Skip to main content

Wanting and liking dopamine

How integrated of a person are you? There is a simple way to assess this quickly. Write down everything you do in your life and evaluate it based on several criteria:

 

1. I want to do this (wanting): you get dopamine from it, feel attracted and drawn to it, and motivated.

2. I enjoy doing this (liking): you experience immediate pleasure doing it here and now (serotonin-oxytocin-endorphins), savor the action, and enjoy it.

3. It is useful for me to do this (needing): the prefrontal cortex calculates the long-term results, the outcomes of actions (especially long-term) are important to you, they strengthen your resilience, increase your resources, and promote survival (including social actions, since we survive as a group, not as individuals). Does what I do strengthen or weaken me?

4. I am doing (or not doing) this: do I have something important that I am not doing? Are my useful actions a way to avoid essential actions? Am I doing enough to achieve my goals? Why do I continue to do things that are harmful to me?

Integrity is when all four of these conditions coincide and overlap, when you do the optimal amount, you want to do it, you enjoy it, and it strengthens you simultaneously. Problems occur when something is useful to you, but you don’t want to do it, or it is a harmful habit that you want (are drawn to), but that harms you, etc., when different vectors pull you in different directions. Think about how to balance these processes: dopamine for motivation, mindfulness for pleasure, simulating consequences for calculation, etc.

More about this is in my book “Will to Live”.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Give Five: 5 health ideas for a better Life (17)

 1. Oral health. In addition to regular brushing and flossing, pay attention to tongue cleaning and oral probiotics. These simple measures can help improve the oral microbiome, reduce inflammation, and eliminate unpleasant breath. Tongue cleaning can be done with a specialized scraper or a piece of gauze. Oral probiotics for both children and adults should contain at least two well-studied strains: Streptococcus salivarius K12 and M18.    2. Dynamic working postures. Varying your working posture helps prevent fatigue, reduces excessive sitting, and improves overall work efficiency. Sit when maximum concentration is required, stand during calls, information searches, or reading, and lie down when creative thinking is needed.   3. Self-stimulation through thoughts. Escapism is a common procrastination mechanism that involves retreating into thoughts, reflections, or activities to avoid discomfort or artificially elevate mood. To assess whether your thinking is healthy ...
Read more

Breaking the vicious circle

Nobody wants to be sick and weak. Why then do people make many attempts to change and still fail to do so? One of the common reasons is getting into a vicious circle, which over time worsens health and makes breaking out impossible. A vicious circle is like a swamp—the more you try to get out, the stronger it sucks you in. In this case, it is important to understand where it can be broken, and on which link to act. Thoughtless heroic efforts to change at any cost can only worsen the situation.    In medicine, a vicious circle is a situation where the disorder itself becomes a factor that supports the same disorder. Cause and effect are connected: for example, with blood loss, the blood supply worsens, which leads to heart failure, which worsens the blood supply even further. The same goes for our habits. For example, the worse we feel, the less we want to move. The less we move, the worse we feel. Don't wait for a "convenient moment" or "inspiration"—just star...
Read more