How to *biblically* fix your attention span (proven by neuroscience)

[0:00]Your attention span isn't broken because you're disciplined. It's broken because your brain is being secretly programmed hundreds of times a day to the point that even your willpower no longer works. And so, in this video, after researching dozens of scriptures and scientific studies on how our brains are actually being hijacked, I'm going to reveal what's actually causing you to lose control of your mind, as well as the solution that's been given to us in the Bible 2,000 years before smartphones were even invented. But first, we need to understand why most people are losing the battle for their attention way before they even realize they're being attacked. So, let me ask you a dumb question. Let's say that you own a house, and every, let's say, 3 hours, somebody broke into your house and stole some of your valuables. Would you, you know, maybe do something about it, like maybe set up security cameras, call the cops, or stay awake with a weapon in your hands? Well, the Bible tells us that this is exactly what's happening to each of us every single day with our two most valuable resources, which is our time and our attention, and most people are not doing a single thing about it. And we see this reality described in two passages in the Bible. The first one is Ephesians chapter 5 verse 15-16. It says, pay careful attention, then, to how you walk, not as unwise people, but as wise, making the most of the time because the days are evil. So, the word time here is actually Kairos in Greek. Now, there's actually two words for Kairos, uh, two words for time in the Greek Bible. The first one is Kronos, which is basically regular passing time. Kairos actually means an appointed time, season, or opportunity. Now, when Paul says the days are evil, he's also attributing an active, hostile nature to time itself. So, in other words, right, what this verse is telling us is that every single moment that we're awake, there is an evil force trying to steal the time and opportunities that we are receiving from God. Now, what is this evil force? Well, first Peter chapter 5 verse 8 tells us this, right? So, it says, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Now, basically, if you aren't constantly sober and keeping watch, the devil himself is actively and constantly looking for ways to ruin your life. And guess what? He's had like over 10,000 years to figure out exactly how to do that. And this is the reality you need to wake up to, if you want to have any hope of saving your attention and your time. Right? Every single time that you've reached for your phone, every single time that you reach for that bag of chips, every single time you open up that tab you knew you shouldn't be looking at, those weren't accidents. Every single one of those moments was built on layers and decades of programming inside of your mind and inside of society. And the worst part is, most self-help and even Christian advice on social media make you believe that all you need is a little bit more willpower, a little bit more discipline, and you'll be good. But what we're about to see in these next steps is that this is actually the weakest weapon that you have in this war that we're fighting. Now, that being said, there is some good news, which is decades of neuroscience has gotten us to the point where we can actually identify the science behind how the enemy is hijacking our brain through things like social media and our phone addictions. But the bad news is, even though science is really good at telling us what the problem is, it's not very good at helping us solve the problem. And so, after I break down each of the weapons of the enemy, both biblical and scientifically, I'm going to show you how the Bible actually allows us to overcome the limitations of science and allow us to completely regain full control of our attention and our time. So, to help you visualize what's actually going on when the enemy tries to steal our attention, imagine your mind or your brain as a fortress or a castle. Now, most people would think, okay, if I want to take down a fortress, I'm just going to throw a bunch of cannonballs at it, I'm going to send a bunch of soldiers at it, and eventually we're just going to break down the front door. Well, unfortunately, the devil in the Bible is called the Father of lies, not the Father of breaking down front doors. And so, with that said, here are the five weapons the enemy actually uses to steal our attention and our time. And the first tactic the enemy uses is what I call bribing the gatekeeper. So, imagine you have a gatekeeper at your castle and his job is to keep enemies out and to let good people in or the good guys in. Well, now, now that he's been bribed, his job is to let the bad guys in and to keep the good guys out. Now, in neuroscience, we actually have a name for this gatekeeper, and it's called the reticular activating system, or the RAS for short. So, just like a gatekeeper, think of your RAS like an importance filter for your brain. Now, when it comes to your brain, importance is determined by how much reward your brain associates with a certain activity, and that importance is marked by how much dopamine is released when you do that activity. So, something like video games or scrolling through your phone is going to release a lot more dopamine as opposed to something like reading the Bible or working on a project. And since your RAS is trained to filter for the highest dopamine rewards, eventually your attention is only going to lock onto the things that generate the highest stimulation. And so this is why, even when you put down your phone after scrolling for hours and try to be productive, your brain immediately shifts its attention to think about something like, you know, what snack do I want to eat, or what TV show do I want to watch? Now, what does the Bible say about this? Well, unsurprisingly, it tells us pretty much the same thing, right? Romans chapter 8 verse 5 says, those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their mind set on what the Spirit desires. And then Titus 1:15 says, to the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. So, in other words, what these verses are saying is that every time we give into our flesh, it actually causes our minds to desire the things of the flesh even more, until our minds become corrupted to the point that they no longer do what we want it to do. So, essentially, here's what the Bible and neuro science are telling us, which is, your brain has an input filter or an attention filter that can be completely hijacked by the enemy. And once it is hijacked, you can't willpower your way out of it because now your brain has already been programmed and corrupted to the point that it desires everything of that is the opposite of what you truly want. So, that's just level one. Now, let's move on to the second weapon that the enemy likes to use. So, once the enemy has bribed the gatekeeper, they can now take it one step further, which is, instead of spending all this time and energy and efforts on, you know, filtering out all the good guys and only letting in the bad guys, the gatekeeper can just leave the gate open. And so, as you can imagine, once they do that, it doesn't matter how well trained your soldiers are, how disciplined they are, when the enemy is just flooding into the city 24/7. And in neuroscience, this concept is actually called the process model of self-control. And what it tells us is that self-control failure doesn't actually happen at the willpower or thinking level. It actually happens earlier or one step above, which is at the attention level. And basically how it works is, once your attention, right, has locked onto a reward queue, something like a notification, a video thumbnail, or a bag of chips, your body's already reacting and releasing all these chemicals of motivation and desire and behavior, or action, before you can even start thinking about whether to do that thing or not. In other words, by the time your willpower even kicks in, the battle's already like 80% lost. Now, what does the Bible tell us about this? Well, James chapter 1 verse 14-15, basically tells about this, right? It says, but each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death. So, the one thing that's really important here is the order of events, right? The order of events here is written that man is first drawn away by his desires and then gets enticed or tempted. Right? So, this clearly tells us that our desires, right, the programs in our brain that release all these motivation chemicals and behaviors, activate before our mind even starts to get enticed, meaning we're already fighting a losing battle before we even get the chance to think. And so, the biggest mistake that people make here is that they try to fight the battle of self-control at the level of their mind. But by then, it's already too late because your brain has been programmed thousands of times, tens of thousands of times to automatically fire a behavior program the moment that the trigger hits you. Now, so far, we've covered what happens when we deal with things outside of the wall or at the wall. But what happens when the enemy is now fully inside? Well, what if I told you that instead of going around killing a bunch of your people, the enemy instead decided to set up or build a gambling house or casino in the middle of your city? Now, why would they do that? Because now, the most exciting thing for your soldiers isn't going to war or defending the families, it's winning or losing money at the gambling house every Friday night. So, now the enemy doesn't even have to waste time or resources fighting against you because you don't even want to go to battle. And this here is probably one of the worst and most dangerous weapons that the enemy has when it comes to our brains, and that is the weapon of novelty and unpredictability, or what's called the variable ratio reinforcement in neuroscience. Now, one study I really want to point to that really highlights the problem with this is, in 2003, right, neuroscientists at Cambridge were observing the dopamine neurons, or basically the motivation circuits in monkeys, and they found something pretty disturbing. Which is when a reward was uncertain, in this case, there was a 50/50 chance of the reward happening for the monkeys, the monkeys' dopamine neurons, their motivation levels, actually fired at their maximum levels. So, what this means is that the greatest stimulation for our brains happens when we're actually uncertain of the reward, which is exactly what happens when you're scrolling through your phone, through all these different videos, not sure whether you're actually going to enjoy it or not. But here's what made the study even crazier, which is when the monkey started waiting for the next reward, their dopamine neurons actually stayed elevated the entire time they were waiting. In other words, right, their brain was basically stuck in this zombie-like anticipating craving state, even when they weren't receiving the reward. And this is the reason why it feels almost impossible to put down your phone, even when the videos aren't entertaining anymore, right? Because you're constantly waiting for that next hit, not sure when the next one's going to come. Now, the Bible doesn't talk a whole lot about gambling, but there is one place where we see something similar happening, which is actually in Numbers chapter 11 verse 4-6. So, this is when Israel was in the wilderness, and they'd just come out of Egypt, they're going through the the desert and they're, you know, waiting to get to the promised land. Now, even though God was providing them this mana, right, this heavenly bread raining from the sky every day to eat, they, the people, actually started complaining that they missed the things like the fish, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and garlic, all these delicious foods that they had when they were slaves in Egypt. Now, how is this relevant to what we're talking about? Because even though the people, back in the day before they left Egypt, were getting beaten and oppressed as slaves every single day, they still preferred the novelty and uncertainty of eating delicious foods sometimes, compared to being able to eat decent food every single day, even when that food was literally from heaven. And this is how addicting novelty and uncertainty are to our brains, right? And this is why it can be so hard to kick a phone addiction. Now, I know this is kind of getting worse and worse by the minutes, but I promise we're going to come up for air at the end of this and everything is going to be fine at the end of this video. But for now, just stick with me because there are still two more key vulnerabilities that the enemy uses to hijack our attention spans and our minds. So, imagine now that while the enemy is taking over your castle, he starts replacing all of your commanders in your army and replacing all the training manuals for your soldiers that they follow in their training. So, imagine now, right, instead of being trained to attack and defend every single time the enemy attacks us, all your soldiers are now being trained to surrender the moment that the enemy invades. Now, I know that sounds pretty stupid, but this is actually more or less what's happening inside of your brain when you get to this stage of addiction and self-control. And specifically, the part of the brain we're going to look at here is what's called the basal ganglia, or this is really just the part of your brain that stores your habits. Now, I talk a lot on my channel about things like neuroplasticity and how your brain can be trained to builds or tear down new or old neural pathways or patterns. But the problem is, while the basal ganglia is also affected by neuroplasticity, it's actually much harder to get rid of old patterns in this specific part of your brain. Or, in other words, once something gets stored as a habit, like, for example, checking your phone every time you get bored, it becomes much, much harder to get rid of it as a physical habit permanently. And this is why many addictions can come back after several years of being free from them. And, unsurprisingly, we actually see this reality reflected in the Bible as well. Right? So, Jeremiah 13:23 says, can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard his spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil. And then Romans chapter 7 verse 19-20, which is a really famous verse that Paul, that a lot of people quote from Paul, it says, for I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is the sin living in me that does it. Now, obviously, Paul is not just talking about his basal ganglia here, right? He's also talking about the power of sin that lives inside his flesh. But both of these verses make one thing very clear, which is that even when we desire in our conscious thinking minds to change, right, if our bodies are accustomed to doing sin, if we're accustomed to doing bad habits, it becomes much harder to change our behavior to the point that it even overpowers our conscious mind a lot of the time. Now, before we get to the solution of all this, there's actually one more weakness that we have to cover that the enemy loves to attack. And this last weakness is actually what makes it nearly impossible for us to escape the enemy's attacks and traps, if we aren't aware of what's going on underneath the surface. So, now imagine that instead of working full-time shifts to defend your castle, all your soldiers are now sitting around doing nothing. So, what are they going to do? Obviously, go to the casino. Now, in neuroscience, the concept that I'm referring to is what's called the default mode network or the DMN, right? And this is basically the part of your brain that becomes more active whenever your mind isn't focused on anything specific or certain task. And the way it works is, the moment that your brain doesn't have anything to do, it doesn't actually rest, right? Our brain never actually stops working, it just looks for different things to do. So, in this case, our mind starts drifting, right? We start thinking about, you know, different things in the past, our regrets, all the things that we're worried about, you know, in the future, different worst-case scenarios, or we just start comparing ourselves to other people. And because nobody likes to sit through those, you know, uncomfortable thoughts and emotions, our brain immediately looks for a way to escape those feelings, which is, you know, almost always reaching for your phone. And so this is why, even when we have something as short as like a five-second break in the middle of our day, right, for example, uh, waiting in line, or stopped at a traffic light, or just being stuck while we're working, like having a mental block, we immediately pull out our phones without even thinking twice. And, of course, the Bible also warned us about this problem thousands of years ago. And the most clear warning of this is in First Timothy chapter 5 verse 13, right? It says, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to. So, Paul here is literally warning that when we become idle, when we don't have something to focus on, we end up doing, we end up doing stupid things and we also end up saying stupid things. Now, the other verse that I really want to focus on is Second Samuel chapter 11 verse 1-2, which is one of the most famous uh stories in the Bible for those of you who actually read the Bible. So, it says, in the spring when kings march out to war, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained in Jerusalem. Now, one evening, David got up from his bed and strolled around on the roof of the palace. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing, a very beautiful woman. So, you can probably imagine at this point how this story goes, right? This was right before David saw Bathsheba, which is the woman, you know, who was bathing, and he slept with her, and he, you know, turns out that she's actually married, and the guy that she was married to was actually one of David's closest men, and he decided to have that man killed. So, not the best, um, sequence of decisions, right? But notice what the Bible points out first, which is that David was supposed to be at war. During these, you know, in this time, kings were supposed to go to war with their people. But instead, David was chilling at home, he was idle. And so, all the enemy needed was that one idle moment to cause David to commit one of the worst sins of his entire life, and really the entire Bible, right? And this is how the enemy pulls you back in, even when you're just peacefully minding your own business. Because since your mind always needs something to focus on, right, all the enemy needs to do is plan one fear, one regret, one worry when you're, you know, basically caught off guard or when you're idle, and the moment you get pushed into fear, into worry, into anxiety, into depression, or despair, your brain is going to immediately detect a threat, and it's going to retrigger one of the habit loops that we looked at earlier. Right? For example, you know, you feel bad, you pull out your phone, you scroll for two hours, and then you feel even more bad, and the cycle continues. And this is why so many people stay stuck in these cycles of addiction, of self-sabotage, of anxiety and depression, because they're constantly retriggering the same programs over and over again. So, at this point, I think you can start to see why willpower doesn't really do anything for us, right? Because you can keep yelling at your soldiers all you want to defend the castle, but if half of your soldiers don't even belong to your kingdom, the other half are busy gambling and are trained to surrender before the enemy even starts to attack, yeah, good luck with that. Now, of course, I promised at the beginning of this video that God has already given us every solution that we need to these problems in the Bible. So, now it is time for me to fulfill that promise. And the first place we're going to start is our friends the reticular activating system, or the RAS, right? So, if you recall, the RAS is your brain's importance filter. And that filter got trained on what you repeatedly fed your brain for years. But that also means that your brain can be retrained in the same way. And the Bible actually has a name for this concept, which is called renewing the mind. And one of the most famous verses on this is Romans chapter 12 verse 2, right? It says, do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. Now, how exactly does this transformation happen? Well, Second Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18 actually tells us, right? It says, but we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the spirit of the Lord. So, the word transformed here is actually the same word transformed in Romans chapter 12 verse 2. So, as we discussed earlier, right? The only way you can effectively reprogram your RAS, right, is either by removing all the sources of high stimulation to make room for lower stimulation things, or you can hit your brain with something even crazier than what you normally do to actually train it on something even more stimulating. Now, in this case, we can actually do both by beholding the glory of God. Now, if you just heard me say that and you're like, I have no idea what that means, or I have no idea how to do that, I actually made an entire video breaking down how what the Bible actually says about renewing the minds and how to do it biblical, and I'm going to link that in the description below. But for now, just understand that renewing the mind is not just about reading the Bible for hours every single day and memorizing a bunch of verses, although you should do those things, right? But it's also about spending time with God in his presence and actually letting him be the one to transform you, just as it says in Second Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18. Now, with that said, let's move on to the second solution that God has given us. So, earlier we mentioned that most of the battle is not lost at the willpower level, but actually at the attention level. So, if we want to stop the enemy from invading us 24/7, we have to do what I call closing the gates. And I talk about this concept multiple times throughout my videos because it really is that important. Because even though I've had multiple encounters with God where, you know, I received deliverance, I received healing, there were still certain addictions that didn't go away until I actually did this step. And one of my favorite verses on how to actually do this is in Proverbs chapter 4 verse 20-27, right? It says, my son, pay attention to my words, listen closely to my sayings. Don't lose sight of them, keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them, and health to one's whole body. Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life. Don't let your mouth speak dishonestly, and don't let your lips talk deviously. Let your eyes look forward, fix your gaze straight ahead. Carefully consider the path for your feet, and all your ways will be established. Don't turn to the right or to the left, keep your feet away from evil. This passage, right, is telling us that every single part of your body and your life is a potential gate, is a potential access points for the enemy to attack you, and our job is to protect and close every single one. For example, right, I'm currently in a period of my life where I've had the least struggle with temptations and addictions ever, right? I haven't really engaged any of my addictions in a really long time, and the one thing that made the biggest difference for me is that I give myself zero tolerance when it comes to anything that might trigger my temptations. For example, right, I eat zero sugar and processed food, I don't watch any TV shows or movies or animes or anything like that, right? I don't look at any sexual imagery or when it does come across my eyes, I turn away as fast as possible, right? And I don't listen to any music with negative influences. Now, you might hear this and say, hey, that's like too disciplined or too extreme, but honestly, this is the least amount of willpower that I've ever had to use when it comes to dealing with my temptations. And that's because I'm not letting the enemy into the castle to mess everything up from the inside. Now, that being said, let's talk about what to do when the enemy actually does get inside. So, one of the biggest problems that we mentioned earlier is our insatiable desire for novelty, excitement, and un predictability or uncertainty. And so, here's the thing that most, you know, dopamine detox gurus don't really understand, which is removing all sources of novelty and stimulation is completely unsustainable long term because we are desired, God created us to seek these things. And so, the reason that most, you know, dopamine detoxes fail, and why most people go back to their old patterns within a couple days or weeks, is because we're still working against our human nature, just the opposite direction. So, what does the Bible tell us to do instead? Well, Psalm 34:8 actually gives us the answer. It says, taste and see that the Lord is good. Now, what does this have to do with any of what we're talking about? Well, it's because God is someone that we can experience tangibly when we encounter him. So, instead of cutting off all sources of stimulation, we seek the highest form of novelty and stimulation, which is, of course, God himself. Like, I can tell you firsthand, right? Before I found Christ, I pretty much checked off, you know, my novelty, pleasure bucket list, right? I had six for business and quit my job, I traveled the world and lived in all these nice Airbnbs, I partied a bunch, did a bunch of drugs, dated different women, right? And I, you know, I drove my dream cars, all this crazy stuff that I, you know, had on my little vision board before I, well, when I was in the world. But after my first few encounters with God, I realized that all of these things combined could not even compare to what it was like being in the presence of God. And honestly, I still feel like I'm still the biggest dopamine addict out of anybody I know. The only difference is that I get it from the best source now, just saying. That being said, it's not just about novelty, right? We also have to address the problem of un predictability. And Ephesians 3:20 actually gives us the answer, right? It says, now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us. So, the idea here is that when you walk with God on a daily basis, right, he always ends up exceeding your expectations. Like, for example, when God told me to start putting up videos again at the beginning of this month, which is April at the time of recording this, right, he told me that he was going to start sending me people. And so, I was like, okay, cool, he's going to send me like, you know, a few hundred views, a few thousand views, whatever, right? Instead, I went from 10 subscribers, not 10,000, 1010, right? subscribers to over 30,000 subscribers and a million views in literally two weeks, all because I just simply obeyed and I trusted him. So, while this is more anecdotal, I can say with confidence that ever since I've completely surrendered my life to God, I have not had a single boring day in the last, really, entire year. Right? Now, not all those days were easy, not all of those days were happy, but definitely none of them were boring, which is why I keep coming back for more. Now, let's say you've been dealing with this problem for a while, and at this point, it feels like you have zero control over your mind, over your body, over your brain, because you've been programmed so deeply with all of these bad habits. What do we do then? So, as I said earlier, right, according to neuroscience, we actually can't completely erase old habits because they're stored in the basal ganglia, and that part is really, really hard to change, um, even when you put new habits on top of it. However, the good news is, this video is not about science, it's about the God of the universe, who gives us all the cheat codes we need to do whatever he wants us to do. So, if it feels like our bodies are the ones in control and not our minds, how does the Bible tell us to overcome this problem? Well, Ephesians chapter 4 verse 22-24 really gives us a good idea, right? It says to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God's likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth. And Second Corinthians chapter 5 verse 17 is something I want to add to this. It says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away, and see, the new has come. So, when we become born again in Christ, we can do something that nobody else can do, which is we can completely take off our old selves, which with all of our bad habits, with all of our, you know, addictions, and we can completely put on a new self, live out a completely new reality as a new creation in Christ. Now, if you're not a Christian, you might be like, okay, I don't know what this guy's talking about. Now, even for some of you who are Christians, right, you might be thinking, okay, Ryan, I've already given my life to Christ, but, you know, I definitely don't feel like a new creation. What's up with that? Well, Ephesians 4:23 tells us that we need to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, right? There is a spiritual components to our minds that we simply can't put into words and sentences, right? And until we can see ourselves and our reality from a spiritual lens and not just a worldly knowledge lens, which a lot of people try to do, we're never going to be able to move from the realm of worldly knowledge to the realm of revelation and encounter, right? And Ephesians chapter 1 actually gives us this idea, right? verses 17-19. It says, I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength. So, it tells us, right, that in order to gain true knowledge of God and everything that we have in God, we need the Holy Spirit and his spirit of wisdom and revelation to open our eyes. Now, another verse that really echoes this is First Corinthians chapter 2 verse 12-14, right? It says, now we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who comes from God, so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God. We also speak these things, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual things to spiritual people. But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God's Spirit, because it is foolishness to him. He is not able to understand it, since it is evaluated spiritually. So, the idea is that there are things of God that no amount of studying neuroscience and the brain is ever going to be able to teach us and help us understand. And when you try to explain something like, you know, hey, I'm a brand new creation and, you know, seated in heaven with Jesus, someone who hasn't had their mind spiritually renewed is going to have no idea what you're saying, right? Now, what does all this have to do with breaking old habits? Well, if you believe that your identity and your reality are limited to your physical body and the physical world, you're never going to be able to access the heavenly reality that you actually don't have to live as your old self. And the way you can access the revelation of that spiritual reality is what Ephesians 1 tells us, right, which is to pray that God gives you the revelation of wisdom you need to actually understand it. Now, I know for my more logical people, that sounds like, you know, super impractical, but sometimes that's exactly what God's intention is. Right? For you to give up your limited human wisdom to humble yourself for a second and to seek his wisdom instead. And I can tell you, right, some of the biggest transformations I've experienced in my life didn't come from, you know, crazy spiritual warfare, it didn't come from this fancy inner healing work, or praying these complicated prayers. Some of them came from simply me getting on my knees, right, not having eaten any food for three weeks, and crying and begging God to change me because I was so sick of who I was. And sometimes, that's just what it takes. Now, let's deal with the last piece of the puzzle, which is our wandering mind or the default mode network. So, earlier we noted that idleness is one of the deadliest traps for people trying to fix their attention spans, because that is a place where all of our triggers can come up inside of our minds. And neuroscience actually tells us that there are three ways to control our wandering mind, which, of course, we'll look at through the lens of scripture. So, the first one is physical action or intentional focus. So, the default mode network actually has an opposite system called the task positive network, or the TPN. And as the name suggests, right, whenever we engage ourselves in an active task, the DMN goes quiet, and the TPN becomes active. So, let's look at how scripture tells us to do this. Well, in Philippians chapter 4 verse 8, it says, finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any moral excellence, and if there is anything praiseworthy, dwell on these things. Right? Another verse that's really good is Colossians chapter 3 verse 2, right? Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things. Now, let me go back to Second Samuel chapter 11, right? We can also see very clearly that David should have been at war, fulfilling his duty and not idle at home. That is one of the easiest ways to avoid being idle is do what you're supposed to do. So, the clear point from each of these verses is that either our bodies or our minds need to be engaged in something purposeful or godly, so that we can avoid idleness. And here's an easy hack you can use in case you're not sure, right? So, if you don't know what you should be doing at any given time, the easiest thing you can do is pray until you get clarity. And First Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 17 actually tells us to do this exactly, right? It says, pray without ceasing. So, the Bible literally tells us that we should never ever be idle, and even when we're not doing anything physically, we can and should still be praying. Now, that being said, if you've ever tried to sit down and pray in the middle of the day, you know that it's it's not easy, right? Because the next problem we have to deal with is actually quieting our minds to the point where we can actually focus on our prayer in the first place. So, researchers have found that mindfulness meditation is one of the most effective ways for people to quiet their default mode network and their wandering mind. Now, a lot of people get scared when they hear the word, you know, mindfulness or meditation because they automatically attribute it to some sort of new age practice. Right? But there is a way to quiet our minds correctly, which we see in Psalm chapter 46 verse 10, which says, be still and know that I am God. So, once we quiet our mind, right? Our goal is not to empty it. We should then take that space and fill it with the things and the person and the character and knowledge of God. Now, this is also one of the easiest ways to abide in God and encounter God, because when you focus all your attention on him and who he is, right, you tend to, you know, get closer to him, you tend to understand him more, and he will draw closer to you as it says in James chapter 4 verse 8. Right? It says, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Now, even with that, right, there's still one more problem we have to deal with, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with, which is the intrusive thoughts. So, one of the biggest problems I see people struggle with when dealing with intrusive thoughts is that they don't actually recognize which thoughts or voices are actually true, or which ones they should listen to. And the best way to deal with this, according to both scripture and science, is preparation. Right? So, Second Corinthians chapter 10 verse 4-5 says, since the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments and every proud thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ. So, one of the key spiritual weapons the Bible talks about is found in Ephesians chapter 6, which is the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, right? And this makes a lot of sense, right? If we don't know what the truth is, we can't tell whether a thought is a lie or not. But if we are prepared and we know the word of God really well, right? We can actually start recognizing when something is a lie, and we can take those thoughts captive like it tells us in Second Corinthians chapter 10. So, I know I've covered a lot here, right? And for those of you feeling overwhelmed, don't try to do all this at once, right? A lot of the solutions that I've covered here are things that I've personally spent weeks and months trying to learn and implement myself, and this video is just meant to give you a starting point that you can return to in the future. Now, if you want to go in depth on any of the topics I've covered in this video, I actually do have a free community which I'll link below where I do deep dives every week on these kind of stuff, and I also have a bunch of free resources that you can use inside of there. So, you can check that out below. Otherwise, if your goal is to get started on implementing this stuff right away, I highly recommend starting with understanding what the Bible actually says about this thing called renewing the mind, because that's going to be the foundation of everything we've covered in this video, and I have a full video breaking that down over here.