Three Levels of Self-Brain Surgery

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

Lee Warren here and I am getting ready to give you a wild card Wednesday episode.

This has been a frustrating morning. I've been working on hooking up new gear

and testing things and this is the first episode that I will have recorded with

a brand new mixer and so we're going to see how that sounds and what it looks like.

But you're gonna be taking some days off here to work on audio and some new things for you.

So we're gonna see how it goes. And I've got just a couple of little ideas about

the three levels of self-brain surgery for you this morning and a breakthrough

from scripture that I found in my Bible study time this morning that I think will be helpful to you.

And we're gonna get after it in just a second. But before we do any of that,

my friend, I have one question for you.

Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.

You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place where the

neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything

starts to make sense. Are you ready 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.

Okay, we are gonna get after this idea that I found in my Bible study time this morning.

I've been thinking about, and we've talked several times lately about the different

levels of self-brain surgery.

If all you're interested in is hacking your neuroscience so you can get your

brain under a little bit better control, if you've recognized perhaps that you're

thinking is a problem for you, you've got a limiting story or you're hearing

negative voice in your head and you want to get that under control,

you can become a little bit happier, maybe 10% happier,

maybe a little more by just working on the idea that you can learn to put a

little pause between the stimulus that life brings you, the negative thought,

the irritating thing, the thing that somebody says to you or cuts you off in

traffic and your normal response that you don't think about.

If you put a little space in there you can make a better decision about how you respond.

You can recognize that maybe feelings aren't facts or that not all your thoughts

are true and you can you get a little control of that and you can get a little

happier by doing that and I want you to think about.

If we talk about prehab as part of our treatment plan for how we're going to

become more resilient and feel better and become healthier and be happier and

all that, then the 10 percent model is programming.

Okay, we're working just on the programming side, on writing new synapses,

automating new behaviors and not having to think so much about our thinking,

that we're thinking more about our thinking so that we don't have to respond

and react in the ways that we always have but we can take better control of

them and over time that'll automate and we won't have to think so much about not being so negative.

So that's the 10% model is programming, okay?

But we also have discovered through understanding neuroscience and really getting

deep into the weeds of understanding how our brains work, we can learn more

about our nervous system,

learn more about how life interacts with our brain and how other people and

different parts of our bodies are all connected and how we can use the science

of epigenetics to understand that we're not stuck with our genes and we're not

just born this way and we can do all that kind of stuff.

And we can really learn then to get better control of our thought processes

and our lives and all aspects,

even our heart rate and our blood pressure and everything comes into better

control and we feel better and we actually become healthier when we understand

how our brains operate and how to take control of that and use it to our advantage

and that's preparation.

So we've talked a lot of times, so the significantly happier model is if you

think about how that prehab works, it's not just programming,

but it's preparing for the inevitable hard things that life is gonna bring us.

Does that make sense? We've talked lots of times about this incredible book

that I read by Chris Voss, who was an FBI hostage negotiator.

And he said, hey, when the pressure's on, you don't rise to the occasion,

you don't turn into some kind of superstar, you fall back to the level of your preparation.

And we saw this actually in action in the Iron Bowl.

The Iron Bowl is an annual football game between Auburn University and the University

of Alabama and last week all of us Auburn fans had our hearts broken because

it looked like Auburn was gonna win that game that was just about a minute left to play.

Alabama had fourth down and goal from like the 35-yard line or something and

they and all Auburn had to do was stop that play from becoming a touchdown and

they were gonna win the Iron Bowl.

Severely under-ranked not not ranked severely underrated way underdogs in this game.

Auburn had a chance to win in the last play and Alabama's quarterback Jalen

Milrow somehow miraculously completed a 31 yard pass 30 something yard pass into the end zone.

A kid named Bond Isaiah Bond made an incredible catch and they won the game.

Alabama won the game when it looked like all was lost and when they interviewed

the quarterback Jalen Milrow after the game.

He said, hey, a football game is 60 minutes. We don't play 59 minutes.

We don't play 59 minutes and 30 seconds.

We don't play less than 60 minutes.

We play to the last whistle, and it's not over until it's over,

and we don't get freaked out when we're behind.

We just fall back on our preparation and our training.

He basically quoted Chris Voss, and what he said was, hey, there's a lot of pressure on us.

There's less than a minute to go. We're behind, but we've trained for this.

Nick Saban, the head coach of Alabama, said it.

We have a play for that. We're down, we got to score a touchdown,

we have a play, we know where the receivers are going to go,

the quarterback knows who is going to throw the ball, we prepare for that.

It's a good example of how you can learn to be significantly happier by just preparing better.

Run a better prehab program and get your brain under better control and you

can learn how to handle the stresses of life in a more automated and efficient

way and you can have more success at getting your mind working for you instead of against you.

So that's the significantly happier prehab process.

So instead of just programming, instead of just hacking your nervous system,

you're actually preparing it to help you, okay?

But then there's this infinitely happier level. Because if you've been through

something really hard, if you've had a massive thing, and I got emails yesterday

all day long, people had a child that had a stroke and was hemiplegic from birth,

they lost another child, somebody's husband died. There's just terrible.

Terrible distress you got on our prayer go out onto our prayer wall And there's

people in great peril and great danger and great heartache and and they're struggling

with their finances And they're having real pressure and I would just submit

to you after having lost a son After having been through a divorce after having

been to war all those things that happen,

10% happier or even significantly.

Happier is not enough to get you back to some place that feels like you again,

after you've been through something really massive and it feels almost infinitely hopeless.

You've been crushed beyond reason and you need more than a little bit of improvement,

in your peace of mind, hope, happiness, all those things to get back to what

even feels like equipoise, to sort of get back to where you feel almost normal again, right?

So I believe that that's why we are created with a mind that can communicate

and upgrade the hardware of our brain, the software of our mind can upgrade

the hardware of our brain.

We know that meditation and prayer actually makes your brain grow physically.

So you can improve the hardware, the structural function and behavior and anatomy

of your brain by changing how you think. That's clear from neuroscience research now.

But also that that mind gives you a almost like a Wi-Fi network interface with

your creator who can help you become even better by operating your brain like he wants you to.

So he can communicate and come into your story and help you in those hard times.

And that, my friend, is how we become infinitely better, able to manage the hard things in life.

Okay, now let me give you the scripture. Doing my Bible time this morning,

I find this verse, 1 Thessalonians 5, 16, 17, and 18, and 19.

This is the, I've told you before that I thought Ephesians four was maybe the

short, Ephesians four and Romans 12 and Philippians four are the three different

sort of levels of self-brain surgery, but here's one even more succinct, okay?

Even more succinct, 1 Thessalonians 5, 16, 17, 18.

If you want to operate your brain on an infinitely higher level and communicate

with your creator so that he can come into your story and help you manage your

mind and therefore turn your thoughts into better things and have a better life

than you've been having after you've been through massive things, here it is.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances,

but for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

So what's Jesus's will for you? what's God's will for your life.

He wants you to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances.

Why? We've been talking about that.

On the neuroscience side, when you choose to focus your mind on something more

hopeful, more positive, more joyful in a difficult situation,

then your brain gets more clear,

you declutter, and you don't focus on the negative things that are dragging

you down into stuckness and sort of being in that cingulate gyrus place where

you can't move forward and you're stuck in neutral and your foot's on the gas

and you just can't move forward because you're gonna choose gratitude and joy.

You're gonna pray without ceasing, which is your ability to communicate with

God so he can tell you and give you better ideas.

And we know that people who pray and meditate start to hear better thoughts

in their head. They start to make better decisions.

Their brain, their hippocampus grows. The parts of your brain that give you

resilience and strength and decision-making capabilities get bigger when you

pray and meditate. That's why it says pray without ceasing.

Okay? And we also know that when you switch on your task positive network,

as we talked about yesterday and on Friday,

or rather on Monday and on Friday of last week, when you pray and meditate and

think and you switch into that task positive network, you get your default mode

network less self-focused,

and improve the baseline of where your thinking goes when you're not actively

thinking about or doing something.

That's why I pray without ceasing works. It means you don't just let your thoughts run amok, okay?

How do you rejoice always? Let's say you're on the beach and you're invading,

you're part of the Normandy invasion at D-Day and you're getting shot at and

bombed and all of that. You have two things to think about.

You can think, holy cow, these guys are shooting at me and I'm gonna get blown

up and I'm gonna die and I better hide under this rock and I better not move

forward. You can think about that.

And if you do, what's gonna happen? Your heart's gonna race,

you're gonna become incredibly self-focused on not dying and you're gonna hide

behind that rock and eventually one of those snipers is gonna zone in on you

and kill you because you're not moving.

If you're sitting still, you're in danger and you're going to get blown up, right?

Or you can say, whoa, that was close. Thank you, God, I'm so glad that bullet

didn't hit me. Wow, I got shot, but it's only in the arm and I can put a tourniquet

on that and I can keep going forward and I didn't die. Thank you Lord for that.

You see what I mean? You can switch into this mode of Choosing joy and gratitude

for whatever you're going through and you can then find better ways to move

forward You're like, holy cow. That was so close. I almost died. Thank you.

And wow, look I can see a path forward there these guys on the left and right

of me all got blown up But the guys that went down this middle path made it

to the next, you know safety place I can do that.

Thank you for showing me that. So you switch your mind into this rejoicing,

giving thanks, praying mode, and then you don't dive into that hole of,

oh my word, I'm getting blown up.

Everybody hates me. Nobody loves me. I'm never gonna amount to anything.

You see what I mean? You just have a choice. You can't have both.

You can rejoice and choose positivity bias, and you can choose to move forward

under great fire and great stress and great peril and pray without ceasing and

give thanks for the fact that even though this hard thing happened,

you still have this other thing.

And even though this happened, you still have an opportunity to move forward

and you can find a way over time for God's promises to start coming true for

you and all of that stuff.

And that's what we've talked about it a million times on the podcast.

Like I can tell you without any doubt that 10 years after losing my son, it is not a good thing.

And I am infinitely sad about losing him. But over time, I've gained this perspective

that God has kept His promise that good things have come about in our life.

We have been more conformed to Christ.

We have helped probably hundreds of thousands of other people who are bereaved

and having difficult situations now because we've been willing to talk about

what God's done in our lives.

We've been able to help other people.

And I've grown, and my marriage is better, and my relationship with my kids

is better because I've learned that you can lose somebody and you better pay

attention and you better start today and you better hold on to the people that are around you.

And so all of that is just to say that if you can focus your mind on ways that God is showing up,

on ways to see that there is still purpose and meaning for you,

then you can actually start to move forward.

And that's turns out, Paul says here in 1 Thessalonians 5, that turns out to

be what the will of God in Christ is for you.

And the last one is don't quench the spirit. Listen, the Holy Spirit,

if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is trying to help you, but he's a gentleman.

He doesn't scream. Tata and I talked about that recently. He'll walk on by if you don't invite him in.

He doesn't scream. He's just there, and he wants to help you.

And that's what, when I talk about how our brains are like a wifi network, that's what I mean.

Like, if you say, hey, I'm gonna connect to the network. I wanna hear you.

I want you to talk to me. I want you to be with me in this moment.

I want you to give me peace and help me out." And he will, he will.

He's there for you, friend.

And so the whole question is, how do you want to run your prehab program?

Do you want it to just be programming so you just learn to hack the neuroscience

or do you want it to be preparation so that when you're under pressure,

you fall back to a level that's a little bit more manageable and a little bit

more efficient? or do you want to actually have presence?

Because it's not just programming and it's not just preparation,

but God's will in Christ for you,

is that you don't quench the spirit, that you rejoice always,

you give thanks, you pray without ceasing, you communicate with him,

you train your default mode to be more resilient.

And that, my friend, is how you become healthier and feel better and be happier.

That's how you find abundance in the midst of the hard life. That's

how you find hope and peace and meaning and purpose and happiness and joy and

resilience and strength and all of that stuff again instead of being stuck with

your cingulate gyrus unable to help you move forward and stuck in rumination

and and Fear and shame and lost from the past and all that stuff.

That's how you move forward my friend And the good news about all of it is that you can start today.

Music.

Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you by my

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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,

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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.