HOW TO GET DOPAMINE

This is a very short but, in my view, important article. It will help you not get lost in the flow of everyday life and sometimes even highlight the moments where you took a wrong turn and show how to get out. There are many books explaining what dopamine is and how it works. But I want to share my own view, through the experience I have lived, on this topic.

Backstory of the article. In 2018, I was in crunch from developing the brand; there was a catastrophic lack of money, the amount of work that needed to be done was enormous, yet I saw how everyone around me was traveling, going to popular places abroad, and all of YouTube was filled with happy faces. I was up to my ears in work, strategically understood that if I didn’t bring the brand to rebranding, everything would collapse, but it also couldn’t keep going the way it was. Gradually and steadily, I was sinking into a cortisol pit. I realized reforms were needed. And then the decision was made to study the nature of dopamine: I bought a decent number of books, read them, and developed my own approach. The result exceeded all my expectations.

“A child who laughs because his dad is making faces gets the very same dopamine, and it dissolves in the blood at the very same speed as if you had bought yourself a yacht.”
– Zinenko Nazar

Three types of dopamine — and not all of them are equally beneficial.
In my opinion, dopamine can be conditionally divided into three types:

• Positive
• Negative
• Neutral

Each of them can bring a sense of happiness — but with a different price and a different approach. Some of them, despite short-term pleasure, can be dangerous in the long term.

1. POSITIVE DOPAMINE

This is the basic dopamine that has been with us since we first appeared as a species. It is a kind of “default setting” embedded by nature for survival and development. To get it, you need to work a little, and pleasure does not come immediately, but it dissolves in the body for a very long time.

It includes:

1.1 Communication

Communication is the foundation, because for humans as a species it is critically important to create connections. Nature has provided dopamine reinforcement for this — it’s pleasant for us to share experiences, laugh, and discuss. Sometimes you keep something inside, and it weighs you down, but it’s enough to simply talk with another person and that state passes. Do not close yourself off; it can be deadly.

Communication is not only words — it is also written form and even silent co-presence.

How to get it: Read books, become a master of your craft, run a blog on social networks, take up some sport, fill yourself up — and people will be drawn to you, or just get a pet. Communication is also a kind of commerce you can “trade” in; the main thing is not to exchange euros for hryvnias at a one-to-one rate.

1.2 Love

It is the fuel that will help you move mountains. The question: what is the meaning of the very meaning of life? If X + X = 2X, then the conclusion is that in life it must go on; therefore love, in the psychological and physical sense, has the most important and sacred character, and it can generate a colossal amount of pure energy inside a person. Love is the gift of life.

Even the universe, in all its vastness and grandeur, is a being that longs for its other half in another world and is forced to expand in search of it. Hmm, how much energy is needed for this desire — an excellent source.

How to get it: Love yourself and the people around you, and the mirror effect will definitely work. But don’t forget: you cannot reach something great by a dirty path.

1.3 Discovery

You cannot sit still; life is movement forward both in the physical and in the psychological sense. Variety gives life sharpness; new streets, villages, cities, knowledge, smells, ideas — everything that is discovered for the first time triggers a surge of dopamine. But discovery also implies calculation, that is, vigorous mental activity, after which a person realizes that they are ready to share their thoughts and ideas with the world and receive a reward for it. But don’t forget: when the sparks fade, discipline takes their place, and it is discipline that delivers results. Learn not only to indulge yourself with variety, but also to dig deep.

How to get it: Start small — with what interests you and what you’ve long wanted to try — and then scale up. All great things start small.

1.4 Food

Up to 30% of life’s dopamine we get through food. But not just through satiety — through the mindful pleasure of taste, texture, and combinations. The earlier you become a gourmet — a connoisseur, not just a consumer — the faster the path will open to true culture and refined perception.

How to get it: You need to retune your values in food, bet not on quantity but on the pursuit of variety and quality. Develop a taste for life.

1.5 Contemplation

Set aside time to “render” your bright and successful future. Work through every element, write down a plan, buy some symbolic objects, watch themed films, read specialized literature. This works at the quantum level. In your consciousness you create an object, and the longer you focus on it, the more it takes shape, and then gravity comes into play and begins to attract other elements you need. And then the magic happens: what you visualized comes to you. The main thing is to be realistic and dream of the impossible — but within the laws of physics.

How to get it: Learn to silence the flow of endless thoughts that replace one another; at first it will be hard, but after a while you will see the result yourself.

NEGATIVE DOPAMINE

This is also basic dopamine, but its key task is the opposite: it is needed to pull us out of the loop of repetition and prompt us to move on. It is a kind of bell for the consciousness through the body that signals that something is going wrong. If you feel the pain of standing still or sliding downward instead of the pain of moving forward — congratulations, you’re in negative dopamine.

It includes:

1. The Past

It’s easy to fall into this trap at any age. Then life turns into a nightmare, like in a dream: you want to run away but can’t — you have no strength, and everything repeats in a loop. The problem is that in your mind you create a point — filled with happiness, significance, emotions, but which are in the past — and you turn it into a “magnet.” You reach for it, hoping to return that state. But the more you strive, the further it gets from you. This creates the illusion of moving forward, while in fact you are standing still, and the abyss behind you is getting closer. You find more and more excuses and explanations for why this is so and why it is normal, becoming completely entangled in lies. And the harder you reach for it, the more it will move away from you, creating the impression of moving forward and thereby generating even greater tension in the present because you cannot get what you want.

You need to understand that the past, in the present, is often ugly, but it is beautiful if it is constant: you don’t notice changes because imagination overlays the mask of the first vivid impression. The past is important, but the main thing is the future.

What will help: books; you need to “rewrite” yourself and learn to live in the present, go into novelty; your motto — “New worlds, new victories.”

2. Fear

Fear can also bring pleasure. It works like this: when encountering a new situation, relying on past experience or stories heard, you create a scenario in your head where you inevitably lose, take damage, or die — and as a result you don’t act but feel fear and retreat. And we remember the law: we get what we want and what we fear.
The brain takes the order and rewards you — this is how dependence is formed: you avoid risk, fights, defeats — and slowly lose predatory instincts, receiving in return a comfort zone, a golden cage. By the way, the difference between a predator and a herbivore is that a predator lives all his life in fear that he will expend so much strength that he will no longer be able to hunt and will die of hunger; in the end, that’s how he dies closer to old age, simply closing his eyes. A herbivore lives all its life in fear of being eaten; thus, in old age, torn apart by predators, in terrible pain, it dies, having no strength to escape.

What will help: learn to love pain; a motto older than me — “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

3. Chemistry

This is a modern source of dopamine that appeared about 250 years ago — with the development of pharmacology, drugs, and synthetic stimulants.
The types of chemical “joys and stimulants” can be listed at length, but the essence is simple: it is a powerful, artificial lever for activating dopamine. Fast, but destructive. Chemistry distorts perception and takes you away from the real path, although at first it can increase your learnability and create the false impression that it will last forever. At some point you can use it as a strategic advantage in a competitive environment where everyone wants to win, but remember all the great people of the past who managed to pull their goal with intellect and character alone.

What will help: in the long term, chemistry breaks your energy system; you need a complete transition into the positive dopamine zone and to “train” your brain the old, reliable way. In the international labor market, brains have always been worth more than brute force.

4. Excess

Any lack of moderation is harmful. It makes you vulnerable, forming strong neural chains of habit that intensify each time.

At some point your own strength may not be enough to break out of this vicious circle. You need to track your habits that do not evolve and constantly repeat without bringing anything new. Any mechanical or mental repetition turns into dopamine masturbation — a process without development in which the law of accumulated tension operates. Sooner or later this leads to internal wear and breakdown. If you want to grow, enjoy your path, and stay alive, you need to widen the flow of your life’s river to a turbulent state: new rivers, new directions, and new skills must flow into it — and there is no other way; your end point is to become an ocean.

What will help: you will never be satisfied by what you are dependent on, but hunger heals.

5. Loneliness

The feeling of loneliness can be unpleasant, but it is not always harmful. It can be used for personal growth, concentration, even enlightenment.

However, loneliness has a law: accumulating tension. If it is not discharged, it will, over time, lead to internal breakdown. Fruitful loneliness is possible — but only if it is conscious and temporary.

What will help: team sports, but stop playing on the console.

NEUTRAL DOPAMINE

This is the type of dopamine that can be positive or negative. It all rests on the original source of your desire that motivates the first action on the path to it.

It includes:

1. Adrenaline

It is insidious and dangerous: you can get it by practicing an extreme sport or traveling to new, unexplored places, or you can get it by playing at the Majik Monkey casino, hoping for three bananas in a row. Or you can get trapped in digital adrenaline, where you score frags for online kills of your opponents; you can spend years in that world, but you won’t find life there. It’s important that the virtual does not replace the real.

2. Control

Whoever tastes it once will not be able to get off it; people are capable of many foolish things just to avoid losing control. Here it is important not to become a tyrant. Strive for balance and a bright heart.

EPILOGUE

We often look back and think we were happier then. But over time we realize that even in those moments when it seemed we were unhappy, there was actually a lot of happiness. We simply did not notice it because of the noise of thoughts. When you learn to live “here and now,” turning off the flow of anxious reflections and focusing on bodily sensations, you begin to feel something greater. Like the cosmic microwave background — the remnant of the explosion of life — penetrating you, expanding the universe, and creating time itself. This is the flow of happiness in which everything is in constant change.

In sum. The brain has three key bugs: it distorts, it fills in, and it shifts.
We track them and remain in a constant state of learning, because to learn means to change. You need to reinvent yourself all the time, develop sexuality, work on endurance, and raise your pain threshold. And then the whole world will be at your feet.
And our next topic will be the “energy system.”

Author of the article:
Nazar Eduardovych Zinenko,
CEO of Scissor Hands™