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GratitudeUnlocked 5/7: Finish With Purpose — The Gratitude Reset That Carries You Through #FinishStrongFriday

• Derek H. Suite, M.D.

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Science Soul Success

Fridays can feel like a headwind.
 Focus thins.
 Energy bargains with you.
 Stress tries to run the last play.

So today we go back to something simple and powerful:
 gratitude as performance science.
 Not soft.
 Not sentimental.
 Strategic.

Dr. Robert Emmons’ work shows that thankfulness reconnects you to meaning,
 steadies your nervous system,
 and helps you cross the finish line
 with clarity instead of panic.

And as Kendrick said,
 “Pressure makes diamonds, and pressure bust pipes.”
Gratitude is how you choose which one you become.

Let’s recap the week’s pillars:
 Widen your attention.
 Move from abundance.
 Compete from your lane.
 Rebuild self-trust when mistakes hit.
 Now we turn all of that into a Friday playbook.

Under the hood, here’s what’s happening:
 Your HPA axis is tired.
 Your vagus nerve is begging for a signal to slow down.
 One grateful pause — even a few seconds —
 redirects blood flow back to the prefrontal cortex.
 Better decisions.
 Cleaner priorities.
 Less static.
 The amygdala stops yelling.

You see this in real moments:
 A midfielder chasing one more run.
 A marathoner holding form at mile 18.
 Anyone finishing a week they thought might break them.
 Same body.
 Same stress.
 Different mindset.

And here’s the secret weapon:
 sleep.

A two-minute gratitude practice tonight
 can increase deep, slow-wave sleep the same night.
 More recovery.
 More clarity tomorrow.
 More you.

So here’s your Friday ritual:
 Pause.
 Breathe.
 Name one thing that carried you this week.
 And if you can, express it to someone.
 Because gratitude that stays silent
 is a gift left unopened.

Today’s affirmation:
 “I finish strong because I remember what carried me.”

If this spoke to you, follow the show,
 share it with a friend,
 and leave a quick review so more people can finish strong with us.
 And tell us in the comments:
 What’s the one thing you’re grateful you carried through this week?

#FinishStrongFriday #GratitudeUnlocked #ScienceSoulSuccess #RecoveryMindset #FinishTheWeekRight #ElitePerformance

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back. Welcome back to the Sweet Spot. It is Finish Strong Friday here on the Sweet Spot where science, soul, and success have come together to help us walk through a wonderful concept known as gratitude. Welcome back to our Gratitude Unlocked series. It's Friday, not just any Friday, Finish Strong Friday. The point in the week where most people's bodies feel the weight, where the mind gets a little thin and the energy starts to negotiate with you. And that's exactly why we named it Finish Strong Friday. So before we talk about Finishing Strong, let's step back and look at the path we've been on with Dr. Robert Emmons' book Thanks, which we've been unpacking all week. Because this book isn't about forced positivity, it's about real measurable high-performance gratitude that actually changes the way your mind and body operate. One of the things that we've been marveling at here in this series is that gratitude is never really taught. We kind of stumble into it in life. We kind of hear the word gratitude, but we don't always appreciate how much gratitude is giving us. What a powerful force that has been with humans since the dawn of time, from the ancient Egyptians all the way to now. How gratitude has gone from being a ritual to now becoming a kind of performance science. Interesting, as they say, right? I'm Dr. Derek Sweet. I'm your board certified psychiatrist here, but more than that, I'm your partner on this journey, this mystery we call life, and together we're unpacking gratitude so that we can live an even better life. Look, I just want to recap for you really quickly what happened this week in case you didn't hear the other episodes. On Monday, we saw from Dr. Evans' book how gratitude widens your field of vision. On Tuesday, gratitude, it helped us take action, not from fear, but from what we have. Wednesday, when it all Wednesday, gratitude was used to help us clean up our competitive mindset and compete from an internal place of power rather than just comparison. Trust yourself Thursday. Remember that one? How gratitude rebuilds your self-trust and rewrites how you interpret your challenges. And today, Finish Strong Friday, we close the week with the skill most people underestimate. Gratitude helping you finish strong. Not by giving you more willpower, but by helping your brain and body recover just enough to be wise, to be focused, and steady as you approach the finish line. Whatever work you're doing, whatever finishing you have to do. So one of Dr. Emmons' findings in this book is that people who are grateful tend to burn out less. Why is that? Because gratitude connects us back to meaning. And meaning is one of the body's most powerful energy sources. When you and I feel connected to why we're doing something, somehow our systems find the strength to handle the what. Somehow we get energy and power and fuel to make it happen. Have you ever been there? Where you're working on a project, something you really, really want. It could be planning a party, it could be working out because you have a big game coming out. I don't know. You just find all this energy because you're so happy, you so want to do this. Picture a soccer midfielder late in the match, right? Picture that. Legs are heavy, lungs burning, the focus is kind of slipping. Late in the game, or a marathon runner, a marathon runner, the 18th mile, you know, it's it's getting tight. The mistake you make when you are under pressure is to give in to the pressure and think about the pressure. You know what stops that kind of thing? Gratitude. Gratitude can bring you back to yourself. When you say, you know what, this is hard, but let's guess guess what? I'm grateful for my conditioning, for my awareness, for my training, for my team, for my coach, for my family, for the opportunity to be in this moment. I get to be tired, I get to be in this. You know when you start thinking like that, your system settles, your focus sharpens, you finish with purpose instead of panic. Gratitude doesn't remove the fatigue, not at all. You know what it does? It gives you something stronger to stand on. That's it. Gratitude will be what you stand on. You know, there's this uh saying standing on business. Well, let your business today that you stand on be gratitude. Because your nervous system is usually worn down by Friday, it's tired, and the reason is that you have a hypothalamus, a pituitary gland, and an adrenal system, HPA access they call it, that's always working all week long in the background. You don't even know it's there. But this HPA access is working, it's doing work for you, and all this cortisol and stress hormones, and all this stuff that you're secreting and I'm secreting all week. By Friday, it's a lot. So, how do you balance that? Get the rest, get the relaxation, but get some gratitude in. You know why? Because gratitude will activate your relaxation system, your parasympathetic system. We've talked about that. The parasympathetic uh the vagus nerve, remember? We talked about that. Every time you appreciate something steady or meaningful in your life, your vagus nerve fires. That's a cranial nerve, and that instantly lowers the temperature. It begins to calm you down, it begins to shift you away from just surviving to being more stable, it calms your heart rate, it helps you relax and digest, it puts you in a better space. You know what else gratitude does? It boosts your prefrontal clarity, your prefrontal cortex. You know this by now, the CEO of your brain, your planning, your focus, your decision-making center. It gets sluggish by Friday. Come on, we've been working all week. We're all week, we've been really pushing. And gratitude, when we take that moment to breathe, to step back, to figure out that one thing that's still steady and working, that one person I'm so grateful for. Gratitude redirects your blood flow back to this region of the brain, back to your PFC, back to your prefrontal cortex, back to your brain's CEO. And you know what? You think more clearly. You know what? Your decisions feel easier. Your mind gets organized again. How great is that? Just by thinking through your gratitude. Here's a third thing that it does. It lowers the background emotional noise. That's right, all week long your amygdala. I know you know who that is. That's the threat center in the brain. That that's well, it's the alarm bell. It's always looking for what's wrong. It's trying to protect you, it's not a bad thing, it's just that it can get overworked. All week long, your amygdala and salience networks, they've been scanning the world for stress. By Friday, they're jumpy, a little edgy. You know what relaxes them? Gratitude. Yeah. Dr. Emmons found in his book that gratitude lures activities in these brain circuits, turning down tension, turning down irritability, turning down the overthinking and the mental clutter. Everybody could use this. You're an athlete, gratitude will help you be a clearer, more focused athlete. You're a cop, you're a lawyer, you're a doctor, you're a homemaker, you're a grandmother. What are you? Whatever you do, trust me. This practice of gratitude will help you quiet the static in your world. So you can hear yourself again, you can improve your sleep. Oh, yeah, that's another one. Gratitude improves your sleep quality. Dr. Emmons found this in the book. It's one of the most powerful findings in this book. He did all this research, and you know what he found? That people who practice a few minutes of genuine gratitude in the evening. A gratitude journal, or they just sit and think about what they're thankful for, they increase their deep sleep. Slowway sleep the same night, according to the research, the type of sleep that restores physical and mental energy. Man, you know what that means? That gratitude doesn't just help you finish Friday, it helps you start Saturday with more strength, too, because you're getting great sleep. And who doesn't need great sleep? And it's free. I don't have to write you a prescription for this. How cool is that? And there are no side effects. So a lot of times we're not taught this stuff, but it's real. So William Arthur Ward's quote, and I'll end with this feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. Holy cow! What a quote! Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. Alright now, let's finish strong by giving the world the best present it can ever get. You. So before you end the day, I want you to pause, I want you to ask, I want you to breathe. What's the one thing I'm grateful that I carried through this whole week? Is it a lesson? Is it a win? Is it a moment? Think of a moment, uh any moment that you felt some gratitude this week, and let that be your closing story for this week. Affirmation. Today I finish strong because gratitude resets my mind, my energy, and my purpose in this land. How powerful is that? Today I finish strong because gratitude resets my mind, my energy, and my purpose. Wow, thank you so much for listening to me this week about gratitude. Tomorrow, Self Care Saturday. We're digging in into how gratitude supports your physical body, your recovery, your calm, your breath, your stress load, and your ability to regroup. Don't miss it. You're gonna love it here on Self Care Saturday tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend. And uh yeah, I'm thankful for you.