Mind, Brain, and Worldview (S14E2)

Introduction to Self-Brain Surgery

0:00Hey, it's your friend, Dr. Lee Warren. I'm so grateful to be back with you for some more self-brain surgery. Welcome and congratulations for showing up to do this hard and holy work. Friend, I know it's not easy. There's lots of other things you could be doing, but you are the kind of person who doesn't mindlessly scroll or numb yourself or check out or waste time doing something else. You're the kind of person who spends your discretionary time improving who you are. We have a saying around here at self-brain surgery. It's not about doing better things.

0:31It's about becoming a better person who does those things. It's about changing fundamentally who we are on the inside so that we have better outcomes with our lives. This is the second episode of season 14, this mini season that we're going to use as a start here place. So if you're new around here, if you're pretty new to the podcast, these four episodes are going to give you a foundation, a place to start with self-brain surgery. I'm always hearing from people Hey, you've got a thousand episodes and four books and lots of newsletters and all kinds of stuff out there. Where should I start? Well, here's where you start. Okay. Start with

1:04episode one from last week. Start here. These four episodes are going to give you a foundation in the kinds of things that we talk about in the self-brain surgery ecosystem. Last week,

What is Self-Brain Surgery

1:14we talked about what is self-brain surgery? What is this all about? What does it mean? This week, we're going to talk about three things that are really important and they're kind of cognitive, big, high-level philosophical constructs, but they're important for the understanding of a lot of the things that we do here on the tactical side. So lots of our episodes are going to give you stuff to do, operations you can perform, ways to handle anxiety or depression or grief or this or that or finances or psychology or all kinds of different things, relationships, et cetera. This episode, sometimes we need to get into the weeds a little bit to understand the bigger concepts

1:50of some of the things that I might take for granted that you know or understand or that you're up to

Mind Brain and Worldview

1:54speed on. So today, we're going to talk about three things, mind, brain, and worldview. Mind, brain, and worldview. So we're going to talk about the fact that your brain and your mind are not the same thing. And what does it mean when I say mind versus brain? And why does that matter so much that we constantly are working to sort of make sure you understand the difference between mind and brain? And then we're going to talk about this big idea called worldview and why that matters so much and how you can be looking out for worldview when you're reading things or hearing things or being

2:26influenced by people or listening to teachers. If you're a younger person, some of the things you hear in school or online are going to be worldview kinds of things. And it's really important, especially if you're a Christian, to see things from a worldview perspective. We're going to talk about why that is in a few minutes. I'm going to give you one little tactical thing today. We're going to talk about journaling and why journaling is so important. I'm going to show you my journal and one or two entries from my journal that we'll talk about and why those are important to you. That'll be the one little tactical thing that we do today. And we're going to do all that for the

2:58purpose of getting into this hard and holy work and making real progress, becoming the kinds of people who don't just do better things, but are better people, are fundamentally different than we used to be. So we stop believing that we are certain ways or have to be certain ways because of our genetics or our traumas or our upbringings or our parents or anything that might have happened to us. And we can start being the person that we want to be, that we're called to be, that we need to be because of our families or our spouses or somebody that desperately needs us to step up and be something

3:28bigger or better than we have been because we can be, because God created you to heal and grow and change. That's the truth. That's the mission for today. We're going to change our minds and change our lives together. Let's get after it. Okay, friend, I'm so glad that we're doing this together. I'm excited about today's episode. I love talking about philosophical things and big ideas and big high-level constructs. But before we do any of that, I'm going to give you one thing that you

Journaling Importance

4:02can do today. If you want to implement one practice in your life that will move the needle for you and will help you, it's journaling. Journaling has been shown in numerous studies to be massively helpful in making significant practical improvements in your life, your cognitive process, your emotional resilience, your memory. Journaling is important, not just from a spiritual standpoint, but from a mental health standpoint. Journaling is really important. And one thing it does in self-brain surgery parlance is it gives us some documentation. If you're journaling every day, what are my recurring

4:37thoughts? What are some things I struggled with yesterday? What kinds of scriptures, what kinds of ideas did I use to counteract those thoughts? How often did I do a thought biopsy? My friend Steve Cuss was on his podcast recently, and he keeps a moron index. How many times a day did I call myself a moron? It's basically keeping track of his negative self-talk, because that's so important to eliminate negative self-talk, as we recently talked about on the YouTube channel. So journaling gives you a chance to document what you're dealing with and what you're going through and what you're thinking about, not just for future generations, but for future versions of yourself, to measure your

5:12progress, to see where you were struggling a year ago, and be able to say to yourself and be proud of yourself, you know what? I don't struggle with that anymore. I saw somebody on Instagram recently that on early January of this year posted and said, hey, for the first time in many years, I'm not going to have to make a New Year's resolution about my weight, because I finally got that squared away last year. So in their journaling, next year they're going to be able to say, wow, I really slayed a big dragon that was a problem in my life. Like every year I had the

5:42same New Year's resolution. I'm going to get in shape. I'm going to lose 20 pounds. I'm going to do this. I'm going to stop drinking. Now I have dealt with that, and now I can begin to deal with something else. And journaling allows you to go back in time, keep track of where you've been, recognized places where you're still struggling. And if you find that in your journal over and over and over, issues keep popping up the same things, then that'll show you some targets, right? Some places where you can dig in and get after it and really focus on trying to make progress instead of

6:12just repeating the same old issues. Because we really get worn down emotionally and spiritually and physically when we keep struggling with the same things over and over and we're not making progress. So journaling really helps. I'm going to show you mine. This is just a hardback journal that I got on Amazon. Somebody gave me this a long time ago. It's Markings by C.R. Gibson. They're still selling these on Amazon. I don't have an affiliation with them or anything, but I use this one because it's got two different bookmarks in it. So it's got a bookmark like a normal book, and then it's got a banded one that you can use that I really like because it helps you keep track of

6:47where you are and mark two different places in the journal. Really handy. And my handwriting is terrible, but I just want to show you what my journal looks like. It looks like that. Terrible handwriting. But I just show you that it's not a big thing that takes me hours every day. I usually just jot down one scripture or one thought that I woke up thinking about or that I prayed about the night before or something that I'm struggling with or an idea that I want to write about that day. Just a little short entry. And I'm going to share my entry from January 11th of 2026 because Lisa and

7:20I are making some big plans, some sort of strategic plans for our future, for our family, for our business, for my writing, and for our marriage. And we're making some kind of big, short, medium, and long-term plans. And so January, early January, the time of year when you're thinking about that kind of stuff, I wrote this, stop dreaming, start working. Small steps add up. God cares about action, not just intention. And then I had two scriptures that I wrote down, Zechariah 4.10, which is the one that

7:52says, don't despise small beginnings for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin. The Lord rejoices to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel's hands. Like he's saying, hey, it's not all about completing everything. It's about starting. Like stop planning, stop contemplating, start operating.

Brain and Mind Difference

8:09And then the second scripture is Joshua 3.15 and 16. And that's this incredible story from after 40 years in the wilderness and the people of Israel are getting ready to finally go in and possess the promised land. But there's a problem. The Jordan River is in their way. And so God says, hey, remember for your ancestors, I parted the Red Sea when they were leaving Egypt. I'm going to part this river for you too. And you're going to walk into the promised land on dry ground. But he gave them a but. He gave them a condition. He said, hey, here's what I want you to do. I want the priests to pick up the Ark of

8:44the Covenant and get into the river. Now, the Jordan was at flood stage. The river was up. It was raging. I can't imagine how dangerous that seemed to them. But God said, the priests need to get into the water before I'm going to part it. And once they got in the water, he carried through with his promise. He parted the waters. The people went through on dry ground. But the point of that story is that God wants you to get your feet wet in your own life. You keep praying for a miracle. You keep praying that

9:15God will do something. You keep praying, God, get after it. Do something. Make this big change happen for me. And he's saying, I will as soon as you get your feet wet. Get in the river. Take some steps. So I wrote on January 11th, I wrote, stop dreaming and start working. Small steps add up. God cares about action, not just intention. And here's the reason I wanted to read this to you today. I wrote this. We want movement, not cheap neurotransmitters and imagined outcomes. And let me tell you why this matters. Okay. And then we're going to, I'm going to tell you the

9:48tactical thing that you can do as it relates to journaling. This matters so much because when you say to yourself or somebody else, especially out loud, I'm going to go work out in a little bit. I'm going to write a book. I'm going to start this business. I'm going to be a better husband. I'm going to re-engage with the kids. I'm going to come home tonight and we're going to sit at the table and have dinner and I'm going to talk to the kids and there's not going to be any phones. As soon as you say something that you intend to do, as long as you believe it at the time,

10:18as long as you want to do it, you're going to get a little bit of dopamine release. You're going to get a little improvement in your neurochemistry environment and it's going to make you feel better. The reason that God made your brain that way is that when you feel better, you get a little reward motivation cycle going and you're more likely to actually carry that action out. And then you'll get the real dopamine reward on the back end, the big one, that'll start to really produce that kind of lasting change, right? But some people, that little bump of cheap dopamine is enough and they just feel better

10:54by talking about stuff all the time. They talk about it, but they don't want to be about it, okay? So I want to be the kind of person and I want you as a fellow self-brain surgeon, as a colleague in this hard and holy work, I want us to be the kinds of people who get after it and don't just talk about it all the time. We operate. We don't just contemplate, okay? Now, how does journaling help you with that? If you journal something, like something you need to do, something God's putting on your heart, something that's calling to you, if you journal,

11:25then you're going to, the next day, be able to go back and look at that thing that you wrote down and say, did I accomplish that? Did I start that? Did the Lord rejoice because of my small beginning? Or is it another day that I just waited? And that's going to put a little pressure on you. Now, I don't want you to feel guilt or shame. And I'm not saying I want you to be under pressure. I'm saying it's going to internally create this little bit of cognitive dissonance. And you're going to say, am I going to be the kind of person who just writes stuff down every day? Or am I going to start being the kind of person who gets something done so I can say, hey,

11:57good job showing up and doing the hard and holy work. That's what I want for you, to be about it and not just talk about it, to operate and not just contemplate. Journaling does one other really good thing for your neurological system, especially if you journal with physical writing, and especially if you use cursive and not just block letters. Okay. The reason cursive is important is it connects your hand to the page in a way that really wires that process of the words getting on the page, wires it into your memory in a very powerful way.

12:30So it goes from a concept to a reality, and you physically turn that into something real. Okay. And we talk a lot around here about connecting physical actions to mental decisions, and that helps you make something real in the world because thoughts become things and you turn your thoughts into something real that you can tie to. So physical examples like tapping or putting your hand over your heart when you're trying to interrupt an anxiety spell or something like that. This is the same kind of idea, except it gets deeply wired and more quickly wired into your

13:01memory if you write it down. So that's why journaling is so important. Okay. Gives you a target, gives you an accountability, and puts something deeper into your memory. So that's your tactical thing to today. Become the kind of person who journals. It doesn't take me three minutes in the morning. Okay. It's part of my morning quiet time, but it doesn't add time, but it saves me time on the back end because tomorrow I'm going to go, what was that thing I wanted to write about? What was that scripture I was thinking about? Well, I journaled it. I've got it. I don't have to worry and wonder and forget and remember and all that stuff. It serves a purpose, and it'll serve one

13:34for you too. Get yourself a journal and get after it. We'll make a self-brain surgery official journal at some point for now. Get you any old journal, get a yellow legal pad, get some kind of thing that you can go back and find later. But I like this hardback markings journal. I travel with it. It's the only thing I take with me when we go on overnight trips and all these podcast interviews. Even when we don't check a bag and I just take a backpack and everything's in that one bag, I still bring my journal on the road with me. That's one thing that's non-negotiable. My Bible time, quiet time in the morning, journaling has become an essential part of my life. It'll help you too. Okay. Let's

14:08talk about three high-level philosophical concepts that are really important practically in our lives and in our practice as self-brain surgeons. But before we do that, let's have a quick word from our sponsors. We'll be right back. Did you know three out of four U.S. homes have toxic chemicals in their tap water? Even though contaminated water looks clear, it could put you at risk for devastating health concerns, including fatigue, hormone disruption, cognitive decline, even cancer. Surprisingly, standard fridge and pitcher filters do very little to remove most contaminants,

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15:48for your AquaTrue water purifier. Okay, welcome back. Let's talk about your brain and the difference between your brain and your mind and why that matters. You'll constantly hear me talking on this show about the fact that you are not just your brain. If you want to read what I think is the best book that's ever been written on that, the big high-level, big book that's got lots of science and references and neuroscience citations, and really one of the most impressive works of scholarship that I've ever read is a book called The Mind and the Brain by my friend Dr. Jeffrey

16:23Schwartz. If you want to read a highly condensed version of the same idea, there's a small book by Dr. Sharon Dierks called Am I Just My Brain? So those two books, the big one, Jeffrey Schwartz's book, and Sharon Dierks' book, the little one, are both really handy to discuss the idea and understand the difference between mind and brain. But for our purposes, I'm going to break it down and make it very simple for you, okay? Your brain is physical. It is the three pounds of tissue that sits in between

16:56your ears, and it is an organ. It's part of your body, but it is not who you are, okay? Traditional neuroscience teaches, and lots of smart people with lots of letters behind their names have said things like, all you are is the product of the activity of the neurons in your skull. But I want to tell you, that is not science. That is worldview, and we're going to talk about worldview in a minute.

Worldview Explanation

17:20But it has never been proven, and it never will be proven, because the truth is, it's not. It has never been proven that your brain generates your mind, okay? People say that, that neurons create who you are, that everything you think, feel, believe, and do comes from the activity of the neurons in your head. We're going to have a special guest this month. Dr. JP Moreland and I are going to talk about this issue as a bonus episode for season 14. That's going to be a really important philosophical

17:51and practical episode about this very idea. But for our purposes here, brain is the organ in your head, and mind is the immaterial. What does immaterial mean? It means it's not something made out of material. It's not made out of paper. It's not made out of flesh. It's not made out of neurons. It's not made out of metal. It's not material. It's immaterial. It's invisible. It's somewhere out there in the non-material world, okay? That sounds like a crazy idea. But when you think about God, what do you

18:22think of? Do you think of a person with a body that lives in a house somewhere? No. You think of a spirit, something bigger than the universe, that's the creator of the universe, that can interact with it, but is not contained within it or defined by it? And God says you are made in his image. He doesn't mean your face and your skin tone and your eye color. It's crazy when people think about God. Is he white? Is he black? Is he Arabic? God's not. He's spirit. He doesn't have a body, okay? God is a spirit.

18:52He's immaterial. The Bible uses three terms for this immaterial part of us that's made in his image. The Bible uses the term soul, mind, and heart and kind of conflates them depending on what the writer's trying to get at. Soul is the more sort of spiritual, religious connotation of the part of us that's forever and all of that. Mind is the sort of thinking part of us, the part that is our personality and that sort of thing when the writer's trying to convey that. And heart is the emotional

19:24part of us, the loving or anxious part, the part that has a feel to it. That's the heart part of this immaterial thing that I call mind. So although the traditional neuroscientists say that brain generates mind, what they believe is that mind is what they call an emerging property of neuronal activity. That your neurons, even though there's neurons in every kind of animal, and even though there's neurons all over the place in your body, not just in your brain, somehow they think

19:56that human brain neurons have evolved to generate a property that makes us able to contemplate our own thinking, be aware of ourselves, and think about things in a way that is not just something we can put our fingers on or measure with an EEG or a brain scan. So in other words, they believe and would have you believe that your ability to think about your life and think about your feelings and decide what you want to pay attention to and all those things is somehow just generated by the electrical

20:31activity of the cells in your brain. Even though there is no published research, there has never been a scan done, there has never been an EEG done that can show you where a thought arises in your brain, that can prove that human consciousness arises from neuronal activity. It's a theory based on a worldview that's called materialism that we'll talk about in a minute, okay? So I don't want to beat this to death because I wrote about it a lot in my book, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery.

21:04This is not a plug for the book, but I want to remind you that if you haven't read The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery, in that book are all of these high-level concepts, tons of references, and the science that I used to write it, lots of tactical things, the Ten Commandments of Self-Brain Surgery that we'll talk about in the next two episodes, and a lot of practical operations that you can use to get on top of these things for the movement in your life that you're looking for, okay? But in The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery, I wrote a lot about mind and brain and what they are and what the science behind it is and all that. So it's important, if you want to know

21:37more, go read the book, read Jeffrey Schwartz's book, read Sharon Dierk's book, but you need to do some research on this because you're going to hear in the news, in your school books, from friends, from Instagram, you're going to hear mind and brain being conflated, being mixed up all the time. And sadly, if you're a therapist, if you're a Christian therapist or a pastor, hear me very clearly, look in my eyes. My dad used to say, hey, look in my eyes, when he wanted to get my attention. Look in my eyes for a second and hear me say very clearly, be careful when you try to use

22:08neuroscience to emphasize or make your points that you don't conflate ideas that are inconsistent with what we learn in scripture or what we teach and believe from our faith, okay? Because our faith and the scripture does not need us to make it sound fancier, to give it more credibility, or to shore it up with scientific findings, okay? We try to do it all the time. Make sure that if you're going to bend something that you bend what you think you understand about science to what

22:40scripture says, and you don't bend scripture to try to make it fit with what science says. Because I'll tell you why. If you look at the long arc of history, scripture always points straight at the truth. It never has to deviate. It never needs an update. It never gets a revision. It never finds out that somebody faked the data. It always points straight at truth. But science bends towards truth over time. In fact, the entire process of science is to question everything and continually refine

23:12what we think we know to get closer and closer to the truth. Or as my friend Gina says, to become less wrong over time. I love that he says that. Become less wrong over time is really the ultimate aim of science. So recognize that all the smartest people in the world, the best scientists a hundred years ago, all of them said things, and everybody thought they were right, that the most basic student in college today knows more than and better than those folks did a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years ago.

23:46Why? Because science continually gets updated. And that, as an aside, is a good reason not to ever believe anybody who says something ridiculous like the consensus of science is or the science is settled. When anybody says any of those kinds of things, they're trying to convert you to a viewpoint, they're trying to sell you something, or they're trying to control you politically or get your votes. Okay? Nobody, no real scientist ever feels comfortable with scientific consensus. Because consensus means

24:18that people stop thinking and checking, which is the whole function of science. And nobody ever thinks that any type of science has settled, because all of us who really do science know that as soon as we figure something out, there will be another layer that we can discover more about it past that. Everything we know now, 20 years ago, we thought something different. Essentially everything. From climate science to evolutionary biology, to how cells work, to what the particles that make things up are,

24:48to what the founding principles of physics are, they have all changed in 20, 50, 100, 200, 300 years. They continue to change. But guess what never does? Scripture never changes. So don't ever think that Scripture needs to be brought into the context of science. It's always the other way around. Science will always eventually arc towards what Scripture said all along, as it relates to human flourishing. Okay? There are some places Scripture doesn't touch. Scripture doesn't talk about the formula for sodium hydroxide. That's purely a science realm. But science can't answer some of the questions

25:22that Scripture answers either. But when they are in the same lane, be very careful that you don't ever make Scripture need to move over towards science, because it's always the other way around. Okay? That's an aside. But I said all that to say this. There is no science that says that brain is the same thing as mind when you actually look at data and results. So if you see somebody saying that, it's worldview and not science. Okay? We're going to have J.P. Moreland help us understand that on an even deeper level soon. But I want you to know that. Now, what is mind? We talked about the immaterial

25:56part, the part that's not in your skull. When you die and your body is dead and your brain is in the ground, there's still going to be you, especially if you're a Christian. You believe there's a part of you that lives forever. That's mind. Mind, soul, heart. Same thing. You want to read a book about that that gets into it from a neurosurgeon's perspective and gets into the philosophical and theological implications of what the immortal mind is. My friend, Dr. Michael Eggner's book, The Immortal Mind, is a great look at the science and the scriptural elements of what soul, mind,

26:29and heart really are. Okay? It's a great book, The Immortal Mind. He was on the podcast a few months ago. We'll put a link in the show notes to that episode. Okay? That being said, mind is eternal, it's immaterial, and the brain is the organ through which your mind interacts with your body, other people, and the world at large. Okay? The interesting thing is, we know now clearly from good 21st century neuroscience that mind can program and structurally change brain, which is the entire

27:01reason that we not only talk about self-brain surgery, but also that we can have hope of any type of lasting change in our life. The reason we can change is because we are not, in fact, just the product of our genes, our parents, our experiences, and our brain structure. Because if we were, we'd be stuck with that. But now we know two things that are unequivocally true and are not controversial from science. Your brain makes new neurons, so you've never been stuck with the neurons that you were born with. And those neurons continually break and remake the connections

27:37between themselves in response to the environment and the thought life that you have. So the things you think about literally structurally change how your brain is formed and what your brain does and is capable of doing almost in real time. Those structural elements in your brain begin to change within seconds to minutes of you changing what you think about. That's why it's so important to practice self-brain surgery, to do the thought biopsies, to take your thoughts captive, to renew your

28:07mind. All the things we talk about on this show all the time. Operate that system so it stops operating you. Mind is eternal. Mind is immaterial. Mind is not physical. It's not structural. It has controlling influence over brain, which is the physical organ that your mind empowers, programs, and operates. Your mind is in charge. Your brain is not the boss of you. That's so important. And I want you to understand it. These are high-level conversations, okay? But you need to clearly separate. I am not

28:41just my brain. Sounds like one of the commandments, doesn't it? The fourth commandment of self-brain surgery. I must believe that I am not just my brain and that my mind is in charge of my brain. That would be a good thing for you to journal tomorrow. I am not just my brain. I am my mind that is in charge of my brain. That's the fourth commandment of self-brain surgery from my book, okay? Now, worldview.

Materialism vs Dualism

29:08What is a worldview? Everybody has a lens through which we see the world around us. We all think that we sort of see things like our eyes are little cameras, and we just see reality, and we're all objective and not biased, and we just see what's there. But the truth is, everybody sees the world through a set of lenses, okay? I wrote a lot about this in my book. I've seen the end of you, especially the epilogue. I wrote about the vision through which we see the world. I wrote about it again

29:38in Hope is the First Dose, and I wrote about it again in The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery. Why do I keep writing about worldview? Because worldview affects how you see things, how you interpret them, the set of internal rules and filters that you use to make decisions, and how you look at everything around you. And the problem is, most people are unaware aware that they have a worldview and that that worldview biases how they think about reality and the interactions that they have. So it's critically important that you know that you

30:12have a worldview and that you're willing to adjust your worldview if it's inaccurate or if it's harming or limiting you in some way. So the most important worldviews that we talk about on this show a lot, and you can read more in my books if you want to read about what I've said about worldview in the past, but the most important worldviews that we talk about here are materialism versus dualism. I've already mentioned both of them in this episode. Materialism is this long-held belief that goes all the way back to Isaac Newton that everything can be best understood by looking at the material,

30:47the stuff from which it is made. That if you can break something down into its parts, into its components, then you can understand how the thing is going to work if you put it back together. And that theory then took on its own life. Newton never meant for it to become a religion, a philosophical system that dictates behavior, but it did. And materialism now is the profoundly, massively runaway number one worldview of scientists, psychologists, and academics across the world.

31:20In fact, it is unchallengeable. If you try to challenge materialism, you will get fired, deplatformed, unbanked, and unpublished if you're in academics. And it's happened. Ask Dr. Stephen Meyer, who's been on the show, about that. He's been involved in all kinds of trouble because of materialism. Any kind of challenge to materialism results in big trouble for you if you're a professor. Okay, why? Because materialism gives people a starting place where they can claim that science operates in the

31:52academic sense, that science is the source of all knowledge, and that nothing outside of material stuff is allowed to even be considered. Now, that sounds like a pretty reasonable idea, right? We want to understand the world without having to explain what God did or invoke God. Sounds kind of reasonable, but it became a system of saying, hey, we all know there's no God, even though you can't know that, and even though science could never prove that. But they would say, we all know there's no God, so you can't invoke God to explain anything. And if you start to challenge materialism, if you

32:25start to say, wait a minute, maybe that's not true. Maybe there are some valid scientific reasons to question materialism, as Dr. Mario Beauregard has written about so beautifully in books like The Spiritual Brain. He's written about the evidence that materialism might not actually be reasonable. Dr. Stephen Meyer has written about that in books like The Return of the God Hypothesis. My friend J.P. Moreland has written a whole textbook called Scientism and Secularism about this idea. But materialism as a worldview gets incredibly threatened when you start talking about maybe there's evidence to suggest

33:00that it's not true, because then they're going to have a hard time explaining some of the things that we see in the universe without allowing for a conversation about God. So just understand, this is not a debate about materialism here, but understand that it is a worldview, and that the vast majority of people in the mental health space, people in the neuroscience space, and people in traditional academics come at the world from a materialist standpoint. So again, if you're a therapist, if you're a Christian counselor, therapist, pastor, physician working in the mental health space, an extender,

33:33a mid-level, a nurse practitioner, a PA working in the mental health space, make sure that you're not borrowing ideas from materialist neuroscience that challenge what you claim to believe on the spiritual side in an attempt to make your work sound more science-y. Okay, be very careful with that. We're going to talk about that when we start certifying therapists to operate and provide licenses for our curriculum in self-brain surgery. People are asking around the world to use this material with their clients and their patients. When we start certifying you to do that and giving you continuing

34:05education credits for it, one of the things we're going to talk about is being very precise about our worldview. Okay? The other worldview that we talk about a lot around here is what we call dualism, which means that we believe that mind and brain are not the same thing, as we just discussed, that they're dual. They're two different things. They're not the same thing. They're two things. That's important, but it's a big challenge to materialism because materialism insists that mind comes from brain, as we discussed earlier. So I just wanted you to be aware of these concepts

34:37because sometimes in episodes six months from now, I might mention something like dualism and not defend it or not define it very well, and you'll wonder where'd that come from. That's where it came from, these big ideas around worldview. Now, worldview can also be built out of trouble. You can have some problems in your life and you can develop a cynical worldview where you believe people are always going to let you down, always going to harm you, that God doesn't love you, that nobody's on your side, and you can start to filter your reality to validate that for you. And then your world will

35:08become progressively darker and more limited because not that the reality is that way, but because that's what you're looking for. Okay? So that's just an example. We talk about such filters in my book, and it's important to recognize if you're starting to see the world in a very one-sided way, maybe it's because you've got a worldview that's blocking you from seeing some other things that might be more helpful to you. Okay? So a good exercise would be as you're journaling, start asking yourself some questions. Are there some lenses or filters that I have put in front of myself that allow me only to

35:44see the world from a more limited, narrow, cynical, hopeless, or maybe irrationally hopeful point of view? Am I filtering because of a worldview that might need to be updated? Maybe I should let God define my worldview. Maybe I should let actual scientific evidence define my worldview. Maybe I should let Dr. Warren help me redefine my worldview in some way. So think about that. Journal it. Ask yourself some questions. Be willing to update. That's the kind of person that takes those small steps. That's

36:15the kind of person that's going to reject the cheap dopamine. That's going to start making progress in our life. That's going to stop talking about it and start being about it. Okay? So mind and brain are not the same thing, and you need to look out for your worldviews. That's what I wanted to talk about

Conclusion and Call to Action

36:31today. Those are three things that we discuss all the time on this show, in my books, in the newsletter, on the podcast, on the YouTube channel. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, on the audio players, Apple, Spotify, wherever. Make sure you hit that subscribe button and the bell icon on YouTube. Make sure that you're following us in both places because there are some episodes on YouTube that are not on the other channels. There are some audio-only episodes that are not going to show up on YouTube. Make sure you get us everywhere. Go to my website, drleewarren.com. You can find the newsletter, the podcast, all my books, and everything else. You can

37:04contact us there if you need to, drleewarren.com. And if you want to go deeper into any of this stuff, we have several courses and a bunch of free downloadable resources at the School of Self Brain Surgery, school.wleewarrenmd.com, school.wleewarrenmd.com. Friend, it's been a pleasure and an honor to be with you today doing this hard and holy work. I'm proud of you. I'm grateful for you. I just want to remind you one more time that I'm your friend, Dr. Lee Warren, hopefully your favorite internet and maybe real life brain surgeon. And I just want to tell you that you

37:35can't change your life until you change your mind. And the very good news is you can start today. God bless.