Frontal Lobe Friday (Flashback)

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. Dr. Lee Warren here with you, and it is Frontal Lobe

Friday. Listen, I have a couple of announcements.

One, congratulations to Emily from Florida, Ellen from Connecticut,

and Kim from Texas. They are the three winners of J.

Warner Wallace's incredible book, The Truth and True Crime.

If you haven't heard the episode from Monday, I had a great conversation with Jim Warner Wallace, J.

Warner Wallace, about his incredible new book, The Truth and True Crime. You should check it out.

And congratulations to Emily, Ellen, and Kim, who are going to receive a free

copy of the book from Zondervan, the great folks who published that book.

Please go back and listen to that episode.

It was a great conversation about worldview and truth and why Christianity makes

sense if you follow the evidence.

Just a tremendous, tremendous conversation with Jim Warner Wallace,

and I cannot recommend that book highly enough.

Secondly, I got in the mail yesterday the Thai translation of my book, I've Seen the End of You.

So grateful now that I've Seen the End of You has been translated into German, Italian, and Thai.

It's such an honor to know that people in those countries who speak those languages

will be able to read that book and and find some hope in the way that people

handle hard things. So very, very grateful.

For that. Today, we're going to go back in time, and I'm going to give you the

very first Frontal Lobe Friday episode back.

We've got a bunch of new listeners, Tara Lee Cobble, Jenny Allen's audiences,

and Boss Camp's audiences joining us now.

We've got a lot of folks, Susie Larson's audiences, and we have a lot of new

folks who haven't been here.

And I want to tell you, as we're getting into my new book that I'm writing,

The Handbook of Self-Brain Surgery, We're going to be talking a lot about neuroanatomy

and neuroscience and how they smash together with faith.

And I want to get you ready for every Friday we're doing Frontal Lobe Friday,

which is all about selective attention,

how we pay attention to things, what we pay attention to, why that matters,

and how it has such a huge impact on our quality of life and our ability to

become healthier and feel better and be happier and hear God and connect with

Him and make a difference in our lives, the lives of those around us and the generations after us.

Frontal Lobe Friday is an important part of our week, and I want to give you

that first episode back so you can get in mind what's going to happen.

And I'm going to move all those episodes out to spiritual brain surgery.

So the spiritual brain surgery podcast folks that aren't listening to the main

podcast will be able to get those in a row.

So if you're looking for an archive of all the Frontal Lobe Friday episodes,

I'm going to put them there in the coming weeks, and there'll be some episodes

you can go back and listen to all these Frontal Lobe Friday conversations.

They're so important. Today, I've got two incredible interviews that are going

to show up on the podcast in the next few weeks.

Dawson Church and my professor mentor who gave me an opportunity to become a neurosurgeon, Dr.

Joseph Maroon, going to be on the show. We're going to have a great talk about

legacy and the shoulders we stand on, and you're going to enjoy that.

And I'm talking to Dr. Dawson Church about genetics and epigenetics and energy

medicine and all these amazing things that he writes about.

And you're going to love that conversation too.

I'm also going to appear today on Leanne Ellington's Outweigh podcast on iHeartRadio.

I'll give you links to that, but she's a great follow.

If you're interested in learning how to think differently about your body and

the science of how your body is put together and how your faith and your body

and all those things work together to give you a new perspective on your life

and honor God with your life, I think Leanne Ellington is a great voice.

She's going to be hosting an episode of Spiritual Brain Surgery for us.

We're going to have a series of those episodes that are hosted by other people,

so you'll You'll get to hear somebody else's voice and their story and their perspective.

And Leanne's going to be the first one to host a spiritual brain surgery episode.

So a lot of cool stuff coming up. But today, if you're new around here,

welcome. I'm going to introduce you to what we talk about on Frontal Lobe Friday.

And if you've been around before, please listen to this episode again.

It's going to help you get your mind on right about what your frontal lobes

are designed for, why God gave them to you in the first place,

and why you're the only thing that he created that has the ability to think

about one thing and not the other when you decide to.

It's going to help you change your mind and change your life.

And before we do any of those things, my friend, 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.

Music.

And 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 you're getting my newsletter, drleewarren.com,

wleewarrenmd.com. You can sign up for the newsletter.

Listen, it's Friday, and I'm going to start a new thing today.

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

the neuroscience, and Friday is going to 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 has that. 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,

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.

We talk about the way businesses are organized.

And most companies, and our hospital is 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.

Or all those people, the chiefs, the C's, 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, the suite of the executives up there, right?

So down on the ground in a business, if something's happening,

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 and 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 going to 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 is 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 Sources 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 will improve the safety conditions, ultimately reward the heroism

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

Body or you know challenge and

punish and 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 were better right 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 trained

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 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 or employees that those automated responses, right?

And I just want you today here on frontal lobe Friday, I want you to realize

that you were 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 want to 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 a hold 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 wife left me.

If that's 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.

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.

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 going to take that fish from him that he's fought so hard for.

It's the only thing he's got in his life is his 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 want to 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 were 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, there's 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? OK, 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

going to help you be better at managing your own life.

OK, so when I say that, just understand the context in which 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 going to stop with you or start

with you to get better. Okay.

I want to tell you, if you really want to 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

going to be, or I can't make this happen because I'm just faded 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 Greig 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 going to give you some tools, some toolkit, 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.

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.

So 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.

And 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 and 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 first. 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 is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right,

whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable,

if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things.

That's what's going to 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 going to change our minds and we're going

to change our lives. We're going to grab a hold of the power of directed neuroplasticity.

We're going to 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.

Hey, thanks for listening. Please subscribe to the show so you automatically get every episode.

And if you like the show, you'll love my weekly letter. Check out my writing

at drleewarren.substack.com, drleewarren.substack.com.

Get the free newsletter every week for my best prescriptions for becoming healthier,

feeling better, and being happier through the power of faith and neuroscience

smashing together via self-brain surgery, drleewarren.substack.com.

And if you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at wleewarrenmd.com slash prayer.

The theme music for the show is Make Us One by Tommy Walker,

graciously provided for free by the great folks over at tommywalkerministries.org.

Check it out and consider supporting them, tommywalkerministries.org.

Remember, you can't change your life until you change your mind.

And the good news is you can start today. I'm Dr. Lee Warren.

I'll talk to you soon. God bless you, friend. Have a great day.