A Massive Amount of Hope (Frontal Lobe Friday)

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

and we are here for some self-brain surgery on Frontal Lobe Friday.

I love Frontal Lobe Friday.

Listen, we're going to look today at an overview of what we've done,

the ground we've covered in Season 9. I'm going to just remind you of some of those episodes.

I want to encourage you, if you're new around here, we've got a lot of new listeners.

Susan Larson and some other places that we've had some exposure This month has

brought a lot of new listeners into the show, and we're so grateful and honored

that you're here with us.

But if you have gone through some kind of trauma or tragedy or massive thing,

if you've read one of my books and that's how you found the podcast.

I want to tell you that season eight of the podcast is all about hope.

We did 100 doses of hope, and you can go back to season eight and every episode

focused on some aspect of how do we find hope when life gets hard.

So don't forget to go back to season eight. Use those episodes.

They're there for a reason. and you can go all the way back through season eight

and you can find a place to put your feet down when life gets hard and find

that hope that holds at the bottom of what feels like the abyss that you fall

into when things get really hard in your life.

So go back to season eight and start there and catch up and go through some

of these episodes and let them be helpful to you.

Today we're going to kind of do a big 30,000 foot overview of the ground that

we've covered in in season nine.

We've gone a little bit deeper on the science side with season nine.

We have two episodes left today and tomorrow. We're going to end season nine

with an incredible talk with a brilliant scientist about, am I just my brain?

Like, is there more to me than just my brain?

We're going to wrap up season nine with that incredible episode.

In season 10, we're going to just go into a deeper dive into big questions about

how we got here and why we're here and and what science has to say about it,

what the Word has to say about it.

We are also going to split off a brand-new podcast that will be starting next

Tuesday called Spiritual Brain Surgery.

In Spiritual Brain Surgery, we're going to look at the question of,

do I have to check my brain at the door if I want to believe in God?

And we're going to go deep into what the Word of God says. Those episodes are

going to be a little bit more focused on spiritual implications of what this life is all about.

We're going to have Tuesdays with Tata in there and Theology Thursdays in there

and some other great content for you.

And episodes that are primarily spiritual or when we talk about an author or

a book that's really all about something faith-related, we're gonna have those

episodes in one place for you.

So spiritual brain surgery is gonna be a special place.

And I want you to go ahead, when I tell you that there's an episode,

I'd love for you to go ahead and subscribe.

When you start a new podcast, it shows up on the algorithm better for people

to find out about it if more people are subscribing and commenting and leaving

reviews and all that. So I'm going to need your help to make sure that that.

Gets off to a good start. We're trying to sort of shine a light in the darkness for people, okay?

There are some people that just won't show up if you tell them that you're going

to some spiritual place.

They won't show up. And there's other people that that's all they want.

And so I'm gonna give a place for both folks to land, the doubters,

the seekers, the skeptics, and we're gonna go deep on the science in season

10 of the Dr. Lee Warren Podcast.

We're gonna do the self-brain surgery. I'm gonna teach you how to change your

mind and change your life. We're going to go deep on the neuroscience side and

some of the big questions of the universe and see what God has to say about them.

On the Spiritual Brain Surgery Podcast, we're going to bring it home a little bit.

We're going to keep it a little bit tighter and more focused on the Word of

God and what our Creator and what our great Physician has to say and how you

can use your brain to interact with your Creator.

And it's going to be fascinating, and I'm so excited about it.

And there's more to tell you about good things that are coming with this work that we're doing.

So just today, we're going to do kind of an overview of season nine,

and I'm going to finish with four thoughts about how you can use your brain

to your own advantage and kind of wrap this season up as we remind ourselves that we are created,

fearfully and wonderfully created, to use our brains to communicate with our

minds and to use our minds and our brains to communicate with our creator and

to use our minds to control and improve our body and the people around us.

To inspire others, to rewire their brains, and to believe that change is possible.

And we're going to get all that done in just a moment. But before we do that,

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.

Okay, I'm so excited. Season nine of the podcast has been like a dream come true for me.

I was this nerdy kid who grew up in a small town in Oklahoma.

I had a lot of self-doubt and fear, and I didn't really believe that I was smart.

I didn't really believe that I could accomplish something great with my life.

But at the same time, I had this core burning feeling in my heart that I was supposed to be a doctor.

It was the weirdest thing. I was a kid from a small town, no medical people

in my family, no science people in my family.

In fact, the church I grew up in would have discouraged someone and did,

in fact, discourage me from pursuing science as a career because I was actually

told by a youth minister and a pastor, and we called them preachers in our denomination.

We didn't call them pastors.

I was told that I would go to hell if I didn't go and become a preacher.

That really hurt me as a child.

Because I was afraid that I was going to go to hell for not becoming a preacher.

And I felt in my heart at the same time that God was calling me to be a doctor.

And my great parents, my beloved, amazing mom and dad, they said, you know what?

God tells you what he wants of you.

Some preacher or some youth minister don't get to tell you what you're supposed to do with your life.

You have a calling on your life and you're supposed to follow it.

So my parents honored the Word and honored the Creator and helped me overcome

that trauma of having been sort of spiritually abused by two people that had

great influence over me.

And that was really a turning point for me. I listened to my parents and believed

the calling that I felt in my life, and I pursued science.

I didn't know that that was going to lead me ultimately into work that a lot

of people describe as a ministry. And just so you know, I've never thought of

this podcast and the newsletter and the books that I write, I've never thought of them as ministry.

Think of them really as self-therapy. I'm a person, as we've talked,

I've gone through some really hard things. I've been to war. I've had PTSD.

I've seen some traumatic things with my eyes and had to do some difficult things with my hands.

I came home from the war a really broken person, and I went through a divorce and struggled a lot.

I had a lot of issues putting my family back together, and then God resurrected

me and introduced me to Lisa. and we built a family out of brokenness.

And I know some of you have done that too.

And God really built a story in our life that there is resurrection.

He can restore the ears that the locust has eaten, as Joel says in the Old Testament.

He can, and he did this great work.

And then right when we were getting our family together, we lost our son,

Mitch, and tragedy struck again.

And out of all of that pain and all of that tragedy was birthed this idea that

I could find my way forward and therefore be able to shine a light on the path

for my family's way forward by writing and speaking and talking and being vulnerable

and honest about what we're going through.

And somehow God gave me a tool set that I didn't know that I had,

which was to be able to process hard things and put words around them that then

help other people process their hard things too.

And that led to podcasting and to all this work. and

so here we are 11 years after 10 and

a half years after the hardest thing i've ever been through losing my son

and now i get to talk to you every day or almost every

day and we have 160 countries around the world shout out to sierra leone by

the way we're in the top 20 in sierra leone last week never been there love

you love hearing about your beautiful country i've been reading about it and

uh grateful that you're listening and we're praying for you so i want want to just remind you,

we got into season nine and it was like a dream come true

for me because I was this nerdy kid who loves

science and didn't understand that being a doctor

was going to lead me into what really could be described as ministry because

I'm using my scientific knowledge and my experience and background to help other

people understand who they are and how they're wired and what they can do with

their brains and their bodies and how we can honor God and the purpose and how

we can honor God in the process of finding our purpose.

And so as we got to season eight, my book was getting ready to come out.

We did the 100 days leading up to Hope is the First Dose launching last July,

and we talked about hope, and we talked about trauma and tragedy and massive

things, and we told all kinds of great stories from my endorsers who were guests

on the show to talk about their stories of hope and tragedy and trauma that they've been through.

And did a whole bunch of episodes called Everyday Hope with regular people who

have great stories. And we covered a lot of ground.

And we really tried to find our way forward together.

And those episodes saw the podcast grow from 30 or 40,000 downloads a month

to 100,000 downloads a month. So now we're going to...

Cross the finish line of our second million downloads inside of just a little

over a year from the first million.

So you're listening and you're connecting.

And we're so grateful because this podcast is for you.

Like I wake up in the middle of the night and think about what my friend out

there in London or in South Africa or in Detroit or in Omaha would be benefited

by, blessed by to talk about today.

And I'm so grateful for you. And I love hearing from you. You can always email

Lee at drleewarren.com.

You can leave us a voicemail, speakpipe.com slash drleewarren.

You can let us know what you're going through, how you found the show,

or how you found my books. And we love to talk.

And remember, I can't give you specific medical advice.

I can't be your doctor on the Internet.

I can be your doctor in the office in North Platte, Nebraska,

if you need a neurosurgeon. But I can't be your doctor here.

I can't answer specific medical questions.

But we love to hear from you. We love to interact with you, but you need a therapist

or a doctor or a pastor or somebody in your real world, your real life to answer

specific medical or psychological questions for yourself.

So I can't answer really detailed personal questions. You understand that.

But so as we got into season nine, I wanted to go deeper into the science.

We started with my friend Max Licato and we had a good talk for an hour,

almost maybe a little over an hour about hope in your brain.

Then we got into this idea that your brain is the only computer in the world

where the software can upgrade the hardware.

And I talked to you about the fact that you've been taught something in school that just isn't true.

We have this determinism that we're taught.

They don't ever call it that, but there's this idea called genetic determinism

where we've been taught, and most of us believe that we're pretty much the culmination

of whatever our genes from our mom and dad give us, that we're sort of stuck with.

Well, that's just how I am. We believe that we think and feel and can achieve

pretty much what we're limited by our genetics to do.

And it turns out that's completely untrue, that

your thinking can switch genes on and

off so that those genes don't behave the way that your mom and dad's copies

of those genes did because you can influence them and you can literally rewire

the structure of your brain And you can change the course of your life by learning

how to think differently about the things that you go through.

That was Season 9, Episode 3, Software Update for Your Brain.

We talked about the different ways that people handle trauma.

We talked about neurophysiology and faith and self-brain surgery in Season 9, Episode 5.

And then we had some amazing guests, Dr. Elisa Britt Scholey and her wonderful

book, The Night Is Normal, we talked about back in September.

Then we started Frontal Lobe Friday, and we started every Friday going through

these different things about the frontal lobe and how your frontal lobe gives

you the gift of selective attention, and you don't have to think about one thing

because you can choose to think about another thing.

And that led us into talking with Erwin Raphael McManus about his amazing book

Mind Shift, and he's talking about the same kinds of things that I'm talking

about to audiences all over the world.

We talked about your trauma response, and the most important thing to know about

trauma Trauma is that trauma is not what happened to you.

If you believe that because your mom died in front of you, because your uncle

sexually assaulted you,

because your son was stabbed to death, if you believe that the thing that happened

defines your future and that you are the way that you are because of something

that happened to you, if you believe that, it becomes true in your life.

But what we know clearly from science now is that trauma is not what happened

to you. you. Trauma is your set of responses to what happened to you.

And fortunately, thank God, you can change the way that you learn to respond

to trauma and tragedy and massive things. You can choose a different path forward.

It is possible to change your response.

And that means there's hope. If the things that you went through created a certain

set of feelings, emotional states, behaviors.

Patterns, habits, and your life begins to look like that's how it's always going

to be, be, it doesn't have to be because trauma is not what happens to you.

Trauma is your response to what happens to you.

We had a whole series of episodes about anxiety and fear and about how self-brain

surgery isn't self-help.

And the only part of self-brain surgery that you do yourself is to convince

yourself that you can't do it by yourself.

And there's a whole path forward in self-brain surgery that's not at all up

to you or only on your shoulders.

We talked about how your genes behave and the way that you can switch genes

on and off with your thinking and how important it is to find that immediate

early hope in Season 9, Episode 17.

That's one of my favorite episodes of all time.

I love that episode because you learn that you can change how your genes behave

by changing how you think.

We talked about different ways that God shows up and how labels that we've accepted

from other people don't have to decide who we really are.

And I taught you an important principle. I even think I named it after myself in the episode.

I think I called it Warren's Law of Labels. But the idea that what's on the

label of something doesn't actually have any power to define what's inside the container.

Entertainer, and just because somebody called you a dummy, or just because you

decided that you're never going to amount to anything because your dad said

that, or just because you've got this label on you that says afraid,

or anxious, or traumatized, that doesn't mean that's who you are.

It just means it's how you're living, and you can change it.

The label on the outside doesn't determine what's on the inside.

We talked about the fact in season nine, episode 20, that there There are some

problems that can't be solved.

Like my son's dead. I can't bring him back.

My son Mitchell is gone. I can't bring him back. I can't solve that problem.

So if I think the problem that's hurting me in my life is that I lost my son,

I'm really hopeless because that's not going to change in this lifetime.

So there are some problems that you can't solve. What next? What next?

That's when we get into thinking about the Westminster Shorter Confession,

which is what's our purpose?

We're here to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

And if that's our purpose and how do we find a way to

live that purpose even when we've gone through really hard things we

talked about how anxiety makes us think we're always in

a fight and there's multiple ways there's at least five ways to

change your mind about that and part of that is to look hard at

your internal stories and the internal structures that you've

built around your life i gave you some first aid for

your nervous system and code red for emotional emergencies in episode 25 and

we talked about psychobiology and neurobiology of how your Your memories aren't

a fair fight when you think you can go back in time and relive those memories

and blame yourself for different things that you should have or would have or

could have or wish you had done.

It's not a fair fight. Because of the psychobiology of how memory works,

you're always comparing your past self with what you know now,

and it's not a fair fight.

And that episode, Season 9, Episode 26 from October 19th, will really help you

if you're stuck with ruminating on memories and moments from the past.

We had a bunch of great Frontal Lobe Friday episodes in Season 9.

We talked about Jesus and Einstein and how time works in both directions and

that there's even some evidence that you shouldn't stop praying for things even

after they seem to be settled because time isn't what you think it is.

We talked about how just a teeny tiny dose of hope is enough sometimes in Episode 32.

We talked about some really complex neuroscience things that give you great

hope in Episode 31. We talked about our internal structures and how those things

are what holds us up when the hardest thing happens back in episode 62.

So, I'm giving you a big overview. We've gone down the road of what your frontal lobe is about.

We've gone down the road of how quantum physics interplays with your nervous

system and how you can really solve problems that seem unsolvable by learning

how to operate your mind more effectively.

I've given you a bunch of new self-brain surgery Saturday operations.

We've talked a lot about epigenetics and neurobiology and gene expression and

interpersonal neurobiology and neurodynamics of how you can relate to other

people and how your state, your internal state affects those around you.

We had some amazing guests, Michael Gillen and Philip Yancey and John Burke,

talking about near-death experiences and the beautiful way God shows up.

And back in episode 41, we talked about, am I just a sack of neurons?

And that episode is going to come back and be important to us as we get into

the final episode of season nine with Sharon Dirkix to talk about, am I just my brain?

And I think those two would be a great one-two punch for you.

So maybe sometime before tomorrow, go and listen to Season 9,

Episode 41 from back on November 4th, and listen to that Am I Just a Sack of

Neurons episode. It's going to be helpful to you.

Season 9, Episode 42, I gave you an operation for what to do when you're stuck

that will really help you.

We talked about how positive thinking isn't just tricking yourself.

It's not just a trick to make you feel better. It's actually learning how to

change your mind, and it actually changes gene expression.

We did two episodes in a row, episode 46 and episode 47, about positive thinking

and how it's not just a trick for your brain.

And then as we got into the middle part and the last two thirds of season nine,

gave you some things to think about with thought cancer and how to overcome

it, how to prepare more and worry less, how your gut-brain axis influences what

your brain and your thinking and your mind does.

And that's when I started telling you about important supplements like Peak

and Armor and Athletic Greens and things that Lisa and I take every day.

Because what you put in your gut affects how you feel.

It affects how your brain works. It affects the the clarity of your thinking.

That's why there's always a link in the show notes to our affiliate partners,

Peak and Armor, to help you feel better and have better fuel in your gut and

protect you from viruses and toxins that are in your food that you eat sometimes.

Those things are important, and that's what we talked about in episode 49.

We had some more guests like Corey Weathers to talk about how the military culture

is changing and how that can influence you even and your mindset.

We talked about worldview and how important that is. I've given you a bunch

of of great Theology Thursdays. In fact, we started Theology Thursday during

season nine, which is one of my favorite episodes.

And that's going to be really a core. Tuesdays with Tata and Spiritual Brain

Surgery with Theology Thursday are going to be the core of this new podcast.

We got into the holiday season. We had Tish Harrison Warren and Kayla Craig

talking about liturgy and Advent and the importance of keeping a liturgical

calendar and how your prayer life can be benefited by the the prayers of others.

We had a great interview with Granger Smith, another bereaved father,

about his book, Like a River, back in November 24th.

I haven't heard that one. It's very helpful.

And then I taught you about the default mode, and we talked about how your baseline

thinking affects everything about your life and how you can train your default

mode to be less focused on self, and it will help you become happier.

I gave you multiple episodes about the different levels of self brain surgery

and how you can take it to the deepest possible level and really change your

mind improve your default mode thinking and change the impact of your life on

others by getting your mind under control.

We even gave you permission to be sad on Self-Praying Surgery Saturday back on December 2nd.

And as we came towards the end of the year, I gave you a bunch of episodes about

hope and about starting over and about swinging the sword on Frontal Lobe Friday

to get that Word of God working for you and get your mind working on your behalf.

I gave you two episodes about the top 10 books that I read, my favorite books

of the year, and those are worth going back and listening through.

We had our friend Susie Larson on for a one-two punch, two episodes in a row

in the middle of December, and you should go listen to those.

One of my all-time favorite conversations was my conversation on December 30th

with Lee Strobel about his unbelievable book, Is God Real?, and that was worth going back.

One of the most important episodes I've ever done was called Hungry,

Hungry Hippocampus, and we talked about that on Mind Change Monday,

and I think you should go back and listen listen to that one because it's incredibly,

incredibly important to understand what your hippocampus is all about and how

it affects your frontal lobe, how it affects your thinking.

That was from December 4th, episode 67, and understanding how your hippocampus

is designed and how it helps you avoid the short circuit that leads inevitably

into anxiety and depression and fear.

That'll help you. Hungry, Hungry Hippocampus, probably my favorite episode I've

ever done just by myself. self. Love it.

And we wrapped up the last part of the season.

We talked about prehab when you're having suffering, getting a good theology

around suffering, changing your perspective and how important that is.

We gave you the first episode of how prayer affects your brain on January 5th,

and we're going to have part two of that inside the Spiritual Brain Surgery Podcast soon.

We gave you back an old episode last week about the gardener in your brain,

the microtubules, and how important they are in building the structure around

your thoughts and the mechanics of what happens when you change the thinking of your brain.

Really important and fascinating neurobiology conversation.

And then I gave you back an old episode yesterday, Creation Story,

and I did that because I want you to see when you're suffering that God is not

abandoning you to the pit of despair.

He's not abandoning you in the

furnace of suffering, but rather He's starting a new story in your life.

And if you can learn to reframe and refocus and reset your expectations when

something hard happens,

then you can start looking for the places where God is keeping His promises

and that out of the ashes of your trauma and your tragedy and your other massive

things is where you will begin to put your feet down and they'll land on something that feels like hope.

And that's what we've done in Season 9, my friend.

We've covered all that ground, and it's been such a joy and an honor to do that with you.

And I'm hopeful, I'm grateful, and I'm hopeful that it's been helpful to you.

And I just promise you that where we're going in Season 10 and where we're going

with spiritual brain surgery are going to be a one-two punch every week that's

going to help you change your mind and change your life so that you become healthier

and feel better and can be happier.

And I'm so just excited to cover that ground with you.

And we're going to put it all together. One of my favorite books is called You

Are Not Your Brain by Jeffrey Schwartz.

And we're going to talk about Am I Just My Brain, another book by Sharon Durkix

on the season nine finale, which should be tomorrow, maybe the next day.

But Jeffrey Schwartz is one of the leaders, one of the psychiatrists who has

made the biggest impact on the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

And Chapter 15 of his book, You Are Not Your Brain, talks about how this false

automatic negative thinking, he calls it deceptive brain messages.

We always call it automatic negative thinking because I'm kind of a disciple

of Daniel Amen, and that's a word that he uses a lot that perfectly describes

these thoughts that pop into our heads, these automatic negative thoughts.

Jeffrey Schwartz calls them deceptive brain messages. And the problem we have.

We've been taught that what we think is real, and I just want you to remember

that feelings aren't facts.

These are two of our Ten Commandments of Self-Brain Surgery.

Feelings aren't facts, and not all thoughts are true.

Jeffrey Schwartz, in chapter 15 of his book, You Are Not Your Brain,

starts out by reminding us that deceptive brain messages seem true,

and we have to learn to think about them.

I'm always teaching you, biopsy your thoughts, think about your thinking,

because listening Listening to those negative thoughts and not challenging them,

forgetting about, if you forget about 2 Corinthians 10, 5, where Paul tells

you it's so important to take your thoughts captive,

look at them, think about them, don't fall into a habit of just letting them

run amok in your mind, because deceptive brain messages,

even benign ones, even seemingly benign ones, can result in you forming synapses

that will be unhelpful and unhealthy for you. you.

And the more you use Hebb's law to wire neurons together, to fire together that

aren't helping you, the better your brain begins to become at hurting you instead of helping you.

When you focus and direct your attention on something that's automatically negative

and you begin to believe it as if it were true and don't challenge that thought,

then the quantum Zeno effect comes in and starts to define your reality in a

negative way that's not based on untruth, and then you're never going to land in a good place.

I'll just tell you, if you make a wrong turn in your car, if you're taking a

drive across the country and you're supposed to go to Denver from North Platte,

you need to be driving west.

And if you make a wrong turn and you start driving north instead,

that wrong turn will never lead you to your destination.

You will never get to Denver, Colorado from North Platte, Nebraska,

if you're driving north instead of west.

No matter how much you believe that you're driving west, if you are in fact

driving north, you will never get to Denver. And the same thing happens in your thinking.

If you listen to automatic negative thinking and you wire it into your brain,

friend, trust me on this.

You will never find yourself in a good place based on harmful and deceptive thinking.

So the only way out of that conundrum is to zoom out and think differently about

the things that you think and start making your thoughts work for you,

making your feelings and your emotions work for you instead of against you.

Schwartz says, The brain learns to ignore and minimize and neglect many of our

true needs and true emotions in childhood, and that process leads to lots of thinking errors.

Like this is just how I am or I can't overcome this or that.

It's impossible for me to change. I've always tried it and it never works.

And the problem is it won't work if you continue to use the same process because

what got you here won't get you there, right?

So you have to remember that you have two friends in this.

You have the automatic negative thinking and the baseline wiring and your whole

lifetime experience of negative thinking and wiring your brain according to

Hebb's Law into harmful patterns that have hurt you. And that's your enemy.

And I believe there's actually a spiritual enemy involved in that process too

who wants you to have your life be stolen, killed, and destroyed,

as Jesus said that the enemy wants of you in John 10.10.

But you have two friends too. And one is your mind, this incredible power that

you have of selective attention and learning to rewire your brain by thinking different thoughts.

And that can get you from that 10% happier and significantly happier mode that

you can get to, even if you don't understand that your Creator wants to help you.

You can get to that because of this general grace that God's given you that

we covered in the podcast last week.

But you also have what Schwartz calls the wise advocate.

I think it's the Holy Spirit. I think he thinks that too. His book,

You Are Not Your Brain, basically says.

Wasn't a spiritual book, and he was trying to get people to understand that

there's help available to them without beating them over the head with the fact that it's God.

But he called it the wise advocate, and that's the Holy Spirit.

It empowers you to see yourself from a loving, caring perspective and helps

guide yourself in making choices about how to focus your attention.

That's that verse in Deuteronomy, by the way. It says, wherever you go,

you'll hear a voice that says, no, don't turn to to the right.

Turn to the left. Don't go that way. Go this way.

God wants to communicate with you in the Wi-Fi network of you connecting to

the Holy Spirit, to your mind, to your brain that turns into thoughts becoming

things in your body and changing your life.

That's the way you can become almost infinitely happier, my friend.

And we're going to go so deep in that in season 10. I'm going to teach you about

your genetics, your chromosomes, your neurobiology, how your different parts

of your brain work together to help you and not hurt you.

I'm going to challenge, we are going to together challenge things that we thought

were never touchable in the way we look at ourselves, in the way we think about ourselves.

And we're going to become master self-brain surgeons over the course of the

hundred episodes of season 10, God willing.

We're going to learn and you're going to start to believe that you're not responsible

for the initial thought, urge, impulse, sensation, desire, or cravings that

pop into your mind, as Jeffrey Schwartz said.

You're not responsible for the pop-in negative thought, but you are responsible

for what you do with those thoughts.

And if you learn to challenge them, notice your deceptive brain messages, as Schwartz says.

Notice your automatic negative thoughts, as Daniel Lehman says.

Biopsy your thoughts, as Dr. Warren says. And learn to look at them critically

and decide how you're going to act and focus your attention on acting and thinking

and behaving and moving forward in a better way than you have before,

then you'll finally break this cycle of what got you here and be able to get there instead.

Because hope is the belief that you can get there from here.

Hope is a verb. It's not an accident. It's based on memory of people having

gotten through things before,

of you having gotten through things before, of God making promises before about

what He wants to do and will do for you, and then moving towards the reality

of those things and watching them come true.

That's how we flex the muscle of hope.

Okay, friend, you can learn.

To do the four R's, as Jeffrey Schwartz says, the four things that you can do.

You can relabel your automatic negative thoughts. You can reframe them and understand

and look at things from a different perspective, as we talked about a couple of days ago.

You can refocus your mental energy and your force on the change that you want to see.

And get your brain working for you and not against you and listening to the

healthy messages that your wise advocate, that the Holy Spirit is communicating

with you, and you can start changing your automatic responses to become more positive.

And then you can learn to revalue the thoughts that you have so that when a

thought pops into your head, you say, wait a minute, I'm not obligated to listen

to that negative garbage.

I am not obligated to take action. I am not obligated to believe that.

And you'll start revaluing those thoughts and putting a lower number on how

important or how true they are.

And you'll start running those filters and those biopsy processes

much more automatically and you'll start to understand there's

a difference between emotional sensation feeling and

something that's true and feelings aren't facts and

you'll understand you start to learn how to discern what's just a feeling that's

based on some prior experience or belief or long-held notion or something that

happened to you before and it's not actually true or applicable to the current

situation and you'll start being able to turn that dial down on those those

anxieties and those fears and those threats that you felt for so long,

those shame and regret and loss and grief and pain, and you'll start being able

to turn the dial up and getting your alpha brain going, getting your mind going in a more healthy,

less stressed, less anxious state.

And you're going to come alive, maybe for the first time in your life.

And you're going to become a master self-brain surgeon with me over the next

100 episodes of this podcast.

And I can't wait to hear your story.

I can't wait for you to send me an email and say, I've been stuck in this thought

loop ever since I was nine and this thing happened, or ever since he left,

ever since the doctor said this.

I've been stuck, and now I'm not stuck anymore.

There was a man that came up to me and Lisa at a book signing in North Platte

for Hope is the First Dose, and he waited a long time in line,

and he came up and he had almost like an embarrassed look on his face.

His wife was with him and introduced himself to me, in, he said that they lost

their son to a brain tumor when he was two years old, and he said, Doc,

when my son died, I crawled into a bottle, he started drinking,

and he said, and I stayed in that bottle, and I drank myself out of not feeling that for 30 years.

And then I read your book and I checked myself into rehab and I decided if you

could survive that and change your mind about what happened to your son,

then I could survive it too.

And he's been clean now for four months and he's solid.

He's got a plan. He changed his mind and he's changing his life.

And friend, that's what you can do too. And I can't wait to hear your stories

because when you change your mind, then what happens is you start becoming a

little bit more able to show other people that hope is possible.

And you inspire other people to rewire their brains too.

And self-brain surgery turns out to be contagious because that's what we're

supposed to be in our lives.

We're supposed to be adorning the gospel to help other people see that there

really is something that's hopeful and maybe even happy out there again,

despite what we've all been through.

And that, my friend, is how you change your mind. And that's how you change your life.

And we're almost done with season nine. and I just have one hope for you.

I hope that you remember the good news that you can always 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 news

newsletters, 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.