The Brain You Have, The Brain You Want

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

you, and it's Throwback Thursday.

I've got a crazy day coming up today.

I told you yesterday that I was going to be paying the piper for being out of

town and the blizzard and the travel delays and all that stuff,

and today is the day it's going to be the payment coming due for all that. Time off.

I'm going to be operating and seeing a full clinic today. My PA is still out,

so it's going to be a little crazy. Pray for me. But we're going to get it done.

And yesterday we talked a lot about how you can actually change the way your

brain works, change the things that you think you need, change the things that you think you want.

You can make your brain behave in a more efficient way for yourself.

And you can learn to get your thinking under control so you're not always reacting all the time.

Well, you also need to fully understand.

And we're going to just dial back a little bit today and go back in time so

that we can fully understand and finally believe that we are not stuck with the brain we have.

If you ever find yourself saying, I've tried and tried and tried and I just

can't help it, that's the way I am.

I'm just like my dad. I'm just like my mom. That's how I was raised.

If you find yourself bumping up against that belief that change is not possible

for you, then I want to encourage you with this episode today,

you are not stuck with the brain you have.

I'm bringing back from last season for a very specific purpose.

Us. Tomorrow, we have two incredible episodes I'm going to record.

Lee Strobel to talk about his incredible new book, Is God Real?

And then Susie Larson, our good friend, friend of the podcast,

advocate and champion of the podcast.

Susie Larson, bestselling author, radio host, you know and love her well,

is going to be back to talk about her new book, which is coming out next month.

And it's called Waking Up to the Goodness of God. And Susie's going to help

us remember that we can can retrain our brain and we can retrain it with truth.

And I taught you in Hope is the First Dose that hope is produced by remembering

what God has done in the past,

remembering that you've been through hard things before and made it through,

remembering that other people have been through difficult things and made it

through, and then moving towards the truth of God's promises and flexing that

muscle will produce hope.

And so I want to remind you that you make 800,000 new cells in your body every

second, and you can learn to harness them through the amazing power of what

what we call self-directed neuroplasticity, or more simply, self-brain surgery.

And you can learn to change your brain and change your life.

You can change your thinking. You can change your mind. And that's how life change occurs, okay?

God says, don't be conformed to the way the world wants you to think.

Don't be conformed to believing that you're stuck with sour grapes because of

what your parents did or what genetics you inherited.

You're not. You can change. And as we get close to the end of the year and we're

tired of carrying these burdens and we're tired of understanding that what got

us here won't get us there,

we've got to make some changes and we're ready to cast off everything that's

hindering us or entangling us and we're ready to step into the year of the Lord's

favor. Today is the day, friend.

I'm going to bring you back. You're not stuck with the brain you have so that

you can get that in your mind.

And then we're going to have two unbelievable episodes coming up in the next few days.

Tomorrow, we'll do a frontal lobe Friday, and we'll kind of wrap this little

idea of self-directed neuroplasticity.

We're going to talk about something called the quantum Zeno effect and bring

a little quantum physics into the equation.

And I'm going to do all of that to give you great hope that as 2023 wraps up,

you really can change your life but

you have to change your mind first and my friend we are going to

get back after it with you are not stuck with the brain you have before

we do that though 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 where the neuroscience of how your mind

works smashes together with faith and everything starts to make sense are you

ready 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.

One day past book launch for Hope is the First Dose, and I hope you've already gotten your copy.

If you haven't, I want to talk just for a few minutes this morning,

not really about my book, but about why it's so important to change the way that we think.

I'm always telling you about self-brain surgery and about learning how to think

differently than you do.

And I've been influenced a lot by a neuroscientist, a physician who's actually

a psychiatrist. She's written numerous really important books.

But Jeffrey Schwartz is a psychiatrist in Los Angeles who has done a lot of

the really important work about OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder,

and how to treat that incredibly limiting mental issue.

And he also is one of the real leaders in this idea of understanding that the

mind and the brain are two very separate entities and that the mind has tremendous

influence over the brain, which is a very biblical concept, as I'm always telling you.

But I want to share a couple of thoughts with you this morning that I've been

having around this idea of mind and brain and why it's so important to understand

that the way you think changes how you live.

It's crystal clear. We all know this. We all know it because we understand that

when you – I'm going to give you an example. Let me just change the direction for a second.

I woke up this morning and I was feeling very emotional.

I want to just be real vulnerable with you for a minute. Feeling very emotional,

not about the book or how many people are out there reading it or any of that,

but this book is the most intimate and vulnerable thing that I've ever done.

We talk in the first few chapters about exactly what happened with our son Mitch

and exactly what it felt like and exactly what we did in our family in those early days.

And we go really deep into that part of the story.

And I want to be crystal clear. If you haven't read Hope is the First Dose yet.

It is not memoir, but it starts and it feels like memoir.

In fact, the first hundred or so pages are story, our story,

my story, Lisa's story, our children's story of what happened and what it felt like.

And the reason I chose to do that is because I didn't want to write another memoir.

The whole purpose of this book is to move from what I gave you and I've seen

the end of you to something prescriptive. Instead of descriptive, here's what happened.

Here's the fact that we made it through that hard time, and maybe you can too.

That was what I've seen in the interview.

The new book is prescriptive. I'm a doctor, and I've been doing this a long

time, and I know how to help people when they're hurting.

And when I was hurting, and I always will be hurting, but in the acute phase

of that injury of losing our son, I came to this place where I realized I needed

to tell you the things that you can reliably do to find your way forward.

And so it's a prescription, a treatment plan. Because I'm a doctor,

I have to give you things in medical terms.

I'm just sitting here this morning at 5.30 in the morning. I'm going to have

a cup of coffee with you and just share the fact that I woke up really emotional this morning.

And part of it is I want Mitch to be honored with this book.

And I don't mean that in terms of how many people buy it and how many awards

it wins or if I get another one of those Christian Book Award plaques or another

top five gold record from Focus on the Family or any of those cool things that

happened from I've Seen the Interview.

That's not what I mean by honoring Mitch.

It will honor Mitch if people connect to his story in a way that helps them have a better life.

If they connect to his story in a way that helps them come alongside other people

who are hurting as caregivers. Yes.

If hope is the first dose can be that EpiPen that you carry in your purse just

in case somebody around you is going through a massive thing,

you can deliver some treatment, some care for them to help them.

That will honor my son. And we're all in this thing together.

We're all going to have these massive things occur.

And so we've tried to give you a treatment plan.

So this morning, I want to just give you a couple of things to think about.

We're going to talk a little bit more about Romans 12, 2 and what it means to transform your mind.

And then we're going to talk a little bit about things I learned from Jeffrey

Schwartz and something new that I've learned from T.D. Jakes, Bishop T.D. Jakes.

I've never read one of his books before, but I'm reading one now,

and it's incredible so far, Disruptive Thinking by T.D.

Jakes, and something I've learned from him that has turned out to be a thought

that I just can't get out of my mind.

And if you're watching this video, the lighting is awful.

It's dark outside, and I've just got this overhead fluorescent light,

and so the lighting is really bad.

But I wanted you to see my face this morning. I'm going to probably release

the video for the paid subscribers only because I'm wearing a hoodie and I'm drinking coffee.

The lighting is really bad.

But I wanted you to look in my eyes. My dad always said when he was going to

say something important to us, he would snap his fingers and he would say, hey, look in my eyes.

Look in my eyes because you can see what somebody is really trying to get at

when you look in their eyes.

So this morning, I'm going to give you a very short conversation.

Conversation, I'm going to give you two quotes, a quote from T.D.

Jakes and a quote from Jeffrey Schwartz, Dr.

Jeffrey Schwartz. I'm going to give you one scripture and I'm going to give

you one idea from Hope is the First Dose.

And I'm just going to try to help you process all these massive things you're

going through, either as an experiencer, the patient in this metaphor,

if you will, or as a caregiver, if you're coming along with somebody else.

Because it's really true. You are not stuck with the brain that you have.

Trauma will make you think that it's never going to be able to be better,

that your past experiences have labeled you and shamed you and hurt you in some

way that's irrevocable and irreparable and that there's no hope for going forward.

But the fact is you are not stuck, my friend, with the brain you have.

You are not stuck with the thoughts you think.

You are not stuck with the past mistakes that you've made. You are not stuck

because you can change your life if you're willing to change your mind.

Man, we've had some unbelievable interviews.

It's funny because this book launch feels a little bit weird,

and maybe that's why I'm somewhat emotional about it.

It's like people always say this, launching a book is like birthing a baby,

and I don't ever say that out loud because I'm a man and I haven't had a baby,

And I know that having a baby in real life is nine months of body changes and

incredible sacrifice on the behalf of women who become mothers and the unbelievable

pain that you go through.

So I don't ever like to use the metaphor of having a book is like birthing a baby.

But in some sense, here's what it is.

You pour your heart and soul into creating this book to try to help other people.

And you put everything you have out there on the page. And someone once said

that writing is like opening a vein, like bleeding out.

You're giving your life in some way to your readers.

And you do all of that, and then you timidly hold it up, and you present it to your agent.

And they generally say something like, yeah, it's a good start.

You've worked for two years on this manuscript, and you hand it to somebody,

and they say, well, it really needs an edit. Holy smokes.

You did a nice job, but it can be better.

And then you go through this painstaking process of ripping open a wound that

you thought was healed when this manuscript was done, and you do it again.

End. Basically, you write a second and a third and a fourth draft.

And really, that's why Stephen King has so famously said that you ought to write a terrible first draft.

He says that nobody gets to see his first draft, not his wife, not his agent, nobody.

He writes the book, sits it on a shelf for a week or two, and then he comes

back to it and gets brutal and writes the second draft.

And that's the one that he shows to his wife and his agent and all that.

You write this terrible first draft and get it get it over

with but nevertheless you do that thing you

spend all this time you present the manuscript to your agent they bring

it back and tell you need revisions and edits and changes and

all that stuff and finally after for me it's years i don't i really don't understand

people like max lucado that can come out with a book or two every single year

but for me it's it takes a long time because i'm maybe it's because i'm a doctor

and i'm trying to give give you a really solid treatment plan.

I think of going through all these FDA trials and stuff before I give it to

you. But nevertheless, it takes a long time.

And then we get to this place where it's time and we sell it to a publisher

and there's this competition sort of publishers get interested.

They bid on it and it goes through all these rounds of people trying to convince

you that they're the good publishing partner.

We chose to go with Waterbrook again, like we did last time because they did

such a nice job with I've seen the interview.

And then after that, it starts all all over again. You get assigned an editor.

Susan Jaden is the same editor I worked with where I've seen the interview and

she takes the manuscript and reads it and then comes back with a host of things

that she wants you to tighten up or change.

And then after that, once you finally get that final manuscript done with the

big first edit with the acquiring editor, then it gets passed off to a copy

editor and they go through all kinds of things.

I've seen the interview. I remember there were all these little things like

I would mention that a patient was watching a particular television show

and they would come back and say wait you said it was

2008 but you said they were watching this show on TV

and that show didn't come out until 2009 and all these little things that from

your memories that when you put them on paper years later they can be a little

inaccurate or something could be quite not so the the second editor the copy

editor picks up all that stuff and make sure it's it doesn't jar the reader

into something because you don't want your your reader to be somebody who really.

Remembered a particular thing correctly and you wrote it

incorrectly and that stops them from progressing in the book because

they're like wait that that show wasn't even on tv then so you

don't want any of that sort of stuff so you fix all that and you get it

all right and you line the timeline up and make sure everything's right and

correct and then there's a legal edit to make sure you didn't quote somebody's

book without giving them credit or make sure that you didn't have too many lines

of a song there's all these rules and copyright rules if you quote somebody's

song more than a certain number of lines that you have to pay them royalties and all this stuff.

And if you mention somebody's name, you have to have a waiver.

If they're a real person that says it's okay with them that you use their name

or told their story and there's all this stuff and it takes months, okay?

It takes months and people are always out there on social media like,

when's your book coming out?

They have no idea all the things that go into it. And then once you finally

get the manuscript, it's passed off to proofreaders.

So these are people who don't have any dog in the fight. They don't have expertise in your field.

They don't have any knowledge of you or emotional tie to you to not want to

hurt your feelings or any of that. And they're going to come back.

And for me, it was particularly frustrating with Hope is the First Dose because

I told some jokes and I tried to use humor.

I knew I was dealing with heavy subject material.

So I tried to use humor as a way of lightening it up for you several times.

And I would tell a joke, and the proofreader would say, I don't get that.

I don't understand what you meant by this. And we'd have to go back and forth

and change things around a little bit to make sure that you want to have this

sort of – I don't know exactly how to say it without sounding offensive,

but you want to have this kind of lowest common denominator, right?

You want your book to be readable, approachable, and helpful to an astrophysicist

out there who's a super nerd that if you don't write elegantly enough,

it won't make sense to them, and they'll think it's lowbrow,

and they won't want to read it.

All the way down to somebody that maybe doesn't have much of an education but

really is hurting and needs help, and you want them to be able to read it too.

So you want to avoid too much lingo and concepts that aren't explained properly.

So for me, writing from neuroscience and stuff about neurosurgery and brain

tumors and all that, I try to be really careful with the medical terminology

to make sure I explain things in a way that anybody can understand,

even if they don't have a background.

So the proofreaders are really important because they'll send a proofreader

who's a graduate student,

they'll send another one to a proofreader who's a plumber or a homemaker or

somebody with a different kind of background or job so that at the end of the

day, you try to thread that needle very carefully where you can give somebody a book that says.

Hits all those targets where everybody can read it. Okay, now I told you I wasn't

going to talk about the book, and here we are 13 minutes into this episode and

we've been talking about the book. I did all that to say this.

I woke up really emotional this morning and really concerned that have I done

a good job honoring my son and is it going to help people?

Is it really going to be a valuable treatment plan like I wanted it to be?

And I want to make sure that you understand as you go into this book,

first of all, if you're one of these people that skips epilogues and prologues,

Please don't in this book.

Don't skip the epilogue because the epilogue sets up a lot of the things that

you're going to need to be thinking about as you get into the story so you don't miss them.

And the prologue comes back to the first and ties some things together.

And if you skip it, there are some people that just start with chapter one and

read to the end of the last chapter and they skip the beginning and ending material.

But when I write a book, if I put something in the epilogue or prologue,

it's because you need it to understand the story.

And there's stuff in there that's going to help your life. So don't skip the

epilogue and prologue, okay?

Here we are again talking about the book. I said that to say this, okay?

I'm giving you a treatment plan. So what to do when the massive thing happens,

when trauma, tragedy, and other massive things occur in your life.

How can you step through that and still find hope again, find happiness again,

find peace again, maybe even joy again?

Again, how can you do that or how can you help somebody else not succumb to

the lies that trauma tells them and to not become a person whose entire life

is defined by that massive thing? How can we do that? And that's what the treatment plan is.

But one of the things that happens in trauma, here's the point of this episode.

We're 15 minutes and 19 seconds in, and I'm finally telling you what this episode is about.

Thank you for allowing me to ramble, but I think it's important.

Here's what it's about. when you encounter major trauma.

You will begin to hear a set of significantly negative thoughts that tell you

things like it's your fault, it's irreparable,

you can't fix it, you'll never be okay again, this is always going to feel just

like it does, you're never going to be loved again, all these things.

And the problem is those thoughts are based on past experiences and traumas

that you felt in the past,

and they are wired into synapses that you've already made that don't have anything

to do with this actual event or the reality of what's happening in your life right now.

Okay and so in order to to master

that didn't do that second corinthians 10 5

thing of taking captive every thought in order to do that

romans 12 2 thing about learning to be transformed by the renewing of your mind

you've got to get in control of that thought loop you've got to get ahead of

it and learn how to biopsy those thoughts and look at them and inspect them

and decide if they're true and if they're not true you got to transplant thoughts

that are true to go forward because thoughts become things.

They become DNA changes. They become neurotransmitters. They become hormones.

They become passed down to generations and create issues with your children

and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They become things.

And so it's super important. It's critical. It's life-saving to get ahead of

that negative thought loop and to be aware that you're going to have those negative,

sometimes false thoughts when you encounter trauma so that when you do encounter trauma,

the first thought that will pop into your head is, wait, I'm in real danger

here because my brain is getting ready to start lying to me and I need to be

ready to take control of that, okay?

That's the EpiPen in your pocket, friend, that will keep you from having this

life-threatening thought anaphylaxis that will kill you when you experience trauma, okay?

But one of the lies that we've bought into really as a society,

one of the lies that is so harmful that can create despair despair and make

you feel stuck is that your brain is fixed and unchangeable and that you got

it from your parents and that you can't do anything about it and that's just the way I am.

It drives me crazy when I hear people say, when I get mad, I just blow up and

I yell at people and I cuss people out and I'm enraged and that's just how I am.

I come from a long line of hot-headed people and I'm just stuck with that.

Or I'm just prone to depression and when something happens, I feel bad And I

need my medicine or I need my alcohol or I need my whatever to deal with that.

It's just how I am. I'm wired that way.

But the fact is, friend, you may have inherited a predisposition to behave a

certain way when you encounter a certain thing.

And you may be wired that way. But we know now from directed neuroplasticity

and from neuroscience, science. It is absolutely possible for you to change

how your brain behaves and the way that you feel.

And the number one determinant of that behavior change is changes in how you

think. And here's the quote.

From Jeffrey Schwartz that I want you to understand. This guy is probably the

most important and successful thinker about obsessive compulsive disorder,

and he's helped thousands of patients with that disorder.

And he's written some incredible books. One of them is called You Are Not Your

Brain, which is really important.

But The Mind and the Brain is the deep nerd level science book that he wrote

that I love so much about the difference between the mind and the brain.

I'm really working to try to get him on the podcast.

He is hard to get a hold of. So if you If you know somebody who knows Jeff Schwartz,

please tell him I want him on the podcast.

He's got a wall of people in front of him. It's hard to get to him,

but I'm working on it. I'm going

to bring Jeffrey Schwartz to the podcast someday. Here's what he said.

Listen, please, friend, listen. Take a sip of coffee with me just for a second. Take a pause here.

Okay. I needed that drink of coffee. Here's what Jeffrey Schwartz said.

It is the brain's astonishing power to learn and unlearn, to adapt and change,

to carry with it the inscriptions of the experiences,

of our experiences that allows us to throw off the shackles of biological materialism.

For it is the life we lead that creates the brain we have. It is the life we

lead that creates the brain we have.

What does that mean? It means that, yes, you were born with a certain set of

genetic predispositions to things.

You were born with a certain set of things that you got from your parents,

and they feel unchangeable.

And the world wants you to believe that you are stuck with your genes,

that you can't change it.

Your enemy wants you to feel hopeless about that. That's just how I am.

The fact is, Jesus said, if you want to come unto me, you need to die to yourself

and take up your cross and follow me.

You want to lay down yourself and become more like him. Romans 12 says,

don't conform to the world anymore.

And it doesn't just mean stop looking like culture and stop doing the same things

that all those other people did.

That's how it was always taught, especially my church growing up, so legalistic.

And the idea is you quit behaving like those sinners out there.

You quit acting like that. You stop doing that.

That's not what it means. It partly means that. Sure it does.

There's always a grain of truth in these heresies.

But we're going to have an episode soon about mini heresies,

these internal thoughts that we have that are not theologically sound.

They're actually heresies that keep you from finding the freedom and abundance

that Jesus wants you to have. We're going to do a mini heresy.

In fact, remind me, send me a comment in a few days and say,

hey, I want that mini heresy episode because I don't want to forget.

It's been bouncing around my head for a while.

Here's what it means. Don't be conformed to the pattern of this world any longer,

but rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Here's what it means. It means that you can change the way your brain works,

and you can make your mind work for you instead of against you by learning how

to change the way you think.

I saw a book the other day, popped up on a list of books about thinking and

hope and life change that I just saw, and it's called Disruptive Thinking,

a Daring Strategy to Change How We Live, Lead, and Love. And I want to tell

you something right now, friend.

Two times in my life, I have been driving and listening to an audio book,

and I heard something so powerful that I had to pull my truck over to the side

of the road to either text Lisa and tell her to remind me to talk to her about

it or to bookmark it so that I wouldn't forget to tell you about it later.

This is one of those two times. The other time was John Bevere's book,

The Awe of God, when he said something that broke me down.

I pulled over. I was on my way to my friend Alan Christen's house with their

dogs, bringing them back. We'd babysat their dogs.

Babysat. We dog-sat their dogs over the weekend.

And I was driving the dogs back, Liberty and Cody and Reagan,

on their way to their house, listening to John Bevere.

And he said something. I pulled over and wept and wrote it down and made a note

in Evernote, my little note-keeping app.

And I sent Lisa a text about it, and I shared it with John Bevere.

I texted him and told him that he had made me pull my car over to the side of

the road. So I'll share that story with you another time.

T.D. Jakes did it to me yesterday.

On the launch day of my new book, on my way to the hospital,

I was listening to T.D. Jakes.

And again, I don't know. Please don't write me and tell me anything about his

theology or anything negative about him.

All I know is this guy is a leader.

He's a tremendous writer, and his voice on the audible is like the voice of God.

It's like James Earl Jones and Darth Vader.

He's got this incredible, deep, powerful voice. When he speaks,

you're like, holy cow, I need to listen to this guy.

I don't know all about it. I mentioned his name, and somebody said,

oh, he's a prosperity gospel guy. I don't know that.

I do know that he's writing a book about how you think.

And so far, I can tell you, I'm three chapters in so far, every single thing

he said has been theologically sound, and it's solid.

But this one line, even if I get nothing else out of this book,

this is the reason God put it in front of me so far.

I can tell you this one line that's going to change your life today.

Day if you pay attention to it. Here it is.

T.D. Jakes said, and again, the book is Disruptive Thinking,

A Daring Strategy to Change How We Live, Lead, and Love. Here's the line.

The older we get, the longer we live, the more we realize that we were born

looking like our parents, but we die looking like our decisions.

Listen to that again. If it hadn't hit you between the eyes yet, it's getting ready to.

The longer we live, the more we realize that we are born looking like our parents,

but we die looking like our decisions.

Friend, that is 100% true from a neuroscience standpoint.

It is 100% true from a scriptural standpoint.

It is 100% true from an experiential standpoint. point, you can absolutely predict

how you will look, feel, and behave when you die by critically examining the

things that you think about every day.

And if one of those things is, I can't change this because it's just how I am.

I got it from my mom and dad. My dad taught me to be this way.

I can't be any different than that. Guess what? That will become true in your life, friend.

If hopelessness and despair and anxiety and depression and obesity and alcoholism

and and all those things were gifted to you by your parents.

You will be stuck with them unless you decide to no longer conform to the pattern

that the world handed you, but to rather be transformed.

And the transformation, Paul tells us in the New Testament, and if you came

from my background, Paul was basically, we talked about Paul more than we talked

about Jesus, to my shame.

The scriptures that were preached and pushed and taught and we memorized mostly

from Paul. Now, obviously, statistically, that's reasonable because Paul wrote

two-thirds of the New Testament.

But we talked a lot more about Paul than we did about Jesus.

And I think because you can distill some of the things he says into rules that

you could then make people behave and follow.

But when Paul says it, you ought to listen to it because God ordained that he

wrote two-thirds of the New Testament.

And he said the way to renew, the way to transform your life.

The way to disrupt these harmful patterns of thinking is to change how you think. Renew your mind.

The guy who wrote Lamentations told us your mercy's never end.

They are new every morning. And now we know from neuroplasticity,

you make a whole batch of new brain cells every night when you sleep.

And they are looking for a job, my friend. and they will automatically wire

into your old thought patterns and behaviors unless you give them a new job.

And the way to give them a new job is to change the stuff you think about.

That's why Paul said in Philippians 4, think about good stuff.

Think about noble stuff. Think about kind things.

Think about loving things. Think

about noteworthy things and you will stop feeling so anxious, my friend.

You are not stuck with the brain you have. You are not stuck with it,

but you will die looking like your decisions.

So the question for you today, one day after hope is the first dose has been born into the world.

The question I came here to ask you is gonna require one more sip of coffee. Hold on.

The question is, do you want to die looking like your decisions?

You're going to. So the question then really is what decisions do you want to look like?

Do you want a whole pile of excuses Excuses because you were handed a certain

way of thinking and behaving from your folks?

Or do you want to die looking like a bunch of good decisions,

the first one of which you made on the 19th of July, 2023,

when you said, hey, this way I've always thought, this decision that I need

this particular thing to make me stop feeling,

or this decision that I have to behave a certain way, or my willingness to blow

up on somebody when I'm angry, or my willingness to go down into a dark hole

every time somebody overlooks me or passes over me or is mean to me.

Or my inability to think that God really loves me or can forgive me or my desire,

my decision that I can never find happiness again since this thing happened

or that person died or this diagnosis came into our family?

Is that the decision you wanna look like when you die?

Or do you wanna transform your life? Do you wanna change everything?

Do you want to make a new brain for yourself? Because, friend,

you are not stuck with the brain you have.

The older you get, yes, you realize you were born looking like your folks,

but you die looking like your decisions.

But even the neuroscientists now are saying it clearly.

It is absolutely crystal clear that this incredible brain in your head,

my friend, behaves according to how you tell it to behave.

It's the brain's astonishing power, Jeffrey Schwartz said.

To learn and unlearn, to adapt and change, to carry with it the inscriptions

of our experiences that allows us to throw off the shackles. Remember Hebrews 12?

Cast off anything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and the

thought processes that are holding you back, my friend, look in my eyes.

If you're one of the paid subscribers and you're watching this video,

look in my eyes right now with the bad lighting and everything,

in my hoodie, with my cup of coffee, Look in my eyes.

You have to believe the sentence Jeffrey Schwartz wrote.

It is the life you lead that creates the brain you have. It is not your parents.

It is not your grandparents. It is not the mistakes you've made.

You can choose those things to become true if you want.

But if you want to come alive again after the massive thing,

if you want to take up the treatment plan that I've given you and hope is the

first dose, I'm holding it up to the camera right now.

If you You want to know how to change your mind and change your life. You have to believe.

You're going to die looking like the decisions that you make.

You're going to. So what decisions do you want to make? Are you ready to make some radical changes?

Listen, applying the treatment plan, friend, it hurts, okay?

Self-brain surgery is not easy. It's going to leave a mark. It's going to leave a scar.

It's going to require some soul surgery. It's going to hurt a little bit.

But it will change your life because there is a treatment plan,

and hope is the first dose.

Go get it, read it, live it. Change those decisions and start today. One, two, three, four.

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 wleewarrantmd.com slash prayer,

wleewarrantmd.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.