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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. I hope you're doing well. I'm doctor Lee Warren here, your host for another episode of Self Brain Surgery Saturday. We're excited to be with you. Lisa and I got back from Virginia late last night.
Dr. Lee Warren:Almost midnight, we got home. Went out for a very quick trip to Virginia and had an appearance on the 700 Club. And if you weren't able to see that live, I'll put a link in the show notes to the replay. We had a great time. The gracious hosts out there at the 700 Club and still remarkable to me the impact that the Robertsons had on the world.
Dr. Lee Warren:And and, boy, it was just an amazing time to spend some time with those faithful folks out there, and I hope it'll bless you. I'll put a link in the show notes to our appearance on the 700 Club, but we are tired today. So at Self Brain Surgery Saturday, this is a part of the week. It's really one of my favorite parts of the week. We start talking about focusing on different ways that we can use the idea behind the powerful notion of directed neuroplasticity that I call self brain surgery.
Dr. Lee Warren:So we can do specific little brain surgery operations that you can have in your toolkit to apply to different problems and challenges that arise in your life. And we get into the mechanics of how we change our minds so we can change our life. That's what we do on self brain surgery Saturday. But today, because we got home so late, my voice as you can hear is kind of worn out. I'm gonna give you back the very first episode we did of self brain surgery Saturday, a long time ago, when I included one of my self brain surgery tips from Twitter.
Dr. Lee Warren:A couple of years ago, I did 31 days in a row of self brain surgery tips that I shared on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. And this one today is number 19. I used it a year ago, September of 2022 is when we started doing self brain surgery, Saturday. And I used this episode this self brain surgery tip number 19 as part of that first self brain surgery Saturday episode. And I'm gonna give it back to you today because it's really if you're new around here, it's really a great way to start thinking about how to do self brain surgery.
Dr. Lee Warren:How do you use the power that God put in your mind? Your brain wants to heal, Your brain wants to help you become healthier and feel better and be happier, and you just have to teach it how to direct those new neurons to behave in a way that's helpful to you and not harmful to you. Remember, the fact is with neuroscience, this is a fact, You either directly and purposefully shape your mind, which then turns into how your life shapes, or your life will shape your mind for you. You direct how your mind is shaped, or your life will shape your mind for you. So self brain surgery Saturday is all about taking back that control, that deciding to purposefully be in charge of what happens to our own brains.
Dr. Lee Warren:Because thoughts become things, because psychology becomes biology, and it's important to learn how to take control and not feel so powerless, not to to be bouncing around like the 5th or 6th domino in a chain of dominoes every time something negative or harmful happens in your life. You wanna be able to direct what happens and not react to what happens. And that's what self brain surgery Saturday is about. So self brain surgery tip number 19 is especially powerful. We'll use it to get into this introduction if you've not been around for very long on how we do this every Saturday.
Dr. Lee Warren:I'm just gonna give you that back. So Saturdays, you can look forward to things like how do we lobotomize a lousy attitude? How do we sever a 6 and a half? How do we drained out and fill up faith? How do we replace gratitude for fear and anxiety?
Dr. Lee Warren:How do we substitute hope and peace for stress and depression? How do we do those things? What are the mechanics of these little operations? I'm gonna teach them to you every Saturday on self brain surgery, Saturday. So today is tip number 19.
Dr. Lee Warren:There's almost nothing outside you that will help you in any kind of lasting way unless you're waiting for a donor organ. And Lamont said that in one of my favorite books, Almost Everything. Listen to that again. There's almost nothing outside you, friend, that will help you in any kind of lasting way unless you're waiting for a donor organ. Help comes from within, from the spirit of God inside us.
Dr. Lee Warren:John 1426-27 is all about how God put a helper inside you to help you change your mind and help you change your life. The the real change that will make a big difference in your life is not outside you. It's true. The spirit's inside you and the way that you change your life is by changing your mind. You can't keep saying to yourself, I'll be happy when this happens.
Dr. Lee Warren:I'll be happy when that happens. I'll be happy if that person changes their behavior. I'll be happy if the right person's in the office. You can't you can't do that because those things will never help you. They will never make you happier.
Dr. Lee Warren:The the target will keep moving if you tie your happiness and your peace and your life to external circumstances. I'll be happy when it doesn't happen that way. So today, we're gonna learn to change that. Real help doesn't come from the outside. If your happiness, peace peace of mind, joy, faith, hope, all those things are tied to external circumstances or the behavior of other people, you'll never really be okay.
Dr. Lee Warren:You just can't tie your life to circumstance. I wrote a whole book about that. That's what hope is the first dose is all about, how to hold on to the hope that comes from within and use it to change your mind and use it to change your life by learning the proper relationship with your mind, your brain, your body, and your spirit. It's a superpower. Learning how to change your mind is a superpower.
Dr. Lee Warren:Anne Lamott really nailed it on the head when she said in her book almost everything. There's nothing outside you that will help in any kind of lasting way unless you're waiting for a donor organ. So I'm gonna give you back this old episode, cell brain surgery, tip number 19, the neuroscience of happiness. Just to kind of get your mind around this, I'm gonna try to get my voice to work. We're gonna watch some college football today.
Dr. Lee Warren:And I hope that you have a great day and that everything is going your way. And if you're having struggles, go to wleewarrenmd.com/prayer. Wleewarrenmd.com/prayer. Connect with this incredible group of people all over the world who are praying for each other and with each other. And it's a great resource for you and give you something to focus on besides just the thing that you're that you're dealing with.
Dr. Lee Warren:Focus on helping other people, praying for other people, and letting them pray for you. It's a great community. So check it out. Hey, I pray that you're not waiting for a donor organ because there's almost nothing outside you that will help in any kind of lasting way unless you are. If you're waiting for a donor organ, we're praying for you.
Dr. Lee Warren:But the real help and real change that you need to get your life on track in terms of your mind and your thinking starts within, from the spirit inside you. And today, I just want you to remember that you can't change your life until you change your mind, and you have to start today. So it's self brain surgery Saturday, friend, and there's really only one question. Hey. Are you ready to change your life?
Dr. Lee Warren:If the answer is yes, there's only one rule. You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place where the neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything starts to make sense. Are you ready to change your life? Well, this is the place, Self Brain Surgery School.
Dr. Lee Warren:I'm doctor Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired, take control of our thinking, and find real hope. This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better, and be happier. This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds. This is where we start today. Are you ready?
Dr. Lee Warren:This is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it. I've noticed something over the years that surgery isn't enough to make people happy.
Dr. Lee Warren:Lisa and I have talked about this a lot. And as I've shared with you before, we figured out when we ran our practice together that there was more to patient care than the right prescription or the right procedure because happiness isn't as much about your body as it is about your brain. Lisa is the first one who articulated it as we thought about these problems over the years. And we took care of a woman who had a condition called trigeminal neuralgia. She'd been suffering for this with this for 20 years and it's a terrible debilitating facial pain syndrome where you have this electrical shock type sensation in your face.
Dr. Lee Warren:And these people sometimes are so miserable because they can't brush their teeth or take a drink or chew anything or have anything touch their face without this horrible lancinating electrical shock type of pain in their face. And a lot of these people end up having all their teeth pulled out because they think it's a it's misdiagnosed as a dental problem or sometimes they even get to the end of the rope and kill themselves. But it can be fixed with surgery often. And I had this particular patient that we took care of that her pain syndrome had become the thing that her life and all of her relationships revolved around her. Marriage revolved around taking care of her pain, her relationship with her husband and her Children and the rest of her family, all kind of revolved around her being sick.
Dr. Lee Warren:And when we fixed the problem and the pain was gone, her life systems didn't work anymore. All the inner relationships that they had kind of fell apart and she ended up divorcing her husband estranged, become estranged from her Children, remained addicted to narcotic pain medicines and even overdosed a few times. And it just illustrated the point what we feel inside our bodies, how we define ourselves, how we define happiness is determined by a lot of things other than the circumstance of our life. Because if it was just about circumstance, if this lady's pain was the only problem, then when we removed the pain, she would have been happier and she would have been better off in her life, but she wasn't. Lisa said, you'd think that relieving pain would produce happiness, but a lot of folks seem just as unhappy when they're well as they do when they're sick.
Dr. Lee Warren:And that realization, my friend, changed how I practice medicine. It became the foundation of a passionate interest I have that I've subsequently pursued in my work and in my writing and trying to understand how to help people achieve what I believe to be the 3 most important goals in life and personal development in anything. Everything I do in my work now, both as a neurosurgeon and as a writer, is aimed at helping people become healthier, feel better, and be happier. And so to finish out 2019, I wanna give you a brief overview of neuroscience. Now don't worry.
Dr. Lee Warren:I'm not gonna give you a boring lecture about how your brain is organized, but rather I believe that helping you understand a little bit more about how you're wired, about the neuroscience of happiness, if you will, will arm you with an understanding of how your neurochemistry and neuroanatomy work together to produce how you think and perhaps convince you maybe that how you think is the most powerful force in the universe to change the reality of your life. Because if you can lock into the power of mastering your own neurochemistry, if you can lock into the power of mastering how your mind works, then you, my friend, can change your own story. You can change your family's destiny, and you can change the world around you. And if you can change your mind, you can change your life, and you can start today. Depression and related disorders cost the United States 200,000,000,000 with a B dollars a year.
Dr. Lee Warren:That was 2010 statistics $200,000,000,000 a year. And that number is made up of direct health costs. The work related costs of what's called absenteeism. So people not showing up for work and also another thing called presenteeism. Presenteeism is basically that you go to work but you're an empty suit.
Dr. Lee Warren:You don't get anything done. You just kind of stammer around and you're there, but you're not really there. I'm certain that you know some people in your job like that. The other cost is suicide. So between direct health care costs, work related costs like absenteeism and presenteeism and suicide and all the other things that go along with depression and related disorders, $200,000,000,000 a year in the United States.
Dr. Lee Warren:And that number of certain is higher now than it was 10 years ago. And here's the reality that we don't often like to admit. Life is hard. Bad things happen to all of us and those bad things can affect your mood and your emotional state. They can attack your faith, and they can make you believe that the future will never improve.
Dr. Lee Warren:That's what my whole premise of my new book is about that's coming out in 10 days, by the way. But I'm here as a person who has been through war and divorce and several other incredibly difficult seasons of life, including losing a child. I'm here to tell you that it is in fact possible to have hard times in your life and still be happy. Throughout history, there have been philosophers and writers and motivational speakers who have said that happiness is a decision and that the things we think about can influence how our lives play out. My dad is one of those annoying people.
Dr. Lee Warren:Sorry, dad. He's one of those people that whenever you're sad or have some problem, he'll say some quote from Zig Ziglar or somebody else. And by the way, I was on Zig Ziglar's podcast this week. You can go check that out. I'll put a link in the show notes.
Dr. Lee Warren:But my dad would always have a quote from somebody like that saying, hey. Turn that frown upside down or hey. You gotta get rid of your stinking thinking. He was forever telling us that our attitude was far more important than our circumstances. And if we wanted to be happy people, we just had to decide to be happy people.
Dr. Lee Warren:I'm so grateful for that guidance. And I mean, honestly, there's more to it than that. Obviously, there's some people who need professional help. There's some people who need to deal with with things in their life before they can actually be happy. But the reality is a lot of times it is 100% in our own control.
Dr. Lee Warren:And I'm very grateful to have been raised by parents who understood that. In recent years, people like Tony Robbins have made 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars teaching these concepts. Why? Because they work. Doctors like Bernie Seagal have helped thousands of people tap into the amazing healing power of faith and attitude to heal emotional and sometimes even cure their cancers and other diseases.
Dr. Lee Warren:And until very recently, these folks were viewed by the mainstream science communities as somewhere between charlatans and quacks. But guess what? With the recent advance of functional imaging studies like spec scanning and MRI functional MRI scanning, neuroscience has now finally caught up with what some people have always known. The brain is an organ that can be in many ways controlled by the mind. It is now unquestionably clear that in almost every case, people can dramatically influence their neurochemistry and the function of their brain by changing how they think.
Dr. Lee Warren:And this is a groundbreaking fact because it means, my friend, that you are not stuck with your feelings. You can learn to manage your mind just as you try to manage your weight or your diabetes or your blood pressure. You're not a prisoner to your thoughts or to your mood. Now these are challenging and scary times. There's a lot going on in the United States and the world right now, and no community is free of even its leaders struggling to have happy lives or even to survive.
Dr. Lee Warren:We need people around us who can make us believe it's going to be okay. And sometimes in order to know that it's going to be okay, you have to change your mind. And sometimes in order to change your mind, you need brain surgery. And so today, I'm gonna teach you how to be a self brain surgeon. We've been talking about that a lot lately.
Dr. Lee Warren:And in fact, all the things I'm gonna share with you today, I've shared in other ways in different times through my writing or through different episodes of the podcast. But I don't think I've ever put them all together in one episode, and I thought what better way to finish out the year than just to give you a toolkit. Here's the bad news. In order to become a brain surgeon, I had to go to school from 5 years old when I started kindergarten without a break till I was 32 years old. That's right.
Dr. Lee Warren:It takes a long time to become a brain surgeon. So this is only part 1 of many, many times that we'll have to talk about how to do these different things. But today, I can get you started. After high school, I went to college for 4 years. I spent 4 more years in medical school and 6 years in residency.
Dr. Lee Warren:That's a lot of schooling 14 years after high school and the programs I went through gave me the tools, the training and the certifications to allow me to safely and legally open up your head and tinker around with your brain. But don't worry. Even though I'm gonna convince you today that you need to learn to change your mind, you don't have to be a licensed brain surgeon to do that. It's easy. And you can do it in the privacy of your own home painlessly.
Dr. Lee Warren:You don't even need a license. So for the next few minutes, I'm gonna give you five self brain surgery techniques that you can use to learn to manage your mind, to help you become healthier, feel better, and be happier. And once you learn the art and science of self brain surgery, you'll know how to respond to your emotions in a healthier way. So are you ready? Let's go to the or and I'll quickly teach you the 5 basic techniques of self brain surgery.
Dr. Lee Warren:Okay. I talked about the first one here a few weeks ago in the episode called thought biopsies and goalposts and patch base. And that that episode we talked about the the thought biopsy, what I used to call the bad thought biopsy. But it's not, it shouldn't be called the bad thought biopsy because sometimes there's good thoughts too that we need to understand where they come from. When I look at an MRI, I can't know for sure what something is just from how it appears on the screen.
Dr. Lee Warren:I need data. I need tissue. It might be a malignant tumor that will kill my patient, but it could be scar tissue, an artifact, or an infection. And I have to find out before I take action to deal with that problem. And happy people learn that they can't just believe every thought that pops into their heads.
Dr. Lee Warren:Happy people learn to think about their thinking. Neuroscience has proven that negative connections are approximately 5 times more memorable than positive ones. That's why you can remember the one time your mom called you an idiot instead of the thousand times she said how smart you are. In fact, you can probably still remember where you were standing, what you were wearing, what was going on, what you could smell in the kitchen the day that she told you that you were an idiot. You remember?
Dr. Lee Warren:Maybe maybe it wasn't specifically that, but there's some memory that you have that was negative that you can recall right now, and you can feel it all over again. Why? Because neuroscience wires those harmful things into us. That's because you don't wanna have to touch a hot stove twice to know that you're not supposed to touch a hot stove. When you do it once and it burns you, your brain creates a synapse that produces a memory that you don't have to consciously think about anymore.
Dr. Lee Warren:But it takes a bunch of positive ones to create the same depth of connection. And so the first step in learning to manage our minds is to recognize that not every thought that pops into your head is valid or helpful or true or worthy of even a response emotionally or otherwise. When your brain says I'm a loser, note that. Look at it rationally. Grab it and look at it before you respond to it and discern whether you're thinking about it from an emotional place that's colored by your big brother or your ex spouse's name calling that was mean or whether it's actually something real that you need to work on.
Dr. Lee Warren:Happy people have learned to think about their thoughts instead of just reacting to them. If you work all day tomorrow on thinking about every negative thought before you react to it, then by the end of the day, you'll be much more aware of the nature and frequency of harmful thinking in your brain. How often do we find ourselves far down a path of listening to worrisome thoughts without ever stopping to question if the thought itself was worthy of an emotional reaction. Everyone has negative thoughts. They're like ants that show up no matter how hard you try to keep things in your kitchen tidied up.
Dr. Lee Warren:My friend, Daniel Amen, calls these automatic negative thoughts or ants in his powerful book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. You should read it if you wanna know more about how your thinking impacts your life. I consider it a required textbook for real life change. But by thinking about our thinking, we gain more discernment about when to actually engage certain lines of thought and when to discard them altogether. My friend, doctor Guy Winch, calls this mental hygiene, learning how to clean up your thinking.
Dr. Lee Warren:But ants are tricky. They have a weird, kind of weight to them that make them seem accurate and real. And like monsters under the bed to an 8 year old, ants can be so scary that they can paralyze us and ruin our lives. But not to worry, the thought biopsy technique will set you free from reacting to every ant in your head. Next time a negative thought pops into your brain, biopsy it.
Dr. Lee Warren:Just take a put a pause in there. Grab that thought when your mind tells you, I'll never be able to do this. I want you to say out loud, wow. That was a really negative thought. I should rephrase that more positively.
Dr. Lee Warren:Here's an example. You may have a thought that pops into your head that says, I'm never going to be able to lose this weight. But you could respond to that by saying, wow. That was a really negative thought. The truth is that if I'm more careful today about my diet and my exercise choices, I'll make a little progress on my weight goal.
Dr. Lee Warren:And if I do that every day, I'll get there eventually. You see the difference? You take the thought and spin it around and 2 things happen. 1, you see possibility where before you only saw defeat. And 2, your brain's blood flow and chemistry changes.
Dr. Lee Warren:And guess what that does? Everything you think about for the rest of the day will start off a little healthier. So today, look for the ants and see what a little positive spinning does to them. Keep practicing and soon you'll be saying this. I used to be a negative person, but my brain surgeon changed my mind.
Dr. Lee Warren:Okay. The second technique is something I call the lousy attitude lobotomy. Sometimes when you perform a bad thought biopsy, the result is that the negative thought is really just the result of a bad attitude. I'm sorry to say it, but sometimes the problem in a situation is us. It's easy to point fingers and pick out everyone else's faults.
Dr. Lee Warren:But if we're incapable of recognizing issues in our own lives, we'll never be happy. And a bad attitude is the closed head injury of neuroscience. People with certain types of injuries are incapable of improvement, of waking up, of ever having the highest quality of life that they can have. And bad attitudes, my friend, will keep you in a relationship in an emotional coma, and the only cure is a lobotomy. It's radical surgery.
Dr. Lee Warren:Bad attitudes can't be fixed by someone else. You've got to recognize it and treat it aggressively. But guess what? Sometimes in life, we're stuck in a bad situation or what or with bad people or in a bad job or an economy or a bad diagnosis. But I was once in a bunker with a bunch of other people, and we were getting the stew mortared out of us.
Dr. Lee Warren:We were getting blown up. There were mortars and rockets landing all over the base, and it was terrifying. And we were all scared and mad and sad, but guess what happened? Somebody started singing. This young lady who was part of the worship team started singing a gospel song.
Dr. Lee Warren:And pretty soon, all of us were laughing and singing. We actually had a good time while we were getting mortared. It didn't change the fact that we were actually physically in danger, but it did change how we all felt. Zig Ziglar said that your attitude, not your aptitude, determines your altitude. If you learn the lousy attitude lobotomy, you're on a path to learning to be happy despite your circumstances.
Dr. Lee Warren:Now the other dangerous thing, really dangerous thing about lousy attitudes is that they are highly contagious. Here again, neuroscience has proven this without a doubt. You know how some people come into a room and there's an immediate energy drain or a major lift that you can feel that Debbie Downer when they come in the room. Right? Or there's some people my wife Lisa is one of them.
Dr. Lee Warren:She walks in a room. Everybody feels better just because she's there. My friend, Ian Pesses, is that kind of guy. He walks in a room, you just feel better. He's just positive.
Dr. Lee Warren:You see him and you feel better. There's a there's an organization called the HeartMath, m a t h, Heart Math Institute. They've done some amazing experiments in which they show that people around you can influence your heart rate and your blood pressure just by standing there, that you somehow have a magnet electromagnetic field about our bodies that other people's electromagnetic magnetic fields respond to. Functional MRI studies have shown changes in people's brain chemistry just by asking them to think about certain things because attitude changes everything. You have to master the lousy attitude lobotomy if you wanna learn to be a happy person.
Dr. Lee Warren:I'll write more about this later. I just wanna introduce the idea to you. Lousy attitudes are terrible cancers, and they are highly contagious. And you've got to get rid of them if you wanna be happy. The third one is radically resecting regrets.
Dr. Lee Warren:We've got to learn to radically resect the things in our past that we regret and are ashamed of and hold us back. When I get someone's biopsy results and learn that they have a brain cancer, it's not time to man be pam be around. It's time for massive massive action. It's time for radical surgery. If I wanna get rid of that cancer, my patient if I don't get rid of that cancer, my patient will be doomed.
Dr. Lee Warren:Regret in living in the past, though, it's the same thing as an invasive malignant tumor that infiltrates your attempts to enjoy your life now. If you don't aggressively handle regret or the the idea that you're still living in the past, that's gonna destroy your future. You can't move forward if you're looking backwards. You're gonna trip and fall over stuff that you could easily have stepped over and avoided if you'd been facing forward. Regrets and sadness over problems that you faced in the past, whether they were real or whether they were imagined, will limit your happiness.
Dr. Lee Warren:They will limit your effectiveness in your present life now and in your future. Here's a hard truth. This is hard, but hear me out. If something in your past has become a prison in your present, you're the warden. You hold the keys to release yourself from your past even if you have to get professional help to do it.
Dr. Lee Warren:If there's something in your past, something that happened, something you did, something someone else did to you, and that's not actually happening now, then you you can choose to change how that imprisons you or releases you into the future. Sometimes, like I said, it takes professional help, but you're the warden. You're the one that can decide that you're gonna take the key and get it done no matter what it takes. And just like that invasive tumor that I have to radically resect, you've got to do that now with regrets and problems from your past if you wanna be happy in the future. Number 4, severing sick synapses.
Dr. Lee Warren:Do you know what a synapse is? You've got about a 100,000,000,000,000 of them with a t, trillion, in in your nervous system. A synapse is where two nerves come together and connect. So a synapse is where how basically different nerves interact with one another or sometimes nerves and muscles. It's it's the way in which information is exchanged.
Dr. Lee Warren:Signals are exchanged in your nervous system. Synapses are formed by repetitive action over time. You have a certain thing that you do over and over and over. You form muscle memory. We talk about muscle memory is built on synopsis of how you certainly build these connections over time.
Dr. Lee Warren:And all of a sudden, you don't have to devote conscious energy to accomplishing them because your synapses trigger a set of events that pull those things off without you having to think about them. And when the biopsy result says that something real is harming you now, you've gotta have the courage to pick up the knife and cut it out. If there are synapses that you built in your life, and a good example of them is habits. If something bad happens to you and you reach for the bag of chips every time, something bad happens and you reach for the comfort of the arms of a bad relationship that you shouldn't be in, something bad happens to you and you spend money to take your mind off of it that you don't have, you shop impulsively because you're trying to do some retail therapy so you don't have to think about the problem that's really at hand. If if you have a synapse like that, a reaction, a set of behaviors that you have adopted over time, surrogates for what you're really needing to deal with.
Dr. Lee Warren:That is a sick synapse that needs to be cut. If your mind realizes if I don't get rid of this, it's gonna kill me. If I don't get rid of this, if I don't get out of this relationship, if I don't stop this pattern of behavior, if I don't change this thing, my life is not gonna be okay. Sometimes it's a person. This man is never going to stop abusing me, and I've got to get out of here.
Dr. Lee Warren:If you have that thought, you need to take action on it. Because if you don't sever that, if you don't stop succumbing to the ease of staying put because you're so afraid of change, you're gonna be in trouble. Sometimes it's a financial or job situation or a friendship or a pattern of behavior. But once you identify a sick synapse that's hurting you, you've got to take care of it. If you can't repair it and sometimes the best answer is to repair it.
Dr. Lee Warren:But if you can't repair it, sever it. Cut it out. Get rid of that thing. If you don't, it will fester. It will invade further.
Dr. Lee Warren:And will it it will continue to ruin your happiness. The last one, number 5, drain your doubts and fill up your faith. Doubt is the abscess, the pus of neuroscience. When you're doubtful, when your faith is low, when you're convinced everything is falling apart, your neurochemistry is at its worst. Like I said before, when the world is dark and scary, we need someone around us to shine a light, to make us believe that it's gonna be okay.
Dr. Lee Warren:And if you wanna be happy, you have to learn to be able to do that for yourself sometimes. When your brain tells you that all is lost, you need to biopsy that thought, manage your mind, call on past experiences and situations in which you prevailed and things worked out, and then realize that you're still breathing, you're still moving, and therefore, you still got a chance. Things are not usually, in fact, they're rarely as bad as they seem, and that's why we need to have faith. If I leave pus somewhere, if I don't aggressively drain an abscess, the brain becomes very inflamed and swollen and it can't work right. People develop something called cerebritis and it looks like they're having a stroke all because of a little infection that we should have gotten rid of.
Dr. Lee Warren:Doubt and fear work the same way. Even if things are bad, and sometimes they are, you have to will yourself to believe that it will still be okay, that you have to decide that your okay is not tied to the circumstance room because the bombs aren't always gonna stop falling. The bombs won't always quit, but you can still start singing in the midst of it and learn how to work your brain out of it. There's a song by Matt Redmond called songs in the night. And one of the lines I think is so powerful is, when I am in the storm, the storm is not in me.
Dr. Lee Warren:You don't have to let the storm be inside you. If you wanna be happy, you have to get rid of doubt and fear. You have to you have to have faith. I'm not saying you have to be religious, although I firmly believe it helps to believe in someone bigger and more powerful than I am. But having faith that you'll find a way or that the way will find you will keep doubt from destroying your life and your productivity.
Dr. Lee Warren:Now please remember, always remember, if you're having serious emotional trouble, having racing thoughts, anxiety, depression, those things that are not responding to self management, you need to see a physician. Get professional help. Sometimes you need medical help. Don't substitute my advice for that of a doctor. I'm a I'm a doctor, but I'm not your doctor in this.
Dr. Lee Warren:If you're struggling, go see somebody because sometimes you do need help. But these 5 brains self brain surgery techniques that I've given you today, they can be helpful to you. And if you use them in your quest to make your world better, the whole world will be a better place. Now here's a last a few last thoughts for you. So we finish out this year.
Dr. Lee Warren:I'm so glad we've reconnected on this podcast, and I'm so glad that my book is finally coming out because I really think it's gonna help you. Here's a few last thoughts as we finish out 2019. Number 1, past losses or problems can teach us, but they cannot define us. Where you've been, my friend, is not who you are. 2, massive change requires massive action.
Dr. Lee Warren:It doesn't just happen. Emotion follows motion. You don't change your world without changing your mind first, and you can't wait around to feel like it. You have to just do it, and then you'll feel better. Because number 3, if you wanna feel better, you have to do better.
Dr. Lee Warren:It's self explanatory. Just take a quick walk through the history of how following your emotions has helped your life. I'm listening, probably hasn't. Think about all those times you blew up on somebody or you cried all day in your room or you quit a job because you were mad or you hung up on your wife or spent a month mad at your sister because of something you're pretty sure she meant when she actually said something she immediately tried to clarify. In the end, how did those emotionally driven decisions actually make your life better?
Dr. Lee Warren:I bet they didn't. I would submit to you then that if you want your days to feel better, perhaps reassess the notion that you're being smart when you act on your emotions instead of responding to them intellectually. Number 4, peace is achievable in your heart in spite of the circumstances going on around you. If you want emotional and mental peace, you can't get there by chasing your feelings and your thoughts. You've got to manage your mind.
Dr. Lee Warren:You gotta do self brain surgery. And number 5, the time to start is today. You start today. We're at the end of the year. It's time to put this stuff to bed and be ready for next year.
Dr. Lee Warren:You can't change yesterday, and you can't control tomorrow. But, my friend, you can decide that today you will live with a better managed mind. You will not allow yourself to be battered and bruised by the automatic negative thoughts you're bound to have. Make a decision that you won't react emotionally, not today, not anymore. You will think about your thoughts.
Dr. Lee Warren:You will respond intellectually, and you will learn to be a self brain surgeon. And you'll start today because feelings are lousy decision makers. If you wanna be happier and wiser, learn to respond and not to react. If you wanna be healthier, feel better, and be happier, you have to learn to manage your mind. If you wanna be a self brain surgeon, you gotta learn these techniques.
Dr. Lee Warren:You have the power, my friend, to change your thinking. You have the power to change your brain chemistry, and you have the power to change your life and your future. And that'll filter into your relationships. It'll filter down to your kids and your grandkids, and it'll lead to better things for the future generations of your family. So for today, take these 5 tools, these 5 instruments, these 5 techniques of self brain surgery, and please use them to help you change your mind because that, my friend, is how you change your life.
Dr. Lee Warren:But guess what? You have to start today. Hey. Thanks for listening. The doctor Lee Warren podcast is brought to you by my brand new book, Hope is the First Dose.
Dr. Lee Warren:It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things. It's available everywhere books are sold, and I narrated the audiobook if you're not already tired of hearing my voice. Hey. The theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker, available for free at tommywalkerministries.org. They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the most high god.
Dr. Lee Warren:And if you're interested in learning more, check out tommywalkerministries.org. If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at wleawarrenmd.com/prayer. Wleewarrenmd.com/prayer. And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self Brain Surgery, every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60 plus countries around the world. I'm doctor Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon.
Dr. Lee Warren:Remember, Freddie, you can't change your life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.