Thoughts Regulate Gene Expression: Positive Thinking Isn't a Trick

Good morning my friend, Dr. Lee Warren here with you and it is my favorite day

of this week. It's self brain surgery Saturday.

Why is it my favorite? Well, we've been dealing with being sick and we had COVID

in the house and all this stuff and it's just been a rough couple of weeks and

today we're going to relax and watch some college football and hopefully just get all the way well.

Tata and I and Lisa kind of getting back on our feet and it's time for some self -brain surgery.

But today I want to give you a little conversation that I told you about two days ago.

On Thursday I threw back an episode from a while back called Positivity Bias

is a Superpower and this idea that just getting a bias towards positivity is

a tool that you can use to help yourself navigate when life gets hard.

That's true and I hope you go back and listen to That was helpful.

Yesterday on Friday Conversations, we had the incomparable Tish Harrison Warren.

I'm just geeking out still that podcasting has given me such a blessing,

an opportunity to talk to so many great writers and remarkable people.

And I'm just so thankful that Tish Harrison Warren took the time to be with

us as she wrote that book, Prayer in the Night, that really helped me crystallize

a lot of my thinking and healing after we lost Mitch.

Just learning how to pray the Lament Prayer, and that really,

even though it was years after we lost our son.

That finally coming across Mark Roggepp's book and Tish Harrison Warren's book

kind of put some spiritual guardrails up for me and gave me this toolkit of

how I can pray in a way that really helps me to voice what I'm feeling but also

understand that God wants me to do that. He wants you to do that too.

So that conversation with Tish, if you haven't heard it yet, really powerful.

And I'm just so grateful that you're listening, that the podcast is out there,

that people have come alongside, and that we're getting to have these conversations

that really move the needle on how to find hope again after trauma and tragedy

and these other massive things.

But today, it's Self -Brain Surgery Saturday, which is really why we're here, right?

We're here to have an opportunity to take neuroscience and understand how our

mind and our brain and our spirits work,

and smash them together with faith and learn that their creator,

the great physician, gave us these incredible brains with the gift of selective

attention and the ability to use applied neuroscience to really make a difference

in how our lives play out.

And self -brain surgery Saturday is the day that I give you some operations.

To make that happen and today we're going to do another one.

I don't have a catchy name for it, but we're talking about,

An email that I got from a reader And listener of the podcast and again,

I don't have his permission to share his name or the whole the whole content

Of what he shared with me, but here's the question.

He asked me and here it is I wish I had a more technical way of describing this

but if i'm honest The process of changing my mind is just really really hard

Quite honestly, I'm pretty discouraged because I seem to have a lot of trouble doing it.

One thing I'm struggling with is that line between healthy thought reorientation

and being disingenuous.

For example, when I'm feeling sad or lonely or ashamed, what's the difference

between genuinely changing my mind and repressing the negative emotions?

This is the real question, right? Lisa and I had a long talk.

We were walking through the store the other day and we had a long talk about

this and She said, you know, sometimes it feels like, almost like a self -help

trick when we talk about just changing your mind. Just be more positive, just be happier.

And how do you go from that sort of cognitive dissonance of not really believing

that you can just change your mind and that it'll make a difference in your life.

To actually learning that, or believing rather, that self -brain surgery is

literally changing how your brain works, which then changes how your mind and

your body and your life play out.

Like how do we know that we're not just tricking ourselves and convincing ourselves

to feel a little happier when nothing's really actually gonna get better?

And how do we get rid of the dissonance of that so that we can actually grab onto it?

If God says, hey, I'm capable of making a way in the wilderness,

I'm capable of making streams in the desert, I'm capable of parting the waters

for you, I'm capable of helping you clear out all that old trauma and learning

a new set of tools to deal with it, I'm capable of that, you just have to let

me. How do we believe that?

And how do we do it? How do we move from this idea that we are reacting to our thinking?

We have 40 ,000 negative thoughts a day, and we're going to believe them all

and react to them all and believe that our feelings are facts.

How do we move from that to 2 Corinthians 10 5?

Take every thought captive, make it your slave, make your brain work on your behalf.

How do we do that? How do we do what Peter said? Gird up the loins of our mind,

get your mind prepared for action because you are in a fight.

It's a spiritual fight for your soul. It's a spiritual fight for your health

and happiness and for your family How do you get ready for that and is it just

silly optimism or is it actually self brain surgery?

That's the question. We're gonna deal with some real stuff today my friend We're

gonna get into it and it might take a long time, but we're gonna do it But before

we get started I have one question for you.

Hey, are you ready to change your life if the answer is yes,

there's only one rule You have to change your mind first.

And my friend, there's a place 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.

I love that little guitar riff. I'm with you, Beth. Beth Maxie wrote in and

said, man, I love that. Let's get after it. And she thought I was playing it. I wish I was playing it.

One of these days I'll record something on the podcast that I played myself.

I'm no Tommy Walker, but I can play a little bit.

So, hey, here's the deal. There's a guy on Instagram. This is totally random, by the way.

There's a guy on Instagram, Don Hewley, H -U -E -L -Y, Don Hewley.

And he does this thing called the Daily Word. And every day at around noon,

I think it's noon pacific time so two two o 'clock central time for us He does

a video instagram tiktok facebook called the daily word and it's just a short

little thing with the word,

What part of speech it is and what the definition is and then he tells a little

like 30 to 60 second story Using that word so you get the idea of what the word

is and he uses really weird words And anyway every day at the end of that video.

He says i'm don huley And that's the daily word.

She's got a great radio voice. I'll play it for you.

I'm Don Hewley and that's the daily word But anyway, I was thinking what's the daily word for today?

The daily word for today my friend is gene methylation Gene methylation what in the world is that?

We'll get there. Okay, that's the daily word for today, though And the

reason it's the daily word is it's the answer to the question that the listener

wrote in It's the answer to the question that Lisa asked me about my friend

Chris cook I was on his podcast when today's great podcast you should listen

to by the way He's got a book coming out next year and he's been through a lot of a lot of issues.

He lost his mom He's got multiple sclerosis He's been through a lot and he's

written this incredible book that'll be coming out and he'll be on the show

You know in a month or so to talk about it and his premise is self -help is

bogus That you shouldn't talk about self -help that there's a real pathway to

change to making your life better but it's not self -help and his point is.

There's all these self -help gurus out there that talk about all these things

you can do to change your life, right and most of them are just,

Gimmicks, they're just hacks and you and

I both know that to be true And so the the problem I have in this personal development

space the problem I have writing books about how to change things is that there's

a there's a huge credibility gap between The the the people that are purely

guru types like the 10 % happier Like they don't even try to tell you that they

can change your whole life.

They just try to tell you here's a here's a neuroscience Hack,

here's the thing you can do to make your life a little better and it does work

But it doesn't produce this sort of massive change If you've gone through some

massive thing like a like a loss of a child or something tremendous like that

It doesn't really move the needle enough 10 % happier isn't enough.

So those little Meditation hacks or neuroscience hacks?

They're not enough and then there's these sort of pure guru types that you know

They have the the seminars and teach you how to get your mind under control

so you can walk across coals and you know All that kind of stuff,

Gets you pumped up but the problem with that is you know that one health one

self -help book after another isn't enough and that's why it's a 11 to 15 billion

dollar industry and that's why you can't just read one book and have your whole

life be better That's why there's every one of those guys writes another book

every year or two because it doesn't last.

And then on the spiritual side, there's all kinds of preachers that say,

just live your best life now and have an abundant life and all that stuff that goes along with you.

Believe and you have enough faith that God will take care of you and you won't

have any problems and he'll give you lots of money.

And that prosperity gospel doesn't ring very true either because each of us,

all of us know that life really is hard and things do happen to good people.

Bad things do happen to good people. And the whole problem with theodicy of

suffering is real, and you can't just have more faith and expect all your problems to go away.

And then we discover, if you really start reading the Bible,

that the Bible never actually says any of that stuff.

So we have this whole chasm between spiritualism on one side that says you can

be happy if you do certain set of things, or have enough faith, or give enough money,

to all the way the other end of the spectrum, which says spirituality doesn't

have anything to do with it, but you get your neuroscience under control,

or you learn how to meditate, or you do this thing, or take this supplement

or go to my seminar or buy my book, you'll be happy.

But in between we have our lives where it doesn't work.

And certain things can wreck you and you don't know what to do.

Or something that happened when you were a little kid can change your brain

or something that happened when you got deployed to Iraq can change your brain

and you don't feel comfortable in your own skin anymore.

And after 20 years you're drinking or you're doing something else to try to

control that feeling so you can just try to live your life, right? It's hard.

And so how do we actually change things for the better? How do we do that? Is it even possible?

And so when I say when you turn on my podcast for the first time if you're new

around here And this is the first time you've ever heard me say it. I say change.

You can't change your life Until you change your mind Am I just being one of those gurus?

Is it silly is it disingenuous as my listener said as lisa and I talked about?

Let me say what he said again Have a lot of trouble doing it the mind change

thing. I'm discouraged.

I'm struggling with the line between healthy thought Reorientation and being

disingenuous for example when I'm feeling sad or lonely or ashamed What's the

difference between genuinely changing my mind and?

Repressing the negative emotions That's the question for the day Let me tell

you why you can really change your mind my friend.

Here's the reason the word of the day. I'm Don Healy I'm not Don Healy,

but that's the daily work.

The daily word is gene methylation.

What are you talking about? Dr Warren remember this show is about learning the

neuroscience of how your brain works and Learning what the Bible has to say

about it how faith works and what the Lord has done in your mind to create The

opportunity for you to live in abundance in the face of a hard world Okay,

Jesus promised John 1633 in this world.

You will have trouble He also said in John 10 10.

I have come that you might have an abundant life So either Jesus is tricking us.

It's gonna be hard and it can't be abundant or it's gonna be abundant I said

therefore it won't be hard.

Those two things are mutually and you know mutually exclusive No,

they're not Jesus says it's both and that's because he's the God of quantum

physics and two things can be true at the same time As you heard me and Michael

Gillan discuss a few days ago,

And if you missed that episode, by the way, go listen to it. It's amazing.

One of my favorite conversations ever. And we did get into the quantum physics

of why two things can be true at the same time.

Okay, Jesus says both it's hard and it can be abundant how I'm gonna tell you

how right now gene methylation,

One of the ten commandments of self brain surgery And if you haven't heard that

go back and listen to the episode called the ten commandments of self brain

surgery But one of them is this little phrase that I give you that we need to

believe that thoughts become things What does that mean thoughts become things?

Let me tell you, when I put you in a functional MRI scanner and I tell you to

think about your grandma's kitchen and what the cookies smelled like,

I can watch the neurotransmitters in your brain change and blood flow patterns change in your brain.

I can watch things happen in your brain in real time in response to what you're thinking about.

And then I can say, hey, remember that you told me that your uncle did that

thing to you when you were nine and that has changed your feeling of security and safety.

What does that feel like? Go back in your mind and remember that event and what it did to your life.

And I can watch your brain morph into that negative dark time in your life and

the blood flow change and memories get activated and I can watch the colors

change in response to what the neurotransmitters in your brain are doing.

Well let me just break that down for you. When you see that happen on the picture

of an MRI scan, you're watching gene methylation happen. What does that mean?

Dawson Church in his incredible book, Genie in Your Genes, Genie in Your Genes,

this is one of those books we'll talk about one of these days.

And I wish he had done, I think he did himself a little disservice because he

does a great job talking about the biochemical realities of neuroscience and

all kinds of amazing things that are true, but he sort of put all of it in the

same book with energy, psychology,

and field theory, and quantum realities, and all these things that seem a little so,

almost so unbelievable that it feels like one of those metaphysics books that

some people would discount because they don't believe it if you don't actually

read it and get into it and understand what he's saying that's very scientifically

validated and verifiable.

So there's a chapter chapter 11 in genie in your genes where he talks about

biochemistry and how biochemistry affects happiness And it's real it's true,

and I'm just give you this information Okay,

because I'm a biochemist my undergraduate degree summa cum laude from Oklahoma

Christian in biochemistry And then I went to medical school where we studied,

biochemistry and medicine and physiology and anatomy and pharmacology and all

that stuff and now I've been practicing neurosurgery and neuroscience for 22

years since I finished my residency.

Okay, and I can Legit say I'm sort of an expert in this space.

We're gonna talk about biochemistry today Okay, so the difference between silly

optimism or just telling yourself.

Hey, don't think about that Just let me just be grateful for a few things and

feel a little bit better And you know drink a cup of coffee and go for a walk

and I'll feel a little better I don't have to feel sad.

I'm just gonna put a smile on my face and go on. That's that's okay You can

do that and you will feel somewhat better But I want you to understand That

you don't have to live in response to those feelings of what happened when you

were nine Or what your dad said to you when you were eight or what your wife

did to you when she left or what your husband?

Did to you when he cheated or what the doctor told you the diagnosis was and

that wrecked your future?

You're you lost your husband your child died and it's wrecked your future and

you don't think you can be ever okay again I'm telling you you can learn how

to live in a world where those things happened But you can change your response

to them and you can learn to be hopeful and happy And have purpose and meaning in your life again,

because if you are still alive Then you have a purpose friend.

There's a there's a reason why you're still here and you can be happy again

Why do I care if you're happy?

Well, because happy people drink less alcohol, exercise more,

live longer, take less medicine, spend less time in the hospital.

Have better relationships, pass on better stories and better financial situations

to their family members.

Happier people have better lives than more hopeless people.

Now Christians get all into this weeds of arguing about the difference between

joy and happiness and all that stuff.

And I'm not saying happy like whistle a tune and pretend like everything's okay type happiness.

I'm talking about that deep sense that you're going to figure out a way to go

forward in your life and you can still have purpose and maybe even smile and

laugh and find a new way forward again.

That's what I call happiness. And you can call it Christian joy if you want to.

We can argue about that. The word the Bible uses, makarios, literally is best translated happiness.

And the enemy, by the way, remember we're in a spiritual fight,

the enemy wants you to think that you're supposed to be happy.

And that's what he sells to the world.

And happiness is being pursued as, what can I do to make myself feel what I want to feel?

And they set that up as being an enemy of Christianity, where they say, well,

if you really wanna be happy, Maybe you should be free to do whatever you want

to and pursue whatever you want and sleep with whoever you want and buy whatever

you want and watch whatever you want and think whatever you want and take whatever you want.

If that's the definition of happiness, then yes, I'm not arguing for that.

I would suggest that it's a cheap trick of your spiritual enemy to think that

things or circumstances are what makes you happy.

They're not. What makes you happy is having purpose and having a future and a hope.

That's what happiness is. Okay? So call it Christian joy if you want to.

I don't want to get too far in the weeds of that. So just call it whatever you

want, but I'm going to use the term happiness. Why does it matter?

Because you have a set of genes that are coded for the biochemicals that create

your feelings of happiness and wholeness and reward and purpose.

And that biochemical system is there for you.

You were created with a brain that wants to feel happy.

And what happens is, we respond to life events and we start with a baseline

of a set of genes that are either switched on or switched off based on our parents

and the things that happen to them.

That's called epigenetics, right?

The genes that we inherit aren't the whole story.

It's how those genes are programmed to be switched on or switched off that tells more of the story.

And the good news about that is, you can control most of that switching on and

switching off through the process of gene methylation or acetylation,

and you can do most of that by changing how you think.

Okay, that's the short summary of what it means when I say thoughts become things, okay? Here's the deal.

Neuroscientist Richard Davison, based on what we know of the plasticity of the

brain, we can think of things like happiness and compassion as skills that are

no different from learning to play a musical instrument or tennis.

It is possible to train our brains to be happy my friend who wrote the letter

to me the email It's not disingenuous to say I feel sad and I want to change my mind.

So I won't feel so sad anymore Then is am I just tricking myself?

No, you're not you're learning to take advantage of something your creator gave

you selective attention and.

Neuroplasticity to be able to change the chemical environment of your brain

in a way that affects the transmission of impulses in your brain to create neurotransmitter

changes through gene expression that then create hormonal changes,

that then create cell surface receptor changes, that then create cell division triggers,

and ultimately produce a whole set of physiological and anatomical and neurobiological

realities in your life based on what you're thinking about.

And that makes it really clear, it brings into sharp relief why Paul told you

in 2 Corinthians 10 5 to take every thought captive.

Why? Because every thought that you have, my friend, switches something on or

switches something off in your brain that either helps you to navigate your

life better or hurts you and harms you and keeps you stuck.

That's the reason and that ought to sink in for you my friend when I was a little

boy My dad once in a while.

We'd take me out in the woods in the Jeep Or we'd be deer hunting and we'd be

out in the woods somewhere on some true track Road And we'd get to a place where there was mud,

And you could see the tracks of the road going down into this mud hole and you

start driving forward and it would start to be Pretty clear that if we kept

going forward we were going to get stuck.

Like the mud was getting higher and higher on the wheels and it just become

clear that that road wasn't going to allow us to get any farther forward.

And if we wanted to not get stuck, we better back up out of there.

And fortunately we had the ability, the vehicle had a reverse gear in it and

we were able to switch gears and my dad could back us up out of there and then

go find another path to where we needed to go.

But if he kept just going forward In the face of the evidence that the situation

was getting muddier and muddier,

we were gonna get stuck and then we'd be out in the woods in the middle of nowhere

in a big mud hole and Unable to move forward or backward at that point and we'd be hosed right?

It's a scientific term hosed by the way That's the daily word. Not really.

So think about that for a second in regards to your thought life You have a

thought that pops into your head.

I feel really sad today. I'm really Anxious today.

I'm really upset about this and I guarantee you so if you do a thought biopsy,

It might be true that you're feeling that it probably is. Yeah, I feel sad.

Why do I feel sad? Well, I have I lost my son ten years ago.

I'm feeling sad about that Okay, that's that's reasonable.

That thought is true. I lost my son and it makes me sad. That's true What happens

next and let's make it even more.

Let's say you haven't lost a child. Let's say it's something more consistent with all of us.

You feel sad because somebody.

Talked about you at work yesterday. You overheard somebody grappling about something

that you did at work one of your employees or You're feeling sad because your

co -workers went out for a drink after work and they didn't invite you So the

next day you're just kind of sad.

You're not quite you don't really have an awareness with why it feels sad But

then you kind of buy up to your thought and say, you know, maybe I feel sad

because they kind of They ignored me. They didn't invite me.

They were talking about me.

They did whatever or behind my back, this thing happened and it makes me feel

sad. So what happens next?

If you biopsy the thought, and it is true that that thing happened,

right, it's true, and that's reasonable then, you say to yourself,

to feel sad about that, it's reasonable.

What happens next, if you pay attention, is if you zoom out a little bit,

you'll recognize that you are in a spiritual war for your state of mind, my friend.

And if you're not a believer, okay, If you don't believe in heaven and hell

and God and Satan and all that At least recognize that your brain will do this

to you Okay If you want to just look at it in neuroscience terms your brain

has a negative voice inside it that biases you towards Negativity and it does

it's like a tractor beam.

That's gonna pull you down this pathway I think it's spiritual warfare and I

think the enemy of your soul Satan wants you to go down this pathway because

when you do you can't do anything productive or good or help anybody or make

any progress in your life towards being whole or honoring God with your life.

Now think about this path for a second, okay?

You feel sad you biopsy the thought you recognize that it's because something

real happened and somebody did mistreat you.

Okay What happens next?

Almost every time it's not the devil doesn't show up in a Red trench coat with

horns and a pitchfork and say hey i'm gonna tempt you right now and drag you

off into something bad It doesn't do that,

What happens is somebody saddles up in your mind and puts their arm around you

and says oh you poor thing,

They really did hurt your feelings, that's terrible, that you're such a good

person, they shouldn't treat you like that, and it's not fair.

Let's just sit here on this bench, Tata calls that the bench of ain't it awful

by the way, this bench that we sit on in our minds that says ain't everything

awful, isn't it terrible?

Just think about it and admit to yourself that this happens.

You're hearing the voice inside your head, you feel the comforting arm of somebody

with with their arm around you, it's a good friend who's just helping you think through this problem.

And it's so bad that they did that to you. And I am so sorry, you don't deserve that.

You're such a good person, and nobody should ever treat you that way.

And it's a shame, and how dare they?

And you should be really upset about this. You oughta, you know what you should

do? You should send them a text message, and you should really let them have it.

That's what you need to do. Now, let's just recognize for a second,

friend, that that thought process that you're in right now is a muddy two -track road, okay?

And just ask yourself, just think about the downstream consequences of continuing

down that muddy two -track road of thought, okay?

And just zoom out enough to say at other times in my life when I have gone down

that particular type of thought process,

did it help me or did it actually hinder me? Did I have a good day?

Did I make positive change in my life and help others and influence people and

get my work done and be efficient and do all the things I wanted to do for that day?

Or did I tend to have it affect me negatively and

be late for work and take extra time getting ready and have a hard time deciding

I don't even look good in the mirror and I don't feel good in my skin today

and I don't think I look pretty or I don't think I sound smart or I don't think

I'll be able to go to this meeting and I'm gonna cancel that because I don't

feel good and they hurt my feelings, and I don't trust the people that I work with.

And did it lead down that sort of thing?

Or did somehow that negative thinking that you're that muddy two track road

of thought that you're on result in you having the best day of your whole life

and improving all your relationships and getting promoted and accomplishing 100 things?

Did it help you or did it hinder you?

The last 20 times you went down that stream of thought.

Trigger a fight with your spouse because you were in a bad mood So you displaced

it onto them and you nitpick something and before you knew it you were in a

big fight Or did it help you have the best day of your entire marriage?

Just think about it for a second. Okay, I'd be honest with yourself about what

happens when you go down that muddy road of negative thinking now the good news is,

You can do self brain surgery And it's not silly optimism because what happens

when you go down that muddy road of thought is thoughts become things, okay?

It's crystal clear from the biochemistry that the way genes get expressed So

if you back up and understand that good feelings come from neurotransmitters

like dopamine and serotonin

Okay And when you have increased levels of them you feel better and when you

feel better you make better decisions And you do better things and you have

a better life. That's clear.

Okay, that's why people give you antidepressant medication when you feel certain

symptoms because you're trying to give you more dopamine and serotonin, okay?

So if it's crystal clear from the biochemistry that feeling better produces,

is the result of having increased levels of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin.

And if you understand, because you're a super duper trainee biochemist now,

if you understand that those chemicals come from genes that get switched on

and off by the process of methylation or acetylation.

And the genes that code for the production of those neurotransmitters change

in real time in response to our thoughts, because that's true, okay?

Then you would say to yourself, gosh, if it helps me to have higher levels of

neurotransmitters that create positive feelings, and it hurts me to have lower levels of them,

and I know that thinking down a negative train of thought, even if something

really did happen, if I know that that triggers the expression of genes that

code for less of those chemicals that I need to feel good,

then why would I choose to go down that road and create a biochemical event

in my brain that is harmful to me? Why would I do that?

When I can, instead, put my brain in reverse and back up out of that mud hole

and go a different direction with my thinking.

That, my friend, is what Paul's talking about in 2 Corinthians 10 .5.

He says, take every thought captive.

Quit driving forward into the mud hole when you don't have to.

I've already ranted for half an hour here. I'm not ranting,

but I just really want you to understand when I say these

silly things like you can't change your

life until you change your mind or thoughts become things or

feelings aren't facts they're chemical events in your brains that's really

true that's real biochemistry okay it's

real methylation of genes and

whether they get expressed or not that makes you feel happy or sad the whole

world's looking to feel better And they're using pills to do it and they're

using alcohol to do it and they're using sex to do it and you can do it by changing your mind,

By deciding I don't want to spend a whole day in that hole Now if you're really

stuck if you if you have a chemical issue a brain injury or something that you

can't make those chemical Changes in your brain you need help.

Okay, you need a therapist. You need medication.

You need a doctor. Sure there's roles for those things.

Remember, if you are having some significant medical problem,

go see your doctor. You might have a thyroid problem. You might need medication.

I'm never going to tell you not to use medicine or therapists or doctors.

I want you to, but there is a huge amount.

Life change that you can make with your own decisions about what you're gonna

think about my friend That's a superpower It's incredibly important.

It's self brain surgery. It is not silly optimism.

It's not disingenuous you are changing the methylation and acetylation of genes

in your brain that code for the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin

and dopamine and those neurotransmitter levels are what triggers the entire.

Neurobiological cascade of things that turn into how you feel and how you move

and how you speak and what you think and how good your memory is and all those

things that turn into how good your life is my friend.

Now let me give you one example 2nd Corinthians chapter 1. This is one example

of how you can drive further into the mud hole or you can back up out of it and change your life.

Paul who's an apostle and remember the backstory if you read the book of Acts

This guy's been shipwrecked, snake bit, flogged, jailed. I mean,

this guy's been through it, okay?

He's been through really severe things, major traumas in his life of trying

to be a Christ follower, okay?

So none of us have been, at least none of us in the United States that I'm certain

of, some places in the world where you're listening, you may have actually been

arrested or flogged or those kinds of things for your faith.

And if you are, we are praying for you and we love you and we're grateful that you're so faithful.

But for most of us, we've been made fun of, maybe scoffed at a little bit for

our faith sometimes, but most

of us haven't really been scathed for our faith. But listen to Paul here.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion

and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles,

so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God, okay?

Go down to verse eight.

We were under great pressure in Asia, far beyond our ability to endure,

so that we despaired of life itself.

Indeed, we felt we had received the death sentence. Okay, that's a lot of pressure,

right? They're in real trouble here.

They're despairing of life itself. They think they've received a death sentence.

And then here's the, this blows my mind, what he says right here.

But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

He has delivered us from such a deadly peril and he will deliver us again.

On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.

You see what he does here?

He's in the middle of a serious problem.

It's not over, he's not looking back and saying, yeah, God did that so I can

have faith in him now. he didn't decide at the end.

He's in the middle of it. He's despairing of life itself. But he says, you know what?

God's delivered us from deadly peril before. Remember, he's been in jail,

he's been flogged, he's been shipwrecked, he's been whipped,

he's been abandoned and abused and condemned and all that stuff before, and God delivered.

He lived through it. So he says, wait a minute.

God, who can raise the dead, I've seen him do it, he's delivered us from deadly

peril before, and He will deliver us again.

And so I'm gonna set my hope on Him that He will continue to deliver us as you help by your prayers.

You see what He did? He changed His mind.

He was despairing of life itself. He was driving down the two -track road and

getting deeper and deeper in the mud, even though the real problem was still there, okay?

He didn't say, I changed my mind and God took the problem away and God made

everything work out and He gave me millions of dollars and made me in charge

of everything. He didn't do that.

He didn't even eliminate the situation. He just decided that God had proven

Himself worthy of trust in the past, and therefore, He wasn't going to give

up hope, and He was going to change His mind.

And just a few chapters later, in this same book, in 2 Corinthians,

He reminds us, 2 Corinthians 10, 5, you better learn the secret of dealing with

hard things, and the secret is, take your thoughts captive.

Change your mind. When you're despairing of life itself, even in the middle

of the problem, my friend, you can change your mind about it.

You can decide to have hope even, remember in Acts 4 he tells us about what Abraham did.

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed.

Even in the worst moment, you can still just believe in hope and you can decide to change your mind.

And when you do, it's not silly optimism, it's gene methylation,

it's the regulation of the expression

of proteins by the transcription and turning on and off of genes,

by how you think about the things in your life that puts you in charge of your own biochemistry,

that determines how you feel and how you live and how you impact others and

the story you tell with your life.

And if that's not self brain surgery, my friend, I don't know what is.

This is good news. It's good news because we can change our lives by changing

our mind. And it's not silly optimism.

It's not some magic trick. It's not self -help

The only part of self -help that you do yourself is admitting to yourself that

yourself needs help and your Lord has Created your brain with all the tools

to manage your biochemistry and manage your neurobiology So that you can take

the high ground of your thinking and not be victimized by it anymore,

And that old friend that comes alongside and starts to put his arm around you

and says oh you poor thing you say wait a minute timeout.

People were mean to me yesterday but my God is bigger than that and they were

mean to him so why would I be surprised when they're mean to me but I don't

have to let that determine how I feel.

I get to be in charge of that and I'm gonna change my mind.

I'm backing up out of this mud hole and I'm gonna go a different direction,

one that's good for me so that I can then help other people.

When the God of all comfort comforts me in my troubles so that I can comfort other people in theirs.

That's why I'm here. I'm not here to spend a whole day ruminating on something

negative somebody said to me yesterday or what my uncle did or what my dad said

or what happened when the doctor gave me that diagnosis.

I'm here to say if I'm drawing breath there's a reason why I'm alive and that's

why I can choose joy and that's why I can decide I still have purpose and that's

because I changed my mind because I wanted to change my life.

And that is why I started 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.