Are You Giving Yourself Participation Awards?

At this point, most of us would probably agree that rewarding people for doing nothing is not a particularly healthy thing to do. We've all seen those kids that get whatever they want, whenever they want. You know what I'm talking about, that kid in the restaurant screaming "I want dessert!!". And then the parents say: "Ok dear. Whatever you want". Most of us roll our eyes and think: "I wouldn't do that!". BUT, then we turn around and treat ourselves to something we haven't earned... every single day. Multiple times a day!!! Let me back up a bit. Surely you've heard of dopamine. It's a neurotransmitting chemical that our body produces. Our body then consumes the chemical in a part of our brain called the nucleus accumbens. When our brains consume dopamine, it gives us a feeling of pleasure. So you can see why we would want to produce dopamine. But let's back up even more. The role of dopamine, in a healthy human, is to keep us motivated during difficult physical and mental tasks to keep going. When we take on a difficult task, our brain begins to manufacture dopamine. As we work on the task, our brains will release small amounts of dopamine to our reward center (nucleus accumbens) to make us feel good about what we're doing and to motivate us to keep going. The more we work, the more we accumulate dopamine. This is good. In fact, we want to produce as much dopamine as we can. Regardless of what you've read or heard, having dopamine isn't a problem at all!

We start running into problems when we engage in things that CONSUME dopamine rapidly, but DO NOT stimulate the production of dopamine. Things like, watching Netflix, eating dessert, taking drugs, drinking alcohol, watching porn, and the king daddy of dopamine consumption... DOOM SCROLLING. All of these activities consume massive amounts of this wonderful chemical but contribute nothing to the manufacturing of it. When you open your phone, and go to instagram reels or tik tok, your brain almost instantly starts releasing dopamine to your rewards center. That, in and of itself, isn't bad. The problem is that you can very quickly blow through your dopamine stores and leave the account in the negative. Then, when you finally lock your phone and come out of your stupor, you will inevitably feel unmotivated. And often, kind of empty inside or depressed. Why? Because you NEED dopamine to feel motivated and excited about life. But you just pissed it all away. You were naughty. In essence, you just gave yourself a trophy case full of participation awards for doing NOTHING MEANINGFUL. To make matters worse, when we have no dopamine, we tend to reach for more things that we're sure will give us a reward. Things like sugary salty snacks, more scrolling, video games, etc.... But the account is already in the negative. And those things don't make us feel good. They make us feel worse. But because most of us don't understand why we feel awful, we keep mashing down the accelerator even when there is no fuel left.

So what do we do? First off, limiting dopamine consuming activities is a great start. There's nothing wrong with having fun. But when we overindulge, we are left feeling bad. Second, when you overindulge (and let's face it, we all do and will...), have a game plan for getting back on track. Start engaging in things that will stimulate the production of dopamine. Things like: going for a hike, working out, reading a physical book, cleaning your house, writing poetry, running errands, etc... Anything you may not want to do at first, but you know will be rewarding is a dopamine generating task. The catch 22 is that once you have no more dopamine it's 100x more difficult to start any challenge. That's why it's better not to run the tank dry in the first place. If you like where this is going and would like to understand more about why you feel bad (or good) after doing certain things or eating certain food, I highly recommend the book "The DOSE Effect: Optimize Your Brain and Body by Boosting Your Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphins" by Tj Power. I guarantee that if you read it and follow along with the challenges he sets forth, it will change your life. And it will change your life IMMEDIATELY. I hope you do ;-)