This is War (for your mind)

Hey friend, I'm Dr. Lee Warren. Hopefully your favorite internet and maybe real life brain surgeon.

Hopefully you don't need a real life brain surgeon, but hey,

we're here today to get some self brain surgery done and that's just as important

because it's every second of every day, every thought you think,

everything that you do in your life starts with your thinking and that requires

self brain surgery if you want to master it so you can become healthier and

feel better and be happier.

Today we're going to get after something incredibly important,

but before we do, I have a question for you.

Have you ever felt like you were in danger like like

nothing was safe and you couldn't do anything about it everything

around you was going to hurt you in some way maybe

emotionally maybe physically you were in some situation that you didn't have

a way out of you didn't have any control over and you couldn't do anything about

how it made you feel you ever been there i remember my first mortar attack in

iraq i was a young neurosurgeon went to school on an air force scholarship ended up in Iraq.

If you've read my book, No Place to Hide, then you know all about that.

If you haven't, it's a great gift for somebody for Veterans Day or if you have

somebody you love who's struggling with PTSD or has gone through something hard

or somebody that's a veteran or somebody else who's been through something really difficult.

That book, No Place to Hide, is my war story. It's about going to war and coming

home and all the things it does to your life and your heart when you go through

something hard like that.

But I remember what it felt like to be there. And the very first night I got

there, we had a mortar attack and the sirens go off and I hadn't been briefed

yet on what you were supposed to do.

Like we had all these bunkers and we had these protocols and things we were

supposed to do, but because I just got there and it was middle of the night,

I was super tired that they just told me to go to bed and I'd get that briefing the next day.

And I, and I had this mortar attack and I heard the sirens and I could hear

the explosions and my trailer was shaking.

And all I knew to do was pull my body armor up over my chest and put my helmet

on and try not to get blown up.

And it was terrifying. I had no control.

I was wondering if the sirens and the thuds and the explosions meant that soon

I'd be blown to bits. I was just going to be another casualty of the Iraq war.

And I went down this whole catastrophe in my mind of coming home in a body bag,

killed before I even took care of my first patient.

It was terrifying, mostly because

I literally couldn't do anything to control the situation I was in.

I had no ability to improve my eyes to survive, to make it stop.

I couldn't do anything to explain to whoever it was that was shooting at us

that I was there to help them.

I was a doctor, for crying out loud. I wasn't there to participate in the war.

I was there to try to help.

Even if they got blown up, I was there to try to take care of them.

I wanted to tell them I wasn't their enemy.

I was there to help them. Ultimately, I had to realize something.

This is war. It is what it is. I'll either survive it or not, but I am not.

I made a decision. I am absolutely not going to survive my time here if I let the fear destroy me.

I had to decide, friend, that I was going to live even if I got blown up and died.

And that moment, that mental shift is what set me free and enabled me to do

what I had to do for the rest of the time that I was at war.

If you're new around here, I'm Dr.

Lee Warren. I'm a brain surgeon, author, podcaster, but I'm also a guy who's

been through some hard stuff like you have.

And that's why I'm here talking to you, friend to friend, to tell you that I'm

so proud of you for whatever you're going through, whatever you've been through,

whatever you've experienced,

however you're suffering or whatever limit you've come up against,

and you're just tired of settling or you're tired of being sad and sick and

stressed and stuck and all that stuff.

I'm proud of you because you're doing something about it. You're not sitting

on the couch watching your life go by anymore.

You Googled it. You searched it. Somebody told you about it.

You found your way here. And we're going to get some work done today.

And it's time to get after it.

The first thing we want to do anytime we're going to do self-brain surgery is

we want to scrub in. Okay?

We're going to take a second. We're going to go to surgery. We're going to wash

all the stuff off of our hands and get all the stuff out of our minds that might

hinder us from doing the job that we're here to do today.

So first, I just want you to take some good, deep breaths in through your nose.

And let them out slowly. Why are we doing that?

Well, that's going to get command of your physiology. If you're anxious,

if you're stressed, if you've got a lot on your mind, you can take command of

that battlefield of your mind

by just taking some deep breaths and getting your vagus nerve activated,

getting your heart rate settled down, and just clearing your mind of all the

clutter and all the chatter and convince yourself that you do have some control,

even if it's over this one little fact that you can take a breath and let it out on your own desire,

your own volition, your own control,

that at least you can do that.

And once you have a firm grasp on the fact that you can, in fact,

calm yourself down, you can, in fact, decide you're going to pay attention,

you can, in fact, decide to leave all that other stuff aside for a minute so

you can get a pencil and paper or a voice message or a memo on your phone,

and you can take some notes, and you can be here with me, your friend Lee Warren,

in the fight to change our minds and change our lives.

So let's scrub in and get that done, okay? We're going to have a good talk about

all of this stuff in a little bit.

We're going to talk about the difference between your left frontal lobe and

your right frontal lobe and what it has to do with attention and what attention

and perspective have to do about life.

And we might even get a little bit into war and peace and life in general.

But before we do any of that, again, take some deep breaths,

clear your mind and hear me say, welcome to the show, friend.

I'm glad you're here to get this important and holy work done with me today

because we're going to change our minds and we're going to change our lives.

We're going to smash neuroscience and faith together.

And right now, we're going to get after it.

You know, we had this moment to sit and talk about life. We're incredibly privileged.

There's a lot of places in the world where they don't have smartphones and internet

connections and they can't choose to listen to a podcast about helping them

overcome something hard. They don't have that opportunity. So we do.

And we're going to be grateful for that because when you can shift your mind

into gratitude, It shifts away from the parts that are focusing on what you're

afraid of and the fight, flight, freeze, fear, fawn, all that limbic stuff.

We can decide to be grateful, and that's going to get our frontal lobes online,

which is what we really need to get engaged, that central executive network.

So we can make some rational decisions about how we're going to move forward

and how we're going to decide to direct our attention and perspective, okay?

Let's talk about your frontal lobes for a minute, okay?

You have two frontal lobes. In fact, I'm going to show you a brain.

This is not a former patient. Somebody asked me that one time.

It's a plastic brain, okay? And you have a left frontal lobe and a right frontal lobe.

They're two different lobes, but they're both in the front. We call them frontal

lobes, okay? Frontal lobes are about being in charge.

They're the CEO up in the executive suite, okay? But they're not identical.

We know from really good neuroscience research, and one of my favorite writers

in the area is a neuroscientist from the UK named Ian McGilchrist,

who has agreed to be on the show next March.

So God willing, that'll come to pass. But Dr. McGilchrist has written two of

the most important books about the difference between the left and the right

brain and the difference between mind and brain and all that stuff that I've ever read.

The Master and His Emissary is about the left and right halves of your brain

and why they're different and how they're different and why they should be working

together and not fighting each other.

And then his last book, The Matter with Things, is about the difference between

mind and brain and the kind of stuff that we're always talking about right here.

But McGilchrist has taught me a lot about the left and the right side of the

brain. And we're going to talk about that in just a second.

But before we do, I want to share an email with you.

I got this a couple of years ago. We talked about it on the podcast once before,

but this is a perfect time to bring this back and give it to you.

I want to give it to you right now. This is a woman who wrote in and she has

really clarified some of the ideas that I was writing about to prepare this

episode. Now, I remember this email.

I went back and found it. It was an incredible email from a listener named Jennifer

from a couple of years ago.

Jennifer, her email is going to kind of give us a basis for our talk today but

there's one more thing i need to talk to you about before we get started with

jennifer's email because i haven't said it to you yet and i want to i want to

just be really frank and honest with you for a second.

A year ago, a little over a year ago, I was approached by a podcast network.

It was run by a Christian, a group of Christians, and they put together a bunch

of really powerful podcasts, and they formed them into a network.

And they pitched me for this network to say, hey, Dr. Warren,

we love your show. We love the work you're doing.

We're going to put this network together of Christian podcasts,

and we're going to have some advertisers who are like-minded and who want to

help people grow their shows and get the message out to a wider audience and all that stuff.

And I thought it'd be a great way to help the show grow and to connect with

these other podcasters and to get to a wider audience to help these ideas get out there.

And what I didn't know was that right about the time that I signed my contract

to become part of that podcasting network, they were purchased by another podcasting

network. It had different values.

It was just after I signed the agreement, this transaction went through.

And it turned out that the company that we signed with was now part of a much

bigger company that had different values, not bad values, but just not necessarily

tied to that Christian ethic that we were originally so excited to be part of, like-minded people.

And then I all of a sudden found that I had no more control over some of the

ways that advertising was presented on my show.

So if you've been listening for a year or so, you're used to,

by now, hearing ads at the start and at the end of the podcast.

And you may not have noticed that you didn't hear those ads today because they weren't there.

So what I didn't like was, yeah, I liked getting revenue for the podcast because

it's expensive, okay, to do this.

It cost me around $4,000 a month to do all this work, all the internet stuff,

all the software licenses, hiring an assistant, hiring a web designer,

all the stuff we have to do to get this show out there, it costs a lot of money.

And so monetizing the show was great to offset some of that cost and help us

not have to pay it all out of pocket and actually to make a little bit of profit

so we could buy better microphones and invest back in the show and all that

stuff was really helpful.

But then all of a sudden I was having some emails from time to time from people

that were saying, hey, I was kind of surprised to hear this company advertised on your show.

I was kind of surprised that it felt kind of commercial. It's always felt like two friends talking.

Now it feels like there's kind of a push towards advertising and all that.

And then I had obligations to people that they sold advertising to that I had to talk about them.

And we made a very strict rule that we followed that we didn't advertise my

voice advertising anything that I wasn't actually using or didn't actually believe in.

So we found some companies that carried the mission that we agreed with and

we believed in their products and all that. But still, it was uncomfortable

to me to have to place an ad at a certain point in the middle of my show.

I'm having a conversation with you, and all of a sudden, you hear me talking about something else.

And so Lisa and I've been praying about that for a while. And that one-year

contract was about to be over at the start of September.

And we said, you know what? We need to have the revenue for the show because

it's going to help us offset all the costs.

But at the same time, we need that control back because I don't like losing

control of my message and the messaging and who's out there that I'm associating

my name with necessarily.

So we decided that we were not going to continue our association with the podcasting

network. and we're going to bring it back in-house.

And so that's going to result in some changes. You're not going to hear those automated ads.

You're not going to hear ads for LinkedIn or CatFood or any of that stuff at the front and back end.

And we're grateful for those companies that supported us. We're really grateful

for the new listeners that they found.

If you heard my voice because of the network over the last year,

I hope you'll stay with us.

But what we're going to do going forward is we're going to bring everything

back in-house, take over the hosting of the podcast again ourselves.

It's another software license we'll have to buy. But we're going to bring it

all back in so that we have control.

I'm not saying we won't ever have partners or advertising, okay?

But if we do, it's going to be at our choice, at our location of placement.

It's going to be when we decide to do it and companies that we're truly aligned

with missionally and know that if you hear me talking about a company,

it's because it's something that we use personally. We believe in.

We believe in their mission.

You may hear some ads for organizations like we used to do in the old days.

We used to run those ads for Tommy Walker Ministries and Messenger International.

If we have an organization like Voice of the Martyrs that we believe in the

work that they're doing, we may donate.

We will, in fact, donate some advertising space to those organizations.

So you may hear an ad from time to time. But if you do, you can know it's got Dr.

Warren's personal approval or I actually wrote it or I'm actually speaking it.

And it's not because we signed an agreement that took that control away from me.

So that's just a little mini commercial about the podcast. So for that reason,

this is the only episode, the only new episode that you're going to hear in

the month of September, except for.

In two weeks on a Monday, you're going to hear an episode about a book that's

coming out the following day from my publisher, Erin Carey's book called Live Beyond Your Labels.

We recorded that episode already, and her book is coming out in the middle of September.

And I committed to her to release that episode right before her book launch.

And you're going to love it.

In fact, the paid subscribers will get an early taste of that episode pretty

soon. So you're going to hear that episode.

We are going to put some new videos on YouTube throughout the month,

and the paid subscribers will be getting some video content every week.

That I'm going to take a little bit of a sabbatical to move the podcast back over to my own control.

And you're going to hear new episodes starting in October.

They're going to feel a little bit more familiar to you. If you've been listening

for a long time, it's going to feel like the old Dr.

Lee Warren podcast. And we were really proud of the fact that for the first

10 years, 11 years of the podcast, we were completely ad free.

But I'm just going to tell you that we do need your support.

And if you would just consider becoming a paid subscriber to the newsletter,

that would help us. It's $10 a month at the basic level.

And what you get in exchange for that is some free video content,

early access to podcast interviews, sometimes up to a month early before everybody else gets them.

And you get the entire back catalog of podcasts and newsletters and blog posts

on Substack that we've written.

And there'll be some other things that we'll give you in exchange for that support.

You can go to drleewarren.substack.com or my website, drleewarren.com.

You can find out all about that.

That's all we're going to say about that right now. Okay, let's talk about Jennifer's email.

Jennifer said, I'm so very thankful for your podcast, and I tell everyone about

the things I'm learning.

I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to how the brain works, and I love hearing

all your insights into science, brain function, and how all that comes together

in the scriptures. It's fascinating.

And although I'm not dealing with a difficult time right now,

I feel much more equipped to handle things when they happen.

That's a really good point, Jennifer made, by the way. We're not all going through

some kind of massive thing all the time.

We're not all going through trauma or tragedy or big upturns in our life.

In fact, I hope that you're not.

But you still need strategies and tools and tips for how to navigate the normal

days and the days when things are hard.

And the truth is, we're always in the middle of a war. You may not feel it.

You may not be aware of it. And it's one of, I think, the enemy's tricks is

to kind of get you not to be aware of the fact that you are constantly in a war for your mind,

for your mindset, for your heart, for the attention that you pay to your life

and the things that happen and the people around you and your generations.

We recently had Allie Marie Smith on the show. We talked about the algorithm from social media.

They were literally designing commercials and programs and social media platforms

to capture your attention and keep you scrolling, keep you clicking, keep you buying.

They are waging a war for your mind. And there's a spiritual war for your mind

going on, too, and for your generations.

Constant spiritual war is being fought. And if you don't believe that stuff,

if you're not into spiritual things or you're just not sure what you believe,

or if you're not really convinced that there's anything after life and just

the vast emptiness of space, and there's not much more to you than the electrical

impulses of the neurons in between your ears,

then you may not appreciate that this is actually a spiritual war.

But I think you will at least agree that you have a constant voice in your head,

generally negative, constant battle to maintain focus,

to find a way to be resilient when things are hard, to overcome and combat that

negative nagging voice that we all hear.

It's criticizing or blaming or reminding us of someplace we've been or someplace we wish we were.

And if that's the case, then yeah, maybe you're not actually going through something

hard right now, but there's a constant battle for the attention and the effort

and the energy that you place on dealing with your thoughts.

That's why we need to learn self-brain surgery. Here's the rest of Jennifer's

email. She said, my word for the year is perspective.

It's amazing how much insight I've gotten from your podcast on this topic.

My husband and I are avid hikers, and right now is the best time in Arizona to hike.

The other day, she said, I was noticing that there are times when I'm hiking,

specifically going across the water, when I get scared to take the next step.

It's mainly because I'm focused right in front of me and can't see a good place to put my foot.

Many times my husband will graciously come over to give me a shoulder to hold

on to, to give me a cross, to help me across.

However, I found that when I look ahead on the trail a few feet,

I can see a way to get through and I don't get stuck, but I simply can go across without hesitation.

Listen, look at my eyes.

This is a really good point that Jennifer made. Sometimes we're so focused on

the one step in front of us that a little problem, a hole, a little stream, a mud pit,

the one bomb in the path that we can't, the tripwire, that we don't see a way

around because all we can see is the thing right in front of us,

the thing that's happened, the thing we're about to step on,

the object or the obstacle that's in our way. And I want you to remember.

That attention is the way we focus our minds on what we're dealing with.

It's the set of tools that we use to bring to bear on applying our mental energy

and navigating that path. That's called attention, okay?

And perspective is a little bit different than attention. They're related, but they're different.

Perspective is the set of biases, the things that we bring to every experience

and encounter that we have in our life.

So perspective has to do with worldview, with our past, with our family,

our genetics, our culture, our upbringing, the things we've been through,

our race, our religion, our belief systems, all that stuff. Perspective has to do with that stuff.

Perspective and attention are obviously related, but they're not the same thing.

As we always say on the podcast, we talk about what we believe and why we believe

it and how we defend it and use science and faith smashed together to figure that stuff out.

That's one of the things that we talk about, the way that we read scripture too.

If you're a Bible person like me, if you use scripture as kind of the way that

you put your thoughts together, there's a thing called exegesis,

which is where you read a text.

It doesn't have to be the Bible, but I just apply it to Bible,

but you can apply it to any type of reading that you do.

Exegesis is where you read a text with the intention of trying to extract all

the meat out of it that you can, that you want to learn as much from something

that you're reading as you possibly can.

You want to break it down and chew it up and extract all the nutrients and all

the nuggets side of it that you can to apply to your life or agree with it or

disagree with it or believe it or not believe it, but you actually try to see

what the words actually say.

And it's again, not just scripture, but anything that you read that you want

to read for what the author put there to see what it actually says and then decide how to apply it.

That's called exegesis, not filtering it for what you believe first,

but actually just reading the words, chewing on them, contemplating them,

thinking about them, really trying to figure out what the author is trying to

say. And that's called exegesis.

That's a great way to study scripture.

But there's another way that's called eisegesis

e-i-s-e-g-e-s-i-s eisegesis

and that's when you read something particularly scripture again

but any type of reading and it's when you read something and

you put a filter on it like like if i if i

read without my glasses and then i put glasses on and i and i read through the

perspective and the and the shaping of the text through my glasses It's when

you read through a set of filters to tell you how to interpret and apply what

you're reading based on your own biases and your own ideas.

And the problem is that you can make anything say anything if you read it from

a particular perspective.

Okay. So again, perspective has to do with our past, our biases,

our belief systems, our experiences, all that stuff.

So if you approach a situation, a text, a scripture, a problem in your life

from a particular point of view and you look at it from a particular perspective

and you apply your own set of filters to it, you're going to always see it in the same way.

If you're applying filters to conversations with your spouse and no matter what

they say, you've been in this mood before.

We've all been in this mood before. When you apply a set of filters to a conversation

and you've done this before where you're so irritated or you're so frustrated

or you're so in a particular type of mood, then it doesn't matter what the other

person in the conversation is going to say.

You're going to hear it from an antagonistic point of view.

That's because that's eisegesis, that you're putting a filter that says,

I don't care what the next thing you say to me is.

I'm already mad about it. I'm already going to hear it in a negative light.

I've already decided that I know where you're coming from and I don't like it.

That would be eisegesis in terms of conversation.

We can do the same thing with reading.

There's a guy named Richard Tarnas, and he wrote this really interesting quote about worldview.

He said, our worldview is not simply the way we look at the world because worldviews create worlds.

We've learned from Ian McGilchrist and we've learned from the great neuroscientists

that how we see things turns the world into what it is that we're looking for

rather than what it really is.

And so the way that you look at the world turns the world into what it is,

into what seems to be reality to you, because that's what you intended to see.

Henry David Thoreau said, the question is not what you look at, it's what you see.

Erwin Schrodinger, the great quantum physicist of Schrodinger's equation fame,

was quoting German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer when he said,

the task is not so much to see what no one else has yet seen,

but to think what nobody else has yet thought about what everybody sees.

So Schopenhauer and Schrodinger are saying it's one thing to see something everybody

else can see or to see something that nobody else has ever seen.

It's another thing entirely to have a different type of thinking about what

everybody else sees the same way.

And so, in other words, when you look at life, you see with your own eyes and

your own worldview the problems that are in front of you.

And sometimes there might not even be a problem there, but you can see it as

a problem if you have the wrong perspective.

The kind of attention that you pay is able to either shift your brain around

to use the right and the left sides of your brain in concert,

try to see what's actually there or just

to see what you perceive to be there or what

your biases are telling you is there so if

you have a problem in front of you like jennifer hiking and she sees a problem

in front of her she could fearfully approach that and say hey i better not step

over there i'm gonna fall if i do that i'm gonna get stuck i need to turn around

and go home need to stop this i shouldn't be here anyway what am i doing here

but she didn't say that i'm just using the example by the way she didn't actually

say that so imagine somebody hiking and saying those kinds of things, okay?

Or you could just zoom out a little bit like Jennifer did. Just look past the

problem, find a stepping stone, look past the hole and say, oh, there's a log there.

I could step on that. There's a way around this problem.

My dad and I, when I was little, he used to take me hunting sometimes out in

the woods and we'd go in his four-wheel drive Jeep.

And we'd be out in the woods and we'd come upon a place where there was like

a mud bog or a little creek to cross.

And my dad would always stop the car for a second, stop the Jeep,

put it in reverse, back up a little bit so he could see, have a different perspective

on what we was about to go through.

And he could say, oh, I see a way through. I can put this tire up on this log

and then we'll get some traction.

I can put it in four-wheel drive. We can go around to the right there.

It looks a little bit shallower. We can get out and make sure we don't get in those ruts right there.

We can put it in lower gear. We can go to the right instead of the left.

And he would map out a path through the obstacle rather than just to start plowing through it.

Because if you just drive into the obstacle and you start to feel stuck and

you press the gas and start spinning your wheels, what's going to happen?

You're going to dig down deeper in the mud. You're going to get more stuck.

Okay? If you're hiking and you see an obstacle and you just go ahead and step

right into it, we're going to break your ankle. You're going to fall down the cliff.

Something's going to happen that's not going to be good for you.

Step on the snake because you didn't pay attention. Right?

You got to be willing and able to attend to the problem from a different perspective.

So let me back up. Let me think about it. Let me change my perspective.

Let me look at it with a different filter. Let me remember that the left side

of my brain is going to present the world to me in a very two-dimensional way.

What the left side of your brain does, and I thank Ian McGilchrist for sorting

this out for us all, the left side is about deciding what something is in your

mind, deciding I'm going to label that thing. I'm going to turn it into an object.

This is a person who lies. This is a liar.

This person is a dirty, rotten scoundrel. That's all they are.

It's all they ever will be.

This problem right here is the end.

It's insurmountable. It's the biggest obstacle I could ever encounter.

That will never be overcome by me. That's what your left brain kind of does.

Tries to identify what something is, the essence of it, and define it for you

so you can understand it and make a decision about it.

That's what left brain does. But the right side does a whole different thing.

The right side of your brain is context and nuance and backstory and remembering

other times when you face something similar, but you got through it.

The right side's about, hey, this person told me a lie, but I've told lies before.

And what was I doing when I told a lie? I was trying to protect myself.

I was trying not to hurt somebody's feelings. I was scared.

So I didn't want to say the truth. And maybe that's what they're doing too.

That's what the right side does. The right side gives you some context.

It gives you another story. It gives you a reminder that things aren't always as they seem.

And I don't want you, friend, to be stuck using only the left side of your brain

or only the right side of your brain. I want you to have balance.

That Lectio prayer from Pete Gregg every day that we do on the Lectio app,

the first thing they say is, As I enter prayer now, I pause to be still.

To breathe slowly, to re-center my scattered senses on the presence of God.

Pete Gregg's not talking about neuroscience there, but he might as well be, okay?

Because that's exactly what you're doing. You're asking God who created this

beautiful brain that you have, okay?

It's not a plastic fixed brain like this. It's a brain that can change.

It can grow. It can change and grow and become better.

It can remember to take your thoughts captive. It can be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

That brain can change. And so when you start getting into a situation that might

be stressful, remind yourself, hey, pause, breathe slowly.

Remember what we talked about when we scrubbed in? That breathing slowly process

is about getting your physiology under control.

It's about convincing yourself that you really can decide to think about one

thing and not another thing, that you really can slow down your heart rate.

You really can overcome anxiety and work yourself through a panic attack.

You can, friend. You can.

So remind yourself here, starting to get stuck, starting to get scary.

The obstacle, the path looks a little weird. It looks a little insurmountable.

And that left brain is saying, that thing is going to do me in.

But just hang on a second.

Take some deep breaths. As I enter prayer now, I pause to be still.

Breathe slowly to recenter my

scattered senses i don't want to be off on the left i don't

want to be off in la la land on the right i want to

be centered i'm going to be using every neuron and

every synapse and every neural network that god gave

me and bring them under the command of my mind and

sound thinking i want to transform and renew

my mind i want to take my thoughts captives i want

to remember that feelings aren't facts i want to remember that

80 of my thoughts are not true and i want

to take them command so that i can be with

the great physician in charge of what's going to play out and i can bring the

proper attention and perspective to the situation okay that's what i want for

you that's what i want for me that's the way we're designed to operate okay to be centered.

That's what we're supposed to be doing, okay? So that's what I want for you

today. I want you to remember that when you're on the trail and it starts to

feel scary and you start to feel stuck, that you're not necessarily,

it's not necessarily so.

Be scanning the environment at the same time as you're looking at the obstacle.

And remember, there's always another path.

There's always another way. There's always another opportunity to take a different

step, okay? Don't let your left brain turn everything into this binary system

of operating, this binary identify and define thing.

Let the right brain work too and center it.

Get both parts of who you are wired in together because what you're doing,

you're getting better at. So guess what?

When you remember that you have options, rather than reacting the way you always

have, looking at everything from the same set of filters and lenses that you

always have, you have an option.

Just pausing, to be still, to recenter, to back up, to survey the ground from

a different perspective.

That's how you learn a strategy for engaging both sides of your brain so you

can operate in a healthier way to become healthier and feel better and be happier.

And all the stuff we talk about on this show all the time.

Attention is not just another cognitive function, as Ian McGilker says.

It's not generated by brain activity. Attention is a willful act that you get

to bring your mind into and decide what you're going to think about.

That's how you bring your brain under the control of your mind.

McGilkirk says the altered nature of attention can appear to abolish parts of the world.

If you're focusing too much on one side of your brain, you can blank things out.

You can not even see stuff that's right in front of you because you've got your

reticular activating system filtering out all the stuff that might be helpful or useful.

Right. And so don't let your brain push you around anymore. Okay.

Remember, you have the ability to change perspective, to bring your attention to bear.

Whenever you need to. And the more you do that, you're going to get better at it. Okay.

I'm so grateful for you, friend. I'm really excited to know that together we

can practice self-brain surgery.

Together we can decide not to let the obstacles in front of us become overwhelming. Okay.

It applies to you. It applies to me, even if you're not in one of those big

T trauma situations right now, but especially if you have been,

you're currently going through something harder, if you've been through a trauma

or tragedy or some kind of massive thing,

one thing I want to point out to you is that you can start to pay attention

to the thing that's happened to you or the ways in which you've been broken

by it or the pain that you've experienced or the situation that you find yourself in.

And you can miss other things that are dramatically important to the life that you actually have now.

Okay. Kurt Thompson and I talked about that recently. He said,

suffering in our culture right now is

by most people being defined as having gone through

something and experiencing its aftermath but

what suffering really is the truth about suffering and the

truth about trauma is that what it really is is

the response we have to it and the things we do

to ourselves by how we

choose to think and live after the experience is long

over that's what suffering really is so forgetting

that even when your reticular activating system is

filtering out the sunlight and all you can see is the darkness

forgetting that there is still sunlight is a

key way that you can stay in the darkness when you don't have

to friend it's relevant if you've lost a child if you've lost a spouse other

people in your life who are also grieving and you forget that they're hurting

too that's how you end up in a divorce after you lose a child because You're

so hurt that all you can focus on is your pain and you don't see your partner

right next to you desperately needing your attention.

Your other kids desperately needing your attention. It breaks my heart.

I've heard it so many times of people who've been on this show and other bereaved

parents that I know who were so broken by the loss of one of their children

that they stopped seeing their other kids.

Listen to me, friend. If you've been through something hard,

you need to hear me right now.

You've been through a divorce and your spouse broke your heart and you're so

broken that you can't see that your kids are broken too. You're going to lose them.

Okay? You lost a kid and your other kid's right there and they're begging you

to see them because now they feel invisible because all they can see is their

parents circling around this grief that they have.

Open your eyes. Filter back in some of the other things that are still great

blessings in your life, friend.

Don't lose the people around you because guess what? They're hurting too and they need you.

They need you to be present with them. It's okay to suffer together,

but bring them into it, okay?

Bring them into it and celebrate the fact that they are still there and remind

them that you love them and you see them and you know they're hurting too.

And it's not just about you, okay? You can ignore them and you can lose them

or you can change your relationship with them.

You can neglect them or fail to notice them and they're still there and they

still have this beautiful life and they need you and they're right in front of you.

And you've got to learn, friend, to attend to them as well as to attend to the

things that you've been through.

And that takes both halves of your brain.

I'm saying like Mogulko says that the altered nature of attention can appear

to abolish parts of the world, including people.

It can appear to collapse time and space to eviscerate emotion and render the living inanimate.

He says it can turn living things and living people into objects in your brain

that used to be part of your family.

And if you focus with the left side of your brain on the problem at hand or

the thing that you've been through or the issue that you're dealing with,

then you can step right in a hole that would have been easily avoided.

You can miss glaringly obvious things like children who need your attention,

like a spouse who's crying out for affection, who's also desperately hurting,

who needs you to be present with them.

I'm telling you, this is why marriages break up. It's why teenagers drink and drive.

It's why there's teenage pregnancies after their parents lost a child and they

weren't paying attention anymore.

If one party focuses entirely on the problem and not the residual relationships,

then the relationship is going to collapse.

You have to be careful. And deciding how to pay attention is a profoundly moral

act, my friend, as McGilchrist says.

Deciding how to pay attention is a profoundly moral act.

Tata and I were talking one time. We were getting ready to do a Tuesdays with

Tata. We were talking about some things that were going on in our lives.

And he said, c'est la vie.

This is life, the French phrase. C'est la vie. And we started talking about

that, how useful that phrase is. Hey, it's just life.

You know, life, it is life. Life's what it is. C'est la vie.

And he remembered another French phrase called c'est la guerre.

It's a French phrase that says, hey, it's war. like there's a war going on they

used to say that in World War II sail like air it's another saying that means

hey you can't help it there's a war going on.

It's like you just sometimes are in the middle of a war like I was in Iraq and

you're getting bombed and you can either be freaked out and destroyed and anxious

and diving in the hole all the time and unable to perform your job and people

are bleeding and dying around you because you can't focus and you're hiding under the desk.

Or you can say, say, there's a war going on.

There's bombs falling. I still have a job to do. I still have colleagues who

need me to be part of this team.

I still have patients who are bleeding and need my help. I still have a life to live.

And I'm in this place, like in the book of Jeremiah, he says, hey, you're in exile.

You can be mad about it for the whole time you're here, or you can plant gardens

and build cities and get married and live your life and honor God where you

are, when you are, because guess what? Selah Ger, there's a war going on.

You can change your perspective about being in war.

Okay. You can. I remember in Iraq, there were people who were,

The whole time we were deployed.

Grumpy, angry, bitter, sad, not engaging, wouldn't come to movie nights,

all the morale things that we did to try to make everybody enjoy their time a little bit more.

Scared, not performing well, not being the kind of surgeons and doctors and

nurses that I knew they were and capable of being.

They were getting mortared every day just like the rest of us were.

They were getting bombed just like the rest of us. They were seeing hard things

just like the rest of us, but they decided they were not going to engage in that place.

They were not going to put a foot down and plant a flag and live there while they had to live there.

They were just going to be bitter. And guess what? They were casualties of that

war, even if they never got blown up.

Because most of us figured out a way to be part of community there,

to try to make the light shine a little brighter for the rest of us,

to agree that we're all going through these hard things together,

and we're thousands of miles away from home and our families and our lives,

and we're getting shot at and we're seeing horrible things, but we needed each

other to survive that time, and we helped each other.

So some people would wake up furious and grumpy every day and miserable and

scared and operating out of this perspective that this place is horrible and

I hate it. That's left brain focus, okay? They forgot.

Say, like, Gary, it's war. Of course it's going to be hard. Let's find a way

to be positive. Let's find a way to be happy. Let's find a way to function well anyway.

Some of us, praise God, were able to shift our perspective and say,

hey, we got a holy task here.

We're here to minister to people who are giving their all for others.

We're here to bandage the wounded, to save lives, to show love and hearts and

minds to the enemy, to maybe change the way the Iraqi people see Americans because

we gave them kindness when they were supposedly our enemies.

Rescue the injured, apply grace and compassion to the enemy,

bring them in when they're hurt, show them what Christians really are about,

what Americans are really about.

We changed our minds when we decided, hey, we can use this time as mission.

We can try to serve somebody even when they're trying to blow us up,

Even when we're trying to save them and they're trying to kill us, we can still love them.

And we're going to maybe recognize that I've been forgiven much.

I need to be willing to forgive other people.

I've been helped a lot in my life. I can help other people.

I've been given a lot of grace and love and patience and lots and lots of rope by people who love me.

Maybe I can give some grace and love and patience and compassion too.

It's a shifting of perspective. It's C'est la guerre.

This is war. It can't be helped. It is what it is. So we might as well change

our perspective and make something good out of it, right?

That's where I want to land today. I want you to say, you know what?

Say it like Gary. It's war. It's difficult. It's hard. Yes. But guess what?

It can also be beautiful.

It can also be part of what's forming my character and my spiritual life and

my mind and my brain into a person that can handle hard things.

Because sadly, it's not going to be the last thing you go through, friend.

And if you have come through something hard and you've survived and you're still

alive, well, there's more in the future.

You better get used to being able to shift your perspective,

be a light in a dark place instead of one more bit of black hole sucking all

the joy and space and oxygen out of the room.

You don't want that. You want to change your mind. That's why you're here.

That's why I'm so proud of you, because I know you're one of those people that's

fighting hard to change your mind.

To learn to pay attention to the world around you so you don't miss some things

that are glaringly obvious and still beautiful because you're so focused on

the whole or the problem in front of you.

You've decided you want your life to be different. So how have you been living?

And are you ready to change your perspective from the problem in front of you

to the path around it, from the issue at hand or the path forward from it.

From the pain or the shame or the failure or the blame or whatever's happened in the past,

the thing that happened to you when you're nine years old or some comment that

somebody made that broke your heart and you've never been able to see yourself

and you're wearing some label that somebody put on you a long time ago that

you don't deserve to be wearing,

maybe now it's time to change your perspective, to remember what God said.

I have a plan for you, a plan to prosper you and not to harm you,

a plan to give you hope and a future.

Remember that Ephesians chapter four thing where he says the whole problem with

the person who is living in all this trouble and all these bad decisions and

all the struggles is really not about their behavior.

It's about their minds. He says, I insist that you no longer live in futile

thinking, bad thinking, friend. is not a problem in your life.

It's the problem in your life. Because if you get that right,

you'll start changing the decisions you make, the actions that you carry out,

the epigenetic imprint that you have on your family.

You'll start changing your electromagnetic field and the way you impact others

through quantum entanglement and heart math and all the other stuff that goes

into human relationships that's far beyond what you can imagine,

just the deeds and words that you have.

If you get that right, you'll start seeing how big

and wide and hopeful god's love

is for you and if you're not a spiritual person then just

understand make your change in your

perspective and your attention because quantum physics is on

your side you do have a purpose and when you change your mind and change your

perspective you change the outcome of the situation okay you can recover from

whatever you're going through you can overcome any problem you can really change

your mind you can grow you're not stuck you're already making new synapses and

new neurons while we're having this podcast.

But if you want it to be different, you've got to change your decisions.

If you want to change your life, you've got to change your mind.

If you're a Christian, your whole purpose is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

That's your general calling that we all have. If you're not a person of faith,

then just remember, the goal of your life should be to leave an impact on the

people around you, right?

And I would say, once you understand that you really do have a purpose,

then all these other things, like maybe a path to God or bigger questions or

questions about why everything seems to matter a little bit more than I thought

it did, will start coming online in your brain.

And I believe there will come a point in time when you want to have a conversation

with somebody about some bigger questions than you can answer with science alone.

And if so, send me an email, contact at drleewarren.com. I'd love to have that

conversation with you. Okay.

I want you to remember that a goal of your life ought to be to become healthier

and feel better and be happier,

to try to find a way to navigate the troubles of this

life with the acknowledgement that two things can

be true at the same time you can go through something hard there can be a big

hole in front of you there can be a big problem but there's also good things

there's life there's light there's possibility there's flowers blooming there's

sunny skies there's rainbows there's other people around you that love you and

the trail and the nature around you are so lovely,

but you can see them once you start to look past the problem in front of you.

So two things can be true at the same time. Attention and perspective and being

willing to change them is what allows you to see that.

If you're hyper-focused on the issue at hand, you're making the entire issue

about the thing in front of you, you'll never see all the other good stuff.

It's still there. Don't forget, this is war.

C'est la guerre. You can't be helped, but you can live a different life in spite

of it. but you got to be willing to change your perspective first. Okay.

That's what I want for you today, friend. I want you to change your mind.

I want you to remember God gave you two halves of your brain.

They help you see the world in two different ways.

They're both true, but you have to integrate them to recenter them to start

telling yourself a different story.

That's what we're about today. We're going to have a lot of time off in September.

You got lots of time to go back and listen to old episodes to make sure you

check out everything that's available to you as part of this community of self brain surgery.

We have a new episode coming in two weeks with Aaron Carey, and then we'll be

back in October with probably three episodes a week going into book launch in February.

I'm so excited to do this with you, to bring you my book, The Life-Changing

Art of Self-Brain Surgery. I know it's going to help you.

I know it's going to help you overcome, change, grow, learn,

and I'm proud of you for the work that you're doing.

Don't forget to subscribe to the show wherever you listen. Subscribe on YouTube,

subscribe on Apple or Spotify, wherever you listen.

Leave us a rating or review if you can. Now, if you have a question,

email it, contact at drleewarren.com.

Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter, drleewarren.substack.com or my website,

drleewarren.com, has everything you might need to know.

Consider supporting us if you want by becoming a paid subscriber.

And I don't want you to forget that you're not stuck.

There is a war going on, but you get to change your perspective about it,

and that'll help you overcome.

But remember, friend, you can't change your life until you change your mind.

And the very good news is you can start today. Hey, I'm Dr. Lee Warren.

God bless you, friend. We'll see you next time.