When I'm the Problem, I Need Self-Brain Surgery
Self-Brain Surgery School Lesson #2: The Lousy Attitude Lobotomy
You’ve learned the discipline of studying your thinking before reacting to it (see last week’s lesson if you missed it), so I’d love to hear from you if you’re finding it helpful. Drop a voicemail or reply to this email and let me know!
Last week’s Mind Change Monday podcast episode went deep into the thought biopsy procedure if you want more practice in this foundational self-brain surgery procedure.
The next question is, what do we do once we’ve identified a thought? How do we take action when we figure out the nature of a harmful thinking pattern, and why does it matter?
The next several lessons will teach you what to do when you recognize that there’s a problem with the way your brain and your mind are communicating, with negative emotions that are hard to navigate, with painful and intrusive memories, anxiety, depression, doubt, when you’re hearing limiting stories, or when you just feel stuck. You’ll learn practical methods you can master, and you’ll find yourself feeling like your brain is working for you instead of against you.
But there’s one particular diagnosis that many of us are unaware of, and if not identified and managed, nothing else we do will help very much. (I wrote a whole chapter about this diagnosis in my latest book, Hope Is the First Dose).
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!
What is this mysterious diagnosis that can hinder our progress in all areas of life, you might ask?
Although it’s a tough diagnosis to deliver, giving our patients the straight truth is always best. So here it is: sometimes we biopsy our thoughts and we recognize that we have the dreaded LAS: Lousy Attitude Syndrome.
We’ve talked a lot in this space and on the podcast in recent months about the ways in which quantum physics and modern neuroimaging have clearly shown our perspective and attention to be critical in shaping the reality of the world around us. In my work, for example, I have to spend a few moments before I see patients or perform surgery each morning to biopsy my own thoughts and scan my mental state, to identify anything I’m bringing with me mentally to the upcoming encounter. I do this because I recognized a long time ago that my attitude and mental state affects every aspect of how I perceive and interact with my patient (and in my personal life with Lisa, our family, and others).
When I recognize LAS (Lousy Attitude Syndrome) showing up, I have to take decisive action, because it will infiltrate my mind and my brain and will negatively influence everything that I do that day.
I get clues as to LAS being present when my internal thoughts start to have an all-or-nothing flavor to them. I hear myself thinking things like:
No one ever listens to me
That guy is always such a jerk
Nothing seems to work out the way I want it to
Things seem so easy for her; she’s so lucky
My life is so hard and things seem to work out better for everyone else
Have you ever had a bad headache, and something you usually enjoy is completely unbearable because your head hurts so much? Like someone playing a song you love (like Tommy Walker’s I Love the Lord), but right then if feels like it’s going to make your head explode? Or you eat something you normally love but you have a cold and everything tastes terrible?
The same thing is true with our mental state. If we’re grumpy or angry or just in a bad mood, everything else is colored by our internal neurochemical and mental environment. The people we encounter, the problems we face, and the decisions we need to make, will all seem more difficult and hopeless if they are filtered through unchecked LAS. And often the behaviors we choose (numbing, avoiding people, sending off angry emails, etc.) turn out to be the wrong ones later, because we justified them under the influence of LAS instead of our more rational frontal lobes and executive decision making networks.
LAS frequently causes violations of several of the commandments of Self-Brain Surgery, most notably that it makes us forget that feelings are not facts, thoughts are not always true, and that we do not treat bad feelings with bad operations. Thus, it is imperative that we radically remove such bad attitudes, so that we can think clearly about the people or problems at hand and make decisions as to how to interact with or manage them according to the actual situation, and not just because we’re in a bad mood.
And so, with that background as to the dangers of LAS, I present here the procedure used to eliminate it: The Lousy Attitude Lobotomy (this will be the topic of tomorrow’s Mind Change Monday podcast, so tune in for that).
To successfully perform the Lousy Attitude Lobotomy, the following steps are required:
Thought Biopsy procedure identifies that I might actually be the problem, and my attitude is lousy.
I must take responsibility for my own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and actions: I realize that I am not in control of other people’s behavior or of every circumstance, but I can always be in control of my own response. This moves me from an internal state of all-or-nothing victimhood to an empowered, responsible position as the surgeon who can make a difference.
I then realize that my self-talk determines my actions, because thoughts become things. Thus, I have to apply II Corinthians 10:5 to my internal conversation, take my thoughts and words captive, and radically lobotomize them.
Having regulated my internal voice, I also must eliminate complaining (I remember that God hates murmuring and complaining: "Now the people became like those who complain of adversity in the hearing of the Lord and when the Lord heard it His anger was kindled…" Numbers 11:1). Why is this? Because complaining reinforces LAS, which is why the 9th Commandment of Self-Brain Surgery is, “I must remember that what I’m doing, I’m getting better at.”
I realize that when I listen to my LAS internal voice, my default mode network revs up and focuses on ME, my painful past, and my problematic future instead of the present, which is the only place I ever actually exist and the only place I can control.
This realization leads me to remember that the shift out of LAS always passes through gratitude. When I am filtering my thoughts and behaviors through LAS, the brain networks involved are the same ones that are active when I’m anxious and depressed. Shifting to a thought stream that invokes things for which I’m grateful or happy about instead clears up the negative neurotransmitter fog and allows my executive networks to resume control (Philippians 4:6-8).
I reinforce better thinking with better actions, because I remember that physical movement and positive words release positive neurotransmitters in my brain and have powerful effects on my decision making ability, my influence on others, and on my problem solving skills.
LAS is a thought cancer that will harm us, both internally and in our relationships (with God and others), and it has a very high recurrence rate. When we learn to biopsy our thinking, recognize LAS when it appears, and treat it quickly with the lousy attitude lobotomy, we can then deal with things from a more realistic and empowered perspective.
The neuroscience is clear: when we say negative things to others, the impact is five times more lasting and powerful than when we say positive things. So don’t let your own LAS make you speak to someone else in a way that so powerfully wounds them. Make sure that your decisions, words, and actions are based on what’s actually happening and what needs to happen, not just as an overflow of LAS. It takes a lot of positive words to make up for those LAS-related ones, and they leave a synaptic trail that never fully heals. We’re self-brain surgeons, yes, but we’re also always operating on others with our words.
Learning and mastering the lousy attitude lobotomy procedure will help you change your mind, become healthier, feel better, and be happier. It will improve your impact on others, help you navigate challenging circumstances more resiliently, and improve every area of your life.
Here’s a free worksheet I made for you to help you learn and implement the thought biopsy operation in your life, in case you missed it last week.
Here at the School of Self-Brain Surgery, we’re all about the good news that you’re not stuck with the brain you have, and you are not JUST your brain. You can change your brain, but you have to change your mind first.
And the good news is, you can start today.
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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That was a powerful message this morning.... it’s definitely for me as I struggle with LAS more than I would like. Thank you for all the work you do to help others strive to become the people that God wants them to be!!!