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Neurosurgeon and award-winning author Dr. W. Lee Warren, MD delivers daily prescriptions from neuroscience, faith, and common sense on how to lead a healthier, better, happier life. You can’t change your life until you change your mind, and Dr. Warren will teach you the art of self brain surgery to get it done. His new book, Hope Is the First Dose, is available everywhere books are sold.
Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you. It is Frontal Lobe Friday,
second day of All in August 2024, and I am excited and grateful to be here with
you because we're going to do a little self-brain surgery today.
Listen, I've got a short message for you. Okay. We've been doing just weekly
podcasts, but for all in August, there's going to be more.
And today I just want to make sure that you are oriented and aimed and launched in the right direction.
So we're going to get this done together for all in August. Okay.
And I just want to encourage you wherever you are and whatever you're doing,
I want you to just take a minute to take a breath. Okay.
Acknowledge that you're safe and secure and you're comfortable and you're listening
to this podcast, whatever you're doing, wherever you are.
Just take a minute to stop thinking about the cluttered day ahead of you,
the busyness, how hot you are, how stressed you are, how sad or sick or traumatized
or worried or anxious, or even if you're having the best day of your life.
I just want to take a second, take a pause and just make sure that you got your head on straight,
that you're ready to commit to going all in, that you're not going to get overwhelmed
with the past habits and approaches and things that you've been doing that you've
decided that you're going to reorient.
You're going to take a different tangent this month. You're going to let some of the former things go.
As the Bible says, you're going to cast off anything that hinders or something that entangles you.
You're going to decide that it's time for a new thing, a new start,
and it's time to go all in.
That's what Frontal Lobe Friday is about today. We're going to engage this incredible
gift that we have that God's given us. The only things he created that have
this ability, you can mentally decide to think about one thing and not another thing.
You can decide to switch your train of thought, to tell your brain who's boss,
to remember that mind is in charge of brain.
If you will operate your mind that way, if you'll commit and go all in with
this mind down worldview, mind down, not brain out.
If you'll commit with me there, then we're going to see some incredible progress
this month. As I said yesterday, with trembling hands and a heart full of hope,
we are going to get after it and make a difference today, okay?
There's some stuff going on in the world that you can't control, okay?
There's political things. It's an election year. You don't know what's happening.
You like one party or the other. You're worried about the candidate.
Don't worry about that right now.
You control what you can control, okay?
You biopsy your thoughts. You remember that feelings aren't facts,
that not every thought is true, that the world out there wants to fill your
mind up to stuff that it wants you to react to on its own agenda.
And I want you to start all in August, every day. Commit. Get up a little bit earlier.
Spend some time, a quiet time in prayer or meditation. Remember,
that's good for your brain.
Whether or not you believe that there's a God who's created you and He loves
you and His Spirit's inside you, whether you believe that or not,
the research is clear, okay?
Spending a few minutes meditating and praying, if you want to look at it that
way, or just calming your mind and getting all that chatter and clutter out
is good for your brain. Your hippocampus grows.
You become more emotionally resilient. You get on top of that cycle of hearing
thoughts that are coming from your brain that are really just programs that
are running programs that make you think that you have to react to them.
You can get on top of that cycle. You can engage selective attention.
And I want you to give thanks for that. Okay? Be grateful for it.
No matter what your belief system is.
I believe that I can be thankful for that because I was created fearfully and
wonderfully. I'm grateful that he made me and gave me that ability.
But even if you just can be grateful for a second, that you do have the ability to switch.
What we know is gratitude and anxiety can't coexist at the same time.
If you want to be less anxious, you want to start getting some traction,
some action, some satisfaction of moving forward in your life.
This is how, this is the path, okay?
It's not my truth. It's not your truth. That's the truth. If you go all in with
this idea that you can change your mind, you'll start seeing your life change.
So here's what we're going to talk about. I just want you to take a second and
take a little history like we do in the office in medicine, in the hospital.
We'll take a little soap note.
Subjective. What am I feeling? What's going on? What symptoms am I having?
What thoughts am I encountering in my head? What am I dealing with emotionally?
What have I been through? Subjective stuff, okay? What do you feel?
Now, this is not the same as saying pay attention to your feelings,
let your feelings lead you around, but just acknowledge them for a second.
Take a second, acknowledge the things that you're dealing with going on in your
life. What are you afraid of?
What's hurting you? What's limiting you? What's frustrating you? Okay, take a second.
Now, objective. What is some evidence that the way you've been operating in
response to those things has been good for you or not good for you?
Are you engaging in habits that are keeping you stuck in those things?
Are you avoiding them? Are you paying tomorrow taxes?
Are you failing to love tomorrow more because you don't like how you feel tonight,
so you're treating a bad feeling with a bad operation, and now you got a headache,
and you hung over, and you didn't deal with the thing, and you still have it
to deal with today, and another problem? problem.
What's the story? Objective. Look at data. If you could get outside yourself,
switch from patient to surgeon and run some tests and look at some lab work
and see what's actually true.
How does the subjective things line up with the objective things?
Just take a second. Do that little exercise.
Okay, so we got it for you today. Just want you to take a second,
like I said, do some subjective assessment.
Do a little objective assessment. Run some data. Get where you really are so
that you can say, hey, I'm not going to get just sucked back in to old habits.
One of the things that happens when we try to start something new is that we
just forget to pay attention. We forget to be intentional.
And we find ourselves three days into a new month where we said things were
going to be different and we're just doing the same old things again because
we're not paying attention.
So one thing is to be aware of the approach that you're taking.
If you're going to make a change, that's going to take some intention and some effort.
It's going to take some mental energy to be diligent, not to just slip into
the old way that you've been doing things.
When we talk about approaches in neurosurgery, we're talking about the position
the patient's in, the place where we make the incision, the type of bone opening
we make, the way in which we retract brain or remove bone or do those things.
It's a set of kind of sort of strategic and philosophical things that help us
get into the right place to get the job I've done.
But sometimes if you're not careful, if you're not careful with how you apply
an approach, you can drift in and end up melding an approach with another approach.
It's slipping into an old habit or coming in to something in a different angle
and not quite honoring the plan that you made for a particular surgery.
And then you find yourself frustrated and stuck and you can't figure out why
it's not working the way you want.
And then you realize, oh, I didn't tilt the head far enough.
I didn't angle the table.
I didn't really apply the approach that I intended to apply,
and then you have to reorient yourself back to the approach, okay?
But I don't want you to waste time in August here having to continually reorient
yourself back to the approach. I want you to start.
We're only on day two, so if you didn't start yesterday, just jump in and commit.
Draw a line in the sand and say, hey, what got me here won't get me there, okay?
Whatever you're dealing with in your life, whatever you wrote down or thought
about in the subjective and objective situation up there, and fill in the blank with whatever it was.
I'm worried about the economy. I'm worried about my finances.
I'm worried about my health. I'm dealing with some trouble in my marriage.
I'm dealing with anxiety. I've got a bad diagnosis.
I'm grieving over losing my child. Whatever it is, okay?
Whatever's going on in your life, if it's affecting your ability to find purpose
and meaning, become healthier, feel better, and be happier, I want you to stop
living. And then I'm not saying don't grieve. I'm not saying don't heal.
I'm not saying don't deal with it I'm saying decide that you're going to get
better and in order to get better You've got to change your approach if you're
dealing with being stuck,
Then it means that the things the tools that the strategies you've been using
haven't been working You're here listening to my voice that lee warren talked
to you at five o'clock in the morning because something isn't working Okay,
whether it's spiritual whether it's emotional whether it's mental professional
professional, relational,
whatever it is, physical, you're
dealing with something that hasn't been working and it's all in August.
And we're going to commit for the next 30 days to trying a different approach.
Okay. It can feel like too much to bear.
All the things we just dealt with, we listed the subjective things of what we're
feeling and what we're thinking.
We listed some objective data. Maybe it's true. Maybe you are failing in some
way. Maybe you haven't performed the way you want to. Maybe you have been stuck.
Maybe you are choosing using numbing agents instead of progressing.
Or maybe the objective data is not as bad as you think, and you're just beating
yourself up. It's time to change the habit, beating yourself up unfairly.
It's time to change positions from patient to doctor and look at yourself from
the outside objectively and have compassion on yourself.
Yesterday, I was doing a run, and I run past this rodeo arena here in Nebraska.
One part of the run, I run past a rodeo arena.
And And I had this vision, this mental picture that came.
I did an Instagram post about it. By the way, if you're not following me,
at DrLeeWarren on Instagram, I'm going to try to do a lot of encouraging post during all in August.
So join me, sign up, follow, at DrLeeWarren, D-R-L-E-E-W-A-R-E-N on Instagram.
But I posted this reel yesterday.
And I said, imagine if you were sitting up in the stands in the rodeo arena,
okay, and you were watching a barrel racer, for example, and let's say she came
around the corner and fell off her horse and injured herself.
She's in the championship. She falls off the horse and injures herself.
We see this at the Olympics sometimes. The guy running trips and falls and he's
hurt and he's down on the track.
Imagine you're watching this from the stands and the barrel racer or the runner
gets up and starts hobbling forward towards the goal.
The barrel racer finds her horse and is trying, even though she injured her
leg, she's trying with all her might to get back on the horse.
The runner's getting up and he's bleeding from his knees and he's trying to
get back on the track because you realize they're not going to give up.
They're not going to quit. They're going to try to finish this race.
What sort of thoughts are you having about that person?
Are you going to look at that athlete, that barrel racer, that Olympic runner?
Are you going to say, man, what a loser. They tripped and fell.
They fell off their horse. What an idiot.
They can't even stay on the horse. Are you going to think that kind of thought?
Or are you going to say, wow, they fell and they could have just given up,
but they're trying. They're not going to quit.
They're going to get on that horse. They're going to finish this race.
And then you start building emotional support for them and cheering them on.
And imagine now, switch positions.
Imagine you're down in the arena and you're on the ground and you've gotten
hurt and you're going to try to finish that race.
And all of a sudden you hear the crowd coming in, cheering for you.
Go Lola, go Marnie, go Brian, go Troy, go John, go Lisa.
You start hearing them cheer for you and that gives you courage.
And then it builds up and you start climbing back on the horse and you're going to finish the race.
Why do you cheer for that person instead of jeering them?
Because finishing the race is a great story and we're all motivated by heroes
overcoming adversity and finishing their story strong, aren't we?
We're motivated by that.
That, my friend, is what I want for you as all in August. I want you to get
to the end of this month and say, you know what?
It didn't all work out the way I thought. Maybe it wasn't perfect.
Maybe I made some mistakes. maybe I had some days that didn't go well, but I finished strong.
I went all in. I drew a line in the sand. I changed my approach.
I reoriented myself to the approach when I began to drift, and I got after it, and it made progress.
You know what God says? Don't despise small beginnings.
If you're making a change and it feels like just a drop in the bucket,
what's it going to matter? My whole life's been a disaster.
What's it going to matter if I take a month out of my life and try something
different? God says, hey, I rejoice to see the work begin.
Okay, friend? He's given you everything you need. All the tools are already there.
So imagine you changed positions, you're in the doctor's chair now,
you're looking at yourself and you're going to apply that compassion and that
energy and that empathy, just like you would if you were watching from the rodeo
stands, that person get back up on the horse.
You're going to deal with yourself with compassion, and you're going to remind
yourself that you don't have to have permission to do self-brain surgery.
You're already doing it. You don't have to have anybody's permission to change
approaches because you are going to practice in a way that helps yourself become
healthier, feel better, and be happier.
That's what good doctors do. They encourage their patients to get after it,
to make the change, to stop contemplating and start operating.
There's a time when it's appropriate to pick up the knife and start the operation.
And that's today, my friend.
Hey, I just want you to understand, maybe you're feeling tired.
Maybe you're overworked, overstressed, overgrieved, just over it.
Maybe you're tired of being so tired. Life seems to be delivering a relentless
series of body blows or massive things or impossible situations.
Or maybe it's just this sort of ling chi, this Chinese torture technique,
the death by a thousand cuts. Maybe it's a bunch of little stuff.
You just can't quite get the promotion. You're not quite getting the satisfaction
you need out of your marriage. You can't connect to your teenager.
Maybe it's just this bunch of little stuff, little nagging health issues,
contretemps, interpersonal frustrations that never seem to stop.
Maybe you desperately need this story to wrap up in a way that makes sense,
and you need this denouement that never seems to come.
You want the story to wrap up and end the way you want to, and it's just not happening.
I'm using these weird French words. I don't know why. Contre Tom and Daniel
Mon. Look those up. They're appropriate for this conversation.
It just feels, if it starts to feel like I'm dropping bombs right over the target
of your life right now, I've got good news.
Here's the good news. You're going to make it because you decided today on August 2nd to get after it.
You can make these changes that you need to, my friend. You can stop feeling
so overwhelmed all the time.
But you can't change your life until you change your mind. You've got to decide
at some point to get after it. Yesterday, we talked about Steven Pressfield's book, Turning Pro.
And today, I'm going to give you one more book, The Practice by Seth Godin.
The Practice. It's a marketing book, okay? It's about business.
It's not about stuff we're talking about. But it actually is.
And he talks about the fact that it is possible.
At the outset of the book, I want to just read you a little passage from Seth Godin.
And you're not maybe writing a book. Maybe you're not painting a picture.
Maybe you're not doing something creative. Maybe we're just talking about your life here.
So just substitute the words that make it work for you.
But listen to Seth Godin. It's possible.
This is a book. This is a story, friend. This is a podcast.
Seth Godin says this is a book for people who want to lead, to write, or to sing.
For people who seek to teach, to innovate, and to solve interesting problems.
For people who want to go on in the journey to become a therapist, a painter, or a leader.
For people like us, it's possible. The people who came before us have managed
to speak up, stand up, and make a difference.
While each journey is unique, each follows a pattern, and once you see it, it's yours.
We simply need to find the courage to be more creative. The forces that are
holding us back have long been unseen, but we can see and understand them and begin to do our work.
The practice is there if we're willing to sign up for it, and the practice will
open Open the door to the change you seek to make.
Friend, it's time to change your practice.
It's time to change your approach. It's time to go all in on this life that God is calling you to.
If you've been stuck in this cognitive dissonance of knowing that your life
is supposed to be somewhat different than it has been.
If you know that you are made for more, if you know that you weren't supposed
to let that massive thing knock you off track and you haven't been able to find
your way forward, it's time to go all in.
It's time to reorient yourself, to aim forward and not backward.
It's time to stop living in then.
It's time to stop wishing for when. It's time to start getting after it now.
It's time to change our mind and it's time to change our life.
It's frontal lobe Friday. I want you to engage that gift of selective attention.
I want you to choose a new approach with me. I want you to reorient yourself
to the approach all through August as soon as you feel drift,
as soon as you realize you're slipping back into old habits.
I want you to sign up for it, live it out, follow it, press the gas,
stop contemplating and start operating.
I want you to change your mind and change your life. You've got everything you need to do it.
We're going to give you some more tools, some more procedures,
some more thought processes, but you've got it inside you because you're fearfully
and wonderfully made by a great physician. I'm a good doctor.
He's a great physician, and you can change your mind, and you can change your
life, and the good news is, my friend, you can start today.
Hey, if this podcast was helpful to you, please be sure and check out my book,
Hope is the First Dose. It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma,
tragedy, and other massive things that'll help you, okay?
It gives you the neuroscience, gives you the tools of smashing faith in scripture
and neuroscience together to help you find hope, meaning, and purpose in your life.
Be sure and like and subscribe to this podcast.
Leave a comment, leave a rating wherever you listen to podcasts.
Share it with your friends. Let's go today, okay? We had a lot of downloads yesterday.
But if this episode was helpful to you, text message the link to a friend and
say, hey, please listen to this today.
Please download and listen to this today. What if we could double the number
of people that heard this message today and committed them with us to go all in?
What if you had five friends, 10 friends that you could say,
hey, let's do this together.
Let's listen to this podcast every day. Let's go all in.
How much would that change our culture, our society, our churches,
our families, if we all committed together, praying, working hard,
going all in, changing our approaches?
Talk to your friends. Share it. Take a second right now and share this episode
with somebody and say, Hey, commit with me to go all in with my friend, Dr.
Lee Warren, and let's get after it. Hey, I'll talk to you tomorrow. God bless.