.png)
TRANSCRIPT
Ask yourself this question “ What would my life look like if I had all the motivation, drive and energy to pursue and realize my goals and dreams and never had to deal with that ugly monster called procrastination?
I’m Phillip and you’re tuned into THE DOER PODCAST.
In this episode I want to share with you 3 dopamine-boosting protocols that can absolutely help you be more driven, be more motivated and have more energy to pursue your goals.
I sometimes get asked “Phillip, why do you care so much about optimizing your dopamine system?
Dopamine has everything to do with how motivated and driven you feel right now. It has everything to do with how eager you are to lean into life and pursue your goals.
When it comes to our personal motivation and drive and dealing with procrastination our first line of attack and defense is not psychology but biology, brain chemistry, especially the neurotransmitter dopamine.
Here at THE DOER Podcast we are all about radically ,pursuing and achieving our goals and dreams, but being a radical action taker requires drive, motivation and energy. Dopamine is a crucial part of that.
Before I continue, just a quick shout out to neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman who brought these tools to my attention.
The third protocol is really interesting and a real time tool for quickly getting out of a state of procrastination,
So, let’s take a look at those dopamine boosting protocols. The first one is an NSDR protocol. NSDR stands for Non Sleep Deep Rest. A popular kind of a NSDR protocol is called Yoga Nidra.
Yoga Nidra is a relaxation and meditation technique that promotes physical, mental, and emotional relaxation. It is usually guided by an instructor and requires lying down in a comfortable position while focusing on deep, conscious breathing and body awareness.
The instructor leads participants through a series of guided visualizations and body scans, systematically relaxing each part of the body.
The goal is to put you in a state of complete relaxation while maintaining a level of awareness, similar to the threshold between wakefulness and sleep.
There is science-based evidence that has shown yoga nidra to boost baseline dopamine levels by up to 65%, which is pretty remarkable.
This is a tool that I often use personally, especially when I don’t sleep well. A simple search on YouTube will result in many free-to access guided yoga nidra sessions. I highly recommend checking them out.
The next dopamine boosting protocol is DCE or deliberate cold exposure.Deliberate cold exposure has become very popular over the years due to its many health benefits.
One of those benefits is the positive effect it has on dopamine levels. In a research study that was published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, it was found that after exposure to cold water participants showed an increase in dopamine levels as high as 2.5 times above baseline.
On top of that,this increase was sustained by up to 3 hours, which is pretty amazing. For practical reasons, the easiest way to utilize this tool in your daily life is to take cold showers.
Dr. Andrew Huberman recommends taking a cold shower early in the morning for a duration of 30 seconds to 3 minutes.
He recommends temperatures of about 4-12 degrees Celsius ( 37-55 degrees Fahrenheit), depending on your level of cold tolerance. He also points out that the exact temperature isn’t important.
You need to find a temperature that is uncomfortably cold to you, wanting you to get out, but that you’re confident you can stay in safely. I personally take cold showers almost every morning before I start working.
It’s best to ease into a practice like this, because extreme cold exposure could be harmful so please take care.
In order to help you optimize your dopamine system I have created the DO- Framework / Dopamine Optimization Framework. You can read all about it in this guide, Dopamine Drive which you can download for free from my website: phillipbotha.com I’ll leave a link in the comment section below. Be sure to check it out.
The third protocol I’d like to talk about is what I , due to an actual name for it have named the
Deepen-the-Dip Drill.
This is a tool specifically aimed at getting you out of a procrastination slump faster. It’s a technique that beautifully leverages dopamine dynamics to your advantage.
Dopamine is released in two main ways into our dopamine system. The first one is called the tonic release. This one relates to the baseline level of dopamine which is present in or systems at all times.
The other one is called phasic release which relates to the peaks above and the dips below the baseline level of dopamine. After every peak in dopamine associated with doing something pleasurable there is a dip
This dip after the dopamine peak is proportional to the height of the peak. So, the higher the peak the deeper the dip. This explains why we sometimes feel so down after doing something really great and exciting.
Some years ago I took part in the final of the Taiwan Toastmasters International Speech contest which was amazing, but after the contest for days I felt down and unmotivated for days because of that dip in dopamine being proportional to the peak. We all experience things like that.
Now this dip will eventually return to the baseline, but it takes time and we don’t always have time to wait for these dopamine levels to return to normal.
So as I said the depth of the dip is proportional to the height of that peak but the rate at which one gets out of that dip is also proportional to how steep that dip is.
This is where the “deepen-the-dip drill” becomes a very effective tool. This drill requires you to take action and do something that is going to feel even more “painful” than the current unmotivated state you find yourself in. Please note that when I say “painful” I don’t mean anything that will cause you physical or psychological harm.
Do something that makes this unmotivated state suck even worse in a very short period of time. When you do it you steepen the dip. The effect is that now that the steeper dip can help kick you out of that unmotivated state faster.
So, what are some things that you could do to deepen and steepen that dip. Well, once again this could be a cold bath or shower. Or this could be 10 minutes of high intensity interval training. The secret is to do something that really sucks for you and you feel is hard to do. So this is going to be different for different people.
It doesn’t necessarily mean doing something that is physically tough. For example if meditation is something hard for you to do and you don’t like doing it , that might be an effective activity for you.
So there you have 3 easily accessible dopamine boosting protocols. The one I do most regularly is the cold showers as part of my morning routine and honestly … I love it.
We are not simply at the mercy of our brain chemistry. There are things we can do to leverage our brain chemistry to help us live better, more motivated and driven lives. One such thing is leveraging dopamine dynamics.
I want to encourage you to use the tools I have just shared with you. I always say that if you are serious about living your best life and achieving your goals you will do whatever it takes. (without harming others of course)
Have you tried any of these protocols Let me know what you think about these protocols in the comment section below. I’d love to connect with you there. Until next time …cheers.
Comments