“Those who will be successful… Are those who can control their relationship to pleasure.” – Dr. Andrew Huberman
Dopamine is dumb.
That’s right; the almighty molecule responsible for motivating us to do just about everything we do…
…Dumb as rocks, and happily willing to make us dumb too, if we let it.
See, dopamine doesn’t care if it’s motivating you to do something healthy or unhealthy, productive or unproductive, enlivening or downright dangerous.
Dopamine doesn’t even care if you actually enjoy the thing it’s motivating you to do.
Dopamine doesn’t enjoy, it craves — and all dopamine craves is more dopamine.
(that’s why we keep doom-scrolling long after we’ve stopped enjoying what we’re looking at — because what if we find something cool in the next post?)
This dumb little molecule is responsible for shaping our future, through shaping our present motivations…
…So if we want a bigger, brighter future, we’d better learn to control dopamine, instead of letting dopamine control us.
How?
By changing the way you get your dopamine.
Instead of chasing cheap little “hits” from the buffet of modern stimulation (social media, junk food, video games, adult content, pick your poison)…
…Activities that act like empty calories for your brain, leaving you less satisfied and more depleted afterwards…
…Hook dopamine up with activities that are rewarding now and in the future.
If you love training, dopamine will crave working out — and the feeling of making progress towards your physical goals.
If you love your work, dopamine will send you flying to your desk the way it sends others flying through their newsfeed.
If you love the feeling of challenging yourself, pushing through discomfort, and overcoming your own resistance…
…Yep, dopamine will learn to crave that too.
(our athletes might recall the feeling of craving hard training during the offseason — that’s dopamine)
Because that’s what dopamine does; it craves.
And if you treat it like a programming device rather than an addiction you feed, you can program yourself to crave things that make life better now, and later on.
In that way, the path really does become the destination.
Doing what you love to do now creates the future you desire.
There’s a lot more to say on this (like, how do I make productive activities more pleasurable so that I learn to crave them?) but I don’t want to make this email too long.
So let me know if you want to go deeper in the future.
In the meantime, have an awesome Thanksgiving weekend over there (living in Canada, I always forget to say that)…
…And I’ll see you back here tomorrow for another one of our “greatest hits.”
– T
