0:02

Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you, and I am excited and

0:06

honored to be having a conversation with you, and we're going to do some self-brain

0:10

surgery today. Listen, it's Theology Thursday.

0:13

This is the day of the week when we take a little bit deeper smashing together

0:17

of ideas from neuroscience and ideas from scripture on how science and faith

0:22

can come together to unlock tremendous, enormous power in our lives.

0:27

Listen, if you're not a person of faith, just go with me here,

0:31

because I'm going to give you some principles and some ideas.

0:33

And even if you don't believe in God, or even if you don't think that there's

0:36

a God out there who cares about you, or it's not a personal God who loves you,

0:39

you can at least acknowledge that wise ideas or things that sound true can be helpful in your life,

0:46

whether or not you believe that they're inspired by God.

0:49

If you hear a quote from a Stoic philosopher or from William Shakespeare or

0:54

from some guy on Instagram, you can weigh those words and say,

0:57

yeah, that sounds like it's got some meat to it. And you can apply that. And I'm just going to give you a challenge.

1:02

If you start applying some ideas from scripture and you start noticing,

1:07

hey, I think I feel better.

1:09

This feels like it's working. This feels like it's helping.

1:12

Then just press in. Don't get your brain all wrapped up in the things you've

1:16

heard on the news or some ideas is you've got from other people or the ways

1:20

that you've seen maybe Christians not live up to what they say they believe.

1:23

Don't get all wrapped up in that. Just test.

1:25

The Bible says, taste and see if the Lord is good. So here on Theology Thursday,

1:30

this is the time that we're going to go a little bit deeper.

1:32

We do this on the Spiritual Brain Surgery Podcast all the time,

1:34

by the way, if you want more of this pure spiritual deep dive into how science

1:39

and faith come together. That's what we're doing over there.

1:41

But here on the Dr. Lee Warren Podcast on Thursday, we're going to take a deeper dive.

1:46

Today, I'm going to help you learn how to make rounds. When I operate on a patient,

1:50

Damon and I have a consult in the hospital.

1:52

We go in the morning, we walk into the hospital, and we make rounds on our patients.

1:56

We see them, examine them, figure out what's going on with them,

1:59

see how they're feeling, and then we make an assessment of the situation.

2:03

We make a plan for what we're going to do that day to try to help that patient

2:06

get better, go home from the hospital, make a good recovery, and have a better life.

2:10

Today, we're going to take a Theology Thursday look at the process of making

2:14

rounds on our own lives. Remember, we're self-brain surgeons.

2:18

You're part of the society of self-brain surgeons. You're understanding that

2:22

the way that you use your mind to influence your brain turns into how your body works,

2:26

turns into how your relationships work, make epigenetic changes in your genes

2:30

that are passed on to your family, that how you think turns into how you live

2:34

because thoughts become things. And so today, we're going to take a little bit of a tool. I'm going to teach

2:40

you a tool for how to make rounds on yourself.

2:43

To see how you're doing, write a progress note, and take a look at what happens

2:47

when you change your perceptions and change chairs to switch your perspective

2:52

from one way to look at your life to another.

2:55

I told you this week's going to be about perception and perspective,

2:57

because perception can immobilize us, but perspective can empower us to look

3:02

at our lives in a different way. So we're going to make rounds today.

3:05

We're going to get after it on Theology Thursday, but before we get started,

3:08

I have a question for you. Hey are you ready to change your life if the

3:13

answer is yes there's only one rule you have

3:16

to change your mind first and my friend there's a place where

3:19

the neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together

3:22

with faith and everything starts to make sense are you ready to change your

3:26

life well this is the place self-brain surgery school i'm dr lee warren and

3:31

this is where we go deep into how we're wired take control of our thinking and

3:34

find real hope this is where we we learn to become healthier,

3:38

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

3:43

This is where we start today. Are you ready?

3:46

This is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time,

3:50

my friend. Let's get after it. Music.

3:58

All right, let's get after it. Hey, today I want to teach you a tool.

4:02

We talked about the soap note The other day, I did an episode for the paid subscribers

4:07

about this little tool that we use in medicine that we teach the medical students

4:11

how to write a note in the chart.

4:14

That's funny to say these days because we don't actually have charts anymore.

4:17

We used to have literal paper charts at the bedside in the hospital,

4:21

and you could open it up and see what everybody thought and did and what the

4:24

other doctors and nurses and labs and results and all that were in the chart.

4:28

And we had this whole departments of medical records people who were shuffling

4:32

papers around, making sure everything got added to the chart every day.

4:35

Now it's all done in the computer. So we still call it the chart, but it's really just an electronic medical record that we have.

4:41

And so every time we see a

4:43

patient or every time we do something on behalf of a patient we

4:46

put a note in the electronic medical record and

4:49

I still call it putting a note in the chart and those notes are

4:52

called progress notes and we teach the medical students this idea called a SOAP

4:56

note S-O-A-P and SOAP stands for Subjective Objective Assessment and Plan so

5:03

when you teach a student how to write a note so they won't forget some of the

5:06

important things to put in there we teach them this little sort of.

5:12

Abbreviations, soap note, if you will, so that they don't forget what to put

5:16

in the note. Now, we always start with what we call a chief complaint.

5:19

The chief complaint is just what did the patient say about why they're here.

5:23

So in the setting of the hospital, it might be, I get a phone call that so-and-so

5:26

had an accident and they're up on the fourth floor in room 4410 or whatever.

5:31

And I need to go up and say, and see what's going on with them.

5:34

And I'll walk in and I'll say, hi, Mr. Jones, what's going on? Why are you here?

5:38

And whatever he says is his chief complaint. He might say, well,

5:42

my back is killing me because I fell off a ladder.

5:44

So then the chief complaint would be back pain after a fall.

5:48

It's just a short little summary of why the patient is here.

5:52

So in the self-brain surgery world, you might think about making rounds on yourself

5:57

in the morning and in the evening and getting a habit, developing a discipline of examining.

6:04

What your day is going to be about that you think and how your day went so that

6:09

you can make some progress in your mind and not just continue to wonder why

6:12

things don't seem to be changing or why things don't ever seem to feel different than they felt.

6:16

Start thinking about being a little bit more objective about what's going on

6:21

in your life. So the chief complaint is a quick summary of,

6:25

of what happened or why you're here, what the visit's about,

6:28

and what you're doing in the hospital in the first place or in your brain in

6:33

the first place if you're thinking about cell brain surgery.

6:35

The subjective is the things that aren't measurable, the things that people

6:40

feel, the things that we think.

6:42

These are important to get out because if you don't understand how you're thinking

6:46

and feeling, then you can't really know where to start in terms of addressing

6:49

whatever it is that might be going on with you.

6:52

So even though we talk about all the the time here that the feelings aren't

6:55

facts and thoughts aren't always true and all that kind of stuff.

6:58

You do need to acknowledge what it is that you're thinking and feeling.

7:02

So write down the subjective things, the things that are going through your

7:07

mind, the things that are bouncing around in your head. It's important to know where you're starting.

7:11

And we do that in the medical record because it's important for me to know if

7:14

you believe that your back pain is related to X.

7:18

Y, or Z, but it's really related to the fact that you weigh 700 pounds,

7:22

then you can't make make very much progress if you think that your back pain

7:25

is because your boss is making you move those four bags of potatoes from the

7:31

counter to the back shelf, but your real problem is that your back pain is related to morbid obesity or

7:38

previous surgery or something else. We've got to kind of square up what you think versus what's real before we can

7:44

really make progress in fixing it, right? We have to deal with the reality of the situation.

7:49

And so subjective are the squishy things that people think and feel that we

7:55

need to know and we need to write them down and be honest with ourselves about

7:58

what we're feeling and thinking. But here's where the power of this idea comes in, okay?

8:03

In the hospital setting or in the clinic setting, you need a compassionate and

8:08

wise and experienced healthcare provider.

8:11

I always used to say physician, but today a lot of care is delivered by nurse

8:14

practitioners and physician assistants and physical and occupational therapists

8:18

and all kinds of other professionals are addressing and assessing patients as well.

8:24

So your particular provider might not be a physician, it might be somebody else.

8:28

So I want to say very carefully that at some point, you have to stop just treating

8:34

yourself in the hospital. Stop saying, hey, well, there's something wrong with me. I need to go check

8:38

myself into the hospital. I need to identify the chief complainant and at least admit to myself the subjective

8:43

parts of what's going on with me. And then at that point, you need a wise and and compassionate external observer

8:50

to assess what's happening with you and objectively identify the things that are going on.

8:58

Objective here doesn't mean objective like when we have a goal or a plan and

9:03

there's an object of our pursuit, you know, our objective is to win this race.

9:06

That's not what that, this is not the definition of objective I'm going with here.

9:10

Objective in this sense means that real things that can be measured and tested

9:14

and agreed upon by more than one independent assessor or more than one independent observer.

9:21

So in other words, if you think something weighs 12 pounds and we put it on

9:26

a scale and it actually weighs 9 pounds and somebody else could pick up that

9:30

same thing and take it to a different scale and weigh it and it weighed 9 pounds,

9:33

that's an objective piece of data. It does not, in fact, weigh what we thought it weighed. It weighs this.

9:39

If you take a blood sample and you look at it and go, oh, that looks like it's

9:43

probably got plenty of hemoglobin in it.

9:45

It's nice and red and I imagine the hemoglobin is normal. But then you actually

9:48

send it down to the lab and the lab comes back and says, hey,

9:51

this person doesn't have enough hemoglobin. The level is four and it should be 12.

9:56

Then you've made an objective assessment. You've actually looked at the data.

10:00

You've actually measured the thing. And now you have data and facts instead

10:05

of something that you thought or felt. So that's an objective assessment. assessment.

10:10

So objective section of the note, then we have the chief complaint,

10:13

we've got the subjective stuff, and now we've got the objective stuff that an

10:17

independent, wise, and compassionate,

10:20

external observer or within one external observer could identify what the real problem is. Okay.

10:27

So here's the shift that I want you to make today, friend, on Theology Thursday.

10:31

Whatever's going on in your life, I want you to get to this place where you

10:35

can say, okay, okay, I'm a patient here, okay?

10:38

I'm a person with feelings and thoughts and experiences and massive things and

10:43

traumas and tragedies, and I've gotten to this place at this hour,

10:46

listening to this podcast or reading a book or dealing with this thing or having this problem,

10:52

and I'm a person who's experiencing something in their life.

10:56

Think of yourself as the patient, okay? And go ahead and identify the reason

11:01

you're here, the chief complaint. Go ahead and identify the subjective things that you're feeling and thinking

11:05

and all of that. But then I want you to make a mental shift.

11:08

If you're in my office and you're sitting on the exam table and I'm sitting

11:11

on the stool next to you, our knees are close together, I'm looking in your

11:14

eyes, you're telling me what's going on with you.

11:16

Then it's my turn to measure your reflexes and see how strong you are and look

11:21

at the MRI and tell you what the problem is and try to help you develop a plan

11:25

for what's really going to do about it, to identify the thing that's hurting you and how to fix it.

11:31

So in your self-brain surgery practice today, I just want to give you this shift

11:36

to say, okay, I need at some point, I need to move from the exam table to that stool that Dr.

11:43

Warren would be sitting in. I need to switch my position from being the patient to being the doctor.

11:49

Because here's the truth. all the things that are

11:52

bouncing around in your ear between your ears all the things

11:54

that are bouncing around emotionally in your heart your mind

11:57

none of those things can be fixed by anybody else

12:00

okay i can help you identify them i can help you think about them your therapist

12:06

your counselor your pastor your friend your spouse your your child sometimes

12:09

have wiser moments than we do your your friend might have the ability to point

12:15

some things out to you but nobody can change how how you think about something until you change it.

12:21

Okay, nobody's coming to help you, okay? Now, understand that from a Christian context.

12:26

I believe the Holy Spirit is inside you. I believe that the Lord wants to transform

12:29

your thinking and all of that, but at some point, and this is,

12:31

again, we're not talking about self-help here, but at some point, you have to decide.

12:37

That you want to allow Him to influence your thinking, that you want to allow

12:41

the Holy Spirit to change your mind.

12:44

Somehow you've got to make a decision. And even if all of it is like in the

12:48

hospital when somebody signs a consent form, they don't do their own surgery.

12:52

They still get hauled down on a stretcher by other people. They still get put

12:56

to sleep by an anesthetist. They still get operated on by a surgeon.

13:00

They still have other people operating on their behalf, but they had to make

13:04

a mental decision that they wanted to get well at some point.

13:07

And sign a consent form to do it. They had to show up at the hospital on time.

13:10

They had to put themselves on the table. They had to stick their arm out to get the IV.

13:14

So it is true that there are some things that you have to do if you want to

13:18

change your mind and change your life, okay?

13:21

So right here in this moment, I'm asking you to switch in your mind,

13:25

mentally change positions. If you see it in your mind, maybe even physically do it while you're listening to the podcast.

13:30

Like maybe when you're thinking about making rounds on yourself,

13:33

maybe switch from one side of the couch to the other.

13:36

Or if you're working out, maybe change your speed on the treadmill or do something

13:41

physical to, in your mind, mentally shift your position from exam table to the

13:46

doctor's stool, the practitioner's chair, and change positions.

13:50

Look at your life and try to get outside of your perceptions and your beliefs

13:54

and your limiting stories and the labels you've been carrying around and all

13:57

the things that you believed about yourself and just change to the position.

14:01

If you could look at yourself through my eyes, through another doctor's eyes,

14:05

through the Holy Spirit's eyes, if you look at yourself through God's eyes for

14:09

a minute, wise and compassionate external observer who can obsess the situation

14:13

objectively and say, here's what it is that you're dealing with.

14:17

And just switch that position because from that position of being objective

14:22

about the things going on in your own life,

14:24

then you can actually make an assessment that's reasonable and not just based

14:29

on fear or anxiety or the past or your previous memories or any of the times

14:34

you've tried and failed before. You can actually shift and make an assessment that's objective and from the

14:39

position of a wise and compassionate person who cares about you outside of your

14:43

own experience. So just mentally make that shift for a minute.

14:46

Then you can make an assessment and a plan in the last two parts of the soap note. Okay?

14:51

So the power of today is we're going to switch our perspective.

14:54

We're going to change chairs. Even if you physically do that with your body, like move from one chair to another

15:00

to make this assessment. So we're making rounds on ourselves. We're changing chairs.

15:05

And one of the ways you do that is you radically attempt to eliminate any sort

15:11

of relativism in your thinking. One of the problems that keeps us stuck and keeps us from making progress is

15:17

that we constantly want to compare ourselves to other people,

15:20

positively or negatively. I can't ever do that. Look at that guy. He's always successful.

15:25

Everything he does turns to gold. Everything I do doesn't turn to gold. and it's just nothing,

15:30

nothing works out for me. And we start to feel jealous and insecure and, and hopelessly,

15:35

you know, hopelessly unable to succeed.

15:37

I heard about a guy who went to a psychiatrist and he was telling him all his

15:41

troubles and all his problems and all his anxieties and all his depression and

15:44

all the things he was dealing with. And the psychiatrist finally said, well, I've made the diagnosis.

15:48

You have an inferiority complex, but it's not a very a good one.

15:52

We think that we are inferior to other people, even to the point that our inferiority

15:59

complexes aren't good enough, right? That's funny. That's a joke. Come on, it's funny. I'm just kidding.

16:05

So we have this relativism of looking at ourselves negatively towards other

16:09

people, but sometimes we also need to acknowledge that sometimes we look at

16:12

ourselves overly positively and we compare ourselves and we take pride or arrogance.

16:18

At least I'm not as bad as that guy, or at least I've never gotten a DUI.

16:21

At least I've never gotten fired for showing up drunk.

16:24

At least I haven't done that like that guy did.

16:27

And then we don't make progress or change because we think we're pretty good

16:31

relative to somebody else. So there's a great power in eliminating relativism.

16:37

So look at Romans 12, 3, for example, for by the grace given to me,

16:40

I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought.

16:47

Don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think,

16:50

but think with sober judgment according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

16:54

So he's saying, hey, don't think too highly of yourselves. Judge yourselves objectively.

16:59

And that means you look at yourself through God's eyes and you see where you're

17:04

having trouble, where you're falling short, where you need to try harder,

17:07

where you need to have some assistance or where you need to change your thinking about certain things.

17:11

But at the same time, while you're not judging yourself too hard,

17:15

while you're not thinking of yourself too highly, look at 1 Peter 5,

17:18

7, cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

17:23

Okay. So if you want to look at yourself objectively, instead of beating yourself

17:28

up and saying, gosh, I'm such a loser. God could never love me. I keep trying this. It never works out for me.

17:33

Nobody loves me. Nobody respects me. I'm never going to be okay.

17:36

Whatever it is that the narrative is bouncing around in your head,

17:38

that this thing happened, I lost my son and I'm never going to be a good dad again.

17:42

And my wife's going to leave me and And all these things are going to happen.

17:45

Like you start catastrophizing your life. And God says, hey, time out.

17:49

Stop for a second, friend. Cast your cares on me. I care about you.

17:53

And then your assessment of yourself would be, hey, the God of the universe cares about me.

18:01

He's got a plan for me. You start reminding yourself what scripture really says.

18:04

Yes, I need to objectively assess my shortcomings and my failures and my problems

18:07

and my issues and all that. But I also need to remember, I need to hold in balance. I need to hold in tension

18:13

the fact that the Holy Spirit of the living God died, that Jesus died for me,

18:19

has the power to be resurrected to give me a living hope.

18:22

The Holy Spirit indwells me to remind me and teach me and correct me and assess

18:27

me and help me and remember me. God loves me. He cares about me.

18:32

Okay? So hold those two things in tension, objectively assessing where you are

18:37

and remembering how greatly you are loved.

18:41

Okay. The thing about emotion, we always talk about emotions as if they're binaries,

18:46

like I've got sadness or I've got happiness.

18:49

I've got anxiety or I've got peace. But the truth is we can have mixtures of both at the same time.

18:55

And that's why, because we have this God who's a quantum physics God who created

18:59

and invented quantum physics, as we talked about yesterday. we have this God

19:03

who says, hey, you can have a hard life and an abundant life at the same time.

19:06

You can have joy mixed in with your sorrow, and that's how you can keep going.

19:10

I'm never going to stop being sorrowful about losing my son Mitch.

19:14

11 years ago. That's never going to stop hurting me. But at the same time,

19:18

I've learned that my life can also contain joy, gladness, and even happiness.

19:23

Again, my life can continue to have meaning and purpose in spite of the fact

19:27

that I've been through these hard things, in spite of the fact that I lost my son.

19:30

In fact, sometimes I can recognize that I've learned and grown and become stronger and more resilient,

19:36

and I've got a better story now, and I'm able to help other people,

19:39

and I'm able to help other people find hope in the midst of their hard times

19:42

because of, Not in spite of, but because of the hard things I've been through.

19:48

Those nightmares and dreams that I still have about the things that I went through

19:51

in Iraq, they help me to help other people when they're going through PTSD or

19:55

struggling with hard things that they've seen or witnessed.

19:57

I can say, hey, there's joy and hope on the other side of this.

20:01

Yeah, you're not going to ever forget the thing that you've been through,

20:03

but there's peace and there's purpose and there's meaning beyond it.

20:07

And you can learn to live with that.

20:10

So hold these two things in tension. and eliminate relativism and accept duality, okay?

20:17

So I just want you to think about that today. We're going to round on ourselves.

20:20

Get this discipline of making rounds and holding

20:23

more than one thing in tension and switching your chair from the subjective

20:27

complaints of your own life to the position of a wise and compassionate provider

20:33

who's objectively looking at the situation and helping you work through it and

20:37

making a proper assessment and finding a plan to move forward.

20:40

If you can make that mental shift, okay, here on Theology Thursday,

20:43

make that mental shift from seeing yourself in your own eyes with your own problems

20:48

and your own issues and feeling responsible for your own care to knowing that

20:53

the great physician is on your side, is helping you to make these decisions.

20:58

Make that mental shift, and I think you'll find that you're able to make progress going forward.

21:04

So in this discipline of making rounds, like thinking about,

21:08

okay, I'm going to stop and check in on myself. I'm going to find out what's going on. I'm going to see how this day progressed

21:13

and I'm going to check it out and try to be objective about it so that I can

21:17

make an assessment and a plan. And then we're going to make evening rounds.

21:20

We're going to go back and do the same thing again and say, how'd this day go?

21:23

Did I get the thing done? What was the result of the objective tests that I put on myself?

21:28

How'd that work out? Did I make any progress? What should I do tomorrow?

21:33

To move this forward a little bit farther. So if you can develop this discipline of making rounds on yourself and then

21:39

mentally shifting in between the subjective and the objective section of your

21:44

progress note, of that soap note that I want you to start writing, make that mental shift.

21:48

Don't look at it all from your perspective as the patient, as this is my life,

21:52

this is my thing, I'm the person here, I'm all by myself in this deal.

21:55

Make that shift and say, hey, I'm going to also remember that I am practicing

21:59

self-brain surgery. I'm applying my mental force.

22:04

And directing the processes that God put in place of self-directed neuroplasticity.

22:09

These brain cells are regenerating. They're new every morning.

22:12

We are going to make synapses and reconnect neurons in ways that are more helpful to us than harmful.

22:19

And that process is going to happen passively if we don't direct it.

22:22

So let's not be victims of the process. Let's be good physicians and direct the process. process okay if i walk out

22:30

in my backyard it's about 40 steps from our back door to the river bank of the

22:35

north platte river and if you just can put yourself on the river bank for a second just,

22:40

think about the the sunrise that's getting ready to happen in the verge and

22:43

you'll see a bald eagle fly by and you can look at that river and it's flowing

22:47

by okay it's it's flowing there's one more mental shift i want to give you for

22:51

today just this mental image if you don't think about doctors and hospitals

22:55

and all that medical and scientific analogy that I'm giving you, just think about this.

22:59

You can imagine standing on the banks of this beautiful river.

23:03

Now, I want you to scoop up a handful of water, okay, and look at that water in your hand,

23:08

and recognize that there are trillions and trillions of water molecules in that

23:13

handful of water that you're holding, more molecules of water in that handful

23:17

of liquid than there are stars in the universe.

23:20

And all of those molecules came from somewhere upstream from where you're standing right now.

23:26

From the raindrops, from the snow melt, from the river stream,

23:30

from the tall mountains, and it trickled down and became a stream and became

23:34

a creek and became a river of tributary.

23:36

And all of that water came together from who knows how many thousands of miles

23:40

upstream from where you're standing.

23:43

And that entire pre-session of water flowing and mixing together other is now

23:48

part of what you're holding in your hand. And you couldn't separate one of those molecules from another in a way that

23:55

you could say, okay, this one right here, this one came from the top of a mountain

23:59

in Wyoming, and this one here came from a raindrop in Montana.

24:03

You couldn't possibly separate that out.

24:05

And so I want you to stop thinking, if you're prone to it, stop thinking that

24:10

there's some way you can go back in your past and put your finger on the thing

24:14

that's really hurting you now, or put your finger on the thing that's really

24:17

creating the situation that you have now.

24:20

And then if you could just change that, or if you could just have not done that,

24:23

or just have not said that, or if he hadn't been in that place at that time,

24:26

or if my uncle hadn't done that thing, that this water wouldn't be what it is right now.

24:31

Because not only is that drop of water in your hand, all the other ones are too. Okay?

24:37

So the idea that you can go back in time and and unmix something from your life

24:43

and make it different than what it is now, it's not possible.

24:45

And part of why it's not possible is that that thing already did happen.

24:48

Okay, remember trauma is not what you went through. It's how you responded to what you went through.

24:53

Okay, so part of the problem is that you can't unmix it.

24:57

But also, I want you to recognize that if you could climb out in the middle

25:00

of that river channel, hold out your arms, and as strong as you are,

25:04

could you stop that river from flowing? No, you couldn't possibly. You would have to at some point acknowledge that

25:09

you are not strong enough to stop that river from flowing downstream anymore.

25:14

So if you have this idea that if you could just undo something in the past that

25:17

the river would stop flowing and your life would stop feeling like it feels

25:20

and all that stuff, you can't. So at some point, you have to recognize that

25:24

you're going to have to yield to the fact that this river of your life is continuing to flow.

25:28

And then I want you to turn your attention from the water that's in your hand

25:32

to the water that's upstream that created that handful of molecules that you're

25:36

holding and look downstream and recognize that your life is going to go forward.

25:42

And you can't stop that river and you can't by yourself redirect the channel.

25:48

You're going to have to yield to the fact that it's going to flow downstream.

25:52

But you don't have to be a victim of it because you can learn to navigate that

25:57

river in a different way. You can learn to direct your response to whatever's happened in the past to

26:03

where you can now direct that process and navigate that in a better way.

26:07

And God comes along and says, Hey, cast your anxiety on me. I care for you.

26:12

I'm going to help show you the way I'm going to transform your thinking.

26:15

I'm going to restore your life. We're going to, we're going to show you a way forward.

26:20

God's going to make a way where there has been no way. He promises you that.

26:25

Okay, if you can learn how to reframe your thoughts about the situation that

26:30

you're in, make a mental shift from upstream causes and labels and problems

26:36

and issues to downstream. Okay, this is where I am. How do I navigate here going forward?

26:41

How do I let God redeem and restore and change my thinking? That's the assessment

26:46

and plan part of this. We've done the objective assessment.

26:49

We've switched chairs from subjective to objective. and now we're making an

26:53

assessment of where we are and how we can make a plan to navigate going forward.

26:57

That's the value and the power of making morning and evening rounds on yourself

27:01

as a self-brain surgeon and learning how to write these soap notes and learning

27:06

how to stop being relativistic relative to other people because you actually

27:10

want to change what's happening with you, not just compare yourself favorably or negatively to somebody else.

27:16

And you actually want to learn to navigate going forward in a better way.

27:21

When you pull a memory out of the past, it's never a fair fight.

27:25

You're actually not just looking at what happened in the past.

27:29

You actually tag that memory, modify it based on your current experience,

27:34

education, lifestyle, thinking, what you're dealing with right now.

27:38

The memory gets modified, and before you even can consciously process it,

27:42

you've already transformed what you think you're remembering through a whole

27:46

set of filters about how you are now.

27:49

And so it's never actually the thing that you remember is not exactly a perfect

27:53

representation of what really happened. So the punchline of that is to say this, don't think that you can just objectively

28:00

assess what happened in your past and judge it correctly and then change it

28:04

because you're going to modify it based on how you are now.

28:07

And so going back in time is not the way to heal yourself forward.

28:14

That just sounds kind of harsh because you think, well, I could just go back

28:17

and sort of deal with that and live back there and think about it.

28:19

But that produces pretty quickly idolatry of worshiping or being stuck in something

28:25

other than in the present and in the future. Because you can't really go back there. Remember we talked about the no old

28:31

beaches analogy the other day. There's no truth in the idea that you can go back and either avoid or correct

28:37

or heal or move forward from something because you're not actually back there.

28:41

You're right here right now. Okay. So I want you to make a mental shift. Start looking downstream and figuring

28:48

out how we're going to navigate going forward.

28:51

Okay. We're going to learn a better response to the massive things that have happened.

28:55

We're going to learn how to pause. As Pete Gregg says, pause and reflect and

28:59

ask and yield. That's a great acronym for prayer.

29:03

Pause for a moment. Let God's into the moment. Reflect on what's happening and

29:07

ask him to show you with new eyes how to move forward and yield to the current.

29:11

Is your life is going to move forward, but navigate it in a way that's in better,

29:17

you're in better shape to direct some of that or yield to his direction.

29:23

Because my friend, if you can learn how to do that, then you really are on the

29:26

path of becoming a really good, compassionate and wise self-brain surgeon.

29:31

You can help yourself become healthier and feel better and be happier.

29:34

And the good news is, if you can make that perspective shift and round on yourself

29:38

twice a day and begin to document your progress properly is that you can start today.

29:46

Music.

29:51

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

29:55

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

30:00

from trauma, tragedy, and other massive things. It's available everywhere books are sold.

30:05

And I narrated the audio books. Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up

30:09

by my friend Tommy Walker, available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

30:14

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

30:20

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

30:25

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

30:29

WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer.

30:32

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

30:36

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

30:42

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

30:46

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