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You don’t need much time or money to build a new neural pathway; you need courage and focus, because you must repeat a new behavior for forty-five days whether or not it feels good.
Once you’re safe from immediate threats like hunger, cold, and predators, your brain scans for other potential threats. It’s not easy being a survivor!
By the time you were seven years old, your core circuits were built. Seven may seem young, since a seven-year-old has little insight into its long-term survival needs. But seven years is a long time for a creature in nature to be practically defenseless.
In short, your brain has some quirks: It cares for the survival of your genes as urgently as it cares for your body. It wires itself from early experience, though that’s an imperfect guide to adult survival. This is why our neurochemical ups and downs can be so hard to make sense of.
Dopamine produces the joy of finding things that meet your needs—the “Eureka! I got it!” feeling. Endorphin produces oblivion that masks pain—often called euphoria. Oxytocin produces the feeling of being safe with others—now called bonding. Serotonin produces the feeling of being respected by others—pride.
FOUR HAPPY CHEMICALS Dopamine: the joy of finding what you seek Endorphin: the oblivion that masks pain Oxytocin: the comfort of social alliances Serotonin: the security of social importance
Your inner mammal rewards you with good feelings when you do something good for your survival. Each of the happy chemicals motivates a different type of survival behavior:
Dopamine motivates you to get what you need, even when it takes a lot of effort. Endorphin motivates you to ignore pain, so you can escape from harm when you’re injured. Oxytocin motivates you to trust others, to find safety in companionship. Serotonin motivates you to get respect, which expands your mating opportunities and protects your offspring.
The lion only gets more happy chemicals when she finds more prey, and the elephant only releases them when he sees a way to meet a need. There is no free happy chemical in the state of nature. Good feelings evolved because they get us to do things that promote survival.
Your limbic system needs your cortex to make sense of your pleasure and pain. But your cortex cannot produce happy chemicals. If you want to be happy, you have to get it from your limbic system.
Happy moments in your past connected neurons that are there, ready to spark more happy chemicals the next time you’re in similar circumstances. Unhappy moments in your past connected neurons that are there telling you what to avoid.
Your neurons have difficulty sending electricity down a path you’ve never activated before. Each time a pathway is activated, it fires more easily. Repetition develops a neural trail slowly, the way a dirt path hardens from years of use. So how can you build new pathways? The answer is simple: Feed your brain new experiences again and again. Repetition will build the circuits you want.
Cortisol communicates pain and the expectation of pain. It motivates you to do whatever it takes to make the bad feeling stop.
Your cortisol helps you make course corrections on the path to meeting your needs. Cortisol alerts you when Plan A doesn’t work. When Plan A works, alas, the happy chemicals don’t last. To get more, you have to do more. That is how a brain keeps prodding a body to do what it takes to keep its DNA alive.
You can stop a vicious cycle in one instant. Just resist that “do something” feeling and live with the cortisol.
Waiting gives your brain a chance to activate an alternative. A virtuous circle starts in that moment.
The pain of resisting a habit eases once a new habit forms. You can do that in forty-five days if you repeat a new thought or behavior every day without fail. If you miss a day, start over with Day One. The new choice will not make you happy on Day One, and it may not make you happy on Day Forty. Even on Day Forty-Five, it cannot trigger happy chemicals constantly. But it will invite enough electricity to free you from a vicious cycle.
An ape’s dopamine starts flowing as soon as she sees a fruit she can reach. That’s because her brain built a dopamine pathway when she first tasted fruit. The sugar triggered the message “this meets your needs! Get more of it!” That dopamine surge connected all the neurons active at that moment, which wired her dopamine to turn on when she sees anything similar in the future.
Dopamine is the excitement you feel when you expect a reward. A hungry lion expects a reward when she sees an isolated gazelle. A thirsty elephant expects a reward when he sees signs of a water hole. Dopamine unleashes your reserve tank of energy when you see a way to meet a need. Even when you’re just sitting still, dopamine motivates you to scan a lot of detail to find a pattern that’s somehow relevant to your needs. When you find details that are “just right,” it feels good. Finding the puzzle piece you’re looking for feels good because of dopamine.
Spend time noticing the joy of finding what you seek: In your work In your free time In someone else In surprise rewards you weren’t looking for
“Euphoria” is a common description of the endorphin feeling. But this neurochemical did not evolve for good times. Physical pain is what triggers it. You may have taken a bad fall and got up thinking you were fine, only to discover that you’re seriously injured. That’s the power of endorphin.
If your ancestor broke his leg while hunting, or got worn down by hunger and thirst, the oblivion of endorphin helped him do what it took to save himself.
We are not designed to release endorphin all the time. Exercise can give you a little, but exercising to the point of pain doesn’t promote survival. Laughing and crying trigger internal convulsions that stimulate endorphin, but this road to euphoria is limited too. Fake laughs don’t trigger the internal convulsions, and real laughs only last for seconds. Real cries are painful, and fake cries don’t trigger the physical distress.
Endorphin is an oblivious feeling that masks physical pain. Endorphin allows an injured animal to escape from a predator and save its life. We are designed for survival, not for getting high. Nature’s opiate is only released in short spurts because pain is actually good for you: it tells you not to touch fire or run on a broken leg.
Notice your endorphin at work in a moment when: You were hurt but didn’t realize it for a few minutes You felt good after a big physical exertion You felt good after a belly laugh You felt good after a real cry
When you feel like you can lean on someone, oxytocin creates that feeling. When you trust someone, or enjoy someone’s trust in you, oxytocin is flowing. The pleasure of belonging or safety in numbers is oxytocin too.
When a mammal gives birth, her oxytocin surges. This motivates her to guard the newborn constantly in addition to facilitating labor and lactation. Oxytocin spikes in the newborn brain too, so a young mammal clings to its mother without comprehending the danger of leaving her. When the birth process is over, more oxytocin is stimulated by holding or licking.
Oxytocin is the pleasure of letting down your guard near those you trust. It’s not the conscious decision to trust, but the physical feeling of safety you get from proximity to trusted others.
Humans often leave the herd we grew up in, but our brains still crave oxytocin. Notice the good feeling stimulated by the following opportunities to lower your guard: Someone protects or supports you You protect or support someone The touch of someone you trust The physical proximity of someone you trust
Getting respect feels good because it triggers serotonin. The good feeling motivates you to seek more respect, and that promotes survival.
I am not saying we should dominate the weak. I am saying we should recognize our own evolutionary urge to make social comparisons and come out on top.
Serotonin is the feeling of being important. We see how much others like to feel important, but we hate to see this in ourselves. It helps to know that our brain was naturally selected to seek social dominance, because brains that did so made more copies of their genes. We strive to avoid conflict because aggression can wipe out your genes.
Noticing your mammalian urge for serotonin is a valuable skill. Practice by looking for: Someone you don’t like seeking importance Someone you like seeking importance A moment when you feel respected A moment when you enjoy a competitive edge
Cortisol is your body’s emergency broadcast system. Corticoid hormones are produced by reptiles, amphibians, fish, and even worms, when they encounter survival threats. It creates the feeling humans call “pain.” Pain gets your attention.
When cortisol surges, we call it “fear,” but when cortisol dribbles, we call it “anxiety” or “stress.” These bad feelings tell you that pain will come if you don’t act fast. Your reptile brain can’t say why it released the cortisol. Electricity just flowed down a pathway. When you understand how this happens, you can distinguish more easily between internal alarms and external threats.
Imagine your ancestor watching someone die from eating a poison berry. His cortisol would surge and he would remember that berry forever. Years later, on a day when he was very hungry, he would be able to resist eating that berry. Your ancestor survived because his cortisol circuits endured.
Whatever triggered cortisol in your past built neural pathways that alert you to avoid harm today. You can call it stress, anxiety, fear, or panic depending on the intensity, but cortisol makes you feel like something awful will happen if you don’t do something now. It’s hard to know what turns it on because it’s just electricity flowing down a well-developed chain of neurons.
But when you know it’s an old response to an old threat, you stop seeking evidence to feed it, so the feeling just passes. Explore your threatened feelings and find examples of: A threatened feeling that fits the pattern of your adolescent threats A threatened feeling that fits the pattern of your early childhood threats A threatened feeling that fits the pattern of a parent’s sense of threat A threatened feeling that fits the pattern of threats that bond your social circle
Social isolation is a survival threat in the state of nature. Natural selection created social pain to warn you of a threat to your social bonds the same way that physical pain warns you of a threat to your body.
We do not mirror everything we see in others. Mirror neurons only fire when you watch someone get a reward or face a threat. The firing is much weaker than executing an action yourself. But if you repeatedly watch another person get a reward or face a threat, connections build. You wire yourself to get the reward or avoid the threat in the way that you’ve seen.
You don’t consciously believe you will die without social support, but the neurochemical response to this prospect is surprisingly strong. For example, if your work is criticized at a performance review, you know your survival is not literally threatened, but cortisol makes it feel that way. The alarm tells your cortex to search for threats, and your cortex cooperates by finding some.
Cortisol helps you interpret information, even when you have two good choices. Daily life is filled with choices between the bad feeling of lost opportunity when you stick with the herd and the bad feeling of being isolated and ignored. These bad feelings do not mean the world is bad. They are just a tool.
We humans are born with an unfinished nervous system for a good reason. If we developed fully in utero, our heads would be too big to fit through the birth canal. Instead, we get born premature, with a nervous system that isn’t hooked up.
Social support disappears for reasons a baby doesn’t understand. When a baby feels safe, it ventures out to explore, and pain strikes again in some unexpected way. We must explore beyond the cocoon of social support to wire up our brains, so we experience threat and learn to manage it. No amount of nurturing can protect us from the reality of human vulnerability.
It’s hard to stop your cortisol because your brain is designed to protect you from threats. Your ancestors conquered hunger, cold, and predators because cortisol made them feel bad until they found a way to make it stop. Once your physical needs are met, social threats get your attention.
Notice the habits you use to shift out of distressing thoughts. Consider the consequences of each habit, and decide whether it serves your long-term well-being: Cortisol-stopping habits that hurt me in the long run Cortisol-stopping habits that serve me in the long run
You may say you don’t care about status, but when a high-status person notices you, your happy chemicals soar. Raising your children’s status thrills your mammal brain even more. When your specialness is overlooked, your unhappy chemicals spike, and if your children’s specialness is overlooked, it’s much worse.
We tell ourselves that status doesn’t matter and everyone is equal, but each brain keeps monitoring how it stacks up against others. Expectations build from experience. When your expectations are exceeded, happy chemicals flow. When your expectations are disappointed, it feels like a survival threat, even if you consciously know better. Everyone is sensitive to slights because everyone wants to be special. The urge for specialness might seem annoying in others, but in yourself, it just feels like fairness.
Make a habit of noticing the urge to be special, in yourself and in others. Instead of denying this urge, notice your expectations and the unhappiness you feel when your expectations are disappointed. Although it’s tempting to condemn yourself for these feelings, you can honor the mammalian energy that kept your ancestors alive. Notice examples of: The urge to be special in others The urge to be special in yourself The urge to be special in your ancestors Disappointments in the quest for specialness
You may feel sure that you’re focused on facts and couldn’t possibly be so biased. But your brain actually has ten times more neurons telling your eyes what to look for than it has to take things in randomly. That is, ten times more neurons send information from the cortex to the eyes than from the eyes to the cortex.
