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.
And remember our new format, we're moving from our regular daily schedule to dropping just once a week. If you're missing the daily drops, revisit our archive of over 300 episodes to catch up!
Now, stay tuned for this weeks episode Slow Down Sunday!
Science Soul Success
In this episode, we slow down enough to notice what speed has been covering up and rebuild mindset from the inside out. We walk through Dr. Derek Sweet’s 5S approach and use breath, silence, and space to make room for clarity, healing, and steadier performance under pressure.
Suite Spots: • defining mindset as belief, expectation, attention, and interpretation • why living at full speed makes us react too fast • looking up to shift perspective and match a healthier rhythm • practicing stillness through the body to reveal what’s real • using silence to reduce input and hear the inner voice • surrendering what we cannot control to use energy wisely • choosing solitude to reconnect with what matters • creating space between stimulus and response for better choices • breathing with a longer exhale to support calm and recovery • affirmations for stillness, surrender, and peace
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Welcome to the sweet spot. 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 Slow Down Sunday.
Blessings, sweet dreamers. Welcome back to the Sweet Spot. So glad you could join me. That you're joining me on this journey we've been taking, exploring the contours and the inner sanctums of the word mindset. Absolutely, it's mindset time. And when we spend time with mindset, we become aware that we need to slow down and remind ourselves. Most of us know how to keep moving, but do we know how to operate in stillness? We know how to work, to compete, we know how to care for others, we know how to solve problems, answer messages, meet deadlines, and push through anything. But what many of us are not really practiced enough in is how to really become still. And that matters.
It matters because mindset, as we've been discussing, is shaped by what we believe, by what we expect, by what we pay attention to, and how we interpret what is happening around us. That is the definition of mindset. I'll repeat it for you. Mindset is shaped by what we believe, what we expect, what we pay attention to, what we interpret, how we interpret things, what decisions we're going to make, and how we're going to react based on these interpretations. And when we live at full speed, we often reach the destination before we understand anything. We answer before we listen. We push before we know what the moment actually requires. Have you ever been in a situation where your cell phone gets stuck for like a second and you keep hitting that button to get it moving? Have you ever been scrolling on social media and you come up on a post, and if it's dragging on and the person keeps talking and talking, but the in and this is I'm talking like five seconds, they don't tell you what it is. You move on. That's how fast the universe is moving for most of us. But
the real universe, the one that's out there, it offers a different rhythm than the speed by which we live. Stephen Hawkins, astrophysicist, once said, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Looking up, sweet builder. Looking up, sweet spotter, sweet dreamer. Looking up can change your perspective. Have you looked up today? Could you possibly have gone through a day and never looked up at the sky? That's so interesting. Looking up can change your perspective. Stars, they form slowly. Planets move in rhythm. Light travels across enormous distances before it even reaches us. You see, the universe is always moving, but it never seems to be in a hurry. What's that all about? Winter, spring, summer, and fall happening. The grass is growing. Things are happening, but yet they don't seem to be in a rush.
I call this the 5S approach: stillness, silence, surrender, solitude, and space. And I wanted to share that with you. So in my mindfulness wellness practice, this is what we sit and we ponder about. This is what we work on. We work on the five S's. So what's the five S's? And this will be quick
today. The first S is stillness. Stillness begins in the body. It's what we need most of. The body does need a lot of motion, but the mind could also use some stillness too. But the mind and body are connected, so stillness is the bridge. If you let your shoulders drop, if you relax your jaw, if you feel your feet on the floor, and you notice your breathing, you will be in touch with the moment. Stillness helps us recognize what speed has been covering up. When you do that and you become still, when we become still, we can get in touch with fatigue, with tension, with the grief that we might be carrying, the fears, the confusion. Maybe it's a decision we've been avoiding. Nothing like stillness to help us know. To help us know what's going on, to find what's happening because we've set we've sat still. So in our mindfulness work, sometimes I would sit with with a client or sit with the performer, and we will practice stillness in the room and listen and know. The ancient wisdom confirms this. Be still and know. Be still and know that I'm God, right? That's where you find your truest self is in stillness. Deeper meanings come out of stillness. It's a wonderful practice. The second
that's the silence. You know, silence is underrated and it's so powerful. You know how many of us can't be silent? That it's very difficult to be with yourself in a silent place? Silence gives the mind a break from the constant input. Imagine no notifications, no television, no need to fill every empty moment. Remember, we've said this that the world keeps competing for our minds and our mindset. And silence can feel uncomfortable at first. Because it allows, when we're silent, we're allowing thoughts and feelings to rise up that we may be suppressing by being constantly on social media or constantly in the TV or involved in activities or speaking all the time, talking. Stay with it gently. Stay with the silence quietly, and you may begin to hear something important. There's so much information. We have a line that we say in our mindfulness practice that the universe is always speaking. Listen to the voice, the still voice, the quiet voice, the inner voice. Sit with that in silence and listen. Sometimes you can listen for your greatness. Sometimes you could listen for hope. Sometimes you could listen for the truth. Silence is the bridge.
The third S is surrender. And that word sometimes gives folks trouble when you say surrender. But what it means is releasing the pressure to control everything. There are outcomes that we just cannot guarantee. There are people we simply cannot change. And there are timelines that we cannot force. You know what? Surrender, letting go. Surrender helps us stop fighting what is already here so we can use our energy wisely. I'll say it again. Surrender. It helps us stop fighting what is already here so we can use our energies wisely. I'm reminded of the gospel song, I surrender all.
Yeah, solitude gives us that time with ourselves, it gives you room to hear your own voice before the expectations of everybody else enters the conversation. Solitude. And some of us are scared of that. It's hard to be by ourselves because we've grown accustomed to having so much around us. But if we can practice it, even if it's for two minutes, it can help you remember what matters, what you need, and what this season of life may be asking from you. It might also be a good thing to get to know you again and get that perspective. You talking to you, you sitting with you, you loving you.
And the final S, space. Yeah, space, the margin around your life, that space. It's the pause before you answer, putting space between what's being said to you or what's being shown to you, what's being given to you in the moment, and how you respond. That there's a space between the stimulus and the response. Just having that level of awareness, that level of mindfulness, to be aware of the space between what's being said, what the stimulus is, what the cue is, and how you're going to respond. It's the pause before answering. Space is an open hour on that calendar that you're going to fill an appointment with. As you become more aware, you recognize that you may want to guard that hour for silence. You may want to guard it for meditation, for solitude, for surrender. Open hours are the sacredness of your space. It is space is like the breath between one responsibility and the next. Remember to breathe. Remember to breathe between responsibilities.
In fact, why don't you stop for a second with me? And let's create a space right now for a deep breath. In through your nose, hold and then slowly out through your mouth. Letting the exhale be longer than the inhale. In the breathing work we do in mindfulness in the sessions that we have, we practice the long exhale. The deep breath, the hold, and the long exhale. That triggers the rest and digest nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, the vagus nerve, deeper relaxation, a deeper letting go. Space gives wisdom time to arrive. We've got to create a space for the wisdom to come in. For the knowing to come in. For great miracles to show up. Carl Sagan, the astrophysicist, once said, somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. Sweet spotter, perhaps something is waiting to be known within you. A truth. A need, a new direction, a revelation, an answer. Maybe it's a quieter way of living. You may not hear it while you're rushing around while you're so busy. But today, if you took Dr. Sweet's 5S approach, the mindfulness approach, the 5S approach, and find a few minutes of stillness, protect a little silence, surrender what you cannot control, spend time in solitude. Create space around your thoughts. And then notice what becomes clearer for you as you practice this. And you're doing just fine. You're doing just fine. This costs nothing. There's no class, there's no hidden fee. This is just about being intentional.
So here are today's affirmations. I give myself permission to become still. I give myself permission to become still. Silence helps me hear what matters. I surrender what I cannot control. I surrender what I cannot control. I create space for clarity, healing, and peace. I create space for clarity, for healing and peace. For science, for soul, Chris I want to say that again. For science. For soul and for success. You've been listening to the sweet spot. Slow down. Get your mind right. Get your mindset right as you slow your breathing. Look up today. Leave some room for wonder and amazement. And keep finding your sweet spot. This is Dr. Derek Sweet. Love and blessings.
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 suscience, soul and success, stay with the Sweet Spot.
