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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. It is Sunday. This is Dr. Lee Warren here,
your favorite internet brain surgeon. We're going to do a little spiritual brain surgery today.
I don't normally give you something on Sunday, but as I was writing the newsletter
today, go check it out, drleewarren.substack.com.
And if you're not signed up for the newsletter, please, please,
please subscribe to the newsletter.
It's the best part of the week in terms of this community, and it'll really
help you. So as I was writing the newsletter, I remembered an old episode that
I did a long time ago about the perils of self-brain surgery.
We've been doing the 10 commandments of self-brain surgery over on the Dr. Lee Warren podcast.
And one of them, the first commandment is first, no harm. Don't commit self-malpractice.
And a common way that we commit self-malpractice is to realize that we need
to do something on our own behalf and we choose not to do it.
And so this episode is all about that. That is from way back in 2021.
It's very helpful. Just good look at the perils of what happens once you know the truth,
if you don't choose to follow it, and what happens if you do choose to follow
it, and how dramatic and life-changing or life-wrecking that can be.
So somebody out there needs to hear this today.
I'm not sure who it is. If it turns out to be you, if you listen to this episode
and say, wow, I really needed that today, shoot me an email, lee at drleewarn.com.
Love to hear from you. And without further ado, I have a question for you.
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.
Today, I want to spend a few minutes with you based on something I wrote about
in the newsletter yesterday, and we're going to talk a little bit about what happens once you know.
Once you learn and have insight that you can change your mind,
that you can use the power of neuroscience and the power of faith,
and when you smash them together in this process that I sort of jokingly,
but not really jokingly, call self-brain surgery,
then you have the the tools, and therefore the responsibility to control your
own mind and not be a victim anymore, like bobbing around in the ocean like
you're wearing a life vest, but you don't have any control, right?
It's not that way anymore.
Once you understand that you can literally change your brain and change your
life, then you have a responsibility to do it.
So today we'll talk a little bit about ignorance versus choice and the dangers
of what happens beyond or past the time that you gain insight into your own
nervous system and your own brain and your own spirit and how they work together.
We're going to talk a little bit about that. Before we do, I've got a couple of prayer requests.
I got an email yesterday from a woman in San Antonio whose husband underwent
a severe acoustic trauma.
A gun was fired in a closed space, and he's having some real trouble with his
ears and his balance and his dizziness.
That really hit close to home for me because in 2020, I told you before,
I fired a shotgun pretty close to a brick wall.
I wasn't thinking. I'm always really safe with my firearms and wearing hearing protection,
but this day I was trying to scare some birds off, and I just didn't realize
how close I was standing to a corner and I really blew
my ears up and that has been for two years now a thorn in my flesh my hearing
isn't right it's not as much fun to play the guitar music doesn't sound right
it's just it really messed me up and this woman wrote in about her husband and
he's having all kinds of trouble related to this pretty fresh acoustic trauma
and so I just want to be praying for him.
So put him on your prayer list and then a woman wrote in a woman named Jane
who found her brother or whose brother was found dead had sudden death yesterday.
They don't know what happened to him yet.
And that's just a shock to the family. They'd lost their mother three months
ago and now they've lost their brother and just be in prayer for that devastating
acute loss that they weren't expecting. It's just kind of an out of nowhere thing.
And then finally, our friend, Beth Maxey, who writes in a lot and we connected
with her through the newsletter and the podcast and Tulsa, her husband,
Matt, has COVID and he's He's pretty sick, so just be praying for Matt and Beth Maxey.
They're two people of great faith in Tulsa, and they are connected to this community.
You can know anytime you're listening
to the podcast, Beth is out there listening and praying with you.
Just be with Matt and give him some thoughts and prayers. Those are three people
I wanted to shout out this morning.
Okay, listen. We're going to talk about the perils of self-brain surgery,
ignorance versus choice, and the dangers beyond insight here on Mind Change Monday.
Then we're going to play an old Tommy Walker song.
Not that old, but one of my favorite Tommy Walker albums is Living in the Wonder,
and this song is called Look What Happens.
And I want to give you that song at the end because today I'm inviting you to
join us in this 21 Days of Prayer and Fasting.
I'll put a link in the show notes to Church of the Highlands and the way they do it.
But I just want to say, we're at the start of the new year, and if things haven't
worked the way you've wanted them to work in your life in the past,
then why not try something new?
Why not give yourself a chance to say, hey, look what happens when I go all
in, when I really decide I'm going to buy into this idea of self-brain surgery,
when I really want to press in with prayer and fasting.
I really want to see if God will keep those promises that he made.
I really want to know. Well, you can't know, friend, unless you do it.
You can't know how surgery is going to work out if you're one of my patients,
unless you have surgery, right?
We can talk about it all day long. We can talk about risks and benefits and
you can read and research and watch YouTube videos.
But until you actually let me pick up the knife and perform that operation,
you're not going to know how it's going to work out for you.
And I just would submit to you that if you don't let God have a chance to keep
the promises that he's made for you, if you don't fully resign control and let him have it.
And this Saturday on self-reinforced Saturday, I'm going to teach you a new
operation called the trust transfer.
And basically, if you don't let God.
Take over. You won't know. There's a scripture in Psalm 34, taste and see that
the Lord is good. This is the time right here at the start of this year.
It's time to find out if he's really honest, if he'll really do the things that
he says he'll do, if he'll really help us change our minds and change our life.
And if it's really good news, as Lisa always says, then we can start today.
We're going to talk just for a minute about some ideas that I wrote in the newsletter
yesterday, the perils of self-brain surgery, okay?
Now, I've got a new book coming out, Hope is the First Dose.
You can pre-order it, by the way, on Amazon and other booksellers and local
booksellers. Anybody, any place can order it.
We have had a conversation about a book launch event with Bible Supply here.
Our good friends Craig and Nancy over there and Elisa over at Bible Supply in
North Platte. If you're in the North Platte area, you can pre-order the book from them.
So anyway, the new book comes out on July 25th. And this book is all about how
you finally can learn how to apply this treatment plan that's all about self-brain
surgery when you have these massive things and hard things that happen in life.
But even from day to day and all the little mini massive things and just to
get our heads on straight about how we can have a strategy for using our brains
as a tool and not reacting to them when they are weapons that are formed against us.
Right? Because they do. Sometimes your brain is definitely sometimes your own enemy. me.
So we got to learn how to never let it be our own enemy and instead let it be
our friend and a tool that we can use.
And that's what the Holy Spirit wants to do in your brain. So that's what the book's about.
So if you pre-order the book, send me a copy of the receipt.
I'll send you a little PDF document that I wrote that's got some of the sort of key concepts in it.
And I'll be dropping these things for the people that pre-order between now
and the time the book comes out.
I'm going to be dropping some worksheets and some ideas and some things for
free that you you can have.
So send me a Lee at drleewarren.com.
Lee at drleewarren.com. Send me an email with a copy of the receipt from wherever
you buy the book and I'll send you some of these resources as time goes along.
Including some of the content released early once I had permission to do that
from the publisher and all that stuff.
So today I just want to give you one idea from the book, okay?
One idea that's been bouncing around in my head lately, and there's a scripture
in James that I want to share with you that gives us a working definition of what God considers sin.
So James 4, 17, and then IV says, If anyone then knows the good they ought to
do and doesn't do it, it is sin for them.
So if anyone knows the good they ought to do and
doesn't do it it is sin for them so what
is sin sin is when your heart's saying hey i
ought to do this thing all right not to do that thing and
we do it anyway or we don't do it that's that's a good working definition of
sin okay so now i'm not talking about sin and damnation and hell and all that
today okay those are real things but what i want to talk about today is once
you know something that you need to do once your heart is tugging on you and
that God is leading you to something, then you need to take action.
We also know in scripture, Galatians 5, 22 and 23, that there's something called
the fruits of the spirit.
And these are character traits of people who have God's spirit inside them,
who are living a life out of the abundance that the spirit gives them out of
these ideas that the spirit will lead you into behaving and looking a certain.
Way if you let him guide and direct your steps.
And those fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control.
People that exhibit those character traits in their lives are living lives that
are influenced and directed by the Holy Spirit of God. Those are not natural things.
Humans naturally tend to move away from those things. But when you're filled
with the Spirit, you live according to those principles and you show those fruits in your life.
And I was raised to think of self-control as this idea of what you do,
resisting temptation, not sinning, doing good things. Those are self-control.
Don't eat all this stuff. Eat that instead.
Eat your vegetables and not all those Cheetos, right? That's self-control.
But there's more to it than that.
I've realized as I've matured and gotten older, I hope I've matured.
At least I might not think so.
But there's two things that are abundantly clear, okay? The first one is that
neuroscience has taught us that it is possible to change how your brain works
by changing what you choose to think about. We have a guest coming up on the podcast.
It's a neuroscience researcher who does functional imaging.
And he's going to tell us that you can change how your brain works.
We can image it and we can see it happen.
Daniel Lehman talks about that
all the time. You can literally rewire the circuits in your brain. brain.
The Bible tells us that thinking about better things is the key to overcoming
anxiety and finding peace in our brains, hearts, and lives.
So these two things are true. You have a thing called neuroplasticity,
which means you can reconnect and create new synapses in your brain.
You can change the neurochemistry of your brain solely by what you choose to
think about and focus on.
The Bible says the same thing. By thinking better thoughts, you'll live better lives. Okay?
The key to overcoming anxiety and stress and depression and all these things
on one level is about learning how to think about different things.
Philippians 4, 6 through 9. Don't be anxious about anything,
but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.
We're always talking about gratitude, right? With thanksgiving,
let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Do you get that? Pray and give thanks, be grateful and be prayerful and mindful,
and that'll give you peace.
God will guard your heart and your mind, and you won't be as anxious.
Finally, brothers, whatever's true, honorable, just, pure, lovely,
commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.
So he's giving you a prescription here. He's giving you a prescription.
Choose to think about stuff that's true
honorable just pure lovely commendable excellent
and good think about those things and you'll
be less anxious you'll be less stressed you'll be happier you'll be more at
peace you'll your mind and your heart will be guarded that's self-brain surgery
learning how to think about what you think about so here's the point that i
made in the newsletter i want to make to you once you know that you can change
your life by changing your mind then it's and exercise and self-control to do it.
Sometimes I have patients come in and they don't know what's wrong with them.
They don't understand why their back hurts or their leg hurts or they're having seizures.
And I make the diagnosis for them. And I say, here's the problem right here.
You got this tumor, you got this disc herniation, you got this spinal stenosis,
you got this misaligned vertebrae, whatever. And I explain it to them and then they know.
And then I say, here's the treatment plan. Here's the surgery that we could
do or here's the physical therapy or here's the injection or here's the whatever
treatment that we can do and make this better for you. And then they sometimes, they say, no, I'm okay.
I'm going to keep taking this pain medicine or I'm just going to get a disability
and stop working. And they choose a different path.
And they walk away from the thing that could actually fix their problem.
They get four or five opinions, and we all say the same thing,
and they decide, no, I'm too scared to have surgery. I'm just going to live with it.
And they have a foot drop, and they drag their leg around for the rest of their
life. And then 30 years later, they see another surgeon, and it's too late then to fix it, right?
That's self-malpractice.
So when I said, once you know that you can change your life by changing your
mind, it's an exercise in self-control, one of those fruits of the spirit,
to do it. You don't have to call it self-brain surgery.
I'm not saying that it's a sin. We talked about James, once you know and you
don't do it, then it's a sin.
I'm not saying it's a sin not to have surgery if you need it.
I'm not saying it's a sin not to
read my book or not to call it self-brain surgery or any of those things.
I'm just saying if you know something that will help you and you choose not
to do it, if you know a path to being less anxious and you choose to be anxious
anyway, if you know that certain thought patterns are harmful to you and you
choose to keep them, then you're hurting yourself.
In the book, in the new book, Hope is the First Dose, there's a character named
Mr. Green. I tell his story and he said something to me that really resonated.
He said, I will relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise.
I will relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise.
That's a tattoo you can have. Okay. I'm not advocating you getting a tattoo,
but think about that for a minute.
If that was a motto for you, I am not going to participate in my own demise
right here at the start of this year.
What if we said, let's just find out if God's going to keep these promises.
Let's just find out if cell brain surgery really helps.
Let's just find out if relentlessly refusing to participate in my own demise will help.
Let's let Tommy Walker say, look what happens when we do it.
Say it with me. I will relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise.
Again, I'm not saying it's a sin not to have an operation if you've been recommended,
but I'm not saying it's a sin not to read my book.
I'm not saying it's a sin not to say that you're doing self-brain surgery.
You can call it whatever you want, but once you know that you can change your
mind and that will change your brain chemistry tree that will change your decision
making, it will change your hopefulness, it will change your level of anxiety,
and you choose not to do it, that's hurting yourself.
We might as well call it self-malpractice, right?
Once you know that you have the power to control the way your brain works,
to make your own life better, why wouldn't you do it?
We know we have an enemy with the devil of hell, or you can call it resistance,
or you can call it negative thinking, whatever you want to call it.
We have an enemy that wants us to be frustrated and ineffective.
Jesus said in John 10.10, the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy.
And if you're tired of that part of your life and you want the abundance instead,
then it's time to do some self-brain surgery.
It's time. And there's some peril and some danger. Once you know,
it creates even more cognitive dissonance and difficulty when you choose not to engage.
So here at the start of this year, let's engage. Let's finally get it done.
Let's turn that switch and pick up the knife and start doing self-brain surgery.
And let's make it better, okay?
Why wouldn't we? We're in peril because we now know that we can either pick
up the scalpel and learn to practice self-brain surgery, or we can choose to
continue to allow emotion,
feeling, and circumstance to dictate how we think and behave and feel. Friend, it's a new year.
Aren't you ready to break free of the harmful thought patterns that have plagued you for so long?
And we all have them. I'm talking to myself too. If so, then let this be the time.
Let this be the moment. Let's step into this new thing that God wants to do.
This year of the Lord's favor that we talked about from Luke 4 and Isaiah 43,
18 and 19. We can change our minds and we can change our lives.
And the good news is we can do it together.
And we can start today. I want to play Tommy Walker's song, Look What Happens
Here, in just a second. And I want you, friend, here on Mind Change Monday on
this ninth day of January, I want you to engage.
I want you to do it, to get after it. Do prayer and fasting with us.
Read the Bible more. Memorize scripture.
Find some ways to put some good stuff in your heart and learn how to change
your mind and learn how to change your life. Learn how to start today.
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 audio books.
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. 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.