making room for imperfection without dropping boundaries • faith and ancient wisdom as a guide when outcomes are unclear • slowing down assumptions, checking facts, spotting patterns, and releasing control
• clear communication and getting support for trauma-rooted distrust
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Success ocean Success in Ocean. Welcome to the Sweet Spot.
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Welcome to the Sweet Spot.
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Welcome back to the Sweet Spot with Dr. Derek Sweet, a board-certified psychiatrist specializing in sports and performance. In the Sweet Spot, we explore what it takes to stay steady and perform when the pressure is on, and the moment matters. Stay tuned for Dr. Sweet's Trust Yourself Thursday.
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Beautiful souls. Beautiful souls. Welcome back to the Sweet Spot where science,
success, and the soul come together. Today, today, sweet spotters, we're going to continue our conversation on mindset. The power of mindset. We've been spending time these past few weeks around mindset, and I think it's been pretty good. Just reminding ourselves that we do have a mindset. And sometimes we forget that this mindset is under our control. Because so many things are competing to control our mindset and to tell us what to think and how to behave and what to believe. And so many of our interpretations are based on what somebody else or some other entity wants us to think. And we've got to find a way to trust ourselves, to trust our God, to trust what we believe, to trust our values, so that our mindset finds itself in
the right place. Yeah, there's a connection between mindset and trust. We usually think about trust as something that happens between people. Two people trust each other. I trust my brothers, I trust my friends, I trust my wife, I trust my family. We all go around implicitly or explicitly navigating trust. Can I trust my teammate? Can I trust my coach? Can I trust my process? Can I trust this process? Can I trust that doctor? Can I trust this situation? The questions they actually matter to the mind. And there's often another question that's even deeper than that. Can I trust myself? Mindset, as we've been saying, is a collection of beliefs, expectations, interpretations, and habits of attention that shape how we understand what is happening in our world and how we're going to respond, what we choose to do about it, all based on the collection of beliefs, expectations, and our interpretations, our mindset. And trust is tied in to mindset. Believe me on that. Yeah, trust begins with the story we're telling ourselves. Someone, this is a deadline that's important to you. A teammate makes a mistake. A friend doesn't call you back. You walk into your job and you're handed the pink slip. The event or the situation, it just happens. And you know what? Once these things happen, the mind takes over and starts filling in the blanks. They don't care about me. You see, I can't depend on anybody. Something bad is going to happen. Somebody is going to disappoint me. Somebody is going to hurt me. Sometimes those thoughts are accurate. But sometimes they kind of come out of fear or stress or
disappointment or some old wound that we keep replaying or remembering. Yeah. Yeah, distrust is also a part of this, right? The opposite of trust is distrust. And so when we talk about trust in our minds, we have to also make space for distrust. Because distrust can quietly shape the way we move through our lives. It can make us a bit suspicious. And it can cause us to expect betrayal before anything else has ever happened. So over time, distrust can leave us isolated, exhausted, and always on guard. You want to check your mind to see where you have distrust. Because it matters. In sports, it may look like a player refusing to rely on his teammates, isolating isoball, right? Just handling it yourself. In leadership, it may look like you're micromanaging every decision. You don't give people a chance to do anything because you don't trust them. So you're micromanaging them. In relationships, it may look like you can't let this person be by themselves. You interpret everything they do as some level of betrayal to you, or they're having an affair, or they're doing something to harm you or hurt you. You're constantly testing them. In health, it may look like ignoring distrust could look like you're ignoring guidance. You're not taking the actions you know you need to take to help yourself get better. That you know have to be investigated, and you know the potential outcomes, but you don't trust the guidance, you don't trust the health process, you don't trust the doctor. The problem is that distrust can create the very outcome you fear. You ever hear that thing that saying the thing you're running from is what you're running to? That the road that you take to avoid destiny is the road on which you find destiny? These are crazy quotes, right? That the thing you're running from is the thing you're running towards. Yeah, the problem is that distrust can create the very outcome that you're afraid of. People become guarded around you when you stop being distrustful, right? If you have a distrustful spirit, people can become guarded around you and they stop sharing honestly with you, they start hesitating around you, they begin to walk on eggshells around you because they don't know, you don't trust them, they kind of pick it up. And then you say, See, I know I can't trust that dude. You know I can't trust her. And that's how the mindset creates a loop. The story you're telling yourself is shaping your behavior. What's your story? What are you telling yourself? Because when you tell yourself the story and you live inside of your story and you give it a meaning,
the behavior begins to shape the relationship. And the way out of that kind of weird storytelling, that that fantasy you're living in that may not even be true, is to begin to trust yourself. You gotta start trusting yourself a little bit more. Self-trust does not mean believing that you will always make the right decision. I'm not talking about that. It means believing that you can respond well when things don't go according to your plan. And that if people disappoint you that that happens, you can discuss it. You don't have to create a story around them, you don't have to uh create a new reality around them, you can discuss it and talk about it and get over it with them. Right? You could say, instead of like I can't trust myself, you can say, Listen, I trust myself to ask the right questions, I trust myself to notice patterns, I trust myself to recover from a mistake, I trust myself to set a boundary, I trust myself to ask for help if I need it. You see, that kind of self-trust gives us more room to trust other people because we're no longer asking them to guarantee that we will never be disappointed. So many of us walk around putting so much pressure on ourselves and other people to be perfect when life is not perfect. So you've got to give room to other people because they will disappoint us. There will be uncertainty, there will be letdowns, and you have to be able to navigate the uncertainty. Sports has taught me that. You see, I've learned from sports that a quarterback releases the ball before the receiver is fully open. A point guard trusts a teammate to be in the right place at the right time. A coach can trust the player to make the read. But I've not only seen it in sports, I've seen it in life where a person facing illness trusts the treatment process while continuing to ask some good questions. A person entering retirement trusts that they still have purpose, that they still have meaning, and that their wisdom, their experience, and their knowledge can carry them through the golden years. You see, trust, the very essence of trust, sweet spotter, is asking you and I to move without controlling every outcome. We can make the move without controlling every outcome. We can take action without controlling every outcome. We can even finish strong without controlling every outcome. We can win even when we don't know the outcome. Because we can lean on something that's deeper and bigger than us inside of us, even when nothing outside of us is working. And here on the sweet spot, we talk about science, soul, and success, and we respect the ancient wisdom. The ancient wisdom always helps us make sense of things when we can't.
Yeah, trust in the Lord with all your heart and don't lean on your own mindset. Don't lean on your own understanding because sometimes our understanding and perspective is the issue. Right? This verse reminds us that our understanding is sometimes limited. We may not see the whole picture, we may not know what the outcome is, we may not know how the season will turn out. Our faith, though, allows us to keep moving while admitting we don't know everything and we can't control everything. Do you have that kind of mindset today? Do you have that level of trust today? You see, sweet spotter, a trusting mindset always uses wisdom. Oh, it asks questions. Oh, it notices patterns. And oh yes, it sets boundaries. It pays attention to red flags. Just because you have a positive mindset don't mean that your eyes are closed. Oh, you're paying attention. You're asking the questions, you're noticing the patterns, you're you're setting the boundaries, you're paying attention to the red flags. Yeah. But it doesn't let distrust become the default. It doesn't let distrust run the show. Right? If you're in a situation where you have to navigate distrust, here's the thing: slow down. Slow the story down. Ask yourself, am I telling myself a story? What's my story and what's my meaning? And then ask yourself, what do I know? What do I really know? What are the facts? What am I assuming here? Hmm. What past experience might be shaping the way I'm seeing this moment? What have I experienced in the past that's making me interpret this moment a certain way? Because that's what mindset does. So the first thing is to ask yourself, what do you know? The second thing, separate the mistake from the pattern. One disappointment may just call for a conversation. Several disappointments
may call for many conversations and certain actions, right? Repeated harm might call for a boundary. Wisdom comes from knowing the difference between one disappointment and repeated harm. What's a pattern, what's not a pattern, and knowing when to draw your boundaries. The third thing, I'll say that again, Chris. Chris, I'll say that again. The third thing is about releasing control in small places. Yeah. Let somebody else carry a responsibility. Don't own everything all the time. I've got to tell myself that. That's note to myself. Notice what happens inside of you. Do you become anxious? Do you do you expect failure before it even begins? Are you owning everything? Or are you letting it are you letting it unfold in front of you? And the fourth thing is to communicate clearly. A lot of distrust grows when you're vague. When your yes is not your yes, your no is not your no, you're not clear. My wife Dorcell is very big on clear conversations. She loves to say this. I'm a straight shooter, and this is what I'm saying. And believe me, I get it. Yeah, a lot of distrust can grow when the expectations are vague and the communication is murky. Say what you need. Speak up. Ask what the other person needs as well. Yeah, clarify the role, the boundary, and the goal. Be clear. Let that be your practice for handling trust. And finally, get support when your distrust has deep roots and you can't get over it. That's when you come talk to guys like me or uh or counselors who can help you. Because sometimes distrust is coming from betrayal, deep betrayals, trauma, abandonment, repeated hurts and disappointments, and that kind of pain, real talk, might require some something more than positive thinking. You may need to sit with a counselor, a spiritual guide, an honest conversation with somebody you trust. Yeah, beautiful souls, distrust might protect you for a season, but it can become a prison if you let it. So don't get me wrong, trust is not asking you and me to become careless, it's asking us to become clear, it's asking us to remain open while we keep our wisdom. Even when life becomes hard to know what's coming next, that using trust, having a mindset that's based on trust, we can respond with courage, which means walking in the absence, walking with the fear, not in the absence of it. We can respond with courage, with faith, and with good judgment. Yeah, that's available to us every single day in every moment. Take a step back. Breathe. Look at the situation and ask yourself, what would one healthy act of trust look like if I were to take it right now? You see, it's important that you do take a moment to breathe
and to understand that trust is both your shield and your weapon today. Here's an affirmation as we close out. Try this affirmation with me. I trust God, I trust the wisdom I've been given, and I trust myself to respond with courage. I trust God, I trust the wisdom I've been given, and I trust myself to respond with courage. One more time. I trust God, I trust the wisdom I've been given, and I trust myself to respond with courage. For science, for soul, and for success, you've been listening to the sweet spot. This is Dr. Sweet. And I'll see you next time. Keep trusting.
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Thank you for listening to The Sweet Spot with Dr. Derek Sweet. If today's message was helpful, please feel free to share it and subscribe. There's no cost to subscribing, and it helps others to discover the show. We hope you'll join us again for another inspiring message from Dr. Sweet and the Sweet Spot team. For science, soul, and success. Stay with the Sweet Spot.
