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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. We're going to do a little
self-brain surgery because it's self-brain surgery Saturday.
I've got a cold or something. There's something going on with my voice. I'm sneezing.
And so rather than subject you to an hour of my crazy voice,
I'm going to give you back an episode that I thought about yesterday when I
was recording a conversation with an incredible guest.
I'm not going to play that episode for you until the end of July,
and I'm not even going to tell you who he is because you're going to be really
excited about this guest.
I want it to be a surprise, but we had a conversation about how to reframe your
thinking when you're going through suffering.
And then later yesterday, I had a conversation with a woman whose husband committed
suicide because of chronic pain, and she had to describe to me how she was able
to put her life back together.
And it came down to basically changing her mind about what her life looked like
going forward and the way that she managed the suffering was to find a way to give it purpose.
And that's exactly the path that Lisa and I and our family had to walk after losing our son.
So after these two conversations that I had yesterday, just remembering the
importance of the fact that you can't change the traumas and tragedies that
you've been through, that you can change your response to them.
You can change how they either define or refine you. And it reminded me of a
self-brain surgery episode we did way back in January of 2023 that I called
the suffering substitution.
It's this operation that you can perform to change the vision that you cast
onto your circumstances, to change the nature of how you view the things that
have happened and what the role of suffering is in your life.
And this is a critical skill.
This particular self-brain surgery operation is critical because no matter who
you are, it's a biblical promise. us, and it's an absolute fact of life that
you're going to go through some hard things.
I just had a text exchange yesterday with a friend who lost his wife,
lost his kids in a custody battle.
He's been through just an incredible series of difficult things over several years.
And that kind of event can either grind you into oblivion, and you can be defined
by it, and it can ruin your whole life. Or...
You can find some way to redefine what your life looks like going forward,
and you can find meaning and purpose in it, and that's the path back.
No matter what has happened, the most likely path that you have to ending up
your life with things restored or repaired or renewed or with a new and hopeful future,
it always has to do with you changing the way you're seeing what's happening in some way,
because Because the pain and the suffering that you're going through can't produce
good results if that's what becomes the focus of your mental energy.
If that's what becomes the defining characteristic of how you see how your life is playing out.
So at some point, if you want things to be better, you have to remember the
premise of self-brain surgery. What got you here won't get you there.
So this is an episode from January of 2023.
We talk about the suffering substitution, and I think it'll be helpful to you.
And we've got some exciting things coming for next week. We're concluding our
first spiritual brain surgery episode that's hosted by somebody else.
It'll be coming on Monday. So very excited for the things that are coming.
Very excited for the guests that I recorded with yesterday.
You're not going to believe it for all in August. It's going to be incredible.
So we're going to spend the month of July getting our minds and our hearts ready
to go all in with this self-brain surgery idea of changing our minds and changing our lives.
So it's Self-Brain Surgery Saturday. The operation you will learn today is called
the Suffering Substitution. You'll learn what it is, when to apply it, and how to pull it off.
But before we get started, I have a question for you.
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, 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.
And in my new book, the first few chapters are about the events that occurred and all that.
Told from the point of view, though, of not memoir, but when something really
bad happens to you, what do you do next?
And what's the process, which we call it, I call it treatment plan.
How do you get that self-brain surgery thing engaged so you can change your
mind about what you're going through and find a path forward instead of a path
down to the pit of despair and doom and death or whatever, alcoholism or whatever.
However, when something bad happens, it's a massive thing happens to you, right?
So I'll cover that ground in the book, so I'm not going to cover that ground
here. But I'm just going to tell you one story.
The day before Mitch died, August 20th of 2013 is when he died.
And the day before, he called me. It was the last time I ever spoke to him.
I was in the middle of my day of surgery at the hospital in Alabama.
And in between cases, the timing worked out just right.
The phone rang. I looked down. I took my breath away because we'd been for a
few months, we'd been in a little conflict.
We hadn't talked a lot because he was mad.
He was struggling like most teenagers do.
He was upset and he was not thinking the way I wanted him to think.
He decided to go live in Prattville and we lived in Auburn. It was about an hour away.
He'd just been kind of doing his own thing and trying to find his own way and
he was dealing with anxiety.
Anxiety, and he just had been making some missteps, right, like a lot of teenagers do,
but my phone rang, I looked down, and there's Mitch, and he's like, Dad,
I'm like, hey, Mitch, it's good to hear your voice, and he said,
it's good to hear your voice, Dad, I love you, and I said, I love you,
too, and he said, I'm sorry, you were right,
I've been praying, and I need to come home, I need to live with you and Lisa,
I need to get back in Auburn, and go back to school, and it's just time for
me to get back on track, and get my life back together,
and I'm, you know, I'm sorry, You were right. I'm ready to come home.
And we were filled with this just indescribable joy, like God had finally answered
all these prayers we'd been praying, that things would be set right and he would be okay.
And then the next morning, okay, we wake up with this day, the sunshine's dawning,
and it's beautiful, and we're excited. Mitch is going to come home in a couple of days.
And the 21 Days of Prayer was happening, the fall version of the 21 Days of
Prayer in our church. We do it in August at the start of the school year every year.
And that day, the prayer focus was the children.
And it was the youth minister, pastor of one of the campuses of Church of the
Highlands. And she was leading us in prayer about the kids.
And she commented on that verse in Nehemiah where it says, do your work with
a sword on your belt and a hammer in your hand. Basically, they're building
the wall, and they're building, but they're also ready to battle.
And the Scripture says, because they're under attack, and the enemy doesn't
want them to build this wall, and so they've got to be ready to fight or build
at the same time. And the Scripture says, be ready.
Fight for your families. Fight for your children. Fight for your wives.
Fight for your family, right?
And so we were praying this powerful prayer, like we're going to fight for our
kids, and we come against the enemy, and we're getting victory here because
Mitch is coming home. and we were all this stuff.
And then like 7.30 that night, the phone rings and Mitchell's dead, right? He's gone.
And so it felt like this big trick, like this big ruse.
And friend, if you've ever been through something like that where it feels like
God's finally doing something and then boom, the rug's pulled out from under
you and you just don't understand what happened. That's how we felt right then.
We were awash in misery and suffering and pain.
And we just didn't know what to do. And it felt like a big trick.
And for a little bit, I was like, Like, I don't even know if I can believe in
this God that could let that happen.
It's one thing if your son just dies, but the fact that we had all this hope
that felt like it was rekindling and all of a sudden everything was going to
be okay and then, boom, it was not okay.
That was just unbearable. Again, I've covered that ground. I wrote about it
a little bit in my new book.
What I'm telling you about this today is that fast forward 10 years,
okay? This is the 10th year.
This August of this year will be 10 years since we lost Mitch.
Mitch's 29th birthday will be next month, February 9th.
And so we're 10 years into this thing now, right?
And of course, over time, your thinking and your feelings about great loss evolve, right?
They don't ever stop being great losses, but your thinking evolves and you understand
and you mature and God pulls you through things and your faith develops and
you find reasons to hope and you move forward.
And for me, that was writing and podcasting. And all the things I do every day
are all about how we put our lives back together and followed the trail of hope,
which led me, frankly, back to Jesus as the only rational basis for hope.
So all this work that I've done for 10 years, my therapy and my self-brain surgery
understanding And all these things I try to teach you all come out of trying
to find a way forward from that great pain and that great loss, right?
So yesterday happened just again. We're doing the 21 Days of Prayer,
and the youth minister gets up.
The youth pastor, the college minister from the Tuscaloosa campus gets up.
And today, yesterday, he says, today is the focus on our kids.
We're going to talk about the kids. We're going to fight for the kids.
He quoted Nehemiah again.
And he said, you put this hammer in one hand and the sword in the other one,
you battle and you build at the same time and you fight for your children and
you fight for your family and you fight for your wives and you fight for your
husband and you fight for your marriage and you fight for the kids.
And I just got mad.
You're 10 years later, right? The guy that writes the books and the guy that
records the podcast, your friend that comes, talks to you every day. I got really mad.
And I'm sitting there and we're all doing our individual prayer.
And Lisa prays with her eyes closed and Tata walks around and does his thing.
And I sit in the chair so nobody can see my face. And I'm sitting there crying and I'm mad.
I'm just like, God, why did you do that? Why did you let us have all that hope?
And why did you let me have that conversation with Mitch and make me think he
was coming home and you knew all the days of his life before one came to pass
and you knew that was the last day he was going to talk to me or the last day
he was going to be on this earth.
And yet you let me spend that prayer time that morning asking you to take care
of him and asking you to bring him home and all that.
So why did you let that happen? And friend, I'm just here to tell you,
I'm going to give you a substitute suffering operation here, okay?
I'm here to tell you what happened to me yesterday morning.
Yesterday morning before prayer time, I was drinking coffee and I finished the
podcast and I was looking at Instagram for a second, looking at something I
was going to send to somebody.
And I found this post that somebody made and it very simply said,
I learned something this year that was helpful to me.
And what the person learned was, they said, pain is mandatory in life,
but suffering is optional.
Pain is mandatory, but suffering is optional. So that was in my brain bouncing
around somewhere after I'd read that because that made me think about Viktor Frankl.
When I read his book, Man's Search for Meaning a few years ago,
there's a passage in there where where he talks about how mankind is the one
who was able to construct the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Man can do that horrible thing to somebody else. But, Frankl said,
mankind is also the one who can walk into those chambers upright with the Lord's
Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on their lips.
The Shema Yisrael is the Lord, the hero of Israel. The Lord our God is one.
The Lord is our God. The Lord is one. It's the most holy prayer in the Jewish tradition.
In addition, so Frankl says, man can build a gas chamber to make somebody else
suffer, or man can walk upright into those chambers with the Lord's prayer on his lips.
He can choose whether he's going to suffer or he's going to hold on to faith and hope.
So I had that bouncing around in my head. I had this idea, pain is mandatory, suffering is optional.
And the pastor's praying, fight for your kids, fight for your family.
And I'm mad, I'm crying, and I'm feeling all that raw emotion.
And I heard, listen, I'm not a charismatic person, okay?
I don't speak in tongues, and
I don't think I can raise the dead with my hands, and I don't have that.
Those spiritual gifts are not mine. God has not given me those things.
I don't have the gift of tongues or prophecy or any of those things.
So I'm not a charismatic person.
So when I say I heard God's voice, voice, I don't mean that like the skies parted
and the ceiling blew open and God's sunlight blew down in my face and the dove
flew by and I heard an audible voice that shook the room and all that. That's not what I mean.
In my spirit, I heard as clear as I'm talking to you right now.
When I said, like a conversation, I said, how could you let me pray that?
When you already knew what was going to happen, how could you let me pray,
bring him home, heal him?
Thank you for restoring my family. Thank you for bringing my son back to me.
When you already knew what was going to happen 24 hours later,
not even 12 hours later, how could you do that?
And friend, like somebody sitting next to me in the car, somebody sitting across
the desk from me, just as clear as that in my spirit, I heard this.
Is how do you know I didn't answer your prayer?
How do you know? How do you think you can define whether Mitch suffered or whether
I was answering that prayer or not?
I was. Think about it. And what I remembered in that moment that I hadn't really
thought about, Lisa and I talked about a pair of ideas around this a few times over the years.
But what I remembered was my son had a problem of feeling comfortable in his own skin.
He was anxious, and he didn't handle anxiety very well. He struggled with it. He suffered under it.
And I couldn't convince him that he could change his mind about it.
Maybe one of the reasons I'm so passionate about trying to teach you how you
need to change your mind because that's how you change your life is because
I wasn't able to find the words during his lifetime to give that gift to him.
And it's taken me a long time to figure out how to give it to other people. Maybe that's why.
But I remembered how uncomfortable he was and how little things weighed him
down so much. And he was a good kid, okay?
And he was a believer and he loved Jesus.
But he struggled with this being uncomfortable in his own skin.
And what God said yesterday was, if you really believe that the ultimate aim
of mankind is to be with me forever, If you really believe that you're created
to make a mark on this earth,
but also to reflect my glory and also ultimately to be with me forever,
if you really believe that and I'm telling you that I'm taking your son to a
place where every tear is dried and every fear is comforted and every anxiety
is eliminated and every chain is broken and every bad thing is gone.
And he finally understands his purpose and why he's here and I've got him,
if you really believe that, then how can you look me in the eye and ask me why
I didn't answer your prayer because I did. And it just floored me yesterday.
Ten years later, I realized that we have the gift of being able,
if we trust God enough, if we have enough of his promises built into us,
if we've read the scripture enough, if we've spent enough time getting to know
him in real relationship,
the prayer and meditation, really walking out the word, If we've done that work,
then his spirit can give us the ability to trust him enough to substitute our suffering for trust.
To say, okay, this is really painful, but I don't have to suffer under it because
I know the purpose underneath it is going to lead back to a place where there's peace.
I know that. If I can believe it, if I can put myself on the line enough to
trust that what he's doing is ultimately for my good.
And by the way, Romans 8, 28, that scripture, all things work together for the
good of those who love the Lord, to conform them to Christ.
Don't tell people that in the acute phase of their pain. Okay,
don't use that scripture. It's true.
And it turns out to be incredibly powerful and useful later.
But you can't hear that in a way that doesn't infuriate you when you're first
upset and when you first lost somebody.
Some preacher told me that a few days after I mentioned that.
Well, you know, all things work together for good.
This is going to work out for your good. And I wanted to choke it.
Like, I literally wanted to choke him.
I had rage when he said those words. It's not good that my son died.
Don't you tell me that. Don't stand here in my house and tell me that it's good
for my son to have died. Don't you tell me that.
That's a thing you can't say to somebody when they first are going through loss, okay?
It turns out to be true. And that's this thing of we talked a lot about quantum physics.
And in quantum physics, and I'm no mathematician, but I've always been drawn
to the beauty of this truth that the quantum physicists have figured out that
time is not what we think it is.
And the reality is not what it looks like in the big scale of the world.
But when you get down to the quantum level, you figure out that weird things
happen. And one of the weird things that can happen is an electron can be in two places at once.
And we don't understand that in our finite minds.
But that's why God can say, Jesus can say in John 16, 33, that you're going to have a hard life.
And at the same time, he can promise you in John 10, 10, that he came here to
enable you to have an abundant life.
Okay. Hard and abundant. and that means
that you can be in pain but not have
to suffer and it can mean that you can walk into
the gas chamber upright and still be praying the lord's
prayer or the shame of israel it means that
you can look at something terrible and devastating that happened and still know
that god is answering your prayers through it but you have to be able to switch
your brain to say i'm gonna let god redefine what i thought was suffering i'm
gonna let him be true i'm gonna let him be the the yes to the prayer that I'm praying,
even if the circumstances don't look like it.
I'm going to trust him enough to transplant that trust onto him because I can't
believe on myself in those moments when life has knocked me out.
I got to believe on him and I put it on him because he's good.
And so what's going to happen when you do that, just like it happened with me
yesterday, is here I've got 10 years of looking back and being really,
even though I'm faithful and even even though I believe I'll get to see my son again.
I've been really mad about that. I've been really unhappy about the fact that
I got tricked, I felt like.
Mitch called me that we prayed for the kids that day so fervently,
and we were fasting, and we were really digging in to praying for our family,
and then boom, my son's gone.
I was mad about that, and it took until yesterday. It took 10 years for me to
finally release that and say, you know what? But your promise in Psalm 124,
the look back at history of Psalm 124 is true.
What if the Lord had not been on her side?
The psalmist said, David wrote in Psalm 124, what if the Lord had not been on
our side when people attacked us? They would have swallowed us alive in their burning anger.
The waters would have engulfed us. A torrent would have overwhelmed us.
The raging waters would have overwhelmed our lives.
But praise the Lord who did not let them rip us apart. We escaped.
The trap is broken. We are free. Our help is from the Lord. See,
David says, looks back on time and says, man, we went through some horrible things.
What if the Lord had not been on our side? and yesterday
I was like holy cow I was really mad about this
for 10 years but maybe he was actually answering my prayer maybe
Mitch's anxiety and stress was going to give his life some difficulties and
he didn't have to deal with them now now he's free he's been set free from all
that and if I really believe in the resurrection and I really believe in eternity
then I have to believe that Mitch is better where he is than he is here you
can't hear that acutely when you're hurting.
You can't. But what if it's true, right? What if the Lord had not been on our side?
What would that have looked like? So maybe instead of being mad about those
prayers and maybe being mad about that phone call,
maybe I should have looked back and given thanks for them because he was actually
putting Mitch in a position of being set free from all that pain.
And that's hard for me to think that way, but that's actually another path,
another quantum physics reality that these two things are both true. It's horrible.
I lost my son. But at the same time, if I really believe that he was created
to be with God, that's where he is.
And that's where he's supposed to be. So praise God for that.
And that took me back to Psalm 34. I will praise the Lord at all times.
I will constantly speak his praises. So that means you're walking into the gas
chamber, right? You're in this life. It's going to be hard.
You're full of all these difficult things, but you're upright with the Lord's
prayer on your lips. I will praise the Lord all the time.
His praise will always be on my lips.
In verse 4, I prayed to the Lord and he answered me. He freed me from all my
fears. All these horrible things that have scared me so much.
I lost my son. How can I be a good parent to my other kids?
How can I be a good enough pop for my grandkids?
I couldn't even save my own son. God says, wait a minute, Lee. That's my job.
I've got this overarching eternal plan for your life and for his.
And I'm a good God. And I'm a good, good father.
And you're not responsible for what happens on the eternal scale. I am.
So take that load and put it on me. Let me carry that for you.
Right? Game changing yesterday what happens. The transplant of suffering back
into pain. Yes, it was painful.
But it wasn't suffering because I was placing the blame somewhere where it didn't belong.
And God, and I was wondering why he wasn't answering my prayers. And he actually was.
And that's why Psalm 34, 18 turns out to be true. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.
He rescues those whose spirits are crushed. He's there with you in those moments.
And I look back and I think that song, Matt Redman's song, Never Once.
And I've told you this before, but that song came out not long after we lost Mitch.
And I used to run to it in Grove Hill in our neighborhood, Moores Mill in Auburn. There was a path.
I could run from our neighborhood up the hill to Moores Mill Drive and run out to Moores Mill Road.
And then run down this big hill, and then there's a long uphill that gets to
a street called Grove Hill, and I would turn left to the top of Grove Hill and
run another mile down to my friend Rob Brooks' house and then back, and it was a 10K circuit.
It was 6.2 miles, just about almost to the step from my front door to Rob's and back.
And the way I had my playlist put together back in those days on my iPod,
which we used back then, which now we don't have iPods anymore. more.
But the way I had my playlist put together, just about the top of Grove Hill
would hit the chorus of this song from Matt Redman, Never Once.
Never once did we ever walk alone. Never once did you leave us on our own.
You are faithful. God, you are faithful.
And so I'm going to play that song for you in a second here.
And I just remember those days when I'd be crying and running and mad and I'll
be pounding out my steps and just frustrated and asking God why.
And it was almost like a call and response that would get to the top of Grove
Hill, just about give out and just about out of gas and just about emotionally spin.
And he would say, never once did you ever walk alone, dude. You were not alone.
You might've been in the gas chamber, but you were upright with my prayer on your lips.
You might've been in the furnace of suffering, but you didn't have to suffer
even though it was painful because I had you and you weren't gonna be overwhelmed.
And if I hadn't been on your side, it would have been so much worse.
And I just, yesterday, friend, I was able to reframe a story,
a narrative that I've held in my heart for so long.
And this is a crucial thing. If you can change a narrative,
a long-held narrative that's been in your mind and in your heart for a long
time, and you can actually look at it with new eyes, like the cataract surgery
came out, and all of a sudden you can see it clearly in a different way,
then you can start telling yourself a different story.
And here's a new story, okay?
Here's a new story for me. Here's a new story for us.
God had us in his hands the day before Mitch died.
And God gave us an opportunity, gave me an opportunity to hear my son's voice
one more time and to know without any doubt that he was out there thinking of me and that he loved,
And that the last words he heard his father speak on this side of eternity where
I love you, Mitch, and I'm so proud of you and I can't wait to see you.
So my son died with my words in his mind and in his heart. He knew I loved him.
And that matters a lot. What if our last conversation had been a fight or an
argument or just silence?
Or if we hadn't even talked, then I would have been devastated with what if,
what if, what if, what if? Why not? Why not? Why not?
Instead, I get to know that my son entered his last moments on earth.
And if he thought of me in those moments, he knew I loved him.
And that means everything to me. So I'm just telling you, the operation today,
the self-brain surgery operation, this very personal episode here where I've
shared a lot of hard things with you, only for the purpose of this,
go back and look at some of the narratives that you've held about some of the
hardest things you've been through.
And if those things are still informing how you feel and how you operate today, day.
You were abused, you lost somebody, you went through this hard thing,
you were betrayed, something X, Y, Z, whatever it was.
And if that's informing how you interact with others now, how you relate to
the Lord now, how you look out to the future with hope or not,
how you think you are blessed or not, if those things are still informing you,
then reframe that narrative because never once did you ever walk alone.
You can change your mind about it and you can change your life on it.
It's Self-Brain Secretary Saturday, friend. Let's get after it.
Music.
Hey thanks for listening the dr lee warren podcast is
brought to you by my brand new book hope is the first dose 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 audiobooks hey the theme music
for the show is get up by my friend tommy walker available for free at tommy
walker walkerministries.org.
They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the most high God.
And if you're interested in learning more, check out tommywalkerministries.org.
If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at wleewarrenmd.com slash prayer,
wleewarrenmd.com slash 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 Dr.
Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your
life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.
Music.