How to Kill Thought Cancer: Mind Change Monday

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

am back with you today on Mind Change Monday.

We're going to do a little self-brain surgery today and we're going to change

our minds about one thing.

The one thing I want you to change your mind about today, it's just one little

thing, is that I don't think that we often understand how important it is to

actually actively steward the things we think about.

I know you hear me say it all the time, we have to think about our thinking,

we have to biopsy our thoughts, we have to have a treatment plan in place for

when life puts negative thinking in life,

there's massive trauma and major events that can challenge the way we look at

our lives and it can cause us

to erode hope and lose faith and spiral into toxicity and all that stuff.

But it all starts with the ability to develop a habit of paying attention to

everything that we think about.

And this is why Paul in 2nd Corinthians 10 5 said we take captive every thought

and every argument that sets itself up against Christ It's super important and

I just want to give you it's gonna be very short today.

Okay, very short I want to give you one thing to think about it I want you to

keep that in front and top of mind all day because I'm gonna teach you why from

a neuroscience standpoint.

How you can ingrain a Pattern that

can quickly become an automated process so

that you become remember back in November We said what you are

doing you are getting better at that's one of our

tenets of self brain surgery It's one of the Ten Commandment Corollaries is

what we're doing we're getting better at and I'm going to teach you real quickly

this morning Why that's true on a neuroscience level in your brain and teach

you one thing That's super important about how to keep in mind the importance of being attentive,

to the things that you think about.

And one principle of neuroscience, and one idea from scripture,

one good book to think about.

And we'll do all that in about 15 minutes, and then we'll get after our day.

It's gonna be a crazy day for me. My PA's out, and I've got a lot of patients

to see in the office, and I'm gonna have to challenge my thinking all day long

to stay on top of my game. And I want you to do the same thing.

But before we do any of 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.

All right, let's get after it. Here's a short thought for you.

Dan Siegel is a clinical psychologist. He's a professor and he's written several

books and he is the founder of the branch of psychology, or one of the founders

of what we call interpersonal neurobiology.

He's one of the first people to articulate how the way we think and behave affects

the biology of other people around us.

I can tell you this, this happened in our house on Saturday.

For whatever reason, and if you've lost a child or lost a spouse or been through

some kind of major trauma or tragedy, you'll relate to this.

If you've had anything that you've grieved over in the past.

I'll tell you it's still shocking to me after 10 years since our son Mitch died.

Saturday we're sitting and I think

we were watching television I was reading something on my on my phone on the

Kindle app and I suddenly out of nowhere became intensely sad like tears in

my eyes and I was just overwhelmed with grief over losing my son like it just happened yesterday.

And all of a sudden I started into this same old thought pattern that led me

down this staircase of what could I have done differently and was I a good enough

dad and did Mitch know I loved him and I should have been there and maybe if

I hadn't done this that he wouldn't have been in that place.

And all this stuff started spiraling and I just became intensely,

deeply sad as if it had happened the day before.

And I'm going to tell you something. This is where interpersonal neurobiology

comes into play. And while that was happening, Lisa was sitting on the couch

to my left. She was facing away from me.

And out of nowhere, she said, what's wrong? And she turned around,

her face was flushed, her eyes were open, her pupils were dilated.

She was in a state of feeling or sensing panic, like fight or flight type of

feelings in her body because she felt me get sad.

I know that sounds weird, but you already know it's true because you can

walk into a where somebody's really mad and you and your heart races before

you know who they are what they're mad about because it because our state affects

the state of others around us that's interpersonal neurobiology okay she felt

my sadness even though she wasn't facing me and wasn't seeing me she could feel me,

that's what they call limbic resonances on a neuroscience term by the way interpersonal

neurobiology limbic resonance we can project our state out into the universe

and people around us can feel it.

And you already know that's true. You've experienced that before,

but I experienced it in a powerful way with Lisa this weekend.

And I just want to set that up to say, this is who Dan Siegel is.

He's the guy that started first writing about and talking about that phenomenon.

And here's something he said about what you think about.

And what you pay attention to and what you fixate on. Where attention goes,

he wrote, neural firing flows and neural connection grows.

Patterns you thought were fixed are actually things that with mental effort can indeed be changed.

We are not passive in all this activity of mind and awareness.

That's Dan Siegel and I'm quoting from Jenny Allen's book, Get Out of Your Head.

She pulled that quote from his work and I thought that was a great summation

of some of the things that he said. She's actually quoting from Dr.

Segal, his book called Mind, A Journey to the Heart of Being Human,

which was published back in 2017.

But she pulled that out and quoted it very succinctly there in her book,

Get Out of Your Head, which I would have to say, Jenny Allen's book,

Get Out of Your Head, I think is the best lay treatment of the power and importance

of getting your thinking under control that I've ever seen.

It was written from a lay person's perspective and a clearly spiritual context,

but she did a tremendous job handling and breaking down the neurological elements

of how our thinking affects our life in a very easy to understand and comprehend way.

And if you've never read that and you don't want to read a heavy science book

about the topic like Jeffrey Schwartz's Mind and Brain or some of the ones that

we've talked about on this show, I think Jenny Allen's book would be amazing

for you to read. Get out of your head. Tremendous book.

Nevertheless, Dr. Siegel put it on the head, where attention goes,

neural firing flows and neural connection grows.

What he's saying is, when you think about something, you think about how upset

you are, you think about how sad you are, you think about how nobody ever pays

attention to me, you think about how this always, why does this always happen to me?

I'm tired of being tired. Why does everything always feel so hard?

Then what you're doing, you're getting better at. You're going to make synapses

in your brain that automate that thinking of feeling defeated or feeling overwhelmed

or feeling anxious and you're going to start identifying with that feeling.

And you're going to say, I am anxious, I am an anxious person,

I am a depressed person, I am a stressed person, I am a broken person,

I am a forgotten person, I am an unloved person. Why?

Because you've trained your brain to think about that.

Now, just let me just say it for the record.

Just because a person doesn't love you doesn't mean that you are unlovable.

And just because a person did you wrong doesn't mean that you are destined to be a doormat.

Just because a person abused you doesn't mean that you have to be a victim Right,

you can learn to think about your life and the labels you choose to accept or

not accept based on your decision Of how you think because what you're thinking

about you're getting better at thinking about and that's why it's so important

To take every thought captive say wait a minute.

Yes. My son died. Yes. I wasn't there when he died.

Yes We'd been through a divorce, and yes, he had some hard times,

and yes, he had some trouble feeling comfortable in his own skin,

but guess what? He was an adult.

He chose to be in a certain place at a certain time with certain people,

and some things happened that I could not have influenced or controlled, okay?

So when I start spiraling down that thought of, was I a bad father,

was I this or was I that, or did I not do something right?

The truth is, I wasn't there, okay?

The truth is, I was a good dad. The truth is, Mitch did know that I loved him.

In fact, he knew it the day before we talked on the phone and he heard me say it.

The last thing he ever said to me was, I love you. And the last thing I ever

said to him was, I love you, son.

And so all those things were not true that my brain started spiraling into.

And you do the same thing. We all do.

And I just want to tell you today, there's a principle of biology that how cancer

starts, you know how cancer starts?

Cancer starts in very general terms as a mutation in the DNA inside of one particular cell. you,

So something goes wrong with the way that cell is supposed to behave and it

mutates and changes and then when that cell divides,

if the mechanisms in place, the

tumor suppressor genes and other things that are going on don't

do their job and they don't detect that mutation if that cell divides and now

two cells have the mutation and then they divide and now four cells have the

mutation and then they divide and now eight cells have the mutation and then

before long millions and millions and millions of cells have that mutation.

That's what cancer is, okay.

Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of mutated cells that don't behave or respond

to regulatory mechanisms in the way that they're supposed to and they over time

overtake normal tissue and begin to invade and cause trouble. That's what cancer is.

And the same thing is true of thought cancer, okay. You have one negative thought

and if you aren't careful to clip it out and manage it,

it will become two negative thoughts and then it'll become four negative thoughts

and it'll become eight and then 16 and then 32 and then on and on and on until

before long you're swimming in this toxic soup of negativity that you can't

control and you begin to believe that's just how you are.

Because where attention goes, neural firing flows and neural connection grows

and patterns you thought were

fixed are actually things that with mental effort can indeed be changed.

The good news is you can change your way of thinking.

Dan Segal says we are not passive in all this activity of mind and awareness.

You can be active, but the problem is if you're not active,

the negative path, remember we talked about on Hungry Hippocampus last Monday,

the short path is automated into fear and fight and flight and freeze and all

that stuff that's negative.

That's the default. The default leads you down the easy path and soon you automate

that easy path and before long you just automate all that negative thinking

and you begin to believe that the things you're feeling are actually because

they are real, there are real things underneath them.

But I just want to tell you this on Mind Change Monday my friend, feelings are not facts.

Feelings are chemical events in your brain that point to something.

They might point to an old trauma and you're attaching meaning to a current

event based on the reality of a previous trauma and you're believing that what

you are now is determined by what you were then.

They might be pointing to the fact that there is something dangerous happening

and you need to take care of it.

They might be pointing to the fact that this event that you're in right now is sort of,

similar to a prior event that you've got an emotion attached to that says it's

dangerous or harmful or hurtful or you're going to get left or you're going

to get broken up with You're going to get cheated on again, and so then you

just decide that this situation now means what that other situation meant before.

And that's why you can't form a healthy relationship now. That's why you can't

stop fighting with your spouse because you're attaching something that you used

to fight about with your dad or your mom into the current situation.

And every time your spouse innocently does something that reminds you of that

prior person and the problems you had back then, it triggers a whole set of

emotional things that trigger thinking, that trigger beliefs,

that trigger behaviors and thoughts become things.

And before long, you're fighting with your spouse and they don't even know what

you're fighting about, that you're really fighting your parent 20 years ago

because you didn't steward your thoughts.

You have to be willing to think about your thinking, biopsy your thoughts,

perform self brain surgery to eradicate harmful and sick synapses,

to lobotomize lousy attitudes,

to drain doubts and fill the cavity of that doubt back up with with faith.

You have to be willing to substitute suffering and understand that suffering

can lead to character and godliness and hope and and all those good things,

instead of just feeling like you're a victim of it.

You gotta be willing to actively take charge of the things that you're thinking about.

That's how you get to this place where you understand that anxiety and gratitude

both come from the hippocampus, either through reduced activity,

anxiety, or through increased activity, gratitude.

And you can fire the pathways in your brain that are related to bliss and excitement

and good feelings and dopamine and all that stuff. if you can fire those pathways

by making yourself find something to be grateful about.

So what did I do on Saturday? When I realized that not only was I stewing in

a toxic set of fears and feelings and beliefs from the past,

but I was also dragging Lisa into it by altering my state.

I was altering her state through the power and the sometimes blessing and sometimes

curse of limbic resonance and interpersonal neurobiology.

Instead of wrecking her evening with tears and feeling sad, what did I do?

And it's not wrong to feel what you feel, okay?

It's important to just identify what you feel and recognize if that's helping

you or harming you right then, or if what you're feeling is actually pointing

towards something real or not.

It is sad that I lost my son. I'll always be sad about that.

But what's not right is when I let myself spiral into this state that tears

me up and drags Lisa into it and makes myself a victim of something that happened

10 years ago but when the feelings I'm feeling aren't even real.

It's devastating that I lost my son, but all that other stuff that goes along

with it, if I let myself go down that mental staircase of despair,

none of that is real, and none of it is helpful.

Remember the ways to think about your thinking. I told you from Seth Godin,

he said, think about a thought and say, is it true?

And if it's true, is it at least helpful, or is it compassionate,

or is it at least unharmful?

And if it's not all of those things, I don't need to think about it.

If it's not true, if it's not helpful, if it's not compassionate,

if it is harmful, I should think about something else.

And that, my friend, is why Paul, in Philippians 4, said, hey,

don't be anxious about anything.

Why? Because he didn't know the hippocampus part of it, but the Holy Spirit

was leading him to say, anxiety and gratitude can't coexist in the hippocampus at the same time.

He's saying, don't be anxious, but instead with prayer, give thanks in everything.

And what will happen, there's a promise in Philippians 4 that is true for you

today, and I'm about to leave it with you.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, will guard your heart and

your mind in Christ Jesus.

The fruit of learning to take captive every thought is peace that guards your

heart and your mind, my friend.

And that's the mind change we need to make out of all this talk about neurobiology

and cancer and cell division and limbic resonance and all that stuff.

The bottom line is what you're doing, you're getting better at.

And if you learn to be attentive to your thinking on this Mind Change Monday,

if you keep this one idea in your mind today, when a thought pops into your

head that is leading you down into a hole, you say, wait a minute.

Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it compassionate? Is it harmful?

Is it something I can take captive and steward more carefully to lead me back

to a place where I'm not anxious, but I'm rather grateful.

What I did is I started thinking actively about the ways in which Mitchell Keaton

Warren's life blessed mine, the ways in which he made me laugh,

the ways in which he pointed me to Jesus,

the ways in which he brought our family together, the ways in which he made

beautiful music, the ways in which I have grown and changed and become a better

person over the 10 years since I lost him, not because I lost him,

but because God can make.

Beauty from ashes because God can take the valley of

trouble and open a door of hope and I

started giving thanks for that Because when I'm thankful I'm

activating my hippocampus and it's going to connect to my frontal lobes

and take me through the long path back to peace and not

down The short path down to anxiety and that's what I want for you today my

friend here on mind change Monday I want you to remember that you can't change

your life until you change your mind I want you to remember that it's possible

to become healthier and feel better and be happier even after you've been through

trauma and tragedy and other massive things.

But the only way you can do that is if you are willing to take captive every thought.

And the good news about that, my friend, is that you can start today.

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.

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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.