Taking the "Self" Out of Self-Brain Surgery

Good morning my friend, Dr. Lee Warren here, your host for another episode of Self Brain

Surgery and it's my favorite day of the podcasting week, it's Self Brain Surgery Saturday.

Today we're going to talk about something important, it's just a point that I want you

to get and make sure that you don't miss out on.

Somebody wrote me a letter and we're going to talk about that in a minute, but basically

the punchline of the letter was that he wanted me to make sure that I didn't ever make

people think that changing their minds was something that they did all by themselves.

The power behind that ability to change your mind and change your life comes from the Lord.

And I want to just address that for just a minute. It's a subtle point.

And I also recently saw a post from a good friend of mine who talked about how much he

dislikes the self-help industry because nobody can really help themselves.

They've got to have power behind that. idea and that decision is to help themselves.

And I want to make a very clear distinction between self-help and between the kind of

powerful life change you can make when you get your spirit lined up with your creator

and you make real change in your heart from the person on the inside becoming the person

you were created to be.

That's different than self-help and bootstrapping and all that.

We're going to talk a little bit about that today. It's Self Brain Surgery Saturday.

I just want to give you one little mind shift to help you arm yourself against this idea that it's all up to you and the.

Most important thing that we need to get done today is to find the answer to 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 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.

And let's get after it.

Music.

You ready to get after it? I'm ready. Hey, today is my dad's birthday.

Shout out to my dad, one of the smartest people I've ever met.

Taught me the importance of looking at things positively. Taught me the importance of looking into the word

to find the answers to the big questions of life.

Taught me to be relentless in my pursuit of chasing after everything that God had in store for me.

Taught me to love Jesus.

And I have incredible memories as a child. I'd wake up in the morning,

my dad and my mom both really early risers.

And the way our house was situated is my bedroom. My brother and I had a bedroom at the end of the hall

and just next to ours was our parents' bedroom.

And I would get up, usually after my parents did on a Saturday or on the weekend

when I didn't have school or in the summer,

and my mom's bedroom door would be open and she would be sitting on her bed,

which was already made, dressed, and she would read her Bible sitting on her bed

with a cup of coffee.

And she always had a journal and she was taking notes and working through some sort of Bible study every day.

I'd see my mom and we'd have a conversation. She'd give me a hug and I'd walk down the hall,

pass my sister Laura's room on the left, my sister Michelle's room on the right,

and then my dad had an office that went up a little flight of stairs.

And inevitably he would be up there at his desk with his cup of coffee, studying his Bible every day.

This is my first memories of my parents, every day in the ward.

So today's dad's birthday, just shout out to my dad. And it's important to remember that what you do,

What your kids see you do is what they do.

And what we treat as optional, our next generation will treat as unnecessary.

You apply that in a lot of areas, church attendance, Bible study.

If your kids think it's plus or minus for you, it'll be minus for them.

My parents showed me it's plus, it's everything, okay?

Now that to say, happy birthday, dad, and moving on.

I got a letter recently from a reader, and he, it 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, I 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

the right side, he added some language in

to insert some more specific scripture and Christian ideas and Jesus's 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.

And if you can learn how to operate it more efficiently, 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 on the just and the unjust.

The sun shines on the good and the bad.

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 just, 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 was on her show and a bunch of her readers wrote in and said hey, I started listening. 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 gonna think they can do it all by themselves and nobody can change their minds without God helping them,

And I'm just 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 this 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 dollar self-help industry

that's why diet and exercise and 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 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 it's 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't,

become significantly 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. 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 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 gonna 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 and 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 is 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 physician. See, I put it

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

If you're coming to this idea that it's something deeper in your life needs to happen for you to recover from this massive thing or

This series of many massive things are 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 called 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

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, 2 Peter 3 9, 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, if you're banging your head against your own life and you're saying,

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

All these things that say they're gonna 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. 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 gonna 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, 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, 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. 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 six 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 talked 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 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.

But it 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 and the microscope

We got everything you need All you have to do is show up at 530 on Monday morning and sign the consent form will 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 now everybody will 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 in 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 then after surgery Yeah, you got to do some work and you got to do some rehab and all that, but we're gonna 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 you come and you wake up and you say I'm,

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.

You didn't you didn't make the surgical microscope You didn't craft and build and machine the surgical table that you're gonna 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

and harness 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 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?

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 gonna 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 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 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 2 says,

Don't be conformed anymore. Just get to the place where you say and 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 too goes on to say, rather be transformed.

It doesn't say transform yourself.

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

Just 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.

Friend, 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 book, if you're not already tired of hearing my voice.

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,

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.