Your fear isn’t a character flaw or a faith failure. It’s an attention problem, and it’s fixable in about 60 seconds. I learned that the hard way in a tent operating room in Balad, Iraq. Mortars were coming in. The ground shook. The alarms were screaming. Fear hit hard; heart racing, thoughts spinning, every instinct telling me to freeze or run. But there was a patient on the table with a shattered skull and a brain that still needed to be saved. I couldn’t afford to leave the present moment. I had to stay with the next instrument, the next vessel, the next careful move. I had to keep operating. That same skill is what the psalmist describes: Psalm 94:17-19 (NLT) Unless the Lord had helped me, I would soon have settled in the silence of the grave. I cried out, “I am slipping!” but your unfailing love, O Lord, supported me. When doubts filled my mind, your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer. He felt the slip. He noticed the fear and the multiplying cares. He didn’t pretend they weren’t real. But he refused to stay there. He returned his attention to the greater reality that was actually holding him up. That’s Self-Brain Surgery. It’s how you keep operating when life tries to paralyze you. Stress pulls your attention into the past (“I should have…”) or the future (“What if…”) and keeps it there. The only place you can actually do anything is right now. When your mind repeatedly notices the thought or feeling, accepts that it’s present without letting it become the whole story, and returns attention to this moment and to God’s unfailing love, you train the brain’s networks to stop treating the alarm as the final truth. Prefrontal regions get better at regulating the emotional signals. The mind stays in charge. Today’s 60-second operation: 1. Notice the stress or the “I’m slipping” thought the moment it shows up. 2. Accept that the feeling is here, without agreeing that you’re doomed or faithless. 3. Return to the present: one breath, the truth that God’s unfailing love is supporting you right now, and the next small action that belongs to this hour. Then keep operating. Not because the fear is gone, but because you’ve chosen to stay with what’s true and what’s in front of you. That’s the skill. And it’s trainable, starting right now. Save this for the next time it feels like you're being mortared. And share with a friend who needs to know fear is not a faith problem. Follow me for daily connections between neuroscience and faith to help you thrive. And click the link in my bio to learn more about self-brain surgery. - @drleewarren