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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. This is Dr.
Lee Warren, and we're here for some self-brain surgery on Mind Change Monday.
Lisa and I are very excited. I've been invited back to First Presbyterian Church
in Bonita Springs, Florida, to speak as part of their Christian Forum series
for this year, and we are so honored and excited to be there tonight at Bonita Springs.
If you are in the Bonita Springs, Florida area, come by at 5.30 and you can
watch the event and come shake a hand and let us sign a book and maybe take
a picture. We'd love to see you.
And if you're not there, you can live stream it. It's going to be available
on the internet tonight.
There is a link in the show notes to that. We would love to have you join and
just be encouraged by talking about Hope is the First Dose.
Pastor Brad Rogers and the great folks there at Bonita Springs,
all the friends we made from last time, we're so excited to be back with them
tonight and hope you can join us either live or on the live stream today.
Since we're traveling, I'm going to give you back a great Mind Change Monday
episode from a while back about resilience.
This is a plan for resilience. It's going to help you change your mind and change
your life and help you get more able to withstand the massive things that happen
in life because we all face them.
We know they're coming. So this is a plan for resilience when life gets hard.
But before we get started, I have a question for you.
Good morning, my friend. I hope you're doing well. Dr.
Lee Warren here with you on the Dr. Lee Warren podcast, where we're going to
do some self-brain surgery today.
I have really a plan today on Mind Change Monday to give you a little lesson
in the art, not so much the science, but the art of self-brain surgery.
I wrote an article for Psychology Today, and I put this out there in kind of
a condensed form of what the treatment
plan is that I talk about in my new book, Hope is the First Dose.
And if you haven't read it and you've been listening to my podcast for a while,
you've heard all these elements, but you haven't probably heard it all in one place.
We're going to put all this condensed into one little lesson here this morning
on Mind to Change Monday.
I've got one element from Scripture I want to give you that kind of blew my
mind as I was studying my Bible this weekend. had an amazing talk with Susie
Larson on her radio show, Susie Larson Live on Friday.
And we kind of talked about cell brain surgery and it made me kind of realize
that I need to put it all in one little place. If you need...
Sort of an emergency first aid manual like what do i
do when do i do it this episode is going to give you that
resource and it would be a great one for you to share with you've
got some friends or family members or loved ones who are going through some
sort of massive thing or struggling with a series of kind of miniature massive
things and you find them are you wondering why is life always so hard why does
it always have to be so difficult why can't my life ever feel like it's going
forward and the way I want it to,
this is going to give you some tools to help you answer the one big question.
You know what the one big question is? Here it is.
Hey, are you ready to change your life? 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, Well, this is the place,
Self-Brain Surgery School.
I'm Dr. 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? This is your podcast.
This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.
Music.
All right, here we go. Listen, here's what we're going to do in this episode.
We're going to learn that we prepare for many types of trouble in life,
but we generally find ourselves unready for mental trauma.
We're going to learn that this science of neuroplasticity teaches us that we
can direct our brain's response to these troubles and make them healthier.
We're going to direct our brains to respond to our troubles in a healthier way.
And we're going to have a treatment plan in place because that's going to help
us direct our brains toward resilience.
We want to be more resilient, right? We don't want everything that happens in
our lives to throw us off onto some kind of tangent down into the pit of despair.
I was reading my Bible this weekend. And in Ephesians chapter 4,
I found this is, it's like a little handbook of self-brain surgery.
So I'm going to give you some scripture.
Then we're going to go back to this treatment plan idea. But I just want you to see something.
It's kind of long, but the much more condensed version of the treatment plan.
The much more condensed version of self-brain surgery in the Bible is in Philippians chapter 4.
Paul breaks it down in 6 through 8 and basically gives you, hey,
if you're anxious, pray more and think about better stuff.
That's the bottom line. There's even a more condensed version in Romans 12 too
where Paul says, hey, don't be conformed to the way the world wants you to think.
Be transformed by renewing your mind.
Test and improve the things you think about and find the ones that are good,
perfect, and pleasing to God, and you'll be happier.
That's the really super condensed. So there's always sort of three versions,
or there's three sort of versions here of this idea of self-brain surgery in the Bible.
But Philippians 4, I'm sorry, Ephesians 4, Ephesians chapter 4,
is where Paul really unpacks it.
And this is a long, kind of a long passage, but I want you to see a couple of
important elements here.
First, he says, we're going to start down in, let's say, verse 11.
So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists,
the pastors and teachers to equip his people for works of service so that the
body of Christ may be built up.
You get that? You're built for works of service. You want to know what your purpose is?
Love God, live according to what he's called you to do and serve other people.
Then you'll find purpose and meaning in your life. So he says you're created to equip.
He gave all the teachers and the evangelists and the pastors and the teachers
to equip you to do works of service so that the body of Christ may be built
up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of
God and become mature. Listen to this. This blew me away.
Until we become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
We're going to do some episodes coming up soon about quantum physics and string
theory and electromagnetism and all the different parts of our body and how they work together.
And this is going to start to help us understand how Jesus did some of the incredible
things that he did and how after Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection,
when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples, they started being able to do
some of the things that he could do.
And I'm just going to point out to you, you. There are some physical changes
in your body that happen when the Holy Spirit gets a hold of you.
This sounds crazy, but I'm going to unpack it for you in coming months.
Trust me, we're going to go there. And this is what Paul's getting at here.
We're going to be equipped to do works of service until we reach unity in the
faith and become mature and attain to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Christ says if you come after him, you die to yourself, you become like Like him, you get a new life.
You are transformed into something entirely new. And I would suggest that it's
you're gonna become more like how you were created to be in the first place.
And why? Paul says in verse 14, then we will no longer be infants,
tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of
teaching and by the cunning and
craftiness of people and their deceitful scheming. Here's what happens.
Some new idea comes along. You see something new on Instagram.
Some new teacher comes along, some new politician comes along.
Millions of people grab onto what they're saying and they follow, follow, follow.
And before long, they realize this is nothing new. I'm just as unhappy as I
ever was. I'm not healthier. I don't feel better. I'm not happier.
Right. And then they go back and they try to find the next thing and the next
thing and the next thing. They're blown back and forth.
But what happens if you build your life on the one that never changes?
If you build your life on the one that's always true, then you're stronger.
You're not blown about like a like tossed back and forth by the waves,
Paul says in 14, what 15 says instead.
So the alternative to being blown around by every scheme that comes along,
15 instead, speaking the truth, the truth,
not a truth, not your truth or my truth, the truth in love, we will grow to
become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head that is Christ.
We're going to become like him.
From him, 16 says, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting
ligament that includes your neurons and your synapses and your spinal cord and
all the parts of your body grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.
And this is where it gets crazy. This is what blew me away. So I tell you this,
Paul says in 17, and insist on it in the Lord.
So he tells us and he insists on it. Listen, what does he insist on?
That you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking.
What's the difference between people who are rooted and founded on Christ and
aren't blown around by every whim and every false teaching and every idea and
every new self-help program and every problem that comes along in life?
What's the difference between the people that are blown around by that stuff
and the people who aren't? They have better thinking.
The Gentiles, he says, the people who don't know the truth, have a disorder in their thinking.
That sounds a whole lot like Augustine and the difference between Augustine
and Freud, doesn't it? And Augustine said the big problem that people have is
their loves are disordered.
They attach meaning and purpose and they pursue the wrong things and they find
the idea that they're going to be happy by pursuing certain things and it turns out not to be helpful.
And until you get your order, until you get your loves in the right order and
you love God first, nothing else ever tastes right. Nothing else ever leaves you satisfied.
Nothing else ever leaves you feeling like you finally figured it out.
Paul's got it right here. What's the problem? Why are you blown around?
Why aren't you stable? Why doesn't everything feel solid? Why can't you feel happy?
Because your thinking isn't right. This is self-brain surgery, my friend.
It's right here in front of us. It's been there the whole time.
He says, if you get your mind right, you can become more and more and more like
how you were created to be, which is how Jesus was, which is why,
by the way, he could do things that we can't do.
It's not a magic trick. Jesus was living fully as a human in the embodied version
of what God intended for us to live like and be like like, and we will be like in the resurrection.
And it starts by getting your mind connected because your mind is connected to everything else.
If your mind isn't right, your thinking isn't right, your body isn't right,
your generations aren't right, and you're not rooted and anchored,
and you can be blown around by anything that comes along.
Isn't that incredible? Get your thinking right, you will get your life right.
So now, let me give you a treatment plan that'll help you do that, okay?
I'm still surprised after all these years that I've never caught on fire.
Based on the number of times I was taught in elementary school,
stop, drop, and roll if you catch on fire.
I thought that was going to happen a lot when I was growing up,
but it turns out I'm 54, I've never caught on fire.
But I have a plan, my friend, in place. I know exactly what I'm going to do if I catch on fire.
I'm going to stop, drop, and roll because I've got a plan, right?
I know what to do. We learn CPR.
We learn how to operate defibrillators so we know how to intervene in a stranger's
heart attack or if they've got a cardiac rhythm problem.
We are taught the Heimlich maneuver and how to use EpiPens in case we or somebody
else chokes or has an allergic reaction.
We know to report an unattended bag at the airport port in case there's a bomb in it.
We're instructed if you see something, say something. We're supposed to have
a plan in place for all kinds of things that might happen, right?
We save up money in case there's a problem or an emergency.
We do all these things because something might happen. And it's clear that wise
people know that we should all have general knowledge of what to do when flames
engulf us, hearts fail us,
bees sting us, or there might be a bomb.
And yet, Yet most of these things never happen to us or even around us in our
lives, but we're ready if they do.
I've noticed, however, that we don't generally prepare for the much more common,
even inevitable, mental traumas and tragedies and other massive things that happen in our lives.
The massive thing, the TMT, can be the death of a loved one,
a difficult diagnosis, a broken relationship, or any type of emotional pain or trauma.
It doesn't so much matter what your TMT is because it's what happens next that
determines whether you're wrecked by TMT or whether you can find hope and a
path back to wholeness again.
Remember what Paul just said, you want to know what the difference is between
those people who are anchored and those people who are blown around by every
wind? It's their thinking.
The famous physician and author Gabor Mate said, trauma is not what happens
to you, it's what happens inside you.
Trauma is the experience and the response to it, it's not the event that happened.
The brain science has made stunning discoveries in the past 20 years around
how our brains handle trauma,
and our evolving understanding of neuroplasticity and neurogenesis has made
it clear that learning healthier ways to think about the things that happen
in our lives leads to increased resilience against future traumas and enhanced
recovery when the massive thing does happen.
Recently, it's been conclusively proven that some areas of the brain,
like the subgranular zone of the hippocampus and the subventricular zone of
the lateral ventricles, have the capacity to form new neurons.
We call this neurogenesis. You can make new brain cells.
It's part of the new mercies that Lamentations is talking about.
Every morning, you wake up with a whole crop of baby neurons that are waiting
for you to give them a job to do.
These neurons can migrate and they can make functional changes changes on the
pre-existing neural architecture in healthy, damaged, or diseased parts of the brain.
These neurons have jobs to do.
Neurogenesis, I'm sorry, neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to form new
synaptic connections between neurons or even between entire brain regions in
response to injury, learning, experience, or thought patterns.
Susie Larson and I talked about this on Friday. This phenomenon is the basis
for the so-called Hebb's rule, neurons that fire together, wire together.
But neurogenesis and neuroplasticity are both a blessing and a curse because
unless they are actively managed,
our default is to wire those new neurons and synapses into exactly the same
thought patterns, neurotransmitter responses, and neurobiological realities that we've always had.
I apologize for my voice. There is some pollen in the air out there,
and it is driving me crazy.
So please forgive the little crackle of my voice. And by the way,
I want to send a shout-out. Susie Larson's brother, Jeff, is listening to the show every day.
He says it's really helping change the way you're thinking. Jeff,
if you're out there listening, I want you to know I'm glad you're listening.
I'm grateful to have you on board.
We've got lots of new listeners. We're so grateful. But I want you to understand this, okay?
You can't change your life until you change your mind. That's what we're doing
today. We're getting deep in the Mind Change Monday.
And Jeff's doing it with us. Susie's doing it with us. And lots of you all around
the world, I would love to hear from you.
Speakpipe.com slash Dr. Lee Warren. You can actually leave me a voicemail.
Sometimes I put those on the podcast. You can always email me,
lee at drleewarren.com.
Or if you have something you want to pray about, wleewarrenmd.com slash prayer.
Wleewarrenmd.com slash prayer. We'll get you to the prayer wall.
People all over the world waiting to pray with you.
There's no cost. You can put it anonymously or just your name if you want to.
And people will pray for you. You'll get an email every time somebody says a prayer for you, okay?
I'm telling you that because it is time to understand that how we're wired can
be changed, and we can take advantage of it.
Neurogenesis and neuroplasticity are a blessing and a curse because unless they're actively managed,
as I just said, our default is to wire those new neurons and synapses into exactly
the same thought patterns, neurotransmitter
responses, and neurobiological realities that we've always had.
Recent insights into neuroplasticity have taught us that thoughts become things.
You turn your thoughts into proteins, molecules, gene expressions,
and real-world realities.
Massive things happen. We react in programmed ways based on how we thought of
our lives and how we reacted in prior times of trouble.
And our standard anxiety, depression, numbing, or coping behaviors seem unchangeable
because we think, hey, that's just how I am, which can lead us into the worst
trouble of all, which is hopelessness.
But my friend, there's a better way. Take it from your friend, the brain surgeon.
There is a better way. We need a treatment plan, something we learn and rehearse
so it comes to mind as easily as stop, drop, and roll pops into your head if
you catch on fire, God forbid. This is self-brain surgery.
The treatment plan is what I call self-brain surgery.
And by the way, I didn't coin this phrase. There's been a few people over the
years that have said this.
I even remember Caroline Leaf said something like, This might be sort of like
doing self-brain surgery in one of her books.
But I realized as I was practicing neurosurgery over the years that my biggest
impact could be getting people to change how they think.
And once I understood neuroplasticity and neurogenesis and the fact that you
can actively rewire your brain, it became obvious that my calling in this world
is not just to do surgery with my hands, but to teach you how to do self-brain
surgery with your thinking.
And it's my mission. It's my passion.
And that's what we're here for. to learn the treatment plan.
It's how we're going to harness the power of neuroplasticity to take advantage
of our brain's abilities to rewire themselves in response to the massive thing when it happens.
It's being aware that the massive thing is coming.
Don't forget that your ability to avoid hard things in your life is not up to you.
Jesus promised in this world you're going to have trouble, John 16, 33.
He also promised in John 10, 10, however, I came here that you could have abundant life.
And so you can have both. And the way that you have both is to understand that
the quantum physics of the universe says that two things can be true at the same time.
We were going to unpack that heavily in season nine. Okay.
Learning to harness the power of neuroplasticity to take advantage of your brain's
ability to rewire itself in response to the massive thing is self-brain surgery.
It's coming. The hard thing is coming, but it's also being aware that we've
all survived hard things before.
That's the memory part of the muscle, the verb of hope.
Being aware that you've been through hard things before. You've seen others
who have experienced TMT and managed to find hope and even happiness again.
And you believe, therefore, that it is possible for us to find it again too.
That's why hope is the first dose, by the way, because I can give you the best
treatment plan. I can be the best surgeon in the world. I can give you the best plan.
But if you don't hope and believe it's going to be possible for you to get better,
you won't bother to get into the car, to drive to the hospital,
to have the surgery that I can use to fix your problem.
So if you don't have hope, the treatment plan is irrelevant because you won't
use it, right? So hope is the first dose.
It's knowing that our limbic systems are predisposed to make us think that we
should be afraid that all is lost and we should run for our lives,
but that most of the time, these automatic thoughts are simply not true.
And in knowing that, we learn to get our frontal lobes involved to take control
of the situation. That's why we have Frontal Lobe Friday on the podcast.
We remind us that as long as we're breathing, there is yet hope of things feeling better.
Here's how it works. First, acknowledge that the hard things,
the massive things will occur in your life so that you're not completely surprised
by them when they appear.
That's when we have a renewed mind, right? That's Romans 12.2. It's Ephesians 4.
It's the Gentiles have disordered thinking. That's why they're easily unanchored.
We're not going to be. We're going to be resilient.
Secondly, just as I do in the operating room when I need to identify whether
brain tissue is harmful to my patient.
We learn to biopsy or examine our thoughts and feelings and think about our
thinking before we react or give into it.
What does that do? It puts us in control of determining whether the way we've
always responded to a particular thought, feeling, or experience is harmful
or helpful so that we have agency in choosing what happens next.
The hope scientists, the people who study hope.
Scientifically say that hope requires agency and pathways. You have to have
some ability to do something about your problem and you have to have a path
or a plan to get there. Can you get there from here?
That's how you make hope, agency and pathways. It's also, as I said,
memory of remembering we've been there before.
You've had hard things before. Other people have had hard things before and
moving towards a future where there's a better way.
That's hope. That's how it happens.
Thirdly, think about the harmful or negative thought patterns you've had before
and make a self-brain surgery decision to transplant a healthier response.
This is where we do the actual operation.
We get the biopsy result. Is it a lousy attitude? Do we need to lobotomize?
Is it a doubt we need to drain? Is it a trust problem that we need to transplant?
What is it that we need to do to swap this unhelpful thought for a better one?
And that allows us to put a little space between the stimulus,
the biopsy result, whether it's the massive thing or just a lousy attitude,
whatever, and our response to it. That's the superpower.
And by the way, this is what they've distilled down into one idea idea in Eastern
meditation and metaphysics and this idea of 10% happier that Dan Harris has
made millions of dollars off of. It's just, hey, you want to be a little happier?
Learn to put some space in between your thought and your reaction.
That's all you got to do. Just put a little space in there.
And that's great. If your problem is mild anxiety or panic attack,
just learn how to stop the process.
Think about it for a second, take a deep breath and respond more healthily. That's great.
But it's 10%. If you've gone through a massive thing and your soul feels like
it's been blown to a million pieces or crushed into ceramic shards a thousand,
thousand, thousand times over.
10% is not enough. If you're infinitely miserable, you need something bigger than that.
And that's what's going to take some spiritual self-brain surgery,
right? It's more than 10% happier.
And you can become significantly happier by learning brain science and understanding
how your brain works and make yourself think healthier and all of that.
But I believe you can come fully fully alive, as my friend Susie would say,
fully alive by getting your spirit involved and letting the Holy Spirit operate
this operating system that he put inside your mind.
And that's how you really get it all finally clicking. And you can bring those
two realities of John 16, 33 and John 10, 10 into one whole life that's hard
and abundant at the same time. Finally.
Finally, my friend, practice the process. Biopsy the thought,
examine it, choose between the prior program response and a new one you'd like
to wire into your brain and transplant the new more helpful thought pattern over and over.
By practicing this, you can make new synaptic connections that will make it more automatic.
You will start finding yourself saying, wait, that's a thought.
I need to think about that thought for a second before I react to it.
Instead of just finding yourself feeling really unhappy or angry or sad or whatever
and never even realizing that you followed the feeling or a thought down a rabbit
hole without examining it carefully.
You'll become a master self-brain surgeon by practicing the plan over and over.
Biopsy the thought. Put some space in there. Examine it critically.
Transplant something new if it's not helpful. Because of the miracle of neurogenesis
and your active direction of your neuroplasticity, you'll start to see Hebb's rule in action,
and you'll fire and wire those neurons into healthier synapses,
And you'll find, my friend, that you will become healthier and feel better and be happier over time.
The most important thing to know is this. When the massive thing comes,
your brain will make new synapses and realities out of it, and they will proceed,
your brain will proceed down the same old pathways you've created from all the
prior traumas, tragedies, and hardships you've encountered before unless you
take control of the process.
Having a treatment plan in place helps you be in charge of the rewiring of your
brain after the massive thing.
Instead of being a victim of what happens to you, instead of being unanchored
and blown about by everything that comes along in your life,
following this plan and that plan and never really figuring it out.
You can be rock solid and super resilient by getting your mind in order,
getting your brain under your own control.
Doesn't that sound better? Doesn't that sound better?
More hopeful, more helpful. It's Mind Change Monday, friend.
It's time to get after it. Listen, you can become healthier and you can feel
better and you can be happier, but you gotta change your mind first.
You gotta get up out of that hole of disordered thinking. I'm gonna play my
friend Tommy Walker's song, Get Up. I think it's a perfect way to end this episode.
You can change your mind and you can change your life, but you gotta have a
plan. When your brain's on fire, you gotta stop, drop, and roll, right?
It's time to get after it and it's time to start today. One, two, three, four.
Music.
Hey, thanks for listening. Please subscribe to the show so you automatically get every episode.
And if you like the show, you'll love my weekly letter. Check out my writing
at drleewarren.substack.com, drleewarren.substack.com.
Get the free newsletter every week for my best prescriptions for becoming healthier,
feeling better, and being happier through the power of faith and neuroscience,
smashing together via self-brain surgery, drleewarren.substack.com.
And if you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at wleewarrenmd.com slash prayer.
The theme music for the show is Make Us One by Tommy Walker,
graciously provided for free by the great folks over at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.
Check it out and consider supporting them, TommyWalkerMinistries.org.
Remember, you can't change your life until you change your mind.
And the good news is you can start today. I'm Dr.
Lee Warren. I'll talk to you soon. God bless you, friend. Have a great day.