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Good morning, my friend. I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and it is Self-Brain Surgery Saturday.

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I'm so excited to be with you. We are wrapping up MindChange March.

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It's Silent Saturday on the Christian calendar. We're getting ready for Easter.

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Yesterday was Good Friday. And just really grateful to be here with you today as we contemplate going into

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what we call Action April around here. and it just coincides this year with

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Easter weekend and all of that. And yesterday I had an incredible experience. I've told you before numerous

0:37

times about Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz. Dr.

0:39

Jeffrey Schwartz, a famous psychiatrist, one of the guys that really unlocked

0:43

the secrets of how to successfully treat obsessive compulsive disorder without

0:47

drugs or things like that. Is it helping people use mental force to change their minds?

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He's one of the guys that figured out what we now call, and everybody talks

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about on Instagram and everybody talks about all the time on podcasts and we

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talk about self-directed neuroplasticity.

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20 years ago, that wasn't a thing.

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Nobody really understood that you could use your mind to change your brain.

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In fact, the bulk of psychiatry and psychology for generations and even still.

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Operates out of this principle of reductionist materialist determinism,

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which means that basically how you are is how your brain is

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and what your brain does is what you do and that the brain generates the

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mind and that the only reason we even have a mind or can talk about

1:31

self or any things like that is because of some evolutionary process where we

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finally got our brains complex enough that it could generate this epiphenomenon

1:40

of mind and that you're not even able to really have free will or any independent

1:46

thought but everything you do is just a bunch of circuits firing and electrical

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impulses in your neurons. Well, Jeffrey Schwartz came along and people like Andrew Newberg and other people

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in the late 90s and early 2000s with functional brain imaging.

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And they said, wait a minute, there's more going on here because people can change how they think.

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And it turns out to rewire and structurally change their brain.

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And they did all these studies with meditation and with people with learning

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new skills and all these brain imaging studies that show cab drivers in England,

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for example, that after a certain amount of time studying the maps,

2:19

their hippocampus gets bigger. People who meditate for eight weeks get bigger hippocampi and parts of their

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brain involved in resilience and emotional regulation get bigger.

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And so we see that the things you think about and the things you do with your mind change your brain.

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And so the good news for us here on Cell Brain Surgery Saturday is as we get

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into Action April, I want you to be aware that what we talk about here on this podcast.

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Is literally self-brain surgery. You literally can change the structure of your

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brain by changing what you think about.

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And I want to remind you that we talk all the time about smashing faith and

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neuroscience together. The Bible's been telling us for thousands of years, going back to the Old Testament,

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that when you think differently, your brain behaves differently.

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The Bible doesn't use words like brain. The Bible uses words like mind and heart

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and soul and things like that.

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But what the Bible's talking about is that when you think differently,

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when you transform your thinking, you will change your life.

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And that has all kinds of implications as we've talked about with generational

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issues and how we live our lives and the things we pass on to our children and

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breaking down traumas and things from the past. All of that stuff is literally in your control if you're willing to learn how

3:41

to perform self-brain surgery.

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Today, I want to parse out between self-brain surgery and directed neuroplasticity

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and cognitive behavioral therapy and all those kinds of things.

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There's a whole interlap, overlap of all these things that we talk about and

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what's what and why does one sound better than the other to me as a Christian

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who's also a scientist, who's also a surgeon.

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How do I sort of see the difference between what we call self-brain surgery

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and what the psychologist might call self-directed neuroplasticity or what somebody

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else might just call therapy or learning how to think differently or self-help

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or those kinds of things? What's the difference in all those things? I just want to tell you about four

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different pathways towards mind change.

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We've talked about them before, but I want to give them to you in a new way today. day.

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I had some insight this morning as I was doing my Bible study into something

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Jesus said, and I think it's relevant. And as we wrap up Mind Change March, we're getting into Action April.

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I want you to go into this month with a confidence that you really can change

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whatever you're dealing with, whatever you've been through,

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whatever has hurt you, whatever is limiting you, whatever is holding you back.

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Or if you're doing great and you're not bereaved and you're relatively relatively

4:54

happy and things are going okay, but you just feel like something doesn't quite

4:57

taste right, you can't quite put your finger on it, but you think that your

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life is supposed to be a little different than the life you're actually living,

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then self-brain surgery is the path to get there.

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It's where faith and science really smash together.

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And it really structurally, literally is like me doing surgery in the operating

5:14

room, except I don't have to shave your head.

5:17

I don't have to make an incision in your scalp.

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I don't have to drill your skull open, and you don't have to recover from that

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painful operation and walk around with a big scar on your head.

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Then take time off work and recover and go to rehab and all that stuff.

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You don't have to do that because you can do this surgery by changing how you think.

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And it will literally change your mind and literally change your life.

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And before we can do any of that, today, as we wrap up Mind Change March and

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get ready for Action April, I have one question for you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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place this is your time my friend let's get after it.

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Music.

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All right let's get after it hey i'm so grateful to be with you and it's such

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an honor to have a chance to talk to you and wherever you are in the world to

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know that you're out there and you're listening and you're learning and you're

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trying to apply these principles and you're trying to to find a way to change

6:55

your mind and change your life. And I'm so grateful that I get to be part of that journey with you.

6:58

Every time I do this, I'm aware of and honored by the fact that you are giving

7:04

me a chance to participate in your healing.

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That's my calling, by the way, is I'm a neurosurgeon, but my identity and my

7:11

calling is not about putting knife on skin.

7:14

It's about helping people figure out what hurts them and finding a way to heal

7:18

it and finding a way to get better. And so a big part of that and how I actually

7:23

make my living is in the practice of neurosurgery.

7:27

But a more sort of nuanced approach to that has to do with whether you need

7:32

physical surgery or not, helping you figure out what hurts and what to do about

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it is my general calling. So I have a high degree of gratitude for you letting me be part of whatever

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it is that you're dealing with in your life. And we love to hear from you.

7:50

We love these voicemails that we get.

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Speakpipe.com slash Dr. Lee Warren. You can leave us a voicemail and ask a question.

7:57

Sometimes I work those into episodes. And if you give me your permission,

8:00

I'll even play your voice sometimes on the podcast and play that so other people

8:04

can hear a real person who's dealing with something.

8:08

Or if you want to leave a prayer request, you can go to the prayer wall,

8:11

wleewarrenmd.com slash prayer, and people will pray for you.

8:14

You'll get an email every time somebody around the world prays for you.

8:17

And that's a great thing. The newsletter on Sunday, every week,

8:21

the self-pray and surgery newsletter, drleewarren.substack.com.

8:24

That's a way you can hear from me in writing every week, and you can leave comments,

8:27

and we can have conversations on Substack about that.

8:30

Or you can always send an email, lee at drleewarren.com, and we will try really

8:36

hard to reply to all of those. But this is a community, okay? We're together in this.

8:41

Lisa and I see it as a way of honoring our son, Mitch, and we lost him almost 11 years ago now,

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and we feel that this work that we're doing is a way to honor him and keep his

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legacy more than being about his loss,

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but actually about his life and how his life motivated us to try to help other

9:00

people and all that stuff. So we're just super grateful.

9:03

And today, as we wrap up Mind Change March, it's almost Easter.

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So today's that Saturday between Good Friday when Jesus died on the cross and

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between Sunday when he rose from the grave, that there was a day when everything seemed lost.

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There was a day when all these people who had pinned their hopes on him as their

9:25

savior, and they thought he was going to rescue them from Roman occupation and

9:28

rescue them from oppressive religiosity. and that he was going to be the Messiah.

9:33

And the way they saw it, that was going to be an earthly kingdom,

9:36

and now he was dead, so that they were lost.

9:38

They spent this 24-hour period in misery and worry and fear and not knowing

9:45

what was really going to happen. But in the perspective that comes with time, we can look back and see that that

9:52

awful Friday and that silent Saturday were leading up to that resurrection Sunday,

9:58

and that hope arose, rose, but it was never really gone.

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It was just working its way back into the picture on that silent Saturday.

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Yesterday, Jeffrey Schwartz called me. Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz,

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we had a long conversation on the phone, and he shared with me the work of T.S.

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Eliot, who was a poet in the last century, early part of the 20th century.

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And T.S. Eliot, he said, really had a lot to do with him becoming a Christian.

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So Jeffrey Schwartz was a secular Jew who then kind of got sort of into Buddhism.

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He never became a Buddhist, but he recognized the importance of meditation and

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learning to calm your mind and all those things. And he ultimately found his way to Christ by searching out the works of Kierkegaard

10:42

and Eliot and others and through brain science kind of brought himself to a

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saving relationship with the Lord. Well, Jeffrey Schwartz called me as we were talking about a potential collaboration that we might do.

10:52

He read me from T.S. Eliot's poem, and I want to just read you a short section

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of this. This is one of the four quartets, part four.

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For Good Friday, and he says this, The wounded surgeon plies the steel that

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questions the distempered part. Beneath the bleeding hands we feel the sharp compassion of the healer's art,

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resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

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Our only health is the disease. If we obey the dying nurse, whose constant care

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is not to please but to remind of our and Adam's curse, and that to be restored,

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our sickness must grow worse.

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The whole earth is our hospital endowed by the ruined millionaire wherein,

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if we do well, we shall die of the absolute paternal care that will not leave

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us but prevents us everywhere. The chill ascends from feet to knees. The fever sings in mental wires.

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If to be warmed, then I must freeze and quake in frigid purgatorial fires of

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which the flame is roses and the smoke is briars.

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The dripping blood are only drink, the bloody flesh are only food,

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in spite of which we like to think that we are sound, substantial flesh and blood.

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Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

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Elliot's saying all the hard things we must go through if we really want to

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live, and all the difficulties and all the pain, all that stuff is part of the

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process. process and especially when we look at Jesus.

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Jesus had to suffer and die on the cross and be buried before he could rise

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again to put death in the ground for good.

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And I just thought it was amazing that Jeffrey shared that with me and it puts

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kind of into context the scale and the scope of the work that we're doing here, friend.

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When you're deciding that you're willing to go through this self-brain surgery

12:43

process, there's some decisions that have to be made and there's some things

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you have to let go of if you're really going to make progress.

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There's some things that need to stay in the ground. When Jesus came up and they walked into the tomb, when Peter and John walked

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into the tomb, the grave clothes were left behind.

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There were some things that went into the tomb with him that did not come out.

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He rose, but he left some things behind.

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And I just want you to know that when you make a decision to let him resurrect

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you into this new mind and new life that you can have and he desires for you to have.

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And I can teach you the structural elements of how you can do that.

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But there's some stuff you're gonna have to leave behind.

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And so today on that silent Saturday, maybe one of the things that you could

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do in addition to worshiping and being in awe of him and the great thing that

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he's done is put yourself in that position of thinking through that if Jesus

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was going to resurrect you and you were going to have a new mind and a new life,

13:40

what things would you need to leave behind?

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What things should stay behind and not come out of that grave with you?

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What things should you not drag into this new life you could leave behind in

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that old life that he made possible for you to leave behind because you now

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have the mind of Christ. You now have a renewed mind.

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You now have the ability to change the way you think and change the way you

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live and structurally change your brain. So what needs to stay behind?

14:07

Mind. Now, that being said, that's kind of a long prelude to this idea that

14:11

when we talk about Action April, it's time to stop contemplating all these changes

14:16

we want to make, and it's time to start operating.

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So it's time for you to pick up the knife and get after the business of really

14:22

becoming a self-brain surgeon. For the last eight weeks, a number of us have been doing this abide practice

14:27

where we've been working on practicing incorporating some time and quiet contemplative

14:32

meditation and prayer into our daily quiet time routine.

14:35

And I hope that that's been helpful to you. I hope that if you've been doing

14:39

that, that you've noticed some changes.

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And if you haven't been sort of able to work through and think about the different

14:47

ways that your brain might have improved and your mind might have improved over the last eight weeks,

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let me just give you a few thoughts and maybe you can run a list for yourself

14:56

and see if it has been helping. And if you haven't been doing it, I would just recommend download the Lectio

15:01

365 app. That's an app that was produced by Pete Gregg of the 24-7 Prayer Movement,

15:06

one of my favorite writers. I've read three of his books, God on Mute, How to Hear God, and How to Pray.

15:12

Those are tremendous books, and Pete's going to be on the podcast in April.

15:16

So I can't wait for you to meet him. But he has an app that's free on the App

15:19

Store, wherever you get your apps, called Lectio, L-E-C-T-I-O, 365.

15:24

And there's a morning and evening devotional. And both of them get you into

15:27

this kind of meditative, quiet space with some music and some scripture and some prayer time.

15:32

And it would be a great way for you to take this Abide practice and go forward.

15:36

And I'll put the Abide lingo, the words that I use to kind of think about in

15:41

the show notes today and a link to that app if you want to continue using it.

15:45

That there's no money changes hands here. It's a free app. You don't have to sign up for anything.

15:51

You don't have to put your email in it. Just it's an app that Pete and his team

15:54

have created that is incredibly powerful. Lisa's been using it all year and I just started using it in the last little bit and it's important.

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But so if you've been doing the Abide practice and you're not sure if it's been

16:06

helping, let me just work you through some things that have probably happened in your brain.

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So based on neuroscience and brain imaging, We know that if you meditate for

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as little as 10 minutes a day for as short as eight weeks,

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you should have seen, if we did brain imaging on you before and after,

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we should see a 22 or so percent increase in the volume of the parts of your

16:27

brain that are responsible for emotional regulation.

16:30

We should see enhanced brain response time, better memory, increased cognitive

16:34

powers, and increased behavioral abilities.

16:36

We should see a brain that's more relaxed and more energy efficient.

16:40

And we should see that you don't need numbing behaviors, drugs,

16:45

surgeries, supplements, or other things as much as you thought you did because

16:50

now you're more mindful and you're more able to tap into the healing power that's already in your brain.

16:55

And so maybe you would have noticed that you're less triggered by things that

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happen in your life, that people aren't setting you off quite as easily,

17:03

that your spouse or your friends or your kids aren't annoying you quite as much as they did before.

17:09

Maybe you're not quite as startled by sudden noises or things that happen that jump into your vision.

17:14

Maybe you're not quite as bothered by the way your kids behave.

17:18

Maybe you're more able to converse with them and less emotional or disruptive

17:22

with them. Maybe you're not quite as worried about politics.

17:25

Maybe you're less annoyed when you're stuck behind that car in traffic or the

17:29

tractor if you live in Nebraska. Maybe the news isn't bothering you quite as much. or maybe you don't feel yourself

17:34

quite so drawn to social media and you're spending more time thinking and praying

17:38

than you are scrolling and swiping.

17:40

Maybe you're less concerned about your body and the way it looks.

17:43

Maybe you're more connected to the way your creator sees you and you're less

17:48

worried about winning or losing. You're maybe not quite so stressed out about investments or finances.

17:53

Maybe you're more calm when people around you are more stressed out.

17:56

Maybe you don't feel quite as overwhelmed. Maybe you're not so worried, but you have more of a strategic idea of how you're

18:01

going to handle your life. Maybe you're not as worried about your age or how your body's changing over time.

18:07

Maybe some of the things that used to stress you out aren't quite stressing you out as much.

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Those are the kinds of things that happen when your brain gets structurally better, my friend.

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And if you've been meditating and praying through this Abide process for eight

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weeks, you've made some of those changes already.

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So just take a minute today, maybe, and just work through a list of what's different for me.

18:28

Than it was eight weeks ago. Maybe run that SOAP method, that medical student

18:34

note-taking process that I told you about where we have this process called the SOAP note.

18:37

And the first thing we have is the chief complaint where we have to say,

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what is the patient here for to be seen today?

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And you write down just the very essential reason for the visit.

18:47

The patient is anxious. The patient has back pain. The patient has a headache. So do that for yourself.

18:51

What's my chief complaint? Eight Eight weeks ago, I was stressed about money.

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Eight weeks ago, I was overwhelmed with grief.

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So that was my chief complaint. Well, let's have a subjective,

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objective assessment and plan. Let's run through the soap note and compare what happened then with what's happening now.

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And if you haven't done this, then start today and just write a chief complaint

19:12

and a soap note about how you're feeling today.

19:15

And then start this meditation process. Use Pete's app and do it for eight weeks

19:19

and then write that note all along each day and compare the start to the finish.

19:24

And subjective means the things that you feel. So the things a patient says

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to me, I feel like my leg is going to fall off.

19:31

I feel like my head's going to explode. I feel like I'm in a vice grip.

19:34

Those are subjective things, what you feel.

19:37

Objective, so the O in SOAP, is the things that you can test and measure.

19:42

Well, I put you in a scanner and your head's not actually about to explode,

19:46

or I'm looking at your leg and examining it and it's not falling off of your body.

19:49

And so the objective things, here's your blood pressure, here's what the labs

19:53

say, here's what the scan says, here's the biopsy result.

19:55

These are objective things that independent observers could agree on that are true.

20:00

So feelings aren't facts, subjective things are not always true,

20:03

and objective things are true and can be measured, can be observed by independent

20:08

observers so that we don't have to wonder if they're real or not.

20:11

We can know that they're true and know that they're real.

20:15

And then assessment is what are we going to do,

20:18

I'm sorry, where do we find ourselves here? We've compared the complaint to

20:23

the subjective and objective things, and here's where we are.

20:26

So the assessment would be something like 47-year-old man who is an alcoholic,

20:32

who is concerned about his future and might lose his job.

20:36

That's the assessment. We've come to the place of 37-year-old lady whose husband

20:40

just died of glioblastoma. She feels like she's stuck in grief.

20:44

What's the plan? So the plan is here's what we're going to do about it.

20:48

Okay here's where I find myself here's how

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I feel and here's how that compares to the things I can measure and

20:54

test and here's the assessment of where I actually am

20:57

so it started with a complaint and now it's down to an assessment

21:00

an objective assessment and now we

21:03

have to make a plan it's time to stop contemplating and it's time to start operating

21:07

okay so that's assessment and plan we're going to get after it so this action

21:11

April and it's time to get after it so I just wanted you you to work through

21:14

that abide process one more time and have an understanding of where we are and

21:20

what we actually need to do about it. So there's four things, there's four paths of how you can move through the idea

21:29

of having self-brain surgery or self-directed neuroplasticity or whatever you want to call it.

21:33

And the four paths are, there's something that I call the imperceptible happening.

21:37

And that's this fact, and this is the reason primarily why I prefer to call

21:43

call it self-brain surgery, as opposed to self-directed neuroplasticity.

21:46

And that is, if we say self-directed neuroplasticity, that implies that that

21:51

process is only happening if you direct it yourself.

21:53

But the truth is that process is happening passively every second of every day,

21:58

whether you do it willfully or not. Your brain is being shaped, whether you shape it purposefully or you allow it to happen passively.

22:05

And it's most things, when you let passive processes happen,

22:08

the default situation generally leads to downgrade.

22:12

And if you don't believe that, plan a garden and then don't tend it for three

22:16

or four weeks and see if things get better out there or if they get worse.

22:19

You're going to go out there and you're going to find the birds have eaten everything

22:21

up and the weeds have choked everything out.

22:24

And it doesn't get better unless it's tended and stewarded by a careful and

22:29

diligent gardener, right? Because default and passive usually lead to things getting worse over time instead

22:35

of better. So you've got this imperceptible happening.

22:37

This neural pathway rewiring is happening all the time in your brain,

22:42

whether you do something about it or not, whether you intentionally steward

22:45

it or not, it's happening. It's imperceptible. It's happening all the time. The microtubules in your brain

22:50

have rewired millions of neurons and synapses since we started listening to this podcast.

22:56

Your brain is not the same as it was 30 minutes ago, and it's not the same as

23:01

it will be 30 minutes from now, even though you haven't been intentionally changing.

23:05

It's imperceptible happening. That's the base level. And if you don't decide

23:10

to be in charge of that process, you might not like the result because it's going to feel the same.

23:15

Or worse than it's already felt. And if you were happy with how things were

23:19

going, you probably wouldn't be listening to a podcast about changing your mind and changing your life.

23:24

So what got you here to this place won't get you into Action April in a different

23:28

place unless you decide to change it by becoming a self-brain surgeon and implementing

23:33

these things and doing them aggressively and actively.

23:37

So what I don't want for you is I don't want you to feel like like your life

23:41

is in the middle of a long series of dominoes that are falling and you're just

23:45

waiting until the domino next to you knocks you over and you're not in charge.

23:50

I want you to feel like you're the first domino. You're the first one. You're deciding how this change is going to happen.

23:56

You're going to say, hey, this is when this thing is going to go down and this

24:00

is how it's going to go down. Okay? Now, don't confuse that to say that you can control all the circumstances.

24:05

You can't, but you can control your responses to those circumstances.

24:10

And that's what the self-brain surgery idea is about. So besides the imperceptible

24:14

happening, there's this idea that I call the immediate hack.

24:17

I mean, you can be the guy or the lady who just wants to know the quick fix,

24:21

the hack, the baseline thing, the quick thing that you can do,

24:23

the control-alt-delete that you can do to learn a little way to manipulate the

24:28

system so that you can control it a little bit.

24:30

And that's this 10% happier idea, this idea that we just learn a few little

24:34

mental tricks and hacks and self-help ideas, and we can basically get a little

24:38

happier, and that'll be a decent way to live our life.

24:41

That doesn't require any spiritual element, doesn't require any faith,

24:44

doesn't require much work. It's just this little pause between stimulus and response that'll help you be

24:50

a little happier, and it does work. But why does it work if you don't imply, if you don't impart any faith or spiritual elements?

24:57

Why does that work? Or somebody wrote in not long ago and said,

25:00

you know, I don't think you can really change your mind or change your life without God.

25:04

And that's just not true. It's not reasonable to say that because God gave us this general grace.

25:09

Second Corinthians says he provides seed for the sower and bread for the eater.

25:14

God gives us processes and systems and tools that work even if you don't believe him.

25:19

Jesus said the Lord causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

25:23

The sun shines on the good and the wicked. So the fact is you can change your mind.

25:28

Without any input from any additional help by calling on him,

25:33

just by the process that he's created and put into place, you can have this

25:37

immediate sort of hack and make things a little better.

25:41

Or you can even get deeper. You can open the hood up and learn all about the

25:45

neuroscience and learn all about how your brain works and how things really

25:48

happen neurologically.

25:51

And you can learn all about neurotransmitters and all about how your mind and your brain interact.

25:56

And that's you know, Dawson Church and Andrew Newberg and all these guys that

26:00

have figured all these brain science things out. And you can really get deep into it. And that's what I call the immersive help.

26:06

Like you can help yourself and change your mind a lot by getting deep into the neuroscience.

26:12

You really can. But that, in my opinion, it's kind of like having a computer

26:17

with a hard drive and a USB slot so you can stick new software in there and

26:22

you can change it and you can make it it better, but it's not quite as powerful as it would be if you connected it to the internet.

26:29

And so the final step, the final path, the fourth one is what I call the infinite healing.

26:34

This is how you connect your mind to your spirit so that the great physician

26:38

who created you can influence and command and control and help you take the

26:43

reins and change this thing under his direction so that you can actually manage

26:48

your mind and your brain the way it was designed to be operated.

26:51

And that's how you're going to reach the highest level of hope and healing in your life.

26:56

And just this morning, and we've talked about all that stuff before,

26:59

but just this morning, it dawned on me that the parable of the sower in the

27:03

gospel of Mark actually kind of describes these four processes.

27:07

And I never put this one together before, but in the gospel of Mark...

27:12

We have this story that Jesus tells of how the farmer goes out and throws seed.

27:18

And some of it lands on this ground that's not very good.

27:23

It just lands on the ground, on the path that's been hard-packed,

27:26

and the birds really quickly come and eat it up.

27:29

So basically, if you have this notion that pops into your head that you'd like

27:33

to change your mind, but you don't do anything about it, then that notion that you have,

27:37

that possibility is going to fall on some hard-packed ground,

27:40

and pretty quickly your brain's gonna rewire and go right back to the way it's always been.

27:45

And you're not gonna make any change and you're gonna start to feel like things

27:48

are stuck because you didn't give your brain a chance to till the soil up and

27:52

really make that stuff get down and deep and grow.

27:55

It just fell on the hard path pack. And then Jesus said, there's a second guy.

28:00

It comes and throws the seed out and it lands in this rocky place where the

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soil's really shallow and it tries to grow, but it can't go very far.

28:08

And as soon as the sun comes up, It just cooks it up and burns it up.

28:11

And I think that's what happens with the immediate hack, folks.

28:15

It's fine if the problem's not very big. It's fine if you're just a little bit

28:19

kind of anxious or something. It works pretty well.

28:21

But if you have a real problem, if some massive thing happens in your life,

28:25

that 10% happier is going to burn up in the sun. It's not going to be enough.

28:29

That toolkit is not deep enough to really make a difference for you.

28:34

And it's not going to help for very long.

28:37

In the third group, seed falls among thorns, and they grow down,

28:42

and they start to grow, and it grows up, and all of a sudden,

28:45

the thorns and the weeds grow up and kind of choke everything out,

28:48

and it's not able to bear grain. So it grows, and it gets going, and it lasts a little longer,

28:53

and it has a little more power to it, but it doesn't really make it in the end.

28:57

I think that's where private, this sort of self-directed process where you take

29:04

this this idea that you can take the reins and take charge and you can work

29:08

through things on your own. I think that's kind of this third level.

29:12

You can make progress and you can do some good things for yourself and you'll

29:16

see some growth and you'll see some change. But I think there's going to be a level where you feel like it's not enough,

29:22

like that something's going to happen in your life where you feel like you just

29:25

don't quite have the juice or the power that you need.

29:28

And there's going to be some level that you feel like you're missing something.

29:32

It doesn't quite taste right. The fourth level, the seed falls on good soil. It grows up and produces a crop

29:38

and it's 30 or 60 or 100 times better.

29:41

That, in my opinion, is the infinitely happier level where we let the Lord, the great physician,

29:48

the healer, come and be part of the process and put those roots down and really

29:52

learn how to make these changes and decide what stays in the ground and what

29:56

comes up out with us when the resurrection,

30:00

the new life, the transformation happens. Does that make sense? I hope so. Listen, it's actually in April almost in a

30:06

couple of days, and we're just finishing up Mind Change March,

30:09

and it's time to make some decisions about what we're going to leave in the

30:13

ground and what we're going to allow to come into life.

30:16

We're going to see some real powerful change. We're going to see some real structural changes in our brain.

30:22

We're going to see some real things that we can take notice of,

30:25

we can subjectively and objectively make assessments about, and we'll make a

30:30

plan to stop contemplating and start operating.

30:33

And we're going to see some action happening in Action April.

30:37

And we're going to start today. Music.

30:45

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

30:50

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

30:54

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

30:59

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

31:04

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

31:08

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

31:14

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

31:19

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

31:23

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31:26

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

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

31:36

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

31:41

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