Using the Ten Commandments of Self-Brain Surgery in Your Life (S14E4)

Introduction

0:00Hey, my friend, welcome back to the podcast. So grateful for you to be back here with me to do this hard and holy work of self-brain surgery. I'm giving you a high five, a little fist bump, and just saying, good job. I'm glad you're here. You could be doing anything else, but you're here with me doing this work. And today, we're gonna finish our series on the four sort of start here episodes for self-brain surgery. If you're new around here, or if you're starting a group, or you just wanna come back and get the basic high-level stuff, these four episodes will always be here for you.

0:31Just go to season 14, start here, four quick episodes, and you'll get your head around what self-brain surgery is really all about and how you can use it in your life.

10 Commandments

0:40And today, we're gonna talk about the 10 commandments of self-brain surgery. These are taken from my new book, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery. If you don't have it yet, I would implore you to get it. It covers all this ground in great detail. It's helping people all over the world. I implore you to get the book. I think it's really gonna be valuable to you, and it may just change your life. Some people are saying it may have saved their lives already. So I would just say, check it out, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery. The 10 commandments are my best 10 principles from neuroscience and from scripture

1:10that I've pulled together in the last 13 years since we lost our son, as I've been diving in and trying to understand how the mind and the brain work and how they're different and all those things. The 10 commandments are the guidelines, the sort of guideposts that help us find our way and hold on tight and make good decisions and move forward as we all attempt our journey through healing and more hope and higher performance. So the 10 commandments are gonna help us do that. And today I want specifically to look at how the 10 commandments work in the major areas of our lives,

1:42our spiritual life, our physical health, our mental health, our relationships, and our professional life, work, finances, that kind of stuff. So we're gonna look just a few little ideas for each commandment of how it could relate to each of these areas of your life. Now there's gonna be more for you, okay? I want you to journal, I want you to keep an op note, I want you to write down, how could I use these commandments in these different areas of my life? And there might even be some other areas of your life that you wanna apply them to as well. So we're gonna just, in a very quick way,

2:13just cover the ground of the 10 commandments as they relate to a few things I could immediately think of that you could use them for in each area of your life. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna cover the 10 commandments in a very short amount of time and how they apply to all areas of your life. Let's get after it.

First Commandment

2:38Okay, the first commandment of self-brain surgery, I must relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise. Say that with me. I must relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise. If you're gonna be a self-brain surgeon, you gotta start with medical school. And the first day of med school, they teach us the oath. They make us take the oath. I will not commit harm against my patient. And if you're gonna be your own doctor and your own patient, you don't wanna be committing malpractice against yourself.

3:08The scripture that we chose to go with this is Romans 12.1. I urge you to offer your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice to God, a sacred offering that brings him pleasure. This is your reasonable, essential worship. Remember, that's Romans 12.1, by the way, in the voice translation, Romans 12.1. Remember, your brain is part of your body. And so basically this verse is saying that when you use your brain in the right way, you take care of it, do the right things by it, including the rest of your body too. You're worshiping God.

3:39It's not hard work, it's worship, okay? Now, in our spiritual life, what does it mean? It means we don't skip things that we know make us better. It's good neuroimaging studies, for example, that tell us that just a few minutes a day in prayer and meditation make our hippocampus bigger, more robust. The part of your brain that's related to emotional resilience and stability and peace of mind and being less anxious and all that gets physically stronger and bigger. Then you can measure that when you pray and worship and meditate a few minutes a day.

4:11And so skipping that kind of practice, not incorporating it into your life is a form of malpractice against yourself. It's like, hey, I would rather have a more anxious brain. I would rather have a smaller hippocampus. I would rather have a brain that pushes me more towards being panicked or anxious. That would be silly, right? If you chose to do that, it'd be malpractice. Because these practices enlarge your hippocampus. They make more robust connections between your hippocampus and your frontal lobes, and they help you have a less distracted,

4:42less panicky type of life. So applying the first commandment to your spiritual life will help you. What about your physical life? It means that if you know something is harmful to your body, if you know something doesn't help you the next day, if you know something makes things worse for you, gives you brain fog, makes you gain weight, makes you not feel good, doesn't set a good example, if you know that, then committing that against yourself is malpractice. So when we look at our behaviors, our choices, the things we intend to put into our bodies,

5:13or the things we tend to do with our bodies, or not do with our bodies, work out or not work out, go for a walk or sit on the couch, these are forms of malpractice against ourself. Once you're aware, and once you know that something's harming you, then choosing to perpetuate it is participating in your own demise. So maybe pick out a few things that you do and ask yourself on paper, is this good for me? Does this help me? Does it benefit me? And if not, engage the first commandment. Is this a form of my practice against myself?

5:46Every choice you make becomes a living sacrifice. One more walk, one more glass of water, one more time to go to bed early and get a good night's sleep. It'll help you observe and obey the first commandment. What about your mental health? Well, let's refuse to feed the thoughts that drag us towards despair or anxiety. Let's capture our thoughts. That's 2 Corinthians 10, 5. Let's get on top of our thoughts, okay? And let's make sure that we are getting metacognitive instead of reactive. We're using our minds as if they are in charge of their brains

6:16because they are. So when our thoughts become self-destructive, we're not gonna ruminate on them. We're not gonna dive in and follow them down the worst case scenario trail. We're not gonna catastrophize. We're not gonna let our minds use our brains to write further trouble for ourselves, okay? What about your relationships? If you know that certain behaviors are harming your relationship, if you know that you're spending too much time on your phone and you're not engaging with your kids or your spouse, if you know that you're involved in something that would hurt your marriage,

6:47would hurt your partner, it's malpractice to continue those things. So let's not commit malpractice against our kids, against our spouses, against our friends anymore. Let's engage. Let's be present. Let's choose behaviors that honor the first commandment. Let's show up differently every day. What about in our professional life, our finances? How about once you know that something's irresponsible, that's affecting your ability to retire someday or take care of your aging parents or take care of your kids

7:17or take care of your spouse, once you know that you are doing something that's going to put you at risk of being under or being short when you might need something in the future, you're not being a good steward of your resources, not tithing, not giving to the kingdom, not doing the things that you need to do. Once you know that, your heart's telling you that's malpractice against yourself. So use the first commandment to look at your life and find places where you're actually making choices that aren't helping you and that may be hurting you and stop committing malpractice against yourself.

Second Commandment

7:47Second commandment.

Second Commandment

7:47I must believe that feelings are not facts, they're chemical events in my brain. The scripture is Psalm 139, 23. Test me, God, and know my anxious thoughts. This is an acknowledgement that you know that some of your thoughts aren't valid, that they're over-anxious. You want God to examine them, remind you of them, help you be aware of them. That's getting metacognitive about it, okay? In your spiritual life, you can honor the second commandment to pray and worship more, to invite God into your metacognitive space, to ask Him to help you

8:18with that right hemisphere of your brain, to zoom out and not be so fact-oriented all the time and not be so anxious and panicky all the time about everything because He can help you see it in a different way. When you don't feel close to God, press in because feelings aren't facts. He's still there. It's as close as He ever has been. In your physical health, stop waiting to feel motivated, to exercise or eat well. Don't wait on feelings because feelings will never lead you into better behavior. If you want to feel better, you got to do better.

8:48The old saying is, emotion follows motion. You start first and the feelings catch up with you. Action leads and feelings follow, okay? So use the second commandment to motivate you to make better decisions. What about your mental health? It's your daily operating room here. When anxiety or sadness floods in, you label it. It's a chemical event in my brain. This doesn't have to be true. It's not pointing towards something that's true. It's just a chemical event. It's based out of fear. It's based out of something that happened in the past. It's not necessarily true. Now, make sure it's really not true, right?

9:19If you feel like you're in danger, make sure there's not a snake you're about to step on or that you're not in some real dangerous situation. But if it's just anxiety, challenge it. Remind your brain that you know the game. It's playing on you. It's a trick. It's a chemical signal and not reality. Test the thought and choose truth instead in your relationships. Don't let a bad mood dictate how you feel. Don't let it dictate how you treat your wife, your husband, your kids because feelings aren't facts. They're chemical events in your brain. Remind yourself of that constantly,

9:51even in your professional and financial life. Like, I don't feel like it will not make you a very good employee. I don't feel like it won't make you a good business leader. You don't listen to your feelings. You take action and your feelings follow. And so you remind yourself that when you don't feel like it is not the right way to live your life because it's going to harm you more than it helps you. You'll never feel like it until you start doing it. So use the second commandment there. The third commandment, I must believe that most of my automatic thoughts

10:21are untrue. Second Corinthians 10.5 says, I take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. We have to remember that alarming amount of the things that pop into your head are overtly biased towards negativity. They're just factually wrong or they're just totally untrue. They don't have anything to do with reality. They're based on fear or some past memory or something else, but it's not true. So be aware that your thoughts don't always tell you the truth. Spiritually, this is important because you need to stop believing the automatic lies

10:52that God is mad at you or the enemy throws at you, that your past will keep God from loving you or that your future looks terrible and you can't do anything about it. Those aren't true. They're just lies from the enemy or they're lies from your brain. You have to take those thoughts captive and replace them with what scripture says, with something that's true. In your physical health, you'll have automatic thoughts that says, I'll never be able to change, but you can replace that with I'm getting better at what I'm doing because I know about Hebb's law. I know the truth. You challenge that thinking and get metacognitive about it

11:23and replace it with something true. In your mental health, this is critical. It's the core procedure. You have to notice that automatic negative thought, label it as untrue and replace it with something that is true every single time. Same thing happens in your relationships. She doesn't care about me. She always does this or he always does that or I'm always the problem. They don't think I'm ever right. Those kinds of thoughts are not true and you don't need to let them poison your relationships. You need to challenge the thought and cherish the people.

11:53Okay? Now again, as I said a while ago, make sure that you're operating in reality. I'm not just telling you to be mindlessly positive. I'm saying be accurate. Be realistic. Investigate the thoughts and make sure you're operating out of truth. Choose curiosity instead of reactivity. In your professional life and finances, same thing. Stop the automatic imposter syndrome. I'm not good enough for this. I'm always getting passed over. I'll never get ahead financially. All that kind of stuff. Investigate it.

12:23Be curious about it. Be cynical about it and replace it with things that are true that'll help you propel yourself forward in your career. The fourth commandment. I must believe that my mind is in charge of my brain. My mind and my brain are not the same thing. My mind is in charge. The scripture here is God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 2 Corinthians 1.7. So in the spiritual realm, how does this apply? Remind yourself that fear is not

12:54from the Lord. Fear is never from God. Your mind submitted to the Holy Spirit is in charge of your brain and you can choose faith instead of fear. Don't be afraid is one of the most common phrases in the whole Bible. You hear it over and over. Fear not. I am with you. Don't be afraid. Fear not. Take courage. Take heart. It's all over the Bible. Don't be afraid. You don't have to live in fear. Okay? In your physical life, when you're deciding to be active instead of sitting on the couch, for example, you have to tell your brain who's boss because your brain

13:25will default to safety a lot of times. So you tell your brain who's boss, we're going to do this. You start moving. Your brain will catch up. Same thing in your mental health. You don't let your brain run on autopilot anymore. You deliberately direct it towards peace, gratitude, and truth and away from anxiety and fear. In your relationships, make your mind choose forgiveness and kindness even when your brain wants to rehearse the thing that offended you because your mind is in charge. You want to be making decisions that improve things for you over time, not make them worse.

13:55In your professional life, you use that sound mind to plan, execute, and steward your resources instead of letting fear or impulse run the show. The fifth commandment, I must believe that self-brain surgery is not a metaphor. It's the mechanism of how I transform my life. Romans 12, 2, do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. In your spiritual life, this is how you're actually transformed. This is where the rubber meets the road. Daily mind renewal

14:26is the mechanism that makes Romans 12, 2 real in your life. Physically, every time you make a healthy choice, you're literally performing brain surgery. You're rewiring your brain to love what's good for you, to want more of it, to get dopamine in a natural way that's helpful to you and not harmful to you. Mentally, you stop wishing for change and start performing the daily operations that you need to renew your mind. In your relationships, you transform how you show up by renewing your thoughts

14:56about the people you love. You change the way you think. You renew your thoughts and it will change your brain. In your professional and financial life, you create a completely new future by treating every decision as an act of mind renewal. You say, it doesn't have to be the way it's always been. If I've been irresponsible in the past, if I'm struggling, I can find some new ways to proceed. I can change some behaviors. I can work this out and make my brain not be so resource-deprived all the time, not be so scarcity-minded. I can start looking for opportunities to change the future

15:27for myself or my family. Now, as an aside, let me just say, we always have to remember that hard things happen and some circumstances don't change. But we always have the power to be well even if things are unwell around us. And we do that through the renewal of our minds. 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,

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16:29in Business Insider, Popular Science and it's named the best countertop water filter by Good Housekeeping. You can join 98% of customers who say their drinking water is cleaner, safer and healthier and three of those customers are me and Lisa and Tata. We drink AquaTrue water every day. It's been on our counter for over a year. We've blind taste tested it with each other and you can tell the difference in how your water tastes and you know it's good for you. Go to AquaTrue.com now for 20% off your AquaTrue water purifier using promo code

17:00Dr. Lee Warren and AquaTrue even comes with a 30-day best tasting water guarantee. That's AquaTrue A-Q-U-A-T-R-U dot com and use the promo code Dr. Lee Warren D-R-L-E-E W-A-R-R-E-N for your AquaTrue water purifier. The sixth commandment is I must love tomorrow more than I hate how I feel right now. This is the no anesthesia commandment and the scripture is don't worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble

17:31of its own. That's Matthew 6-34. In your spiritual life you're willing to choose the discomfort of consistent prayer and scripture reading over the temporary anesthesia of distraction. In your physical health you do the workout or skip the dessert because you love tomorrow. You love the future version of you more than the easy feeling the numbing behavior right now. Mentally you sit with hard emotions instead of numbing them knowing that tomorrow's peace is worth it.

18:01In your relationships you have the hard conversation because you love tomorrow's connection more than comfort today. You're willing to press in and do the difficult things professionally. You make the sacrificial choices now saving, learning, investing, showing up because you love the tomorrow the freedom the security that those choices will create. The seventh commandment I must stop making an operation out of everything. The scripture is in repentance and rest is your salvation and quietness and trust is your strength.

18:31That's Isaiah 30 verse 15. Spiritually you stop overanalyzing every prayer. You stop overanalyzing every situation. You just rest in God's presence and your physical health. You stop turning every meal or workout into a stressful event. You eat well you move more because it's simple obedience and you know it's good for you. You don't want to commit malpractice and you don't want to overthink it. You just want to choose best practices and start living that way. Your brain will follow. Mentally you give yourself permission to let some thoughts

19:02pass without hours of overthinking and analysis of them. Let somebody say something that used to offend you and just let it go because you don't have to spend 12 hours catastrophizing about what they really meant. Quietness and trust become your strength in your relationships. You stop turning every small issue into a major operation and you choose peace instead. You don't have to win every time. You don't have to be right every time. Peace is more important. I'm not saying don't take care of things

19:32that need to be taken care of. I'm not saying be a patsy. I'm not saying draw yourself into a shell and let somebody run over you. I'm saying when there's a choice to be made do I have to win this battle? Do I have to say the last word? Do I have to do that? Do I have to spend 12 hours wondering what she meant or wondering why he gave me that look? Or can I choose peace instead? That's a choice, right? Professionally, financially, you stop overthinking every decision and you trust that quiet,

20:03consistent effort is enough. The eighth commandment, I must not perpetuate generational thought or behavioral issues in my family or start any new ones. The scripture says, be very careful then how you live, not as unwise but as wise. That's Ephesians 5.15. Spiritually, you break any legacy of doubt or distance from God. If it runs in your family to not go to church, you make your family be the ones who go to church. You change the game for the future if you know it's going to help you. You model a living faith

20:34for the next generation because the studies are all clear. If church is optional for you, if belief in God is optional for you, if Bible study is optional for you, it won't even exist in your kids' lives. You can pass on a better spiritual life than you inherited. Physically, you refuse to pass down unhealthy habits. Don't let your kids see you modeling things that you tell them not to do. Model wise stewardship of your body. Model honoring God with your body. Model making good choices so your kids will too.

21:05Pass those things along generationally. Mentally, you stop repeating the anxious or negative thought patterns you inherited, the abusive patterns, the substance use patterns that you inherited and create new healthy ones. Show your kids that it is possible to change. When five generations hit, this is how we are, this is how it's always been, not for you. Just like God said in Job to the ocean, this far you may come. This is where your waves will stop. You're not coming any farther than this. We can say that with generational issues in our lives too. Relationally,

21:36you can become the one who ends the toxic cycle and starts patterns of grace and truth and love and peace in your home. Professionally, you can refuse to repeat the same mistakes that your parents made. If your dad lived paycheck to paycheck, you don't have to. You can use wisdom and good financial stewardship principles to change things for your family in the future. The ninth commandment, I must believe that I'm getting better at what I'm doing. The scripture is, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you

22:06will carry it on to completion. That's Philippians 1.6. Spiritually, you trust that God is completing the good work that he started in you. Your faith is growing and you're trusting that you're getting better at what you're doing. Physically, you celebrate every small win because you really are getting better at taking care of your body and you're trusting in the plan that your body will come along to if you do the right things by it. Mentally, you notice and name your progress so your brain keeps rewiring towards hope. You journal, you keep track, you document,

22:36and you know that you're getting better at getting better. Relationally, you start to notice and celebrate those small improvements as you're making steps towards being a good parent, a good spouse, a good friend, or better one. You see your self-brain surgery kicking in, you'll see Hebb's Law making a difference for you and you keep going and you have hope and you gain steam and momentum because it is getting better because you've been practicing self-brain surgery. Professionally, you track your growth and believe that the skills and habits that you're building

23:07will take you where God wants you to go and you trust that you can steward what He gives you into something that you'd be proud of yourself for if you keep pressing on. The Tenth Commandment, I must believe that thoughts become things. The Bible says what He thinks is what He really is. That's Proverbs 23, 7 in Good News Translation. Some people say as someone thinks in their heart, so are they. That's other translations but Proverbs 23, 7 says what you think about is what you become. Spiritually, your thoughts of faith

23:37literally shape the reality of your walk with God. Physically, the thoughts like I am a healthy person become the actions that make you one. Thoughts become things. You're choosing and then you're becoming. Mentally, you choose thoughts that create peace, resilience, and joy instead of anxiety and defeat. Relationally, the thoughts you rehearse about the people you love become the way that you treat them. Professionally, you believe the abundant, wise thoughts that create the future that God has for you. You think

24:08and you become. Now, this is not manifestation and it doesn't change all circumstances, okay? But operating within the realm of the things that we can control, better thoughts produce better outcomes. I'm not preaching prosperity doctrine here. I'm not saying that if you pray right and think right that everything's going to go your way. Jesus promised us in this world you're going to have trouble. I'm living proof of that, okay? But, making level paths for your feet as the Bible says in two different places gives you the best chance

24:40to optimize the circumstances that you can control, okay? So, when you know something is unwise or wise, choose the wise path. When you know something is going to produce a better outcome, choose that path. When we make the wrong choices that we already know are wrong and then we have the wrong outcome, it's not right to shake our fist at God. I say, why did you let that happen, right? When we do everything right and bad things still happen, then we lean on God and trust His plan for redeeming

25:11all of this eventually. But God is there for us and He's given you a mind and a brain that will operate in a way that will help you and not hurt you if you leverage the power of self-brain surgery and neuroplasticity to your own benefit. The Ten Commandments are there for you to guide you, give you some structure, some principles from neuroscience