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Good morning my friend, I hope you're doing well. I'm Dr. Lee Warren and I am.
So excited to be here with you on Monday morning. You know why?
Because it is Mind Change Monday. It's Mind Change Monday.
We're going to change our minds about something called your default mode network.
We're going to talk about two brain regions, two brain networks rather,
that integrate all the different parts of your brain and make it work either
for you or against you. And unfortunately, sometimes the default is almost not in your best interest.
And we're going to learn how to take charge of our default mode network by understanding
how it works, what it is, what it's for, and also to compare it and contrast
it with another network called the task positive network.
And we're going to do all that in about 30 minutes. And we're going to land
on a Tommy Walker song called There is a Rock. There's a good reason for that.
We had all this stuff to do. We're going to start with an email from a listener.
I'm going to tell you about a couple of exciting things that will help your
body and help your brain I'm going to tell you about a new book that's coming
out in January from my friend Susie Larson that I'm so excited about And we're
gonna get all that done and all along the way We're gonna be learning how to
become healthier feel better and be happier by changing our minds so we can
change our life But before we do any of that my friend,
I 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 for 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.
All right, you're ready to get after it's mind change Monday and I got an email
from a woman named Kathleen and,
Kathleen wrote in and just had the most incredible thing to
say it was yesterday that she sent this and Lisa
and I have heard from Kathleen a few times over the years if I'm not mistaken
I think you've probably heard her voice on the show and sometimes when I play
the speak pipe voicemails and by the way if you have something to say about
how self brain surgery is helping you or or anything about a message that you
think might be encouraging to others about how you've changed your mind,
send us a voicemail, speakpipe, S-P-E-A-K, speakpipe,
P-I-P-E,
.com,
speakpipe.com slash Dr. Lee Warren, and you can leave a voicemail.
And if it's appropriate for a particular episode, I'll put it on the podcast,
and you may have your voice broadcast all over the world.
We've been in 165 countries in the last 30 days, and people are listening and
connecting to change their minds and change their lives. Well,
Kathleen hit the nail on the head. Here's what she said.
Oh, Dr. Warren, here I am, a 69-year-old woman, and for the first time in my
life, I am considering the possibility that it's okay to be happy,
really, and that this happy can last more than a brief moment, days even.
Is that what Scripture means when it says His mercy is new every morning?
And that something bad is not going to happen to me now to balance out the happy?
And that this is what God wants from me, and that even when bad things happen,
the happy can also remain.
And all of this and more has just sunk in.
I believe it. I embrace it. I can live it.
Not like a magic trick, but in the truest, simplest way.
Thanks to the things you share and teach sinking in.
Thanks to learning to change my mind so I can change my life.
Something is really happening here. Quietly, but truly, our God is a God of love. Kathleen, amen.
Holy smokes, you exactly said it right. God does renew your mind every morning.
His mercies are new every morning.
And he wants you to have an abundant, and yes, even happy life,
in spite of the fact that hard things will happen,
massive things will happen, things that can knock you off your feet,
and you can still have hope and purpose and meaning, and maybe even happiness
again, Because it's not a balancing act.
It's not a magic trick. It's quantum physics. God created you to be able to
live abundantly in spite of a hard life.
Thank you so much, Kathleen, for exactly saying it right. You perfectly described
What God wants for us in this sometimes hard life why because if you can maintain
your resilience If you can maintain your hope and sense of purpose,
you're going to be a light You're going to be a path for other people to follow
so that they will find their way to hope as well That's why we're here glorify
god with our lives progressively become more sanctified,
Achieve the real hope of resurrection that he has for us and help other people,
Find their way to what more could we ask for in a life that means something?
Matters how cool is that? I just love it I love when people really get it like
you you you put something out there you work really hard You believe you're
following the leading of the Holy Spirit and then people find it and they relate
to it and it helps them I'm just so encouraged Kathleen by your email that,
Self brain surgery is helping you and it's because our God is so merciful and
kind and he's given us a brain This designs to heal and get healthier and look
for the positive and we always talk about how we have this baseline Negativity and it's true,
but I'm going to present to you today I think a new way to look at that and
why you actually are not designed for negativity.
You do have a baseline pile of negative thoughts and negative reactions that
happen But the design is something far different and far better than that We're
gonna get into that in a little bit before we do that a couple things.
I want to tell you Yesterday, I was on Instagram and I saw a story update from
our friend Susie Larson, author, radio host, who's been on her show a few times.
She's been on my show a couple of times. I'm praying that she'll be again soon.
But Susie's got a new book coming out, which is unbelievable because her most
recent book just came out a few months ago, Closer Than Your Next Breath,
which I've told you is in the running for my top books of 2023.
Which we'll cover in a podcast later this year. and just a tremendous book.
And her book, Fully Alive, is one of my favorite all-time books on mindset and
how to come alive and understand what God's done in your life and how he wants you to live.
And she's just great, but I don't understand how somebody can write a book as
powerful, as closer than your next breath, and then turn around six months later
and have another one coming out.
And so I saw that and I was like, holy cow, are you kidding me, Susie?
You got another book already? Because I'm a very notoriously slow writer of
books. My first book, my first real book came out in 2014 in May.
And my next book, I've seen the interview, came out in January of 2020, so almost 6 years.
And then I thought I did a great job getting my pace better.
And my next book, Hope is the First Dose, came out in July of 2023,
so 3 and a half years. So I cut the time almost in half.
And my next book, hopefully, Self-Brain Surgery, whatever it ends up being called,
will come out in some time in 2025, so that'll shorten that gap to 2 years.
That I can't even imagine.
Like I've always wondered at my friend Max Licato, who writes a book,
at least one book every single year.
And I've always been amazed at his output and how he does that and how the Holy
Spirit just pours out these amazing books through him.
And his new one's amazing by the way too, which we'll talk about soon.
But Susie here has got six months, holy smokes, six months.
And so when I saw that she has a book coming out, I went and looked at what
it's all about. We haven't talked about it yet.
And it's called Waking Up to the Goodness of God, 40 Days Toward Healing and Wholeness.
I went to Amazon, pre-ordered it, of course, pre-ordered the audio book too,
because Susie narrates her own audio books and they're amazing.
But I was blown away when this happened in the description of Susie's new book. Listen to what it says.
For those who have been disappointed when the good life let them down or discouraged
by life struggles The goodness of god is trustworthy life-giving,
and everlasting Jesus wants to lead you on a healing path to redeem your story
and to make you whole now listen to this Join best-selling author popular radio
host and bible teacher suzy larsen on a 40-day pilgrimage to.
Explore god's invitation to flourish Heal and know his peace in a way that changes
us forever through this journey listeners will discover how to,
I'm just gonna read you the first one,
retrain their brains and renew their minds to notice God's goodness and to make
that their default setting. You get that?
Susie's gonna teach you how to retrain your brain and renew your mind to notice
God's goodness and to make that your default setting.
And I was like, holy cow, are you kidding me? Tomorrow we're
gonna to talk about the default mode network and so my plan for the podcast
as I told my newsletter subscribers yesterday as I told you on Self Brain Surgery
Saturday we're gonna talk about the default mode and the whole purpose of that
conversation is to help you understand how you are designed so that God can help you heal,
find abundance, find purpose and meaning and retrain your brain to improve your
default setting away from negativity and self-focus and towards connectedness
with your creator and the abundance that you're supposed to have.
And I love it. I think God does this, if you pay attention actually,
if you pay attention, you'll notice that there seems to be lots of books and
lots of conversation around similar topics frequently in life.
Like things show up, especially in the Christian world, things show up over and over.
And I think that's because the Holy Spirit is trying to get our attention.
And he uses all kinds of different people in different ways to hit the same
message to try to bring us into awareness of what He wants us to know,
and over time that we collectively get closer and closer and closer to the way
He wants us to live, okay?
And so here you have Susie Larson, who's writing a book to help you retrain
your brain and renew your mind to notice God's goodness and to make that your default setting.
And at the same time, I'm coming at you to help you understand the neural network
in your brain called the default mode and how to help train your default mode
network to become more resilient and more generally focused away from self and
towards connectedness.
And outside of your self-observation rather than being the subject of all these
thoughts that you have bouncing around in your head all the time.
And I think that's clearly evidence that the Holy Spirit wants you to get this friend.
He wants you to get it, whether it's from your friend the brain surgeon on the
internet, or it's your friend Susie Larson, or it's somebody else.
There's going to be a lot of opportunity for you to get the message that God
is just yelling out through the universe.
He's saying, be still and know that I am God. Cease striving and let me teach
you How to operate this incredible brain that I've given you remember on Saturday.
We talked about how you could have a computer That just had a dumb hard drive
and whatever it was programmed to do.
That would be the only thing it could do It was an accounting computer It was
a whatever computer designed for one thing and that's all you could do with
it And it would be a great tool And maybe you could use it and become a little
bit more efficient or a little bit more Abundant or a little bit maybe 10% happier because,
you use that computer and you've figured out a hack to make your life a little bit better.
But you could also add an external USB drive or some way to put new data into that computer,
new programs and new software, and you could make the computer a whole lot more,
significantly more useful to you if you could add additional capability to it.
That's why some people can go beyond being just 10%,
happier They can learn how to operate their minds at a
pretty high level and they can become Significantly happier
and we talked on Saturday about Dawson Church and his incredible book
bliss brain And it's just this amazing look at how our brains are designed and
all the networks in our brain Work and how we can use them to our advantage
and improve our lives significantly but then he in my opinion kind of falls
off the cliff because he attributes it all to just an accident of evolution and how
You just understand how your brain has evolved then you can operate it more
efficient efficiently and you can be happier, right?
But I think the the power of
a computer is when you connect it to the internet Because once you connect it
to the internet then it has an infinite amount of possibility of serving you
can teach it new things You can have it run new programs You can find information
about anything all the time you can communicate with somebody instantly across
the world Once you're connected to the Internet,
you can really be almost infinitely more capable.
Right, and that's what I think God designed our minds to be our minds are the
interface between our Creator and our life our Creator and other people our
Creator in the universe in the world around us and connecting ourselves to that,
Wi-Fi network that communicates with the Holy Spirit if you will is how we really
then can become almost infinitely resilient and able to handle whatever comes
along in our life. It's powerful.
Okay, so what I want to give you today is just a look at this little important
area of your brain, this important network in your brain called the default mode network.
And before we do that, I've told you recently we had a couple of episodes about
gut health and immune modulation and all the different ways that your brain
and your gut interact with one another
and hopefully we'll have more opportunity to do that in the future.
As we're talking, I am drinking a green drink.
This green drink is a little concoction that Lisa made for me and it contains a number of things.
Athletic greens, which is a powder that you can put in your water and shake
it up and it's got all the vitamins and minerals and nutrients and probiotics
and prebiotics and all that stuff in it that's really powerful.
I am not an affiliate of athletic greens, so I'm just telling you,
it helps me feel better. I use it every day.
Helps me get stronger helps me get my gut health in order and I use athletic
greens all the time You can check that out.
If you want to I don't get paid for you using athletic greens There are two
products that I put in my athletic greens every day.
One is from peak PIQ you either is a link in the Show notes and it will pay
us a little commission if you use peak, but I use peak because it supports,
brain health immune health skin hair and nails Support Lisa uses it for that
purpose and it just makes you feel better because you're putting good stuff into your gut Remember,
I've told you before that your gut is the USB drive of how you get stuff into your body.
If you imagine that when thoughts become things, it happens because proteins
get transcribed from genes that get turned on and off and DNA that gets transcribed or not.
Proteins are the things that thoughts create.
Proteins are built out of amino acids and amino acids come from the things that you eat.
If you put good things in your gut, you're going to get good things into your brain.
If you put bad things into your gut, you're going to get bad things into your
brain. and you can't build a good house with bad materials, that's why I put PEAK in my gut.
It supports me, helps me feel better, and I use it, and I mix it up in my athletic grains.
The other one is called Armra, and it's a colostrum product.
Colostrum lines the gut and protects you from harmful things getting in there.
Will keep viruses and bacteria and the wrong kinds of things.
Remember I told you about papers that I wrote in the past that have to do with
how bacteria in your gut can get chopped up and presented to your body as antigens,
and you can create antibodies to them that can turn into arthritis and all kinds
of other things like ankylosing spondylitis.
We know now that some of the things that get into your body through your gut
can turn out to be the triggers that create lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and
ulcerative colitis and anterior uveitis and ankylosing spondylitis and all these
itises that can afflict us.
It all starts in the gut. So I put Armour Colostrum and Peak in my athletic greens.
That's what I'm drinking right now as we talk. So it's a little commercial,
but there are links in the show notes. And if you want to feel better and give
your body some better fuel Those are some good products that you can use and
it helps us support the podcast.
Okay, that's enough about that Why do I tell you about that stuff?
Because I want you to understand that your brain is Constantly building your
brain is constantly growing and changing and chopping up proteins and removing
things that aren't being used and adding Things that are being used and all
of that energy It has to have a supply of good things and it has to block out bad things.
And that's why I use those products. Okay, let's talk about the default mode.
Made the joke about Depeche Mode the 80s band the
other day and I just said that because I want you to remember you have A
default mode you have a network in your brain that
is working and operating all the time It's constantly in action This came about
because it was discovered by a neuroscientist who was looking at the brain energy
consumption And they realized that in fact his name is Marcus reckle He worked
at the Washington University in St.
Louis in the mid-90s, and Raquel's work was looking at energy consumption in
the brain using functional imaging called PET scanning, positron emission tomography.
And they were looking at how the brain's baseline metabolic activity doesn't
really change when you're not actively thinking about something.
The theory was when they started doing this research that your brain uses a
certain amount of energy,
like your car on idle, right, like you turn the car on and the engine's running,
And then when you push the gas the energy consumption goes way up and you can
operate your car at a higher RPM level and drive Around right well everybody
thought that's what happened in the brain that when you were thinking you would
use more energy and when you were Resting you wouldn't but what they actually
found was quite surprising Okay,
what they found is that there is a default baseline metabolic activity in your
brain that even when you're not actively thinking about Something the energy
consumption in your brain basically stays the same It's within 5%.
When you're active and when you're not active.
Your brain operates at about the same level of power all the time.
And the reason for that is that there's a default mode network.
It kicks in when you're not actively engaged in something.
The flip side of that is there's a region, a set of brain regions that are connected
called the task positive network.
And these are areas like the parietal lobe and the lateral prefrontal cortex
that work when you're actively thinking about something like working memory,
cognitive awareness, and attention.
And when you're busy and thinking about something or solving a problem or working
or doing something actively, the task positive network is engaged and it's out
there grabbing different brain regions and calling on different areas to do different things.
But when you rest, your brain doesn't rest.
A different network lights up, a different set of regions in the brain that
we now call the default mode still consume about 20% of your body's energy,
even though you're resting, okay?
And it only varies about 5% between really active and resting.
So your brain is busy, like a car engine that keeps revving,
even when it's in neutral, okay?
Your brain's always doing something. So here's the deal, and Dawson Church writes
about this very well in his book, Bliss Brain.
He says, it turns out that when you're doing nothing, your brain is not inert,
it's highly active, but it's running on autopilot with a set of regions called
the default mode network.
This is what your brain defaults to when it's not engaged in a task like creating
a spreadsheet or kicking a soccer ball or playing chess.
When you're mentally at rest, your task positive network shuts down while your
default mode network, the DMN, kicks in, keeping your brain running at a high
RPM, even though it's not doing any specific task.
Now, Reichel discovered that there's all kinds of areas like the posterior cingulate
cortex, which is kind of in the middle of the back of your brain,
it's linked to the limbic system, which is obviously super important in memory
and emotional processing.
The precuneus, that's part of your parietal lobe, it's also involved in memory.
And all of these areas light up when you're not doing something active and they
all calm down when the task positive network kicks in.
And so, Rackle looked at a whole bunch of brains and a bunch of previous studies
that figured out that there's this default mode running.
It's like the dark energy in the
background of your brain when you're not actively engaged in something.
And that's the default mode network.
Okay? Everything lights up. Reckles said it hadn't occurred to anybody that
the brain is actually just as busy when we relax as when we focus on difficult tasks.
When we relax, the DMN is the most active area of the brain.
Now, Buddha and meditators and Eastern mysticists have talked about something
they call the monkey mind.
And this is the idea that when you try to relax and calm yourself down,
you find your thoughts going all over the place, right?
Like the way monkeys jump around from tree to tree, they never sit still.
Why does your brain work that way?
Well, Reichel says maybe that's how you keep your brain organized.
You've got all kinds of things running around trying to connect different things
and organize your brain in a way to keep things ready for action when you go into action.
It actually gets deeper than that though.
Your default mode is actually focusing constantly not on what you're doing currently,
because you're not doing anything currently when the default mode kicks in,
But rather it looks back in the past and drudges up all those old memories and
all the old mistakes and all the old problems and all the ways that people have
hurt you has a Dizzying amount of connections to areas that focus on me.
I me mine It's the me show the default mode network Gets you into this place
where you're thinking about stuff that's happened in the past and you're projecting
into the future things that might happen And it's basically worry time Okay?
Now you just admit it to yourself if you don't like me saying it,
but when you're relaxed and when your thoughts are not directly specifically
focused on something, don't you find yourself generally thinking,
I'm so nervous about that test I've got to take tomorrow, I'm so worried about
what my brother's going to say when we get together for Thanksgiving,
he's going to dredge up that thing again and everybody's going to blame me for
that problem that we had when I was five.
And you go down these paths from the past to the future. The precuneus contributes
to this self-referential focus and this episodic memory.
The default mode is all about the past and the future.
It involves an area called the insula, which we've talked about before.
And the insula is interesting because it's got some specialized neurons that
don't show up anywhere else in the nervous system called von Economo neurons.
And this area, the insula, is important because it integrates memory and attaches emotion to it.
You don't just think negative thoughts when you're in default mode,
but the insula pulls in emotion attached to them too.
We talked about the psychobiology of old memories before. When you remember
something from the past, you don't just replay a slideshow.
You also trigger the emotions associated with that and you even evolve and change
them and you add in new emotional feelings based on how you are now and what
you know now and what you believe now and what your life looks like now and
you attach those emotions to the old memories so when they get stored again,
the next time you trigger them, they feel like they felt just now to you.
And that's why it's not really wise or healthy to ruminate on old memories because
you don't actually get to be in the past Your brain makes you think you're in the past,
but you're really in the present so you're making the old memory more like What
would it what it would be if you had all the insight and knowledge and ability that you have now?
And it's not a fair fight. We've talked about that before the DMN the default
mode network recruits the insula integrates all this adds emotion to it and
And basically, it's not a fair fight, okay?
You find yourself wandering in misery and ruminating about something that you
can't even really compare because you're comparing it to what you are now.
So you feel those things emotionally.
Now you've got, you're trying to be relaxed and you're trying to calm down and
your default mode is basically taking your frontal lobe hostage to the CEO,
the executive function of your brain is now following along with this emotional mire,
quagmire that you're in.
And the insula is like firing all these slights and insults and disappointments
that you've had in your past, and you project them into the future,
and it's always going to feel this way, and I can't really look forward to anything
being better than it has been, and why would I even try?
That's, my friend, what the default mode network does.
Dawson Church made a really stunning observation, I thought.
The default mode network DMN sounds a lot like the word demon.
The demon is out there robbing you of inner peace that you're seeking when you're
trying to relax and calm down now I think it's hilarious that somebody that
doesn't believe in heaven or hell or God or Satan.
Recognized that this activity of our default mode network Sounds and feels a
whole lot like demonic activity and I would tell you I think you're in a spiritual
battle for the state Of your soul.
I think you're in a spiritual battle for your abundance and your peace and your
happiness And I think that's exactly what happened to Jesus when he was tempted
on the mountain by Or in the wilderness by the devil. What did the devil do?
He tried to tempt him with things he didn't have or could have you see that
He doesn't if he can't get you by making you focus on things You don't have
or things that you've lost or any of that if you're in a better place than that and he can't get you
wandering down this rabbit hole of thinking about things you've lost,
then you may dangle things that seem good in front of you.
Like, well, maybe, you know, it would be so great if these people weren't such
jerks, then maybe you'd be able to get that promotion, or maybe you'd be able to have all this power.
Maybe people should finally start paying attention to you. You start hearing
those kinds of thoughts in your head, right?
Nobody ever pays attention to me. Everybody always overlooks me.
All that kind of stuff. That's the demon. That's the default mode network.
This is obviously going to have to be a multi-part podcast.
We're going to have to do default mode a few times to really get all of this,
but today I'm just trying to get you into one thing to understand.
What you're doing, remember one of our principles of self-brain surgery.
One of our principles of self-brain surgery is what you're doing,
you're getting better at.
So that means that every moment when you're not actually focused on something
with your task positive network, you're allowing your default mode network to run.
Every moment you're either getting better at being self-directed and thinking
about yourself and running the me show, or you're getting better at learning
how to operate your brain where it's not all focused on those things.
And I'm just here to tell you that if you want to become healthier and feel
better and be happier, you need to train your default mode to allow God to operate
it through you and with you in a healthier way.
Now, let's just smash some scripture in there, okay?
Why would God give us, Lisa and I had a long talk about this the other day,
and we did a whole episode about a listener's email where he wrote in and said,
why is my brain so negative if God wants me to be positive?
If God wants me to be happy, why is my brain so unhappy? Here's the answer.
God gave us a default mode, whether, even if we didn't believe him or follow
him or pursue him, that our brain would help us stay alive and have an opportunity
to find truth and find peace and find happiness down the road.
God did that. He created a brain that will help us to stay alive and the purpose
of the default mode at its baseline.
To scan the past for things that have hurt us and to scan the future for things
that might harm us and try to
find a Navigatable path to avoid things that might take us out or kill us.
Okay, that's basically it That's why you don't have to think twice about not
touching a hot stove because you hardwired the first time you burned your hand
on A hard stove when you're on a hot stove when you were a kid you hardwired
a set of reflexes to pull your hand away that you don't even have to think about a set of,
Emotional triggers that you know that thing is going to hurt you and you hardwired
that why because your default mode.
Synaptically connected all these areas of your brain and your motor system to
know that you're going to get hurt if you do that again And then to project into the future.
Hey, I'm gonna keep make sure that I don't go around putting my hand on hot stoves Okay,
that is a baseline protective mechanism God gave you that to protect you even
if you don't trust him and let him operate with you in a way that helps you
point your life towards him and
help other people avoid the misery of not knowing him in their life. Why?
Because he loves you. Listen, check out what Matthew 5 44 through 46 says,
Jesus says, but I say love your enemies.
Pray for those who persecute you. In that way you will be acting as true children
of your Father in heaven for he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the
good and he sends reign on the just and the unjust alike." God loves all of
his children, everyone he's created.
He created them with a brain and an opportunity to seek him and find him.
Paul talked about that in Acts 17.
In Acts 17 26, from one man he made all the nations that they should inhabit
the whole earth and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.
God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find
Him, though He is not far from any of us.
For in Him we live and move and have our being. Listen, God gave everybody a
brain with the default mode network to help keep them alive and keep them in
the fight so that maybe someday they could seek Him and perhaps find Him. He loves them.
Remember Paul said, our battle is not against flesh and blood.
You're not in a fight against other people.
You're in a spiritual war and that
spiritual war is against the demon and the demon Sometimes
shows up in your default mode network So don't forget that
God gave you that brain not so you would be negative But because
he loves you and he gave you sunlight and on both
the evil and the good He sends rain on the just and the unjust and
he gave us all brains and minds and it's
a shame I think when people live their lives and they look at this incredible
brain that they have and they don't Understand why they have it and who made
it for them and how they could operate it in a way to help them almost infinitely
become healthier and feel better and be happier because God my friend did not give you a.
Spirit of fear his your default mode was not
designed to make you afraid or make you focus on the
me show all the time Second Timothy 1 6 3 8 says this Therefore I remind you
to stir up the gift of God Which is in you through the laying on of my hands
for God has not given us a spirit of fear But of power and of love and of a
sound Mind we talked about the first part a lot.
God hasn't given us a spirit of fear Don't be afraid God gave you a spirit of power,
but finish it He gave you a spirit of power and
of love and of a sound mind friend what you're doing You're getting better at
so if you learn to train your default mode to zoom out of the Making yourself
the subject of all those negative thoughts and rather look at your life Objectively
and say hey, why am I here God put me here?
Why am I here in this time in this place? Well because he want me to he wanted
me to seek him and perhaps find him He wanted me to influence other people He
wanted me to help people understand that he didn't give them a spirit of fear
But of power and love and of a sound mind he wanted me to train my default mode network He wanted me to.
Become healthier and feel better and be happier he wanted me to get out of my
own headspace and enter into a communication with the great physician.
See when you learn how to not do what Eastern meditation says,
not just stop the noise so you can get your thoughts under control and and think
about them and respond better and just
be a little happier or operate more efficiently or any of those things,
but what God says is be still.
Cease striving, and know that I am God and hear my voice.
When Christians meditate, when Christians calm their minds, it's not because
they're trying to achieve silence is because we're trying to learn to hear our great physician.
I'm just stunned. I'm dumbfounded that it took me 54 years to finally understand
why all this interest that I had in science and the brain and all these things
and all this career that I've had of fixing broken bodies and damaged brains
and ruptured discs and all that.
Why it took me so long to understand my calling and my specific calling and
my purpose in this world.
And I hope you listened to the episode last week with the incredible Drew Dick
and we talked about that.
My purpose is to help people understand what's hurting them and how to figure
out how to stop hurting so much so that they become healthier and feel better and be happier.
That's my purpose and I can do that as a neurosurgeon and I can do it as a writer
and I can do it as a pop to my grandkids and I can do it as a husband to my
wife and to a dad to my kids and I can do it as a podcaster for you.
I can help you see that your default mode network can be trained to become healthier
and feel better and be happier.
And if I can't get you there, if you can't hear it from me, then go read Susie
Larson's new book and let her retrain your brain and renew your mind to notice
God's goodness and to make that your default setting.
Susie's new book is going to help your default mode get better. Okay?
You weren't given a spirit of fear, my friend. You were given a spirit of power
and of love and of a sound mind. That's why.
There's an incredible book by Sharon Durkix, who's a scientist from England,
called Am I Just My Brain? We're going to have her on the show in a few weeks.
And she's going to help us understand that you're not just a pile of neurons.
You're not just a sack of neurons and synapses, but you are created fearfully
and wonderfully by Almighty God for a purpose.
And it's because He wants you to learn how to help other people find their purpose
and meaning in their life too.
And you can go read Carolyn Leaf, and she's an amazing psychologist who's written
and done tons of research about how your brain is designed for positivity and
designed for healing and health and all of that.
And you can take that Psalm 4610, be still and know that I'm God.
And you can direct even what happens in your mind when you're at rest to come
under his control, to take captive every thought.
Direct your rest by introspection, self-reflection, and prayer.
Carolyn says, when When you capture your thoughts, when you memorize and quote
scripture, when you develop your mind intellectually, that's how you enhance
your default mode network to improve brain function and mental,
physical, and spiritual health.
Everybody's writing about this. Why? God's calling all of us,
smart people, writers, pastors, radio hosts, authors, neurosurgeons, neuropsychologists.
God is putting this message on lots of our hearts. Why? Because you
my friend are fearfully and wonderfully made and
God does want does not want you to hear the
voice of the demon all The time he wants your default mode
network to become healthier and feel better and
be happier He wants you to recognize that you were not given a spirit of fear
But of power and of love and of a sound mind he wants you to know that there
is Absolute truth and our culture is telling us the truth is relative and it's
all about whatever you feel and you should follow your feelings and trust your heart.
And God says, no, there is a rock. There is a solid rock.
There is a real truth. There is a way and a life and a truth in its name. His name is Jesus.
And that's how you can retrain your default mode. My friend,
Tommy Walker, years ago had an album called There is a Rock.
I'm training for a half marathon the other day and I put on Tommy Walker and
I listened to three of his old albums in a row while I was running that make
it glorious and never gonna stop and there is a rock.
And in this the album, there is a rock. The title track is a song called There's a Rock.
And I had this mental image as I'm listening to Tommy and his incredible band
saying there is a rock. There's a rock you can build your life upon.
There's a solid hope. There's a real truth.
I'm listening to that. And the music is uptempo and it's really powerful.
I thought, man, if King David had an iPod or iTunes account and he was listening
to music when he worshiped before the Lord so mildly, the Bible tells us that his tunic came off
and his wife made fun of him and gave him a hard time because he danced so hard
that he lost his clothing.
I thought if David had iTunes, he was probably listening to Tommy's song, "'There is a Rock'
when he danced that hard because that's the kind of worship that this song puts
you in the mood for and gets your spirit just so turned up that you would dance
so hard that your shirt might fall off.
And I'm not advocating that, but I just had that thought as I was running.
Man, this song is powerful.
And I'm gonna give it to you now because I want you to give yourself,
as we talked about in Hope is the First Dose, the way you find hope is memory and movement.
You train your default mode to remember good things
and move towards true things Instead of
ruminating about the me show and the I me mind and
the hurts of the past and the worries of the future You train your
default mode to know there is a rock There is
a solid rock that you can build your life upon
We're gonna let Tommy take us out and friend You can't change
your mind until you change your life and the
default mode Network is gonna help you if you can get that thing
under your control under the control of your creator Then you can really redesign
the baseline of what happens when you're not fully engaged in thinking and that's
where you be still and know that He is God because there is a rock and the good
news about all that my friend is that you 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.
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