Tricking Your Brain, or Changing Your Mind?

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

Lee Warren here with you for some throwback Thursday action.

We're going to go back in time to an episode that we played a while back called Positivity Bias.

Now Daniel Amen, my friend, the world famous psychiatrist who's written some

amazing books and has done some incredible work with brain imaging,

we talked about him and he's been on the show numerous times,

but Daniel has this concept that he calls positivity bias.

And it means that in any situation that you get yourself into you try to find

some way to take the high ground on the thought Okay, because it's easy to get overwhelmed.

Something's hard something's Devastating something's seems

impossible and it's easy to just get overwhelmed by it But if you want to solve

it if you want to find a way through it if you want to be able to navigate it

Or figure out what comes next Then Daniel says that the secret to that is to

find a positivity angle on it That doesn't mean you say, oh,

it's not so bad. It doesn't mean that.

It doesn't mean, oh, this doesn't really hurt that much. It doesn't mean that

either. It means, okay, this is what the situation is.

What are my tools? What are my resources? What's my past history in a situation

like this? Have other people managed to make it through this?

And guess what? That kind of thinking leads to better problem solving and better resilience.

When it turns out, it didn't come from Daniel Lehman, came from lots of other

psychologists and psychiatrists before him. But even before that, it came from Scripture.

That's really what 2 Corinthians 10 5 is about, about taking captive every thought

and making it obedient to Christ and putting that thought in submission to your

higher level cognitive powers and your ability to communicate with your mind

and your brain and the Holy Spirit and all the tools you have available to you.

And as I told you in Hope is the First Dose, it gives you this ability to stop

the crazy train, to pause,

biopsy the thought, Look at what's happening and then remember and flex the

muscle of hope hope happens because of memory and movement Okay,

memory and movement and we're gonna do a whole episode about this email that

I received this week I got an email Lisa and I just talked about how do you

how do you describe the difference between?

Just tricking yourself into being silly and optimistic or actually changing

your mind about what you're going through Especially when what you're going

through seems so devastating and pervasive Okay,

this email came in I'm just give you the gist of it So I don't have his permission

to share his name or the whole story,

but here's the gist He said this I wish I had a more technical way of describing

this But if I'm honest the process of changing my mind is really really hard

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

One thing I'm struggling with is 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 a perfect question and we're gonna dive into that on self brain surgery

Saturday We're gonna do a whole episode about what it actually means to change

your mind and not just tell yourself to be happier Tell yourself to be more

positive or tell yourself to be more,

you know Oriented towards a better solution than

the negative emotion or repressing those negative thoughts

and not giving yourself permission to feel them We're gonna

talk about how we do that in a healthy way how we actually Change

our minds to take the high ground so that we can move

forward through whatever type of trauma or tragedy or

massive thing or difficulty or tricky situation we find

ourselves in and how we do that and balance between neuroscience

and faith and how those not not balance but how

we bring those two things together to work together the

way they're designed to and we're gonna do that on Saturday but today I want

to give you back this positivity bias episode we played it during all in August

and then was first released the previous year during all in August and I just

want to give you this this little episode about the concept of how important

and powerful it is to have a positivity bias.

We're gonna get that done today as a kind of a preamble to a full Self Brain

Surgery Saturday episode that's coming about how you really change your mind

and not just trick yourself into feeling a little better or trick yourself into

repressing your emotions.

We're going to do it in a healthy way that's consistent with neuroscience and

scripture, because when we smash those two things together, we get our brains

working the way God designed them to work.

And that's when you can break through, my friend. And that's when you can answer this one question.

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.

He's a guy named Martin Seligman and he wrote a breakthrough idea in psychology

taught generations of psychologists to stop thinking about what most mental

health experts always think about which is problems.

Don't think about your mental illness or your mental problem, your difficulty,

the insufficiency of how your brain is working but rather he's now called the

father of positive psychology because he taught people to look at finding the

ways to look at what's good, finding the ways to look at what's hopeful,

finding the ways to look at what's positive.

For many years, psychology worked within this idea of disease,

treating people with mental problems and psychopathological issues instead of

finding a way to help people see the positive psychology,

to shift the focus of interventions from problems to solutions.

So not, why are you so depressed? Why are you so anxious? just stop feeling

that way, stop doing that, stop thinking that.

Instead, they determine that positive psychology really has five key aspects.

And this is really well laid out in Daniel Amon's book, You Happier,

which is a fantastic look at the neuroscience of happiness and feeling good and all those things.

It's a really important, it's just a tremendous book and Daniel has done a beautiful job.

But he lays out this sort of positive bias training in that chapter and he talks

about Martin Seligman's work. and here's the summation of it,

that they determined, Southerland and his colleagues, determined that positive

psychology helps you to look at life with optimism.

Positive psychology allows us to appreciate the present.

Positive psychology lets us accept and make peace with the past.

Positive psychology helps us to be more grateful and forgiving.

And positive psychology helps us to look beyond the momentary pleasures and

pains of life, to look beyond the moment.

Those are all great things, right? And we've learned that in what we call now trauma -informed care,

like instead of saying looking at somebody's behavior and saying what's wrong

with you, man, why are you doing all these things, why do you take those drugs,

why do you behave that way, why are you always causing trouble,

instead of what's wrong with you,

we look beyond their behavior and say what happened to you, what has occurred in your life, friend,

that's led you to thinking and behaving this way so consistently, what happened to you?

So the positive bias when you're looking at a situation or you're looking at

yourself and your life is not to say what's wrong with me,

what's the matter with me, why does it always feel this way,

why does this always happen to me, why is this always occurring to me,

why does nobody behave appropriately around me.

The positive spin on that would be what has happened to lead.

Me into this situation where I feel this way. What's happened?

To look at it. And most of the time, I would just challenge you,

as we're trying to go all in with our lives, with our brains,

with our spirits, all in in our relationships, all in with our behavior,

I want you to understand that a lot of the times,

the problem is what I've jokingly called eye trouble, like we're wondering why

everybody else is behaving a certain way and we never look inward to maybe some

of the solutions to why things are happening or feeling the way they are has

to do with the way we're thinking and approaching them.

And so learning to have a positive bias towards your thinking is a crucial aspect

of learning how to break through all that clutter and the sameness and how's

that working for you ideally like we talked about yesterday.

Having a positive bias to your thinking helps you to unlock a couple of really

important things and what they are is that positivity in a situation creates

a better brain environment, a better brain chemical environment than negativity do.

That's just true. It's been proven without any doubt from neuroscience that

positive thinking produces a better chemical environment in your brain.

And what that does is allows you to re -engage, or recreate rather,

new synaptic connections that will

lead you to a more natural or automated positive thought in the future.

Now when I'm talking about positive thinking, don't ever mistake.

Don't ever think that I'm saying that you should just put a smile on your face

and move on I was Exposed to some of that thinking as a child and it can be

really harmful especially if you attach it to a religious connotation and say.

Christians aren't sad christians are happy christians are always supposed to

have a smile on their face christians shrug off troubles The problem with that

is it doesn't line up with the real world because it's not reasonable,

To lose your son and still be happy about it the same day

That's not reasonable and if you tell people they have to if

you tell people that they should always be happy no matter what happens Then

that they're gonna realize that's not realistic It's not

possible And then you're gonna start feeling guilt and shame over not living

up to what you are being taught That you're supposed to feel right so when I

say I want you to feel positive I'm not saying that you should always just paste

a smile on and act like it doesn't matter to you That's not what I'm talking

about What I'm talking about is, like I said the other day,

when you're on the beach and the bullets are coming at you,

and you know what your purpose is, then you can put the shield up and you can

say, wait a minute, I've gotta find a way through this.

There is a path forward here that will allow me to succeed.

I'm gonna stop just thinking about the bullets coming at me,

and I'm gonna start looking for the opportunity to move forward safely.

I'm gonna start believing that there's a way to get from point A where I'm at

to point B where there's safety, where there's peace, there's hope,

there's future, there's reconnection, there's resolution of problems or whatever.

There's a way for me to get from here to there.

And I'm telling you, friend, the way to get from here to there in your brain

is to look at the situation with a positive bias.

To say, okay, this is happening, but I can find a way through it.

Because the alternative, the negative bias is the cortisol and the adrenaline,

the stress hormones are gonna fire up and you're gonna say, I need to run away

or I need to suck in and get deeper down in this hole and just hide or I need

to kill myself or I need to divorce this person or do whatever.

You go down this negative path and your problems don't generally get better, do they?

If you dig in on the beach you're going to eventually have a shell land on you and get blown up.

You've got to have an ability to move forward and the only way to do that is

to find some way to positively look at the situation.

Again, really careful to discern what I'm talking about.

Not saying that you say, oh yeah, I went bankrupt. Great, that's wonderful.

No, that's not what I'm talking about. That's insanity.

What I'm saying is the money's not there.

What can I do? Is it impossible? Is it never going to be okay? Am I going to fail?

Am I going to go bankrupt? Are they going to take my house? No.

You say, wait a minute. I've got some skills.

I can add some hours at work. I can find a way to get my boss to advance my pay.

I can do this. I can do that. There's a way to solve this problem.

Starts with prayer. There's a way to clear the situation and look through it and find an answer.

Look through it and find a possibility. Look through it and find a path.

That's what I mean by positivity, not oh, it's all going to be okay,

which I say that all the time, but I don't mean it in a silly way, a fantasy way,

to say that based on my track record of memory of the past of how God has behaved

and responded when I've had trouble in the past, somehow I got through all those previous situations.

Somehow I didn't go bankrupt. Somehow I didn't die in Iraq. Somehow I didn't

kill myself after I went through a divorce or I had all those issues.

Somehow I found love when I

met Lisa. Somehow I believed in myself again because Lisa said I was okay.

So somehow God got me through losing my son.

Somehow we managed to survive moving our practice from Alabama to Wyoming and

somehow we wound up in Nebraska. Somehow God did all those things.

And so since he did all those things in the past, I've got memory.

I can say, maybe there is hope for the future. And then I can move,

can flex that muscle of hope and start moving towards that possibility instead

of just hunkering down on the beach and waiting to get blown up.

That's what I mean by having a positive bias.

We just say, I'm gonna look at this situation and find the path, because there is a path.

There's a crack in the door filled with light in this dark room and I just need

to find the path forward there, okay?

So when I tell you to have a positive bias, please don't ever think I'm telling

you to be unrealistically positive, okay? There's lots of psychology to this.

But the thing you don't know, the thing that most people don't know,

is how much positive and negative thoughts affect your brain chemistry.

You said it a while ago, but when you have a happy thought, even a simple one, like a bright idea,

a loving feeling, your brain releases the chemicals of happiness,

dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin, they calm your body,

they help clear your thinking, they help you find possibility and hope in the moment.

And when you have negative thoughts, the brain releases or decreases certain

chemicals and you feel angrier, more stressed, more sad.

The release of these stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline and you deplete

the positive neurotransmitters and your brain predictably gets worse and worse

and worse when you focus on those negative thoughts.

So your choice then, as I've told you many times, the only animals in the whole.

Animal kingdom, if you wanna think about yourself in terms of zoology,

is that has the gift of selective attention, are human beings,

we're the only ones who have the ability to say I am not going to think about

that for a second, I'm going to think about this instead.

You can change trains, you can change your train of thought,

you can change what you're thinking about friend, and you can decide to think

about something that's going to make you feel better instead of worse.

You can set that train of thought and you can change the direction of how you're

thinking and feeling and deciding that you're going to live more positively

is the key to do that. You have to do that ahead of time.

You have to do it ahead of time. I've said it a million times.

You've got to prehab your brain to believe that you are going to handle whatever

you encounter in a more positive way and you will.

You absolutely will. One sort of surgery, one self -brain surgery technique

that we've talked about a lot is what I call the bad thought biopsy.

It's been covered many times in many ways. Lots of people have written about this idea.

Byron Katie and Daniel Lehman and lots of people have looked at it as a way

of just examining your thinking and not believing every thought that pops into your head.

I call it the bad thought biopsy because when I do brain surgery,

if I look at a scan and I see a round spot in your brain and I just tell you,

I put my hand on your knee and say, hey, you've got a brain tumor,

we need to go put you in radiation chemotherapy.

You would say, wait a minute, how do you know for sure it's a brain tumor?

And I would say, I've seen it before, that's probably what it is,

we ought to just radiate your brain, we ought to put nuclear radiation on your skull.

You would say, that's crazy, you don't know for sure that it's a tumor.

That'd be malpractice, right? Instead, I have to take you to the operating room

and I have to put a needle in that thing and I have to biopsy it so the pathologist

can tell us what it is for sure before we decide how to treat it.

And it's the same thing with your thinking. When the thought pops into your

head, you've got to say, wait a second, is that thought true?

Is it absolutely true? Is it certain to be true? And how do I feel about that if it is true?

And what would I feel if it wasn't true? What would I do differently if it's

cancer as opposed to if it's just a little scar tissue in the brain?

If it's cancer, I've got to do radical surgery, chemotherapy,

radiation, all that stuff, hospice, all those things. if it's just a little

scar tissue, I just don't have to do anything. I'm well.

I'm fine. I get to move on with my life, right?

If it's a bad thought and I look at it, is it absolutely true?

Maybe not. Maybe there's some way to think about it as it's not true. Is it 100 % true?

Maybe it's partially true. Daniel Lehman gives a great example in the book of

you have a thought that pops into your head. Nobody likes me.

And then you put yourself through this process. Is it true? Yes, I think it's true.

Is it absolutely true with 100 % certainty? And you would say,

maybe my mom likes me, maybe my wife likes me. So the first thought was nobody likes me.

You say, is it true? Yeah, I think that's true. But then you say,

wait, is it 100 % absolutely true?

Then you make yourself admit, no, there's a couple of people who like me.

The third step then was how do you feel when you believe that thought?

If nobody liked me, I'd be pretty sad. I'd be depressed and I would spend the

rest of my life alone with no friends, I'd be a loser, I'd be a loner,

I'd die alone, and nobody would care as the guy in the Bible that said he died

to no one's regret, right?

Then the fourth step, how would you feel if you didn't have that thought?

If I didn't have the thought that nobody liked me, I would feel happier and

more open to meeting other people and connecting with them.

And then the last step, turn the thought around to its opposite and ask if the opposite is true.

So instead of nobody likes me, maybe the thought is some people do like me,

and is there any evidence that this is true. My wife seems to like me. She sticks around.

We've been married for a long time and she doesn't leave me.

So maybe she does like me.

Maybe my co workers invite me to lunch from time to time or somebody sends me

a funny meme on instagram. So somebody's out there thinking about me. Right.

I can pretty much guarantee that when I open my phone this morning,

I'm going to have a couple of funny videos to watch from my friend Al almost

every day. So he's out there thinking about me. He likes me.

So now I've worked myself from this thought that nobody likes me all the way

out to, hey, there are a few really connected people who actually do like me and I am not alone.

And so then instead of reacting to the negative thought automatically.

Meditate on the thought that's actually true and you'll find a way to feel a

little more hopeful and a little more optimistic about what's going to happen that day.

So the question at the end of the day is, are the thoughts that I'm routinely

allowing myself to think, as Dr.

Phil said, how's it working for you, are these thoughts helping me or are they hurting me?

Is my bias negative towards the harm of my own brain chemistry or is it positive

towards helping my brain chemistry and therefore my automated thinking,

my synaptic connections and my behavior going forward that's easier and easier

to accomplish because I've trained my brain with prehab,

brain surgery and now rehab to go forward in a more positive way.

That's the treatment plan. Do your thoughts bring you more safety,

peace, joy, hope, happiness or are they bringing you regret,

anger, frustration, sadness, depression?

Learn how to keep the thoughts that are serving you and question or discard

or better react to the ones that are dragging you down and that will change

your life and that's how you go all in with your brain.

You know what cracks me up is that we've done all the psychological research

and written tens of thousands of books and articles and papers and blogs and

there's all this stuff out there about positivity bias training.

And 2 ,000 years ago, the Apostle Paul wrote this in Philippians 4, 6 through 8.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition

with thanksgiving, present your request to God. You hear that?

Prayer, meditation, gratitude.

Verse seven, and the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard

your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

He's telling you, you need to guard your mind. You need to be careful what you

let your brain think about.

Then verse eight, finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true,

whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,

whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy,

think about such things. What is that?

Positivity, bias, training. He's telling you, you're gonna have a hard life.

Remember this guy Paul, who was in prison, shipwrecked, snake bit,

stoned, ultimately martyred.

This guy is not saying that you'll have a happy life full of great things and

never have anything bad happen to you.

He's saying in the midst of those hard things, be positive anyway and you'll

find a better path forward.

That's the answer. So you see, positivity bias training is not teaching you

how to be ridiculously optimistic in the face of overwhelming evidence that you ought not to be.

That's not it. Let me give you an example of something that you can do based

on something I did that was.

Almost life -saving in the moment. So when you have something really bad happen,

when you go through a really hard circumstance and I want to say take a time

out here and just say thank you.

We've received written cards and emails and several text messages from many

people who are listeners.

Noticing and being aware of the fact that three days from now August 20th is

the anniversary the ninth anniversary the worst day of our lives the day we lost our son Mitch and.

And many of you are just very kindly Loving on and doctoring us and reminding

us that you're thinking about us in that moment And I just want to tell you

how grateful we are for that just to know that people are out there that are

aware As time goes on after a big event like that happens You wonder if people know,

if they care, especially the people who knew about it when it happened and who

knew that person that you lost or knew that situation that you went through, have they forgotten?

Like I spend a little time sometimes going down this rabbit hole worrying that

people have forgotten Mitch or don't remember how funny he was or how smart

he was and those kinds of things.

And to know that the people who didn't even ever know him are just giving us

a little thought, a little mental energy, sending out a word of encouragement,

and even taking the time to write. That's amazing.

It's a good example of how we can love one another and be community for each

other, even if we're only connected digitally to each other in the world.

It's amazing what the internet has allowed us to do. We're grateful about that.

But let me tell you something that happened. So we lose our son on the 20th.

On the 23rd, we have his funeral, and we were driving back from Prattville,

Alabama to Auburn, which is about an hour, hour and a half, something like that.

Probably an hour and 15 minutes in the car that day.

Got my parents in the back seat, Lisa and I are in the front.

We're in a little caravan of cars going from Prattville down the interstate

to Montgomery and then over to Auburn to the east.

And we're devastated, right?

We're crying and we're just numb and we don't really know what we're gonna do

and we're in that situation of just being emotionally and he stunted and muted by the whole thing.

And all of a sudden, it's a cloudy day. It's a cloudy day.

And all of a sudden, we see this intense, incredible, just unbelievably vivid

double rainbow over the highway.

And it was in front of us far enough that we could see both ends of it,

like we're driving under this double rainbow.

And just in that moment, I can't tell you, I can't really describe it. It sounds kind of silly.

I just knew that somehow God was going to get us through this.

And I had this weird thought, it's just this strange thought,

I wonder what that looks like from Mitch's perspective in heaven.

I wonder if he can see that rainbow.

I wonder if he's smiling because he knows it's giving us a little bit of a boost,

a little bit of a lift right now.

Like I just had this moment where I stepped out of the pain that I was in and

allowed myself to think about something that was happier and I felt better.

And that sounds like a trick but it's not a trick from a chemical standpoint.

Even in the midst of a hard time you can notice something good in that moment.

There was a day in Iraq I wrote about in my last book where I was just miserable

and everything was bloody red and everybody getting blown up.

I did all this trauma surgery that day and it had been just brown everywhere on the outside.

There's dirt everywhere and it's dark sky and there's a sandstorm and my whole

world was red and brown, just red and brown.

I was just focused on these negative thoughts as I was walking down the sidewalk

and I just encountered this little tiny plant that was growing up,

bright green plant growing up out of a crack in the sidewalk.

And it just was wow, this whole world, my brain is saying everything is red

and everything Everything is brown, everything is bloody or dirty or filthy

or decaying or dying or screaming or bleeding. Everything is negative.

And all of a sudden my brain said, but that's not, there's a little blade of

grass right there that's popped up somehow and probably in the middle of this

desert, there's a little green plant growing up out of the ground in the hardest

place possible growing up out of concrete.

And just for a moment, I said, well, that plant can grow and thrive in this

difficult the environment, maybe I can too.

And so I just stepped out of the problem and into something a little bit more

positive for a second. And it made a huge difference in my heart that day.

Just made a huge difference. And I've heard from so many people,

that little story in that book resonated with them.

And the reason it resonates, friend, is because we need to be able to find,

and it's something you can reliably do.

You can train yourself to find something positive in the midst of any situation that you're in.

And that doesn't mean that what's happening isn't happening.

It just means that you allow yourself to say, we're on parallel tracks here,

this is happening, there's still some good and some light and some hope in the world.

And because of that means it's possible for you to get through what you're going

through and move forward.

That's why the Bible says, think on these things. That's why the Bible says, fret not yourself.

Like don't go down these rabbit holes of negativity because that's how you get

lost in these heavy circumstances.

Don't allow yourself to believe every stupid thought that you have,

because most of them are negative.

Most of them are wired to be negative, but you can train your brain to bias towards positivity.

You can and it'll make all the difference

And I'm just telling you friend if you can learn to think

on these things these better things You're gonna be happier and not to be happier

just for the sake of acting like things are gonna be okay But to be happier

because happier people have better brain chemistry And they make better synapses

and they make better decisions and they find better possibilities and they solve problems better.

And this has been proven unequivocally through all kinds of scientific research.

It is absolutely true that if you look at the world negatively,

you don't perform as well.

You don't marry as well. You don't sustain relationships as well.

You don't avoid bad habits as well. You don't live as long.

In fact, there's been really good research that says happier people have lower

blood pressure and lower risk of coronary artery disease and lower numbers of

strokes, and lower numbers of cancer.

Like happier people live longer and feel better.

And that's why I always say I want you to become healthier, feel better, and be happier.

I want you to change your mind so you can change your life. So I'm always telling

you to find a way to look for the hope and the light.

And the only reason I care about that for you so much is because if we can all

find a way to be a little more positive,

our society will change, the world will change, but people will start seeing

that the Lord loves them, and there's opportunity and purpose and power and

passion and promise for you.

Because when God says something, friend, he says it for everybody,

and when he tells you that he's got good plans for you, it's true,

and you can't get to him if you're just mired down in your negativity and your impossibility.

If you can't see the light and move towards it, you'll never find the light.

It's time to go all in, and it's time to go all in and decide that we will relentlessly

refuse to participate in our own demise.

And I'm just telling you, friend,

running with your negative thoughts is participating in your own demise.

It's playing Russian roulette with your own brain. So quit it, okay?

Let's go with positivity bias, not irrationally positive,

but a way to find consistently the ability to find something in a moment that's

positive and hopeful and move towards it and latch onto it and refuse to give

it up because that's the good news.

You can't change your life until you change your mind. And you can start today.

Music.

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

brand new book, Hope is the First Dose.

It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things.

It's available everywhere books are sold, and I narrated the audio books.

Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries .org.

They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship

the most high God. and if you're interested in learning more,

check out TommyWalkerMinistries .org.

If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at WLeeWarrenMD .com slash prayer,

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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.