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. It's Dr. Lee Warren and we're

here on frontal lobe Friday.

It's frontal lobe Friday and I know that some people have been distressed that

we're not releasing daily episodes.

Right now we are in the midst of a big technological upgrade to the studio and

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this big technology update and all of that is allowing us finally to get back

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We are grateful for your support and your partnership.

Wlewarrenmd.com slash join. I will have a full length brand new episode for

you tomorrow for self brain surgery Saturday.

But today we're going back in time to the very first frontal lobe Friday episode.

I want to give you this back just because we have so many new listeners.

I want to make sure you get on board with what your frontal lobes are all about.

And today is the very first frontal lobe Friday and we're going to get after

it. But before we do that, 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.

I've been trying to sort of write a new intro for the show as we get close to season nine.

Season nine is going to be all in on the neuroscience side, neuroscience and

faith smashing together, how we make all this stuff work.

This is Dr. Lee Warren. I'm your friendly internet brain surgeon.

Not really internet brain surgeon, I'm an actual real life brain surgeon,

but you probably know me more in the context of reading my books and listening

to the podcast and I hope If you're getting my newsletter, drleewarren.com.

Wleewarrenmd.com, you can sign up for the newsletter. But listen,

it's Friday, and I'm gonna start a new thing today.

As we get close to season nine, like I said, we're gonna dial in more on the

neuroscience, and Friday is gonna be, sometimes, Frontal Lobe Friday.

What in the world does that mean, Dr. Warren? Frontal Lobe Friday.

Your frontal lobe is probably the pinnacle of God's creative ingenuity.

Like of all the things that he made, The human frontal lobe sets us apart from

the animals in numerous ways, but the most important one is you have the gift

of something called selective attention.

You can choose to think about one thing and not another thing.

You can make a conscious decision, friend, when something is stressing you or

giving you a hard time or something is not worth your time.

You can make a decision to switch and think about something else.

No other animal had that. Harvey and Lewis, God rest them.

We miss them, by the way, really. It's crazily quiet around here.

But Harvey and Lewis, when they got on a raccoon or a coyote or something, they couldn't stop.

That's ultimately what led to their demise is they would get engaged with something

and they could not switch away.

I would have to grab them, drag them, fire a gun, shock them with their collars,

to do something to change their minds because they were incapable of changing

it on their own. But you are not.

You were given this incredible gift of the human frontal lobe.

And the frontal lobe allows you to make an executive decision.

Now we talk about the way businesses are organized and most companies,

and our hospital's a good example, have what they call the C-suite.

The chief officer's suite, where they'll have this chief executive officer,

the chief operating officer, the chief financial officer, chief nursing officer,

all those people, the chiefs, the Cs, are in the suite of all those offices.

And they're in charge of the business of that organization, right?

In big companies, it's often the top floor, like the suite of the executives up there, right?

So down on the ground in a business, if something's happened and there's a fire

in the cafeteria of the hospital, it's a little while before the executives get involved in that.

And what's happening on the ground in the cafeteria is that somebody's getting

a fire extinguisher and trying to put that fire out and making all kinds of

decisions and Implementing policies that hopefully had prepared them for handling

whatever's going on at putting that fire out, right?

But the business of what's happening acutely immediately on the ground Isn't

directly under the control of the executives, right?

But in a little while somebody's gonna make a phone call or send a text or run

down to the CEO's office and they're going to say, hey, there's a fire in the kitchen.

And the CEO's going to send somebody or go himself or herself and go down there

and get involved and make sure that the problem is being handled appropriately,

that resources don't need to be allocated differently, that decisions and policies

and procedures have been followed properly to try to prevent it from happening again.

All that kind of stuff the executives get involved in that ultimately will lead

to a better system, hopefully, if they're good executives, right?

Ultimately, we'll improve the safety conditions, ultimately reward the heroism

of whoever got involved and solved the problem and put the fire out and saved everybody.

Or challenge and punish, re-educate, handle the people who didn't do the things

properly that led to the trouble, that they will fix the problem and make sure

that going forward things are better.

That's what you hope your executives do. But the most important thing about

that is the executive function takes a little bit of time to get involved.

And on the ground in the early stages of the problem flaring up,

other parts of the organization are firing.

When your brain's wired the exact same way, your limbic system,

particularly the amygdala, all this emotional stuff that the sympathetic nervous

system and the parasympathetic nervous system happen instantly,

instinctually, quickly, and they get things like fight or flight,

fear, anxiety, stress, trauma responses, All those kinds of things almost ingrained

synaptically to happen instantly without you having to think about them.

That's the analogy we always talk about when you put your hand on something

hot, you immediately draw it away, which is a whole complex bunch of neurons

firing to make your arm pull away before you think to yourself,

I need to move my arm, right? You've already gotten yourself out of danger.

And the problem with that is that same set of reactions and responses to traumas,

real or imagined, or fear, anxieties, real or imagined,

happen automatically in other areas of our lives, too, and that messes up our

relationships, and causes us trouble with our kids, or our parents,

or our employers, our employees.

Those automated responses, right? And I just want you today,

here on Funnel Lobe Friday, I want you to realize that your more basal, more instinctual,

more ingrained responses aren't always happening in your best interest.

And so learning then to get your executive function engaged more quickly.

Is a superpower that will help you become healthier and feel better and be happier

in your life. It will help you, okay?

Learning to get that executive function happening. And I wanna remind you of

a quote from the book called Disruptive Thinking by T.D. Jakes that I read.

And boy, I would love to have him on the podcast sometime. He is really hard to get ahold of.

Bishop T.D. Jakes would be a great interview for the show.

But his book, Disruptive Thinking, was incredible to me and covered some ground,

made me think about a lot of things differently than I have.

And I'm not necessarily recommending that you read it. It's a very specific

kind of thing and it's not really in the vein of most of the things we talk about on this podcast.

But boy, he said some things that really shook me up in that book, and here's one of them.

The older we get, the longer we live, the more we realize that we are born looking

like our parents, but we die looking like our decisions.

We're born looking like our parents, but we die looking like our decisions.

Friend, that is exactly what you need to hear and you need to absorb on Frontal Lobe Friday.

You need to get that. You're born looking like your parents,

but you die looking like your decisions.

If you're dealing with some kind of problem right now and your go-to reason,

for why you're dealing with it is that's just how I am, that's how my parents

were, my dad was that way, that's just the way I was raised.

If you're saying anything like

that, or I'm this way because that thing happened to me when I was 17,

I'm behaving this way, I'm drinking this thing, I'm sleeping with that person,

I'm doing this thing, I'm not going to church, I'm doing this and I'm feeling

that, and I'm reacting this because of so-and-so.

That did this thing to me 20 years ago, or my child died,

or my husband died, or my my wife left me if that's the the answer to why your

behavior is what it is then I would just suggest to you that it's not their

fault anymore because you're making a decision,

And you may not be consciously making it, but you are making it.

You're making a decision not to change your brain and not to change your life because you can.

You have the absolute power to get your frontal lobes in an executive role to

make the changes that are needed to be made to make your organization of your

life better than it has been.

You can make those decisions.

You can make those changes.

And you may think, no, I can't, I've lost too much.

And I want to remind you of Ernest Hemingway in the book, The Old Man and the

Sea, which is one of my favorite little books.

If you've never read it, you should go read it. It'll take you about four hours

probably. It's a short little guy, little book.

And the story is an old man in a boat out in the ocean. He catches the big fish

that he's been trying to catch his whole life, the biggest marlin he's ever seen.

He's got it lashed to the side of his boat. And all of a sudden the sharks show

up and they're gonna take that fish from him that he's fought so hard for.

It's the only thing he's got in his life is this one triumph.

He's finally achieved this thing and they're gonna eat it all up or he's gonna

die and he may not even make it back safely to land.

And he's struggling because he's out in the boat in the middle of the ocean

in the midst of the struggle with the sharks and the distance and the weather

and the lack of food and water and all those things.

And he says this, Now is no time to think of what you do not have.

Think of what you can do with what there is. Now is no time to think of what you do not have.

Think of what you can do with what there is. And friend, that's what I'm telling

you today here on the inaugural episode of Frontal Lobe Friday.

You can stop and you must, if you wanna become healthier and feel better and be happier,

you must stop living your life in the echo and shadow of what's happened before

and what other people have done before and how you think your genetics are and

how you think your parents forced you to live and think and behave in a certain way.

And you must stop thinking, I don't have this and I don't have that and that's why I can't be happy.

Or if I could only get to this place or only get that promotion or only achieve

this thing, then I would be happy.

If you believe that your happiness and your peace of mind and your ability to

have a meaningful and purposeful life depends on any external circumstance,

person, relationship, achievement,

experience, emotion that could be taken from you or has been taken from you,

then you will never actually be happy.

You will just find yourself in a series of shooting and moving targets that

you are never able to hit and wondering why you can't find your way towards being happy.

And you will ultimately blame it on somebody else or something else that's happened.

But now, my friend, is no time to think of what you do not have.

Think of what you can do with what there is. That, my friend,

is the way to get your frontal lobe engaged and take over all those basal instincts

and teach them new ways to behave.

You make new brain cells every day of your life.

And those brain cells are looking for a job to do.

They're looking for a pathway to be wired into because neurons that fire together wire together.

And your job as the CEO of your own life, And please, please,

please accept the title of the CEO of your own life. Now, understand.

Even CEOs answer to somebody higher, okay? So I'm not saying you're the God of your own life.

I'm not saying that, because if you have it right, if you're doing things properly,

you're gonna be in submission to the Lord,

and he's gonna help you live the life that he designed for you,

and that's gonna make you even happier and even more whole and aimed at the

purpose that you were created for.

So I'm not saying be the God of your own life. Don't hear me saying that.

But the CEO answers to the board, okay? The CEO answers to the shareholders

and you if you're the CEO of your own life you answer to the Lord and he's gonna

help you Be better at managing your own life.

Okay, so When I say that just understand the context as much I'm saying it your

frontal lobe is the executive of your brain and your mind And your brain and

your mind control what your body does and your body controls what your life looks like Okay.

And now we know from epigenetics and neurobiology and interpersonal neurobiology

that the things you think about change the way that your brain behaves and that

changes how other people experience you and changes their brains too through

mirror neurons and you are actually incredibly influential

in the life and success of other people around you and in the genetic changes

and markers that get expressed in your children and your children's children

and your children's children's children.

That's the basis of generational curses. it's also the basis of generational blessings.

And you can be in charge of deciding that it's gonna stop with you or start

with you to get better, okay?

I wanna tell you, if you really wanna tune in to your spirit and start hearing

things that are better than this is just how I am or this is how it's always

gonna be or I can't make this happen because I'm just fated and genetically coded to be this way,

I want you to understand, God has a different story for you.

How do you hear him? Jesus is what God sounds like. Pete Greek said that in

his incredible book, How to Hear God.

If you're wondering why you're not hearing God, the first thing to do is cuddle

up to places where he definitely is, and that's in the word.

He's already given you a lot of his own words.

And Jesus is what God sounds like. So get to know him.

That's gonna give you some tools, some toolkits, some prehab to handle the things

that you think about when you're going through something hard, okay?

And that's going to allow you to get your frontal lobe involved and learn how

to do that front that thought biopsy and put that little space in between the

stimulus and that immediate hey I got to put this fire out and hey maybe I should

call the CEO and find out what I need to do next before I make a decision that

might be the wrong one after I get the fire out.

Okay. Think about getting your executive team on board. Let those smart neurons

help you make better decisions so that you can stop Dying looking like your

decisions if they're not good ones.

Okay look like better decisions And I'm rambling just a little bit But I want

you to dial it in with me as we get close to the conclusion of this episode

your brain is wired to help you,

Make pathways that automate decisions feelings and behaviors so that you don't

have to use as much brain power to think about them.

That's why you can drive to work after a few days to a new job without having

to think about all the turns.

You can instead start thinking about the audio book you're listening to or the radio.

You don't have to think about all the stop signs and all the turns and all the

lights and changing lanes and all those things because your brain will wire

that in over time as something that you can do without having to expend a lot of mental energy on it.

So remember, be kind to yourself, be trauma-informed,

towards yourself, remember not what's wrong with me, but what happened to me gives you insight,

not excuses about how you can move forward from now because what got you here

to this place where you're listening to this podcast and wondering how you can

make things better and wondering if you can really test out some better opportunities

to live differently in the future this September as we're examining ourselves.

Then also be patient with yourself because neurologic damage in my patients

when they have a spinal cord injury or brain injury the first thing I tell them is be patient.

These wounds take a long time to heal. Your spinal cord takes a long time to

get better. It doesn't happen overnight so be patient with yourself.

Love your brain and understand the way it's wired and that you are given this

gift of the frontal lobe that nobody else in all of creation has,

you can decide what you're going to think about.

And Paul says, in Philippians chapter four, hey, if you're unhappy,

if you're anxious, if you're stressed, then maybe think about some different stuff.

Maybe change what you think about for a, maybe just spend a little time getting

your brain on some different things.

So if you're stressed, if you're worried, if you're concerned,

if you're anxious, then hear these words from the apostle Paul from 2,000 years ago.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every way, in every situation,

by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God,

and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your heart

and your mind in Christ Jesus.

Finally, whatever's true, whatever's noble, whatever's right,

whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever's admirable, if anything is excellent

or praiseworthy, think about these things.

That's what's gonna help you, friend. Change your mind, you'll change your life.

Take control of that beautiful frontal lobe that you have.

Stop using your past as an excuse and enable instead a new pathway forward because

what got you here won't get you there.

On this frontal lobe Friday, we're gonna change our minds and we're gonna change

our lives. We're gonna grab a hold of the power of directed neuroplasticity.

We're gonna rewire our brains and start understanding that it doesn't have to

be the way it's always been, but we do have to start today.

Music.

Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you by my

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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,

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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.