The Plan for Hope (Mind Change Monday)

Good morning, my friend. I hope you're doing well.

Dr. Lee Warren here with you for a Mind Change Monday episode of Self-Praying Surgery.

We are going to have a great Monday.

I hope that the Lord blesses you today and that you have the best Monday of your whole life.

That's what we're praying for. If you're going through something hard, we are praying for you.

Don't forget the prayer wall is out there at your disposal. WleeWarrenMD.com slash prayer people all over the world ready to pray with and for you if you've got something going on

We'd love to hear from you. Hey this morning. I have been battling,

Technological we beasties having all kinds of trouble with audio and some kind of computer issued this morning.

That has just basically taken up my entire time that I was going to record and give you a new episode. So,

Instead of a new episode where I cannot seem to pull off What's been going on with the audio? I'm going to give you back a Mind Change

Monday episode from season 8 called The Plan for Hope. Now you're gonna hear me

talking about pre-ordering the book and all that. The book came out already obviously

and if you haven't read Hope is the First Dose yet, please do so. It's gonna

help you, I promise, but in the meantime I'm gonna tell you why you need a plan.

Why you need a plan for hope. My book is about a treatment plan or what you do

when trauma and tragedy and massive things hit your heart, hit your life, wipe

you out? How do you manage to find hope again? How do you manage to hold on to faith? How

do you manage to put your life back together when the hard things are going on? That's

what we're going to talk about today. We're going to go back a little bit in time, back

to early July and give you Mind Change Monday, the plan for hope, because I think it's going

to be helpful to you. In the meantime, pray that I get the issues worked out so that I

can bring you the episode I was working on at the appropriate time. And God bless you,

My friend, I hope you have an amazing day.

And I just 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 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.

Let's get after it.

Music.

My book, Hope is the First Dose, is coming out in 15 days. So two weeks from tomorrow,

Hope is the First Dose, a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy,

and other massive things will be available everywhere books are sold.

You can pre-order it now.

And in a couple of days, a few days, I'm going to have a link for you to go to

where you can get all kinds of special resources to download if you pre-ordered the book.

All you have to do is upload your proof of purchase to Penguin Random House,

and they will send you a whole bunch of stuff,

lock screens, home screens, screen savers for your computer and phone,

Spotify playlist that we made that's music that goes along with the book,

some songs that Mitch liked

and some songs that were important to us after we lost Mitch,

and some songs that'll help you kind of work through hard things and land on hope.

And it finishes with Tommy Walker's song, I Have a Hope. And it's just a great playlist.

It's a couple of hours that you can listen to while you're reading or meditating

or doing your quiet time.

And I think songs that'll help you. And that playlist is gonna be updated as time goes on.

Every time I change it, the link that you go to will reflect changes in the playlist.

So that'll be useful. And then also some sample chapters

and some special things that you have access to

that you don't have access to if you buy the book after it's on sale everywhere else.

So pre-orders help us a lot, so thanks for that.

We'll give you some special content and some bonus things that you can only have

if you pre-order the book. Stay tuned for that.

Listen, the treatment plan.

Is my way of saying, after we lost our son, and after I've been with lots of people

during their massive things, their traumas and tragedies and hard things in life, what do you do next?

What do you do? How do you find your way back? How do you find your way back so you can grab that promise

that Jesus made in John 10, 10, that life is abundant,

that he came here to give us an abundant life in spite of all the hard things

that he promised us we would face, because you're going to, okay?

And today we're gonna just talk for a couple of minutes, a few minutes, about why the treatment

plan is so important and what the elements of it are.

And I'm just gonna give you some things to think about as you become a self-brain surgeon

to find your way through after these massive things happen.

And we're gonna finish with a song that's on the Spotify playlist for Hope is the First

Dose from J.J. Heller called Your Hands.

It's a great song that I never heard before until I was working on this book and this playlist.

On this song, it's so encouraging and it's so honest and vulnerable and just

excited about sharing that with you at the end of this episode. And I'm going to

give you some things to think about so that you can find your way back to

the light no matter what life brings you, no matter how dark it feels or how

hopeless you sometimes can feel after these massive things occur. And the most

important thing is that you can't change your life until you change your mind and

you have to start today. I was on the Jesus Calling podcast the other day and.

And we had a really great conversation.

And one of the things they asked me, it really helped me kind of clarify the messaging.

I'm gonna be doing a lot of public speaking and speaking in some churches around the country,

and I'll make sure you're aware wherever you live, if I'm gonna be somewhere close by,

we'd love for you to come out to the event and shake your hand, take a picture,

sign a book together, and just get to know you.

But one of the questions that really helped clarify my thinking around the messaging of this book was why.

Why do you need a treatment plan? How do you explain to people why you say they need a treatment plan

for these traumas and tragedies and massive things?

And the first reason is, well, I'm a doctor, so I'm in the business of giving people treatment plans

for their back pain and their brain tumors and their aneurysms and their glioblastomas and all that stuff.

That's what I do. That's just naturally the way that I think.

So obviously, if I'm going to describe to you the way in which I recovered,

Lisa recovered, our family recovered from losing a child and how I've helped thousands of patients now and their families

deal with hard things that come along in their lives.

It's always wrapped in medical kinds of language because it's real for me. It's what I do.

But on a very real sense also we understand now from neurobiology and neuroscience and epigenetics and all these things

that we've been talking about lately that when you change the way you think

and when you change your perspective on things you literally change your brain.

And so you really are doing self-brain surgery when you learn how to get your brain under control.

And one of the things we know from trauma, and this is why PTSD and post-traumatic stress syndrome

and all that is so real and so troublesome, is that trauma changes the way you think

towards the negative and makes you believe a whole bunch of things that aren't really true.

Like, I'm always gonna be a victim, I'm always gonna be broken,

this is always gonna be how I feel, I can't ever get over this.

And after you lose a child, you have all kinds of things, guilt, shame, somehow blaming yourself for what happened

for sort of wishing that it could be different than it is and knowing that it won't be,

so your brain starts telling you, you're just always gonna be broken and sad

and you just won't ever feel happy again.

And the fact is, that isn't true, because you can actually find happiness again.

And for me, it came down to two things Jesus said.

It came down to John 16, 33, where it says, "'In this world, you will have trouble.'"

You're gonna have trouble here, friend.

Brian and Lola and Catherine and John and Jim, you're gonna have trouble in this life.

Even Leah and Lisa, you're gonna have some trouble.

But he also said in John 10, 10, he said, the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy,

but I have come that they might have life.

You might have life and have it abundantly. He says in the same breath,

the thief came to this place to take away your joy.

He's gonna steal and kill and destroy your quality of life. And that's what all these hard things

have the potential to do, but I have come that you might have life and have it

abundantly." And he's talking about now. Like there is a way that you can have an

abundant and rich life in spite of the fact that you're going to have TMT, these

massive things that are gonna happen. And so when this lady from Jesus Calling

asked me, hey, why do you need a treatment plan? It dawned on me, I'd never said it

this way, but we teach people...

How to prepare for things, even if they're not very likely. Imagine, you remember back in school,

they taught you to stop, drop, and roll if you ever catch on fire?

The number of times they taught me stop, drop, and roll made me think that I was probably going to catch on fire

a lot more times than I actually have in my life.

Because looking back over 54 years, you know what? I've never caught on fire,

but I have a plan in my mind for what I'm going to do should I ever burst into flames.

I'm gonna stop, drop, and roll.

You probably are too.

They taught you all kinds of things like that, that we teach people how to do CPR

in case somebody has a heart attack in front of us, right?

We teach people how to change flat tires in case you have a flat tire so you won't be stranded on the roadside.

We teach people these basic things just to be prepared in case something happens.

But how many times have you ever been instructed, have you ever been taught to think ahead in your life

and what are you going to do if some massive tragedy befalls you?

What are you gonna think about? What are you going to do next?

Who are you going to call? What are you going to read? What are you going to think about?

How are you going to prepare yourself for this massive thing?

And the funny thing is, massive things happen to 100% of humans that have ever lived or ever will live on this planet, which

means it's not silly, and it's not morbid for you to think ahead and say, what am I going to do if something really

bad happens in my life?

How am I going to handle that?

Well, I had a patient, and I wrote about him in the book. His name was Lucky Chuck, and Lucky Chuck's wife got sick,

Wanda, got breast cancer, and she told him

before they ever got the biopsy result back, she said, Chuck, you need to make some decisions right now

about what you think about God and who he is.

You need to decide that you trust him or not right now before things get hard, because you're gonna need him.

You're gonna need to be able to rely on him when this gets hard, if I get really sick,

and if I die, you're going to need to not be mad at him, you're going to need to know who he is.

And so she instructed him wisely to think ahead and be prepared of what he was going to think about

and what he was going to fall back on, what he was going to rely on,

how he was going to build his thought processes up

to be prepared, right? That's self brain surgery.

So we talk about in the book, we talk about the treatment plan

and the treatment plan starts with this prehab,

this preparing your mind for what you're gonna do.

For me, that's filling my heart with stuff that I know is true, scriptures, worship songs,

great writing, books that I've read, the things that I know are true,

that when troublesome times happen,

instead of this despair that I'm predisposed to feel, and you will, you'll feel it anyway,

but instead of being lost in it,

you'll start hearing some echoes of other true things to replace, sort of biopsy those negative thoughts

and replace them with more true things.

Like for me, it was, you're always gonna be sad and miserable as you lost your son,

but then I would also remember, well, wait a minute, I've got four children, I've got grandchildren,

I've got a loving wife, I've gotta hold on and steward these relationships.

I am always going to be sad about Mitchell, but I haven't lost my entire life.

And a friend of mine said, hey, Mitch wouldn't want his death to have a 200% mortality rate,

which means he said, you don't have to die here. Mitch wouldn't want you to die too.

You can't die even in your heart. You've got to live. You live for him, make him proud of you,

tell a story with your life that matters so he would be encouraged and uplifted

by what his life motivated you to become

instead of the fact that his death destroyed you.

Your son wouldn't want you to die with him.

And that was profound to me, that idea that one death should not produce 200% mortality rate, right?

So, in the Jesus Calling podcast, we had this amazing conversation,

and you'll be able to hear it when it comes out in a few weeks.

I'll send you the link.

And I'm going to be story in their magazine in October, too, about this.

But you're going to be able to hear this conversation we had about how I realized

that you need to have a treatment plan in place because this is more likely to happen in your life

than you catching on fire.

You're going to have a massive thing. Somebody's gonna die. Somebody's gonna cheat.

You're gonna get bad news from the doctor. The financial situation is gonna happen.

The pandemic's gonna occur. You're gonna have some kind of issue that's massive for you.

And maybe it's not even medical or devastating like a loss of a child.

It might be the death of a dream. It might be that you don't get something that you've worked so hard for.

It might be that you get passed over for a promotion that you've passionately pursued for your whole career.

It might be that it just doesn't work out. your life just doesn't work out the way you wanted it to

or you thought it would.

And that's just as real of a trauma. It's just as real of a tragedy.

It's just as massive of a thing as losing a child, if that's what your heart was set on.

You can't have a relative, you can't judge the pain that you feel over whatever it is that you lose

or whatever it is that you're suffering from based on how somebody else's is bigger in your mind

than yours is. It's just not that way. So the bottom line is this, you've got to be prepared

for these massive things that come along. Now we talk about in this idea of having a

society of self-brain surgeons and one of these days I'm going to get you a t-shirt

or a certificate if you want to join the Society of Self-Brained Surgeons.

I'm going to get you some way to prove that and put it on your shelf because I think it's important.

It's way more important than being a member of the Society of Neurological Surgeons which

is a hoity-toity group of department chairmen who sit around and talk about how great they are.

This is more important than that. The Society of Self-Brained Surgeons is a group of people who are learning how to change

their minds so they can change their lives, tell better stories, change their future generations of their family.

I'm sorry my voice has given me so much trouble this morning,

and I apologize for the creakiness in my sound, but this is really important, okay?

The way you become a self-brain surgeon is first you take the oath,

I will relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise.

You're gonna first do no harm, just like we promise ourselves in medical school,

primum non necessary, first no harm.

I will relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise. This gets into not paying tomorrow taxes,

It gets into learning how to stop negative thinking and it's tracks to biopsy your thoughts

and get them under control. It gets into all of that stuff.

Relentlessly refuse to participate in your own demise.

And that starts with the three things we have to believe. Number one, feelings are not facts, they are chemical events in your brain, they are not

always true and you have to think about them and understand what you're feeling and how

to change it or how to change what you're doing in response to those feelings so that

you feel better things because feelings are not facts.

Number two, thoughts are not always true. In fact, five to one, they're usually not true.

And after the massive thing happens, you're going to have a host of lying, dirty, horrible,

It's aimed at making you think that it can never feel better than it feels right now

or that it will never be better than it is right now.

So those are two things. Feelings aren't facts. Not every thought you have is true.

And finally, by changing how you think, you can change how your brain works and by changing

how your brain works, you can change everything else about how the cells in your body down to your DNA behave.

And you can change your life by changing your mind. And now we know from epigenetics, you can change your children's lives and your grandchildren's

lives.

And so you have a choice. Does this massive thing create an alcoholic or a divorced person or a pornography addict

or an overeater or an overspender?

Does this massive thing turn you into this sad person whose life is wrecked and that

produces a generation of children after you who learned to handle their problems by turning

to numbing behaviors from you, and that becomes how your family handles trauma and stress

down through the ages, and your great-grandchildren are alcoholics because of that decision?

Or does your family learn from you that when they face massive things, they learn how to

think and get their thinking under control, they learn how to change their minds, and

they hold on to things that are true, and they find faith and hope in life again?

And that your children and their children and their children learn from you and your life that when you have massive things occur

That you stand up to them face into them and fight for the light you flex the muscles of memory and movement to find hope

Again, and you tell a better story with your life You find those things that are true and you engaged in prehab and you learn self brain surgery

And then you did rehab by getting a strong community around you and practicing those things you've learned over and over until they become second nature

and then your thinking becomes more positive at its baseline and you handle

the next massive thing more resiliently and better than you did the first time

and that's what your family learns from you and that's what your friends learn

from you and you break generational curses and you say this far and no

farther I will not pay a tomorrow tax anymore based on trying not to feel things I will learn how to understand what I'm feeling and get control of

those thoughts and change my mind and change my life by putting it in the hands of the one the great physician who can help me. That's what self-brain

surgery will do for you my friend. I remember we're not gonna do any harm to

ourselves right? So if you fall down and hit your head at home and you're bleeding and you have a head injury and I don't know about it as a surgeon and

you die from that it's not my fault because I didn't know about it didn't have an opportunity to take care of you. But if you hit your head and they take

you to the ER and my colleague the ER doctor Renee Engler or they're one of

those great ER physicians at our hospital calls me and says,

John here has a brain hemorrhage and you need to come save his life and I turn the phone off and go back to.

Hey...

Sleep I have committed malpractice against you because I knew what was wrong

And I did not take action even though I had the capacity to do so right that would be malpractice,

Now I'm just telling you friend if you know,

That you have a thought pattern or a tendency towards certain thought patterns,

And you don't interact with them if you know massive things are coming and you don't prepare for them.

If you know how to change your mind and change your life and you choose not to, it's more easy for you

or more comforting for you to hold on to those negative patterns and embrace those dumbing behaviors

and do the things that you've always done to handle stress and strain and hardship.

If you choose not to change your mind and change your life, guess what?

You're committing malpractice against yourself.

How tragic is that? We are participating in our own demise. Let's not do that, okay?

Tomorrow's July 4th in the United States, it's Independence Day.

It's time for you to declare your independence from the things that you've been holding on to

that are holding you back.

Cast off everything that hinders, the Bible says in Hebrews 12,

and run without hindrance, the race that you're being called to run.

Listen, you gotta change your mind if you wanna change your life.

You gotta stop paying tomorrow taxes. You gotta declare yourself independent and free

from all those behaviors and thoughts and hindrances that have been holding you back.

It's time to draw a line in the sand.

And it's time to change our minds and change our lives. It's time to stop, drop, and roll

and engage those things that we now know to be true.

It's time to become self-brain surgeons. It's time to engage the treatment plan.

And guess what? Hope is the first dose.

You can't change your life until you change your mind, friend, and the good news is 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.