Speaker 1: I won't let my body out me outwait everything that
Speaker 1: I'm made, don't won't spend my life trying to change.
Speaker 2: I'm learning to love who I am again.
Speaker 3: Strong, I feel free. I know everybod of me.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: And that will always out way if you feel it.
Speaker 2: But she'll some love to the vio. Why get there.
Speaker 2: Let's take one day, Anita, did you and die out way?
Speaker 2: Happy Saturday, Outweigh.
Speaker 1: I am grateful to be back here with doctor Lee Warren.
Speaker 1: We're here for our neuro series here on Outweigh. Two
Speaker 1: weeks ago we talked about your neuro thoughts. Last week
Speaker 1: we talked about neuro feelings and how feelings are not
Speaker 1: facts and they can actually lie to us a little bit.
Speaker 2: If we're being honest, they're sneaky.
Speaker 1: This week we are going to get into neuro beliefs,
Speaker 1: and if you missed the past couple weeks, definitely go
Speaker 1: check it out because there's a lot of chicken egg
Speaker 1: cause and effect going on here bringing us into the
Speaker 1: belief side of it. But what I'd love to do today,
Speaker 1: Doctor Warren, is really kick off when it comes to
Speaker 1: our beliefs and believing what we're believing you know, first
Speaker 1: of all, we have to kind of become aware of it.
Speaker 1: And there's the unconscious, there's the subconscious, there's the conscious.
Speaker 1: Can you just kind of share a little bit about
Speaker 1: your perspective of beliefs and how it comes into your
Speaker 1: self brain surgery thought.
Speaker 3: Process absolutely well. Beliefs lean sort of start with this
Speaker 3: thing that I call that's called worldview. Like, basically, worldview
Speaker 3: is the set of filters and ideas and beliefs that
Speaker 3: you use to sort of investigate and think about new
Speaker 3: ideas that are presented to you in the world. And
Speaker 3: so when you encounter something, the way that you decide
Speaker 3: if it's true or not, the way that you decide
Speaker 3: if it's worthwhile for you to pursue or to believe
Speaker 3: that it affects you is dependent on the set of
Speaker 3: filters and underlying beliefs and your overall worldview you view
Speaker 3: the world right, So that means that the belief systems
Speaker 3: that we have, whether they come from our family, our heritage,
Speaker 3: or our own reading or our own experiences, those belief
Speaker 3: systems really impact everything that you do and everything that
Speaker 3: you feel and think, and everything that happens in your
Speaker 3: life and the people around you, even if you're not
Speaker 3: sort of consciously aware of it all the time, because
Speaker 3: whether or not you recognize it. And some people might say, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm a really open minded person, don't really have a worldview? Yes,
Speaker 3: you do. Your worldview might be everything's true all the time.
Speaker 3: And if that's your worldview, I'll challenge you to say,
Speaker 3: that's going to harm you in some ways because you're
Speaker 3: going to accept some things that really aren't true, and
Speaker 3: then you'll find yourself reacting to some things that weren't
Speaker 3: true in the first place, and you've got to clean
Speaker 3: that up. So having a worldview, having an awareness that
Speaker 3: you do have a worldview, and then spending some time
Speaker 3: questioning what that is and understanding identifying what your belief
Speaker 3: systems are. That's what we talk about on Spiritual brain Surgery.
Speaker 3: Concept is this podcast is this idea that you have
Speaker 3: the worldview, So you need to know what it is
Speaker 3: so you can explain it and then decide if it's
Speaker 3: worth living with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think people, you know, they download it
Speaker 1: from like you said, upbringing parents, friends, even today, we're
Speaker 1: being influenced.
Speaker 2: Everything is influencing us.
Speaker 1: And if we don't have this basis of our own
Speaker 1: foundation of beliefs and worldviews that really align with the
Speaker 1: version of ourselves that we want to be. And that's
Speaker 1: where it really connects to this identity piece of the
Speaker 1: puzzle in our self image, which we did kind of
Speaker 1: talk about a bit in our neuro Hope and neuro
Speaker 1: Faith episodes, so we'll link those as well. But really
Speaker 1: it's it's knowing what you believe. I love how you
Speaker 1: just pointed that out, because a lot of people are
Speaker 1: walking around kind of with with blinders on and they
Speaker 1: don't know what they believe. They're just kind of repeating
Speaker 1: what they've heard or what they've downloaded. And I feel
Speaker 1: like what you just said is almost like a permission
Speaker 1: slip of like, hey, you get to vote on what
Speaker 1: you believe, so can you speak a little bit more
Speaker 1: about this voting process. So, now that you're aware of
Speaker 1: this worldview when it comes to our beliefs, how do
Speaker 1: we shift our beliefs now that we're actually aware that
Speaker 1: we have that.
Speaker 3: So if you have a worldview that says that you
Speaker 3: know there's no absolute truth, for example, that's a common
Speaker 3: worldview these days. Everybody has their own path to truth,
Speaker 3: and you can find your way and all of that.
Speaker 3: I'm not challenging if that's what you believe. But what
Speaker 3: I'm saying is, if that's your worldview, then you have
Speaker 3: to say, okay, well, there are some things that are
Speaker 3: consistent with a happy, productive life that I can build
Speaker 3: out of that worldview. And when something, some other idea
Speaker 3: comes in and challenges me, then I need to say,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, is this idea that I'm being asked
Speaker 3: to accept consistent with my belief system? Is it consistent
Speaker 3: with my worldview? And when I say to other people,
Speaker 3: this is my set of things that I operate by
Speaker 3: my operating system, if you will, then if a new
Speaker 3: idea comes along and I'm presenting that to myself as
Speaker 3: if I want to incorporate this in my behavior and
Speaker 3: my feelings and all of that, then I've got to
Speaker 3: be able to say, wait, is this consistent with what
Speaker 3: I believe? And if it's not, then am I harming
Speaker 3: myself on an integrity level by accepting this new idea
Speaker 3: or practice? Is if it's true, when it's really not
Speaker 3: consistent with my overall worldview? And now that brings up
Speaker 3: a question. Sometimes we find things that may need to
Speaker 3: revise our worldview. Maybe something comes along and you try it,
Speaker 3: you taste it out a little bit, and you test it,
Speaker 3: and from a good science you and I are both
Speaker 3: kind of science nerves. If you take something and test
Speaker 3: it and run all the exams on it and it
Speaker 3: turns out to probably be true, then maybe your worldview
Speaker 3: needs updating. So one of the problems we have sometimes
Speaker 3: is we dig our heels in to our belief system
Speaker 3: and we say, I don't care if this turns out
Speaker 3: to be beneficial, and maybe even turns out to be true.
Speaker 3: If it's not consistent with what I've said I believe before,
Speaker 3: I can't accept it. Right That's one of the problems
Speaker 3: we have in our society right now. We pick this
Speaker 3: side and that side, and if you're on this side,
Speaker 3: you can't agree with anything or you got to cancel
Speaker 3: everybody on the other side. And the problem with that
Speaker 3: is sometimes the other guy has something that's true and
Speaker 3: it might be helpful to me, and that sort of
Speaker 3: conversation and back and forth. As part of I think
Speaker 3: being a fully embodied, fully developed human is to say,
Speaker 3: can I accept an idea that's challenging to me, and
Speaker 3: can I use my intellect to process that idea and
Speaker 3: test it out as a scientist and see if it
Speaker 3: might actually be helpful to sort of evolve and mature
Speaker 3: my own world view a belief system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love how you also brought up the
Speaker 1: piece of the puzzle of integrity, you know, because when
Speaker 1: you believe a certain way and you witness yourself acting
Speaker 1: out of alignment with it, that gap in between is
Speaker 1: where the shame lives and the cognitive dissonance, and you
Speaker 1: end up being out of integrity when I think all
Speaker 1: of us want to be in alignment with who we
Speaker 1: want to be. Now, I talk about all the time
Speaker 1: how we can't out behave our beliefs, and our beliefs
Speaker 1: shape our behaviors, and we're going to get into the
Speaker 1: habits and actions and behavior side of it. But can
Speaker 1: you share because you already started talking about you know,
Speaker 1: what I heard you say essentially is like you have
Speaker 1: to have the beliefs of the person that you want
Speaker 1: to become right and believe your way there. So can
Speaker 1: you just speak into that a bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So you referenced something called cognitive dissonance, and that's
Speaker 3: really important to remember, and there's a lot of relevance
Speaker 3: here when we talk about habits and numbing the behaviors
Speaker 3: that we might use alcohol or food or whatever it
Speaker 3: might be. It has to do a lot with cognitive dissonances.
Speaker 3: When you believe that something is harmful to you, or
Speaker 3: you believe that something is bad for you or good
Speaker 3: for you, or helpful or not helpful, but then you
Speaker 3: do that thing anyway because there's some other benefit that
Speaker 3: you think you're going to get from it. Then you
Speaker 3: have this sort of little disturbance in the force inside you,
Speaker 3: this little burr under your saddle that says, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: I know this is going to hurt me. I know
Speaker 3: that if I do this tomorrow, I'm going to pay.
Speaker 3: What I call the tomorrow tax is sort of this tomorrow,
Speaker 3: I'm dealing with something that I did yesterday instead of
Speaker 3: being able to deal with today, which we don't talk
Speaker 3: about spiritual things a lot here, but Jesus said each
Speaker 3: day has enough trouble of its own right. So the
Speaker 3: tomorrow tax idea is like, if you choose to engage
Speaker 3: in a numbing behavior, you nesetize yourself because you don't
Speaker 3: feel good about what's happening today, Then tomorrow, when that
Speaker 3: numbing behavior wears off, you still have the original problem,
Speaker 3: and now you got the effects of whatever it was
Speaker 3: that you did to numb yourself. You spent too much money,
Speaker 3: you ate too much food, you drank the wrong things.
Speaker 3: Now you've got a headache and you're hungover, and you're
Speaker 3: late to work, and now you're all day long trying
Speaker 3: to catch up and process and pay that tomorrow at
Speaker 3: tax and you've got this dissonance in your brain and
Speaker 3: your spirit that says, wait, man, I didn't do the
Speaker 3: best job I could have done. I let myself down
Speaker 3: because I acted out of balance with what I say
Speaker 3: that I believe, and so that'll harm you in some way.
Speaker 3: So I'm not saying that your worldview is always right
Speaker 3: and always has to be perpetually the same. But what
Speaker 3: I am saying is that it's valuable on a spiritual
Speaker 3: and emotional and neuroscience level to know what you believe,
Speaker 3: revise it when necessary based on evidence and practice, and
Speaker 3: live your life in accordance with that. That's how you
Speaker 3: become healthier and feel better and be happier.
Speaker 1: Well, coming back fall circle to our very first episode
Speaker 1: around neuro thoughts, you know, because really a belief is
Speaker 1: a thought that you repeat and you eventually believe it. Right,
Speaker 1: there's that repetition pattern, and of course the worldview comes
Speaker 1: into play. So can you talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: how you teach shifting your beliefs when it comes to
Speaker 1: becoming aware of your thoughts? And if you were just
Speaker 1: going to give us beliefs shifting one oh one, what would.
Speaker 2: That look like?
Speaker 3: I think it's this if you constantly observe your own behavior,
Speaker 3: because a lot of us don't. I mean, frankly, a
Speaker 3: lot of us are stunningly unaware of our own part
Speaker 3: that we play in life. And I heard somebody say
Speaker 3: the other day, if you meet a jerk in the
Speaker 3: morning and that evening, you met a jerk that morning
Speaker 3: and the rest of your day was pretty good, then
Speaker 3: he was probably really a jerk. But if you meet
Speaker 3: jerks all day long, then when you get home and
Speaker 3: you say, man, everybody I met today was a jerk,
Speaker 3: you might be the jerk.
Speaker 2: You're the jerk.
Speaker 3: So a lot of us don't spend any time evaluating
Speaker 3: our own behavior, the consequences of our behavior, the effects
Speaker 3: on other people of our behavior. And what that means
Speaker 3: is if you spend a little time looking at the
Speaker 3: evidence of what your life is producing at looking at
Speaker 3: the fruit of what you're life is doing, then it
Speaker 3: may be that you're acting as if you believe some
Speaker 3: things that you don't really believe because you're not willing
Speaker 3: to practice them. And so then maybe you say, well,
Speaker 3: if I'm never practicing these things I say I believe,
Speaker 3: maybe I need to revalue those things, reorder them a bit.
Speaker 3: Maybe I need to tune up my world view so
Speaker 3: that I'm living more consistently with the things that I believe,
Speaker 3: and then maybe the outcomes that I'm seeing in my
Speaker 3: own life will start to be more effective for myself. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: You obviously talk a lot about the spiritual side of
Speaker 1: things on your podcast. So you share a concept and
Speaker 1: then you align it with scripture. Was that something that
Speaker 1: you kind of unconsciously started doing and it was just
Speaker 1: something that resonated with you. Was it a conscious thought process, Like,
Speaker 1: so if somebody did want to say, listen, this feels
Speaker 1: like a spiritual belief problem and I want to uplevel
Speaker 1: my beliefs to align with my spirit what was the
Speaker 1: process like for you to just start aligning scripture with beliefs.
Speaker 3: You know, I was trained as a scientist, so as
Speaker 3: a biochemist in college, and I became a neuroscientist, neurosurgeon
Speaker 3: and all that. But I was raised as a Christian.
Speaker 3: So I had this sort of two worlds that I
Speaker 3: was living in because a lot of the people in
Speaker 3: the science world are kind of materialists, reductionist people that
Speaker 3: don't believe there's an overall purpose or meaning to life
Speaker 3: and all that kind of stuff. But then I had
Speaker 3: this other side of my life that was about spiritual
Speaker 3: things and Christian worldview in particular. And what I started
Speaker 3: noticing was every time science finally got down to where
Speaker 3: they could prove that something was actually good for humans
Speaker 3: to live, it aligned with something that I had learned
Speaker 3: from the Bible a long time ago. Here's a good example.
Speaker 3: Science now says that when you think about better thoughts,
Speaker 3: you have better brain chemistry and you feel better. Your
Speaker 3: physiology gets better, you have less heart disease, less stress,
Speaker 3: your quarters all goes down, your diabetes get some better control.
Speaker 3: All of that stuff can be done by thinking better.
Speaker 3: In fact, it's been shown that cognitive behavioral therapy, for example,
Speaker 3: is as effective or more effective than certain medications for
Speaker 3: improving people's physiology. Right, So, basically, the Bible said the
Speaker 3: same thing a long time ago. There's a book in
Speaker 3: the New Testament called Philippians. In Philippians, chapter four, he says, hey,
Speaker 3: if you want to be less anxious, pray more and
Speaker 3: be more grateful and think about better stuff. And so
Speaker 3: two thousand years ago you had this guy in Palestine
Speaker 3: who was saying things that turn out to be true
Speaker 3: from functional neuroimaging two thousand years later, and so I
Speaker 3: just started noticing that there were a lot of things
Speaker 3: that aligned with scripture and modern cognitive neuroscience. And whether
Speaker 3: that's just that people are good observers of behavior and
Speaker 3: they can make smart sayings like the Stokes did, or
Speaker 3: if it's actually that the Bible was onto something and
Speaker 3: those guys knew something is up for you to decide.
Speaker 3: But I found, as a person who tries to think
Speaker 3: critically about how I think and help other people get there,
Speaker 3: that the Bible is a pretty good guide to how
Speaker 3: humans can flourish. And whether you think that's real and
Speaker 3: eternal truth or you think it's just a good book
Speaker 3: full of information, it's worth knowing. So the first thing
Speaker 3: I would say is if you want the final thing,
Speaker 3: I would say is if you want to talk about
Speaker 3: or sort of bendit from what scripture might say, the
Speaker 3: best way to do that is to read it for
Speaker 3: yourself and not let somebody else tell you what it says.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it well before we end today's episode
Speaker 1: and head over to the beliefs and behavior side of it,
Speaker 1: which if you're getting the memo, it's all interconnected, this
Speaker 1: idea of the difference between unconscious subconscious conscious. Can you
Speaker 1: just give us your thirty thousand foot overview of what
Speaker 1: that looks like and how that transforms into each other.
Speaker 3: So your subconscious has a lot to do with synapses,
Speaker 3: as we've been talking a lot about in the last
Speaker 3: three episodes. So you attach meaning to physiology, feelings, and
Speaker 3: past memories, and you basically stick those in parts of
Speaker 3: your brain that don't require the input of your frontal
Speaker 3: lobe and your higher cognitive centers to operate. So that's
Speaker 3: how you automate certain behaviors, and it's how you automate
Speaker 3: certain ways that you operate your life without having to
Speaker 3: sort of use metabolic energy to think about those things.
Speaker 3: But you find yourself having done a lot of things.
Speaker 3: You walked across your house this morning when the lights
Speaker 3: went on and the sun wasn't up yet, and you
Speaker 3: didn't hit your foot on the coffee table because your
Speaker 3: brain already knows where it is. You've wired that, and
Speaker 3: so subconsciously you'd make the turns and you avoid the trouble.
Speaker 3: And you do the same thing in your mental life.
Speaker 3: You sort of do a lot of things mentally without
Speaker 3: having to think about them because your subconscious is out
Speaker 3: there accessing all that information without you having to literally
Speaker 3: think about it. And then there's this sort of super
Speaker 3: conscious idea if you want that. We now know for
Speaker 3: sure that your mind is non local to your brain,
Speaker 3: like a brain in mind are not the same thing,
Speaker 3: and we can have a whole multiple hour conversation about that,
Speaker 3: but mind and brain are two different things, and they're
Speaker 3: two different things that and that's been proven mathematically in
Speaker 3: quantum physics, basically that your mind can affect other people's
Speaker 3: lives without your body and being involved in it. And
Speaker 3: that's a long conversation. But the reason I mention it
Speaker 3: is that part of how you're operating and navigating your
Speaker 3: life comes from outside of your brain. And I think
Speaker 3: that mind brain interface is also where we have sort
Speaker 3: of a mind spiritual interface with our creator, and that's
Speaker 3: that's the way I think it's designed to operate, not
Speaker 3: brain out, but mind down.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that we're touching on all of this
Speaker 1: because most of the people that are listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: it's a very focused, narrow conversation of it's just about
Speaker 1: the food, it's just about the fitness, it's just about
Speaker 1: my weight, it's just about my body. And those are
Speaker 1: all such downstream things to everything that we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: So if there's anything that will give you hope, it's
Speaker 1: just know that when you start solving the right problem
Speaker 1: with such as the things that we're talking about on
Speaker 1: this podcast, anything's possible.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's proven scientifically.
Speaker 1: But then if we do open up the spiritual realm,
Speaker 1: it's like miracles can happen too, you know.
Speaker 2: So don't lose hope wherever you are.
Speaker 1: And that's actually a great segue to talk about your books,
Speaker 1: your podcast and where people can find you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So anywhere you listen to podcasts, you can find
Speaker 3: the Doctor Lee Warren podcast. I have a second podcast
Speaker 3: called Spiritual Brain Surgery that goes a little bit deeper
Speaker 3: on the spiritual side of things, and then I write
Speaker 3: a Substack newsletter every week called Self Brain Surgery and
Speaker 3: that's doctor Lee Warren dot substack dot com. And if
Speaker 3: you want to read my books, just tap in my
Speaker 3: name on Amazon or anywhere you buy books and they're
Speaker 3: all out there, easy to.
Speaker 2: Find me amazing.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear more about what brought
Speaker 1: doctor Warren to become the man that he's become, we
Speaker 1: did a deep dive on the What's God Got to
Speaker 1: Do with It podcast where he share he has such
Speaker 1: a beautiful story and testimony, but also how he used
Speaker 1: the tragedy and trauma in his life for good and
Speaker 1: he's really speaking hope and truth into all of our
Speaker 1: lives and really just I believe changing the face of
Speaker 1: how we see the brain and hope and possibility, and
Speaker 1: my spiritual heart has opened.
Speaker 2: So I really.
Speaker 1: Can't endorse his podcast his books anymore. So we'll also
Speaker 1: link those in the show notes and we will be
Speaker 1: back to finish up this neuro series next week where
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about neuro habits. So that
Speaker 1: includes the doing side of it, which is what people
Speaker 1: rush to to start with, but obviously we put it
Speaker 1: last for a reason, so we will be back to
Speaker 1: talk about that
Speaker 2: Next week and have a beautiful week five.