You Can Change Your Mind

Good morning, my friend. I'm so excited to speak with you today.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, hopefully your favorite internet brain surgeon.

I'm a real-life brain surgeon too, but in this context, your favorite online

brain surgeon. And we're going to do some self-brain surgery today.

It's Wild Card Wednesday, and we're getting this year off to a good start.

And on Wild Card Wednesday, we talk about whatever I want to talk about.

And today I want to address one very particular thing that I've been hearing

a lot from people that have contacted me through email.

And the thing I want to talk about is we're hearing from people who say, hey, this is great.

You give us all these ideas to change our minds and you show us scriptures that

help us understand that God doesn't want us to be anxious and he wants us to

live abundant lives and he doesn't want the thief to steal and kill and destroy.

And you tell us how neuroscience of our mind is designed to help us live healthier,

better, happier lives and all this stuff, but how do I actually do it?

I can get anxiety under control for five minutes and I can change my mind for

a day or so, but then the old thought patterns keep creeping up. So how do I do it?

How do I actually make these changes? It feels impossible.

And that's what I wanna address today. The people who have written in,

and if it's you, I want you to hear me say.

I read you loud and clear, friend, when you say, it seems impossible.

I just can't get my anxiety under control. I just can't get my depression under control.

I just can't stop going back to that day when I got the news about my son or

when I found out about my wife's tumor.

I just can't shift that gear and get my cingulate gyrus to move forward. I just can't do it.

So how is it possible that God tells me to do something and I can't seem to do it?

And that's what we're going to address today. I just want to encourage you.

I want to give you some insight,

and I want to give you maybe one tool to understand and believe with all your

heart that if God calls you to something, if He tells you to do something,

if He promises you that if you do something, He'll come through for you,

then that means it has to be possible for you to do it, okay?

It's not an either or. It's a both and. If He says it, you can do it.

You don't have to decide if you're good enough or strong enough or smart enough

or talented enough, if God says, hey, I've got something for you on the other

side of this decision that you can make, then I promise you,

He will give you the ability to do it.

And the question is how? And that's what we'll talk about today.

But before we do that, my friend, I just 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 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 are today. Are you ready? This is your podcast.

This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.

All right, let's get after it. Hey, the Bible says in Romans 12,

2, do not be conformed to this world,

but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern

what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

And what I want to give you today, friend, is that we've been living.

A lot of us have been living in a place that's not good and not acceptable and not perfect for so long.

We've been struggling with grief or anxiety or doubt or depression or crushing

guilt or shame or something that's holding us back.

I got an email from a woman named Amy yesterday. Shout out, Amy.

Thank you for the beautiful voicemail and the poem that you sent us.

It's really encouraging.

I'll share elements of it with the listeners sometime.

But Amy sent this incredible email, and she's struggling with some of these

changes, and she's made some decisions that she's going to buy in.

To what God says about her instead of about what her life keeps trying to tell

her, what her enemy, the enemy of her thoughts keeps trying to tell her.

And it's time to put some of those thoughts in that Faraday bag that we talked

about yesterday where God can zip it up and you can't get to it anymore and

it can't get to you anymore.

And what the Bible says is don't let the world conform you anymore to what it

wants you to believe, that it's all about you, that you can't change,

that your feelings are facts.

And yes, you are stuck with that frame of mind, and you know you can't change

this because your dad and your mom were this, and your uncle was an abuser,

and he abused you when you were eight, and you just won't ever get over that.

I got another email from a woman yesterday who said, you know,

I'm starting to see that trauma is not what happened to me.

I can't undo what happened when I was a little kid. She saw somebody murdered.

And it's stuck with her for her whole life. And it's been a problem,

a real problem for her moving through that. And she said, I'm finally starting to understand.

I can't change what happened, but I can learn to let God help me respond to

what happened in a healthier and different way.

That's the secret, my friend. That's the secret.

We have the ability to stop listening to the lies of the mind that the world

wants us to have. It's focused on us.

It's focused on the circumstances of our lives. us. It's focused on the feelings

that we have around those things that have happened to us and the ways that

we keep attaching them to the things that have happened, that are happening now,

even if they're not actually applicable to what's happening now.

We attach that feeling and the way that the previous thing made us feel,

and we believe that we can't ever feel or have or be anything more than that.

But what's the back half of this verse? God says, don't be conformed to the

the world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you

may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

And what we were wanting to do now at the start of this year is we want to start

grabbing on to things that are good and acceptable and perfect.

We want to believe that God has a better plan, that Jeremiah 29 11 applies to

us. I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord.

Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.

You'll seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Now, what's that mean? It means that we can actually look at neuroscience and

neuroscience says it clearly that you can in fact change your mind.

You can change your brain structurally by changing the things you think about.

It may seem impossible, but how do you do it? Neurons that fire together, wire together.

You have to keep running the program. You have to keep engaging the treatment

plan that I taught you in Hope is the First Dose and that we talk about on this podcast all the time.

You prehab, you put all the good stuff in your brain so that when you fall,

when life knocks you down, you fall back to the things that you've repped and

prepped and the strategies and plans you have in place for what you're going

to do when life hurts you and you're not going to fall into despair again because

you know that your feet are going to land on something solid.

And that you can transform your mind because the neuroscientists have proven

it. God said it a long time ago.

Now we know it. Your brain gets healthier when you think healthier thoughts.

What you do, you get better at. What you actively think about, you get better at.

When you pray and meditate and call on His name and call Him in,

dial that volume down on the internal stories and the outside voices that are

distracting you and hurting you and blaming you and shaming you,

and turn that volume up and allow God into the situation where he can help you transform your mind,

then you can start testing out, if I think down this thought, what's gonna happen?

I've thought down this thought a million times before and I know what happens.

It ends with me opening a bottle or sending a text or going to the wrong place

or doing the wrong thing or watching the wrong thing or being crushed by despair

or spending all night worrying and stressing about something.

That's what's gonna happen. If I test out this thought path,

what's gonna happen? I know what's gonna happen, but let me test out this one.

And you know what? down this path, I think the will of God might be down there.

There might be some good stuff for me down there. There might be some acceptable

and perfect things for me down there.

And I'm just telling you, friend, that Romans 12.2 is a fork in the road.

It can either transform or conform.

And if what you've been living isn't good and acceptable and perfect for you,

and I'm not saying everything will be perfect.

I'm saying your mindset can be right so that you can grab the the situation

and you can wrestle it towards something that's more helpful to you.

Okay? That's what I'm saying.

And what I have to give you today is one scripture. If it feels impossible,

if you just can't get the anxiety under control, Paul says in Philippians 4.13,

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

I can do all things, not some things.

Not those people instead of me can do all things, but I can do all things through

Him who strengthens me. Now remember the context.

He's talking about learning how to live even when it's hard.

You can do that. He's not talking about, I can go start a company and become

the next Jeff Bezos and be a billionaire.

Maybe I can do that if I'm gifted appropriately.

Maybe I can't. Maybe I can climb Mount Everest if God gave me that ability.

Maybe I can't if I'm quadriplegic or if I'm laid up and I've got emphysema and I can't do it.

I'm not saying this will give you supernatural abilities.

I'm saying that if God puts you in a situation and he says, hey,

you change your mind, you'll change your life.

You can do that. And the neuroscientists have proven it.

You can, in fact, change your mind and change your life. What does it take?

It takes a treatment plan.

It takes a strategy. It takes an unwillingness to accept anymore what's not

good and pleasing and perfect.

It takes an unwillingness to say that what I've been doing that got me here,

I'm no longer willing to continue that because it's not going to get me to the place that I need to be.

I need a better treatment plan. I need a better prescription.

I need a Faraday bag to put these anxieties in that are crippling me and holding me back.

And let me give you this one. 2 Corinthians 10.5, we destroy arguments and every

lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to obey Christ.

One of the things that keeps popping up in your mind, if it's anxiety and you

get it under control for a day or two and then it comes popping back,

maybe you've stopped trying to take every thought captive.

Maybe you're not running the play. Maybe you're not implementing the protocol.

Maybe you're not remembering that you have some agency in deciding what you're going to think about.

Maybe that exercise I gave you yesterday with the Faraday, the mental image

of the dark room and the two knobs and the Faraday cage and asking God to put

stuff behind a door that he can close and you can't open.

Maybe you need to develop a practice of doing something like that that'll help

you take every thought captive.

Maybe you're only taking a few of them captive and you're letting other ones

run because you haven't decided that they're not acceptable or good or pleasing or perfect.

And I'm not putting all of this on you. Sometimes you need a doctor and sometimes

you need a therapist and sometimes you need medication. I don't think as often as we think.

We talked about that the other day, in fact, especially if you're using medication

and a numbing agent like alcohol or something like that. You don't need both of those.

You're robbing Peter to pay Paul if you're doing that.

What I'm saying is you can do this, friend, because God doesn't ask something

of you without giving you the tools to be able to do it. He does not do that.

How do I know that? because it's in the Bible. Philippians 2.13 has this stunner, okay?

For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good

purpose. What does that mean?

He calls you to something. He says, hey, friend, you need to change your mind about this.

He's telling you the work He wants you to do. He's calling you to it. And then He works in you.

That's the brain that He gave you, the mind that He gave you,

the mechanisms in place that He put there through, through the magic and the

amazing design and quantum physics and all the things that he did inside your

head, and the spirit that connects to you.

And he said, I will do this work if you just submit. The only part of self-brain

surgery that you do yourself is to admit to yourself that you can't do it by yourself, right?

God works in you to will. He even changes what you want. If you delight yourself

in him, he'll give you the desires of your heart. Remember that from three days ago?

He works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

So the punchline of today, my friend, is that you really can change your mind.

It is not impossible. possible and you don't have to wonder

why God said one thing and it doesn't turn out to

be possible for you because if he said it you can do it Philippians 4 6 through

8 says this do not be anxious about anything but in everything what does but

mean but is it is a binary you can do this but I want you to do that but you

can't do both do not be anxious about anything but in everything,

not some things not a few things not once in a while but in everything by prayer

and supplication with thanksgiving,

let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God,

which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Jesus.

What's the secret? You don't want to be anxious anymore.

Instead, pray, give thanks, and He'll fill you with peace that you can't even understand.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever's true, whatever's honorable,

whatever's just, whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever's commendable,

if there's any excellence, if if there's anything worthy of praise,

think about these things. Here's the deal.

You learn how to do the thought biopsy and you say, this thought that's keeping

me awake tonight, is it true?

And if it's true, is it something that's within my power to change? Is it helpful?

Is it possible to do something about it? Or do I need to put it in the Faraday

bag until God gives me an opportunity to do something about it?

Is it honorable to think about these things?

Is it just to think about this? Is it pure?

Is it lovely? Is it commendable? Is it excellent? If it's worthy of praise.

If it's not, God says, don't think about it or it's going to make you anxious.

And my friend, that's a choice that we can make. Remember, anxiety is not a disease.

Anxiety is a chemical trigger that makes you feel something.

It's a set of physiological things in response to stimuli.

Now, there is a disorder called anxiety disorder where people cannot get their

anxiety under control. That's a whole different thing.

I'm talking about the stuff that pops up in your mind when you're trying to

sleep or when you're trying to focus or when you're driving down the road and

you're letting somebody have it in your mind.

And you're in the shower and you're giving that guy the business that you're

gonna see when you get to work and you're so anxious and so worried and so stressed

and God says, hey, is that stuff you're anxious and worried and stressed about, is it true?

Is it honorable? Is it just? Is it pure? Is it lovely?

Is it commendable? Is it excellent? Is it worthy of praise? If it's not,

stop conforming to it and start transforming your mind around it because you

can do all things through Christ who gives you strength.

What we know from the neuroscience is is when you focus hard and direct your

mental effort on a new pathway for your mind, you make new synapses around it within hours.

And you can continue to use that synaptic pathway and it will become stronger

and stronger and stronger because Hebb's Law says neurons that fire together, wire together.

And a quantum Zeno effect says the more you observe something with a particular

expectation and set of observational skills, the more real it becomes.

So if you put that in place and you say, I am going to submit to the power of

God to work in me, to will and to

act according to his good purpose for my life. He has good plans for me.

He wants me to have abundance and not to be stolen from, killed and destroyed all the time.

He wants me to know that even though this life is hard, he has overcome the

world, that I'm in the middle of a long story that ends with my redemption.

And the final score on this life is gonna be he wins.

And because I'm his, I win too. and I don't have to be so anxious all the time.

He says, he rescues me when I call to him and rescues me from all that makes me so afraid.

That's Psalm 34, four. So friend, this is wildcard Wednesday.

We got a little heavy on the scripture, but it's also heavy on the neuroscience

to tell you without any doubt that if you're tired of being so tired and you're

tired of being so anxious and you're tired of being so stressed out and you're

tired of not being able to sleep,

you can change your mind and you can change your life.

And my friend, 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,

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

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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.