Make Your Dopamine Work for You!

Keeping our neural bank account replenished is vital to achieving big goals.

Say you want to run a marathon. One effective thing to do, as experts suggest, is –

Day 1: Prepare your running shoes
Day 2: Put on those shoes and walk around the block
Day 3: Walk around two blocks

and so on. Small incremental steps.

And every day you get closer to your goal without being discouraged or physically hurting yourself. So, is it that simple?

The answer is, yes, if we keep making small deposits to our neural bank account.

. . .

And what does that mean?

“The key thing is not to go through each one of those actions (day by day), but to pause for a moment after every milestone and tell yourself: I’m heading in the right direction,” explains Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University.

Every time we take a moment to acknowledge our effort, we realize we are laying the foundation towards achieving a bigger goal, and the next action will lay another foundation on top of it.

This is what produces dopamine at the right time. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that makes us feel good, and make us want it more.

If we don’t acknowledge our effort and constantly remind ourselves that we are heading in the right direction, we will end up depleting our energy. That’s the cost of solely focusing on achievement. Our brain gets tired. We get tired. The neural bank account gets smaller and smaller because the dopamine is wearing out.

When we reward ourselves by valuing our efforts, we are constantly generating little pulses of dopamine. And this is what keeps us from depletion. We feel replenished. Our neural bank account stays healthy.

Otherwise, it’s just like spending money and you feel poorer. Then helplessness and despair start seeping in.

Steven Kotler, a leading expert in human performance, explains we all have “neuro-personalities” — dopamine dominant vs serotonin dominant. They are the two rewards systems.

Being in the “here and now” releases serotonin and oxytocin, and makes us feel relaxed, harmonious, loved. Dopamine is the second type of rewards system — it gives us pleasure and pushes us to go further.

. . .

High performers like David Goggins, Lance Armstrong, Jennifer Douda are very good at attaching rewards to specific behaviors in subjective ways. This is true in all professions — from athletes to scientists.

Huberman explains, “They know how to make these small, simple, physical steps in the real world that allow them to build on these reward circuitries, but they don’t get delusional about how they’re doing. They keep the end in mind but they get very micro. They move the horizon in very close.”

When we reward ourselves as we’re heading in the direction we need to go, we become just as strong if not stronger. We’re not depleting or spending out anything. It could feel weird when we are rewarding things that aren’t external. But that is the exact point — the secret — about being dopamine rich: developing the ability to control these internal reward schedules.

Dopamine is involved in rewards but also involved in the pursuit of rewards, which is what makes the friction and challenges we feel en route to success purposeful.

. . .

This ties directly to the growth-mindset, which has been popularized by the work of psychologist Carol Dweck.

A growth mindset, in its simplest and purest form, is the attachment of reward systems to the effort process, not just obtaining a reward. It is really about rewarding ourselves during friction, setback, and challenges.

This is the principle governing the reward prediction error and its opposite — pro-depressive circuits.

When we develop the growth mindset, we train our brain to attach its rewards to the action of pursuing the goal, not just achieving it. It is with the growth-mindset we are able to secrete dopamine en route to rewards.

“The ability to tap into that system — to subjectively amplify that pathway of rewards in pursuit of goals is an absolute game-changer,” says Huberman.

This is especially important during this pandemic.

. . .

So how do we actually do this?

Adrenaline and epinephrine are the two neurotransmitters that cause pain or discomfort and get us moving — make us agitated — react with the “flight or fight.” This is nature’s way of getting us into action, and take responsibility.

In the process of action or moving forward, the secretion of dopamine becomes important as it suppresses the sensations of wanting to quit.

The longer it takes to achieve something, the harder it is, and more uncertainties there are, the more dopamine we need in the process — in almost regular intervals to get us going. Not every day is going to be good. Some days will be painful.

So the question we constantly want to ask ourselves is: how do I get my dopamine to work for me before I hit the goal?

Instead of attaching our sense of rewards towards our ultimate goal, we want to attach ourselves to the fact that we are taking action steps that are generally in the right direction. For instance, if you’re writing a book, you set smaller goals of writing 5 pages per week, and reward yourself for doing that.

The more we reward the effort process, the better off we are at building neurocircuits that can handle challenges for an extended duration, as research shows.

. . .

So back into running the marathon — if you prepare your shoes today, walk around the block, and feel good with the belief that you are progressing in the right direction, you will replenish your dopamine levels in your brain instead of depleting it.

As a result, not only will you get those two events that already happened, but also get tomorrow’s action step as well — walking two blocks. This will develop your capacity to build more rewards.

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If reading this article has energized you to some extent, then you’ve just replenished your neural bank account. Congratulate yourself, and move on to the next action step that challenges you.

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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.

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