Today, I’m going to give you ten years of therapy in two minutes. I'm a brain surgeon, and I'm gonna show you how to make rapid progress in healing the wounds you’ve been carrying; the ones from childhood, from broken relationships, from things said that can’t be unsaid, and from things done that can’t be undone. Let's scrub in and get it done. Here's a Fact: Your Wound Lives in Your Brain, But Your Healing Lives in Your Mind When something hurts you, your brain stores it. The sights, the sounds, the sting of the words, the shape of the moment. That storage is real and physical. But here’s where the hope of healing lies: your brain doesn’t get the final vote on what that memory means to you. Your mind does. And your mind is not the same thing as your brain. Neuroscience nugget: Emotional memories get encoded in circuits involving the amygdala and hippocampus, but each time you recall a memory, it becomes temporarily unstable and gets rewritten via a process called reconsolidation. That means every time you revisit a wound, you have a fresh chance to change how it’s stored. Self-Brain Surgery Procedure: The next time an old wound surfaces, don’t just relive it. Instead, reframe it while it’s “open.” Ask: What is the truest, most redemptive way to understand this moment now? Speak that new understanding out loud before you let the memory close back up. Scripture: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3, NIV This is self-brain surgery. Hard and holy work. Follow me to connect neuroscience and scripture every day. Save this to help when you need to heal. Share it with a friend who's hurting. Click the link in my bio to learn more about The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery, my NYT bestselling book. #selfbrainsurgery #neuroscience #neuroplasticity #grief #healing

The Third Commandment of Self-Brain Surgery: "I must believe that not all of my thoughts are true." Being curious about your thoughts instead of reactive to them is a superpower if you want to flourish in your life. II Corinthians 10:5 isn't just a good idea, it is 1st-century neuroscience. #selfbrainsurgery

Right before I cut into someone’s brain, a thought sometimes flashes through my mind, "What if my hand slips right now?" I’ve been operating for years. If a brain surgeon’s mind can do that to him mid-surgery, yours isn’t broken either. That thought doesn’t mean I’m unfit to operate, and it doesn’t mean you’re dangerous or crazy for the thoughts you can’t say out loud. It means the brain, under focus or fear, fires off the worst possible image; but that's a misfire, not a message. Feelings are not facts. Thoughts are not always true. Those are Self-Brain Surgery Commandments number two and three from my New York Times bestselling book: I must believe that feelings are not facts, and that most of my automatic thoughts are untrue. Paul wrote it this way in 2 Corinthians 10:5, ESV: “We take every thought captive to obey Christ.” Not every thought is you. Some are just noise your brain generates. You don’t have to obey it. You get to examine it, and let it go. If a thought is torturing you and you think it makes you a bad person, it doesn’t. That’s hard and holy work, and you’re not alone in it. Save this for the next time a thought is running on a loop in your head. Share this with a friend who struggles with difficult to control thinking. And follow me for helpful connections between neuroscience and faith every day. Click the link in my bio to learn more about self-brain surgery. #selfbrainsurgery #neuroscience #mentalhealth #anxiety

Your brain doesn’t know what time it is. Every time you replay that conversation from last year, that mistake from last month, that moment you wish you could take back from yesterday, your brain treats it like it’s happening right now. Same stress chemicals. Same alarm bells. You’re not remembering it. You’re reliving it, on a loop you built yourself. That's because of two things: your brain doesn't know the difference between what's really happening and what you're just imagining, and neuroplasticity means that your brain automates things that you think about and turns them into programs that it runs without you having to think about them next time. So, the more you rehearse something from the past or something you're just imagining, the more your brain builds out a reality as if that thing is still here right now. The ninth Commandment of self brain surgery is, "I must believe that what I'm doing I'm getting better at." That means if you're doing things with your mind that are making your brain better at living in the past or worrying about imaginary outcomes, you're getting better at feeling worse. So knock it off. Here’s the shift: you can’t edit the past, but you can stop rehearsing it. Every replay is a rehearsal, and your brain gets better at whatever you rehearse. Let's make neuroplasticity work for us and not against us. We call that self-brain surgery. It's not easy at first, it's hard and holy work. But remember, you get better at whatever you repeatedly do Philippians 3:13 says it like this: forget what lies behind and strain towards what lies ahead. Not denying it happened, but refusing to keep performing it. There's better stuff in the future, but not if you keep building a brain that lives in the past. Follow me to connect neuroscience and scripture every day. Save this for the next time your mind hits replay. Share it with someone stuck on a loop. Click the link in my bio to learn more about Self-Brain Surgery. #SelfBrainSurgery #Neurosurgery #FaithAndScience #BrainHealth

The First Commandment of Self-Brain Surgery: "I must relentlessly refuse to participate in my own demise." Stop committing malpractice against yourself. Your life will dramatically improve. #selfbrainsurgery

Defined or Refined? When you face difficulty, insurmountable obstacles, great loss, or other massive things, it forces a choice: Will you be defined by this? Or will you be refined by this? When we lost our son in 2013, Lisa and I quickly realized that this loss could easily become the thing that our family was about for the rest of our lives. We've seen it in our practice, when someone goes through something hard and everything about their entire life. After that revolves around the loss, the pain from the past, the wound that they've suffered. But we've seen other people that, after they appropriately grieved, somehow found purpose against the pain. Somehow overtime seemed to develop a quality about their lives that was informed by the tragedy that made them stronger, more resilient, and able to help people because of what they've gone through. This redemption of pain and turning it into purpose seems to me to be what God is promising in Isaiah 48:10 . "I have refined you, but not as silver is refined. Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering." The furnace is not pleasant. But loss, trauma, and adversity are GOING TO PUT YOU IN THE FIRE. So, since you cannot avoid being in the fire, the only choice you have is what the fire does to you. Defined, or refined. That choice made all the difference for us. Save this for the next time the furnace forces you to make a choice. And share it with a friend who's in the fire. Follow me for daily connections between neuroscience and faith that will help you flourish in your life, even when you're in a season of suffering. And click the link in my bio to learn more about my New York Times, best seller, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery. #neuroscience #selfbrainsurgery #pain #trauma

As a neurosurgeon, I've operated on two patients with nearly identical injuries many times. One was back on his feet in weeks, talking about gratitude. The other was still in the dark six months later. Same tissue. Same operation. Completely different outcome. The difference was not in their brain or their spine. It was in how their mind met the signal. NEUROSCIENCE: Pain is not just a wire from the body. A signal travels up. Then your mind interprets it, predicts what it means, and decides how much danger it represents. A mind braced for helplessness turns the volume up. Catastrophe, rumination, “this will never end," those are not just moods. They change how the signal is processed. A mind anchored in meaning and hope can genuinely turn the volume down. That is not a pep talk. It is how descending control of pain actually works. This is why two people can share a diagnosis and not share a recovery. The injury is real. The suffering is also being shaped by what the mind keeps rehearsing. You do not pretend the pain is fake. You refuse to let the pain become the whole story. II Corinthians 12:9 says, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” (ESV) Grace does not always remove the thorn. It changes what the thorn is allowed to mean. Self-Brain Surgery: The sixth commandment of self-brain surgery is this: I must love tomorrow more than I hate how I feel right now. That is not denial. It is orientation. When the signal flares, do the operation. Tell the truth: This hurts. Then refuse the second injury—the story that this feeling is the future. Aim your attention at the next faithful step, the people who still need you, the hope that is still allowed to be true. Same tissue. Different mind. Different path. Save this for the next time pain tries to push you around. And share it with a friend who's hurting. Follow me for daily connections between neuroscience and scripture to help you flourish. Click the link in my bio to learn more about my New York Times bestseller, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery. #neuroscience #selfbrainsurgery #pain #chronicpain

Ready isn't a feeling, it's a choice. It's Monday morning, and there's something you've been stuck on, waiting to feel ready to get after it. But actions lead, and feelings follow. Take a breath, set your mind on what you're called to, and step into it today knowing that your brain will listen to your mind. Your chemistry follows your choices and feeling ready comes on the backside of movement. Save this for the next time you need your favorite internet brain surgeon in Dad mode to encourage you. And share it with someone who's been stuck waiting to feel ready. Hit that follow button. I'll be here every day connecting neuroscience and faith to help you flourish. Check the link in my bio to learn more about self-brain surgery.

I’m in love with this sentence: “The strongest version of you is buried under the habits you're afraid to break.”

"I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief." -C.S. Lewis

"Let me be the answer to someone else's prayer and let someone else be that for me." I can tell you, kids, it works.

Thank you, Dr

Your brain cannot tell the difference between a disaster that is happening and one you are only rehearsing. That’s why worst-case-scenario thinking isn’t “just being prepared.” It is building a brain that learns how to stay afraid. Neuroplasticity means you don’t live with the brain you were born with. You live with the brain you keep building. Spend enough time in the spiral and your amygdala stays online while your frontal lobes, the part that actually solves problems, go quiet. Cortisol rises. Sleep drops. The thing you’re trying to avoid becomes more likely, not less. Two thousand years ago Paul already knew the move: don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything, with prayer and thanksgiving, present your requests to God (Philippians 4:6-7). Anxiety and gratitude turn opposite directions on the same volume knob. One goes up, the other goes down. Next time the “what if this ends in disaster” thought shows up, try the other question: “What if it works out?” Hit that follow button and we'll work together every day to connect neuroscience and scripture to help you thrive. Save this for your next worst-case monent. Share it with someone whose brain is stuck in disaster mode. And click the link in my bio to learn more about my New York Times best seller, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery. #neuroscience #selfbrainsurgery

Pray, do good works, and let the madmen strangle on their own twisted plans. It may take a while, though, so be patient. That's basically what I have gathered from reading the Gospels over and over.

Every single thing you want in life is on the other side of something that sucks. That suck might be 100 workouts, 100 bland meals, 100 hours of work, or 100 hard conversations. Embrace it. Pay the cost of entry with pride. The answers you seek are found in the actions you avoid.

Do not use your energy to worry. Use your energy to believe, to create, to learn, to think and to grow. —Professor Richard Feynman

You showed up! You didn't feel like it, but you remembered that feelings aren't facts, they're chemical events in your brain, so you did it any way. I'm proud of you. Send this to someone who needs to know that you're proud of them for doing the hard and holy work. And save this for the next time you need to hear it from me! Follow for daily connections between neuroscience and scripture to help you flourish in your life. And click the link in my bio to learn more about my New York Times bestselling book, The Life-Changing Art of Self-Brain Surgery. #selfbrainsurgery #neuroscience