I Don't Want to Have Surgery! (Self-Brain Surgery Saturday)

Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you on Self-Brain Surgery

Saturday, and I am so excited and honored to be talking with you today.

Have a little self-brain surgery.

We're going to talk today about when you decide that you don't want to have surgery.

Surgery is the last option. You're not interested in surgery.

Why would you want to have surgery?

Today, we're going to talk about that. It surprises me when somebody comes to

see me in my office, the big sign on the door says surgery.

And basically, we go through everything that could potentially help them. They've already tried.

And the last thing is, well, it's time to have surgery. And they say,

oh my goodness, I didn't come here to have surgery. I would never have surgery. It's not why I'm here.

And I always am sort of surprised and shocked by that.

If you've tried everything else, there comes a point when surgery is the option.

When surgery is the appropriate thing.

And so we're going to talk about that a little bit today. Are there places in

your life where you've tried everything else and it's not working and it's time

to have surgery? It's time for self-brain surgery.

And you've drawn some kind of line in the sand and you've said,

nope, I'm not having surgery.

Is there a place like that in your life? We're going to talk about that today.

And we're going to do so right after I ask you one question.

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.

All right, let's get after it. Hey, here's the deal. Before we get started,

I want to address just a couple of things.

Yesterday, I had four incredible conversations.

One was on somebody else's podcast, the Family Life Blended podcast.

I'm so honored to have a chance to talk to Ron Deal. Ron and Nandeel are doing great work.

We're blended families, and they work with Brad and Jill Sullivan.

And while we're waiting at work, they are fellow bereaved parents like Brad and Jill and Lisa and I.

And they're just doing great work to help people who are hurting.

And Ron and I had a great conversation that will be on their show in a few weeks,

and I'll share the link with you when it's out.

We had a wonderful talk. We talked about everything from self-brain surgery

to hope to relentlessly refusing to participate in your own demise,

quantum physics, and all kinds of scripture. I'm sure we had a wonderful, wide-ranging talk.

And then I had a talk with Andrea Herzer, who is dealing with chronic illness.

She has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and several types of chronic regional pain syndrome.

And in the last 10 or 15 years, she's had over 100 surgeries.

She lives with chronic pain.

And she's written a beautiful devotional book about dealing with what happens

when you're not going to get rid of the problem that's causing you so much suffering.

Her book is called An Incurable Faith. I had the honor of endorsing the book.

And it's just beautiful.

And you're going to enjoy that conversation with Andrea. I had another talk

with Erin Lochner. Erin was a social media influencer.

She had a show on HGTV. She was famous. She had over a million followers.

But after they had their first child, her husband worked in Silicon Valley and

they realized what was really happening with the pervasiveness of technology,

particularly smartphones, and what it was doing to our children and our families.

And they made a decision to walk away, way to opt out of technology to some

degree, to opt out of social media, to opt out of the idea that you can live

your life looking at a screen all the time.

And she's written an incredible book, The Opt Out Family, and goes into great

detail on the research and what screens are doing to our lives,

to our children, to our families.

And she said something profound that just shook me up, a question that she asked

a technology insider in Silicon Valley.

She said, well, what would be the minimum appropriate age at which you think

a child should have access to a smartphone?

And the person said, as soon as you're ready for them to see pornography,

because that's basically what's available to them if they have access to a smartphone.

It's a wide-ranging conversation that we had about technology.

It was beautiful. I can't wait to bring it to you in a few weeks.

I think it's going to help you. And the last conversation I had was with Dr.

Josh Axe. Dr. Josh Axe is a world-renowned natural medicine physician.

He has an incredibly successful natural supplement company.

He's written a New York Times bestselling book called Think This, Not That.

We had a wonderful talk about mind shift and just how you get your mind around

the big changes that need to be made in your life.

We had just a great day of talking to luminary, smart people about all these

ideas that we talk about here on this show all the time.

Today, I want to talk about something a little bit different,

and that's this idea that what happens if you don't want to have surgery,

if you're not interested in cell brain surgery, if you're not interested in

changing your mind, what happens and what kind of person gets to that place

and what can we do about it and what might it benefit you to think about it

in a little different way.

Before we do that, I want to say one more thing.

We got an email from a woman who had the devastating event of her husband committing suicide.

Now, I've heard from numerous of you. We have a listener whose mom committed

suicide right in front of him.

We've had a bunch of people whose lives have been affected by their children committing suicide.

This person had her husband commit suicide, and the problem he had was a failed

back surgery, several failed back surgeries that led him to chronic pain and

a problem that he just couldn't live with, of suffering all the time.

And we had this devastating conversation, and she basically shared some of the

things that she thought led to her husband's death, and it was truly quite moving.

And it just made me realize, and then we got another email this week too from

a woman who's asking questions about what happens if you commit suicide,

can you still go to heaven,

and she seemed to be sort of hearing voices in her head that are telling her

it'd be easier to check out, it might be more relief for her to check out.

And I just want to tell you, as somebody whose family has been touched by suicide, it doesn't help.

It leaves behind an incredible scar and deep wounds for the people who have

to live after you're gone.

You have a purpose and a meaning for being here. And whatever's going on with you, it can get better.

That's the whole mission behind self-brain surgery.

The things that are bothering us in our lives can change.

They can get better. There's nobody who's too stuck or too broken to have a

renewed and redeemed mind. The scripture is clear.

That's a promise of God. You can change the way you think.

There's a floor to your suffering. As Mark Brogap said, that Jesus bought, you are not stuck.

With the brain that you have, my friend, you're not stuck with the pain and

the thought processes and the issues that are causing you so much grief.

You can learn to change them, but it takes self-brain surgery.

It takes changing your mind before you can change your life.

But if you're struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can call 988 from any phone

in the United States at any time and speak to a trained grief suicide counselor.

You can talk to somebody who knows how to help you.

There are resources available. You're not alone.

Let me say that very clearly and very carefully.

I'm not a therapist, okay? I can't intervene with you in a suicidal crisis.

We get emails sometimes in the middle of the night, and I wake up the next day

and somebody says, you know, I'm thinking about killing myself. I can't help you.

There's nobody in real time here that's going to address your issues,

and we're not trained to do that.

But you can call 988 at any time if you're struggling with suicidal thoughts.

Know that this community is praying for you. You can go to the prayer wall and

put your prayer request there.

Lots of people all over the world will pray with you. But if you're really struggling

with suicidal thoughts, you need professional help and you need it right now.

Call a friend, call a pastor, call your therapist, call somebody.

But if you need a crisis intervention right now, don't do something that's going

to leave a wound in your family from which they may never recover.

Call 988 aid and get the help that you need. Okay. That's the little commercial.

Now let's talk about this idea that your life is going along a certain way and

you think everything is going fine and you don't have any issues and you,

you feel like you're, you're happy.

And then you start to make this mental sort of connection between the fact that

your life is good and everything seems to be going right.

And the circumstances are happy. And you make this little mental bridge between

that meaning that God must be showing favor on you because of how smooth and easy your life is going.

There's a woman named Catherine Wolfe who was a beautiful model in Los Angeles.

Her husband and her were very successful in the early young part of their career.

And she had a devastating brainstem hemorrhage at age 26 and nearly died.

She was paralyzed, was severely disabled from it. And she wrote this incredible book.

They've written two previous books, but the new one is called Treasures in the

Dark, 90 Reflections on Finding Bright Hope Hidden in the Hurting.

I'm going to try to get her on the show sometime.

Catherine wrote this exact thing that I'm talking to you about right now.

Until that point, she said, my life had been largely pain-free in a way I had mistaken for blessed.

So we have this idea that if things are going well for us, that it means that God is blessing us.

And then the flip side of that is what the enemy will do to you is that when

things are not going well, it must mean that God is not blessing us.

And I just want to tell you today that that's one of the self-brain surgery

operations we need to learn how to do,

is make this suffering substitution where we say that God's blessedness,

God's favor on my life, God's sort of purpose and plan and presence and keeping of promises,

isn't related to the circumstances in my life in any way.

And we know that because what Jesus went through.

We know he told us directly in John 16, 33, in this world, you're going to have

trouble, but take heart, I've overcome the world. We know that he told us in

John 10.10 that the enemy comes to steal and kill and destroy,

but I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.

That's this thing that we have to accept.

It's the foundational principle of our lives that we have to accept that we

can have pain and purpose.

We can have hurt and happiness at the same time.

And when we start to make this mistake that good circumstances means God is

blessing us and bad circumstances means God is punishing us or God is withholding

from us or God's not there or God doesn't exist.

If you tie circumstance to peace of mind, hope, health, happiness,

purpose, meaning, all that stuff, you are going to be a crasher.

Remember the four types of people that we talked about in Hope is the First Dose?

And please, if you haven't read Hope is the First Dose yet, it's got the underpinnings

of everything we talk about on this podcast.

If you're one of my new listeners who came to me via Susie Larson or Tara Lee

Cobble or Jenny Allen or somebody like that, Ann Voskamp, please take the time

to read Hope is the First Dose. If you can't afford it, go to your local library.

They'll have it or they can get it from interlibrary loan.

If you can't afford that, reach out to me. We've got some scholarships,

some people who might be willing to help you obtain a copy.

You need to read Hope is the First Dose. that gives you my version of the treatment

plan for what to do when you're dealing with trauma and tragedy and other massive things, okay?

So when I talk about crashers, I'm talking about a group of people who thought

everything was pretty good and then something happened.

The wife left, the husband cheated, the glioblastoma showed up,

the child committed suicide, bankruptcy occurred, whatever it might be.

Something happened that took away this notion that a pain-free life meant that

God was blessing you and they crash and they become hopeless.

And hopelessness is deadlier than brain cancer, okay?

So I'm just telling you that the thing that separates crashers from people who

seem to be resilient and untouchable or those that have a little stumble in

their faith and then make it back up to a more meaningful life in a redefined

way after trauma and tragedy and hurt.

Those people, the thing that separates them is how tightly coupled their perception

of circumstance Circumstance is from their sense that things are okay and God

loves them and they still have a purpose.

The more you tie circumstance to happiness, the more likely you are,

the more vulnerable you are to becoming a crasher.

And that's not what we want. Catherine Wolfe said it very clearly.

Until the point of my stroke, until that point, my life had been largely pain-free

in a way that I had mistaken for blessed.

She writes this beautiful book, and she stumbled on a verse in Isaiah 45 that

says this, I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness, secret riches.

I will do this so you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel,

the one who calls you by name. I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness.

That's where the title of her book came from. And then she said this,

after I read this, it dawned on me, the darkest days of my suffering had taught

me things that a pain-free life never could have.

In the darkness, I experienced peace that transcended my circumstances.

I rediscovered my worth apart from my ability. I gave up the illusion that I

was in control of much of anything.

None of that could have happened in a life lived exclusively in the light of

favorable circumstances.

Listen, friend, this is what I'm getting at. I spent an hour,

a few hours terrified in Iraq one day, caught outside on my way to the PX.

Mortar attack occurred. I was exposed in the open, didn't have my body armor or my helmet.

And I basically huddled up against a concrete wall and heard all the explosions

and just hoped that I wasn't going to get blown up.

And that was the beginning of the time where God convinced me that I was not

in control of my own life.

I wrote a whole book about that. No Place to Hide, my very first book that came

out 10 years ago last month.

So 10 years ago, I wrote that book that described what happened to me in Iraq

that peeled away my sense. like Catherine Wolfe just says, the illusion that

I had control of anything.

I had to do some self-brain surgery to recover from that.

And you can too. So let me tell you a story about something that happens in my office frequently.

I'm going to give you a quote first. Henry Stapp in this book,

Quantum Theory and Free Will,

How Mental Intentions Translate into Bodily Actions, said this,

A personal belief in the power of one's mental intentions to affect one's physical

future is the rational foundation of our lives.

Let me repeat that. A personal belief in the power of one's mental intentions

to affect one's physical future is the rational foundation of our lives.

This is not a spiritual thing. He's saying this in a physics realm.

And what he means is that you have to believe that what the science says is true,

that the things you decide and the way that you direct your attention and your

will has real power to change the nature and course of your life and those of

those around you and your children and your offspring and your generations.

You can change your future by changing how you think.

That's the basis of self-directed neuroplasticity.

It's the basis of the mind change and the renewed mind that the Bible talks

about in Romans 12 and 2 Corinthians 10 and Ephesians 4 and Philippians 4 and all over the place.

The basis of it is that God has given us minds that can influence and structurally

change our brains and can redirect and reshape the future of our lives.

It is absolutely true from a physics, neuroscience, and spiritual standpoint

that you can change your mind.

And when you do, you can change your life. That's what I call self-brain surgery.

Now, this happens at least once a week in my office.

Somebody is referred to see me. They're having back pain. They're having a headache.

They're having something going on with them. They've been dealing with it for

months or sometimes years.

Often they've had previous surgeries, they've had injections,

they've had physical therapy, they've had acupuncture, they've had dry needling,

they've had everything.

They're addicted to pain medicines. They've been through a hundred things.

Some of them have had multiple operations. Some of them have had no surgery,

but a million injections.

Some of them have had years and years and years of conservative treatment.

And their doctor finally says, okay, it's time to send you to see Dr. Warren, the surgeon.

It's time for you to go see the neurosurgeon. And then they wait four to six

weeks to see me because I'm a busy guy and I'm the only neurosurgeon in this market.

And you have to wait to see me. You can't see me tomorrow unless it's a life

or death emergency. So they wait several weeks.

And then they drive. And in Nebraska, being a rural state, and in Wyoming where

I live there, sometimes they drive 200 miles to see me.

So they wait weeks and weeks after suffering for months to years,

and then they drive hundreds of miles, and they get to my office,

and they see a big sign that says brain and spine surgery, Dr.

Warren neurosurgery, on the wall.

And then they come in and fill out a bunch of paperwork, and the label,

the letterhead on the paper talks about surgery, neurosurgery,

brain and spine surgery.

And then they get taken back. One of the girls, Shauna or Chris or Brianne or

Kristen or somebody in the office, takes them back to the exam room.

And then they sit and wait for 10 or 15 minutes or 30 minutes if I'm really

busy or having a long day.

And then I finally come in to see them and I introduce myself and shake their

hand and sit down and look at their MRI and they tell me the whole story and

tell me where it hurts and I examine them and they give me the history of all

the things they've tried and the physical therapy and the injections and the

prior surgeries and everything that they've been through.

Unimproved, contorted in pain, low on hope, worried that nothing can feel better.

And then I finally put my hand on their shoulder and I look them in the eye and I say, I can fix this.

You're gonna need surgery, but I can fix it.

And then it's like somebody sucked all the oxygen out of the room,

their mouth drops open and they make a little sound and they stiffen up and

they look at their wife or husband and they both kind of shake their head and they look shocked.

And they say, oh my goodness, I didn't come here for surgery. I'm not having surgery.

Are you crazy? I'm never having back surgery. I watched on YouTube about all

the people that have bad outcomes from surgery. I'm not having surgery.

And I just shake my head and I say, what did you think was available to you

at an office that's labeled surgery,

when you waited weeks and you've done everything else and there's literally

nothing else, and this is your last resort. I'm the last resort guy.

A lot of neurosurgeons and a lot of orthopedic spine surgeons tailor their practice

to eliminate hard cases.

They won't do surgery on you if somebody else has ever operated on you.

They won't do a revision.

They won't repair a failure. They won't fix a broken screw.

I'm the guy. I was trained in a place where we were the last resort.

Like if you, nobody else can fix you, you come to me because I'm the guy that's

willing to take on the hard cases. Okay.

I've, I've got the training and the, and the 20 years of practice to say,

yes, I can help you with this problem.

I'm willing to get into this hard problem with you and try to help you.

So I'm sort of the last resort. And it's just shocking to me when people say,

oh my goodness, I'm never going to have surgery. So here's the deal.

I'm never going to recommend surgery to you unless I believe it's the right

thing for you, unless I believe that it's the only thing that's going to help you.

You've already had multiple second opinions and third opinions and fourth opinions.

I'm the last resort. But let me just tell you something.

We have a mistaken belief that the last resort is the worst resort. And That's not true.

Sometimes it should have been that you were referred to me years ago.

This should have been the first thing, that some people just need surgery,

that nothing else is going to fix the problem.

There's no other thing that's going to make it better. If you've got a massive

brain tumor, then going to your chiropractor is not going to fix that. You need surgery.

That's the appropriate referral. You need surgery.

So I'm never going to recommend an operation that I don't believe in.

That's not the right thing.

And the flip side is I'm never going to not offer you surgery or try to convince

you that you need it if that's what you really need because you don't want to

talk about it because you're too afraid to let somebody pick up the knife and

actually intervene in your problem.

Let me tell you about a device that we use in the operating room sometimes.

There's a bone-biting instrument called a kerosene rongeur.

I mean, I need to remove some bone or bone spur from a nerve or something.

I use a kerosene, and it allows me to safely remove little bits of bone and

pointy things, sharp things that are pressing on nerves.

And somebody invented a pneumatic version of the kerosene rongeur.

The kerosene is a great instrument, but it's really hard on my hands.

When I do a multi-level lumbar laminectomy, for example, I might have to do

a thousand bites of bone with that instrument.

And it's really physically taxing on the hands of surgeons. All of us have arthritis.

All of us have aches. All of us have carpal tunnel syndrome.

All of us have cubital tunnel syndrome.

All surgeons who've been working for a long time have some pain in their hands

because of the physical nature of the work that we do.

So somebody invented a pneumatic kerosene, soaked up to air pressure.

And when I put it in the bone and get it in the right place and I pull the trigger,

the instrument does the work for me.

Dr. Joe Maroon told me one time that the pneumatic kerosene probably added 10

years to his career because it takes so much stress off his hand.

But I'm going to tell you this, I avoided using pneumatic kerosene for 10 years

because I had a bias against it.

And the reason I had a bias against it is that the rep who came to show it to

me, the guy who first introduced me to the technology,

showed up at my office one morning to introduce me to this instrument that he

said was going to help me.

And lo and behold, he had stitches on the tip of his finger.

His name is Patrick Bryan, a great guy, great rep, worked with him for years.

And Patrick had four or five stitches on the tip of one of his index fingers.

And just in the course of the conversation, I said, hey, what happened to your finger?

And he kind of blushed a little bit. And he said, well, I was setting up this

pneumatic kerosene to teach a surgeon how to use it.

And I snapped it on my own finger and it cut my finger. And I just saw this

in my mind, this mental image of that instrument chopping a nerve in half and

causing some kind of complication.

I thought, even if the rep who's supposed to be selling it can't handle it safely,

I'm certainly not going to put it in somebody's body.

So I had this idea that the pneumatic kerosene was dangerous,

and therefore I didn't use it for years and years.

And my mentor, Joe Maroon, who was recently on the podcast, one time said to

me, hey, are you using pneumatic kerosene? You're getting into your late 40s,

early 50s. You really need to start doing things that are going to take some

stress off your body so you can practice longer.

And he said, I think the pneumatic kerosene added 10, maybe 15 years to my practice.

And I told him that story.

And he said, well, it just means the rep didn't set it up right,

that you can operate this safely. I've done thousands of cases with pneumatic kerosene.

And so I finally tried it and it's become a really valuable part of my armamentarium

of things that I do in surgery.

And I found that it actually makes the surgery safer sometimes.

There's times when the regular kerosene, the way you have to squeeze with so

much force, can actually put more pressure on the underlying nerve.

Then use the pneumatic kerosene. I had the same experience with barbed sutures.

It's amazing to me how we use something like sutures for hundreds of years,

and nobody thinks about innovating around them and making them better.

Well, somebody came up with the idea of putting little sharp barbs on the edges

of sutures that are kind of like those things you drive over in the airport,

that if you go over in one direction, you're fine, but if you go over in the

other direction, they'll pop your tires, you know, the little security gates.

Barbed sutures are they're designed to

when you pull them through tissue they won't allow the

suture to back up and the wound to loosen up

over time so they're designed to keep the wound more

tightly closed which should help with healing they also have the advantage of

you not having to tie knots because the barbs will hold the tension on the suture

so that's a great innovation because tying knots actually it sounds funny but

when you're doing a big operation you might tie eye, a thousand knots.

It's really hard on your hands. The suture kind of digs into your gloves.

All surgeons, all training surgeons and all surgeons that are practicing have

calluses on their fingers from places where the suture has cut into our skin.

And so we have these sharp, kind of rough places on our fingers where hundreds

of thousands or millions of knots that we've tied over the years have hurt our hands.

And then barbed sutures eliminate that completely.

Well, the first time I used a barbed suture, again, a rep showed them to me and we tried them.

And the The rep wasn't real familiar with how to tie or how to implement this technology very well.

And it was an early version of the technology.

And so the first wound that I ever closed with barbed sutures didn't heal really

great. Ultimately did okay.

But this didn't feel right to me. It didn't feel like it was as good as what I was already doing.

But then a few years later, somebody else pitched it to me with a better sort

of version of the device.

And now we use it every day in every operation.

And it's dramatically saves tons of time.

Wounds heal better. We never have infections. We've almost gotten to the point

where we almost never have wound infections anymore.

And that's because of better closing because somebody decided to innovate around

sutures. Just a beautiful idea.

But again, I had a bias against pneumatic kerosene and a bias against barbed

sutures because somebody else had a bad experience with them.

Somebody else didn't present them properly to me.

Somebody else didn't give me the right idea about it.

So a lot of people have a bias against surgery because their uncle had a bad

outcome or because they've had a bad outcome before or because they saw something

on Google or they heard a rumor at the hair shop that back surgery is bad for you or whatever.

So some people come to my office with a notion that surgery can't help them.

And so too, my friend, do we have a desire to believe that everybody else needs

to change, but we are thinking clearly that our thought processes are proper,

that the way we feel and the way we think is right.

That's a big pervasive problem in our culture right now.

You do you. You find your truth. You think, feel, and everybody needs to validate

your feelings and your thoughts.

And I'm just telling you that there is a truth and a life that will lead you

to freedom and healing and hope and purpose and passion and even happiness again

after you've been through trauma and tragedy and massive things.

But the path involves self-brain surgery.

And don't be shocked to hear me say, hey, it's time to stop thinking about all

these troubles and start operating, to stop contemplating and start operating.

Don't be shocked and don't throw up your hands and say, wait a minute,

I didn't come here to have surgery.

I'm just telling you, friend, sometimes that's the only thing left.

You're dealing with anxiety. You need to hear the psalmist in Psalm 34.

He said, I needed the Lord. This is Psalm 34 in the voice translation,

verse four. When I needed the Lord, I looked for Him.

I called out to Him, and He heard me and responded.

He came and rescued me from everything that made me so afraid.

Now, I'm just going to ask you, if He's going to rescue you from everything

that makes you so afraid, how does He do that?

We talk about physics a lot on this show, and I want you to understand,

physics is not that boring class you had to take in high school where somebody

rolls a ball down a hill and you're supposed to calculate the angle and the

speed and the velocity and the energy and all that stuff.

That's not what I'm talking about when I say physics. I'm not talking about the class in school.

Physics is the science of how things actually work, okay?

What's actually happening? So when God says, I will come and rescue you from

everything that makes you so afraid, what's actually happening when he does that?

That's physics, because what's happening is he will help you learn to think

about your suffering and your troubles in a new way. He'll help you learn.

To understand that feelings aren't facts. He'll help you learn to understand

that not all your thoughts are true.

He'll help you learn to believe that he's designed your mind in a way that can

make structural changes in your brain and your brain can get better.

And you're not stuck with your genetics and you're not stuck with the traumas

and tragedies and massive things and dramas of your life.

You can actually change your response to those things that it is possible,

but it requires surgery.

It requires you being willing to say, wait a minute, it.

Nobody's coming to rescue me from my own thinking.

Nobody's coming to rescue me. I've got to be the self brain surgeon.

Now, please don't misunderstand.

The role of God here is that God is the one that has made your mind and your

brain work the way that they do.

He's the one that's given you the ability to reach for him, to seek him and

perhaps find him as the Bible says, to to will and to act in a way that pleases

him and is in accordance with his purpose, he's doing the work.

He's done all the creating, okay?

He's done all the enabling. He's made all the networks and all the synapses

and all the stuff that's gonna happen in your brain, but you've gotta give him

consent and you've gotta be willing to do it, okay?

Now, if you're a skeptic, if you're an agnostic, if you don't believe,

if you're an atheist, the truth is these processes that we talk about with self-brain

surgery work under your direction.

You are not stuck with a determined brain that's made up of a bunch of neurons

firing, and that's just going to determine everything about your life. That's not true.

Quantum physics teaches us that you have a direct ability to intervene in the

course and nature of your life, and your choices matter, and they do make a difference.

So you don't have to believe in God to know that this will work, because it will work.

And self-brain surgery is true and real, whether you give God credit for it

or not. I'm telling you, the highest level of operating your mind involves letting

the Creator speak into that, to be the guiding, attending physician to help you navigate this.

But nobody's coming to change your mind for you.

God makes it possible, but He won't do it for you. You have to do it.

You have to be willing to accept the idea that you've got to be a self-brain

surgeon, and you've got to change your mind. Now, here's the thing.

This is critically important, okay? Okay.

Some of us think that if only my wife would stop nagging me so much, then I would be happy.

If only my husband would make a little bit more money, then I would be happy.

If only my kid would stop being such a knucklehead, then I would be happy.

If only I could have a little bit more wine, then I would be happy.

If only I would win the lottery. If only I would get promoted.

If only my husband hadn't died. If only this or only that, then I could be happy.

All of us have a thought process like that, and it's not true.

And I'll tell you why. I already said it.

Circumstances can never make you happy. Nobody else can change enough to make you happy.

Nobody else can respect you enough, honor you enough, work on your behalf enough,

give you enough things, make you enough money, bow down enough to you,

apologize enough to you for you to be happy until you change your mind.

That's a fact. And it's a fact from neuroscience, and it's a fact from scripture,

and it's a fact from psychology, and it's a fact from neurobiology.

Nobody else can make you feel better for very long.

Now, certainly they can do things that are pleasing to you. They can perform

things that feel good to you.

They can give you gifts that make you happy in the moment. But nobody can actually

make you happy until you decide that you're ready to become happy.

You're ready to become a purpose-filled person. person that you're ready to

redefine your suffering.

Science has figured this out. Science is not meant, as Robert Sapolsky said

in his incredible book, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, the acclaimed guide to

stress, stress-related diseases and coping.

He said, science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it.

Science is not meant to cure us of mystery. That's what Psalm 103 is talking about when he says,

greater the works of the Lord, they are pondered by all those who delight in

him science the purpose of science is not to say oh now we understand everything

god did the purpose is to say holy smokes that's amazing that god was able to

do that that god created this system and friend i'm telling you,

that science has led us to this place in the 21st century where now we see very clearly.

That our minds are not our brains. They're not a product of brain activity.

Our minds have creative power to change the structure and function of our brain.

So there is no amount of brokenness in your brain that cannot be improved by

changing the way that you direct your mind towards it.

And the highest level of functioning with that is to allow your mind to be under

the control of the Holy Spirit, to renew you and restore you to the way He wants

it to be. He said in the Bible.

Yourself. We talked yesterday about how anesthesia is inappropriate in self-brain

surgery. It's time to stop numbing ourselves.

It's time to stop contemplating and start operating.

It's time to get after it because, friend, you can change your mind and you can change your life.

But after waiting years to feel better and after going through everything else

that you've tried and failed to make things better, after all the other things

that you've tried, you've finally gotten to the surgeon's office.

And here on this day, I'm telling you that it's time to stop contemplating and

start operating. Don't be shocked by that.

Just decide that you're going to get in the fight and you're going to change

your mind and you're going to change your life.

And the good news is, my friend, 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

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available everywhere books are sold and i narrated the

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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.