One Mental Shift for Personal Power
Changing perspectives leads to changed lives
Last week on the podcast, I had an incredible talk with the New York Times bestselling author Ann Voskamp. Be sure to check it out, as we went deep on smashing neuroscience and faith together with self-brain surgery!
One of the things Ann and I discussed was the incredible ability we have to switch out of anxiety and panic and towards calm and peace by changing our minds. This is due to the way God wired our hippocampus to direct neural traffic away from the amygdala and towards the prefrontal cortex when we focus on gratitude and not fear.
A reliable way you can do that is to believe in the power of changing perspectives.
I showed you this picture last week, but I want to remind you that self-brain surgery is not a metaphor. It is the mechanism of how you can harness the power of self-directed neuroplasticity to make structural changes in your brain, beneficial epigenetic changes in your gene expression, and improve your health, mental health, and overall life. Learning to operate your nervous system and the God-mind-brain interface is a form of worship (Romans 12:1), and aligns your mental life up with God’s will and his plan for your abundance (John 10:10).
In the picture below, we see the same woman dressed as both patient and surgeon. She represents you, my friend, and me as well.
Consider the difference between those two versions of her:
As a patient, she may feel:
Sad, sick, stressed, stuck, or tired of settling in her life for less than she believes she is capable of
Anxious because she lacks the training or agency to make the changes she needs to make
As if some combination of her genes, her family, her background, her traumas, or her personality type can limit or define, and that she “is just how” she is, and that she is just the product of how her brain works
Powerless, helpless, or hopeless to make real progress
Once she finds out that she can, literally, perform self-brain surgery to change her brain, she shifts perspectives.
Now, she looks at herself as a surgeon, and she may feel:
Empowered to use the design of her mind and her brain to make changes that help her, instead of perpetuating the things that were keeping her stuck before
Confident that she has (or can learn) the tools, the training, and the technical ability to safely help herself become healthier, feel better, and be happier
That she is not just her brain, and that because of self-brain surgery, she is not stuck with the brain she has
If you make this perspective shift: “I am not just a helpless patient. I am a wise and compassionate self-brain surgeon,” you remove the limit on how much you can heal, grow, change, learn, recover, find peace, be resilient, adapt, and have hope in your life, no matter what you face.
The patient-to-doctor switch is possible because you have everything you need already inside you to change your mind and change your life (II Peter 1:3). You do not have to conform to life’s pressures anymore, because you can be transformed and have a renewed mind (Romans 12:2-3). Your racing, negative thoughts do not have the power to torment you anymore, because you can biopsy and master them (II Corinthians 10:5). Your overpowering feelings cannot overwhelm you anymore, because you know they are not facts, they are chemical events you can learn to reinterpret (Psalm 139:23).
You, my friend, are a self-brain surgeon. Starting next week, I’m going to teach you some operations you can use to make everything in the above paragraph come true in your life. But you need to know that even though I’m a pretty good doctor and you’re learning to be an effective self-brain surgeon, you have these tools and all the help you need because of The Great Physician having equipped you perfectly for the job (Philippians 2:13).
All you have to do is to decide to believe it, and start practicing.
If you’ve been using self-brain surgery and it’s been helping you, please take a moment to send me a short testimonial This will help other people find out about it, and we’ll all grow healthier together.
Be sure to check out last week’s lesson if you missed it.
Announcement: We’re starting The School of Self-Brain Surgery™ soon. If you’re interested in knowing more about The School, click here to be notified when it’s ready to go live.
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.
And the good news is, you can start today.
If you need a treatment plan to help you overcome any kind of trauma, tragedy, or massive thing in your life, check out my latest book, Hope Is the First Dose.
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.")
P.S. 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!
From the banks of the North Platte river on Moon River Ranch in Nebraska, USA
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