I won't let my body out me outwait everything that I'm made, don't won't spend my life trying to change.
I'm learning love who I am, A young strong I feel free. I know every part of me. It's beautiful.
And that will always out way if.
You feel it.
But she'll some love to the vio. Why have there take you one day? Anita? Did you and die out way?
Well? Happy Saturday, Outweigh. I'm so excited to be here for a brand new series. It is our Outweigh neuro series, and I'm joined by doctor Lee Warren.
Hello, doctor Warren. Hey, so good to have you here.
And this is a fun series for us to do because this is kind of a crossover. So over on my What's God Got to Do with It? Podcast, Doctor Warren was on there for two episodes. We'll link them in the show notes where we talked about the concept
of neuro neuro faith and so on. This series, this is the neuro series because we're gonna really be getting deep into your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs, your habits specifically, as you know, if you're listening to this, there's some sort of food and body prison that you're in there's some.
Sort of out of controlledness that you feel.
There's something that you don't feel like you have agency over your life when it comes to food in your body. So who better to talk about the neural implications and the cause and effect chicken egg than a neurosurgeon himself,
doctor Warren. But also the cool thing about it is this time last year, Amy Brown, the creator of Outweigh and my copilot for this podcast, we teamed up and we did a four part series called Acting as If, where we talked about the connection between our thoughts, our feelings, our beliefs, our behaviors and actions and how to influence them by taking a brain base approach.
But now we get to talk to a neurosurgeon himself.
He's gonna walk us through it, and there's so much connection and crossover to what we already talk about and his ways of thinking, ways of being. So I'm just excited for us to dive on in. And this week we're going to be going through the concept of neuro thoughts, and you're thinking next week we're going to get into the neuro feelings side of things. So if you feel like your feelings are driving the show or you feel
out of control of your feelings. You're going to understand a little bit more about why you do what you do, why you feel how you feel, and then we'll get into the neuro beliefs side of it, and then neuro
habits and the behaviors and action side of it. So we're going to go ahead and dive on in to this week's episode all about your thoughts, and so I think a great place to start, doctor Warren is just explaining from your perspective this idea of we now know it is widely understood that our brain is plastic, it's multible, it's pliable, it's switch up able at.
Any time we choose.
But that now gives us a whole new set of options and possibilities. It really starts at our thoughts. So can you just kind of walk us through your perspective on that for.
Us absolutely, You know, we used to think like you just alluded to. Up until about two thousand and four, most neuroscientists thought that you were born with all the brain cells you were ever going to have, and you were pretty it was pretty fixed, and you just to better learn how to take care of it. And that was kind of a hopeless idea like your brain is what it is and your genetics determine it and all
that stuff, and we know now without any doubt. So from the neuropathology side neuroimaging, there's no doubt it's absolutely true that your brain makes new nerve cells or neurons every day. That's called neurogenesis, and your brain connects those new cells into networks of old cells and pathways all the time, like while we're speaking, we're making new synapsis. That's called neuroplasticity. The stunning thing is that we have
some control over that. So the functional imaging of the ability to look at the actual brain as it's happening, the thoughts that you're thinking, the blood flow, changes in the brain, neurotransmitter levels, and all that stuff has allowed us to basically connect the ideas that, yeah, we know that new nerve cells are being born every day, we know they're wiring in and all that to the fact that it's dynamic and it's somewhat under your own control,
and that's where the power comes in. So we now know that the things you think about turn out to be able to make structural changes in your brain to create new synapses, new connections between cells and networks in your brain, and to eliminate old ones that aren't helping you anymore. So, if you want to think about it like I do in surgery, if I take a pair of scissors and cut a neuron or a connection between a neuron, I'm severing a connection between two areas of
the brain that aren't helpful to one another. Like if I want to interrupt seizure activity, I can eliminate sezer activity by disconnecting networks of cells that shouldn't be talking to each other. And you can do the same thing with your thinking, which is a lot less invasive.
Yeah. I think that gives us a lot of hope too, because people think, like you know, and I hear a lot of women being like, yes, I have very negative thinking, I have very negative self talk, and they think like, oh, but this is just who I am, this is how I'm always going to be.
It's just part of their way of thinking or way of being.
Can you just kind of speak into that, because I think there's some people that have kind of resigned to it and think that this is how their brain will always be.
That's right. And you know, on my show we talk about the ten commandments of self brains are one of them is to understand that not all of your thoughts are true. Yeah, the fact is, your brain generates a lot of thoughts that pop into your mind that are presented to you in a familiar voice, because your inner voice sounds like you, and so that means that automatically has a lot of credibility. But there's a lot of thoughts that pop into your head that simply aren't true.
They're generated based on accessing memories and emotions and feelings and current events and kind of jumbling them up, and they present to you as if, oh, I just can't ever be different than this, or I tried this before and it didn't work, or I'm such a loser, or
whatever those thoughts pop into your head. The problem is if we don't recognize that automatic thoughts are often negative and often untrue, then we think we're hearing from a credible voice inside our head that we're obligated to believe and take action on. And so the most important thing for the listener today, if you're stuck with that kind of negative thinking loop, is to learn to say, hey, wait a minute, I know from science that most of the thoughts that pop into my head are not true,
and I am not obligated to act on them. So the first thing is then to develop a toolkit, a set of procedures, if you will, to think about your thinking and decide only to take action on those thoughts that are true and necessary and helpful and compassionate.
Wow, to think about your thinking, become aware of what you're not currently aware of. Can we just follow that threat a little bit more? Because I know for me that was a very profound thought process. I'm like, wait a minute, I can basically take an aerial view of my thinking and think about my thinking. So as you explain it on your podcast and in your books, can you just share a little bit about the process of thinking about your thinking.
Yeah. So, since I'm a surgeon and I like to think about things like procedures, that the metaphor just works for me. So if you come into my office and you say I've got headaches, and I do a scan and there's a spot on your brain and I think it might be causing your headaches, I don't know what that spot is until I buy ope it, or until it take you to surgery and put a needle in that thing and look at it under the microscope and get with the pathologist and we identify what that tissue is.
So I can think it's a tumor, or I can think it's an infection, or I can think it's something else. But until I BUYAP see it, I don't know what it is. And so as a surgeon, it's called malpractice if I take action on something that I think without knowing first. So if I if I took you to surgery or sent you down to radiation and zapped your brain with a whole bunch of gamma rays because I thought you had a tumor, but it was not true.
You actually didn't have a tumor. And once I buyop see that, I found out you just had a little piece of scar tissue in your brain that you didn't need to have radiation. That would have been malpractice. Right, So taking action on a thought that you haven't properly evaluated is committing the act of self malpractice. You're harming yourself because you don't know for sure that what you're doing is in response to a thought that was valid. So I teach people this idea of buyap seeing your thought,
like literally think. Wait a minute, that thought that popped into my head sounds kind of damaging to me, like, hey, you're such a loser. You'll never be better than this, You'll never be able to overcome this habit. Maybe that's not true. Let me look and see if there's some evidence that that is or is not true. And if it isn't true, then I can just eliminate it, like I don't have to think about that thought because it's not true. It's malpractice to follow that trail of thought.
And if it is true in some way, then my next thought shouldn't be yeah, I really am such a loser. I should just give up. My next thought should be what can I do to change that? What can I do to intervene in that to try to make the future thought more hopeful, more helpful, more compassionate to myself?
Yeah, And I love because it just underneath what you're saying. It denotes that you have to take radical responsibility for your brain and your thoughts and the concept of self malpractice right, there's no shame in it.
It's just like a data.
Driven term where it's it basically is saying, Okay, this is what I'm doing when I'm not thinking about my thinking. We're not shaming ourselves because I think that's a lot of the spiral that people that are listening to this go into is that shame spiral, but it denotes just really taking radical agency of this.
Now on that note, when.
It becomes obsessive, right, because there's a lot of obsession that comes around thinking about what you're eating, think about what you're not eating.
Are they judging my body? Are they not judging my body? Am I judging my body?
Is it me?
Is it them? I mean, I could go on and on.
When you talk about the obsessive thoughts, and you know, you said talking about stopping that feedback loop, can you just speak into what obsession is in the brain and what you've experienced with how to kind of think about your thinking and transform that rabbit hole.
There's a world famous neurosurge named Peter Jannetta that was one of my professors who trained me, and he invented a lot of the procedures that we still use. And he was so famous that Maya Angelo spoke at his
birthday party one year like that. He was a big name guy, but he was funny because he would teach us these brain surgeries that were these elaborate, complex operations took all day to perform, and he would allow the more senior residence to start the procedure before he came in the room, and he would, invariably Doctor Janetta would come in and he would watch me operate for a minute, and he would watch all the things I was doing, and he would say, hey, you're making an operation out
of this. And it was kind of a joke because it was an operation, But what doctor Jenette was saying was, you're overly complicating this situationally, you're making it harder than it has to be. The good surgeon, a good doctor, learns how to do the mission in the most efficient and effective and best way that is possible to do it. So when we talk about thinking about your thinking, one way that you can make an operation out of it is to overthink and get into a loop of thinking,
Am I thinking about my thinking too much? Am I shaming myself too much? Am I blaming myself too much? Maybe I'll never be able to stop thinking about this. And you get into this loop of right of overfixating on the process, then of thinking about your thinking, and you're making an operation out of it. So the way to stop that is to say, hey, I need to
identify whether a thought is helpful or not. And once I do that, then the next step is I'm going to shift into I'm gonna stop contemplating and start operating, and we'll start doing something to make that next thought better, to make the outcome better, to have a better, hope, more hopeful place to land. So you shift really quickly from that biopsy stage to your taking action to do something to try to make the process better, and that
that becomes automated and easier over time. But that's how you stop making an operation out of it all the time.
I mean, I'm thinking of a scalpel now.
And it's like anything can be a tool or a weapon, right, And it's like thinking about your thinking can be this beautiful tool to set you free, but if you overthink the thinking about your thinking, it becomes a weapon used against yourself. So really that distinction is like who you're being while you're using it.
This is so good. And guys, if you're listening to this and you love.
What you're hearing, first of all, we have the rest of this series coming up, but you've got to check out doctor Warren's podcast. He's got two different podcasts, He's got a gaggle of books. So before we end this episode, where can people find you? Can you share a little bit about your podcast.
Yeah, so the Doctor Lee Warren podcast, that's the main podcast, and we talk about this kind of stuff all the time, as you know, Lee and you've been on the show. So we talk about neuroscience and faith and big things like that and how we smash them together to try to find a way to become healthier, feel better, and be happy in our lives. And then the second one is a little bit more sort of Bible focused. We
call it spiritual brain surgery. It's kind of looking at what we believe, why we believe it, how faith and science can help us defend it, live it and share it with other people. And they're everywhere. Podcasts are available, And then I got a bunch of books. You can check out my website Doctor Lee Warren dot com WWNMD dot com. And I write a newsletter and do all that stuff. So easy to find and I hope people will connect. We love to meet new people.
So thanks amazing, Yeah, your Sunday newsletter. I will look forward to it in my inbox every weekend. So thanks for being here. We are going to link all of that in the show notes and we will be back
next Saturday for neuro Feelings. And so if you have ever wondered you know what's going on when I go to reach for food to fill a void of sadness or loneliness or comfort or stress or sorrow or whatever, or happiness even but why you're feeling the way that you're feeling, what's the cause and effect relationship, really connecting the dots from what we talked about with your thoughts, then stay tuned because we're going to be talking about
that next week. So this is Lean and doctor Warren signing out for this week and outwigh and we'll be back next week.
Bye,