Speaker 1: Let's learn how to work our machinery a little bit. I agree. We don't, in this culture, teach people how to operate their mind and body. How do you get motivated? Well, one way to do that is if you are good at subjectively attaching dopamine to the pursuit, just knowing, okay, I really am hungry for this. I'm just going to tell myself that, you know, making, you know, making it 1% of the way is a success and I'm going to keep going and I'm going to keep ratcheting on. And then the other aspect of it is that anytime that we're leaning into action, you know, it has the possibility of being an amplifying process or a depleting process. And the key to that is making sure that you're balancing the dopamine and epinephrine systems. We have to remember that this mechanism of dopamine and pathfinding to goals is in every animal, humans, dogs, sheep, so grazing animal might be on a really barren landscape. They go some direction and they don't smell water, which animals can do. And so they veer off course and then all of a sudden they get a little bit of scent of water. At that point, that's when the dopamine is released, not when they get the water and drink from it. So that puts them in energy to get there. You know, you think about walking in the desert and you're just dying of thirst and all of a sudden you spot a big lake. All of a sudden you will have the energy to run the remaining mile, whereas before you thought you were going to die. How is that? How is that? It's not like more glycogen is suddenly available. It's not like ketones did it for you. So what did it? That's dopamine. That's dopamine release that says there's a reward waiting for me. And I would say finally in 2020, we finally as a field got a clear idea of how dopamine is really working. If you can start to register that craving and that friction and that desire, that almost kind of low level of agitation, sometimes high level of agitation. That is that I'm trying to impose my will on the world in a benevolent way. We hope that's dopamine. It's working with its close cousin, which is epinephrine, which is adrenaline. They are very close because in fact, dopamine manufacturers, epinephrine, a lot of people don't know this, but adrenaline is actually made from the molecule dopamines. Okay? So those two are hanging out together. It's like crave work, crave work, crave and work, crave and work, crave and work. And then you get the win. Some people allow the big peak in dopamine to be associated with the win 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're kind of laid back and looking at this, not letting yourself get manic, crazy, you won't necessarily crash as hard and pretty soon your system will reset so that you take the day, you clean up the dishes, you relax, you go, what now I'm feeling a little low. Well, rather than going out and spiking your dopamine again, just wait, understand that the scale will reset again. Give yourself a few days where you're going to feel a little kind of underwhelmed. Things aren't going to be as interesting. It's going to be hard to trigger that big release because you just had the peak. Well, if you adjust that, you relax, you understand there's always a little bit of a postpartum depression. We sometimes hear about postpartum depression. That's a clinical thing. But there's always that kind of, Hmm, today's not as exciting as a previous days. What am I going to do with my life? But then if you let it start ratcheting up again, then what you realize is your capacity to tap into dopamine as a motivator, not just seeking dopamine rewards. That is infinite. And I can say with great certainty that this is how you were able to build a big company and sell it, how you've been able to build a successful podcast and sell it, how you constantly seeking because seeking is the reward. And I think for most people, we think of the reward as the finish line. And so the key is to get to the finish line, step into the end zone, but no end zone dance. It's just like, yep. And now I'm going to go do it again. How we view the world is shaping the release of these chemicals. And I do believe this happens when we have positive thoughts, we, we get a lift. If we, if we can get a lift from our positive thoughts and then dopamine itself puts us in relationship with the outside world, such that we view the outside world as having more possibility that is going to put us into forward momentum. They're good. There are a lot of studies to support that. The key with positive thinking is that it has to be honest. It can't be. I've already won. You know, I don't have 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's not going to release dopamine in my system. The key thing is that you can't just be all gas pedal all the time without rewarding yourself. It's it's mental energy. It's the, it's the desire to push on. It's the desire to keep going.

Speaker 2: So we need some consistent dopamine hits throughout the days or months to give us more energy to pursue. That's right. But we don't want to be over pursued because then we'll burn out.

Speaker 1: That's right. And so everyone has to find where that sweet spot is. There's a lot of interest these days in like habits and habit formation, because when you move that horizon and close and you complete something small, it's not about what you completed. It's the fact that you completed that. So one thing to understand is that dopamine release in the brain is always subjective. There's no experience that, that says, uh, that has unique domain over dopamine release that will only allow dopamine release. So if it's very subjective. So if I say to myself, I'm going to, um, get into the process of doing something, we have a new year coming up. So there'll be a lot of resolutions soon. The it's not a, if you attach the dopamine release to the process of effort or goal setting itself, you'll have more energy to be an effort. And then if you can attach dopamine release to the belief that you're at least heading in the right direction, you'll have more energy to keep going in the right direction. People make the mistake of thinking that the positive thought process should be attached to the finish line. It's not about thinking you've already won. It's not about being delusional. It's about thinking that your training is going to take you to the finish line. And so it's about moving that mental horizon in more close, more closely, and then triggering some sort of positive internal representation of what you're doing, meaning thinking positive. And people, this is usually where I get stopped and people say, wait, but it sounds so subjective. Tell me exactly how to do it. But here's the key point. It's supposed to be subjective. This is for you, everyone needs to figure out what allows them to continue to be in forward momentum. What allows them to constrain the world of possibilities and to go after goals and how often to self reward because that, but the key is the self word. Because if you start only pursuing external rewards, that's when you are no longer in control of your dopamine system. Make sure that that reward really bask in it, really appreciate what you've done and what's come to you. And but, and here's a very important but, is but take that feeling of being saturated with dopamine, the huge win, and attach it to the effort process that got you there.