How to motivate your mind to accomplish difficult tasks and beneficial activities

You probably don’t have a problem spending several hours playing video games, or browsing social media platforms on your phone.

But what about half an hour of studying? It looks heavy and difficult, right?

Although you know fully that studying or anything like that benefits you and generate productivity, and improves your life in the long run, you will always prefer to watch TV or play video games and others.

The reason is simple and clear because one of the two activities is easy and does not require much effort and focus, while the other requires commitment and exertion.

But there are some people who do study and others on a daily basis easily, and this brings us to the important question, what motivates them to do difficult work with ease? Is there some way to make these tasks easy and usual?

To answer that, we’ll look at some medical and chemical terms and simplify them for you.

What is Dopamine? What is his role in our lives?

Dopamine is a chemical that is excreted naturally in the human body and is also a neurotransmitter, that is, it sends signals from the brain to the body.

Dopamine plays an important role in controlling human movements, emotions and responses, and this makes it a major factor affecting physical and mental health.

In fact, dopamine affects mood, sleep, and focus, and its severe deficiency leads to depression … Yes, that’s right! The reason for the lack of dopamine is due to a decrease in its level in the body, or the presence of an imbalance in the work of neurotransmitters in the brain.

Dopamine also controls our desire for things, and that desire is what drives us to do those things.

Dopamine is excreted from two regions:

Black matter area

The dopamine secreted from that region controls the movement of the body, and when this area is infected, this causes difficulties in movement.

Abdominal roof region

The dopamine coming from that region is responsible for the reward, and the reward is meant to stimulate that area of the brain, and to give the body a feeling of happiness and contentment as a result of doing an activity we love to do or even when eating delicious food.

The dopamine from the second region will be what we are talking about in this article today.

Leverage and mice experiment and practical test for dopamine effect

To test the strength and impact of dopamine, some researchers conducted experiments in mice. As electrodes were implanted in their brains, and the rat pulled the lever, the scientists stimulated the release of dopamine in its brain, which makes it continue to pull the lever more and more for hours until it sleeps from fatigue.

And when the dopamine secretion was stopped in the brains of rats. The rats became so inactive that they did not even bother to get a sip of water, and they completely lost interest in anything.

Whereas if food is put in their mouths, they will eat it binge and have fun.

You may think that thirst or starvation is what motivates us to get food or water, but dopamine plays an important role in that. In our cases, we humans, we prioritize based on the amount of dopamine that we get from every activity we do.

What kind of activities release a large amount of dopamine?

Any activity that provides you with immediate value or satisfaction releases dopamine, but if you know that there is no immediate return from performing a task, your brain will not release it, and therefore you will find it difficult to do the job.

Before you eat delicious food your brain releases dopamine because you expect that the food will give you a good feeling, even if it is unhealthy food, and you realize the negative effects of that. Your brain just wants more of anything that helps release dopamine.

It’s more like a drug addict, he knows that what he’s doing is not good, but all he wants is to get more drugs, in addition to getting a high percentage of them releasing abnormal amounts of dopamine, which makes him want it more.

And in our current technology-based times like games and social media platforms, we dump our brains with abnormal amounts of dopamine on a daily basis without being conscious of that.

The three smart steps to tame your mind and get the job done

Step 1: Understand how your biological system is balanced and how to apply this to dopamine

Our bodies have a biological system called “equilibrium”. This means that our bodies work to maintain their physical and chemical systems of entry at a balanced level, and whenever an imbalance occurs, our body reacts to coping with this imbalance.

When the weather is cold, our body temperature decreases, and we start to shiver to generate heat and warm the body. When the weather is hot, the body temperature rises and we sweat to lose some of this heat to maintain the usual temperature around 37 degrees Celsius.

But there is another way that our biological balance works, and it is called tolerance or possibility. For example, when a person rarely drinks alcohol, he falls under the mental influence of alcohol when he drinks a small amount.

But if there is a person who is addicted to alcohol, his body adapts to the large quantities of alcohol he consumes, and then he does not fall under the mental influence of alcohol except when he consumes more alcohol.

It does not differ much with dopamine, as your brain gets used daily to the presence of high levels of dopamine, so these levels become your new nature.

Thus, the things that do not produce a lot of dopamine, do not interest you yet and feel very difficult to implement, and this is the real reason that hinders you from accomplishing your daily tasks of interest.

Understand the idea, because a deep understanding of things is the beginning of a thread to deal with it intelligently, so let me help you understand what is happening with you.

Your mind is used to a high level of dopamine, which is often associated with activities that are not beneficial to you, (such as browsing porn sites, watching TV series and interesting movies, browsing social media, playing video games, chatting with friends … etc.).

On the other hand, you want to accomplish many other important tasks in your life that produce small amounts of dopamine (such as remembering your lessons at university, starting a course to develop your life, doing your work, exercising, eating healthy, etc.).

Unfortunately, your mind mostly will choose activities that produce a high level of dopamine, and it will delay the procurement of tasks or other important activities … This is the source of the problem of low levels of achievement in most people’s lives.

Step Two: Conduct a dopamine detox

Initially, you should perform dopamine detox, or as it is known as dopamine fasting, that is, stopping the flow of dopamine.

To implement this procedure, what you will do is dedicate a day when you avoid all the stimulating activities of dopamine secretion, in order to stop dumping your brain in large quantities of it and allow the dopamine receptors to recover.

For a whole day, you will try to have the least possible fun, you will not use the Internet, your phone or your computer, and you are not allowed to listen to music, or eat any unhealthy food … You will get rid of all sources of pleasure throughout the day.

In our first step, we mentioned that your brain is completely submerged in dopamine, and therefore is unable to accept the performance of activities with low levels of dopamine.

Now he needs something to help him make a reset in order to taste the low levels of dopamine produced through activities of interest (such as eating a healthy meal).

Do you remember the perfume seller who after smelling a number of beautiful perfumes … asking you to smell coffee in order to help you reset the sense of smell again in order to receive the next smell naturally, even if it was less quality or intense than previous smells.

The idea of ​​dopamine fasting is somewhat similar to the idea of ​​smelling coffee after experiencing the crowds of the beautiful scents that it was exposed to in the perfume shop.

Of course on Detox Dopamine Day you can go for a walk, and make that an opportunity to clear your mind away from the technological influences full of harmful waves to the brain, and you can think about your life, your goals, and what you intend to do.

Or you can visit some friends or relatives you haven’t been able to meet in a while, or read some useful books.

This may seem a very extreme measure, but if you are seeking radical and rapid results, you must be able to take that measure, and if you do not want to take such an extreme measure, you can do the same process simpler.

You will choose one of the days of the week, as you will refrain from one of the stimulating activities of dopamine, and every week for a whole day you will refrain from this activity … yes, you will feel a little bored, but this is the bottom line.

Step Three: Use dopamine in moderation and the way that works for you

After you have done dopamine detox, it is assumed that you have made a reset of your brain with regard to the secretion of dopamine, and you can now feel the small dopamine levels that are produced as a result of normal activities, such as reading a useful book, doing an important job, or eating a healthy but not delicious meal.

Now you should use moderately high stimulating activities for dopamine in your favor but how? This is what we will discuss in the following points:

• Never go back to the high dopamine addiction cycle, but do it all in moderation.
• Use high-stimulating activities for dopamine as a reward after accomplishing important and beneficial activities, such as watching an episode of your favorite TV series at the end of a hard day’s work.
• Avoid starting your day at all with any dopamine-stimulating activity, rather make it at the end of the day, or after a work period, such as 45 minutes of work and 15 minutes of social media, for example.
• Completely stop any dopamine stimulating activity that is harmful to your health such as smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, porn addiction, etc.
• Try to include other activities that are useful and stimulating for the release of dopamine at the same time such as practicing a sport you enjoy, watching documentaries, live direct communication with friends and family … etc
• At the end of the article, my friend, let me tell you that we are human and that we do not always do the right thing, and it is difficult for us to ignore years of wrong ways and habits in our lives.
• So you need to be aware, understand and accept that everything healthy and new in our life needs time to adapt and become part of our life, there is nothing wrong for my friend that you need some time to learn how to deal with dopamine and make it work for you.
• Al-Faisal here is to keep trying, not to give in to old life, and always make your goal is that today will be better than yesterday, and I think that by reading this article, there is something that has changed because knowledge represents an enormous force for liberation from internal prisons.

Time Management Tips 2020 (Work less and play more)

How to get traffic to your website for free: 14 methods

How to generate traffic to your website

How to make money online from Youtube

Now you at least know what is happening in your brain and prevent you from achieving your goals.

Thanks for reading
BrainFood+ Team.