Pleasure Comes With A Crash
Pleasure can leave you feeling worse afterward.
Most people have heard of dopamine and we hear all the time now about dopamine hits, but actually there's no such thing as a dopamine hit.
And actually the way that your body uses dopamine is to have a baseline level of dopamine, meaning an amount of dopamine that's circulating in your brain and body all the time.
And that turns out to be important for how you feel generally, whether or not you're in a good mood, motivated, et cetera.
And you also can experience peaks in dopamine above baseline.
A simple way to envision dopamine hits is every time you do something you like, you eat a piece of chocolate, dopamine hit.
You see someone you like, dopamine hit.
All these things described as dopamine hits neglect the fact that if you scroll social media and you see something you really like, dopamine hit.
Sure, there's an increase in dopamine, but then you get to something else and you go,
hmm,
not that interesting.
However, had you arrived at that second thing first, you might think that it was really interesting.
If you had arrived to that second Instagram post three days later or four days later, you might find it extremely interesting.
Again, how much dopamine you experience from something depends on your baseline level of dopamine when you arrive there and your previous dopamine peaks, okay? That's super important to understand, and it's completely neglected by the general language of dopamine hits.
This is why when you repeatedly engage in something that you enjoy, your threshold for enjoyment goes up and up and up.
So I want to talk about that process.
And I want to explain how that process works, because if you understand that process and you understand some of these schedules and kinetics, as we call them around dopamine, you will be in a terrific position to use any dopamine enhancing tools that you decide to use.
You'll be in an excellent position to modulate and control your own dopamine release for optimal motivation and drive.
So what sorts of activities, what sorts of things increase dopamine and how much do they increase dopamine? Well, let's take a look at some typical things that people do out there or ingest out there that are known to increase dopamine.
So let's recall that you have a baseline level of dopamine and that everybody does.
Your level of dopamine has everything to do with those genetics, but also with what you've experienced in the previous days and the previous months and so on.
When you do or ingest certain things, your levels of dopamine will rise above baseline transiently.
And depending on what you do or ingest, it will rise either more or less, and it will be very brief or it'll last a long time.
So let's take a look at some of the typical things that people take and do and eat.
Some are good for us, some are not good for us.
Most people have heard of dopamine and we hear all the time now about dopamine hits, but actually there's no such thing as a dopamine hit.
And actually the way that your body uses dopamine is to have a baseline level of dopamine, meaning an amount of dopamine that's circulating in your brain and body all the time.
And that turns out to be important for how you feel generally, whether or not you're in a good mood, motivated, et cetera.
And you also can experience peaks in dopamine above baseline.
A simple way to envision dopamine hits is every time you do something you like, you eat a piece of chocolate, dopamine hit.
You see someone you like, dopamine hit.
All these things described as dopamine hits neglect the fact that if you scroll social media and you see something you really like, dopamine hit.
Sure, there's an increase in dopamine, but then you get to something else and you go,
hmm,
not that interesting.
However, had you arrived at that second thing first, you might think that it was really interesting.
If you had arrived to that second Instagram post three days later or four days later, you might find it extremely interesting.
Again, how much dopamine you experience from something depends on your baseline level of dopamine when you arrive there and your previous dopamine peaks, okay? That's super important to understand, and it's completely neglected by the general language of dopamine hits.
This is why when you repeatedly engage in something that you enjoy, your threshold for enjoyment goes up and up and up.
So I want to talk about that process.
And I want to explain how that process works, because if you understand that process and you understand some of these schedules and kinetics, as we call them around dopamine, you will be in a terrific position to use any dopamine enhancing tools that you decide to use.
You'll be in an excellent position to modulate and control your own dopamine release for optimal motivation and drive.
So what sorts of activities, what sorts of things increase dopamine and how much do they increase dopamine? Well, let's take a look at some typical things that people do out there or ingest out there that are known to increase dopamine.
So let's recall that you have a baseline level of dopamine and that everybody does.
Your level of dopamine has everything to do with those genetics, but also with what you've experienced in the previous days and the previous months and so on.
When you do or ingest certain things, your levels of dopamine will rise above baseline transiently.
And depending on what you do or ingest, it will rise either more or less, and it will be very brief or it'll last a long time.
So let's take a look at some of the typical things that people take and do and eat.
Some are good for us, some are not good for us.
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3 of 6
Pleasure Comes With A Crash
Pleasure can leave you feeling worse afterward.
Dopamine Drives Motivation
Motivation depends on more than simple pleasure.
Why Dopamine Hits Stop Working
Dopamine reshapes how daily experiences become rewarding.
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