The Gift of Self-Respect (Self-Brain Surgery Saturday)

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

We're here for a little self-brain surgery.

It's Saturday of Christmas week. It's almost Christmas Eve, and I'm going to

give you a Christmas present today.

This is an episode that we recorded last year, right before Christmas,

and it's a great Christmas present.

It's about learning how to respect yourself again after you've been through

massive things, things, hard things, difficult things, major traumas and trials,

sometimes you start to feel unworthy, unlovable, unnoticed, unseen.

Maybe God's forgotten you. You start feeling like you're not who you're supposed to be.

And losing that self-respect will keep you stuck and mired in loathing and shame

and in the past and in mourning and all those things.

And so we're going to learn how to get back our self-respect,

and that's a great Christmas present because you can't really help anybody else

if you can't see how loved and cherished you are in God's eyes.

So I'm gonna give you this, and we're taking a couple of days off from new episodes

here as we get close to Christmas, but I wanna make sure that if you find yourself

driving, working out, alone, if you have to work,

that you have something valuable to listen to on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day,

the day after, and today, which is the day before Christmas Eve,

I just want to make sure you have this gift because it'll change your mind about

who you are, how loved you are what God thinks of you and once you have that

right everything else will start to fall in line listen,

it's a great Christmas present learning how to get your self-respect back we

love you, we're praying for you we want you to remember that you can become

healthier and feel better and be happier and you can change your mind and you

can change your life you just have to start today Merry Christmas Hey my friend,

good to have you back on the show today I am thinking about Christmastime.

And if you were going to think about a gift you could give to yourself,

the best one probably is self-respect.

We're going to talk today about respect, not the kind that you get from other

people, but the kind that you give yourself.

And there's two parts to this podcast. In the first part, we'll talk about where

we've been. And in the second part, we'll talk about where we're going.

You always hear me talk about how you can't change your life until you change

your mind, but learning to respect ourselves, regardless of our past,

is one of the secrets to becoming healthier, feeling better, and being happier.

So today, we're gonna take it deeper. We're gonna make it more personal,

and we're gonna talk about what happens when life is so hard that we not only

lose hope, but we lose self-respect.

If life has beaten you up, you may find it hard to feel hopeful about the future,

But I believe the first step in finding hope again is to just understand the

unique value that you have as a human being, to learn to respect yourself,

to believe in what you and you alone bring to the world and how much we all need you.

Look, you can't change your life until you change your mind.

If you don't believe in yourself, if you don't respect yourself,

you're going to be stuck in an endless loop, fearing that the past will always determine the future.

You're going to be looking over your shoulder, afraid that those people or events

that harmed you, abused you, labeled you, defined you, that they're going to

show up again and prove they were right all along.

But we're going to change that. We are not letting you see the end of yourself.

You're only getting started with the life God intends for you to have.

So we're going to start respecting ourselves, and we're going to start today.

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.

Find little reward in asking other people for the recognition that you deserve,

thanks, appreciation, etc.

And the same thing applies with apologies, recognition of special events,

like when you have to say, hey, did you forget today's our anniversary?

Or did you forget that it's my birthday? You never really get what you want out of that.

It doesn't feel right when you have to tell people to recognize you, does it?

But there's another thing that you also can't demand, and that's respect.

If you have to ask somebody for it, they don't deserve you. And let me tell you a story.

A while back, I was a member of a leadership group in an organization.

And it was a really, to me, a great honor to be asked to serve in that way.

And I was really proud of having been trusted with the opportunity.

But one day we had a special meeting with another organization. It was kind of a big deal.

And there were a lot of big decisions that needed to be made.

But when we got there, I noticed that my name had been left off the printed

list of leaders on our side of the deal.

It just wasn't there. We went through the meeting, and the whole time I was

thinking about why my name wasn't there.

Did they consider me not to be a valid member of the team? Was I an afterthought?

Did I have less credibility to speak up and be part of the conversation and.

Help make decisions because somebody overlooked my name on the paper?

And I really struggled with this for a few minutes. And when we got to the part

of the meeting where we introduced ourselves, I thought I would just say who

I was and that my name had been left off.

But something stopped me. I didn't say anything about it. I made a decision.

I realized that I was probably the only person in the room who even noticed

that my name wasn't there.

And if I mentioned it or made a big deal out of it, it would only make me look insecure or petty.

I was in the room, after all, and nobody was telling me I didn't have a place

there, which meant that everybody knew I was supposed to be there.

And here's what I realized.

My name being left off the piece of paper did not invalidate my place at the table.

I made a decision to let my presence in the meeting be defined by my behavior

and not by my pettiness or being left off the list.

I was a valid member of the organization, and the reason I was was that I was a good leader.

I had been invited to be there because of my skills and in leadership.

And if I focused on being offended or overlooked, I could have either limited

my effectiveness in the meeting, or I could have made myself look small in the

eyes of the other attendees. You get it?

I had to be okay with knowing who I was and living that out,

even if other people didn't acknowledge it.

Now, why am I telling you this story? Because here's the truth.

I was offended that my name wasn't there. But I was there, and I was there for a reason.

I was there to be the most effective leader that I could be.

And the bottom line is, you can be offended or you can be effective,

but you can't be both at the same time.

Remember last week when we talked about quantum physics? Well,

offense is not a quantum issue.

Offense is a singular internal problem that gets you focused on your own issues

and not what's going on around you.

You cannot sit in a meeting thinking of all the ways these people have disappointed

you or hurt your feelings and still be effective and present in the meeting.

And you cannot demand that they respect you. You have to perform in a way that's

worthy of respect, and it'll come.

And you have to be respectful of others and give respect to get it.

Now, what's that have to do with faith, doubt, and neuroscience, you might ask?

Well, let me tell you about two of my friends. I have these two friends that

came from different places.

They both grew up in different situations, but there were some common elements

that are interesting to me as I engaged with them later in their lives.

The first friend grew up in a really small town in a family that basically was

very poor, in a set of relatives and surrounding people that were just not going

anywhere in their lives. They'd lived in the same place.

None of them had real successful careers.

None of them had any great financial or academic success.

And the family dynamic was pretty stressed and they had a tragedy in their family

when my friend was at a pretty young age and that sort of defined the relationship

between the parents and the siblings and the situation just wasn't really conducive

to growing up in a really emotionally healthy way.

But my friend had this situation where they were successful in school.

And so even though they were raised in this difficult situation,

they did well enough in school that they recognized, or somebody at least recognized

them and pointed them towards the idea that they could get out of that situation

by succeeding academically.

And so my friend did that, ended up growing up and putting themselves through

school and getting scholarships and working in different jobs and ultimately

became a healthcare professional.

And today is very very successful in their chosen field and has overcome that difficult background.

My other friend grew up in a larger town, but in a really difficult family situation.

There was a lot of abuse. There was drug abuse. There was physical abuse.

And there was just a lot of difficult situations. And multiple relatives of

my friend had spent time in jail at different times.

I mean, this was a bad situation for a little kid to grow up in.

But somebody mentored my friend and got them involved in a youth organization

and gave them some place to go after school and on the weekends where they could

have a safer and more comfortable environment.

And this friend too was a smart kid and somebody recognized that and pushed them academically.

And my friend ended up going to college and getting some scholarships and ended

up also becoming a healthcare professional.

But what's interesting is that one of my friends has shaken off that difficult

background and almost uses it like a superpower. power.

They're very engaging and dynamic and they look out, they have a lot of empathy

for other people and they use

their story to help people see that they could live a better story too.

But my other friend, you can at different times almost see them living in the

shadow of their upbringing.

They recognize that they've done something good with their life and they want

respect so bad, they want affirmation so badly that it tears them up when people

don't acknowledge them and don't affirm that they're successful.

It's almost like they're not sure that they really are successful, but they are.

One of my friends has recognized how powerful their story is.

And the other one just can't seem to see it, that if they could live life with

the lessons they learned from that background, but not let it label them.

Then they would have a better ability to be happier and more centered in their life.

Now, one of them craves other people's affirmation. The other one lavishes it

onto others, and it really comes back in spades.

So I told you about those two people because I want you to understand one thing.

Your past should shape you, but it should not define you.

Now, there's a problem when we've got certain things in our past.

If there's been some sexual trouble, bad relationships, financial failures, abuse,

certain kinds of sin patterns, addictions, there are some things that life kind of uses,

I think the enemy, Satan, uses to put a label on you where you start feeling

that those things define who you are.

They make you feel that certain things are true of you even if you're not in

the situation anymore. more.

But the truth is, those things are not who you are.

The past, the things that we've done and the situations we've been in are not

who we are unless we choose to let them be.

So a big part of self-respect, to get back to that, is to understand that we

are not who we used to be unless we choose to be.

And if you've been through some stuff, if you've done some things that you wish

you hadn't done, if you've been some places you shouldn't have been,

if you've done some things that you're you're not proud of, then the best way

to start respecting yourself again is to make a decision that tomorrow is going

to look different than yesterday did.

And then be proud of the promises you're keeping to yourself.

Look, it's almost New Year, and everybody talks about New Year's resolutions.

And I think the best one you could make is to decide that you're not going to

wear the label of what happened to you in the past, or what you did in the past,

or where you came from in the past.

You're not going to let that label or define you, but you are going to let it

shape you and better you and let it be part of your story that you can use to help other people.

Let's let that be a New Year's resolution. How about that? Let's be proud of

the promises that we're going to keep for ourselves in 2020.

I'm not sure if you need to hear this right now, but I know somebody does.

So I'm going to say it. If it's not you, tell it to somebody else. Here it it is.

Here's what God says about it. If you'll give him the chance to take care of you.

My dad would snap his fingers right now and say, look in my eyes.

You can't look in my eyes right now, but hear me.

Here's God about to tell you, look in my eyes. I want you to receive this.

Here it is. Isaiah 118 in the NIV says this.

God says, come now, let us settle the matter, says the Lord.

Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow.

Though they were red as crimson, and they shall be like wool. What's he saying?

God is saying, look in my eyes, and we're gonna settle this right now.

Your value is not about the things that you've done in the past.

I'm gonna wash all that away.

I'm getting rid of it. Your value is because I say you're valuable.

Just hear that. Psalm 103.12, and the voice says this.

You see, God takes all our crimes, our seemingly inexhaustible sins, and removes them.

As far as east is from west, he removes them from us. And that's what I have for you today, friend.

Even if you're not receiving this in a spiritual way, you don't have to,

but just understand what I'm saying.

The past cannot define you unless you let it because it is gone. on.

Yesterday is as far from you now as east is from west.

You need to feel secure. You need to feel safe. You need to feel like your future is hopeful.

Try this from John 10, 28 through 30.

Jesus said, I give them eternal life and they shall never perish.

No one will snatch them out of my hand. Look, the point here is that nothing

in your past can make God think less of you.

So why should it make you feel less of yourself unless you give up and decide

to let it? even if you're not spiritual, receive this message.

Your past can inform you, it can shape you, it can instruct you,

it can sharpen you, it can improve you if you use it as a teacher.

But if you let it label you, you're in trouble.

We've been talking about how people handle hardship in the last few episodes of this podcast.

And the first parts of my new book are all about brain cancer and trauma and

difficult medical situations and how people deal with that.

And it's all about how you encounter hardship and somehow find or regain faith

and hope in the midst of those difficulties.

But trouble in your past is just as real and just as hard as handling disease or illness or trauma.

And it can leave the same types of scars on you.

So today, I want you to understand that looking back at your past should be

the genesis of a new type of self-respect.

Because as we talked about in the episode when I told you about Fibonacci,

and last week when we talked about quantum physics, Your life is a series of

equations and complications that produce who you are right now.

And so unless you decide to live in the past and let it define you,

you need to start being proud that you came through it and you're the person that you are now.

Because your story was given to you to make you able to impact the world in

the way that you need to right now.

Think about your life, your past, your story as like a crown on your head that

you can't take off, like something that's visible from the outside.

So if your past is gonna be a crown on your head that shows the world who you

are, the question is this, is it a crown of roses or is it a crown of thorns?

So let's leave the past in the past, and let's mine it for its lessons,

but let's don't let it poke our skin and our scalp and make us bleed anymore.

Let's let it become a superpower for us.

But before we go on to talk about how we're going to do that in the future,

here's this week's things that will help.

I ran across a little book called Rules for a Knight, K-N-I-G-H-T,

Rules for a Knight by Ethan Hawke, the actor.

I didn't know he was a writer, but it turns out he's actually a remarkable writer.

In addition to being a very talented actor.

And Rules for a Knight is a great story.

In fact, I think every dad should read it with their sons and their daughters.

Here's the synopsis. This guy loses his grandmother, and at the funeral,

all the family is going through the grandmother's house.

And up in the attic, the guy discovers a book, a little journal,

that was written by his ancestor. It was a mid-century knight.

And the guy, the knight, was writing to his children because he was about to

leave the next day for a battle and it looked pretty ominous and he was afraid

he would be killed in the battle.

I'm not gonna tell you what ultimately happened, but he writes this letter to

his kids to leave a record of all the things he knows about how to live a good life.

And it's a great story about how to be a knight. And if you think about a knight,

that's a noble, strong person who can go through battles and hard things,

but is also kind and loving.

It's a great metaphor for being a good person.

And my favorite rule, by the way, is that a knight doesn't go around telling

people he's a knight. He just lives like one.

And so I think the book is really helpful because it gives you some perspective

and some rules and just thinking about honor and dignity and love and charity

and mercy and justice and all these great things.

And it doesn't come at it from a spiritual context, but just the idea of how

to live in a more noble way.

And I think it's a message that we all need right now. No.

Okay. So we talked about the past and we've talked about where we've been in

our lives and how that can affect how we see ourselves and how much or little

self-respect or self-esteem we have. And here's why that matters.

It matters because if and when, or I should say when, not if,

you encounter hard things in your future, because you will, how you see yourself,

the way that you respect yourself will affect your faith and your hope and how

you handle doubt and how you move forward through that trial.

So we need to get right about the past and who we are.

When bad things happen, if you're not really clear about who you are,

then when something bad happens in your life, the enemy, your brain,

your heart, the actual spiritual enemy of your soul is going to say to you, okay, here we go again.

This is going to happen again because that's what always happens to you.

Well, you need to get right about the past and who you are so that you'll be

ready when you encounter a trial and you can see the best path forward into a better, healthier,

happier future instead of giving in to all those lies that your brain and your

heart and your enemy are going to tell you. But there's one thing to be careful of.

Balanced, happy people learn from their past. They know who they are,

and they use their lives to build themselves into a solid person who can bless

other people. But there's a fine line between confidence and arrogance.

You think about the people that you know who seem to be unassailable.

Nothing's ever their fault.

Nothing ever is their problem. They're like the guy in Proverbs 30,

12, who says, there's a kind of person who is without fault in his own estimation,

but has not been scrubbed clean of his own sordidness.

Some people build a suit of armor around themselves like knights wear,

but they build an armor around themselves cells because life's been hard.

So they project this spirit of impenetrability. That's a big word.

It's early in the morning.

They project this idea that nothing can get to me. You can't hurt me. You can't touch me.

Remember that song, really great song that Townes Van Zandt wrote,

Poncho and Lefty. There's a line in that song that I love.

Living on the road, my friend, was supposed to keep you free and clean.

But now you wear your skin like iron and your breath's as hard as kerosene.

Listen, that's a person who's let a hard life make them hard.

And the point of me talking about self-respect today is this.

Life is hard, but you don't have to be.

There's a difference between resilience and impenetrability.

And we need to be vulnerable, real, honest with ourselves and others about how we feel.

Not cold, arrogant, untouchable, afraid to be hurt again, and wounded beyond

repair or scared of our own shadow.

Life is hard, but everything that's happened adds up to where we are now.

And God has a purpose for today and for the rest of your life.

So live it, be accessible to others so that your story can be redeemed by helping

someone else live theirs in a healthier way.

Those people who are without fault in their own estimation or whose skin has

become like iron, they've let life win. in.

They've created a system in which they can't get hurt again or at least ever

show anybody else hurt. But that's no way to live.

And I think the secret to having self-respect is to see your life through the lens of faith.

You didn't get through all that stuff by yourself after all.

And you don't have to go through whatever comes next by yourself either.

But you are strong and your life has made you a gift that God expects you to

use to help other people.

So respect is one of those those things you can't demand.

But guess what? You don't have to, because you already have it.

As long as you remember that you're a knight.

You don't have to go around telling everybody to love you, to respect you,

to honor you, because if you love yourself and respect yourself and honor yourself

and honor what God has done in your life, everybody else will see that.

That's a beautiful thing.

Self-respect is attractive.

It's magnetic, and it is the opposite of arrogance.

Look, when life beats you up, the enemy will make you doubt everything.

When life gets after us and tears us up, the enemy starts telling us that we

have no value, that we don't have ability to make good decisions,

that we're not good, or even the hope that things can ever be better.

We start accepting labels and letting other people define us or needing their approval.

But God says he's enough for you. In 2 Corinthians 12, 9, there's a situation

where Paul's talking about some thorn in the flesh, he calls it,

some kind of problem that he had.

And he didn't tell us what it was, but I wish he had.

He had this thorn in the flesh, and it says three times he asked God to take

it away. And God said, my grace is sufficient for you.

And that's what I want you to hear this morning. His grace is sufficient for you.

Your past adds up to who you are right now, which means that you've been through

some stuff and that stuff can be used to build you into someone with a gift to give the world.

So don't land on either side of this.

One side is a wounded, crushed person who desperately need someone else's approval or affection.

The other side to land that's bad is don't land as a person so armored up with

thick, hard skin like iron and insulated that no one can get to you.

Those two places are not where I want you to land.

Here's where I want you to land. Your life matters because God says it does.

Your life matters because you are intrinsically valuable as a a human being,

as valuable as anybody else.

And you can have faith and hope in the future because you've made it through a lot of stuff already.

You don't have to tell people you're a knight. You don't have to tell people

that you're successful.

You don't have to tell them that you're good. You don't have to tell them that

you're lovable. If you love yourself, they'll want to know how they can be more like you.

That's the truth. Listen, the best thing you you can do is to remember why you're here.

You are here wherever you are because God intends for you to redeem the past,

to make today the day that you see yourself clearly.

Are you perfect? No, nobody is. But you're a knight. You're a warrior because

you're still on the battlefield.

You didn't give up. And don't start now.

Don't stop seeing yourself as a lovable person who has a lot to offer the world.

My father-in-law always says this, be kind to yourself.

Start respecting yourself and have faith that God made you in his image because

he wanted to see all you do with it. And 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.