Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Linda Hill
Started reading
August 20, 2023
Perhaps you find it hard to motivate yourself to achieve the goals that you truly desire. Instead of focusing on working toward your goals and ambitions, you get distracted from them and instead, lose yourself in the daily humdrum of life. Perhaps you find it difficult to concentrate and have picked up procrastination habits that are preventing you from getting what you really want out of life.
The more we seek reward-based stimulation, the greater the desire for stimulation becomes.
Important
This leaves our brains in constant overstimulation mode.
This book will also focus on understanding how obsessive and negative thoughts can further instill procrastination habits that ultimately stop you from getting what you want out of life.
what happens to our dopamine levels when we are addicted to something.
dopamine is responsible for motivating our actions in return for a reward.
But technology has designed apps, television series, and games that give us a similar dopamine hit from less emotionally fulfilling tasks. The desire for pleasure is never satiated, and people are left wanting more and more.
Dopamine creates a “call to action” that sends a message to our brain receptors to allow feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. However, it is not actually a pleasure chemical, despite some mistaking it as such.
Important
Dopamine release is not necessarily connected to our pleasure preference either.
Rather, it allows for that pleasure or satisfaction to be felt in the first place. In other words, dopamine is the signal to ou...
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Dopamine is essential for everyday activities. It influences our movement, the type of food and beverages we consume, how we take in information, and our likelihood of experiencing addiction issues.
If the brain does not think that a task is worth the reward, or if the reward feels too far away, then less dopamine is produced and the motivation to complete the task may be more difficult to find.
overstimulation of dopamine can lead to addiction to anything that causes its release. This could be an addiction to food, work, sex, drugs, and alcohol.
the brain has a habit of pushing us to repeat the action to obtain the reward again.
But naturally, as soon as we gain the reward, we are often left feeling empty or dissatisfied.
overstimulation means that you need more external stimuli to receive the same amount of dopamine. This
is the definition of overstimulation and essentially, it’s what can cause addictive habits to form.
When someone consumes an addictive substance over and over again, their brain becomes overstimulated and the reward pathways are disrupted. The brain now needs more external stimuli for the same amount of dopamine to be released.
The desire for drug use is still strong, but now it takes larger quantities of the drug to arrive at the same feeling.
every action first starts as a thought.
Alcohol
Cigarettes
Marijuana, prescription pills, or other drugs
Sex/Pornography
TV apps
Social Media apps
● How do I feel after engaging in this activity a number of times a day? ● How does this habit prevent me from getting what I need done in one day? ● What are changes that I can implement to help me curb this habit?
you will understand 1) the danger of these habits and what they do to the brain, 2) your thoughts around these habits and how to question those thoughts, and 3) tried and tested methods that will help you reset your stimuli
an important truth about dopamine is that the brain is never satiated by the reward it receives. Rather, our brain gets stuck in the habit of seeking stimulation that is outside of ourselves.
Neuroscientists and health practitioners across the world agree that our brain’s cognitive ability actually declines when we multitask.
multitasking leads to procrastination.
What happens when we live like this is that the activities we engage in the most are going to be low-effort, low-action, high-procrastination activities that release dopamine continuously and cause overstimulation.
the instant gratification caused by a task that requires so little effort is the very thing that gets us addicted.
It has been scientifically proven that dopamine has a direct influence on the type of decisions and actions we take.
From an addiction perspective, this is how dependency on drugs begins. When the brain gets used to engaging with drugs or alcohol for dopamine release, then tolerance is heightened so the user can consume more of the same drug without the release of dopamine multiplying. Now, the user needs more of the drug to feel the same amount of dopamine release, causing addiction.
If our brain is used to dopamine hits day in, day out and we are trying to visualize a goal that seems too far away, then there is a big chance that our brain will tell us it’s not worth it.
The thoughts that follow when we are in the habit of engaging in these dopamine-producing activities can be just as damaging.
consider some of the key goals that you are committed to achieving in the next five years.
While you list the required tasks for each goal, define whether each task is a daily, weekly, or ongoing task.
The brain does not know the difference between tasks that are good for us and tasks that feel good to us. Dopamine overstimulation allows the brain to “reward” itself for bad behavior.
Daily boundaries implemented around the things that are causing overstimulation will be an essential step toward freedom.
Obsessive thinking, resistance, fear, and anxiety are all reasons why people don’t go after what they really want in life.
Overstimulation can cause many people to ignore their greater goals and get stuck in a never-ending cycle of reward-based, low-energy, and low-motivation tasks.
Dopamine does not know what is good for us and what is not so good for us. All that dopamine is seeking is the potential for pleasure.
Important
This is why addicts find themselves in hopeless cycles of getting a hit again and again.
you have reflected on one substance in particular that you have felt addicted to. That substance could be alcohol
arrange your schedule so that you have a certain amount of uninterrupted dopamine downtime.
Detoxing from activities on which we mindlessly spend hours each day helps people find their true purpose in life and experience the long-term joy of achieving their goals.
Focus your mind on what the thing that you are craving actually does to your brain and how it usually ends up making you feel.
remove things that cause overstimulation.
