Cold Open And Show Welcome

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Science success in ocean. Success in ocean. Success in ocean. Welcome to the sweet spot.

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Welcome to the sweet spot. 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 Self-Care Saturday.

Declaring It Is Well

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Greetings and welcome. It is well. It is well with you, sweet spotters. It is well with you. It is well with your health. It is well with your finances. It is well with your home. It is well with your family. It is well, it is well, it is well. It is well with your soul today. I just felt like saying that to you today, sweet spotters, because sometimes you have to declare it is well, regardless of what's going on outside of you. And you know, as I say that, as I say it is well, it is well, it is well, I am cultivating, promoting, and perpetuating a mindset. Yes, all month long, all year long, you and I have been in the mindset conversation. No matter what we've been facing. Mindset is behind it all. Mindset is what's driving the bus.

Mindset As Your Internal Operating System

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We have a mindset. And today we're going to talk about how the mindset and self-care come together. Absolutely, there is a connection. There definitely is a connection between your mindset and self-care. When we talk about self-care, we typically talk about it as an action. A spa day, a workout, an extra hour of sleep, or stepping away from the cell phone. I speak to myself. But sweet spotter, self-care isn't really an action item alone. It's not just an action item on your to-do list. No. Self-care, I'm coming to understand, is an act of recovery. Yeah. And recovery requires the correct mindset. You've got to have the right cognitive frame to engage in self-care. To engage in recovery. You see, before we can fix our self-care habits, we've got to look at our mindset. And what is mindset really? As we've been discussing on this topic that we've been spending so much so much time with, it's not just positive thinking. Mindset is that's a that's a 101 understanding of mindset, that it's positive thinking. Oh, it's much more than that. By now, you know, if you've been if you've been listening here with us on the sweet spot, you know that the mindset that your mindset is the underlying internal operating system, the lens that you look through to make meaning of the world. You know that your mindset is the underlying internal operating system, the the set of assumptions, your beliefs, the core narratives that you have inside of you that all of us have inside of us, the core narratives that filter how we view ourselves. Yeah. Your core narratives filter how you view yourself, your worth, your capacity, who you are. It dictates what you prioritize when the pressure goes up. Your mindset, your operating system dictates what you prioritize when the pressure goes up. And here's the thing, sweet spotter. If we have the wrong mindset or the non-self-care mindset, we're gonna be sabotaged. The wrong mindset can actually sabotage your self-care. You see, when we're operating on the wrong code, when your operating system is running the wrong code, self-care is the very first thing that gets deleted.

The Transactional Mindset Sabotages Rest

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There are a couple of mindsets I want to talk to you about today that I want you to be aware of. We need to be aware of these. The transactional mindset. What is that? That is the kind of mindset that says, you know what, my belief, my worth is tied only to the output that I can deliver. If you believe your worth is tied only to output, to achievement, or serving others, self-care starts looking like laziness to you. You begin to think something's wrong with you if you have to care for yourself because you're just tied into helping others. You're just tied into your achievements, your goals, getting it done. You start thinking, I'll rest when everything is done. I heard somebody even say this to me once, I'll rest when I'm dead. Hmm. That's interesting. Yeah, just this just sitting with that is is troubling. Undoubtedly, you will rest when you're dead, but uh don't push yourself to death, don't work yourself to death. You see, that's the trouble with high performance environments, the work is never done, and so when you get into the transactional mindset, you become a victim, a slave to it. What about the armor mindset?

The Armor Mindset And Rest Guilt

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That's another one I want you to think about. You see, there's a way that you can think about self-care that says, hey, that's a luxury, that's a kind of a reward. I have to earn that. I have I don't just get to do it, I have to earn it. You see, when you view self-care as luxury, as a luxury or a reward, you have to earn, quote unquote, after you burn out, then you're operating in a reaction mode. You have the armor mindset. You think that you have to wear this armor all the time, and therefore, self-care can only come after you've burned out. So when you have either a transactional mindset or an armor mindset, you know what the result is? You don't recharge, you you actually don't recharge, you just crash eventually. And when rest feels unearned, it comes with this heavy side order of what I call guilt. I've been guilty of that myself, where I feel as if if I rest, I'm guilty, and that true self-care has to be a reward for hard work. That's not true. True self-care isn't a reward for hard work, it's the foundation that makes working hard possible, and I have to really spend time with that, and not just thinking that self-care is a reward for my hard work, but that it's the foundation that helps me to work with work hard, to really work hard, you know, and so that's something to think through, right? So your mindset could be the reason you're not getting self-care or you're not prioritizing it. You know what else can sabotage self-care or can work against it?

Busyness Culture And External Pressure

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Distractions. I see it all the time in high-performance environments. Why is it so hard to maintain a foundation that puts self-care first? You know why? The outside world is making it hard because the outside world is constantly conditioning and competing for your mind, for your mindset. Oh yeah. The city that never sleeps, that's where I am in. That's the slogan, right? So, what if you're in a city that never sleeps? What do you think is gonna happen to you? Yeah, there's the cult of busyness and social proof, right? We live in a culture that glorifies exhaustion. Being overcommitted is often worn like a badge of honor by some people. When everyone around us is running on fumes and the boundaries are like blurred and we're working 24-7 and we can't stop, that feels great, that looks good. You look like an Iron Woman, Iron Man, that kind of thing. And when you set boundaries, like you say something, well, I'm gonna go home and rest today, you feel like, oh my goodness, you're being a little weak. So there's that pressure that can work against self-care, the cult of busyness, the cult of social proof. I gotta prove that I'm strong, I don't need any rest, that kind of thing. So sometimes you have what's also called, I like to call this the external validation loops. You know, your cell phone, your watch, the notifications, the demands, the emails, the messaging that constantly pulls you forward. There's always another ping, another beep, another thing that has to get done. We get trained to react to everybody else's priorities, every notification while neglecting our own internal signals. We don't get any notifications from our own physiology or our own brain. Everything is coming to us from the outside. Goodness do I know that. How many times have I picked up my phone today and just looked at it because it either beeped or it buzzed, it vibrated? Ah heck, it doesn't even have to beep, buzz, or vibrate. I just want to check it. And that's the problem. I'm in an external validation loop. I don't have internal signals anymore. I need the phone, I need the TV, the radio, or something else to give me a signal and tell me what's next. That can go against

Notification Loops And Lost Internal Signals

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my self-care and perhaps yours too. How about this other one? Misguided self-sacrifice. So, uh Chris, I'm gonna start that over, and then there's misguided self-sacrifice. We absorb the false idea that prioritizing our own recovery means that we're taking away from our families, we're taking something away from the team or our clients, and that by taking care of ourselves, we are diminishing or hurting somebody else who could really use our help and could really use our time and our energy and our talents. How selfish. Right? There's a feeling like that, but running on an empty tank, sweet spotter, doesn't make you selfless. You know what it does? It makes you ineffective. It's only a matter of time before you burn out, or before you're giving less than you should, or maybe you even resent all that you are being pushed to do. But that's you. That's me, that's our mindset. Misguided self-sacrifice, false ideas appearing real. So, as we are talking about self-care, we talked about having the wrong mindset, sabotaging self-care. We talked about the transactional mindset, we talked about the armor mindset. Then we talked about outside distractions that condition us against self-care. We just talked about the cult of busyness and social proof, we talked about external validation loops, you know, the

Misguided Self-Sacrifice And Burnout

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notifications, that kind of stuff. We talked about misguided self-sacrifice, falling on the sword, you know, the idea that I can't care for me because I have to care for somebody else. How do we find our way back from the outside distractions, from the wrong sabotaging self-mindsets?

Three Mindset Shifts For Recovery

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Well, I have information for you today, sweet spotter. I am gonna give you three mindset shifts that could help you break out of these external traps that are set up for us and help us rebuild a self-care mindset. You know what it comes down to? You've got to be intentional. You've got to one, reframe self-care as a performance readiness indicator for yourself. Just reframe it as performance readiness. Self-care gets me ready. Number two, shift from outcome-based to identity-based boundaries. Instead of saying I'll try to go to bed early if I finish my work, which is outcome-based, shift it to who you are. I am someone who protects my sleep so I can bring my best energy tomorrow. You see how that's different from saying I'll try to go to bed early tonight if I get all my work done and all of that, to look, I'm somebody who protects my sleep, my sleep architecture, so I can bring my best energy tomorrow, so I'm going to bed. Protect your baseline first. So that's what I call shifting from an outcome-based identity to an identity-based perspective. And I promised you three. I I said that you have to reframe self-care as performance readiness. That means you have to stop viewing self-care as self-indulgence. View it as a non-negotiable maintenance. You don't skip physical recovery. Athletes don't skip physical recovery and expect to perform at an elite level. The brain and the body require the same operational standard. Whatever you're gonna give to your body, you have to give to your mind and your brain. So that's number one. Reframe self-care as a performance readiness indicator for you. Shift the outcome, shift from outcome-based to identity-based boundaries. I'm the kind of person who goes to bed early to protect my sleep so I can be the best, right? And number three, listen to the biometric and internal signals that are happening early. Listen to them early. What's happening inside of you early? When we burned out, that didn't happen overnight. When we feel so depleted, it didn't happen in one second or one day. No, there it leaves breadcrumbs. You if you if you're burned out and you're so tired and you're exhausted, look for the breadcrumbs. Because bit by bit, day by day, every time we ignored our self-care, when we didn't pay attention to our self-care, we were stacking or dropping breadcrumbs. Pay attention to your early indicators. Where when you're irritable, when your sleep is low and you're not getting enough of it, when your brain feels a bit foggy, or you lack focus, those are breadcrumbs. When you get snappy with people, you get you're getting frosty with individuals. Right? You're cutting corners, you're negotiating with yourself, you're no longer working out, you're going for all the fast food, and you're not cooking any healthy foods. Treat those signals as data. Actionable data. Don't just push through. Those are your early signals. That's your biometric. I call it biometric. I'm a doctor, I can't help myself. You know, they're they're internal signals. Okay, just let's listen to your signals, listen to your body, because your body keeps the score. Does that make sense? So we just reviewed Sweet Sparter, finding your way back. The three mindset shifts. One, reframe self-care as a performance readiness indicator for you. Two, shift from outcome-based to identity-based boundaries, and three, listen to your biometrics, listen to your internal signals early. Because, sweet spotter, you cannot give what you do not have. And you cannot pour from an empty cup. I love you. I really do. I care about you, and I want you to be well. That's why I made this podcast. So that we can slow down and think about mindset and how it helps or hurts our self-care. How do we reclaim our self-care? Yeah, how do we reclaim it? Because self-care is an act of recovery, and recovery requires the right cognitive frame. For science, for soul, and for success. This is the sweet spot.

Protect Your Baseline And Closing

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Remember, if you want to lead, to execute, and to show up at the highest level for the people in your life or on your team that depend on you, taking care of yourself. It is not optional, it is your primary responsibility. So look at your schedule today. Find one boundary you need to hold, or one habit of recovery you need to reclaim. One thing that you could do to show yourself that you care about you, even if that's looking in the mirror and saying I love you? And treat it with the exact same respect you would give your most important client or commitment. Until next time, protect your baseline, keep optimizing, and I'll see you in the sweet spot. This is Dr. Sweet. I'm out.

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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.

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Success in motion. Success in motion. Success in motion.