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? Sounds heavy and hard, right? Although you know full well that studying or anything similar benefits you, increases your productivity, and improves your life in the long run, you will always prefer watching TV, playing video games, etc.

The reason here is simple and clear. One of the two activities is easy and does not require much effort or focus, while the other requires commitment and effort. But there are some people who study and others who work on a daily basis easily, and this brings us to the important question: what motivates these people to do difficult work with ease? And is there some way to make doing these tasks easy and familiar?
To answer that, we will touch on some medical and chemical terms and simplify them completely for you.

What is dopamine? What is its role in our lives?

Dopamine is a chemical substance that is naturally produced in the human body. It is also a neurotransmitter, meaning that it sends signals from the brain to the body.
Dopamine plays an important role in controlling human movements, emotions, and responses, which makes it a major factor affecting physical and mental health.
In fact, dopamine affects mood, sleep, and concentration, and its severe deficiency leads to depression… Yes, that’s right! The reason for the lack of dopamine is due to its low level in the body or a defect in the work of nerve receptors in the brain.
Dopamine also controls our desire for things, and that desire is what drives us to do those things. Dopamine is released from two areas:

Substantia nigra region
The dopamine secreted from that area controls the movement of the body, so when that area is affected, this leads to difficulties in movement.
The ventral tectorial region
And the dopamine coming from that region is responsible for the reward, and what is meant by the reward here is to stimulate that region of the brain and give the body a feeling of happiness and satisfaction as a result of doing an activity that we like to do or even when eating delicious food.
And the dopamine coming from the second region will be the focus of our article today.

Leverage experiment, mice, and an experimental test of the dopamine effect

To test the strength and effect of dopamine, some researchers conducted experiments on rats, where electrodes were implanted in their brains, and whenever the rat pulled the lever, the scientists stimulated the release of dopamine in its brain, making it continue to pull the lever more and more for hours until it fell asleep from fatigue.
And when the release of dopamine was stopped in the brains of the mice, they became so lethargic that they didn’t even bother to get a sip of water, and they completely lost the desire for anything. If food is put in their mouths, they will devour it with greed and enjoyment.
You might think that thirst or hunger motivate us to get food or water, but dopamine also plays a role, and as humans, we prioritize based on how much dopamine we get from each activity we do.

What kinds of activities release a lot of dopamine?

Dopamine is released by any activity that provides you with immediate value, gratification, or gratification; however, if you know there will be no immediate return from performing a task, your brain will not release it, and you will find it difficult to complete that task.

Before you eat delicious food, your brain releases dopamine because you expect that food will make you feel good, even if it is unhealthy and late, and you realize the negative effects of that. He just wants more of anything that helps release dopamine.
It’s like a drug addict; he knows what he’s doing is not good, but all he wants is more drugs, plus getting high on them releases abnormal amounts of dopamine, which makes him crave it more.
And in our current time, based on technology such as games and social media platforms, we flood our brains with abnormal amounts of dopamine on a daily basis without realizing it.
But what is the solution? Continue reading, and we will put together a solid three-step plan for you to deal intelligently with your brain to release dopamine in your interest and make you do the important things.

The 3 smart steps to tame your mind and get things done

Step one: Understand how your biological system balances and how this applies to dopamine

Our bodies have a biological system called “homeostasis.” This means that our bodies work to maintain their internal physical and chemical systems at a balanced level, and whenever an imbalance occurs, our body reacts to adapt to 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 and maintain the usual temperature of about 37 degrees Celsius.

But there is another way in which our biological balance works, and it is called tolerance. For example, when there is a person who drinks alcohol only rarely, he falls under the mental influence of alcohol when he drinks a small amount. But if there is a person addicted to alcohol, his body adapts to the large quantities of alcohol that he consumes, and then he does not fall under the mental influence of alcohol except when he consumes larger quantities of alcohol.
And the matter is not much different with dopamine. As your brain gets used on a daily basis to having high levels of dopamine, those levels become your new normal.

Thus, the things that do not produce a lot of dopamine do not interest you yet, and you find it very difficult to implement them, which is the real reason that prevents you from accomplishing your daily tasks of benefit. Understand the idea, because a deep understanding of things is the beginning of the thread to dealing with them intelligently, so let me help you understand what is happening with you. Your mind is accustomed to a high level of dopamine, which is often associated with activities that are not beneficial to you (such as browsing porn sites, watching interesting series and 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, which secrete small amounts of dopamine (such as studying your lessons at the university, starting a course to develop your life, completing your work, exercising, eating healthy food, etc.). Unfortunately, your brain will frequently choose dopamine-releasing activities and will procrastinate in carrying out tasks or engaging in other important activities…This is the source of the problem of low levels of achievement in most people’s lives.

Step Two: Do a dopamine detox

First, you have to do a dopamine detox, or, as it is known, dopamine fasting, i.e., stop the flow of dopamine. To apply this measure, what you will do is designate a day when you avoid all activities that stimulate the release of dopamine in order to stop flooding your brain with large amounts of it and allow the dopamine receptors to recover.
For a whole day, you will try to have as little fun as possible; you will not use the internet, your phone, or your computer; you are not allowed to listen to music or eat any unhealthy food. You will eliminate all sources of pleasure throughout the day.

We mentioned in the first step that your brain is completely overwhelmed with dopamine, and therefore it is unable to accept the performance of activities with low levels of dopamine. He now needs something to reset him so he can savor the low levels of dopamine that are released through beneficial activities (such as eating a healthy meal).

Do you remember the perfume seller who, after you have smelled a number of beautiful perfumes, asks you to smell the coffee in order to help you reset your sense of smell again in order to receive the next scent naturally, even if it is less good or intense than the previous scents? The idea of dopamine fasting is somewhat similar to the idea of smelling coffee after exposure to the crowd of beautiful aromas that I was exposed to in the perfume shop. Of course, on the day of the dopamine detox, you can go for a walk and use that as an opportunity to clear your mind away from the technological influences that are full of harmful brain waves, 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 for a while, or read some useful books.

This may sound like a very extreme measure, but if you are looking for drastic and quick results, then you should be able to take that measure, and if you do not want to take such an extreme measure, you can do the same process in a simpler way. You will choose one day of the week where you will abstain from one of the dopamine-stimulating activities, and every week and for a whole day, you will abstain from this activity… Yes, you will feel a little bored, but that is the point.

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

After you did a dopamine detox, you supposedly reset your brain in terms of dopamine secretion, and you can now feel the small amounts of dopamine that are released as a result of normal activities, such as reading a useful book, completing important work, or eating a healthy but not appetizing meal. Very…etc.
Now you have to use dopamine-stimulating activities moderately and to your advantage, but how? This is what you will discuss in the following points:

Don’t fall back into the cycle of high dopamine addiction, but do everything in moderation.
Use dopamine-sstimulating activities as a reward after completing important and rewarding activities, such as watching an episode of your favorite TV series at the end of a hard day’s work.
Avoid starting your day with any activity that stimulates dopamine, but rather do it at the end of the day or after a period of work, such as 45 minutes of work and 15 minutes of social media, for example.
Completely stop any dopamine-stimulating activity that harms your health, such as smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, an addiction to watching pornographic films, etc.
Try to introduce other activities that are useful and stimulating to release dopamine at the same time, such as playing a sport that you enjoy, watching documentaries, direct communication with friends and family, etc.

At the end of the article, my friend, let me tell you that we are humans and that we do not always do the right thing, and that it is difficult for us to ignore years of wrong ways and habits in our lives. So you have to be aware, understand, and accept that everything healthy and new in our lives takes time to adopt and become a part of our lives, so it’s okay, my friend, to need some time to learn how to deal with dopamine and make it work for you.

The key here is to keep trying, not to give up on the old life, and to always make your goal that today will be better than yesterday, and I believe that by reading this article, something has changed, because knowledge represents a tremendous force for liberation from internal prisons. Now you at least know what’s going on inside your brain that’s keeping you from achieving your goals.

Use dopamine to train your brain to complete difficult tasks