0:02

Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you. It is a brand new week,

0:06

and it's Mind Change Monday. Hope you're doing well. Hope you had a great weekend. We are having what I hope

0:13

will be our last big snowstorm blizzard of the year.

0:16

The wind is raging outside, and the central part of Nebraska is getting hammered

0:21

with a big, windy snowstorm. So that's good for the farmers and good for the ground eventually when all that snow melts.

0:28

It's still dark, so I don't know how much we got. We were forecast to get six

0:32

or more inches last night, but the wind is a problem because that'll create snow drifts.

0:36

So pray for the folks out here in this part of the country, and I hope you're

0:40

warm and safe wherever you are. Today, we're going to talk about the fifth commandment. I told you this weekend

0:46

that we're retooling the Ten Commandments of Self-Brain Surgery just a little

0:50

bit to create the book, Self-Brain Surgery Manuscript, that I'm working on.

0:55

This is going to be the handbook, the go-to guide.

0:58

It's going to give you a book that you can come back to and flip open to a particular

1:02

chapter and deal with a particular thing or read it like a book or use it like a 40-day devotional.

1:08

There's going to be lots of different ways to use this book, and I hope it'll become a trusted guidebook, something you can reach for over

1:14

and over again as the years go by in your practice of self-brain surgery as

1:19

we try to develop this brain-mind life.

1:21

It's self-brain surgery, tools to rewire your brain, reorder your mind,

1:25

and radically transform your life.

1:28

In the course of that, we have the Ten Commandments. And I told you recently

1:32

that we're going to kind of reshape these as I put the manuscript together,

1:36

because once it's published, they're fixed. We can't change them anymore.

1:39

So trying to find the very best way and order in which to state these ten principles

1:44

that we've drawn from neuroscience and from Scripture to smash together to give

1:48

us the best tools we can to live this brain-mind life.

1:52

And since you are a self-brain surgeon, because you wouldn't be listening to

1:56

this podcast if you weren't, then today I want to talk about the fifth commandment.

2:00

This kind of was originally the fourth and fifth commandments,

2:03

but we realized that they were sort of corollaries of one another.

2:07

So we want to be efficient. We want to make sure we give you the most sort of

2:10

perfect list that we can to put in one place.

2:14

I know people are putting these on bathroom mirrors and putting them on index

2:17

cards in their pocket, putting them on their phone so they can rework them or

2:20

reuse them and remember them and memorize them and live them out as the days go by.

2:25

So today, the restated fifth commandment, here it is.

2:28

I must love tomorrow more than I hate how I feel right now.

2:32

I must love tomorrow more than I hate how I feel right now.

2:36

We're going to get after that in just a minute. The fifth commandment of self-brain

2:39

surgery for mind change Monday. day. But before we do that, I have a question for you.

2:44

Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.

2:49

You have to change your mind first. And my friend, there's a place where the

2:53

neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and everything starts to make sense.

2:59

Are you ready to change your life? Well, this is the place, Self-Brain Surgery School.

3:03

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired.

3:07

Take control of our thinking and find real hope. This is where we learn to become

3:11

healthier, feel better, and be happier. This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.

3:17

This is where we start today. Are you ready? This is your podcast.

3:21

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

3:27

Music.

3:32

All right, let's get after it. Hey, the fifth commandment. This is about loving tomorrow more.

3:38

It's about not being willing to pay the tomorrow tax anymore.

3:42

It's about stopping the idea that we can't stand how we're feeling after some

3:48

trauma or tragedy or massive thing or just the humdrum of a life that we think

3:52

should be different than it is. We don't like it so we do something to stop

3:56

feeling it now self-brain surgery is

3:59

the only type of surgery that anesthesia makes

4:02

worse i rely on my colleagues from anesthesia the crnas and the mdns anesthesiologists

4:09

who i work with at my hospital are outstanding and they keep my patients asleep

4:13

and comfortable so we can perform these life-changing and sometimes life-saving

4:17

surgeries surgeries and without anesthesia, I wouldn't be able to do what I do.

4:21

It's absolutely critical to my work.

4:24

But in the self-brain surgery realm, it turns out anesthesia is bad.

4:29

Anesthesia never helps us. And here's why. When you numb yourself to what you're

4:35

feeling, you can't feel anything.

4:38

When you numb yourself to the bad stuff, you also can't feel the good stuff.

4:43

Because unlike Unlike local anesthesia that we do if I'm going to take a mole

4:47

off your finger or if I'm going to perform carpal tunnel surgery on your wrist,

4:51

I can give you a local anesthetic so that you only stop feeling that particular part of your body.

4:56

But unlike local anesthesia for those kinds of minor procedures,

5:01

self-brain surgery, when you

5:03

anesthetize yourself, you anesthetize your whole self, your entire mind.

5:08

You can't not anesthetize the good stuff when you're trying to anesthetize the bad stuff.

5:15

That's why verses like Ephesians 5.18 are so important.

5:18

We talk about alcohol as an example of numbing behavior a lot because it's probably

5:23

the one that most people reach for the most.

5:26

When you don't like how you're feeling, you like to consume something that you

5:31

think is going to relax you and calm you down and make you not have to think

5:34

about it. The problem is there's always a flip side to that.

5:39

And in the setting of alcohol, we could talk about pornography or internet shopping

5:44

or gambling or relationships or sex or lots of other things that people use to numb themselves.

5:50

We could talk about those things. But specifically with alcohol,

5:52

you always rob Peter to pay Paul, so to speak.

5:56

Because yes, you stop thinking about or feeling the thing that you don't want to feel right now.

6:01

But you also harm your brain structurally. We know that alcohol is a direct

6:05

neurotoxin. So you're doing structural damage to your brain.

6:09

So ultimately, you're making your brain less able to help you cope with the

6:12

life that you have, enjoy the life that you have, relate to the people around

6:16

you, make decisions that are going to be good for you, and all of that.

6:18

You're covering up all that ability and actually structurally harming it and

6:22

making it harder for you to do those things as efficiently in the future.

6:26

And yes, this occurs sort of on a microscopic scale, but there comes a tipping point.

6:30

We all know the person, or at least in healthcare, we all know the person who

6:34

handles chronic alcoholism pretty well. We call them high-functioning alcoholics.

6:39

And then all of a sudden, they finally lose enough brain cells that they become

6:43

consistently, clearly, obviously demented and disabled and dysfunctional to everybody.

6:49

So they pushed it too far and they finally got past their limit.

6:51

And now they've irreparably harmed their brain with alcohol.

6:55

And what does everybody do? We kind of shrug our shoulders and say,

6:58

oh, poor guy, he just couldn't get off the bottle. Well, I would say it's a terrible tragedy to destroy your own brain that much.

7:05

But all of us, if we use alcohol or some substance like that,

7:09

all of us are doing harm to the structure of our brain.

7:14

And when I say you rob Peter to pay Paul... I don't just mean the structural damage to your brain.

7:20

I also mean that you disconnect yourself from the Wi-Fi network,

7:24

if you will, that's connecting your mind to the Spirit of God,

7:28

to your great physician, the one who actually wants to help you solve these

7:32

problems and deal with them in a healthy way.

7:35

That's why Ephesians 5.18 is not about debauchery, by the way.

7:39

It says, do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.

7:43

Instead, be filled with the Spirit, the New Living Translation.

7:45

Don't be drunk with wine because that will ruin your life.

7:48

Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit.

7:50

I like that translation better because I was, so the church that I was raised

7:55

in, it was always don't drink or you'll go to hell.

7:58

Don't drink or you'll do this. Don't drink or you'll do that.

8:00

It was all about behavior. But the verse isn't about behavior. And that's why that kind of teaching,

8:06

Paul even says it later in the New Testament, don't give people all these rules,

8:10

don't handle, don't taste, don't touch because they seem team-wise,

8:13

but they lack value in restraining indulgence because people figure out that

8:17

something else they get from it will help them more than abstaining from it.

8:23

They at least think that, which is incorrect thinking, but that's the trade-off that people get.

8:27

If you teach them the right thing for the wrong reason, then when that wrong

8:30

reason doesn't play out to be helpful to them, they'll do it anyway.

8:34

But this verse has never been about the botchery. It's never been about things

8:40

that you do when you're drunk. Yes, they're bad things. That you can do when you're drunk. There are lots of them. And lives can be

8:45

ruined, as the New Living Translation says.

8:47

You can ruin your life with alcohol or with drugs or with other kinds of numbing behaviors.

8:52

But the reason why is because you can't be filled with the Spirit while you're

8:58

drunk with alcohol. What does that mean?

9:01

If we accept the proposition that our mind is the interface between the great

9:07

physician, the Spirit of God that lives inside us and wants to communicate with

9:11

us and guide us and help us as the gospel of John's all about.

9:14

The Holy Spirit wants to remind you of truth, help you, teach you things,

9:18

help you, sustain you, guide you, counsel you, heal you.

9:22

And when you turn your mind off with alcohol, he can't communicate with you.

9:29

And so if you want to be filled with the Spirit, if you want to have the guidance

9:33

and the help of the great and wise physician who's there to help you,

9:36

the wise advocate, as Jeffrey Schwartz calls him, you can't turn your brain off.

9:40

You can't disconnect your mind from the Spirit.

9:44

So that's why we're not supposed to be choosing to inebriate ourselves with

9:49

drugs or alcohol or anything else that disconnects us from our ability to communicate

9:54

with the one place that can really help us. It's the one person who can really understand us, the one person who really

9:59

knows how that trauma or tragedy or massive thing has affected us.

10:03

But it does take some bravery to face into this.

10:06

So the fifth commandment then is really about choosing to accept the feelings

10:11

that we have right now, the pain and the difficulty of what we're going through,

10:15

choosing to accept that so that on the backside,

10:18

we can get all the other good stuff in exchange for it, because you can't feel good things.

10:25

If you're anesthetized against the bad things.

10:27

My patients are asleep for surgery for the hour or two hours or three hours

10:31

or 30 minutes or five hours or however long it is that I have to do that procedure.

10:35

While they're asleep, yes, they're not feeling the pain from the surgery,

10:38

but they're also not talking to their grandkids.

10:41

They're also not enjoying their life. They're also not doing anything else with

10:45

their spouse or their loved one or catching up or doing work or going for a walk.

10:50

They're anesthetized on the table, and the only thing they're going through

10:53

is the procedure that they're having right then.

10:56

And that's okay because that's for a purpose.

10:58

But when you choose to numb yourself because you don't like how you're feeling

11:02

right now, you're missing out on everything else in your life.

11:07

And remember, we're in this quantum physics world where two things can be true

11:10

at the same time. and the reason that we're not devastated and overwhelmed and

11:14

completely ruined by our traumas and tragedies and massive things is because

11:18

we can have that abundance at the same time.

11:20

When Jesus says, your life's going to be hard, but I've overcome it.

11:23

This world I've overcome, John 16, 33.

11:26

The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but take heart.

11:29

I've come. I'm sorry, I misquoted that. The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I've come.

11:34

That you might have life and have it abundantly. That's John 10, 10. Always a dual edge.

11:41

There's something difficult, there's something positive, and they can both be true at the same time.

11:45

So when we numb ourselves, we only cover up the bad, but we also stop feeling

11:51

the good and we take ourselves out of the quantum physics reality and we just don't feel anything.

11:58

My friend Annie Grace, who wrote the incredible book, This Naked Mind,

12:02

which is all about alcohol and getting yourself set free from alcohol,

12:06

she talked about how you can achieve Relaxation by removing the source of discontent.

12:14

She says, alcohol by definition cannot relax you.

12:17

Now you may wonder about the numbing effects of alcohol. Surely alcohol will help numb the pain.

12:22

And she says, yes, alcohol will numb your brain and your senses.

12:26

It will numb you in such a fashion that if you drink enough,

12:29

it will render you unconscious. And unconsciousness will relieve your pain. But saying this is a good idea is

12:37

like saying it's a good idea to go under the guillotine because you have a migraine.

12:43

There are better solutions. Listen, if your head hurts, you don't have to chop

12:45

your head off to make it stop hurting. There are other ways to achieve that pain control.

12:51

And so the idea of numbing your brain to the point of unconsciousness as a way

12:55

to stop feeling something that's hurting you is not the best path to getting that done.

13:00

Annie Grace Further says, if you're truly happy and relaxed,

13:03

you have no need or desire to change your state of mind.

13:06

Looking back, I see that my constant need to drink, to relax myself was really

13:11

proof that alcohol wasn't relaxing me.

13:14

If alcohol helped me achieve relaxation, wouldn't it follow that I wouldn't need as much of it?

13:19

If alcohol cured my stress, wouldn't I need less, not more of it over time?

13:24

No, alcohol does not relax you. It does not fix the stress in your life.

13:28

Rather, it inebriates you, which covers the pain for a short moment of time.

13:33

As soon as it wears off, your stress returns turns and over time it multiplies.

13:39

And here's the important part. Annie Grace says, being happy and stress-free,

13:43

dealing with the root cause of stress rather than numbing the symptoms is the

13:47

only sure way to find relief.

13:50

Then you no longer need to cover the symptom with poison.

13:54

I'm heartbroken to know more than one person who has taken their own life.

13:58

It's tragic that we deal with our unhappiness in this way by rendering ourselves

14:02

forever unconscious, believing the only cure to to our depression or unhappiness

14:06

is to erase ourselves altogether.

14:08

Alcohol erases a bit of you every time you drink it.

14:12

It can even erase entire nights when you're on a binge. Alcohol does not relieve stress.

14:17

It erases your senses and your ability to think. Alcohol ultimately erases yourself.

14:24

Listen, this is important, okay? Now, this podcast isn't about alcohol.

14:28

I'm using that as an example because it's such a common way that we choose to

14:32

numb ourselves, but it erases yourself as well. Because guess what?

14:37

In order to have a self, you have to be willing to accept that good things and

14:41

bad things happen in your life, that a normal, healthy, balanced person.

14:46

Encounters hard things and learns to overcome them and learns resilience.

14:50

We talked about that on Friday, on Saturday rather, when we talked about how

14:54

trees raised in a windless environment don't develop any root systems and they're

14:58

not strong enough to handle even minor challenges. They just fall over.

15:02

And we want to be people who stop falling over every time we encounter a challenge.

15:08

Same thing is true about pornography, by the way. It radically changes your brain.

15:12

So if you're a man or a woman who uses pornography sometimes,

15:16

that's a devastating thing to do to your own brain.

15:19

It changes the balance of the neurochemicals in your brain.

15:22

It rewires your reward circuit. It makes it almost impossible for you to find

15:26

pleasure and sort of relationship in normal ways.

15:30

And for men, actually, it's been shown that constant and chronic pornography

15:34

exposure can lead to erectile dysfunction.

15:37

So the sort of one thing that they're after becomes the thing they they can't have.

15:42

So again, not a podcast about alcohol or pornography or any of those things.

15:46

There's much deeper resources available.

15:48

Annie Grace's show about alcohol is tremendous. If you're struggling with that,

15:52

there's much deeper resources here. I'm just saying anything that you use to turn your brain off,

15:59

to stop thinking or feeling is actually going

16:02

to end up harming you in the end because you're

16:04

meant to be an embodied whole person who

16:08

learns to experience difficult things and turns

16:11

them around to become part of your story to help you show the world that transformation

16:16

is possible and that God's story of rewiring and retraining you to think differently

16:22

and handle the stresses and strains of your life is a way to honor him and to

16:26

provide hope and extend it to other people.

16:28

We got a tremendous email from Gina Berkmeyer, who's a therapist,

16:31

who's written a great book called Generations Deep. And she talked about how she's been using the abide practice and she loves it.

16:37

And she made a great suggestion. We're actually this This week on Theology Thursday on the Spiritual Brain Surgery Podcast,

16:43

we're going to talk about how the whole purpose of this transformation that

16:47

we're going through and learning how to communicate with our Father and with

16:51

our two sides of our brains is really all about finding our way forward and

16:55

being able to lend a hand to those behind us so that they can reach forward as well. And so...

17:01

Gina suggested that we add an R to the end of abide, to become abiders,

17:06

and the R for relationship, that learning the abide practice will help us relate

17:10

to God, to each other, to ourselves, and to other people more effectively.

17:14

And we become not just people who practice something, but people who live something

17:19

out to abide in him and become abiders with him and with each other to help

17:25

move forward together to extend hope and healing and peace and maybe even happiness

17:30

and purpose and meaning and all those good things to other people behind us,

17:34

to the generations behind us, because we're abiders.

17:37

That's the same idea as saying that we're self-brain surgeons,

17:41

but also we train people in self-brain surgery.

17:44

In Theology Thursday this week, we're going to talk about multiplying miracles

17:48

and how the whole purpose is. Chris Cook said last week, the purpose of you being transformed is to show other

17:53

people that God can transform and redeem, and your story becomes a healing story

17:58

for other people, an inspiration for other people.

18:01

And that is how you find meaning and purpose in these hard things,

18:04

because you can use them to help other people find their way.

18:08

So the fifth commandment comes down to this. Stop paying the tomorrow tax.

18:13

When you indulge yourself in something to turn your brain off,

18:18

to numb yourself so you don't feel it anymore, when you don't love tomorrow

18:21

more than you hate what you're feeling right now, then tomorrow you have a double problem.

18:27

You have the same problems that you had before, and now you've got a new problem. You don't feel good.

18:32

You've blown your your brain up. Things aren't right for you.

18:37

And now you've got the original stress that you had, the original pain that

18:42

you felt, the original issue, and a whole set of new problems,

18:46

the things you did while you were turned off, the text messages you sent, the money you spent, the,

18:52

alcohol you consumed that makes you feel bad and less effective today.

18:55

And now your day is being affected by the choices you made last night because

18:59

you didn't love tomorrow more than you you hate what you're feeling right now.

19:03

And the corollary to bring it into self-brain surgery terms is this.

19:08

Don't treat a bad feeling with a bad operation.

19:12

So if you say to me, hey, my back hurts, and I say, well, let's go to the operating

19:15

room, you'd say, wait, aren't there some other ways to do this?

19:19

Don't you want to try something non-surgical? Don't you want to try to find

19:22

a less invasive way to do it? Or if you had a simple problem, like Annie Grace said, you have a headache,

19:28

and I suggest chopping your head off, you would say, wait, that's a bad operation

19:32

for that set of symptoms. That's not the right procedure. It's overly aggressive. There's got to be less

19:37

invasive ways to dealing with that.

19:40

And that's the fifth commandment. Don't treat a bad feeling with a bad operation.

19:44

You just create more trouble for yourself. And Jesus said it this way,

19:48

Matthew 6, 34, don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

19:52

Each day has enough trouble of its own.

19:56

And so if we flip that around and say, tomorrow,

19:59

love tomorrow, don't worry about tomorrow, and don't be overly concerned about

20:03

how you're feeling right now, because if you can learn to sit with those feelings

20:06

and let them be part of life and let them be, yes, this is true,

20:11

but it's also true that I have other things that are good and beneficial and

20:15

helpful and still happy and purposeful.

20:18

There are other people in my life. I did lose a person. I did go through something hard. It is true.

20:25

And my trauma response may need to be refined in some way so that it stops becoming all there is.

20:31

And if I can't bear it, it, then I need to find a more healthy way to deal with

20:36

it than to numb it, to cover it up, because tomorrow's got some trouble too.

20:41

And so if I cover up today and drag some of today's troubles into tomorrow,

20:47

then I'm not loving tomorrow more. I'm not leaving space for tomorrow's troubles to be managed and helped and let

20:54

God deal with them in a way that's efficient, because I'm now adding additional trouble to them.

21:00

I'm making tomorrow harder. I'm not making a level path for my feet.

21:04

So that is what the fifth commandment is all about. Love tomorrow more.

21:07

Don't pay the tomorrow tax. Don't treat a bad feeling with a bad operation. That's the fifth commandment of self-brain surgery.

21:16

Listen, we're trying to do this together, okay? Self-brain surgery is the process

21:21

of understanding that God has given you a mind that is designed to be used to

21:27

communicate with him and designed to be used as an operating theater.

21:31

For your brain, to structurally change your brain, to help it become the most

21:35

idealized version of itself that can therefore help your life to be the most

21:40

idealized version of itself that it can be in the context of a fallen world

21:45

where there are traumas and tragedies and massive things and difficulties that we must go through.

21:50

So if we're going to have to go through hard things, don't we want to put ourselves

21:54

in the best position in which to manage them, to inspire others,

21:59

to heal and become healthier and feel better and be happier and all those things? Don't we want to do that?

22:05

If we want to, then we have to stop using anesthesia because anesthesia is not

22:10

helpful in self-brain surgery. We got to be able to bite down on the bullet, go through the process,

22:17

feel the pain and and learn how to heal from it, and learn how to operate on

22:22

our own brains, since we're doing it anyway.

22:25

Remember, you're making those synapses, and you're connecting those neurons

22:28

every second of every day. So as my dad always said, if you're going to do something, do it right.

22:33

And since it's happening anyway, and you have to undergo the process of self-brain

22:37

surgery, you might as well self-direct it in a way that's helpful to you and not harmful to you.

22:43

And that's why we must relentlessly refuse to participate in our own demise. eyes.

22:48

We must believe that feelings are not facts, but chemical events in our brains.

22:52

We must believe that most of our thoughts are untrue. We must believe that our

22:55

brains are designed to heal. We must love tomorrow more than we hate how we feel right now and stop paying

23:02

the tomorrow tax and stop treating bad feelings with bad operations.

23:06

We must stop making an operation out of everything. Let things be simple sometimes.

23:11

We must not perpetuate generational thought or behavioral issues in our family or start new ones.

23:15

And we must love our brain and live in such a way as to improve it and not harm it.

23:20

We must believe that what we're doing, we're getting better at.

23:23

So let's get better at getting better instead of getting better at getting worse.

23:29

And let's understand that thoughts become things. The things we think about

23:33

turn into the real things of our lives and the real things in our children's

23:37

lives and the real things in our generation. And so let's think about better things because thoughts become things.

23:44

Today, I wanted to remind you about the fifth commandment. You must love tomorrow

23:48

more than you hate what you're feeling right now.

23:51

You must stop making a bad operation for bad feelings. And you must stop paying

23:57

the tomorrow tax if you want to become healthier and feel better and be happier.

24:01

And my friend, the good news here on Mind Change Monday is that you can do all

24:06

these things. You can start today.

24:09

Music.

24:15

Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you by my

24:19

brand new book, Hope is the First Dose. It's a treatment plan for recovering

24:23

from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things.

24:26

It's available everywhere books are sold. And I narrated the audio books.

24:30

Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

24:34

available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

24:37

They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the Most High God.

24:43

And if you're interested in learning more, check out TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

24:48

Or if you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at wleewarrenmd.com slash prayer,

24:52

wleewarrenmd.com slash prayer.

24:55

And go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self-Brain Surgery,

24:59

every Sunday since 2014, helping people in all 50 states and 60-plus countries

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around the world. I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your

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life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.