How Do You Take Your Dopamine?
In a short video, Dr. Andrew Huberman explains how we can tune up our dopamine system. He explains that dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with motivation and our sense of time. It leads us to feel like doing the task at hand, and higher levels of dopamine create the perception that time is passing more quickly. Dopamine levels influence our behavior, but it also works the other way around: our behavior influences our dopamine levels. We can spike dopamine before the task, during the task, or after the task. And one of these times has a dramatically better effect.
Suppose you are about to do a challenging workout. You could:
Drink a cup of coffee or listen to loud music on the drive to the gym.
In the most painful parts of the workout, notice the effort and tell yourself that you choose and love the workout precisely because of the effort.
Eat a meal afterwards and frame it as a reward for having finished.
Options 1 and 3 both lead to the gradual deactivation of dopamine circuits that are normally associated with the workout. In the long run, this makes the experience of exercise more painful and difficult. Option 2, on the other hand, trains your brain to amplify an “internally generated reward system.” As Dr. Huberman says, you “learn to spike dopamine from effort itself.” Once you begin to enjoy effort in one area like exercise, this system gets activated during other difficult tasks as well.
This week, I invite you to examine how you take your dopamine:
Where in my life might I have inadvertently deactivated dopamine circuits by using external reward systems before or after difficult activity? What would change for me if I mastered the art of creating dopamine from effort itself?
God bless,
Dan