Breathe In, and Win the Battle for Your Mind (Frontal Lobe Friday)

Hey Lisa! Hey Lee! It's good to see you today.

It's good to see you too. Will you help me with something? Of course.

I can't remember what day it is. It's frontal lobe Friday.

Good morning my friend. I hope you're doing well. I'm Dr. Lee Warren here with

you on a frontal lobe Friday.

It's my favorite day of the week. It's frontal lobe Friday and

we're going to talk today about one thing you can do

to engage the incredible superpower That your creator gave you of selective

attention you get to decide you don't get to decide a lot of things But the

tax rate is you don't get to decide whether the global superpowers decide to

get into a war You don't get you don't get to decide whether you develop cancer

or somebody does something to you.

That's harmful You don't get to decide everything But there's one thing God

said you can have this thing my friend and that thing is you can decide what

you're going to think about and you can decide how you're going to respond to

the things that happen in your life.

Whether they're just the normal irritants or happy moments of the day or whether

they're massive things, traumas and tragedies and things that really hurt,

you get to decide how you're going to respond.

And so people that have a life where they can become healthier and feel better

and be happier, guess what they have in common? They're self-brain surgeons.

They're people who say, you know what, I can't control everything,

but I can control what happens in the six-inch battlefield between my mind.

So the question for us today, my friend, is do we want to be people who are

constantly thrown off, as Paul said in Ephesians 4, constantly blown about by

every wind that happens in the world around us,

or do we want to be people whose feet are planted solidly on firm ground and

we know what's gonna happen because we have a plan, we have a treatment plan in place.

That's what my whole new book, Hope is the First Dose is about,

by the way, is how you can develop a treatment plan to help you build this incredible

resilience so you can stand firm no matter what happens.

And that's what your frontal lobes are all about. We're gonna talk a little bit about that today.

I'm gonna give you one exercise, one little tool that I learned from a woman

named Kayla Craig who's coming to the podcast soon and you'll get to hear her

story in an incredible book that she's written called Every Season Sacred.

That's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to give you one tool today.

I'm going to give you one song from my friend Tommy Walker, One Thing to Think

About, and we're going to learn to take control of these incredible frontal lobes.

We're also going to talk a little bit about something else in your body that's

super important to brain health, and we're going to get after it.

But before we do that, I just have one 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.

Ready to get after it, here we go. Hey listen, we talked a couple of times this

week about how we're getting into winter time and during winter time,

everybody's getting colds and flus and you're getting your flu shot and we had

COVID recently and there's just all these challenges to your immune system that

happen in the winter time.

And there's also lots of times when we have to get together with other people,

so we have family gatherings and Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday,

by the way, along with Christmas.

All these times when you're putting yourself in the position to be around other

people And that's not the time to be having your immune system messing you up

and not working on your behalf.

And I told you the other day, we had an episode a couple of days back where

we talked about some of the research that I did back in the nineties when I

was working at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation,

and how some of that research has turned out to be still relevant today as we've

developed and the scientists have developed an understanding of the powerful

connection between your gut and your brain and the microbiology of what happens

in your gut and how it affects your entire body and your nervous system and

your thought process and everything and it turns out to be a two-way street.

What happens in your brain directly affects your gut and what happens in your

gut directly affects your brain and all of that comes down to the health or

lack thereof of the microbiology environment which is called the microbiome

and the microbiota of your gut, the bacteria that live in your gut.

And all of us, every mammal really, and you know when I say that,

and you know I don't think humans are animals, we're created separately and

distinctly we have our own purpose and plan, we're the only things in all creation

that are made in God's image.

But, if you just look at the zoology, the textbooks, and we're considered to

be mammals because we have certain things in common with other animals who give

live birth and feed their children milk and all those things.

So, if you look at how all mammals behave in the first 48 to 72 hours of their

life, they drink mother's milk and they receive something for the first two

or three days called colostrum.

And colostrum is this superfood that your mom gives you if you were breastfed

for the first two or three days that has everything you need.

All the nutrition, all kinds of immune molecules, and a barrier basically that

lines your gut to keep harmful things out while your immune system is developing.

It strengthens the mucosal barrier of your gut. Well, somebody,

some smart people at a company called Armra, A-R-M-R-A, have come up.

With this incredible powder that you can mix into your drink,

and I have it every morning.

Lisa and I both drink it with my athletic greens of my peak that we've talked about.

Peak life has teas and elixirs that can give you everything you need to boost

your immune system, improve your skin, hair, and nail function,

and just really make you feel better and add a lot of power to your immune system.

But colostrum is an important component of that, and Armour has synthesized

this cold chain biopotent technology that they use to concentrate colostrum's

200 living nutrients in their most pure and bioavailable form.

And we use it every day and mix it in your powder.

You can get colostrum and the powerful immune system modulating benefits of

it by drinking Armourous.

Substance mixed in with your water or

athletic greens or mix it in with your peak life products or whatever

you want And there's a link in the show notes if you're interested in checking

out armor It's really really helpful is something that I personally use every

day And it really I think gives you an leg up on all the challenges to your

immune system There's all these organisms that are trying to get in there and

cause you all kinds of trouble as the winter months come along There's a link

in the show notes the code.

Dr. Lee Warren at checkout will give you a discount Just check it out along

with the peak life products that we've already talked about arm Ray is one of

the three things that I drink every day as we get into winter I think it'll be helpful to you.

Just check it out. So we talked about gut health Okay and the reason that guts

so important is that your gut is the USB portal that the thumb drive entry point

of everything that comes into your body, right?

You put something in your mouth that goes into your gut it gets broken down

and it turns into a whole bunch of little packets of amino acids that present

themselves to your immune system and are recognized either as friendly or foe,

their enemy or their helpful.

And the problem is because there's only 20 amino acids in our bodies that some

of the amino acid sequences in your good stuff, your joints.

Your organs, normal blood cells, looks the same spelling, it's got the same

amino acid sequence as some of those bacterial sequences do.

That's what my research back in Oklahoma was about. And so

sometimes your immune system can get tricked and see

some sequences that it thinks ought not to be there And they actually should

be there and that can create the immune system problems for you That's another

reason to use colostrum to use Immune boosting superfoods and things like that

to add into your diet to give you some leg up to keep some of those harmful things Out of there.

Okay. It's frontal lobe Friday. You heard Lisa say it. It's

frontal lobe Friday And today we're going to do a really short quick

little thing that's going to help you regain control when

your mind starts racing and your fear starts to jump up and your limbic system

starts to take over and you feel like you're getting ready to be knocked off

your feet because another massive thing has happened or another major trauma

or another reminder of something that's happened in the past and you're all

of a sudden going down this stairwell of thought that's leading you into all this trouble.

And guess what happens? your brain kicks up memories that trigger synapses and

all of a sudden your stomach hurts.

All of a sudden you're feeling that acid rise in your throat and you've just

triggered the mind-gut connection, okay?

You've just triggered a connection between your brain and your gut that's harmful to you.

And now you're feeling pain in your joints, you're feeling pain in your shoulder

blade. I've got that shingles reminder.

When I lost Mitch, I developed shingles in my right shoulder blade.

And you're starting to feel pain, physical pain in your body.

That's because your brain is connected to your body. You're turning genes on and off that generate.

Protein synthesis and turns on engines of things that hurt you and it's time

for you to retake control Okay.

So what happens is if you can learn a Strategy to get your brain back under

your control Then you can stop those trains of negative.

Sequel a From what happens when you think down negative trains of thought you

can stop them before they become problems for you and you can then learn to

remember one of our rules of self-brain surgery,

which is that what you're doing you're getting better at, right?

If you can learn to interrupt the process earlier, redirect it to something

more positive, then you can take control and avoid that detour and don't be knocked off your feet.

That's what Frontal Lobe Friday is all about, okay? We're trying to learn strategies

for how we can re-engage, understand how our brains work, understand how God

built us so that we can then take advantage of those things to become healthier

and and feel better and be happier, right?

Now remember, this is new thing November. We're getting ready to step into the

year of the Lord's favor.

If you say, hey, this year hasn't gone the way I wanted it to,

and I'm really hoping next year is gonna be better, then we gotta be ready.

If we want the year of the Lord's favor, if we want to finally break free of

all those things that are holding us back, then we have to remember that what

got us here to this place where we're saying, hey, I'm not quite there yet, I want something new.

I'm ready to move on to the next level of my life. if I'm ready to step into

God's favor and His promises for me and stop covering the same ground and stop

waking up and paying a tomorrow tax and all that, if you're ready,

then we have to embrace the idea that what got us to this place is not what's

gonna get us to the next place.

We gotta be ready to make some changes and that's why Hebrews 12 is so important to us.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,

let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.

These are two different things. there's sin, then maybe you've got some sin

problems that you need to deal with because that can get you tangled up, right?

And if you want to go to the next place, you're gonna have to get untangled.

You want to run the race, you got to take the weight off so you can move faster.

But there's also things that aren't sinful, but they hinder you.

And by now, if you've been thinking critically about this, you know what those

things are. Maybe you need to journal that or write it down and think about it a little bit.

What are the things that are hindering you? Maybe there are some sins.

Maybe you need to deal with that. But maybe there's just some things that are hindering you.

And for many of us, it goes back to that trauma and the tragedy and the massive

things that happened in the past, and we just can't quit ruminating.

We're stuck in grief, we're stuck, and our cingulate gyrus is in neutral,

and we just can't move forward, and we gotta figure out a way to deal with that, okay?

So Hebrews 12 reminds us that there's a great cloud of witnesses rooting for us.

Get out on the prayer wall, and you'll see it. There's people out there wanting you to succeed.

There's people that are putting themselves out there that are hurting and need

you to pray for them that are begging you to be part of their great cloud of

witnesses. And there's people already in heaven that are rooting you on that.

Are saying hey, come on you can do it, right?

There's people on your side. I'm one of them by the way Lisa and Tata are on

your side We want you to throw off everything that hinders and we want you to

throw off this in that so easily entangled so we can all run together I Bought

a new product for our home gym the other day Tata calls at the Moon River Fitness

Center down in our shop We have the MRFC.

We all go down there and work out.

We got our Peloton bike and treadmill and a rowing machine and some weights

and some other stuff. And I bought this thing for us called Monkey Feet.

And Monkey Feet's a fantastic little contraption. This is not an advertisement,

by the way. It's just something I think is cool.

Monkey Feet's a deal you can strap onto your shoes and it's got a little clamp

on the bottom that you can put a dumbbell, a free weight on,

and you can basically attach weights to your legs and then lift weights like

you do with your arms using your legs.

It's a total game changer. If you've ever done weight machines for your legs,

you know it's very controlled and you can isolate one muscle group and then

push or pull or abduct or adduct.

And those are great. But when you put a free weight on your leg and you've got

to do a knee extension or a knee flexion or a lateral move and you don't have

anything to stabilize it and it's not just one direction of a machine,

but it's a free weight hanging on your foot, it is a total game changer.

You put a 10 pound dumbbell on your leg and do 20 hamstring curls with your

leg, you'll It's never felt anything like that. It's totally a game changer.

Tata calls them monkey shoes, but they're called monkey feet.

Anyway, what I've noticed is, if I do that for a few minutes before I run.

And then I take the monkey shoes off, the monkey feet off, then all of a sudden

it feels like I'm running faster and stronger than I ever have before.

And why? Because I've taken the weight off, right? That's what Hebrews 12, one is telling you.

You've been running, you've been dealing with something, but you've been carrying

this weight with you and it's slowing you down. It's hurting you.

So read that verse again and think about just taking those monkey shoes off, okay?

Therefore since we're surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses Let us throw

off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us

run with perseverance The race marked out for us. Okay?

Fixing our eyes on Jesus Jesus is the goal that he's the standard and he's right

here in the story with you and he'll help you Okay, and this is the mind switch

that I want to give you today This is a quick little thing.

Kayla Craig's book, Every Season Sacred, we're gonna talk to her on the podcast soon.

And she wrote this idea of having these little breathing prayers,

these little breath exercises.

It's not, she didn't come up with it. It's a practice the church has been doing

for several thousand years now.

But she's made the point here that I hadn't thought of in this way.

That if you can develop this habit, when Paul talks about praying without ceasing,

what does that really mean?

Like if you could get to this place where you encounter something and it immediately challenges you,

then you normally would go down a whole stream of thought that's going to result

in heartburn and joint pain and stress and fear and sleeplessness and worry

and all those things or lashing out or opening a bottle or taking a pill or

calling somebody or doing something.

If you have a trigger and a synaptic chain that normally results when you think

a certain thing, If you can add this little breath exercise,

it'll help you regain control and here it is a little prayer I want you just

to do this with me for a second if you're driving don't close your eyes But

but wherever else you are,

you might want to close your eyes and just think about this for a second It's

gonna be weird, but we're gonna just pray together for a second and it involves taking,

Physiological control of your breathing for a second and just breathe in take a deep breath in.

Okay, and while you breathe in, you're gonna say this little prayer to God.

Help me see you. So breathe in. Help me see you.

And then breathe out And while you're breathing out In and around me,

so you're going to add help me see you In and around me Help me see you,

In and around me breathe in Help me see you breathe out,

In and around me Now that seems weird, but why are we doing that if you can start to envision?

That the holy spirit Of your creator God who made your nervous system and created

your mind as the Wi-Fi network,

So he can communicate with your brain because your brain controls your life,

And if you can develop this ability to call on him in real time and say hey

my brains getting ready to go down this pathway that I've created through years

of reacting and responding to traumas and tragedies and massive things and I'm

getting ready to trigger that and just,

Help me see you in and around me. Help me remember that you're here with me.

That you may not take me out of this moment, but you're gonna help me be in

it, and you're gonna be in it with me, as you promised to help me bear this burden.

Help me see you in and around me Can you just add that that that nanosecond

that it would take you to develop this because remember friend What you're doing

you're getting better at you're training your frontal lobes to remember that

you are not in this fight by yourself Okay.

Now you have an enemy Obviously an enemy that hates you and wants you to stumble. Okay.

Now we can argue about whether salvation is losable or not, we can argue about

whether the doctrine of once saved, always saved is correct,

or whether you can do something that could cost you your salvation.

And I don't want you to worry about that right now. But just recognize,

okay, that if it's not a matter of losing your soul, let's say you're saved

and you can't lose your salvation,

and it's not a matter of the enemy being able to trick you into losing your

soul, then what would the purpose be of having an enemy that wants to tempt

you and all of that stuff?

The He wants to mess up your abundance that Jesus came to give you because He

doesn't want you to be happy.

He doesn't want you to be happy because if you're happy you might be more attractive

in the gospel presentation to other people who don't know Jesus yet.

Your life might be a worse witness and you would be less effective to help other

people find their way to the hope that you have in Jesus.

That might be a reason why the enemy would want to tempt you.

Another reason might be that he just wants to poke the eye of the Savior who

died for and say, look, yeah, you may have saved this guy or this lady,

but I can make their life miserable.

I'm going to mess them up because I hate you. And that's what the enemy does,

okay? Now, if you don't believe in all that spiritual stuff, it's okay.

Just recognize that you have a voice in your head that's always trying to get

you to think about stuff that doesn't help you.

And you can at least agree with me on that. That's the neuroscience of it, okay?

I think there's an actual spiritual enemy entity involved in that process.

I think there's good scriptural reasons to believe that.

But we can debate that okay, but I want to give you a scripture Isaiah 14 16. There's a prophecy here.

Where Isaiah the Lord speaking through Isaiah is saying that the king of Babylon

which is synonym or a metaphor for Satan,

Is going to fall at the end There's going to come a time when he gets taken

down like Jesus wins in the end If you're a christian, the one thing you can

know is that you win if you read the last page of the book You know who wins

so the the question is not do you win or not?

The question is do you live victoriously in the middle of the battle?

Okay Okay, so the King of Babylon is prophesied to fall. Satan is going to fall.

And here's this earth-shattering statement that I realized we need to remember and know.

Isaiah 14, 16, there's gonna come a time, he says, when those who see you stare

at you, they ponder your fate and say, is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble?

Who turned the world into a desert and destroyed its cities?

That basically what they're saying

is, Satan's going to be revealed as the trickster and fraud that he is.

And people are going to shake their heads and go, Really?

I fell for that? That guy's a moron. He had no power.

He never had any hope of winning. He never had anything that was real to offer me. It was all a trick.

It was just a joke. Really? I fell for that?

Just remember, that's the end of the story. So, if you can remember to call

into your moment the guy who actually is going to win.

The actual guy who can do something about your problem,

the actual person, the Holy Spirit of the Creator God who made your nervous

system as a communication portal to you and your life to help you feel better

and be happier and find meaning and purpose and abundance in the midst of this

story that contains your traumas and tragedies and massive things at the same time.

If you can remember that you can breathe in and say, hey, help me see you,

and breathe out and say, in and around me, then guess what just happens?

You're not gonna fall for the tricks anymore.

You're not gonna say gosh. I don't want to think this I don't want to feel this

I need to numb myself I need to open that bottle take that pill

send that text click on that thing buy that deal Place a bet do whatever eat

those Cheetos You won't fall for that trick anymore at least not as often at

least not as severely Or you'll get back up more quickly if you can add this

little frontal lobe control exercise is,

help me see you in and around me.

Why? Because he's there.

Okay? He's there. The Mayo Clinic, Kayla Craig also put this in her book,

it's really cool. They have this little grounding exercise.

It's really helpful. If you can take a second and physically go outside and

put your feet on the ground, look up in the sun.

Like Andrew Huberman is always talking about how important it is to get some

sunlight in your face in the mornings. From a nervous system perspective and

a whole health perspective, you need the sun. We don't need to be inside all the time.

You'll be significantly happier and healthier if you can just get some sunlight

and get some light in your eyes and get your feet on the ground.

It's even better if you can take your shoes off and just feel the earth and

the electromagnetic field of this creation that God has made. This is not weird stuff.

This is legitimate science. Your body needs to touch the earth.

You need to touch the ground. You need to see the sun. So what can you do to

just take a second and get your brain back under control?

So if you're feeling distracted or having a hard time turning off the noise

or Dealing with all this stuff in your brain and you just can't get it under

control Then try this little grounding exercise the Mayo Clinic put this out I'm not a you know,

not advocating for the Mayo Clinic But they had a great article called five

four three two one countdown to make anxiety blast off is a good way to get

the momentary control back over your anxious moments if you're struggling. Okay, here it is.

Sit quietly, take in your surroundings, and use your senses to start noticing.

Remember the little prayer, breathe in, help me see you, breathe out, in and around me.

And then what are five things you can see?

Look with your eyes and quickly see five things.

I see that cloud, I see that tree, I see that squirrel, I see my wife over there,

I see the picture of Jesus on my wall. Five things you can see,

four things you can feel.

My feet on the ground, the wind blowing past my face.

I feel this blade of grass I can put my hand on. I feel Lisa's hand in mine if I'm holding her hand.

So what are five things you can see, four things you can feel,

three things you can hear.

Okay, I hear the wind blowing, I hear that bird chirping over there.

Hear that owl up in the tree.

I hear my grandson laughing on FaceTime. What are two things I can smell?

I smell the coffee in my cup over there. I smell the breeze bringing the aroma

of the cornfield Next over the next property over I can I can smell two things.

What's one thing I can taste I can taste this Amazing cup of coffee that I made

I can taste this beautiful meal that Lisa may I can taste the Wonderful mixture

of armor and athletic greens and peak that I've got So it's really quick.

It's breathe in help me see you breathe out in the world in and around me,

then five, four, three, two, one.

Five things I can see, four things I can touch or feel, three things I can hear,

two things I can smell, one thing that I can taste.

And just really quickly, what is that doing? It's getting yourself in control of the moment, okay?

This is a practical exercise of what to do when you start to feel like you're

gonna go down that crazy train again,

When that trauma or tragedy or massive thing is going to call you back into

its reality, okay? You don't have to go there.

Healing is a process, okay? It's not an event. It's not a one-time thing.

It's a process. And this is one of those processes you can use to get things

back under your control.

Now, one thing I want to give you, just a little thought process here,

is I want to give you, as we're almost at Thanksgiving,

this idea that gratitude is an incredibly powerful way to get your brain back

under control and get things working for you instead of against you again.

Gratitude is incredibly important.

It's really hard when we're hurting, it's hard to think of being grateful,

but I'm telling you, if you can wrestle control of your thought process away

from the problem and towards something to be grateful for,

then you'll be able to solve the problem or get after dealing with the problem

more effectively because you're turning your frontal lobe back onto problem-solving mode.

Managing mode instead of reacting mode with your limbic system, okay?

Frederick Buechner wrote something that I think is super important,

and this is a little bit of a hard practice here, okay?

It's hard because I'm constantly telling you to stop thinking about the past

so much, to stop ruminating on things that have happened, but there is some

value in time-traveling a little bit back to the thing that hurt us.

There's a little bit of value if you can keep it under control and use it this

way. Frederick Buechner said this about tears, about when we cry.

Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears,

it as well to pay the closest attention.

They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are,

but more often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery

of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to

be saved, you should go to next.

Think about that for a second. When something brings you tears,

when you look back on that memory of losing your son or finding out about the

glioblastoma or finding out about the affair, whatever it is.

When you find those tearful moments, here's the hard thing, okay?

But it's the path to healing and wholeness. Here's the thing.

Find the thing that you can see in the process of looking back at the past and

comparing it to how you are now.

Find the thing that you can be grateful for that has evolved or changed or become

true in your life because of the massive thing that you went through.

And if you can find that thing to be grateful for, it's not saying,

please understand, it's not saying that you're happy that the thing happened.

Okay, it's not saying that.

But since it did happen, how has God shown up and kept his promise,

that Romans 8, 28 promise, that all things can work together for the good of

those who love me and are called according to my purpose? How can he keep,

how has he kept that promise?

I can tell you, as I've told you before, or 10 years after losing our son,

Mitch, in the most horrific and violent way possible, I can tell you, I am a better person.

I was then I have grown and changed in immeasurable ways And I've seen my family

my marriage become stronger.

I've seen my family come together I've seen my children grow and become more

resilient and I have seen myself learn how to take a problem that it's hurting me and,

Dive deeply into it and examine it as a scientist and understand it and be able

to articulate What it is and how I've learned from it and what I'm doing to

move past it in a way that helps other people That's why you're hearing my voice right now,

So when you feel those tears take a second to say,

Help me see you.

In and around me.

What have I learned? What have I done? How have I changed? How have you been

faithful to me? How have you kept your promises?

How can I see something in that pain over all these years that you've used to

keep your promises and for which I can be grateful,

And the problem the thing about that my friend is if you can do that pay attention

to your tears, especially the unexpected ones that come back when you're in

the Hallmark store when you see the,

Picture that reminds you of the thing that happened the massive thing and all

of a sudden the tears are there again And they and that'll happen to you by

the way, even ten years later,

It's well Frederick Buechner says it is well to pay the closest attention to the tears,

Because they're not only telling

you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not,

God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from

and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to

next. It's a new thing, November, okay?

He says, see it. Forget the former things, Isaiah 43. Forget the things. I'm doing a new thing.

I'm the guy who makes streams in the wilderness.

I'm the guy that makes streams in the desert and I'm way in the wilderness.

I'll make a road that's going to end in the Red Sea, but I'm going to part that water for you.

So pay attention to those tears because what you're doing you're getting better

at so if you can go back in time And look at something hard something massive

that happened and find something to be grateful for about the journey that that put you on,

Not to be happy that it happened But to be grateful for

how god carried with you went with you through

it And carried you at times through it and how

you've evolved and changed and become strengthened and bettered

and how other people have been helped by your story and how

your family is stronger or you've recovered or you've healed

or whatever your story is if you can find something to

be grateful for then you can step into

that year of the Lord's favor that new thing that he wants to do you can cast

off take off those monkey feet and your legs will feel fresh and strong and

you'll feel better and it starts with getting your frontal lobes under control

help me see you in and around me okay I hope this This isn't weird.

I hope you don't think it's metaphysical.

This is a real spiritual practice that you can do.

Five, four, three, two, one, that will produce less anxiety and help you regain

the high ground so that your frontal lobes are working for you.

So you can cast off everything that hinders, the sin that so easily entangles,

and you can run with perseverance.

The race marked out for you, my friend, by fixing your eyes on Jesus,

calling Him in to every moment.

Make every season sacred, every moment holy. Take control, and that's how you

do it. Breathe in, and breathe out.

Healing is a process. It's not a one-time event, my friend. I'm gonna tell you

a little story about when I was in Iraq.

We would lead worship. We had a little chapel and a band and a good group of

musicians that were all deployed together, and we would make music,

and we'd lead a worship service.

And we'd start the worship service with a slow, kind of what we'd usually do,

kind of a praise song, and then we would go into sort of a prayer time,

And we play a song often by Tommy Walker is way before I even knew him personally

and I was playing his song when all Is said and done It's real slow.

I'm gonna play it for you in a minute real slow Contemplative kind of song when

all is said and done and everyone is gone Lord, you're really all I want when

the bestest world has just leaves me feeling numb,

Lord, you're really all I want all that I long for, all that I hope for is just

one touch of your loving hand when all is said and done.

Lord, you're all I want." And I have this memory, this perfect memory of this

soldier that came in, big, tall, African-American man, big, strong guy.

He had body armor on, Kevlar helmet, M4 carbine, a couple of grenades.

He was probably a special operator or something. He had all this gear,

and he's standing there, and he's so tight, like he obviously had just been

in a firefight or been out on patrol or something and the guy was just wired

up and you could see the stress and the tension his muscles he was holding his

rifle close to his chest and kept his helmet on inside the the chapel.

And we're singing, all that I long for, all that I hope for,

is just one touch of your loving hand.

Lord, you're really all I want. We played it over and over and over.

And then he set his rifle down. He was right in my line of sight and we kept singing.

And then he took his body armor off and we kept singing. He put his helmet down at his side.

He kept singing and then he dropped his hands and then we kept singing and eventually

he was raising his hands and by the end of the song, he had his hands up and

he was weeping and he was worshiping and he had just let all that go.

It cast off everything that was hindering him, and he was able to relax in the

presence and that breathing in and breathing out of seeing his God come alongside him in that moment.

Whatever it was that he was going through, the battle for him was a physical one.

For you, it might be a spiritual one, it might be a mental one,

it might be a relational one, but whatever that battle is,

I want you just to use this song as a few minutes to just let your frontal lobes

help you regain control of that thought process and step into that moment where

you know he is with you and you're not alone and you're going to tell that enemy, really?

Is this what caused nations to stumble? Really I fell for that?

I'm not falling for that again.

No, I know who I am and I know whose I am and I'm not falling for that trick anymore.

I'm not going down that pathway of spending a whole day racking

my brain about what I need to do or why this happened or

why she did that or why he sent that message or why

this occurred why God wasn't with me that because he was and

now I can see him help me see you

in and around me we're gonna take control of our frontal lobes today my friend

because it's frontal lobe Friday and I want you to become healthier and feel

better and be happier but you can't change your life until you change your mind

and it's time to get after it my friend because we're getting ready to go into

the year of the Lord's favor we are gonna be grateful we We are going to be thankful,

and we're going to be smart self-brain surgeons.

We're going to be good, because what we do, we're getting better at,

and we're going to start doing better stuff, because it's time to get after it.

And the good news is, we can 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.