This #FirdayKnowledgeSharing is about motivation and drive. Understanding Dopamine and tools that u can use to make it to your maximum advantage. How u can leverage specific behaviours, reward schedules and dopamine-prolactin balance to help ensure..
.. u can maintain motivation and capacity for pleasure over the long term. Don’t let the world control ur dopamine level. Dopamine is the thing from which adrenaline is made. Motivation is balancing pleasure and pain.
When u r sitting idle, dopamine is releasing at 3-4 times per second. If u suddenly are excited about something, not after receiving the award, then the rate of release increases many times. Dopamine is mostly released in anticipation or craving for something
Eg. going to eat your favourite food, or meeting ur partner, or buying something, or winning a sports event - thinking about something u look forward to releases dopamine.
Your thinking about food increases dopamine release by 50% from basic, for sex it increases about 100%, nicotine increases by 150%, cocaine and other drugs increase about 1000 fold within 10 seconds of consumption. This dopamine push increases the motivation and focus to
achieve that goal. Cocaine and other drugs are disastrous for people as it creates so much dopamine that the person gets into a vicious circle and craves only for that. Even video games and social media ‘likes’ release huge dopamine and becomes addiction.
For any pleasureful experience we want more of it. But you will notice each subsequent time you pursue the thing, the experience and pleasure of dopamine release is diminished a little bit. Your desire for something is proportional to how much u enjoy that thing but also
how much pain u experience when u don’t have it. Gambling is a good example how u can control ur dopamine and use ur to your advantage. The reason why people go back again and again to gamble is because of hope and anticipation.
Casino businesses are made to utilise our dopamine system. The slot machine every once in a while gives you a win to keep you playing it again and again. Intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful form of dopamine reward. Use it to your advantage for motivation.
If you are pursuing some goal at this time - money, body, academic, even followers on SM, one of the things that u can do to remain on that path for very long time and u continue to exceed ur previous performance and enjoy the dopamine release when u hit your milestone
is to occasionally remove reward subjectively. As u reach ur goals, understand your amount of dopamine is not going to peak but actually going to diminish and make u crave more. More likes, more followers, more money, and so on.
The best way to avoid that crash and also keep it at healthy level to allow u to pursue is as u r staircasing towards ur larger goal, blunt the reward response for some of the in between goals. U don’t need to celebrate all ur wins. Say, if u reach a high point in
your pursue of an academic larger goal, blunt the reward of inbetween achievements. Do not go and celebrate every small win intensely. By doing that u keep ur dopamine system in check. And u ensure u r going to stay on your path of continued pursuit
Big increase in dopamine leads to big crashes in dopamine. U will keep on shifting your goal post otherwise as dopamine increases.Celebrate ur wins but don’t celebrate every win.That way u can ensure that u continue to move on your path of progress. #gettingfitterwithSandeep
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