Turning Pro: All-In August #1

Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you, and I am so excited because

it's August. It's all in August.

This is our fourth year of having all in August together,

and all in August is about the idea that there comes a point in your life when

you're tired of not committing fully, when you're tired of the results you've

been getting, when you realize that what got you here won't get you there anymore,

and if you're going to get to a different place, at some point you've got to

get on a different path, right?

So we get to this place in our lives where we're sad, sick, stressed,

stuck. We've been through trauma or drama or tragedy or massive things.

Something's been going on.

And we get to this place where we say something has got to change.

I'm tired of being stuck.

I'm tired of the results I've been getting. I'm just tired of being tired.

And it's time to change. And to do that, we've got to break some of the synapses

and some of the patterns and some of the habits and some of the things that

have been going the way they've been going.

So we'll stop getting what we've been getting. And I'm just telling you,

friend, if you're at that place and this time, it's time to go all in.

Please go back and listen to Mind Change Monday.

This past Monday, a couple of days ago, we had Mark Batterson on the podcast.

And every year on All In August, for the last three years, we've used Mark Batterson's book All In.

It's our textbook, our plan, our guide to this concept of how do we live an all-in life.

Now, it's specifically written from a Christian perspective.

It's about going all in with God.

It's about putting everything on the table with your faith but not holding on

to things that have held you back and but really believing god's promises but

i just want to encourage you friend.

If you're not a believer if you're not sure what you think if you're not sure

there's a god if you're certain that there's not one whatever your belief system is.

It's time for you to go all in in your life anyway, okay? So we're going to

have some spiritual things to say.

We're going to talk about scriptures like Joshua 3, 5, where Joshua told the

people, consecrate yourselves for tomorrow.

The Lord will do amazing things among you. I just want to encourage you.

If you will go all in in your life, if you'll stop holding back,

if you'll stop having one foot in your life and one foot somewhere else, one foot in the past,

one foot in the future, if you'll stop doing that, if you'll just go all in,

I promise you, you will see some incredible progress in your life next 31 days. I promise.

If you go all in, you cut the ties, burn the boats, get ready to go and get

after it and stop holding back.

If you'll stop doing what you've been doing so you can start getting something

other than what you've been getting.

If you'll really believe the 10 commandments of self-brain surgery,

if you'll really believe that what got you here won't get you there and what

you're doing, you're getting better at, you can go all in and you will see your

life change. Now here's my premise.

Okay. I make no sort of secrecy about the fact that I'm a Christian. I I believe in God.

I believe we're designed and I believe our lives operate best when we connect

our minds to the Holy Spirit who wants to help and guide us and that's how we

have better top-down control of our brain and our bodies and our life and our

epigenetics and our generations and all that stuff.

I believe that, okay? But even if you don't believe it, here's a principle from science,

that I just want to throw out there for you is if you pursue this all-in idea,

if you operate this system from the perspective of mind down and not brain out,

if you stop believing you're just your brain and you're determined by your genetics

or your circumstances, your parents or trauma or whatever has turned you into

who you are and there's nothing you can do about it.

If you'll just trust me for one month and operate your mind as if you have mind down control.

Then here's what I think will happen. Science says, if you have an idea and

you test that idea and the results of the test aren't what you think,

then you've got to revise your idea.

So you keep testing and refining and testing and refining until finally the

idea is proved out by the test.

These experiments show what would be predicted by the concept or the notion

that you had, the hypothesis, we call it.

And ultimately, you get down to where you can then predict what's going to happen

based on the hypothesis and the

testing, and you can then understand how a particular system works, okay?

That's called science. But the underpinning philosophy there is you've got to

have the character and the ability and the willingness to change the hypothesis

when the results point towards something else.

You've got to be willing to refine what you thought was true based on the results

and the data that you get. That's good science, okay?

We do a lot of times in science nowadays, days, capital S, science and media

gets involved and popular press and culture gets involved.

And all of a sudden we start saying how we want it to be and then making the

experiments try to prove that or ignoring data to the contrary so that we can

hold on to our own idea of what we think true is.

But I just want to tell you here at the outset of all in August,

let's just have this idea that what if there's not my truth and your truth and

truth and their truth? What if there's just a truth?

And at least as it pertains to this idea of the best way to operate your mind

and your brain and your body and your life, what if there's a true path?

Whether or not you think there's a spiritual implication there or not,

what if there is just a way that's the best way to operate?

I promise you, if you'll go all in on this idea of mind down,

whether there's a spiritual connotation to it or not, you will find yourself

during this 31 days asking some questions and and getting some answers that

might be surprising to you.

And that's when you'll be ready to say, as a good scientist,

maybe there's something else to think about here.

Okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to turn pro in your own life.

What does that mean, turn pro? Does it mean you're going to start getting paid

to live your own life? Well, that'd be amazing.

Here's what I want you to see. There's a book by Steven Pressfield called Turning Pro.

Steven Pressfield has written a bunch of novels, The Legend of Bagger Vance,

300 novel, or Gates of Fire that they made the movie 300 out of.

He's written a bunch of novels that became movies, he's gotten famous for that.

But he started writing these little short books. The first one was called The War of Art.

He started writing these short little books that are just this philosophy of

how you overcome what he calls resistance.

Anytime you're trying to create something or change something or be something

different, that there's this force of the universe that he calls resistance.

I call it the enemy. I think we're in a spiritual war, okay?

And I think you have an enemy that wants to keep you stuck, that wants you not

to break through, that wants you not to find peace and abundance in your life.

And so he calls it resistance. And it's just this idea that,

and it's universally true that whenever you try to change something,

there is a tremendous amount of inertia and resistance to making that change happen.

And it's true. You already know it's true. As soon as you say,

I'm going to stop drinking, you're going to walk into the office and somebody's

having a birthday and it's five o'clock and office hours are over and everybody

gets invited out to the bar to have a drink and celebrate this person's birthday.

As soon as you say you're going to stop eating Cheetos, you get home that day

and somebody has sent you in the mail a package of the new flavor of Cheetos.

You didn't even know it was coming the day you said you weren't going to have

Cheetos anymore, right? You say you're going to fast and you walk into the office

the next day and they've got cake for somebody's anniversary.

It always happens. There's a resistance to things that we want to change.

You say you're going to write a book. Well, your computer crashes the next day.

And it always happens. Something happens and you get this resistance.

And on a more fundamental level, I sit down to try to script out a podcast or

write a chapter in my book.

And I can't stop checking the Internet. I can't stop checking my email.

I just need to check that one Instagram post before I get started.

And before I've just run out of time and I didn't get my work done that day.

What I want you to recognize is everybody faces resistance.

The difference is amateurs face resistance and wilt from it and walk away and

don't get their work done.

Amateurs check Instagram or Facebook for an hour, check their email constantly

and they don't get their work done.

Amateurs eat the cake because it's there even though they had decided they weren't

gonna have cake that day. and professionals approach things differently.

So what's the difference between a pro.

And an amateur. I think it comes down to this idea of several things that Steven

Pressfield talks about in his little book, Turning Pro.

And by the way, every time I recommend a book that's not written by a Christian,

I get a bunch of emails from Christians who say, hey, you recommended this book

and I downloaded it and it's got a cuss word in it, or you recommended this

thing and I did it and it's got some philosophy in it that I don't agree with. Don't do that.

Understand that we can learn from things that don't necessarily agree with us

100%. It's one of our problems in our culture right now.

Everybody on one side of the aisle says everything the other side does is horrible

and terrible and they're bad people and they need to be canceled.

Everybody on the other side of the aisle says all those people are godless savages.

We don't trust them. We don't believe in them. And the truth is we can learn from each other, okay?

There's ideas and there's good writings and good things that are true and good,

even if they're not written by somebody who agrees with you.

So just take Pressfield with a grain of salt.

He's obviously not a Christian. There's some things in his books that we don't

agree with necessarily, but you can learn from him.

Okay. And he certainly knows how to get the work done and be successful.

So there's some ideas in turning pro that are incredibly helpful.

If you want to start making progress on this idea of going all in, in your own life.

And one of those ideas is that we have this sort of notion, and I don't know

why we think it, but we always have this sort of thing.

If I just get through this deal, I just get this thing accomplished,

then I'm going to break through.

And all of a sudden my life's going to be perfect and everything's going to

be great. If I just get this promotion and marry that girl and win this lottery

or get that raise or overcome this cancer or whatever.

Once I do this, once I graduate, once I get into medical school,

once I make it to the NFL, once I get promoted, whatever it is,

once I get to X, then Y will happen.

Once she says yes, once he comes back, once I can finally overcome this,

then everything's going to be okay.

And the problem is, it's never true, okay?

It's never true. Why? Because life is hard. It's one of the things Jesus promises.

In this world, you will have trouble. He didn't say, you're going to encounter

one spot of trouble, and as soon as you overcome that, everything else will be fine.

In fact, he says in John 10, 10, the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy.

He didn't say the thief came, came once, and then he left. He said he comes.

He keeps coming and showing up. You can call that resistance.

You can call it the thief. You can call it spiritual warfare.

You can call it inertia, whatever you want to call it. I believe it's really spiritual warfare.

The thief comes over and over to steal and kill and destroy.

You're going to have massive things.

You're going to have trauma and tragedy and difficulty. This is not to be a

scary, depressing podcast.

It's to be arming you for the fact that when you decide enough is enough in

my life and you're going to go all in and you're going to stop being in then,

you're going to stop being in when, and you're going to be in now,

and now's the only time you can control.

When you decide to do that, my friend, you are going to face resistance.

In Turning Pro, Steven Pressfield said, practice what he calls this,

getting the work done, showing up in your life to do the work that whatever

it is that you're called to, whatever it is that you're trying to live out,

that work, if we define it as work,

showing up and bearing God's image or making the world a better place or lighting

up the universe for other people or helping your family or doing your job or

writing your book or whatever it is, that practice is lifelong.

You don't get to some place where you say, I did it, it's done,

everything's going to be perfect from now on.

Here's what Steven Pressfield said, a practice is lifelong the Spartan king

Agelius I think I said that wrong Agesilus.

The Spartan king Agesilus was still fighting in armor when he was 82.

Picasso was painting past 90.

Once we turn pro, we're like sharks who have tasted blood or renunciants who

have glimpsed the face of God. For us, there is no finish line.

No bell ends the bout. Life is the pursuit.

Life is the hunt. When our hearts burst, then we'll go out and no sooner.

What's the point? The point is, you don't get to an age or a time or a place

where the resistance goes away.

If you're retired, now the resistance is, what is my life about now?

I don't have my career anymore. I don't have my thing. What am I supposed to be doing now?

And old people sometimes who sit and become very narrow in the scope of their

life. They got the television. They got the newspaper.

They got the TV dinner and nothing else. And they just wither away because they

stopped fighting the fight. They stopped facing the battle.

They stopped finding something to define themselves by or something to pursue

or something to engage in.

They forgot that as long as you're drawing breath, God has a purpose for you

and a plan for you. And it's not to watch television.

It's not to work the crossword. It's not to play Sudoku. It's not to do that.

It's to press through the fight and maintain the fact that you have a meaning

and a purpose to your life. And you're supposed to be all in.

You're supposed to be a pro in your own life. Does that make sense?

So amateurs face resistance and will to weigh. Amateurs taste a little success

and that's enough for them.

Amateurs show up until it gets hard and then they back off.

Amateurs do it for themselves.

Professionals do it for the love of the game, the love of other people,

to serve the client, to serve the customer, to serve the reader,

to serve the listener, to serve the consumer,

to serve their family, to serve other humans, to honor God and reflect Him and enjoy Him forever.

Wherever pros in their lives show up to do the work because they realize that

the work is about something more than them.

If you're a bereaved parent, like we are, that bereavement, that grief,

that loss, that massive thing, if you've lost your child, could become the defining

thing of your whole life. It could crush you. It could put you into a box.

It could make you stuck. It could make you decide to anesthetize yourself against

the pain for the rest of your life.

And that's what an amateur does and I'm sorry if this sounds hard but if you

let your trauma or your drama or your tragedy or your massive thing become the

defining thing then it cannot become the refining thing.

You can be refined by that experience, and you can say, hey, you know what?

I didn't ask to become an expert in grief. I didn't ask to become professional in bereavement.

But guess what? Now I've got a mission.

Now I've got to be able to walk this out and show people that you can put your

feet down and land on something solid.

If you find God's promises, you find hope, you find purpose,

you find an ability to stand up in the midst of that hardship.

And what you're going to see, if you're careful, is you're going to see in front

of you some little lights on the trail a little bit farther in front of you.

Those are the people, like Jill and Brad Sullivan.

Those are the people, like Jess Lindberg, who have carried on after such massive trauma.

And they're shining a little light, and they're walking down the path,

and that's giving you hope that there's possibility out there,

that God's promises are still true. that there's something good out there,

that you can redeem this experience and not be defined by it, but be refined by it.

And you can move forward. And then if you're careful and if you're discerning,

you'll turn your head a little bit and you'll notice that there's some people

behind you and they don't have a light.

They're in the darkness and they're looking for your light up ahead on the trail

so they can find some way forward.

They're in that place. The trauma is so fresh. It's so big.

And it's so powerful. They don't know if there's a crack in the door where the

light's going to come through or not.

And unless you stand up to this moment, unless you stand up to this challenge

and you turn that light on, you find the light of hope again,

you remember that hope is a verb.

It's made of memory that God's promises have held true for other people in the

past and even for you in the past.

And it's made of movement, of starting that walk towards faith,

towards promise, towards hope.

Then all of a sudden, your light comes on a little bit, and the person behind

you can see that light and have the courage and the faith to be able to start moving forward.

That's when you start hearing that Joshua 3, 5 again. Consecrate yourself.

This is holy ground you're on. This outset of all in is holy ground,

my friend, because you're going to either stand up to this moment and you're going to say, what?

Where it's been is unacceptable to me. I will not live there anymore.

I'm ready to go all in. I'm ready to go pro. I'm ready to move forward in my life.

Another thing Pressfield said that I think is really powerful is take what the defense gives you.

Remember you're in a battle, okay? Call it resistance. Call it the enemy.

Somebody is fighting against you to get this done, to go all in,

to make a difference, to find your purpose, to not just fade away.

It's what the enemy wants. What the resistance wants is for you to fail because

somebody else will see you fail and They'll lose heart too, and then progress won't get made.

Lights won't come on. Hope won't be resurgent.

And Jesus' message will be hindered in some way, or the great connection that

we're all supposed to have, this great hope and promise of moving forward and

there being something better out there won't seem as true. That's what the resistance is for.

Keep you from getting this work done that helps other people find the light.

So, Pressfield says, think about football. He says, every book I write has at

least one giant section that's as tough as a knot in a plank of lumber. I can't crack it head on.

Attacking from the flank doesn't work. The thing is too stubborn.

So, he's saying, when you do something, when you try to overcome grief,

when you try to overcome addiction, when you try to write a book,

when you do whatever, you're going to run into some days that are hard,

that it just doesn't seem to work, that the things that you found that seem

to be helpful today, they're just not working. Okay.

And he says, when you're up against that kind of resistance,

there's no shame in taking what the defense will give you.

In football terms, we shut that part of the playbook that contains the Hail

Marys, the deep go routes, the 55-yard bombs.

We're not going to make that kind of progress today.

Okay. Instead, we turn to the section that has the short plays,

little running plays, the three-yard slants, the little quick things that can

make you a little progress on days when big progress is impossible or hard.

So Pressfield says there's two key things, two key tenets for days when resistance is really strong.

Number one, take what you can get and stay patient because the defense might crack late in the game.

And two, play for tomorrow.

Now be careful here. He's not saying live in tomorrow.

He's not saying wait until tomorrow. He's not saying, oh, when tomorrow gets

here, I'll be better and things will be okay.

And I'll just, today, I'm just going to take a drink and relax and watch TV.

It's not happening today. I'm going to give up. I'll wait for tomorrow. He's not saying that.

He's saying what I tell you in one of the commandments of self-brain surgery, love tomorrow more.

Don't do things today. Don't treat a bad feeling with a bad operation.

Don't use anesthesia. Don't numb yourself. Don't turn it off.

Do something today that's going to make tomorrow a little bit more possible.

It's going to make tomorrow a little bit easier because Because Jesus said,

don't worry about tomorrow. Every day's got enough trouble of its own.

And the corollary to that is,

don't leave stuff for tomorrow because tomorrow's got its own problems.

Don't mess up tomorrow by dragging tomorrow's problems into it.

And certainly don't make tomorrow's extra work because you didn't do the work today.

So play for tomorrow. Understanding that what you do today will impact what

you do tomorrow and the ability you have to move the ball down the field a little bit further.

Pressfield says our role on tough days is to maintain our composure and keep

chipping away. We're pros.

We're not amateurs. We have patience. We can handle adversity.

Tomorrow, the defense will give us more, and tomorrow we'll take it.

And there's a third tenet.

We're in it for the long haul. Friend, the work is a practice.

A bad day is nothing to us. Ten bad days are nothing to us.

Thirty-one bad days are nothing to us because we believe we have a God who is

the God of there is coming something amazing.

We won't even believe it. We have to consecrate ourselves for tomorrow.

God is going to do mighty things among us. We got to do the work.

Okay? OK, Mark Batterson said in All In, an incredible conversation,

he said, we pray like it's all up to God. We work like it's all up to us.

OK, people ask me sometimes all this self brain surgery talk.

Are you saying that it's all up to you, that you've got to do the work,

that God's not going to come in and help you? No, I'm not saying that.

Remember, God made your nervous system. God made the universe.

God made the connection between mind and spirit. He made the incredible faster-than-light

connection between the Holy Spirit and prayer and God and your mind and the

way it plays out in your brain.

He made all that stuff. You didn't have to make it. You just had to learn how to operate it.

You're not a puppet, though. He's not going to stick his hand on the back of

your head and move your mouth up and down and make you walk and work and speak

and do the things he wants you to do.

You're not a puppet or a robot. robot he's armed

you with the talent and the skills and the gift and the

composure and the things that you need second peter 1 3 says his divine power

has given us everything we need for life he gave it to you all he asks is that

you are willing to step up and pick up the knife and become a surgeon in your

own life and do the self-principal he's giving you all the tools,

to do it but he's not going to make you do it he's not going to turn you into

some robot you've got got to step into your own life.

You got to get after it, okay? It's time to go. It's all in August.

It's all in, and it's time to get after it in our own lives, my friend.

So we're going to take what the defense gives us. We're going to understand

there's going to be some bad days. There's going to be some hard days,

but those are not the days that we quit.

Those are the days that we go all in because it's a lifelong practice.

And until you hear, well done, my good and faithful servant,

until the lights go out in your eyes and you wake up in heaven or in another

plane where God's keeping his promises and bringing you back to life,

until that day, you're going to have resistance.

Even if you're old, even if you're retired, even if you have glioblastoma,

even if you've lost your child, there's not going to come a day when it stops

being hard, and there's not going to come a day when you finally overcome all

the grief, and you finally overcome all the pain, and you finally made it through.

There's going to come a day, though, if you press in, when the light seems to

be back on, when you're still carrying the pain,

but you're also walking on that dual train track of hope, when you recognize

that you finally found the way to understand what John 10.10 means,

that the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I've come that you might

have life and have it abundantly.

When you understand that you can have abundance and pain at the same time,

and it's not an either or transaction, that's when you become a pro.

That's when you realize I can handle adversity. I can throw myself back into

the fray today because I did the work yesterday and I'm ready today.

I've recognized that when I'm under pressure, I don't rise to the occasion.

I fall back to my preparation.

I'm playing with a treatment plan. I'm playing by holding on to the dual components

of hope, memory, and movement.

I realize, as Pressfield says, that the amateur believes that I must have all

my ducks in a row before I can launch my startup or compose my symphony or design

my iPhone app or recover from the loss of my child or overcome the grief associated

with losing my marriage.

The amateur thinks, I've got to get all this stuff squared away before I can go all in.

That God won't accept me until I've cleaned up my acting. That God won't love

me until I've done this thing or done that thing or quit doing that thing.

Here's what the gospel says though. And this is why we have hope, my friend.

Gospel says, God knew all about you.

Before he created you. He made his decision about you before you were born.

The Bible says, all the days of my life were written in God's book before one of them came to pass.

God sent his son to take your place and spread his arms wide and say,

I love you and I accept you and I believe in you and I know that you can do

it before you made that mistake, before you went through that massive thing,

before you became an alcoholic,

before you did whatever it was that that you think has disqualified you.

Amateur thinks you've got to square everything away before you can get after

it. The professional knows better.

The professional says, keep riding, keep working, keep walking,

keep turning the light on.

Athletes play hurt. Warriors fight scared. The professional,

Pressfield says, takes two aspirin, keeps on trucking.

That's what we do. We're ready to go all in. We're ready to be pros at our own life.

We're ready. Are you ready? It's August 1st. It's time to go after it.

It's time to draw a line in the sand and say, you know what got me here won't get me there.

And what I'm doing, I'm getting better at. So I'm going to stop getting better

at being bitter. I'm going to stop getting better at blaming.

I'm going to stop getting better at focusing on my Enneagram score or on my

anxiety or on my ADHD or all these other things that the world is telling me

have defined me and I can't change them because I understand that I am operating

my mind from a mind down perspective that my creator has given me incredible

power over how my brain works,

how it's actually structurally forms itself in response to my directed mental effort.

That the neuroscience is clear, that mind is in charge of brain and body and

epigenetics and everything else about our life flows from a mind down perspective.

If we will take up the mantle, being a pro and learning how to be a self brain

surgeon on our own behalf, so that our nervous system starts to work for us

and not against us so we can become healthier and feel better and be happier.

That's why on this day with trembling hands and a heart full of hope,

we're going to say, I'm ready to go all in.

I'm ready to change my life. I'm ready to change my mind. I'm ready to get after it.

I'm ready to go pro and I'm ready to start today.

I hope this was helpful to you, my friend. I'm Dr. Lee Warren,

hopefully your favorite internet and maybe real life brain surgeon.

Check out my website, drleewarren.substack.com for the newsletter,

podcasts, all the episodes are there.

It's time to get after it, friend. If you need a treatment plan,

if you need some help, check out my book, Hope is the First Dose.

That along with All In by Mark Batterson will be our sort of guides for this month.

If you've not read Hope is the First Dose, please read it. If you have and you

think it's helpful, share it with a friend.

Share this episode, subscribe wherever you listen, share it with a friend and get ready to go all in.

We're going to do a lot of amazing work this month. Consecrate yourself because

the Lord's going to do incredible things among you. God bless you,

friend. I'll talk to you soon.