NEUROSCIENTIST - You Will NEVER Lose Motivation AGAIN! | Best of Andrew Huberman

Let's learn a little how to operate our machinery. I agree that in this culture we don't teach people how to operate their mind and body. How can you motivate yourself well? One way to do this is if you are good at subjectively attaching dopamine to the machine. search just know okay, I'm really hungry for this. I'm just going to tell myself that you know, let you know, getting 1% of the way there is a success and I'm going to keep going and I'm going to keep going. keep moving forward and then the other thing is that every time we lean towards action, you know it has the possibility of being an amplification process or a depletion process and the key to that is making sure that you are balancing the dopamine systems and epinephrine, we must remember that this dopamine and goal-seeking mechanism is found in all animals, humans, dogs, sheep, so a grazing animal can be in a really bare landscape, going in some direction and not smelling the water, which animals can do and they go off course and then all of a sudden they get a little bit of a smell of water that's when dopamine is released, not when they get the water and drink from it, which gives them energy to You get there, you know, you think about walking through the desert and you're dying of thirst and suddenly you see a big lake, suddenly you'll have the energy to run the remaining mile when you thought you were going before. die, what's that like, how come it's not like there's suddenly more glycogen available, it's not like the ketones do it for you, so what was it, it's the dopamine, the release of dopamine, that says that there is a reward waiting for me and I would say that finally in 2020 finally As a field, I have a clear idea of ​​how dopamine really works if you can start to register that longing and that friction and that desire, that almost low level of agitation, sometimes a high level of agitation, that's what I'm trying to impose. my

will

in the world in a benevolent way we hope that it is dopamine it is working with its c

lose

cousin which is epinephrine which is adrenaline they are very c

lose

cousins ​​in fact dopamine makes epinephrine many people do not know it but adrenaline is actually made of dopamine molecule okay so those two are together it's like longing to work longing to working longing to work longing to work Cowardly work and then you get the victory and some people allow the big spike and dopamine to associate with the wind and smart people learn to adapt your celebration internally, right, this is all internal, you could throw the biggest party in the world, but as long as you are a little relaxed and look at this without letting yourself go crazy, you won't necessarily fail your system so hard and very soon. it

will

reset so you take the day you wash the dishes you relax you go what now I feel a little depressed well instead of going out and increasing your dopamine

again

just wait understand that the scale will reset

again

give yourself a few days where you will feel a little disappointed, things won't be as interesting, it will be difficult to trigger that big release because you just peaked, well, if you adapt, you relax, you understand that there is always a little bit of postpartum depression, sometimes we hear about the postpartum depression, that's a clinical thing, but there's always that kind of um, today isn't as exciting as the days before, what am I going to do with my life?

But then if you let it start to speed up again. Then you realize your ability to harness dopamine as a motivator, not just to seek dopamine rewards, that's infinite and I can say with great certainty that that's how you were able to build a great company and sell it like you have. able to create a successful podcast and sell it as you constantly seek because seeking is the reward and I think for most people we think of the reward as the finish line and therefore the key is to get to the finish line and get into the end zone, but there's no dancing in the end zone, it's like yeah and I'm going to do it again.

The way we see the world is shaping the release of these chemicals and I believe this happens when we think positive thoughts. We get up yes. We can get a boost from our positive thoughts and then dopamine itself puts us in relationship with the outside world so that we see that the outside world has more possibilities, which will give us a push forward. There are good things. There are many studies. To support that, the key to positive thinking is that you have to be honest, it can't be. I already won. You know, I don't have an Olympic gold medal.

If I could tell myself I'm going to get one. tomorrow, but I just don't have the skills, so that won't release dopamine into my system. The key is that you can't just speed up all the time without rewarding yourself, it's mental energy, it's the desire to keep going it's the desire to keep going, we need some steady doses of dopamine over the course of days or months. to give us more energy to keep going, that's right, but we don't want to be chased too much because we get exhausted, that's right, so everyone has to do it. find where that sweet spot is, there's a lot of interest these days in similar habits in habit formation because when you zoom in on that Horizon and complete something small, it's not about what you completed, it's about the fact that you completed what needs to be understood. . is that the release of dopamine in the brain is always subjective, there is no experience that says that it has a unique hold over the release of dopamine that will only allow the release of dopamine, so if it is very subjective, if I say to myself, I'm going to get into the process of doing something, we have a new year ahead of us, so there will be a lot of resolutions soon, but it's not, if you attach the release of dopamine to the process of effort or goal setting, you will have more energy to push yourself. and then If you can link the release of dopamine to the belief that you are at least going in the right direction, you will have more energy to keep moving in the right direction.

People make the mistake of thinking that the positive thinking process should be linked to the Finish Line, it's not about thinking you've already won, it's not about fooling yourself, it's about thinking that your training will get you to the finish line. goal, so it's about bringing that mental horizon closer and then triggering some sort of positive internal representation of what you're doing, meaning thinking positively and people, this is where they usually stop me and people say wait, but it sounds very subjective, tell me exactly how to do it, but this is the key point, it's supposed to be subjective. for you for everyone you need to figure out what allows you to continue moving forward, what allows you to limit the world of possibilities and go after goals and how often to reward yourself because, but the key is the word yourself because if you start looking for only external rewards, that's when you're no longer in control of your dopamine system, make sure that reward you really enjoy it, really appreciate what you've done and what it's come to you and but and here's a very important but, but take that feeling of being saturated with dopamine, the huge wi and attach it to the effort process that got you there, how can we make sure we have great morning routines that support us so we don't have any brain fog in the morning or later?

In the afternoon I will describe it as my routine I generally get up between 5:30 and 7 in the morning depending on when I go to sleep I am not very regular as to when I go to sleep but it is generally between 10:30 and um midnight, I try to avoid that midnight hour, but it happens, so I get up, obviously use the bathroom. I drink some water. I think hydrating is very important. Yes, so I will. I drink some water and then the fundamental layer of health is establishing your cadian rhythm. The easiest way to do this is to go outside for 10 minutes and have some bright light in your eyes.

People always ask what happens if you wake up before the sun rises. Well, a simple rule if you want to stay awake turn on as many bright lights in your house as possible, but then when the sun comes up, it comes out, excuse me, go outside and see some sunlight, you don't have to look directly at the sun. , but you do want to go out. side outside of shade cover if you can don't wear sunglasses if you can do it safely don't try to do this through a window don't try to negotiate with me on this point what about a window?

Well, the filtration of the important wavelengths of light passing through the window is too high, so it would take you hours to set your circadian clock that way. You want to do this because once every 24 hours you will get a cortisol spike, which is a healthy spike: you want that spike to happen early in the day because it sets the alertness for the rest of the day. I would say that this is the fundamental step of any good day and if you don't do it enough you are ruining yourself. In many ways, after you wake up and have a bright light in your eyes, you're setting yourself up for a complicated sleep-wake cycle that leads to a lot of what we call insomnia when we talk about all these things like the gut and the skin, etc. .

It's tempting to say oh, it's sunlight on the skin, no, actually it can only be a signal through the eyes because the clock lives deep in the brain, that Master Clock, and you need the signal to get to that Master Clock, every cell in your body has a 24-hour schedule. -Hour clock: All those clocks need to be aligned at the same time, so imagine a clock store with many different clocks and you don't want them to ring the alarm at different times when seeing sunlight or seeing bright light early in the morning. the day, I would say. within 30 to 60 minutes of waking up for about 10 minutes or if it's very cloudy, maybe 30 minutes or so, that activates a particular type of neuron in the eye called the intrinsically photosensitive R gangana cell, if people want to look for those signals to the circadian rhythm. clock that's right above the roof of your mouth, but that's the master circadian clock that then releases a bunch of signals into your body.

This all happens very quickly and every cell in your body tunes into exactly the same time set point so that your system can function as a nice concert of cells rather than as a hit. There are many sources of mental confusion. The most obvious would be a bad night's sleep. Well, and sleep, of course, is the most fundamental layer of physical and mental health. you don't sleep well for one night you're probably fine for two nights you start to fall apart three four nights you're really a degraded version of yourself in every way the emotionality is out of the capacity to do almost anything it's wrong the hormones start to suffer then Sleep It is essential, but assuming you have slept well, there are several things, one of them is your breathing patterns.

We often get into discussions about breathing, but this one is slightly different than what we have had in the past. Many people have sleep apnea. they don't get enough oxygen during sleep, or they breathe through their mouth during sleep these days, it's become popular in some circles to take some medical tape and tape your mouth shut, yeah, and learn to breathe through your nose , and there is now excellent evidence that breathing through your nose most of the time, as long as you don't talk, eat, or exercise enough to need to breathe through your mouth, it is beneficial to breathe through your nose to wake you up. in the morning you slept your normal 6 to 8 hours but you feel a little groggy and out of it and of course there could be other reasons why you are experiencing brain fog, maybe you know this for people who drink alcohol the night before , maybe you consumed alcohol for people who maybe ate too big a meal before sleeping, maybe several reasons were correct, but getting adequate oxygenation of the brain during sleep is key, so learn to breathe through your nose and to those of you who say, well, I have a deviated septum, a lot of people think they have a deviated septum, the problem is that they don't breathe through their nose enough, their sinuses can learn to dilate if they breathe through their nose, uh, doing exercise, while nasal breathing will depend on the sport like If you box, a lot of times there is a need to do a sh or something like exhale at the moment of impact, so I don't think anyone should alter their normal breathing patterns in what It refers to sports or singing or some activity that you know, but what I mean is that when you are standing, when you walk down the street, any low-level activity, when you are working at your desk, you should breathe through your nose and breathe regularly.

There are really interesting studies done by my colleagues at the Department of Psychiatry and Biology at Stanford show that if that cortisol spike starts to decline too late in the day, you start to see signs of depression, it's actually a well-known marker of depression, so what you want that qutool to be almost stressed in the day. At first I have a lot of doing feeling like it's a healthy thing that you want to happen early in the day. Sunlight will wake you up and what's really cool is that over time you will start to notice that sunlight wakes you up more and more.

The system tunes up if you miss a day,It's not the end of the world because it is, as we call it, a slow integration system, but don't miss more than a day and if you live in an area where it's really cloudy outside, just know. Since the sunlight and photons passing through that cloud layer are brighter than the brightest interior lights now, if you live in a very dark region of the world or it's unsafe or just impractical to go out in the morning, then it might make sense to see the sunrise simulator or one of these lights but they tend to be very expensive what I recommend people use instead is just a ring light blue ring light this is a case where you can blow up your system wow um so get that morning light that sets a number of things in motion, like your melatonin The rhythm will occur 16 hours later to help you fall asleep I would say this is the fundamental step of any good day and if you don't do it enough you are ruining yourself in several ways your liver has a clock your heart the cells have a clock, every skin cell has a clock and for those who are not motivated enough by cortisol and all the other things, the system actually activates replenishing stem cells in the skin, hair and nails, so hair grows more easily. the skin turns and the nails grow faster because you have Rel cell liter stem cells that release more cells that become new hair cells and new skin cells and new cells that form the nails, so the skin, Hair and nails also benefit and it has to be light. exposure to the eyes when we talk about all these things like the gut and the skin etc. it's tempting to say oh it's sunlight on the skin, no it can actually only be a signal through the eyes because the clock lives deep in the brain that controls the clock and you need the signal to reach that Master Clock.

Why do we have fears? Why do we have traumas? Why are we ashamed? Here is the Stinger. Everything was prepared for you in your youth. I don't want to focus on the bad, but on the most. Of these things, when you're young, you're just a passive learning machine, everything comes. Young children learn three languages ​​without accents flexibly, they don't even think about it. They are learning instruments. You know, someone asked a great question. The other day at the workshop, wait, now I know I want all those things. Why is it so much harder and there is a lot of biology I would love to tell you about?

It explains why all of that shuts down after the so-called critical periods of development. So what happens when you're an ad and you want to change your brain? Now I'm going to get into things that hopefully will be useful to you, but this power of emotion, the ability to combine really strong emotions with things, is so useful if you want to improve your brain and the way you do it is clear in the physical space. We all know this story. There are many news cases like this woman's child trapped under a car. Superhuman strength. We've heard a lot of amazing stories about desperation.

JJ's story was desperate and she said, "No, I'm not going to accept failure because the failure in the case she was described in was potentially the death of her son, so desperation is strong and motivated by fear, but what if?" you are not in a desperate state and you really want to do something, in that case there is something remarkable and we should ask ourselves why children are such good passive learners, they don't try, they are just learning, they come home with all kinds of things, sometimes things that you don't want them to come home with, it's CU, they have this element of play and what play is, play is not just movement, although it includes movement, it is giving things everything you have, but keeping it in perspective , it's that sweet spot of enjoying life and trying hard at the same time, it's essentially what we're all looking for and there are incredible cases throughout history of famous scientists like Richard Feineman, Nobel Prize winner, he's most famous for playing the naked bongo the roof of Caltech and became an incredible artist at 60 and developed all kinds of other skills and always had this childish way of looking at the world,

never

got stuck in his ways,

never

became a kudin and a extraordinary man. and that's something that I, but you don't have anything else left, I encourage you to do that, you want your brain to change, stay light, stay loose, but give it everything you've got, so I think that's one of the most important things we should all do. ask ourselves anytime we want to learn or we want to relax or we want to sleep or we're in a situation where we need to receive concrete information, whatever it may be, ask ourselves, you know, where we are in this continuum of alertness and sleep, so when we sleep deeply, we actually learn while we sleep, but basically we learn

best

when we are focused and alert, but not too stressed, and then when we alternate that with periods of deep rest and not just sleeping, but when we go. in states of it may be superficial naps, it may, it may be meditation, but it is actually entering a state of what is most easily considered as speechlessness, so I would say that as people listen to all the words that come through of the airways in this place where look at this once you get to a point where you feel good, there is a lot of information, it may be dense or I just want to consolidate it or make the most of it, it is okay to just go into a state without words , pause it, just leave it. your mind wanders for a moment and then the Mind likes to focus back on things, it likes to focus in and out of things in this culture, we don't teach people how to operate their mind and their body, and that leads to all kinds of problems, stress.

Anxiety disorders add that there is no guide to social interactions for sexual development, it's a big problem and I think, um, the brain is harder to identify as a user manual, because it's always meditation. High level consciousness. Concepts, what do dreams really mean? Interesting stuff, true, but I like that we're starting with CU physiology. The nice thing about these core mechanisms of the brain and body is that they are real things, like we can point to neurons, these are things in textbooks, there is nothing mysterious about it. it requires some learning, like once you know how to do it, it works the first time, it works every time and that's the other thing that children don't learn to run their own state, they don't know that they can do it and we give people all this . mantras about resilience and mindfulness and these are powerful terms.

What we tell people just does it, but what we don't do is give them tools to access these states more easily and for the people who are lucky enough to have the time or the opportunity to come. in contact with people who help guide them down a path as if they had a Crucible experience early in life where they say wow! I felt like I was very close to death or close to panic and I recovered. Is powerfull. The hallmark of the growth mindset is. Two things really: one is that I'm not where I want to be right now, but I'm capable of getting there eventually.

The other is to attach a sense of reward to the effort process itself, and if you look at the real high performers who are. consistently good at what they do, they don't peak and they go through postpartum depression and crash and come back and their life is a cycle of ups and downs, but actually people who are on that upward trajectory constantly attach dopamine to the effort process. about the discovery of growth mindset were these kids who love solving math problems that they knew they couldn't solve correctly, so it's like people love puzzles, but in this case they knew they couldn't solve them correctly, but they love doing it and, by the way, or not, by the way, these kids are fantastic at math when there is a correct answer because they feel a sense of reward from the process of effort.

Now the good thing about dopamine is that it is controlled in a very subjective way, we can all learn to secrete dopamine in our brain in response to things that are purely subjective, but it has to be attached to reality so that you know if you are thinking on the effort you're expending, so let's say someone right now is financially on their heels and For example, we're creating a new business and it's difficult if they can take a few minutes each day to reflect on the fact that the process of effort is allowing them to reach their full potential and is giving them an opportunity. that they are somehow on the right path or if they are not moving along that path or at least they are not oriented on the right path they are not lying in bed all day if they can reward that process internally, first two things happen things all the brain circuits that are associated with creating subjective rewards and dopamine are strengthened, so you improve that process and secondly, and most importantly, dopamine has an amazing ability to buffer adrenaline and epinephrine, so you're expending effort, but you're doing it from a place where you feel like you have the energy for it, everything works

best

in context, good sleep, unless you need to be nocturnal, avoid exposure to bright light from 10:00 p.m. at 4 a.m.

It's not the end of the world if you get up and go to the bathroom or briefly turn on the lights, but studies show that exposure to bright light in the middle of the night punishes you by suppressing dopamine the next day. day and the next day, so try to have a good night, you know, master your sleep and that's another discussion, but that basically means getting as much bright light as safely possible in your eyes during the morning and during the day and as little light as possible afterwards. around 10: p.m. and don't give up on the big party I would say you know great things happen between 10:p.m. and 2: a. m. in life, so you don't want to live like a monk, you know, but you wake up in the morning and I think you know some people wake up slower than others, exposure to bright light, hydration will help a lot.

Of the things that are in your book, these CU go straight to the core physiology, if the morning time is the time when you start to feel some agitation, which means that you are alert and then it is time to do your best work, it is the press field. It's time to do the work and that resistance is expected. It's normal, it's healthy, and you should almost see it as a friend on the road with you. It's like an irritating friend who pushes you and tries to distract you, pushing you and you can do. It's fun, but there is a time to take work seriously, it's like it's yours and you don't want to waste it, so I say lean into that work and understand that if you do pretty well today, you'll do even better. the next day because I think what people forget about neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to change itself in response to experience, is that Focus circuits are also subject to neuroplasticity, so the more you feel that discomfort in Focus, the easier it is to get to the next Focus. day and the next day and very soon, if something interrupts you even for a minute, you will feel irritating, but do yourself a favor and look back and realize that in a short period of time this will not take 100 days of which We are talking. 3 4 days you will be creating and working at a level that is much more efficient and productive than before.

Trying to control the mind with the mind is like trying to catch fog, they are vapors, you will never catch them. The system includes the brain, but also all the connections with the body and vice versa, so when you can't control your mind you want to do something purely mechanical, all the anxiety fears from trauma, they all relate to stress in some way, now you can have it. stress without trauma you can have anxiety without trauma but you really can't have trauma without stress and anxiety although there are no really strict definitions of the boundaries between trauma and stress and fear.

I think it's fair to say that trauma is a fear. And or a stress response that occurs at the wrong time, it is a kind of inheritance of an experience that makes life uncomfortable or, in some cases, extremely challenging, so the first thing anyone trying to overcome stress should do is Understand what type of stress you are dealing with. Are you exhausted and having difficulty raising your energy or is your energy too high and finding it difficult to lower it because the solutions are often quite different? It is very difficult to control the mind with the mind.

It can be done, I mean when in times of stress, whether it's overly alert stress or overly fatigued stress, look at the body because there are mechanisms that have been built into the body designed to do this. Now the reason I can say that is because the physiological side. The double inhalation and exhalation is controlled by a specific set of neurons in the brain stem that Jack Feldman's laboratory discovered that breathing emphasized byInhalation can be practiced in a way away from stress in a kind of offline approach that can be beneficial in raising what we call stress threshold, so there is another way of looking at stress, that is, how can I have the mind calmer when my body is going crazy?

On the other side of things, when you feel overwhelmed and fatigued, there are two ways to approach it. The first is the underlying type of fatigue, which is almost always lack of sleep and sleep scheduling. This is something that is not discussed much. I don't think I've discussed this on any podcast before, but you know how to improve. Sleep is a complete set of practices, but sleep is a slow tool, it is not a real-time tool because if you feel exhausted and you have to get up and make your day take care of the kids, take care of work, or take care of the life, we can talk. how to improve sleep, but in real time what you want to do is bring more attention to the system focus and attention the way to do that is to take advantage of a very well established medical fact that all medical students learn this All MBS know this, which is that there is a direct relationship between the way you breathe and your heart rate, so when we inhale we almost feel like everything is moving up, but actually what happens is that our diaphragm moves down, when that happens, our heart literally races.

The volume of the heart becomes a little larger, which means that the blood there moves per unit of time a little slower, and there is a set of neurons in the heart called the sinoatrial node that sends a signal. to the brain and says, "Hey, blood flow is slowing down." and the brain sends a signal to the heart and says, okay, let's speed up and speed up your heart rate, so the short and concise way to say it is when you inhale more vigorously or for a longer time, you're speeding up your heart rate, this is this.

There is actually a name for this in the medical community, but the important thing to understand is that when you inhale you are sending a neural signal to your heart to speed up and when you exhale, the diaphragm moves up, the heart becomes a little smaller, literally. CU there's less space there, so a signal is sent to the brain and the brain sends a signal back and says to slow your heart rate down, so if you want to be more alert, you can just make your inhalations a little more vigorous or a little bit more than your exhale.

Longer or more vigorous inhalations will speed up your heart rate and make you more alert. Longer or more forceful exhalations will slow your heart rate and make you less alert. Faster and deeper repetitive breathing. some variant of that through the mouth or through the nose increases the heart rate and causes the adrenal glands just above the kidneys to secrete adrenaline. They make you more alert and you see these big inflections in heart rate when people do this. It usually makes people feel agitated at first, they feel a little agitated and then when you exhale and hold it, you hold your breath for about 15 seconds or what you're essentially doing is learning to be calm as your body floods.

With all this adrenaline and heart rate going and that's 100% top down. Control what you are doing in those moments. You're learning to take your brain and say: fight the temptation to move, fight the temptation to breathe this particular pattern. of breathing 25 or 30 times followed by an exhale and a hold and then a big inhale and a hold sometimes do more by inhaling and exhaling, repetitive breathing type which is actually someone training themselves how to self-induce stress and we know from good literature. and some emerging science that is still ongoing indicates that it is possible to feel comfortable in these agitated states so that your mind is fine, it feels good when the body feels like it wants to shake or move, that you can learn to suppress that activity which is bathing of ice.

Another good example of this is that some people go straight to the ice bath because cold water almost always induces a low level of stress in people. You have to fight it, even if you learn to love it, you still have to do it every time. Jumping in there, okay, I have to control the Mind essentially to calm down exactly, so the body says this is too cold, get out, this is too cold, get out now and you're pushing that back and it's top down control, It is pure from top to bottom. control and you can do this in many ways, there's actually something called the hour of pain, the hour of pain was actually described to me by a friend of mine, a former Special Operations military man who said they locate you.

This wasn't through the military, but it's kind of like extracurricular extracurricular activities outside of the military where they put you in a position on the floor and you have to stay there for an hour, which can be unbearable, there's so much friction. lyric where you want "Move so bad because the body's stabilizing muscles and the feedback in our musculoskeletal system say: move, move, move, I just want to move a little bit and all that practice is just a different version of the ice bath, yeah, you're you". We're learning top-down control, so we start with a question about trauma, yes, and we'll get there, but I think it's very important to just summarize that people understand that they need to ask themselves if I feel this way too. too much agitation or I feel too exhausted if it is too much agitation emphasize the exhalations and do the physiological sigh Yoga Nidra is also a wonderful practice that is a kind of mirror image of super oxygenated breathing.

It involves a long exhalation lying on your back. Completely relax your body and learn to stop thinking completely, which sounds difficult, but you can learn to do it very quickly if you practice for about 10 minutes a day. Yes, if you can begin to identify the craving as its own internally released drug. This dopamine thing is a source of

motivation

, so what you realize is that capturing the reward is wonderful, but adding dopamine to the reward is actually a little dangerous. Yes, this is celebrating victory, celebrating victory more than the quest it really imposes on you. we are set up to fail in the future and this leads us directly to something called dopamine reward prediction error, basically if you expect something to be really good and then it's not so good, your dopamine baseline goes down and that means not only You felt like you lost because it wasn't as big a celebration as you thought, but it also means you're starting from a lower place, which means you're less motivated, so when I say dopamine is the universal currency of everything you do.

I mean is it driving the

motivation

to develop new currencies? Let's say someone has 100,000 Bitcoins which are presumably now worth, gosh, certainly more than they were a few years ago, the way they can track whether or not they're in a position of wealth or not. It all has to do with the number you see on the screen or in your Bitcoin wallet, but that number becomes a chemical signal that has everything to do with how much you had previously, so we could talk about the so-called reward prediction era. . how good you feel from an experience and dopamine itself is what is driving the human species to create these new technologies and so while we think of coins as the goal, it is actually what really drove The forward evolution of our species has been the desire to go searching for things beyond the confines of our skin and when I say that the common currency is dopamine, what I mean is that the dopamine molecule, when secreted in The brain makes us chase things, build things, create things, makes us want new things that we don't want yet.

If people can do what you do, they will be in a much better position in life, it doesn't matter if it's a school sports relationship, any area of ​​life, if you can start to register that longing, that friction and that desire. . agitation is that I am trying to impose my will on the world in a benevolent way we hope that it is dopamine it is working with its close cousin which is epinephrine which is adrenaline they are very close cousins ​​in fact manufacturers of dopamine epinephrine many people don't I don't know, but adrenaline is actually made from the molecule dopamine, okay, so those two are together, it's like longing to work, longing to work, longing to work, longing to work, longing to work, and then you get the victory and some people allow the big peak and dopamine are associated with the wind and smart people learn to adjust their celebration internally, right, this is all internal, you could throw the biggest party in the world, but as long as you are a little relaxed and watch this without letting yourself go crazy, you will win.

It doesn't necessarily crash that hard and pretty soon your system will reboot, so take the day, do the dishes, relax, do what I'm feeling a little depressed about right now, instead of going out and raising your dopamine again, just wait, understand that the scale will reset again can we increase dopamine? mhm, yeah, so, um, and you've done this, so your example of longing is actually what you long for, you long for, the feeling of longing is beautiful because what it means is that you don't allow yourself to. go as far down the Arc of the dopamine trajectory to get to the other source of motivation, so there are two sources of motivation when it comes to dopamine and then we can think about tools that we could export from these that are nested in neurology.

The first thing is to do what you do, which is to be able to feel longing as its own form of pleasure. This has remnants of Carol Dre's growth mindset, that you eventually develop a pleasure in pursuit and effort. flavors of a go David goggin type approach where it seems like he gets pleasure from the friction itself and so there are elements of that where you seem to get that too whenever you have a bunch of dopamine and you're in Chase Chase Chase after If you achieve a victory now, this could be a victory in business, a relationship, a victory of any kind, but inevitably there will be a reversal of the scale on the pain side and that pain side will always go a little higher than the dopamine side.

So this is what you would feel if you pursued a goal like building a big company, here it comes, here comes the big sale and then there's what now you're going to be disappointed if you wait, if you just wait and stop chasing dopamine. for a moment the scale starts to reset, the problem is that many people immediately go straight to the next Chase and then what happens is the scale starts to get stuck on the pain side a little more a little more a little more and very soon no amount of seeking will allow you to experience that longing and motivation, it's just taking the stress that is connected to us to make us feel agitated instead of holding us back, you know, instead of saying you know, I'm just going to sit here.

I'm overwhelmed, I'm not, I'm just going to take action, so there is a circuit to win. There is the same circuit when being underactive, not being active enough is what causes losing in these competitive scenarios and similarly, there is a circuit for quitting smoking. There is a norepinephrine circuit in the brain. This was published in the last few years and shows that when animals or people exert constant effort, eventually that level of norrin increases so much that it activates a circuit that disables motor control of your limbs and you. just say that, I give up, I'm done, so these mechanisms were built into us, we all have them, whether or not it's from Evolution, Mother Nature, God, the universe, is irrelevant to the discussion that these circuits exist in everyone and I think it's a select few people, people who really understand that forward action is what drives these circuits, it's the ability to take that agitation, stress, agitation, increase our focus and predispose us to movement and nature wanted us to move forward in the face of the challenge, not to be still we were not sitting around fighting tigers and saber-toothed tigers all the time, rather we were in caves and we were hungry and we had to go out and look for things, the agitation and the stress were designed to lift us up and move us and when we try to fight too much against it and try to calm that stress that can actually be problematic, you have to decide whether you are going to try to calm the stress or if you are going to really lean towards action, that is a point critical choice for everyone. athletes or academics or anyone or musicians and they rise and fall, it is clear that they have lost touch with the motivation that evokes dopamine and they have lost touch probably because it has not really been described by the Neuroscience Community until Anna started to talk about this publicly and I'm just echoing what she said beautifully, said much better than I, which is that you should always hope that after a lot of pleasure there will besuch a low level and then that desire, how can I? go back there again and the key is that you have to walk the stairs again.

You can't do this as a square wave pull. You know you can't just Ascend Ascend Ascend, it's always up, down, a little higher. down up you know that's the function but there's always that kind of mmm today is not as exciting as the previous days what am I going to do with my life? But then if you let it start to rise again, then you realize that it is your ability to harness dopamine as a motivator, not just to seek dopamine rewards, that is infinite and I can say with great certainty that this is how you were able build a great company and sell it, how were you able to build a successful podcast and sell it as you constantly seek because seeking is the reward and I think for most people we think of the reward as the finish line, so the key is to get to the goal line, getting into the end zone, but there's no dance in Endzone, it's like Yeah and now I'm going to do it again.