Self-Brain Surgery and Self-Help Part 1 (Frontal Lobe Friday)

Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you. It's Frontal Lobe Friday,

and we're going to do a little self-brain surgery to change our minds about

something here this morning.

I'm giving you an old episode this morning. It's more than 100 episodes ago,

way back in season nine, at the start of season nine.

We did an episode called Taking the Self Out of Self-Brain Surgery,

Taking the Self Out of Self-Brain Surgery.

And I did that because a reader had written in and asked me to parse out the

difference between the self-help industry and what we do.

And I just want to remind you of some of the things that we talked about in

that episode and tomorrow on self-brain surgery Saturday,

give you a little bit deeper dive into sort of the ideas behind self-directed

neuroplasticity and self-brain surgery and cognitive behavioral therapy and all these things.

Because I got another email yesterday from a gentleman who really articulated

the question very well, and I don't have time to fully address it this morning.

So I want to preface the answer to that email with this episode.

So here's the email that I got yesterday.

Thank you for the incredible work you're doing. Before going any further,

please know this is not meant as a critical email.

It's simply me trying to get some clarity in what I think is a crucial distinction.

In your podcast, you often make the clear distinction between what you do and self-help.

I think it's really important and gives many of us who are suffering a lot of hope.

However, when I hear a lot of the work you encourage us to do,

it sounds like self-help. The idea of changing our minds, examining our thoughts,

choosing where to put our attention sometimes makes me feel like I have the

lion's share of the work.

Could you please give us a clear delineation between self-help and your approach?

Listen, the writer of this email asked not to be identified,

so I'm not going to identify the person. But here's the deal.

My belief is that our creator, the great physician, has wired us in a particular

way. And if we live our lives in that particular way that he designed us to

live, we will have the best outcome.

We'll become healthier and feel better and be happier. The closer we get to

a renewed mind that he says we already have, the closer we get to the mind of

Christ, then the more structural changes will happen in our brain,

and our brains will become more like the brain that Jesus would have had,

never harmed by negative thinking, never sinned against himself or committed

self-malpractice or violated any of the other Ten Commandments of either God or self-brain surgery.

And so we have to sort of make this distinction between things that we do in

response to and with the help of Him.

According to the way he built our brains, according to the principles of neuroscience,

and things that we do all by ourselves with our own power and our own energy.

The problem with traditional quote-unquote self-help is that if you think it's

all up to you, you will get tired, you will get worn out, you will find over

time that you don't have the juice to keep it up.

And I'm telling you that there's a way to live where you do actually do some

things, and what you're doing you're getting better at.

And when you do those things the way that God designed you to do them,

they become more efficient and more automated

over time and you find yourself breaking free

of chains and things that are holding you back and you're

not having to feel like you're doing all this work all the

time to continually make the same things happen you're going to find this sort

of effortless mastery in your life we're going to go deeper into that tomorrow

we're going to talk about philippians 2 and a little bit about work and about

farming and a little bit about about community and some things like that that

have to do with how we're designed to process and proceed through our lives.

First, I want to give you this broad answer we talked about way back in season

nine about how to take the self out of self-help. It's a mind shift.

It's a perspective change and it'll help you. But before we get started with

any of this stuff we're going to talk about today and tomorrow,

I have a question for you.

Hey, are you ready to change 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 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 got a letter recently from a reader, and he was incredible,

very kind and thoughtful.

And he said, hey, I teach Bible studies. I'm using your work.

I'm using your work to help other people.

I really appreciate your books. He said, but I just have one little concern,

and I'm modifying some of the things you write in my classes that I teach.

And he wrote out this long passage of excerpts from a couple of my books.

And then on the right side, he added some language in to insert some more specific

scripture and Christian ideas and Jesus' name in the middle of some sentences.

Because he wanted to make the point that self-brain surgery doesn't come from

yourself, that the power behind it is Jesus. And that's correct, okay?

It's correct. If you really want to take it all the way, and I don't think this

gentleman listens to the podcast, because I think if he did,

he probably would have heard me say a million times, like there's three different

ways that you can make your life better, okay?

And two of them, the self-help people have it right.

There are two different ways and two different levels of improvement you can

make in your life that don't involve the Lord at all in the big sense, okay?

Now, in the underlying sense, here's what I believe.

God created the heavens and the earth, and he created your incredible brain.

Brain. And if you can learn how to operate it more efficiently,

you can have, you can improve your life.

Even if you don't give him credit for it. And even if you don't understand that

he's the reason you're able to do it or that you even have that brain. Okay.

You can't. And that's why Jesus said, Hey,

the Lord causes the rainfall and the just and the unjust, the sun shines on

the good and the bad, like, like the world is there and God made it and the

rules and how science works and how gravity works and all of that applies.

Even if you don't recognize that there's a creator, even if you're one of these

super smart people that thinks that there's no God, right?

And thinks that you can understand how everything works and that it's explainable

without a creator, you can actually harness the power of science.

You can build a windmill and use the wind that God gave you to power your home,

even if you don't believe that God made the wind blow, right?

So this Dan Harris idea that you can take thousands of years of Eastern mysticism

and sum it up into that basically those guys learn how to turn the sound off

so they stop hearing all the clutter and the noise and they can get themselves

quiet enough to learn how to put some space in between whatever their life stimulates

them and how they respond to it.

And that doing that will give you about 10% happier.

And Dan Harris said, hey, that's enough for me. I needed to get my anxiety under control.

And for me learning to calm my brain and think about my thinking and just make

better thought decisions before I react, that made me a little happier and that was enough.

And you can do that. You can utilize the fact that your nervous system reliably

improves when you take charge of your thinking, whether or not you believe that

God gave you that brain and that God is in there wanting to communicate with you. You can.

I had a—Susie Larson made a post on Facebook about my podcast,

and last time I was on her show, and a bunch of her readers wrote in and said,

hey, I started listening, and Dr.

Warren is really helping me. And this one woman wrote and posted on Facebook

this long response of how, I wish you wouldn't call it self-brain surgery because

then people are going to think they can do it all by themselves.

And nobody can change their minds without God helping them.

And I'm sorry, that's incorrect. You can change your mind without giving God credit for it. You can.

Now, He gave you the mind and He gave you the ability to do that.

But you can do it without coming into contact with His Holy Spirit.

You can do it apart from a saving relationship.

You can make yourself a little happier.

You can. And that's why there's an $11 billion self-help industry.

That's why diet and exercise and mind change programs and seminars about how

to think more positively and Zig Ziglar and all these guys.

And Zig was a Christian, but my point is that you can do all that and not have

it be in a specific spiritual context. You can.

But there's also another level of self-help, and that level is what we call.

So I've told you before, the 10% happier is not enough.

If your problem is just mild anxiety or a little bit of thought racing issue,

10% might be fine for you, right?

But if your thought problem is you've lost your child or you have a glioblastoma

or your husband cheated on you or your bottom dropped out of your business and

you're homeless now or any of those things, if that's your problem.

Then 10% happier is not enough. And you need to become significantly more in

control of your thought life to make a difference and find a way forward and

find anything that looks like hope and engage in that agency and pathway and all that stuff.

It's not enough to be 10% happier, but you can become significantly happier

by just hacking the way that your brain works and learning how to make it work to your advantage.

You can do that without a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

You can become significantly happier happier

because like i told you before magic precedes science

there's always somebody who figures out how a system works

and can use it to their advantage even if

they don't understand the full science behind it or in the spiritual context

even if they don't understand the power behind it really is because of how god

wired your incredible brain right remember when moses was getting the israelites

out of trouble most of the signs that he performed pharaoh's magicians could

perform too Two, they figured out how to make magic work.

It wasn't magic. It was just they

understood how to manipulate physics and biology and all those things.

They figured some of those things out, but they didn't have the power behind

them of God being on their side.

And that's why they didn't come alive like the Hebrews did under God's direction, right?

So you can become significantly happier without God helping you. You can.

You can do it. But my contention is that when you really have a major problem

in your life or when you really finally admit to yourself that all these strivings

that you're making in your life aren't really making you happier or they're

not really giving you hope,

I think that's when you feel this call in your heart that there's something

bigger out there for you.

And maybe that's where you are today, friend. Maybe you haven't ever really figured it out.

You need Jesus in your life. Maybe you never really even believed in him,

but maybe you have come to this

place where 10% is not enough and even significantly happier isn't enough.

There's more and you know, there's more and something's calling you.

I'm going to give you some ideas today. Okay. Now I want to just say it for the record.

If you've read my book, hope is the first dose in the very first chapter after

the, after the prologue, I wrote at the end of the first chapter,

very specifically this, in the following pages, I'm going to be talking a lot

about things you can do to try to live again after TMT turns the lights out in your world.

But in all the talk about changing our minds, self-brain surgery,

and fighting for faith, do not think it's all up to you.

Because TMT, the massive thing, will take your strength and your resolve,

and you will soon despair if you miss this one important point.

Just as you have to actually walk into the cancer center to receive the radiation

beams you did not invent and cannot administer to yourself, there's some work

to be done in learning to live again, but you don't do it alone.

I already told you that the first dose is hope, but it comes in the syringe

of grace from the skilled hands of the great physicians.

See, I put it right there plainly. Listen, I'm not trying to to beat you over the head with it.

If you're coming to this idea that something deeper in your life needs to happen

for you to recover from this massive thing or this series of many massive things

or these major traumas or tragedies, and it's just not enough to try to bootstrap

it, and 10% is not enough,

and significantly happier is not enough,

and you know there's something deeper that you need, I'm trying to get you there.

And I call it self-brain surgery for one reason.

You can actually change how your brain works by harnessing the power of directed

neuroplasticity and learning how to think differently about the things that

you experience in your life. You can.

But the reason I call my book Hope is the First Dose is because that's the only

part that's really up to you, is making a decision that you need some bigger help.

Now, the secret, the underlying secret, is that even that part isn't up to you.

Because Paul tells us plainly in Philippians chapter 2. Check this out.

Paul says it plain, Philippians 2.13, it is God who works in you to will and

to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

Listen to that again. It is God who works in you to will and to act in order

to fulfill his good purpose. Do you get that?

Don't feel like it's all up to you because even the idea that there's something

more out there doesn't come from you. You don't have to create this.

God puts that idea in you. Your creator, no matter how far from him you are,

no matter whether you believe in him or not, that nudge that says there's got

to be something more in my life, my life has to have more purpose than this.

My life has to have more meaning than this.

I've got to be able to find some kind of power to move forward after this massive

thing has happened in my life.

God puts that nudge in your heart, friend. It's not up to you.

And so, yes, I call it self-brain surgery, But you're not even responsible for

the initial urge that that drive, that desire in your heart that there's got

to be more comes from him.

He wants you to have a life that's full of meaning and purpose.

He's got purpose for you and he puts the drive in you. So you're not even responsible for that.

Peter says it different. Second

Peter three, nine. The Lord isn't really being slow about his promise.

As some people think, no, he's being patient for your sake. He does not want

anyone to be lost, but wants everyone to repent.

So if you're banging your head against your own life and you're saying,

why is it so hard? Why isn't...

All these things that say they're going to make me happier. Why aren't they

making me happier? Why am I not able to recover from this? Why am I stuck in this problem?

Why, why, why? And then when you finally start crying out to God,

you say, well, why does it feel like my prayers aren't being answered?

Why does it feel like it's taking so long?

And Peter says, God doesn't want anybody to be lost.

He's patient with us. He's waiting for us to cry out. Remember yesterday we

talked about Isaiah. The Lord longs.

He longs to be gracious to you. He rises to show you compassion.

He wants to help you. He doesn't want you to be lost.

He doesn't want you to be in despair. He doesn't want you to be hurting.

John 6, 44, nobody can come to me. This is Jesus, John 6, 44.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.

You see that? Paul said it, and Jesus said it, and Peter said it.

God's doing this work inside you to stir you up, to make you reach out for him

so he can do the thing he wants to do for you.

He's got the syringe full of grace. He's got the treatment plan.

He's got the ability to help you, but you have to just say, I need it.

I'm ready for it. And that's the reason I call the book. Hope is the first dose.

Okay. Please read it. If you haven't read it yet, please, it's going to help you.

I promise it's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma and tragedy and the

massive things that happen in our lives, Hope is the First Dose.

Everywhere books are sold, go get it.

Season nine of the podcast sponsored by Hope is the First Dose.

You need it, okay? But here's why I called it that.

The book is about the treatment plan. The book is about how you get your brain

ready for what happens in your life.

How you get your brain ready to respond, Respond to be resilient,

to hold on when hard things happen, to not crash and not lose hope and find your feet again.

How do you do that? Well, you do it through prehab and loading your brain full

of all these good things and having some stuff and some decisions made ahead

of time about who God is and what he can do for you. And then if you're in the middle of it.

You do it by learning the techniques of self-brain surgery,

of biopsying your thinking, putting some space in between stimulus and response,

and then eradicating lousy attitudes and getting rid of doubt and filling up

faith and severing sick synapses and all these little crazy operations that I teach you, okay?

Trusting and transplanting good thoughts for bad thoughts, all these things

that we talk about on the podcast all the time.

Go back and listen to some of those. That's the self-brain surgery piece.

And then there's rehab, getting yourself a community and working hard to heal

and move forward and build better habits and be more resilient for the next

time TMT comes around because it's not ever gone.

There's always going to be another massive thing, right? That's how life works.

So the point of all of that is the treatment plan is stuff that you can learn how to do.

Do. But the analogy is like if you come to my office and you have back pain

or a brain tumor and I tell you, hey, we've got the team, we've got the operating

room, we've got the technology,

we've got the radiation and the chemotherapy and the drill and the microscope,

we've got everything you need.

All you have to do is show up at 530 on Monday morning and sign the consent form.

We'll do the rest. We'll put the IV

in for you. The anesthesiologist will intubate you and put you to sleep.

I'll do the surgery. Damon and I and the team, Kristen and Al,

everybody will work work hard together to help you.

And then after surgery, we'll get you hooked up with the physical therapist

and the occupational therapist, and we'll get you the rehab you need and the

chemo and radiation and all that stuff.

And all you have to do is have enough hope that we can deliver that plan for you.

Have enough hope that you can get out of bed and get dressed and drive yourself

to the hospital and sign the consent form.

That's all you have to do. And then after surgery, yeah, you've got to do some

work and you've got to do some rehab and all that.

But we're going to take care of you. And that's the point here, okay?

God draws you. God gives you the plan. God makes the invitation.

God schedules the surgery. God prepares the hospital, okay?

The church. God prepares the work.

And he even initiates the desire in you to have it.

Where you come and you wake up and you say, I'm sick and tired of my back hurting so badly.

Somebody's got to help me. I can't do it. I've tried all the physical therapy

stuff. I've tried all those exercises on Instagram.

I tried that copper pad that you stick to your back that I found on a commercial.

I've tried all of it, and I can't fix it. Somebody's got to help me.

And in that desperation, you come to the doctor's office, and somebody gives you a plan.

And you didn't make the surgical microscope. You didn't craft and build and

machine the surgical table that you're going to lie on.

You didn't make the anesthesia machine. You didn't create the science behind

how anesthesia works and how surgical techniques work.

And you didn't train all those doctors and nurses yourself. You didn't have to do all that.

You just had to have the wall that you hit that said, it's time for me to get some help.

And other people had all that stuff ready and harnessed the science and were

there to prepare for you and deliver for you.

But you had to have enough hope to get in the car and drive because that's hope is the first dose.

That's why hope is the first dose. Okay.

So, yes, long story to tell you this.

I didn't come at you and beat you over the head by saying you have to include

the word Jesus Christ and you have to outwardly acknowledge that God is behind

all this in every sentence and every word that you write and say and everything

you think about on the podcast. I don't want you to think that way. Why? Why?

Because if you're seeking, I want you to find a place here in a community here

of people who will say, yeah, we've got some tools for you that you can use

and you can start running some reps in your life of these things that will make a difference.

And at some point you're going to come to say, yeah, I'm making progress, but I want more.

And that more is where the door opens for you to become almost infinitely happier.

Because when you're infinitely wiped out by your life,

when you're infinitely crushed by the weight of the massive things that are

happening to you, you need more than some hack to become a little bit happier

or some hack to become significantly better able to control your thinking. You need more than that.

And to get across that finish line into this quantum faith world where you can

have a devastatingly hard life but still manage to have meaning and purpose

and even maybe hope and happiness again, you need your creator to get involved in that.

The software of your mind operates best when it's under the influence of the

programmer, of the guy who made it.

And the hardware of your brain works better when it's under the influence of

the person, the physician who made it in the first place.

I'm different than the great physician. I can work on brains,

but I could never create one.

And so your father, your great physician, your healer knows you more intimately than I ever could.

He has scanned you more completely than I ever could with an MRI machine.

And he can heal you more completely than I ever could with surgery.

And so that's the next level.

But I would just submit to you that getting to that place requires some work

on your part in order to change your mind.

But don't feel overburdened by that.

Because as I've shown you in this short short episode, that work doesn't even initiate with you.

And you don't really have to do it. All you have to do is what Romans 12 says.

Don't be conformed anymore. Just get to the place where you say,

whatever the world is giving me is not working and I'm tired of it.

And I can't, it's just not enough, God.

And just open your heart and your mind to the idea that you would rather stop

trying so hard to make yourself fit into what the world says will make you happy,

because it's not working.

And then Romans 12, two goes on to say, rather be transformed.

It doesn't say transform yourself.

It says, be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

That's how you change your mind. And that's how you change your life.

And all you have to do is sign the consent form.

It's to say, I need help. I need hope. I'm ready for this operation that you can perform.

I need you to change my mind. I need you to change my life.

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

Music.

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

brand new book, Hope is the First Dose. It's a treatment plan for recovering

from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things. It's available everywhere books are sold.

And I narrated the audio books. Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up

by my friend Tommy Walker, available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the Most High God.

And if you're interested in learning more, check out TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,

WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer.

And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self-Brain Surgery,

every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60 plus countries

around the world. I'm Dr.

Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your

life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.

Music.