00:00 today we're going to talk about how to
00:01 boost your resistance to
00:06 dopamine the basic struggle that most of
00:08 us have today is that we should be doing
00:10 some things like studying or working on
00:13 our resume or exercising but our brain
00:16 wants to do something else it wants to
00:18 do dope and energic things like play
00:20 video games watch pornography Doom
00:22 scroll take your pick of technological
00:25 addiction and the problem is that we
00:26 struggle to control this part of our
00:28 brain but that doesn't work because the
00:31 part of your brain that wants these dope
00:33 energic activities actually is the part
00:35 of your brain that controls you so this
00:37 is sort of best described by this old
00:39 Soviet Russian meme so I don't know if
00:41 yall have heard this but you know these
00:42 memes back in the day about in Soviet
00:45 Russia you do not watch television
00:47 television watches you so in our brain
00:50 the way that this kind of works is in
00:52 Soviet Russia or in the current digital
00:55 age you do not control dopamine dopamine
00:58 controls you I want to want to take a
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01:51 with each other so we have to understand
01:52 this so you have one part of your brain
01:53 called the nucleus succumbent and when
01:55 we're talking about dopamine this is the
01:57 part of our brain that we're talking
01:59 about so the the nucleus accumbent
02:01 basically generates motivation for us
02:03 and the way that it does that is through
02:05 using dopamine as a signal so when we
02:07 get motivated towards something and we
02:09 engage in that behavior we get this
02:11 triggering of dopamine which gives us a
02:13 sense of pleasure and results in
02:15 behavioral reinforcement the problem is
02:17 that you can't really directly control
02:19 this circuit because this circuit is
02:22 what generates your wants and
02:24 motivations so you can't kind of
02:26 motivate yourself to not be motivated by
02:29 Pleasure able things if that kind of
02:31 makes sense it's the part of your brain
02:33 that generates your motivation instead
02:35 what we need to do is utilize the other
02:38 parts of our brain to reduce the power
02:42 of our nucleus accumbent so when it
02:44 comes to a behavioral action there's the
02:47 motivational drive from the nucleus
02:49 accumbent but then there are all these
02:50 other parts of our brain that influence
02:52 that motivational drive and this is sort
02:54 of what I've learned as an addiction
02:56 psychiatrist this is kind of our bread
02:57 and butter is that we work with people
02:59 people whose nucleus accumbent in dopam
03:02 energic circuitry is in full control of
03:05 their brain so we have people who will
03:06 do things like pick up a bottle of of
03:08 beer let's say and I the moment I get my
03:10 first sip even though there are parts of
03:13 my brain that are screaming at me put it
03:15 down put it down put it down you can't
03:17 control it you're going to get divorced
03:19 you're going to get fired you're going
03:20 to get thrown in jail your whole brain
03:22 is screaming at you but you cannot
03:24 control it because once the nucleus
03:26 accumbens gets a taste of that alcohol
03:29 you lose all control so let's start with
03:31 the nucleus accumbent okay so the first
03:34 thing is that our nucleus accumbens is
03:37 has this pile of dopamine in it and
03:39 let's just go over a quick overview of
03:41 of kind of what the nucleus succumbent
03:43 does so anytime we engage in an action
03:45 depending on what the results of that
03:47 action are we will get a release of
03:50 dopamine and then this dopamine results
03:52 in pleasure now when we receive pleasure
03:55 from this action we are going to go back
03:57 and we are going to reinforce the action
04:00 once we do this then this will create a
04:05 engage in the action again okay so
04:09 basically there's some kind of initial
04:12 experience with something which results
04:14 in dopamine and pleasure which then
04:16 creates behavioral reinforcement and
04:19 improves motivation so the first thing
04:21 that we're going to talk about is how
04:22 things like dopamine detox actually move
04:25 us in the wrong direction so in order to
04:28 do what we want we actually want a large
04:31 amount of dopamine available in our
04:33 brain so I know that sounds very
04:35 contrary to popular thinking but let's
04:38 take a quick look at some research on it
04:41 here is a study that looks at rats and
04:44 dopamine depletion so what we've got
04:46 here is we have lever presses which is
04:49 the action and we have two kinds of rats
04:52 we have our control rats and what we
04:54 sort of see is that the control rats
04:57 over time will engage in lots of lever
05:00 presses and then we also have something
05:02 called dopamine depleted rats and what
05:05 we tend to see is that when you get rid
05:07 of dopamine in the brain you actually
05:10 engage in less and less action so the
05:13 nucleus accumbens dopamine and
05:14 regulation of effort in food seeking
05:17 Behavior implications for studies of
05:19 natural motivation Psychiatry and drug
05:20 abuse now here's the sentence that we're
05:22 going to focus on a cin dopamine that's
05:25 da may be important for enabling rats to
05:27 overcome behavioral constraints
05:30 such as work rated response costs and
05:32 may be critical for Behavioral
05:34 organization and conditioning processes
05:37 that enable animals to engage in
05:39 vigorous responses such as barrier
05:41 climbing or em emit large numbers of
05:44 responses okay so this is kind of
05:46 complicated but let me explain what this
05:48 means this basically says the more
05:51 dopamine we have the easier it is to
05:54 engage in something called sustained
05:56 effort now this may sound kind of weird
05:58 but let's understand understand this
06:00 okay if you look at our our body this is
06:02 what happens we wake up and we've got a
06:03 ton of dopamine and then our body has
06:06 the system called homostasis and so what
06:09 this means is if we engage in some kind
06:10 of action right so let's take an action
06:13 and we've got a ton of dopamine what
06:15 this means is that if we engage in an
06:17 action we've got a lot of dopamine a lot
06:19 of dopamine comes out because we've got
06:21 a ton of it right so our brain is just
06:24 like the way you are with your bank
06:25 account where if you've got a bunch of
06:27 money you can afford to spend some
06:29 because you've got a a bunch left so
06:31 after we engage in some kind of action
06:33 we lose some dopamine but we we kind of
06:35 spend dopamine and then the action
06:37 remember the more dopamine we release
06:41 reinforced okay so this is totally fine
06:44 so as we use some dopamine you know
06:46 that's fine we have some left we can
06:48 take another action and we'll deplete
06:50 some more dopamine right totally fine
06:52 and then eventually what happens is we
06:54 run out of dopamine and once we run out
06:57 of dopamine then we have a slight
06:59 problem because now our bank account is
07:00 empty so now in order to get dopamine
07:05 out right now that we're kind of we've
07:07 squeeze the lemon dry we need to engage
07:11 dopaminergic activities so now that our
07:14 reserve of dopamine has run out we need
07:16 something so think about it like a a
07:18 lemon that you're squeezing the juice
07:19 out of right so the more you squeeze at
07:22 the very beginning you can squeeze very
07:24 little and you can get a lot of juice
07:25 out but at the very end you need
07:27 something very very powerful
07:29 to squeeze to squeeze out the remaining
07:32 juice so the more dopaminergic the
07:35 activity the less dopamine you need to
07:38 engage in the activity so when we look
07:40 at things like video games these are
07:41 highly dopaminergic and I don't know if
07:43 this kind of makes sense to you but when
07:45 you feel really tired and you don't feel
07:47 motivated and you don't feel like doing
07:49 anything when you're exhausted and you
07:51 don't want to have fun you just kind of
07:52 sitting around doing nothing what are
07:54 the only actions that you can take what
07:56 are the actions that are the easiest to
07:58 take the lower your energy level is the
08:00 easier it is to engage in dopaminergic
08:03 activities because these will squeeze
08:05 out the last bit of dopamine that is
08:08 left in your brain because they're very
08:09 powerful pulls of dopamine now if we
08:11 engage in actions like video
08:13 games uh let's go down here so if we
08:16 engage in let's say we start out our
08:19 day and we engage in an action like a
08:21 video game now remember this is a
08:23 powerful squeeze so now we have a full
08:25 lemon and we are squeezing very tightly
08:28 what's going to happen to our dop
08:29 energic signal we're going to actually
08:31 empty our whole swath of dopamine
08:34 because we've got a full lemon and we
08:36 have a powerful squeeze and then we have
08:38 no dopamine left over for other things
08:42 this is what this rat study essentially
08:43 shows that if you want to engage in
08:46 sustained effort with low rewards we
08:51 need to have a lot of dopamine in
08:54 reserve okay so this is something that a
08:56 lot of people don't get but what we
08:58 really need to do is understand that the
09:00 moment you engage in a high dopaminergic
09:02 activity at the beginning of the day
09:04 you're going to exhaust all your
09:06 dopamine and you literally will have
09:07 nothing left for the sustained effort of
09:10 the things that you want to do and y'all
09:12 may have noticed this in your own life
09:14 right so when you wake up and you play
09:16 video games for 6 hours between 8:00
09:19 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. how motivated are you
09:21 at the end of that time and then flip it
09:24 around let's say we wake up in the
09:26 morning and we work for 4 hours how
09:29 motivated are you how many how much
09:30 video games can you play after 4 hours
09:33 of work so this is the first important
09:35 thing to understand we do not want to
09:36 get rid of our dopamine we actually want
09:40 a high level of dopamine so that when we
09:43 engage in low dopaminergic activities we
09:46 still get a strong dopamine response and
09:50 as we get a strong dopamine response
09:52 right because there's a lot of dopamine
09:54 in our brains we are going to reinforce
09:57 the action and in increase our
09:59 motivation to engage in the action so
10:01 the tldr for this is that dopamine isn't
10:03 bad it's actually what causes behavioral
10:05 reinforcement and this is why it is very
10:08 important to do productive stuff first
10:11 thing in the morning so do not even pick
10:13 up your phone for one hour after you get
10:16 up wake up and start doing something
10:18 anything try to avoid avoid technology
10:21 usage or especially the dop and energic
10:23 Technology usage for at least 4 hours
10:25 ideally at the beginning of the day but
10:27 don't touch your phone for 1 hour as you
10:29 do this you will have lots of dopamine
10:32 and then you will be able to engage
10:34 literally in sustained effort right so
10:36 let's go back to this so this is an
10:38 experiment where we have lab Chow which
10:40 is like crappy food okay that is very
10:44 very easy to access and then what the
10:46 rat can do is jump up here and then end
10:49 up eating this tasty Chow so this is
10:52 like better Chow but requires more
10:54 effort and when we have a dopamine
10:56 intact Mouse what we find is the mouse
10:58 goes over here jumps on here and eats
11:00 the tasty Chow okay so this is harder to
11:02 get and then what happens is if we have
11:04 a dopamine depleted rat the rat is too
11:07 lazy to even get the thing that is good
11:10 for it that it likes more and this is a
11:12 beautiful example of what goes on in
11:15 most people's lives we know that there
11:17 are things that we should end up doing
11:19 but we are too lazy to do them and every
11:21 time we do them we're like damn this was
11:23 really great I'm so glad I did this and
11:25 it turns out that the reason that we
11:27 can't engage in the stuff that is good
11:29 for us is actually because we're
11:31 depleted in dopamine so conserve your
11:33 dopamine and try to use it at the very
11:35 beginning of the day in whatever
11:37 productive activities you have the cool
11:40 thing is that kind of going back to our
11:42 iPad drawing what we see is that any
11:44 action even something like cleaning your
11:46 room if we have a large reserve of
11:49 dopamine will generate dopamine and
11:51 behavioral reinforcement so let's talk
11:53 about our second part of the brain so
11:55 here's the nucleus accumbens and now
11:56 we're going to talk about the amydala
11:58 and the limic system so this system is
12:02 very important for dopamine
12:04 vulnerability so the more negative
12:07 emotion we are dealing with the more
12:10 vulnerable we are to dopam energic
12:13 signals from the nucleus accumbent so
12:15 these two parts of the brain talk to
12:17 each other a lot there are a lot of
12:19 connections between the nucleus
12:20 accumbens and the amydala so if you sort
12:22 of think about it this kind of makes
12:24 sense right the worse we feel if I'm
12:26 feeling depressed if I'm feeling anxious
12:29 I'm more vulnerable to dopaminergic
12:32 activities because what we know is that
12:34 dopamine basically shuts off negative
12:38 emotion and negative emotion induces
12:41 cravings for dopamine because we feel
12:43 bad when we have negative emotions right
12:46 and if we feel bad when we have negative
12:48 emotions what does our brain how does
12:50 our brain know how to make ourselves
12:52 feel better Ah that's right we have this
12:54 thing called dopamine and if we release
12:56 dopamine we will induce more pleasure so
12:59 what do we see as in Psychiatry
13:01 especially with things like addiction
13:03 Psychiatry so what we tend to find is
13:05 that people who are addicted tend to
13:07 have a lot of negative pent up emotions
13:11 and as long as you have negative pent up
13:12 emotions your vulnerability to dopamine
13:15 signals will increase on the converse
13:18 side when we do things like
13:19 Psychotherapy and we end up reducing our
13:23 negative emotion our resistance to
13:25 dopaminergic signals actually improves
13:29 so what we really want to do if yall are
13:31 struggling to control your motivation
13:33 and you're not motivated to do what you
13:35 should you should really start to work
13:37 on your negative emotions so we can do
13:39 all kinds of emotional processing
13:41 activities this can be things like
13:43 therapy or journaling meditation right
13:46 and some of y'all may be saying okay so
13:48 Dr K you just saying that I should
13:49 journal and meditate and go to therapy
13:51 oh my God you've said a million times oh
13:53 my God yes but this is the main thing to
13:56 understand it's not about engaging these
13:58 activities because they're good for you
14:01 right so this is once again we'll get to
14:03 Value generation in a second but the the
14:05 thing to understand is that if you want
14:06 to be able to control your dopamine
14:09 circuitry you have to understand what
14:10 the inputs are and understand that the
14:13 more depressed you are the more anxious
14:15 you are the more you will wind up
14:17 addicted to dopaminergic stuff so you
14:20 must deal with those negative emotions
14:22 and the cool thing is that as you start
14:24 dealing with these negative emotions and
14:26 you can do something as simple as taking
14:28 a walk right you can just go for a walk
14:30 for about an hour and a lot of these
14:32 negative emotions will start to process
14:34 themselves automatically as you go
14:36 through this stuff you will be amazed at
14:38 how much you are able to resist the
14:41 dopaminergic impulse as long as your
14:43 emotions get taken care of you go for
14:44 three walks a week for one hour a week I
14:47 mean one hour a day right so you do that
14:49 three times and you'll be amazed that
14:50 you'll be 20% more resistant to the
14:53 effects of dopaminergic activities the
14:55 next circuit that we're going to talk
14:57 about is the prefrontal c
14:59 so the prefrontal cortex is part of our
15:01 frontal loes and our frontal loes are
15:04 what generate things like willpower
15:06 right so when we do things like meditate
15:08 the frontal loes are basically what
15:10 control the other parts of our brain so
15:12 that if you're feeling really really
15:13 emotional and there's this voice in your
15:15 brain that says Get It Together buddy
15:17 let's calm down we need to focus or if
15:20 you're trying to study and so your brain
15:22 is like instead of getting distracted
15:24 let's focus that's all done by your
15:26 frontal loes but that's hard right and
15:29 the one thing that we're going to focus
15:30 on today we're not going to do hard
15:31 things we're going to teach you easy
15:33 things to improve your resistance to
15:36 dopamine so the other thing that the uh
15:38 prefrontal cortex does is generate value
15:41 assessments so anytime you're thinking
15:43 about doing an action your brain has
15:45 some idea of what the action is worth
15:49 right what the value of the action is
15:51 for example when we have something like
15:52 studying or gaming each of these have a
15:55 value and now we may think that the
15:58 value of studying is greater than the
16:00 value of gaming but if on a given day
16:03 you choose to game or you lose control
16:05 and you end up gaming instead of
16:07 studying what that literally means is
16:08 that the value generated by Gaming in
16:10 this subconscious part of your brain
16:12 it's not intellectual this is what it's
16:14 actually observed okay this is some
16:16 weird subconscious part it is doing a
16:18 subconscious calculation about the value
16:21 of gaming versus the value of studying
16:23 and this is literally what drives our
16:24 Behavior the result of the subconscious
16:27 action and this sub conscious value
16:29 assessment is done by the prefrontal
16:31 cortex so what we need to do is do a
16:35 conscious value assessment and there's
16:38 one really really simple way to do that
16:40 so this isn't something like I know this
16:42 you may think okay like I just think
16:44 about it I know studying is better like
16:46 I know that like but I just can't
16:47 motivate myself no no you don't
16:49 understand if you are motivated to not
16:51 study that means that your subconscious
16:54 value judgment is going to the nucleus
16:57 accumbent and telling it to game instead
17:00 of study that's literally what's
17:01 happening and there are some moments
17:03 even if you sort of think about it right
17:04 so if we kind of and this is a
17:06 constantly ongoing process so why do we
17:08 study one day before the test because
17:10 our subconscious value judgment is today
17:12 we can game tomorrow we can game on day
17:14 three we can game on day four we can
17:16 game and then the subconscious value
17:18 judgment changes on Thursday morning
17:20 when you wake up and you have a final
17:21 exam on Friday now the subconscious
17:24 value judgment changes and if you sort
17:26 of stop and examine yourself you'll see
17:27 this now you start to panic now the
17:29 consequences are big now it becomes very
17:31 important to start studying the
17:33 subconscious value judgment has changed
17:35 so this is what's really cool we can
17:37 take that last minute Panic we can take
17:39 that last minute motivation and we can
17:42 bring it up a couple of days we can
17:44 generate that motivation earlier if we
17:47 do a conscious value assessment and
17:49 there is one really simple way to start
17:51 doing this we use this a ton in
17:53 addiction Psychiatry works really well
17:55 it's called play the tape through to the
18:01 end this is what we're going to do we're
18:03 going to play the tape through to the
18:05 end okay so what does this mean this
18:07 means that you should sit down with a
18:09 piece of paper you can't do it in your
18:11 head because in your head your mind will
18:12 jump to all kinds of stuff you have to
18:13 sit down ideal with a piece of paper
18:15 don't use a technological device and
18:18 walk through the actions that you're
18:20 going to take and what the consequences
18:22 of those actions are going to be like so
18:24 if I wake up at 8: a.m. and I study what
18:27 what's happen next what's going to
18:29 happen at 9:00 a.m. what's going to
18:31 happen at 10: a.m. what's going to
18:32 happen at 11: a.m. and then how am I
18:34 going to feel at 5:00 p.m. and I study
18:36 for at least 2 or three hours versus if
18:38 I game right now what's going to happen
18:40 at 9:00 a.m. what's going to happen at
18:41 10: a.m. how am I going to feel at 5:00
18:43 p.m. your mind will tell you oh we'll do
18:45 it later but stop and really play the
18:47 tape through to the end are you going to
18:49 do it later when what's actually going
18:51 to happen and when you force your mind
18:53 to slow down and you play the tape
18:55 through to the end if I start drinking
18:57 today what's actually going to happen
18:59 what do I know is going to happen even
19:00 though this may not instantly boost your
19:02 willpower you may sort of find that at
19:04 the end of this exercise you end up
19:06 gaming anyway and that's actually okay
19:10 because what we've done is change your
19:12 subconscious thinking a little bit now
19:14 the price of gaming there's a part of
19:15 you that feels a little bit more guilty
19:17 at the end of this exercise right you
19:18 end up gaming anyway but it's not quite
19:21 as mindless as it used to be you're like
19:23 holy I really shouldn't do this but
19:25 okay fine whatever today is fine so even
19:28 there is a small subconscious shift and
19:31 as you play the tape through to the end
19:32 over and over and over again your value
19:34 assessment will change okay so the next
19:37 thing we're going to talk about is super
19:38 fascinating and this is the hippocampus
19:40 so the hippocampus is our memory circuit
19:43 this is where our memories live so
19:46 there's one thing that's really
19:47 important to understand when the
19:48 hippocampus has a strong influence on
19:51 the nucleus succumbent but there are
19:53 some things that the hippocampus loves
19:55 and some things that the hippocampus
19:57 hates so this is important to remember
19:59 the hippocampus values novelty so if
20:02 something is new for you it will
20:04 actually trigger a stronger motivational
20:07 impulse so if you are trying to do
20:09 something like study or let's let's take
20:11 the case of exercise and it is hard for
20:14 you to exercise if you are trying to
20:16 exercise instead of playing video games
20:18 and you've tried to exercise before the
20:20 hippocampus will say hey we've tried
20:22 this before it doesn't work well we
20:24 don't really enjoy exercise so let's end
20:26 up gaming if you want to start
20:28 exercising the key thing that you need
20:29 to do is add novelty to the mix so if
20:33 you try a different kind of exercise
20:35 let's go to Pilates let's go to yoga
20:36 let's go to taichi let's work out with
20:38 friends let's do high-intensity interval
20:41 training let's join this workout group
20:44 with dudes or with women or whatever the
20:46 more novelty you can add that if you're
20:49 trying to do something again the more it
20:51 will increase your motivation and
20:53 Trigger that sort of positive dopamine
20:55 response so if you failed at trying to
20:57 do something like going to the gym to
20:59 work out I've tried going to the gym
21:00 I've tried going to the gym going to the
21:01 gym utilize your hippocampus circuitry
21:04 and just try something new the more
21:06 different it is the easier it will be to
21:09 try and this is something that the
21:10 gaming industry understands very well
21:12 right they understand that games are old
21:14 and old games are boring and how do we
21:16 encourage people to play this game again
21:19 we add new stuff we add new stuff we add
21:21 new stuff so novelty triggers motivation
21:25 so anything that you're trying to do
21:27 whether it's cooking exercising studying
21:29 whatever try to add some novelty to the
21:31 mix and it will be easier to do the next
21:33 circuit we're going to talk about is
21:34 actually the opioid circuit so this
21:37 involves the MU receptor and the Kappa
21:40 receptor so this is interesting because
21:43 when we're all talking about dopamine
21:44 we're obsessed with dopamine motivation
21:46 pleasure all this kind of stuff but
21:48 remember that the whole brain works as a
21:50 circuit things are connected right and
21:52 it turns out that the opioid endogenous
21:55 opioids and the opioid receptors are
21:58 very powerful influencers of our
22:01 pleasure circuitry and it turns out that
22:03 pain and pleasure are actually very
22:05 tightly linked and and control one
22:07 another literally so I'll give you all a
22:08 simple example of this let's say that
22:10 you're playing a video game and it's a
22:12 stomp so when you stomp in a video game
22:15 how fun is it chances are it's less fun
22:17 than if the game was very very hard
22:20 right if I'm losing at the beginning and
22:21 then my team makes a comeback the
22:23 dopamine rush I get is huge so this is
22:26 something very important understand that
22:29 pain correlates with pleasure so as we
22:32 can increase the pain from a particular
22:35 activity the pleasure that we will get
22:37 from that activity actually
22:39 increases so you can sort of notice this
22:42 as well when we kind of think a little
22:43 bit about like things like working out
22:45 right so if we half ass when we work out
22:49 like if we half ass it and it's just a
22:51 lot of pain and there's not what ends up
22:54 happening is we avoid the pain and when
22:57 you half ass working out you actually
22:59 avoid the pain minimize the pain and
23:01 then it turns out that we have less
23:03 reinforcement but instead if we sort of
23:05 think about working out right let's say
23:06 I'm like doing a bench press or
23:08 something like that and I can do six
23:10 reps of the bench press without too much
23:11 problem but it's in that seventh rep in
23:14 that eighth rep that I sort of feel that
23:16 burn this is what Arnold Schwarzenegger
23:18 calls the PMP right as I feel that pump
23:21 that those are the hard ones and those
23:22 are the ones that make me feel really
23:25 good at the end of it so it's it's that
23:27 last pain painful part that actually
23:29 positively reinforces our Behavior so
23:32 this is where we've got to be super
23:34 careful because a lot of times when we
23:36 are engaging in dopam energic activities
23:38 or our nucleus succumbent is running the
23:39 show we have a ton of avoidance of pain
23:43 and instead what we want to try to do is
23:44 add some pain to the mix to influence
23:48 our dopaminergic circuitry we also have
23:50 really interesting evidence of this
23:52 which is that if you want to reduce
23:54 Cravings we have a medication called
23:56 Naltrexone and what Nal actually does is
23:59 blocks some of these opioid receptors or
24:01 partially blocks them it's not a full
24:03 blockade and so it it kind of interferes
24:06 with our ability to engage in pleasure
24:08 from dopam energic activities now I know
24:10 that's not exactly what we're talking
24:12 about here but we certainly know from
24:15 nxone that the opioid receptors and the
24:19 opioid system in the dopaminergic system
24:21 the nucleus acumin are very tightly
24:23 linked so the way that we want to
24:25 utilize our opioid system is first of
24:27 all don't retreat from pain we want the
24:30 right amount of pain we want a balance
24:31 of pain so we want something that is
24:35 moderately painful or mildly painful
24:37 which will make that we can still
24:38 complete so we don't want to have pain
24:41 to the point of stopping the activity
24:44 right so if something is too painful our
24:46 brain will actually say this is not
24:48 worth it so this is where I think
24:49 working out is really like perfect and
24:51 people sort of figured this out right
24:52 they said you should do the the weight
24:54 that makes you feel the burn in the
24:56 seventh rep the eighth rep the last
24:58 couple reps should be painful but you
25:00 should be able to do it and that's
25:01 literally what we're kind of shooting
25:03 for so you want to add some pain to the
25:05 mix which will increase your resistance
25:07 to the dopamine system and this is
25:09 something that I think people like David
25:10 goggin has turned this into a lifestyle
25:13 right so he's somehow figured out a way
25:15 to use pain to increase his motivation
25:17 is what I've heard I've never talked to
25:19 the guy and so this is it's actually
25:21 very consistent with our understanding
25:23 of Neuroscience so let's summarize the
25:28 is that the nucleus succumbent
25:30 generates motivation and once it
25:34 motivation that's what we want to do
25:37 right this is what creates our want now
25:40 this is a problem because if we have
25:42 created a want then it's very hard to
25:45 control it and our whole life is a
25:47 struggle about wanting to want different
25:50 things so instead what we're going to do
25:52 since we can't create the wants that we
25:54 want right so you don't get to pick what
25:55 your desires are instead what we're
25:57 going to do is utilize other circuits of
26:00 the brain to weaken the strength of our
26:03 nucleus accumbent to weaken this ability
26:06 of the nucleus accumbent to control our
26:08 behaviors and we're going to use other
26:10 circuits of the brain we're going to use
26:12 amydala because our amydala makes us
26:15 vulnerable to dopamine we're going to
26:17 use our prefrontal cortex and change the
26:21 consciously demonstrate value we're also
26:24 going to use our mu receptor an opioid
26:28 system because if we can add some pain
26:31 into the mix it will change the way that
26:33 we experience pleasure we're also going
26:37 hippocampus to add novelty to the mix
26:40 and so if you have some kind of goal
26:42 that you don't feel motivated to do the
26:44 more novel you can make it the more your
26:46 motivation will increase and lastly
26:49 we're going to be super careful about
26:54 reserves and we're going to remember
26:56 that in order to exhibit sustained
27:00 effort we require dopamine we need lots
27:03 of reserves of dopamine and that the
27:04 more dopamine you have the easier it is
27:07 to release a higher amount of dopamine
27:10 for a less pleasurable activity and the
27:12 biggest mistake that you can make is
27:14 depleting your dopamine at the beginning
27:16 of the day because then what you need is
27:17 you need something very very
27:19 dopaminergic to squeeze the remainder of
27:21 the juice out so the last thing that I
27:22 want to share with y'all is that if we
27:23 look at the brain there's one very
27:25 fundamental principle one part of the
27:27 bra brain cannot control itself so if we
27:29 sort of think about let's say we get
27:31 emotional the part of our brain that
27:32 experiences emotion can't restrain
27:34 itself we need other parts of the brain
27:37 to control our emotional circuitry right
27:40 so we we'll use something like our
27:41 frontal loes and we'll say hey bro you
27:43 need to calm down or hey girl you need
27:44 to calm down I need to take a step back
27:46 I need to take a deep breath that's your
27:47 frontal loes controlling your amygdala
27:49 and your lyic system so then the
27:51 question becomes how do we control our
27:53 very motivational circuitry and the
27:55 problem is that we've gotten so obsessed
27:57 with Will willpower and habits and
27:58 things like that that we've stopped
28:00 looking at the inputs to our
28:02 motivational circuitry and once you
28:04 understand the inputs to your
28:05 motivational circuitry what you will
28:07 discover is that you can control your
28:09 motivational circuitry by using these
28:11 other things so definitely give this a
28:14 shot and let us know how it works for
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