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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 all in August and
we are coming down to the wire.
We're entering the last week of all in August and it is Friday,
so that means it's also Frontal Lobe Friday.
If you're enjoying all in August, I would love to hear from you.
Send us a voicemail, speakpipe.com slash Dr.
Lee Warren. We're going to be gathering and including some of those voicemails
in the podcast in the coming days.
And we just would love to hear from you to see how it's going.
Have you gone all in? In what areas of your life have you gone all in?
What resistance have you faced? What breakthroughs have you encountered?
This will help other people to see what happens when they go all in too.
Today, we're going to do one of those all-in check-ins. It's been a little bit since we did one.
I just want to check in with you and give you a couple of things to think about,
some maybe guardrails and some checkpoints, some things to discover for your
own life and think about as you're trying to go all in.
One thing that happens is it can get easy to to drift from our approach without
recognizing it. I'll unpack that for you in just a moment.
Before we get going today, I just want to remind you that we are coming into September.
And as we get to September, there's going to be a big change in the podcast.
We're going to go back to weekly episodes, so just once a week.
And we're going to be on sabbatical from new episode creation for the month of September.
I've got to finish the manuscript for the new book. It'll be coming.
I'll tell you all about that later. and we're also developing some new content
for you, a new opportunity for us to do some live self-brain surgery training
together and some really good stuff coming. I need a little bit of space to do that.
So September is going to be sabbatical month for us as we reset and relaunch for October.
Also, the podcast is joining a big network of Christian podcasts.
There's a lot of podcasts that you've heard of, have reached out and invited the Dr.
Lee Warren podcast to be part of that, which is going to really help people
all around the world to find out and engage in the self-brain surgery mission.
And message, and that's going to require...
Me to submit a bunch of new episodes all at once.
So I'm going to be spending September recording new content for you that will
be launched as part of this new network on October 1st. We'll have a little
bit of a format change for you there, and I'll tell you all about that later.
But we're so excited to be partnering with the people that are behind Jenny
Allen's podcast, Tara Lee Cobble's podcast, Theology and the Ross podcast,
people that are involved in those productions and the network of shows around
that have invited us to be part of it.
We're really honored and grateful to be moving forward there.
And so I'll have a lot more to tell you about that, but we're going all in with
making sure that everybody around the world has an opportunity to change their
mind and change their life like you and I do every day here on the Cell Brain Surgery Show.
I'm just so excited and grateful to be doing this with you and that you've gone all in.
And if you haven't started yet, this is day 23.
There's 22 episodes of All In August. We've done it every day.
We're going to bring you an episode every Every day this month,
there's good stuff, good ways to get your head on straight, to break down barriers,
to throw things off that are hindering you, and to press in and go all in for the all in all.
It's a great way to reset towards the end of the year, get ready for next year,
and go all in on your own life.
So I'd love to hear from you. Speakpipe.com slash Dr. Lee Warren.
Speakpipe.com slash Dr. Lee Warren. Let me hear your voice. Tell me where you're
from. Let us hear from you and how it's going.
Okay, today we're going to talk about approach drift. and what that means and what it looks like.
Before we do that, I want to tell you about an email that I got from a listener,
and then we're going to get after it right now.
Be sure to share this episode and the podcast with your friends.
I would love it also if you would rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts.
That's a great way to help other people find out about it.
And if you haven't read Hope is the First Dose, my most recent book,
I would encourage you to read it.
It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma and tragedy and other massive things.
It's how you get the introduction to where we got
into cell brain surgery in the first place and what you can do in
your own life when you need to change your mind when things aren't
making sense when things are hurting when you're stuck hope is the first dose
will help you move forward and then mark batterson's book all in is the textbook
for this month all in august if you haven't read it i encourage you will really
change your mind and help you get moving in your life to go all in now let's
go to an email i got from a listener named kathy.
I love hearing from you. I love getting emails. I love communicating and building
community with people all over the world.
And this is a great email I got from Kathy a couple of days ago.
And I just want to address some things that she brought up.
Kathy said, I'm so grateful for what you're providing in your podcast.
I was not raised in a church, but have always felt nearly compelled to study
and to attempt to understand religions.
I have a friend also. We are similar in our drive to find faith and with continued
questions. One of your last all-in podcasts included to be all-in for accepting
Jesus Christ as the only way to God.
That is what we both grapple with.
We both have studied religions and believe that the wisdom teachings are all
very similar in the basic tenet to live according to God's word and truth.
If there is one God, and if God made all things, then it is very hard for either
of us to say in our hearts that Jesus is the only way to God.
In Genesis 11, 5-9, as the people began building the tower to the heavens in
order to make a name for themselves, the Lord confused their language so they
would not understand each other.
This passage to me suggests it was the Lord's intent to create different languages and cultures.
An additional part of my grappling is that I can clearly see in our current
world here that there are greater man powers that are manipulating the public to get what they want.
I have read some Bible history, and as I understand it, there were also manpowers
that believed in order to have Christianity succeed, the message needed to be centralized.
From this came the choosing of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and other letters in the New Testament.
However, there were other gospels and writings, so did the church need to promote
the messaging that the only way to God is through Jesus in order to gain greater
control of the people? Very complicated.
My friend and I both continue to land in the same spot. We are all in in Jesus'
teachings and to live our lives as he and many other wisdom teachings prescribe,
and she put that in quotes with a smiley face.
But we cannot come to a resolution with our dilemma of believing that Jesus,
who seems to us had the intent of gathering and including all people,
was saying that he is the only way to God.
Thank you again for what you're doing. We love your program and your insights,
and we'll continue to listen and learn from you as we struggle with this concept.
Kathy, thank you for laying out and articulating your concept and your concern
and your questions so clearly.
And I love it. I love that kind of honest grappling.
I want to give you a little bit of encouragement here, though,
and a little bit of, I think, direction in where you're thinking.
And I hope it'll be helpful to you.
I just want to say that Jesus is.
Very specifically and clearly said that he was the only way to truth,
that he was the only way to God.
And so I would just say, it's wonderful to read about what the Bible says.
It's wonderful to think about what other people say about it.
It's wonderful to study and try to understand how the Bible came to be as it is.
But it's another thing entirely to actually read the Bible and see what it says for itself.
John 14, 6, Jesus said, this is a direct quote from Jesus, I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me. That's the New International Version.
Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.
So here's the deal, and many people have said this. I'm not the only one to say this, but it's fine.
If you want to believe that there are multiple paths to God,
that there are multiple ways to get to God, to find your truth,
and I can find my truth, and we'll all end up finding our way to God, you can believe that.
But if you do, I don't think that you can include Jesus as one of those many
possible ways because it would violate what Jesus said of himself.
So as C.S. Lewis said, Jesus is either God or he's a lunatic.
He's either God or he's the devil of hell.
Because if he's not telling the truth, if he says I'm the only way and he's
not the only way, then that means he's not a reliable path to find truth.
Okay. And we're after truth here, right? So there's either a truth or there's multiple truths.
And I think the wise person would say, okay, if I'm going to try to create a
list of all the different possible ways to God, then I would need to exclude
from that list anybody who claims to be the only way to God if it's not true.
So again, we're after truth, right? I don't want there to be my truth and your
truth and somebody else's truth if there in fact is only one truth,
and that's what Jesus is offering.
Jesus is saying, I am the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes to
the the Father except through me.
So you can't hold in serious conversation,
you can't hold this idea that there are multiple paths to truth and that every
road leads to God and that Jesus is one of those in the same breath because
it would invalidate what he said of himself.
In fact, he clarifies it a little bit further, this idea that Jesus wants everybody,
or not that he wants, of course he He wants everybody to be saved,
but Jesus will allow everyone to be saved because in Matthew 7, 13, and 14,
he says, enter through the narrow gate for wide is the gate and broad is the
road that leads to destruction and many enter through it, but small is the gate
and narrow is the road that leads to life and only a few find it.
And then to put the finer point on it in the Gospel of John in 10.9,
he even claims, I am the gate.
Whoever enters through me will be saved. So he tells us in Matthew that the
gate is narrow that leads to life.
And then in John 10.9, he says, I am the gate.
So again, he said of himself, I'm the way, the truth, the life.
There's a narrow gate, and I'm the gate, and there's no path to God except through me.
So it makes it pretty clear that if you want to have a sort of universalist, pantheist,
polytheist idea that all roads lead to God and any kind of truth pursuit is
reasonable and rational and that all we want is, all that we need is to just try to find our way.
You can believe that if you want to, but you can't include New Testament Christianity
in that belief system because it would invalidate what it says of itself.
Does that make sense? So I would just say, take a little bit of time and search
through the scripture of what Jesus actually said.
Now, the other argument is, well, okay, that's fine, Dr.
Warren, but I don't think the scripture is all-inclusive, and I don't think
the Bible that we have is actually what you say it is, the inviolable actual
canon of scripture that God gave us because man put it together,
and man made these decisions,
and they left out some books and put in others.
And I'll just say, this isn't an apologist or Christian canonical podcast,
and I'm not trained in an expert in that area, but I have read extensively about it.
And I would just say, if you're serious about wanting to know why the Bible
is what it is and how it was put together, rather than thinking it was some
sort of cabal of people who are trying to control the population,
I would say, go read Lee Strobel's book, Is God Real?
And J. Warner Wallace's book, Cold Case Christianity. Those are the two that
I think, in the most accessible way, recently at least, they've both been on the podcast,
by the way, both of those books address why the
Bible is how it is and what it is and why Christianity of all the world religions
seems to make the most sense and has the most historical validity and why the
Old and New Testament Scripture seem to have the most historical validation
behind them and why they are what they are. and I think there's more to the story.
So I would just say if you're really on this pursuit of truth that you seem
to be on and I'm so grateful the way that you articulated what you're looking for,
there's a path to find out what's true and the path involves reading what the
Bible actually says for itself and by the way.
I don't know of any world religion that claims that it's only one of a bunch of ways to find truth.
Most of them make exclusivity claims.
Most of them say, if you don't see it our way, you're not on the right path.
So the question then is not to just have this universalist idea of every way is fine.
The question would be to interrogate and look at what those religions actually
say of themselves and what evidence is there that they might be true,
true and then find the true path to the life and hope that God offers us by
finding the one of those ways that seems to be the most accurate.
Because I think you have to, at some point, you have to dip your toe in on going.
You have more than just dip your toe. You've got to say, I am going all in.
I'm going to pursue this, taste and see, find out if it works,
adopt a scientific approach to it.
And if a claim of a system continues to seem to be true over time,
when you investigate it and test it and try it out, then over time you can build
confidence that thing turns out to really be true, right?
And if you try something and it doesn't seem to work and doesn't seem to have
the power, it doesn't seem to lead to freedom in life, then maybe it's because it isn't true.
So I would just say, take a serious approach to see what Jesus said of himself.
Take a serious approach. If you want to know why the Bible is what it is,
take a deep look at what people have
written and why it is the way it is and read
specific things about why did the christian canon come to be what it is not
just from a cynical standpoint of people trying to control the masses and the
population and all that the point about babel by the way is not that god wanted
to break them up into groups so they could all go do their own thing and have
their own language and their own culture that's not the point of the story of Babel at all.
The story of Babel is that people were arrogant and prideful,
and they wanted to find a path to God that didn't involve seeking his will.
They did it themselves. They said, we'll just build up to the heavens,
and we'll just get to God ourselves.
And God said, no, I'm going to come down and be part of you.
I'm going to come down and interact in your story. You don't need to do your
own thing and take up the work and not even seek my guidance or my counsel,
I'm going to confuse that.
I'm going to come against you trying to plan your own way, and I'm going to show you the way.
I'm going to help you find the way. So that's the story of Babel.
It's not that God was threatened by their collective working towards a way to find him.
It was that they didn't seek him. They didn't ask him first.
They didn't allow him to be in charge of the project for their own good,
to follow his wisdom and his guidance.
And the point of all of that, by the way, is that Jesus doesn't just want to be your Savior.
He's your Lord. He will not just be Savior. He will not just be a friend.
He will not just be a counselor or a guide. He will be Lord.
And if He can't be Lord, He won't be anything at all to you. But guess what?
There will come a day when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.
That's what the Scripture says. So I would just say, if.
If you have this idea of what is true and what is not true, dig in and see what
the Bible says of itself.
Dig into every system and see what they say of themselves.
And if there are exclusivity claims, then you can't accept two different exclusivity claims.
You have to only accept one of them and find your way to the truth.
So I hope that's helpful. A rambling thought process here, but there's a lot to unpack.
There's a great email and a great thought process, a very good character of
trying to find your way to the truth. And this is my humble attempt to give
you some things to think about. I hope it's helpful.
And I'm so glad you're listening and all in. So let's get more into now this idea of approach drift.
Okay, so when we're doing surgery, we use something called an approach.
An approach is not technique. We go to medical school and we learn techniques.
They teach you how to suture, teach you how to deliver a baby,
they teach you how to cut stitches, they teach you how to put bandages on,
they teach you all these different techniques. And techniques are portable.
Like, you learn how to suture on your ear, nose, and throat rotation.
You can use that skill set on your general surgery rotation or your family practice
or your ER rotation because you know how to suture and it's portable amongst
all kinds of disciplines and all kinds of different applications.
But what's not portable is specific approaches. We're going to do brain surgery.
Then I don't need to know how to open somebody's abdomen in order to learn how to do brain surgery.
I need to know the different ways to get into the head safely and how we position
that patient, the angle of the head on the table, how I need to stand,
where I need to stand, how we angle the microscope,
where we make the incision, how much hair we cut, how much bone when we drill,
all that stuff. Those are approaches.
And so sometimes we choose an approach for an operation. And by the way,
this is relevant to our previous conversation about Kathy's amazing email,
because we have an approach.
How do we find out about truth? What kinds of things do we do to find our way to truth?
What kinds of ways do we look at? Those are called heuristics, right?
The worldview and the ideas that we use to approach truth to determine whether
something's right or not for us, whether something's real or valid or true.
We have all these these filters and worldviews and ideologies that we use.
And if something isn't working, then we need to start questioning our approach.
Did we make the right decision? Are we in the right position to get this done?
And so one thing that we talk about in brain surgery is this idea of approach drift.
If you're in the middle of an approach, let's say you've got a tumor in somebody's
pituitary gland and we've made an incision across the forehead and we've peeled
the scalp down, we've opened the bone.
I'm sorry if this is graphic, but this is how we get into the head.
We've used a saw to open the bone. we've opened the dura mater over the covering
of the brain, we have gently retracted the frontal lobes up off the floor of
the skull, and we're using a microscope to look down between the,
undersurface of the frontal lobes and the floor of the skull underneath it.
That's our corridor, that's our avenue, that's our approach to be able to look
down and try to find this tumor.
We're going to encounter some anatomical structures along the way that we can't
cut, We can't move out of our way.
Optic nerves, carotid arteries, different structures that we have to work around
in order to get to the target and deal with the tumor.
OK, now, if all of a sudden in the middle of the surgery, I begin to have difficulty
seeing and it seems like my corridor is shrinking or my ability to approach
the tumor with instruments safely seems to be getting worse instead of better.
Then i have to figure out if something has changed so is the brain swelling
is the brain getting bigger because it's swelling i'm retracting it too hard
i've torn a vein and it's bleeding into the brain if something's happening that's
causing the brain to swell have my retractors slipped and allowing the frontal
lobe to slip back down towards the frontal skull base,
has the head slipped in the head holder so the angle has changed is something
moved about the The table, the anesthesiologist forgot to lock the table and
it's rolled a degree or two away.
And something's changed. So I have to look for drifts in my approach.
Is something changing that's happening that's changing my ability to see or
interact with the tumor that way?
Is the microscope not balanced properly and it's sliding a little bit?
Has my chair drifted just a little bit? Is my neck angle wrong?
Am I looking down the scope in the wrong way?
So there's something that has changed about the approach.
That's making the approach drift and I'm not seeing
what I should be seeing from that approach and that's what I want to
just give you today on the 23rd day of all in August if you tried this and you
went all in and things seem to be going pretty well and all of a sudden you're
struggling a little bit there seems to be a little more resistance or you seem
to have awakened two or three days in a row and you've slipped back into an
old habit has your approach drifted in some way.
Did you say, okay, in order to make this all-in practice happen,
I'm going to need to unsubscribe from Netflix.
I'm going to need to deactivate my Instagram channel.
I'm going to need to stop going to the store and buying that bottle that I used
to buy every couple of days on the way home.
I'm going to need to do that if I really want to go all-in. And maybe somehow
during the month I slipped into old habits and I've been watching more television
or I've been eating that thing again or drinking that thing again.
Or I've been dallying on that relationship again that I meant to,
that I committed myself to breaking off, that somehow I'm drifting from the
approach and now it doesn't feel like I'm quite as all in and I'm not making
the kind of progress I was making in that first 23 days.
Look for approach drift, okay? Look for places where the things that you knew
you would need to do to really go all in, maybe you've allowed some of those
things to slide back in there.
Or maybe some of those ways that you knew you would have to change in order
to get this done, you haven't actually changed.
Maybe you didn't quite go as
all in as you thought. Maybe the approach has drifted just a little bit.
Okay? So it's just time. It's time to put your eyes back on the system and look,
take your, zoom the scope out. This is what I do in surgery.
If something seems to not be working, sometimes you've been looking through
the microscope and everything's focused and zoomed way in, then you can't see the problem.
But if I just move the microscope and look down at the patient with my bare
eyes, I can see a much wider field.
And sometimes it's obvious, oh, I bumped the retractor and it's angled a little
weirdly and that's allowing the frontal lobe to slip out or the head's drifted
a little bit or my angle is just a little bit wrong.
It's easy to see when you zoom out a little bit.
Okay. So I'm just saying, look for.
Approach drift. Now's the time. Put your foot down on the idea.
We're going to plant my foot and I'm going to strongly stand up against whatever
it was that I needed to go all in about.
And I'm going to step forward and make the rest of this month count.
So I go into September strong.
I'm going to finish this thing well, but I'm going to make sure that I'm aiming
in the right direction, that all the things about the approach are still right.
So I'm not just spinning my I want to make progress.
I want to really go all in. And in order to do that, I've got to check my approach once in a while.
I've got to make sure I haven't drifted off of what's true.
And to come back to Kathy again, friend, if Jesus says, I am the way and the truth and the life,
and nobody comes to the Father except through me, that means that the approach
to truth through Jesus means that you go all in with him.
Learn more about what he said. Read what his words were. Find out what he was teaching.
Learn more about him. And if he says, I'm the way,
then follow his way and see if you don't get different results than you've gotten
from this sort of broad approach of trying to learn what you can from him,
but not really let him be Lord and learn what you can from him,
but not bow your knee to him as king,
to not really believe that he's the only way, that he's maybe a good teacher
or a moral guy or a smart person you can learn something from.
That's not what Jesus says I am. I'm the way. I'm the truth.
I'm the life. You can't find father except through me. I'm the gate. I'm the door.
Narrow is the way, broad is the way that leads to destruction,
narrow is the way that leads to life.
I want everybody, but not everybody's going to come. See, Jesus is a gentleman.
He doesn't force you to follow him.
And so if you find your life doesn't seem to quite be clicking,
doesn't quite make sense, that some things aren't quite working,
I would say dig in harder at learning what Jesus had to say about himself,
learning what Jesus had to say about what's the way, what's the truth,
what's the life, what's the path, what's the approach.
And if you've got some approach drift, my friend, on all in August,
if things aren't quite working the way they were in those first few days,
or if you started and faltered and and now you haven't really gone all in.
Maybe it's time to just adjust your approach a little bit. Zoom out.
See if you've drifted off the approach that you knew you were going to have to take.
See if there's some places where you need to change your mind a little bit and
get back after it, okay? It's never too late to start again.
It's never too late to go all in. It's never too late to refine your approach,
to check for approach drift, to make sure that your navigation isn't off,
to make sure that the patient hasn't moved, to make sure that you haven't done
something to change the way you were looking at the situation.
Okay? I want you to go all in. I want you to discover how this process of using
your mind to change your brain,
to change your body, to change your life, to influence others,
to break generational curses, to dig into what's true and find motivation and
momentum and breaking free of barriers.
I want you to find that for your life and it's available to you if you go all in.
That's what this is all about is throwing off anything that hinders and the
things that lead so easily to our destruction and to finally commit to the instructions
that lead us to truth and life and freedom and meaning and purpose no matter
what we're facing you're going to go through some hard things in your life I'm so sorry but you are.
11 years ago today, we had a funeral service for our son, Mitchell.
11 years ago today, we went through the most massive thing we can go through.
And you're going to go through some massive things.
Your husband's going to die. Your spouse is going to get glioblastoma.
Your kid's going to not want to have a relationship with you.
You're going to have a bankruptcy.
Something's going to happen. I'm not trying to be negative, Nellie.
It's just the fact that we have a hard time in our lives.
In fact, that verse, John 10, 9, that I quoted a minute ago,
where Jesus said, I am the gate and whoever enters through me will be saved.
The very next verse is John 10, 10, which is the verse that started my whole
thought process about all this quantum brain surgery stuff that led to the development
of the self-brain surgery program.
The very reason I started thinking about this and learning from it that resurrected
our hope and our faith and our life again after we lost Mitch.
And the reason that I'm coming to you today is because of the truth that I found
in John 10, 10, which is not coincidentally next to the very verse where Jesus
says, Kathy, that I am the gate.
Whoever enters through me will be saved. The path to my freedom and my healing started there.
And I went through that gate. And in John 10, 10, Jesus says this,
the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy.
But I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Jesus says every other path leads to your life being stolen and you're feeling
like you're being killed all the time, and your hope is being destroyed,
and all these hard things happen.
But I came, he said, I'm the gate, and I came here so that you might have life and have it abundantly.
And I'm just here to tell you, after 11 years as a bereaved father.
11 years after the day we formally gathered in that church in Alabama and said bye to our son.
11 years later, I can tell you that it is true that the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy.
And it is equally true, and thank God it is equally true, that Jesus came to
give us life so that we could have it abundantly.
And the world of quantum physics says that two things can be true at the same time.
John 16.33 says, He says, in this world, you will have trouble,
but take heart. I have overcome the world.
You can have both. You can have a life with trouble and you can have a path
that leads to freedom and hope and truth and life and meaning and purpose and even happiness.
Again, you can have both, but to get there, you got to walk through the gate.
You got to go all in. You got to be willing to say, I'm going to find out everything
I can find out about this guy.
And when I realized finally that he's telling the truth, when he says,
nobody comes to the the Father except through me.
I'm the truth, the life, the door, the gate. I'm the shepherd.
When you finally realize that's true, trembling will fall to your knee and say,
I need not just a friend, not just a guide, not just a teacher.
I need a Savior, and I need Lord.
And that's the kind of mind change that you can have when you go all in.
And friend, if your approach has drifted, if things aren't making sense,
if you need to make a change, use your giant frontal lobes that God gave you, your rational,
thoughtful brain that can overcome anxiety and overcome stress and depression
by thinking different thoughts and get after it.
Put your foot down on the path that will lead to the way and the truth and the
life and the self-brain surgery that you need to go all in.
It starts with understanding that you can have both a hard life and a purpose-filled
abundant life at the same time.
And the way to do that is to let the great physician change your mind and change
your life and the good news is you can start today.