Love Tomorrow More

The Fifth Commandment of Self-Brain Surgery™

Anesthesia is a critical part of my job as a neurosurgeon. It would be impossible for me to perform most of the surgical procedures I use to save lives and treat pain if my anesthesia colleagues we not so skilled. And so, I am incredibly grateful for the advancement in our ability to put people to sleep, keep them still, and numb them to the pain of the operations I need to perform in order to help them.

Anesthesia is crucial for neurosurgery.

But it is completely detrimental to self-brain surgery™.

In the operating room, feeling me cutting into your body would cause such distress that it would simply make surgery impossible and unacceptably brutal, dangerous, and inhumane.

But the procedures of self-brain surgery reside in how we use our minds to interact with our brains and bodies in a controlling way, and anesthesia at its core is about taking our minds offline.

It’s understandable, and ubiquitous in modern society’s messaging, to feel we desire or even need to use something, some sort of numbing agent or behavior (think alcohol, Netflix, shopping, etc.) to “take our mind off” of whatever is hurting us. “You deserve it,” culture says. “I need a drink,” your brain tells you when it’s 5 o’clock somewhere and you just can’t bear the stress one more second.

But here’s the problem: there is no such thing as a local anesthetic for the things that keep us sad, sick, stressed, or stuck in our lives. We either feel all of it until we can’t stand it anymore and decide to change it, or we numb ourselves to it and shut our brains off. But as I said, if we’re numb to that we soon realize we’re numb to everything else too.

And then tomorrow comes along and we pay the dreaded Tomorrow Tax.

The Tomorrow Tax means we’re in a worse position to take care of today- we don’t feel good, we’ve made other messes that need cleaning up, and we still have the same problems we were trying not to feel yesterday.

That’s why our fifth commandment is this:

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I must love tomorrow more than I hate how I feel right now

(The Fifth Commandment of Self-Brain Surgery)

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Read it out loud:

I must love tomorrow more than I hate how I feel right now.

Jesus famously said that we should not worry about tomorrow, because each day has enough trouble of its own (Matthew 6:34). I would humbly add the corollary that dragging today’s trouble into tomorrow is equally unwise.

In the language of self-brain surgery, we say it like this:

Don’t treat a bad feeling with a bad operation.

I want to love tomorrow for the gifts that it holds. If you’re grieving, hurting, frustrated, or just tired of being so tired, recognize that if there be any hope in things feeling better tomorrow, it will require you being awake and alert and able to respond to its spark.

Give yourself the gift of waking up and starting tomorrow by stacking at least one win onto the beginning of a day: “I’m so glad I loved tomorrow more, because I already feel better than I would have if I’d anesthetized myself again.”

It’s not just a good idea, it’s the fifth commandment of Self-Brain Surgery:

I must love tomorrow more than I hate how I feel right now.

We’re starting The School of Self-Brain Surgery™ soon. We had the first training session for a test group on Friday, and paid subscribers will have an opportunity to hear a replay of that training soon. If you’re interested in knowing more about The School, click here to be notified when it’s ready to go live.

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Listen to this podcast for more on The Fifth Commandment.

Be sure to check out last week’s lesson if you missed it.

We’re going all in on believing that we have the tools to change our minds and change our lives. Living from a mind-down perspective changes everything, and it helps us harness the transforming changes to our lives that the Bible promises in Romans 12.

The neuroscience is on your side, my friend.

And the good news is, you can start today.

By the way, if you think these lessons are valuable, please consider sharing this with friends. If you share with three or more people and they sign up, you can get free access to my paid subscriber content!

Lisa and I are praying for you.

Dum spiro spero (While I breathe, I hope),

Lee

Psalm 71:14 ("As for me, I will always have hope.")

From the banks of the North Platte river on Moon River Ranch in Nebraska, USA

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