I won't let my body. I'll be out wait everything that I'm made done. Won't spend my life trying to change. I'm learning love who I am again. I'm strong, I feel free, I know every part of me. It's beautiful and then will always out way if you feel it with your hands and be here, She'll some love to the boy you have there. Say go one day Ana, did you and die out way?
Happy Saturday, out Weigh.
We are back for our fourth and final episode of this neuro series. We are back with doctor Lee Warren. Hello, Doctor Warren, Welcome back.
Thanks Leanne. Good to be back with you.
If you missed the last three weeks, definitely check it out. Three weeks ago we talked about neuro thoughts, then we went through neuro feelings. Last week with neuro beliefs, and this week we are going to get into neuro habits and action and doing and the get off your butt and do side of things, which is what people think is the first thing, but I specifically put it last.
So that being said, when it comes to this kind of trickle down effect or this cause and effect chicken egg, of what we talked about, the thoughts, the feelings, the beliefs and really believing your way into becoming the next version of yourself and starting at your thoughts. What would you say to you to really kick us off when it comes to how our brains decide what we're doing,
the action, the habit side of things. Can you first and foremost kind of give us a thirty thousand foot overview of what actually happens in connect the dots from the last few weeks.
One of the things we talked about in the first episode, I believe was this idea that sometimes we get stuck in thought loops. Something happens and we start thinking about it, and then we can't quit thinking about it, and then pretty soon all we're doing is thinking about everything, and we can't get out of our heads. And that's when we have to have somebody, a wise professor or a friend, a counselor somebody come alongside. Hey, it's time to stop
contemplating and start operating. You got to get out of your head and start doing stuff. And then one of the things we know from neuroscience too, is that it's not just that you've got to somehow some of the courage to start moving, but you can also anticipate that movement and action actually feeds back and makes things better for you too. You get this brain derived neurotropic factor and need all these neurotransmitters that boost more effectively with
movement and physical activity than they do with medication. So taking action is actually a compassion and a good thing you can do for yourself too, even when it seems hard.
So I think the first thing is just to say that there's a process in your brain of anticipating something that you need or want to do and then thinking about all the variables involved in that, and then the feelings get involved, and you know, the last time I did this, last time I put myself out there, this happened, And then you can cock yourself out of taking that action, and then you feel bad that you didn't do the thing, and then you can start getting into that rumbination loop
of not having done it, and you get stuck. Right. And so sometimes especially if we've been through something hard, or if we have a shame situation with of a habit or a pattern that we are using as a numbing behavior to avoid feeling or dealing with something else, then we can find ourselves really stuck and we don't have to be stuck, like the hoarder in our house that hasn't left, you know, been inside for twenty years.
But we can get stuck in inactivity or inaction in various areas of our life where we have certain things that we just aren't doing that we need to be doing, stewarding relationships, you know, advancing on our professions, or whatever it is that we need to be doing, and then that starts becoming its own burden of this weight of not having done something. So there's this risk reward thing that I want people to recognize that sometimes it's sort of scary to take action, to finally jump and make
the leap and do that thing. But it's not as scary is if you look at the long failure of staying put. So like, if you keep doing what you've been doing, you're going to get better at doing what you've been doing. And if what you've been doing is nothing, stuck, ruminating, deprive yourself of life, then you're going to get better at doing that. You're going to start making this synaptic like we talked about in the Feeling and then and then the Belief episode about synaptic c wagon trail that
you get stuck in these ruts. So the longer you delay starting the action part of your thought feeling action loop, the harder it's going to be to make that happen. So sometimes you got to rip the band aid off and just get after it.
So good, And I'd love to kind of dive into the whole lessons more concept as well, because I remember back in I think it's twenty ten, when I started learning about the physiological nervous system just trying to heal my own stuff. One of the things I heard was that not all movement is good movement, because you if you're in pain, like taking the nervous system through a painful repetition, is you want to go for a pain
free repetition. And I started diving into this idea of the nervous system kind of being a less is more, smarter, not harder system and training it to success, not to failure, and versus the muscular skeleton system, which you know a lot of people look at is like this harder, faster, more, you know, no pain, no gain kind of thing.
So can you talk to us a little bit.
About for a beginner that doesn't have the momentum is in that ripping off the band aid phase. Can you talk to us about the beauty of how the brain learns?
Yeah, I think you know. There's a lot of neuroscience around the idea of your anti mid singulate gyrus. For example, that learning to make yourself take a step in something that's uncomfortable or hard actually turns out to have tremendous benefit in improving willpower and increasing resilience in all areas
of your life. So if you learn how to just sort of do one hard thing, like make that phone call that you've been avoiding, make that apology, say thank you for something that you've been avoiding, or finding a way to send somebody a note or whatever, it might be just a little thing, that little step might be enough that the next time you're faced with a different hard thing, the inertia involved in doing that is actually lower, and you find yourself, hey, I'm actually becoming a person
who can do stuff when I say I need to do it, and so little. Your nervous system is incredibly efficient, and when you teach it a lesson in one area, it applies that lesson in multiple areas, so you can create that kind of synaptic fluidity and you're reduced inertia in other areas by doing things in one area that seem a little bit uncomfortable.
Yeah, So it's almost like your willpower, your discipline can expand, but you've got to give it that stimulus.
What's right.
So one of the things I talk about with my clients is this idea of if you absolutely hate something and you have all these negative neuro associations alongside doing the thing, the chances of you continuing to do the thing aren't going to be very good, right, And it's about who you're being while you're doing. The doing is also just as important, because the truth is is if you hate it, you're not going to sustain it, right.
So can you speak to us a little bit about that, because a lot of people that are listening, they're coming from, you know, doing plans and programs that they absolutely hate, or it forces them to obsess or control or micromanage or think about things or just do things that they absolutely hate, and it becomes a conversation of force, persuasion, coercion versus feeling like they're choosing it, feeling like they're moving in the direction of something that they enjoy or
that they could see themselves doing.
In the long haul.
So can you help just kind of speak into that piece of the puzzle as well.
Yeah, So I think one thing is to identify why you hate something, like to figure out what the story is that's happening. And that's not to say that if there's something that you really just loathe, you need to first ask yourself, do I have to do that thing? Am I putting myself in a position of having to do something that I could change my life in some way and not have to do that thing? Not to avoid something uncomfortable, But maybe sometimes some questioning and understanding
the situation might be helpful. But oftentimes what you're getting at is that there's something that we really do need to do, we need to exercise, we need to repair this relationship, we need to balance our budget or whatever, and we hate it. Then maybe the question comes down to what we talked about, I think in episode two about this tension density and quantum Zeno effect idea of what you pay attention to and the way in which you pay attention to it determines how it comes true
or doesn't come true in your life. So that means that sometimes the idea is can I shift my perspective somehow on this thing, and can I find a better story to tell myself that would make me not actually hate it, but to find some value in accomplishing it or doing it well. Right. I always say perception, I mobilizes in perception and power. So if you have this perspective, empowers perception to mobilize. This perspective empower. So if you have this idea that, oh, I hate this, My perception
of this is always miserable. I hate it, It's just horrible, then what's going to happen is that's going to become true in your life that when you finally have to do the thing, it is terrible, and you prove to yourself that you were right because you focus your attention in a particular way on that thing and you wired that into your brain, that that's always going to be
an uncomfortable and miserable experience. But if you shift your perspective and say, wait, what if I could a coomplish this in a way that benefited somebody else, or that I could find some way to be grateful about the outcome of this, even if I don't like the process that takes me through to get to it. If I can change that perspective, then I can look at it
from a different way. And all of a sudden, I'm using different parts of my brain, I'm wiring different things in, I'm paying attention to the problem in another way, and I'm finding, hey, wait a minute, you know that wasn't so bad and I kind of enjoyed it. Then they were grateful when I did it, and they said thank you, and now made a new relationship, or I've repaired something, And so maybe the issue is not that you should
just suffer through things and improve to yourself. That that really wasn't miserable, but I'm at least glad it's over. Maybe rather find a way to say, you know what, I learned something about myself that I can do hard things, and that when I do them, they turn out not to have been so hard in the first place. And then maybe I actually sort of enjoyed that. Maybe you can just change perspective and that might be the answer.
It just so trickles into everything that we've talked about. You know, a lot of times it's not the thing itself. It's like the story te is the problem, so to speak, the story that we're telling, And again, coming back to what you're saying, feelings.
Are not facts.
You know, how we feel about something might be painting the picture in a way. And then also just being aware of when we're using those always never kind of statements or like I hate doing this or I'll never be good at that. It's such a good thought process because a lot of people get stuck in the rut of thinking that the thing is the problem, right, But oftentimes you're right, it is our perspective.
So the question that I feel, I'm guessing you've been asked this a thousand times.
I feel like if you ask ten different people, they'll give you ten different answers about you know, it takes twenty one days to start a new habit, it takes thirty days to start a habit. Obviously, the attention density, the fire and wired heads law that we talked about, there's all those different things that come into play. But what would you say to somebody who's like, Okay, I'm drawing a lie in the sand. There's this whole new way of thinking and being and feeling and beliefs that
I want to step into. In terms of it becoming my new way of being and my new brain what does that look like on a timeline level, on an intensity level, on a density level.
From your perspective, Well.
I think it's different for everybody, and I think it's different in every situation for everybody too, because there's some habits that need to be broken and new ones to be replace. The length and depth to which you will have to go to break those depends on a number
of things. Some of them are just how long you've been doing it that way, right, Like if you've been using a pair of scissors in a certain way with your right hand your whole life, and all of a sudden somebody says, oh, you have to use those with your left hand. Now, it's going to take you a long time to figure out how to do that job with your left hand because you're not left handed. There's
some physiology involved in that. You haven't ever done it that way, so there's some novelty involved in that, and it's awkward because the scissors are right handed scissors and you're trying to use them with the wrong way. So there's some mechanics and logistics involved in that. Right. So there's a lot of different things that come into play when you talk about breaking a habit or changing a habit. Another level of it, though, is that some things breaking
a habit related to certain medications or substances. There's also a physiological and psychological involvement and an addiction component to that, and so the answer is different depending on what the situation is. But the truth of it is this that what you're doing, you're getting better at. And the way to get better at something is to tell yourself, I don't have to do it all today. In fact, they talk about this in the addiction Recovery lingo a lot.
It's like, you don't have to quit drinking for the rest of your life. You just have to decide I'm not going to drink for the next hour. You just have to decide, Okay, I'm not sure when the next time I take a drink is, but it's not going to be to day, right, So make a habit that will get you through. If it's a day and you can do that, do that, If it's an hour and you can do that, do that. But get better at being better at doing something for the specified period of time, right.
And then what you'll find is that as you start to incorporate that sort of will and that sort of sort of carefully stewarded thought and effort and drive into the process. You'll find that the process itself becomes easier to attack and more successful in short increments. And so I think habits that don't require physiological addictions to be broken are probably quicker. That's probably where that twenty one
day thing comes in. That people say it's actually probably more like thirty days for a lot of hard things. But I think when you're talking about something that changes your physiology like substances, or changes your psychology significantly, like pornography or something like that, it may take a very long time, but it won't take you long to master the art of doing it in short bursts and being proud of yourself, giving yourself that dopamine reward of having
accomplished that thing for a short period of time. And you know, for me, it might be I don't wake up tomorrow with cheto dust all over my fingers. I did it for tonight. I don't have to worry about tomorrow. Each day has enough trouble of its own, but I can do it for today.
And I mean, even just stacking on everything that you've just said is in alignment with making sure that you're addressing the thoughts, the feelings, the beliefs, the habits.
It's not just the thing itself, Like the thing is never the thing, you know.
So before we kind of end this, bring us home, bring us full circle. So if you were to just kind of paint a picture of how our thoughts, our feelings, and our beliefs all coexist, all chicken egg each other which is a technical term of course, and the cause and effect of all of them, could you just kind of speak into that, just because I really, I really want people to get that whatever they're struggling with is not about the food, and it's not about their body.
It is what's going on in their brain, their thoughts, their beliefs, their behaviors. It's not any one thing. It's all of it. It is a three dimensional thing. But that's a beautiful opportunity and possibility, you know, and there's a lot of hope that lives in that. So can you just kind of speak it to all of that three dimensionally?
Absolutely, And it might even be more than three dimensions, you know, so you a fourth dimension involved in it.
Yeah.
But the thing is, so you're not a collection of your failures and you are not a collection of the
things that you've not been able to overcome. What you are is a whole person with a story and a history and a heritage, and a set of genetics and epigenetics which is that created the starting point from where you are, and a set of traumas and tragedies and dramas and maybe massive things that you've been So what you are is not just a person who has repeatedly failed to accomplish this one thing or repeatedly falls into
this particular behavior. Give yourself a little bit of self care and say, hey, wait a minute, I need to have a kind of trauma informed view off and stop saying what's the matter with me, and rather say, kind of what happened to me? Where have I been? What have I been through? Where did I get from my parents? What was my starting point? And all of that stuff. To just acknowledge to yourself that if you looked at another person in the same situation, you would have compassion
and empathy for them. So give yourself the same perspective. Right, have some compassion and empathy for yourself and then say, okay, wait, now I've got a set of emotions, feelings and a set of thoughts that are all mixed and mingled together in a way that I can't possibly say. And I know that the baseline generation of feelings is that there
are neurochemical events and not necessarily facts. And if I can learn to discern that, then I can begin to apply some reasons in frontal low brain power to what
I'm feeling before I act on it. And then if I can recognize that I have a lot of automatic thoughts that aren't necessarily true, and I can learn to biapse to them and decide if they're true before I take action on them, then I can start to have some power in the process of say, wait a minute, I know that I don't have to respond every thought and feeling, and I know that I can use the directed power of my mind to make structural changes in my brain and make myself better at being better at
my own life. Then I've got some power. Now, I've got some skin in the game because I'm not a victim anymore of the way I've always been. I'm not a victim of the way my parents raised me. I'm not a victim of the genes that I inherited. Because I know that my thoughts can turn them on and
off and make them better in the future. And I'm not even a victim of what I might pass on to my kids, because I can make that better too by changing the way I think in the way I live now, they'll inherit a better set of switched on or off jeans than I did. So all of that to say, Leanne that if you add the fourth dimension, which I think is spiritual, then you say, okay, wait, I'm a whole person with the whole vast story that's happening.
And I'm not just a left brain kind of thing that's a two dimensional object that says I am a failure or I'm a success. I'm a right hemisphere too, which is the whole world around me and all the experiences and feelings and nuance and thoughts and all of that stuff jumbled up into this entire person that, from my perspective, is fearfully and wonderfully made and worthy of value and love and honor, that has a purpose and
a meaning to your life. And if you believe that about yourself and that you can change the things that you feel like you've been stuck with, there's no limit to what you can do.
Oh my goodness, this is why we love you, doctor Warren. That was I mean, that was such a beautiful summation. And ladies and the couple of gentlemen that are listening. You know, no, really, in all of that, there wasn't much said about food or your weight, or there wasn't anything said about it. It really comes back to you as an entire being, the essence of who you are, the worthiness that lives inside of you.
That has nothing to do with any of those things.
But if you do want to change those things, start in this four dimensional conversation, right, multidimensional conversation. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. I mean, we could go on and on, and there's so much to share. You have so much wisdom, even beyond the scope of the neuroscience side of it.
So if people want to find your podcast, and by the way, everything that doctor Warren just kind of summed up of the cause and effect of the thoughts, the feelings, the beliefs, and the habits his self brain surgery thought process. He goes on a deep dive, so you definitely want to check out his podcast, The Doctor Lee Warren podcast is where you go deep into that. The Spiritual Brain Surgery is where you intersect the faith and the science
piece of it. But tell us a bit about your where to find your podcast, your books, where to Google's talk you all the things.
Well, you're already listening to a podcast somewhere, so right now, wherever you are, you can go to the search bar and type in doctor Lee Warren and you'll find my two podcasts, the Doctor Lee Warren Podcast and Spiritual Brain Surgery. As Lean so kindly mentioned. You can also go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and type in my name and you'll see all my books. And the most recent one is called Hope is the First Dose, and it's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma and tragedy and
massive things that happen. And we talk about all the kind of stuff that we've been talking about today. And I have a website too, Doctor Lee Warren dot substack dot com, or write a newsletter every week, so easy to find me. Lots of good content out there, and I hope that people will benefit from it.
Yeah, and guy subscribe to his newsletter because he sends out an email every Sunday with just jam packed full of not just the content that he puts on his website, but also you get an inner working of his brain and his life, and it's just a beautiful way to wake up on a Sunday morning. So definitely add yourself in there. We will add all of that to the show notes. Thank you so much for being here.
You're also going to be on Amy's podcast. We're gonna link you to our What's God Got to Do with It? Podcast? So we've got a lot.
We love doctor Lee Warren over here on the Amy Brown Network, here on iHeart, So we're just so grateful to.
Have you here. Thanks for listening out Weigh and we will catch you next week. Bye.