We all want to feel great. We all want to motivate ourself to do the things that help us in the long run. Our brain is capable of improving our motivation on it’s by rewarding us with the “Feel good” hormone dopamine. When we do certain activity we get a reward from our brain.
If you think about this hormone we all figure out when we receive this hormone. It helps us do the things that are important for us, but it also prevents us from doing them. Our brain plays tricks on us, it rewards us for working out but it also rewards us for achieving rewards in a computergame. It makes it easy to complete levels in a game, but it also makes it harder to achieve real life goals.
Exercise is like an addiction. Once you’re in it, you feel like you body needs it. – Elsa Pataky.
Learning to get to know everything about dopamine helps you to know what you can do for motivation. It also helps to know which things you need to avoid. There are some games which you are drawn to more than others. They are not necessarily the most fun on themselves. They are just games that are created to give the most amount dopamine creation. It will make you feel addicted and make you believe that you enjoy playing it. Just like social media. When opening facebook you end up scrolling through every facebook page, open instagram and check twitter. Social media is made with the same goal of creating dopamine.
However dopamine can also be used to your advantage. Working out is the best example for it. Working out consistenly is difficult. But the more you do it, the more you will be drawn to the great feeling it creates. You can also take even a bigger adventage from the dopamine surge. When working out a lot of people listen to music. However you can also listen to a foreign language while working out. You will link the dopamine surge from working out with listening to the new language. So you can trick yourself into liking the new language. Same things goes for learning the new language with games. Find a language learning game that makes you feel happy. You will look for the good feeling of answering correctly. The better you do, the more you will learn.
Products like alcohol and fast food also provide us with dopamine production. This however are the resources we don’t need in our life. It is better to focus on the positive things that can help us improve our life.