Start Here with Self-Brain Surgery™ (S14E1)

Introduction to Season 14

0:00Hey, it's your friend, Dr. Lee Warren. I'm so grateful to be back with you for some more self-brain surgery, friend. It's season 14. I can't believe that I've been doing this since 2014. I started the podcast, as you know, shortly after our son, Mitch, died, and I started writing and recording and trying to encourage other people as we find our way forward after these kinds of great traumas and tragedies. And here we are over 13 years later, and we're still talking to each other. This little podcast has grown. It's all over the world. People in 150 countries

0:34listen every week now, and just so grateful and excited. And mostly, I'm proud of you that you showed up today to do this hard and holy work. It's not easy doing self-brain surgery. It's the most important thing that will help you get your life on track if you're struggling,

Self-Brain Surgery Basics

0:52if you're hitting limits, if you're bumping your head up against some kind of performance issue, if you're struggling after going through something hard. And I'm not talking about this being the most important thing in your life in terms of your eternal destiny and all kinds of stuff like that. I'm talking about if you want that abundant life that Jesus said he came here to give us. In John 10, 10, Jesus said, the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I've come that you might have life and have it abundantly. So I'm telling you, friend, after I've gone through the war,

1:23a divorce, the loss of a child, and all kinds of other hard things. And I'm the guy who's in the room all the time, giving the bad news to people, telling them the tumor's back, or the cancer is there, or that their child might not walk again, or their husband's not going to make it. I'm the guy that has to deliver all that news. And after walking with thousands of people through that sort of thing, and walking through it with myself and my own family, I can tell you, if you want to learn how to operate your life better, you've got to learn how to operate your mind and your brain.

1:55And if you do that, your mind and your brain and your body and your life will support you because you're designed for healing and hope and higher performance. You're a great physician. Your creator designed you to get through it, to get stronger because of it. He tells us, in fact, in Romans 5, 3 through 5, that we know that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And that mechanism will hold up for you, too, no matter what you're

2:26going through, if you want to flourish instead of floundering in your life. Self-brain surgery is

Mini Season Overview

2:32the mechanism of how you get it done. So season 14 here, we're going to do a short mini season with four episodes. There's actually going to be two bonus episodes, too, but we're going to have four episodes that cover the big things that I get from people all the time. I'm constantly getting emails from people that say, hey, Dr. Warren, I just found your work, and I've got your book, or I'm going to read your book, and I see you've got a thousand episodes and all these videos on YouTube, and your newsletter's been around for a long time. Where should I start? And so this season, the mini season, four episodes is going to be, where do I start? It's going to be, start here.

3:07And today is the first episode of that. We are going to give you a place to start, friend. And if you've been doing this for a long time, you've been hanging out with us for a long time, listening, reading, learning, if you've already read my book, and you just want to have these four episodes then as a place you can share to say to other people, hey, let's get after this together. Here's where you can start so you can get caught up. Or if you've been doing it for a while, and it's been a long time since you heard some of the concepts that we talk about all the time, and you want to go back, you can use these four episodes as kind of a touchstone to go back and

3:38get yourself grounded again. You know, when you go to school, when you're going through college or high school, and you take Algebra 1, and then you go off for summer break, and you come back in the fall and take Algebra 2, they always start with kind of a refresher, right? Let's get the concept back. Let's get the big ideas back so we make sure we're going forward in a really healthy way. So that's what these four episodes are going to be for you. You can share them. You can revisit them. And they'll just be a good place for you to start. So when people write in, they always ask me questions like, does self-brain surgery work for my problem? I get emails about, does it work for

4:13obsessive compulsive disorder? Does it work for complex post-traumatic stress disorder? Does it

Common Questions

4:18work for people who are neurodivergent? Does it work if you're stuck in complex grief? And I'm just here to tell you, it's really the only thing that does work. And what I mean by that, before my therapist friends or before anybody pushes back, I don't mean to say that there aren't any therapeutic techniques or medications or there are professionals that can help you. There certainly are. But ultimately, the only way that we make any type of progress in our life is when we make the switch from victim, from helpless, from hopeless, from somebody who needs outside fix, who believes that

4:52the fix is from outside. The only way we get better is when we make that switch from patient to doctor. When you decide that you're going to operate your nervous system because you're tired of it operating on you, when you decide you're going to operate your life with God's help, this is self help, but it's not self-reliance, okay? When you decide you're going to operate instead of being operated on, that's when you start making progress. Do you need professional help sometimes? Absolutely. Do you need outside help in the form of therapy or medications or lifestyle changes or all kinds

5:23of things like that? Do you need other people to come alongside you? 100% you do. But every good therapist, every good psychologist, every good psychiatrist, every good primary care provider, every good pastor is going to tell you nothing is going to change, friend, until you make the change. That's what we hear from people all the time. Is it going to work? And I'm just here to tell you, it's the only thing that does work. You've got to switch from patient to doctor. So when people write in from now on and say, where do I start? This is where you start. These four episodes. Today, we're going

5:57to cover the basic, basic foundational things of self-brain surgery. So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to get this idea that you can use these concepts to begin operating your life so it quits operating you. And we're going to do that in the next 30 minutes or so. It's all based on my book, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery. I would highly encourage you to read it, do a book club around it, share it with your friend. It's changing people's lives all over the world. But everything we talk about on this podcast, we cover in The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain

6:31Surgery. You can get a sense of the Ten Commandments. You can get a deep dive into the operations that we teach, the basic procedures, the thought biopsy, the four approaches. All that stuff is in the book. So make sure, if you're wondering how to go deeper, start with the book. People write me all the time and say, I haven't read your book yet, but what do you think about using self-brain surgery for this? Well, I shouldn't have to write you that because I wrote you a 300-page book to teach you that. So check it out. Stick around on the podcast, the YouTube channel. We're always here for you. But the book is important. And I'm telling you that because we're getting feedback now

7:02from people all over the world saying, this book is changing my life. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to get started with this idea that, like I always tell you, you can't change your life

Changing Your Mind

7:13until you change your mind. Today, we're going to go deep into the idea of what is self-brain surgery. And we're going to use this as a starting point for everything we do from here on out. Okay? Does that sound good? Let's get after it.

7:32All right, friend. Hey, this is the place where you come. If you want to know what neuroscience says, what scripture says, and how we can smash those things together to make rapid, profound, transformational change in your life, this is your place. If you've ever felt stuck, anxious, overwhelmed, if you're just tired of feeling like your thoughts are running your life instead of your life running your thoughts, then this is the place. Okay? The big idea is this. You can't change your life, like I said earlier, until you change your mind. But you can change your life when you decide

8:04to change your mind. You can change your life. I get so many emails. I don't think I can change. It's always been this way. This is how my parents were. It's just going to stay the same for me. No, it's not. And we're going to explain why, because your brain is ready to change and ready to help you when you decide to change your mind. So when I say it, it's not a metaphor. Okay? It's one of the most important things. It's not a metaphor. This is what we know from neuroscience. Your brain structurally changes and organizes itself and becomes something fundamentally and structurally

8:35different than it was in response to you changing your thinking almost in real time. The microtubular synaptic connections in your brain begin to make rapid structural change within seconds to minutes, seconds to minutes of you changing one thought to another thought. That's profound. And that's why we're getting emails from people saying, hey, I've been doing therapy for 20 years and I made more progress in the last three weeks since I read your book than I ever have. It's because once you start

9:05directing your mind appropriately, then your brain will respond and it will become different than it was. And then your baseline responses and reactions will start to change and you'll start to feel some wind at your back. And so momentum instead of the headwind of your hurried and stressful life that you previously thought had left you helpless and hopeless. And so friend, you really can change your mind and you can use it to change your brain. Okay? You really can. You can literally make a new

9:37brain. You're not stuck, even though you might've previously believed you were, that your genetics, your family, your upbringing, your traumas, your tragedies, your neurodiversity, your Enneagram score, your ADHD, your anxieties, whatever it is. You used to think it defined you. You used to think it was your identity. Now you're going to use those things as insight. When your brain starts to tell you something, when you start to think ahead in the day that's coming and you'll say, usually when I get into this situation that I'm going to have later today, usually when my spouse gets home, usually when the kids get home, usually when I'm in this meeting, I react this way. You can get ahead of it now

10:11because you'll know that you can change what your brain's going to do at baseline. If you start telling your brain what to do ahead of time. Remember Chris Voss, the FBI hostage negotiator that wrote the great book, Never Split the Difference. He said a line that I steal and I use all the time, but I always give him credit. Chris, if you're listening, I hope you're listening. Here's the line. When the pressure's on, we do not rise to the occasion. We fall to our level of preparation. When the pressure's on, we don't rise to the occasion and become somebody we're not.

10:43We fall to what we've been preparing. And Chris Voss didn't say this. Dr. Warren said this, your friend Lee. Here's what Chris Voss didn't say. The reason that we fall to our preparation is because our preparation engages neuroplasticity and our brains automate that type of response. And that's the entire game. You're not broken. You're not messed up. You've just got a bunch of automations that haven't been helping you. And with self-brain surgery, we're going to change them. Okay. Doesn't have to define you anymore. Identity can turn into insight, but here's a caveat.

11:19And I want you to be aware of this. Once you have insight, now you have responsibility. Okay. Now it doesn't have to define you anymore. You can build yourself a new brain. If you're willing to do the hard and holy work like you are right now, because you showed up today to change the content of your thoughts, to direct your attention appropriately, to bring the scalpel and the focus of a brain surgeon, a self-brain surgeon, to your own life. That's the big idea behind self-brain

11:50surgery. And it's not just a motivational idea. It's neuroscience backed up by thousands of years of scripture. Romans 12, 2. Okay. Is our do not be conformed to the pattern of this world verse. What's the pattern of this world? Follow your heart. Believe everything you feel. You do you. Chase your idea of what your identity is. And the problem is when you follow that path, you look at the data from your own life and from others, nobody's getting happier. The mental health

12:22crisis is getting worse. We have more resources, availability, less stigma than we have ever had before. Right? But the problem's getting worse. Why? Because we're conforming to the pattern of this world. Romans 12, 2 says, don't be conformed to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Now, some people on Instagram quote Romans 12, 2, and they say, hey, that's about neuroplasticity. I just want to push back gently and tell you, let's be accurate

12:53here. Okay. Romans 12, 2 is not about neuroplasticity because it's not about your brain. Romans 12, 2 is about your mind, renewing your mind. And neuroplasticity does not take place in the mind. It takes place in the brain because one of our tenets of self-brain surgery, in fact, one of our commandments, the fourth commandment, is that I must believe that my mind and my brain are not the same thing and that my mind is in charge of my brain. And that turns out to be the crucial thing that will get you back on your

13:24feet in your life is that Romans 12, 2 says, if you change your mind, it will change your life because here's why. God gave us neuroplasticity and neuroplasticity happens all the time, whether you renew your mind or not, because neuroplasticity simply means that the things that you pay attention to and think about the most and do over and over, whether mentally or physically, get wired in and become automated in your brain. That's what neuroplasticity is. Your brain is constantly changing. Neuroplasticity. So neuroplasticity is a brain process and it is not dependent on you renewing

13:59your mind. However, if you don't renew your mind, you're going to keep automating and you're going to make more automatic all the things that you're doing that have led you to this podcast or to buy my book or to reach out and say something's got to change in my life. The problem is neuroplasticity will keep you the same or worse unless you direct it. That's where the power of Romans 12, 2 comes in. Don't be conformed to the pattern. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. What's he saying?

14:31If you want neuroplasticity to start working for you instead of against you, you got to change your mind and that your mind will direct these structural changes to begin helping you instead of hurting you. It means you're going to change your life as soon as you take command. If you're thinking you're not going to just keep conforming, you're not going to let life press you into the shape that it wants you to press into. You're going to become something and someone fundamentally different than you were before. In my journal recently, I think I said this on a previous podcast, I have a statement that I wrote

15:05down that I don't want to just be doing better things. I want to become a better person who's doing better things. That's what happens when you get this process working for you and not against you. You're not going to let circumstances, you're not going to let your past, you're not going to let your old automatic thoughts and feelings boss you around anymore. That's what we're talking about here in self-brain surgery. That's what we're here to do. We call it self-brain surgery because it's literally the same thing as I do in the operating room without all the pain and without all the

15:38anesthesia and the medications and the insurance claims and the office visits and the hospital stays. It's not a metaphor. It's the mechanism of how you really can change your brain and your life. And today we're starting season 14 with this episode, Self Brain Surgery Basics. So I just wanted you to have a place to come back to an episode where you can renew these things and review them, share them with a friend. Go ahead and smash that like button or subscribe button. If you're

16:08watching on YouTube, hit that bell icon so you get notified about new episodes and make sure that you share these episodes with friends, okay? If you have time or interest, leave a review. And if you haven't read the book yet, The Life-Changing Art of Self Brain Surgery, it will get you grounded and give you some practical tools for getting your life under your control with the help of the Holy Spirit, the great physician who's there to help you do this job, this hard and holy work. And you're going to start

16:39finally making progress in your life, okay? This is for anybody who needs a little reminder of what Self Brain Surgery is all about or anybody who's new around here. That's the ground that we're covering. You're finally making progress. Now, like I said, I am so grateful that you're here. This is hard work, okay? I know I've already said that a couple of times. I just want to keep telling you because you need somebody to tell you that you're doing a good job. You might feel stuck. You might feel sad. You might feel

17:11stressed. You might feel chronically sick. You might feel like you're settling for stuff in your life, but you're here doing the work. We're doing it together. Now, before we start any brain surgery, we take a second to scrub

Scrubbing In

17:26into the process. And I want you to do that with me right now. Even though we've been talking for a few minutes already, I want you to scrub in for a second. Now, what do we do when we scrub in? Obviously, we stand at the sink and we wash our hands and get all the dirt and all the stuff off of our hands because we don't want to bring anything into the operating room that might harm our patient, okay? But the other thing it does for a smart surgeon is it gives you a few minutes to think and to clear your mind and to lay down anything that might be holding you back or hindering you or distracting you or keeping you from being fully present with the job at hand. Your patient,

18:00who's you, deserves you to be fully in this thing, okay? You can't help your kids. You can't help your family. You can't make yourself a better professional until you get situated, okay? And that's what we're doing here. We're going to scrub in and get our minds and our hearts cleared, squared away, and present and focused. And we can do that by taking some deep breaths. Big, deep breath in through your nose. Hold it for a few seconds. Let it out really slowly. Try to breathe in four. Hold for four, three,

18:32two, one. Now breathe it out. That's good. What are you doing? You're getting your vagus nerve tone up. You're lowering your heart rate. You're clearing your mind. You're distracting yourself from the distractions. You're taking your anxiety down a notch. You're putting yourself in a frontal lobe activated state, okay? So just do that for a second. Breathe in and out. Ask God to help you turn your hand over and let anything go that needs to be let go of or gently set anything down. You don't want to ignore things that need to be managed, but you just want to set them aside for a little

19:02while. And then maybe turn your hands up. Maybe connect that physical action to your mental decision and say, God, you know, just put some stuff in me during this episode that'll help me on this process. And now we've scrubbed in. We've cleared our minds. We've let some stuff out. We're adding some things back. So if you're anxious or you're stressed or you're worried, this physical act of letting it go and then letting something else come in. It's an old Quaker practice, actually. Hands down, hands up. That's going to help you mentally see this letting go of stuff that shouldn't be here right

19:37now, even if you need to deal with it later. And you're going to pick it back up later if you have to. But for now, we're just going to let God fill us up, give us what we need. We're going to do this work together, okay? Now, if you're not a believer, it's okay. So when I talk about God and Scripture and all that stuff, I just want you to know you can engage in this practice. It's very clear that the idea of setting your mind in charge of your brain is proven in neuroscience now. There's no question about it. It's not controversial that changing the content, the character, and the attention direction of your

20:10thoughts does make structural changes in your brain. So when I talk about Scripture, I'm using words that I find valuable, that I think prove out over time to be true, to be helpful. And I use those to replace the anxious negative thoughts that pop in that I know are not trustworthy. So you can use whatever you want. This process will work for you. I think when you follow a spiritual plan for it, there's good evidence that it makes your brain more robust and resilient. It makes your hippocampus bigger. It improves the areas of your brain that are involved in emotional regulation and all those

20:41things. So spiritual practices clearly make a difference in your brain structurally, but they benefit you even if you don't believe in God. So I'm not telling you what you have to believe. So just don't be turned off by the language and the verses. Just listen, and maybe it'll help you. Maybe something will pop into your mind later. One of these Scriptures that I say that starts to make sense. Maybe then you can do what the Bible says. God says, He's not forcing you to believe Him. He says, taste and see that I'm good. Taste and see that the Lord is good. And I just encourage you to be a good scientist. Get a hypothesis. Say, does this stuff work? And then start doing this stuff.

21:16And if it seems like your life is getting better, maybe you say, hey, maybe it does work. And then if it works, why does it work? Maybe because what the Bible said all along was actually true. So that's why I just want to say that for a second. If you're not a believer, it's okay. You're welcome here. I want you to use this practice. I want your life to get better. And this will help you regardless of your spiritual lens or worldview or lack thereof. Okay. The neuroscience is very clear that when we do this sort of deep gratitude focused breathing, your hippocampus comes online, your emotional regulation

21:50and resilience gets better. And you can think more clearly because your frontal lobes gets activated. So that's what we're here for. We want to calm down that amygdala, calm down that fear sensor and get ourselves squared away and hyper-focused so we can get after this work that we're here to do. Yep. Told you we're going to do some basics today. Okay. Self-brain surgery. I want you to define it very clearly. Here's what it is.

Defining Self-Brain Surgery

22:14Self-brain surgery is when you intentionally make structural changes in your brain by leveraging neuroplasticity for the purpose of improving your life in some way. You're using your mind to change your brain just like I do with my instruments in the operating room. This is applied neuroplasticity. Okay. That process we talked about earlier where God gave us this ability for our brain to constantly change. It literally physically disconnects from networks and neurons to other networks and neurons that make things change. And it doesn't care whether what you're asking it to disconnect and reconnect is

22:50helpful to you or not. It doesn't care or no. If what you're thinking about and pondering and driving all this change with is true or just imaginary. So you have to be responsible then. Once you know that what you think about changes your brain structurally, you need to spend more time thinking about true things that you can control, that you're involved in, that aren't just some worries, some fears, some imaginary things, or some real things that you don't have any control over. Because what kind of brain do you want to build is the question self-brain surgeons are asking themselves every day.

23:24We want to reconnect these things in ways that help us and don't hurt us. Remember, like I said, neuroplasticity is value neutral. Your brain does not care and cannot tell if what you're asking it to automate or what you're asking it to connect is helpful or harmful to you. It just does what you tell it to. 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

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25:08promo code Dr. Lee Warren, D-R-L-E-E-W-A-R-R-E-N for your AquaTrue water purifier. So the more you think about something, the more attention you bring to it, the more connections you make, and the more robust it becomes. The more automated it gets over time, the less you have to think about it, and the more it starts to feel like this is just who I am. This is just how I am. So self-brain surgery then flips the script. It says, hey, we're going to make neuroplasticity work for us instead of against us. And again, we are going to make this thing work on our behalf.

25:43We're going to take command of it like a surgeon holding the scalpel. We know from decades of neuroscience research now that the brain is constantly changing based on what we think, feel, believe, and do. It's important to get that working for you instead of against you. Belief is important because your brain won't really do something that it doesn't believe. If you don't believe it, your brain will have a hard time automating it, okay? Even if the thing that you do believe is fictional or made up, your brain will automate that if you believe it. So be careful deciding that this is just how I am or nothing ever works out for me or God

26:17abandoned me. Be careful deciding that because if you believe it and you say it to yourself over and over, you're going to build a brain that helps you live that out. So be careful what you automate. This creates responsibility. As I said, because of Hebb's law, neurons that fire together, wire together. So wire them in a way that helps you, okay? Every thought you think is literally shaping the structure of your brain for good or for harm. So self-brain surgeons say we are going to take that process under our command. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 10 verse 5,

26:53we take every thought captive. And here's the key distinction. Your brain is hardware and your mind is writing the code that that hardware runs on all the time. People say sometimes brain is hardware, mind is software. Your mind is not the software. Your mind is the master computer like the internet servers out there that are communicating with your brain, not software. Your mind is writing code that changes the hardware of your brain and what it does. That's amazing, right? It's a physical edit.

27:27Imagine this. I've got an iPhone 15 here. I'm always a couple of versions behind. This is an iPhone 15. Imagine if I plugged my iPhone 15 in to charge on my bedside table tonight. Imagine when I got up tomorrow morning, if this phone somehow turned into an orange iPhone 17 Pro Max. Imagine that. Like if I plugged my phone in and I woke up the next day and it was a different phone, like physically different phone, I would think that somebody snuck into my bedroom and swapped out my phone. Why?

27:58Because hardware doesn't change itself with software updates, right? But guess what? Your brain does change itself every day in response to what you think about. Your brain physically changes. That's amazing. The Bible calls this heart, mind, and soul, this eternal part of you, this immaterial part of you that's not physical like in your skull, not physical brain material. Your mind is not your brain.

28:28The Bible uses those three terms, heart, mind, and soul for this immaterial, immortal, eternal part that is made in God's image. Okay? After you die someday and your brain dissolves in the ground or in the crematorium or wherever, you still will be. Your mind will still be there. The amazing part about this is that neuroscience is now beginning to be able to acknowledge that, hey, there's more to this story than we thought. We used to think the brain was everything. And there's some research now that suggests the brain is not everything. The neuroscience is catching up and it's getting

29:01harder and harder to defend the idea that we used to believe that the brain created mind. It doesn't. The reason they can't ever figure out how that happens scientifically is because it doesn't happen. Brain does not generate mind. Mind and brain are separate things. Your brain runs automatic programs, habits, emotional reactions, and fear. Over time, your brain automates these things and they become more and more and more about who you think you are. And your mind is the part of you that can get above all that and engage what we call metacognition and think about what you're thinking about and think

29:36about what you're feeling and decide that the reactions and responses that you've always had are not serving you anymore and you can decide to change them. That metacognition ability is selective attention and the ability to observe our own thoughts, observe our own feelings, and choose a different response. That's a uniquely human thing that God gave you. You can think about your thoughts and feelings. You can observe them. Look at the programs you're running. Look at the things that have been automated and say, you know what? That isn't helping me anymore. Now it's time to change. It's time to

30:07implement some new protocols around here. It's time to do some self-brain surgery. If the ones that we had before are not helping us, we can change. And it puts you in the position of being the surgeon instead of just the patient all the time. Okay? That's why one of our foundational ideas of self-brain surgery is that I am not just my brain. I am my mind and my mind is in charge of my brain. It's the fourth commandment. Okay? You're not just your brain. You are your mind and your mind is in charge of

30:38your brain. You're not stuck with your genetics, your parents, the family or situation that you grew up in. You're not stuck with the way your brain has adapted to the traumas and tragedies and massive things and issues that have come along in your life. Because if those responses are not helping you, you can change them as soon as you're ready to pick up the scalpel and do the work to change your mind. It's incredibly freeing. It gives you agency and opportunity to do something about the way things have been. That's called hope, by the way. Agency and opportunity. You're not stuck, friend.

31:11And you've never been stuck. You just need to change your brain. And you can do that when you intervene in it by changing your mind. So as soon as you decide to get serious about changing your mind, you can begin to operate as a self-brain surgeon. That's why we call ourselves that. Okay? Let's clear up some misconceptions. Okay? Self-brain surgery is not just positive thinking. I get

Misconceptions

31:33this email all the time. Are you just prescribing positive thinking? It's not that. It's not pretending everything's okay. It's not about pretending like nothing's wrong or that everything's under our control. Self-brain surgery is about telling the truth, looking at ourselves and saying the way I have been living is not helping me. I have automated some things in response to difficult situations that are not helping me anymore. I want to choose a different place to go forward from, friend, because what happened in the past does not have the inherent power to dictate what happens in the future for you.

32:07Okay? And I know that. Somebody's going to write back and say, well, I got paralyzed in an accident. How can that not determine what happens next? Well, you're right. I mean, if you're paralyzed from the neck down or from the waist down because of a car accident, doing self-brain surgery isn't going to get you out of that wheelchair. But I'm going to tell you something. I'm looking in your eyes right now. I hope you're looking at me. If you're listening, just lean in and pretend you can look into my blue eyes and hear me say this just right in your face as a compassionate friend, as a compassionate doctor. I'm going to put my hand on your shoulder and I'm going to tell you the truth. Okay, friend,

32:40the way to get better in the future cannot depend on the situation changing. Okay? If you think you can't be happy or that your life can't be purpose-filled and that you can't be successful or rejoice or discover purpose again after whatever you've been through, unless that thing goes away, then you won't be happy because as soon as you decide that, even if that thing does go away, something else adverse is going to happen in your life. And if the change you made was only because

33:14the circumstance got better, you won't be okay. Okay? So I need you to hear me say this, okay? I have seen thousands of people who got well even while they stayed sick. You don't have to get your disease or your divorce or your diagnosis or your situation resolved in a way that you wanted it to be resolved in order to still have a meaningful life. And that's not a cop out. It's the only reason, the rational basis that we have for hope. When Jesus said, the thief came to

33:48steal and kill and destroy, but I've come that you might have life and have it abundantly. This is what he was talking about. Okay? Sometimes the baby dies. Sometimes your son gets stabbed to death. Sometimes you can't kick the habit. Okay? Sometimes he doesn't come back. And I'm just telling you, you can still learn to perform self-brain surgery and develop better responses and automate things that

34:19will help you. And you can find hope and healing and even higher performance again, no matter what you've gone through. That's the life-changing art of self-brain surgery. That's the power we have. And if you say, you know what? It's just too much for me. I can't do it, doc. I'm too anxious, too stressed. You don't know what I've been through. Let me just gently remind you of 2 Peter 1.3. Okay? 2 Peter 1.3 says this, His divine power has given us everything we need for life. Let me just

34:58ask you, friend, if we agree that God has written a book that He promises He never changes, never lies, never changes His mind, and that every word of His scripture is true, if you can accept that as a premise with me, then you have to say, did He tell the truth when He made that promise that I have been given everything I need? Notice the verse does not say that God gave some of us some of the things that we need. It doesn't say that. It says friend. It says Lola. It says Becca. It says Beth. It says

35:33Charles. It says William. It says Lee. It says Tata. It says Lisa. You have been given everything you need for life. So whether you're Jonas in Nashville, Tennessee, or you're Chad in Los Angeles, California, or you're Beth in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or you're Lola in Kentucky, or you're Tata in Nebraska, whoever you are and wherever you are, you have been given everything you need. So when I say that

36:07self-brain surgery is not about ignoring your feelings or your situations or pretending they're not true. Feelings matter, but they are not facts. They're like barometers. They're not good GPS navigation systems, okay? They can tell you something's going on, but they can't tell you where you are or where you need to go. They should never be in charge of you deciding what to do next. They are chemical events in your brain for you to be aware of, but not controlled by. That's one of our core commandments. The second one, feelings are not facts. They're chemical events in my brain.

36:38That's in the book, by the way. And we've talked about the 10 commandments a lot. Feelings are not facts, and self-brain surgery is not a quick fix. It is not a life hack or a system of little mantras or things you can remember and whip out when you need them. It is a process, a worldview through which you can live and practice every day. It works through repetition and discipline. It's not an easy fix. It's hard work. It works through repetition and discipline to build yourself a brain that supports you in the way that you want your life to feel. So instead of saying, how do you feel? Self-brain surgeons

37:14say, how do I want to feel? I'm going to build a brain that will help me feel that, live that, become that. It's not manifestation culture either. You're not thinking things into existence and some kind of magic trick. What you're doing is absolutely shaping your brain, setting your filters, changing your perspective and your future through what you repeatedly think about and how you set those filters and how you set those automations to begin helping you. And we talk about filters all the time in the reticular

37:45activating system and what your brain shows you and what seems real to you. But the truth is reality is based mostly on what we're looking for because what reality looks like depends on what you're telling your brain to pay attention for. So the diligent application of self-brain surgery allows you to set filters that show you a reality that supports you in the person God is calling you to become the person you so desperately want to be. Now let's just talk about for one second about one of the

38:15most common questions I get since this is self-brain surgery basics and we're starting out here as a new place to start. I get this question all the time, Doc, how is self-brain surgery different than cognitive behavioral therapy? And it's a great question, but you need to understand CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy is a technique. It's derived from materialist neuroscience and it is a technique. It's helpful. It teaches you how to identify distorted thinking and replace it and it helps millions of people around the world. But self-brain surgery is not a technique. It is a worldview. It is an operating system for your whole

38:50life and it goes much farther than any particular technique, including CBT, can go. CBT teaches you to say, hey, that thought's not true. Self-brain surgery teaches you to say, I am not my brain. I have authority over my brain and I can investigate my thoughts and feelings. I can decide if they're true. I can decide how to navigate them. CBT is largely psychological. Self-brain surgery is mechanistic and identity-based. We are talking about literally rewiring the circuits in our brains so that we

39:21become different people. The Bible calls it being transformed by the renewing of our minds. We're not just correcting thoughts. We're changing the structure that produces those thoughts over times. And we're doing it with intention, repetition, and purpose. Not from a materialist perspective where we say, oh, we're just made out of brain parts, but from a dualist perspective. Mind and brain are not the same thing. Mind has power over brain. The perspective is that we live in control

39:51of what our brains are and what they become. And now I just want to take one second, okay? This is

Biblical Truth and Neuroscience

39:58where it all comes together. It's not just neuroscience. It's also biblical truth. We're smashing those together so we get the most benefit. In my new book, I talk about the maybe God can help me approach. That's the highest way I think of how you can operate to overcome anything that makes you sad, sick, stressed, stuck, or feel like you're constantly settling. 2 Corinthians 10 5, as I mentioned earlier, says we take every thought captive. That's not a passive process. You don't wait anymore for things to come along and somebody outside of you to fix you or to finally find the

40:29magic thing that's going to make you happy. This is a surgical, intentional process of you getting some power back in your life. Proverbs 23 7 says, as a person thinks in their heart, so are they. And the more you think the way you think, the density of bringing those thoughts and the perspective of where you bring them from changes how your brain is and changes how your life turns out, my friend. Your thinking is not neutral. It's creative. It has power. And that gives you responsibility. Philippians 4 8

41:00says, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is trustworthy, whatever is good, think about those things. The Bible says the things you think about change how you live. And neuroscience tells us that too. If you don't want to be anxious, be grateful. Switch this thought for that thought. It changes who you are by changing what your brain is. That's intentional training of your brain to become something that helps you instead of hurting you. Isaiah 26 3 says, you will keep in perfect peace

41:33those whose minds are fixed on you. The Bible says, if you want more peace, fix your mind on different stuff. Fix your mind on him, on God, on better things, on higher things, not your feelings, not your stresses, not your traumas. Fix your mind on some better things. Romans 8 talks about the idea that the mind that is set on the flesh is death. Why is that? The more you focus on the things that hurt you, the bigger and more powerful they become. The more you stress and worry about your anxiety or cast yourself into worst case scenario thinking, the more real those things become.

42:06But when you focus on better things, those things fade away. And you start to build a brain that allows you to see a reality and a map and a way to process and progress forward in your life that you never could see before. This is amazing. The mindset on the spirit is life and peace. Instead of you getting worse, you start getting better. The mindset on the spirit helps you to move forward in your life. And that's what we want, right? We want life and peace. We don't want death. We don't want

42:37strain. We don't want steal, kill, and destroy. We want abundance. We want flourishing. And peace is connected to where your mind is anchored. That's self-brain surgery language right there in the Bible. Thousands of years ago, before neuroscience caught up, and it changes everything in your life. For most people, they spend their lives living on autopilot. They don't know that they can change their brain. They don't know that they can have any choice in the matter of how things play out for them. They don't have to believe every thought that pops into their head. But nobody told them that.

43:11They don't know. And if they don't know, they can't build a better brain because everything they think about and every day, they keep thinking the same things that's automating their brain to be the same brain. They don't know that they don't have to react to everything out of fear. They just feel everything as if it's true. And friend, here's the punchline. The dual purpose of this is if you get this right in your life, people are going to start looking at you and saying, you know what? When the pressure's on, you seem to do something different than I do. You seem to find some way to be okay,

43:44to navigate a problem, to solve an issue. You don't fall apart anymore like you used to. What's the deal? What's going on with that? And they're going to start looking at you as somebody who can guide them and help them. And friend, if you're looking for some purpose in your life, showing other people that they're not stuck with the brains they have will go a long way towards helping you find purpose because people go around reacting all the time and they assume that their brain's in charge. They hear it from the media. They learn it in school. The brain then becomes in charge because it automates the thing that you think about the most frequently. And if you never change

44:19what you think about, you get stuck in anxiety loops, fear loops, negative identity loops, and you get a whole bunch of no freedom and no flourishing in your life. But once you understand this process, something amazing happens. It's not a miracle. It's a mechanism God gave you, but it's still amazing. You realize that you don't have to believe every stupid thought that pops into your head. You don't have to follow every feeling that works its way up from your gut. You can interrupt those destructive patterns. You can train your brain to give you a better baseline.

44:53You can build hope on purpose. You don't have to look for it or wonder where it is. You can create it. This is where neuroplasticity becomes practical. It's where your life really starts to change finally. Now, I want you just to dig in to self-brain surgery with me for just a second. I'm going to

Practical Application

45:09write you a prescription. For the next seven days, take a piece of paper, and at the end of the day, before you go to sleep, write down with a pen or pencil the three things that you can remember that you thought about the most for that day. Just write them down. Don't judge them. Don't try to edit them. Don't worry. I'm going to see them and try to find some better ones. Just the three things I thought the most today. Like, everybody was mean to me today. Nobody loves me. My future stinks. Since this happened, I won't ever be able to change. I can't quit drinking. Whatever it is, your top three thoughts that pop into your head, I want you to write them down. Don't judge them.

45:43Just write them down. Okay? Do it again the next day. Do it again the day after that. Do it for seven days. We know from really good neuroscience that about 90% of the thoughts that most people think over a given day don't change from day to day. In other words, what you think about tends to be repetitive over and over and over and over again every day. So since we know that a good percentage of what we think and feel automatically is not true, and now that we know that about 90% of the things that we think are the same set of things that we thought the day before and that

46:18neuroplasticity automates things in your brain based on what you think about the most, it's no surprise that we keep making brains that are more automatically thinking and feeling the same stuff and that over time we throw up our hands and say, this is just who I am. So I want you for seven days to write these three things down, the three most common thoughts that you have, and prove it to yourself. Hey, I'm thinking about the same stuff every day. And then I want you to just spend a couple of days scratching those things out and replacing them with something that you know to

46:51be true. If one of your thoughts is, I've got no future and I've got no hope, I want you to write down Jeremiah 29 11. For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. I have a plan to prosper you and not to harm you. I have a plan to give you hope in a future. Maybe if you say, I don't have the intelligence or the strength or the willpower or the peace of mind to do this thing in my life that I need to do. I don't have it. I'm not able to do that. Then I want you to scratch that out. And I want you to write down 2 Peter 1 3. And I want you to say, I have been given everything I

47:28need for life and godliness. And if you say, I'm tired of suffering and there's no point in this suffering and I just don't understand why it hurts so bad to be me and live this life. I want you to scratch that out when you say, I don't understand. And I want you to write down Romans 5 3 through 5 that says, we know that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope. And you're going to then write down, when I suffer, God will help me turn that into endurance and I'll become the kind of person who knows that suffering is temporary and

48:04I can survive it because I have before and I'm durable. And then I'm therefore able to generate hope because I know there's a mechanism for how my brain gets stronger and things get better, not in spite of what I've gone through, but because of the process that God has built into me that helps me get better in response to suffering. Just do that thought experiment for a week, okay? The three things you think most often and then challenge them, physically scratch them out and write down something that's true. Friend, I promise you, you will start having a

48:36different brain, okay? That's the surgery part. We've been in the contemplation phase. That's the operating phase. Spend a week auditing your thoughts, biopsying them, challenging them, transplanting them, and running that new thought over and over and over again. And you're going to start seeing some tactical results from a new type of brain that you're building. And you're going to start feeling some hope, maybe for the first time in a long time. Listen, smash that follow button. Share this episode with a friend. Make sure you check out drleewarren.com. Everything we do around

49:11here is there. You can find the newsletter, the podcast, all my books, everything you need, drleewarren.com. And you don't have to email me anymore to ask for our free resources. If you want the thought biopsy worksheet, if you want the 10 commandments of self-brain surgery, you can go to school.wleewarrenmd.com, school.wleewarrenmd.com. That's where you can download everything for free. There's also a free course there that I recorded for you called You Can Change Your Life that really

49:42will help you change your life. And there's two paid courses there. There's the transformation training that really will take you deeper from the book. Don't buy it if you haven't read the book, okay? It takes what happens in the life-changing art and goes way deeper. So if you want more after you've read the life-changing art of self-brain surgery, go to school.wleewarrenmd.com. Get that transformation training course. It will help you. If you've read the book, it'll take you even deeper. Make sure you leave a review or share this with somebody who might need it if you think it's

50:13going to be helpful to them. Friend, I'm so grateful to be doing this work with you. I'm so grateful that you showed up again today. Make sure that you show up next week because we're going to do these four episodes. They're going to give you this deep foundation in what self-brain surgery is and how you can use it to do the thing we always finish with around here, that you can't change your life until you change your mind. And the very good news is you can start today. I'm your friend, Dr. Lee Warren. I'll see you next time. God bless you, friend.