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Science Soul Success
Today we stop romanticizing “wanting to win” and get honest about what actually separates consistent winners from everyone else. We show how standards and fundamentals create a performance floor you can rely on when pressure floods your mind and goals disappear.
Suite Spots • wanting to win as the most common and least useful desire • standards as the floor you refuse to drop below • fundamentals and routines as what you still do on your worst day • goals that pull you up versus standards that hold you up • discipline as a decision made once rather than daily negotiation • research showing specific demanding standards beat “do your best” • why outcome obsession shifts attention and triggers choking • Zen archery and focusing on the shot instead of the target • a weekly prompt to define your basics and build them board by board
Oh, by the way, if this meant something to you, please subscribe i-follow me--if you haven't and become part of the Suitespot family. And if you know somebody who needs some help to be on the winning side and some strategies, maybe this episode on winning could be helpful. Share it.
Success ocean. Success ocean success in ocean. 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 Win It All Wednesday.
Raise your floor. The science of standards. You don't rise to your goals, you fall to your floor. That's the title, sweet spotters, of our series here that we're doing on standards. You don't rise in this episode we talk about. You don't rise to your goals, you fall to your floor. Everybody wants to win. Of course we do. Say it out loud and it makes sense. I want to be a winner. But wanting to win is the most common thing in the room. It's also the least useful thing in the room, too, because everybody wants it. Everybody across from you wants to win just as bad as you do, just as bad as I do. So today we're going to sip with an uncomfortable truth. An uncomfortable truth about what actually separates the ones who really win from the ones who only want to. And the whole idea, sweet spotters of this series stands on this. If you are the one who wants to win, you also have to be the one who's willing to do whatever it takes to win. A standard is going to be your first step. A standard is your floor. And your floor is the basics. Your floor is the fundamentals. Yeah, your floor is about the simple things you do right every single time. The grind that you get into every single day, the routine, the boring stuff, the ordinary things that you do. Long after everything stops being exciting. A standard, as we have discussed, isn't the ceiling you're reaching for. It's the line you refuse to drop below. It's the floor. You don't go below this line. My mother told me to make that bed up in the morning when I get up. Notice I say in the morning when I get up, because I'm still doing it. That's what she told me, and I have to do it. You see, your standard is what you still do on your worst day. So even if I'm having a bad day, a bad morning, guess what I do? I make my bed. Even if I'm super excited and I want to get out and get the day going, guess what I do? I make the bed. If it's raining outside and I don't have anywhere to go or whatever, I make the bed. It's what you still do on your worst day. The effort you don't drop, the rep you're not gonna skip, the prep you're not gonna cut. You see, a goal, as we've said before, it can pull you up. But a standard, oh a standard holds you up. And on the hard days, the goal is nowhere to be found. Isn't that true? On the hard days, goals will leave you in favor of something easier, in favor of a distraction, in favor of an excuse. As my guy Cam Clark once said, right here on the sweet spot in his interview. We have reasons or excuses, and on the hard days, the goal is nowhere to be found. The floor, however, the standard. Remember, the standard is the floor, is the only thing under your feet when the going gets really rough. The basics are all you've got. Return to your basics. Yeah, yeah, we've been a couple of weeks into this whole series, this idea of standards, revisiting it. We saw it in the power of standards podcast that we did here on the Sweet Spot a few months ago. We saw it in the Spirit of the Game podcast with Alan Houston. Yeah. We learned a couple of episodes ago that you're always standing on a floor. A set of basics you are already living by. Whether you choose them or you've inherited them from the room around you, you're standing on something. That's a standard. And here's the thing: you can raise that floor just by changing the room you stand in. We also talked about the discipline. We learned that the disciplined individuals aren't grinding harder than you. What they've mastered, they've turned the fundamentals into a decision they make only once. So the flaw holds them without them needing to put an extra effort or fight. It's no negotiating in the morning at 7 a.m. to go work out. There's no negotiating whatever it is that you have to do because you have a standard, you've made the decision. That's what we've learned. Which brings us today. Today brings us the notion that everybody's chasing the ceiling. But winners are building the floor. That's right. They're building the floor, the foundation, they're setting the standards. And they take the decision out of it because that's what they are and what they do and who they are and what they do. It took me years to understand that the people who win the most are not the ones staring hardest at winning. They're the ones who are honoring the basics while everyone else is chasing the ceiling. You fall to the level of your floor. And your floor is about your fundamentals. So you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your fundamentals. On the night, it counts, under real pressure, you don't climb up to the beautiful goal you set back a month or two ago. You drop to your floor. The basics that you had drilled into you, whatever you had truly built. So on a hard night, when you're really being tested, or when the challenge really comes, that floor is the only thing that's holding you up. And that's what you're relying on. Yeah.
And there's science here. Remember, on the sweet spot, we're about science, soul, and success. There's science here that that makes all of this even stranger. Two researchers that I am familiar with, Locke and Laham, spent decades proving that specific demanding standards beat telling yourself to just do your best. Self-talk is great and it's important. It's a skill, it's a mental skill. But you know what's important? What's really important is having a specific demanding standard for yourself. Because it's actually a bit more powerful than just saying, I'll just do my best. You see, you might already know what I'm saying, but here's the part you may not really fully appreciate. Gripping the win can wreck the very performance you're chasing. Holding on to just having to win, must win, can actually wreck your performance. Watch what happens under pressure. Attention, it floods your mind. It floods the moment, it floods onto the outcome, the scoreboard, the result, the stakes, the crowd, everything. It just goes nuts. And the skilled performer, the one who's done this 10,000 times, suddenly starts washing their hands, they suddenly become conscious of what's going on, they're completely distracted, and they start thinking about things, stuff they already know that's automatic for them, but they start thinking about it. Thinking about things the body already knows how to do. And then their motion gets interrupted, their game is thrown off, and they choke. To win, sweet spotter, to win, you have to understand that you cannot let your conscious mind start overthinking the moment, start gripping the win before you actually perform the task. The win you were clutching, ironically, is the thing that cost you the win. Holding on too tight. You ever been there? So invested in the outcome, so scared that you're not gonna win, so desperate that you start clutching and gripping and you're no longer performing. Now, here's where it gets beautiful.
The people who figured this out, what I'm talking about, they weren't scientists, they were monks. Yes, monks. There's a teaching that comes out of Zen from the old Japanese art of archery. A Western philosopher went to Japan to study it and wrote about the master who trained him. And the master kept telling him something that made no sense at first. Stop aiming at the target. Hmm. The student was baffled. The whole point is the target, isn't it? But the master understood what our science is just catching up to. When you obsess over the bullseye, sweet spotter, you tighten up, you force it, and you miss. But when you pay attention to the shot itself, when you tend to the shot itself, the stance, the breath, the draw, and the release, the basics, the floor of the shot, then and only then the target takes care of itself. That's not mysticism I'm talking about. It's just the same truth that science is giving us, but it just happened 500 years earlier. Take your eyes off the outcome. Put everything into the fundamentals and let the results come to you. Modern science and ancient wisdom shaking hands. Take your eyes off of the outcome, pour everything into the fundamentals, go back to your basics, and let the results happen. Let them come to you. You know, Paul understood this too. Long before there was a sports science department, in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 in the ancient wisdom, he writes about runners in a race. You know, he says everyone runs, he says, but one and only one takes the prize. So guess what? He advises run to win. The one that I really like. Every athlete, this is in the ancient wisdom, exercises self-control in all things. You see, there's a discipline of the basics, there's a discipline in the language of even that day. So
here's your move, sweet spotter, this week. Sweet winner that you are. I want you to take your eyes off of whatever it is that you're trying to win in this moment. Just for a second. Ask yourself, what does your floor? What does your standard? What do your basics actually look like? Ask yourself what your floor actually looks like. The fundamentals under your game, under your performance, under your task, under your assignment. The fundamentals. What does the next possession look like? What does the next rep look like? What does the next action look like? The next move. What does it look like? What does practice mean? What does rehearsal mean when nobody's watching? And build that. Build those basics. Build your floor board by board. Maybe you've never even thought about your floor. Maybe you've just been looking only at the ceiling because you want to win so bad. Guess what? You got information today. So yeah, wherever you are today, sweet spotter, ahead or behind, winning big or just trying to hang in there, be like the archer. Take your eyes off the scoreboard, put them on your basics, the next rep, the next possession, the next action, and let the wind take care of itself. You see, if you build a floor high enough, the trophy you're chasing turns out to be what you're actually standing on. Let's say that again. Build the floor high enough, and the trophy you were chasing turns out to be standing on it. For science, for soul, and for success, you are in the sweet spot. You're born to win, you're meant to win, and you've got to prepare to win. This is how we do it. This is Dr. Sweet, talk to you soon. Oh, by the way, if this meant something to you, please subscribe if you haven't and become part of the Sweet Spot family. And if you know somebody who needs some help to be on the winning side and some strategies, maybe this episode on winning could be helpful. Share it. And I'll see you next time.
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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.
