How To Dopamine Detox - 07

Conclusion

Highly stimulating activities make you lose control of your attention and affect your focus over the long term. Society offers so many things that can hijack your dopamine neurotransmitters. It wants you to buy things; the best way to sell them is to steal your attention and say that you are not enough. Becoming who you want to be, building a happy family, or losing weight can often become complicated. When you are overstimulated by short-term gratification, you cannot do the things that bring the most value to you.

Don’t expect fulfillment from short-term pleasure activities. Fulfillment comes from activities that align with your values and goals.

Choose the type of dopamine detox that feels good to you right now and explore your feelings. Your mind is such a magical system that helps you build your life. Exploring it in such an exciting way might bring you results you never thought possible. If you feel restless or want to check your messages on a detox, take notes to identify your state of mind and what you may have been doing that led to that feeling. It will help you understand yourself better.

The world is fighting for your attention, but you must succeed in achieving your aims. Winning the battle for focus is a continuous process; sometimes, you have to start over. You must have power over your environment, not vice versa. After all, your life goes where your focus goes.

Try this

After succumbing to overstimulating activities, take a moment to ask yourself these searching questions:

• Was the benefit from social media or junk food worth my time?

• Has it improved the quality of my life?

• What is the next step to make the situation better?

• What task would make the biggest impact if I completed it?

How To Dopamine Detox - 06

 From outer chaos to inner peace

Let’s focus now on how to deal with overstimulation. A dopamine detox will help you reduce your stimulation level by creating the proper state of mind to perform important or challenging tasks.

You can protect your focus by building habits and systems. ~ Thibaut Meurisse

There are three types of dopamine detox:

1. The 48-hour dopamine detox. It’s about eliminating external stimulators for 48 hours, including caffeine, alcohol, movies, phones, social media, video games, the Internet, and junk food. Instead, you can meditate, walk, journal, read, do yoga, and enjoy nature. It’s also a great time to sleep, eat well, and just exist. Engage in solitude and don’t be afraid to get bored — nothingness is an excellent place for new thoughts and beginnings.

2. The 24-hour dopamine detox. You do the same as the 48-hour detox but for 24 hours. Returning to a natural and peaceful state of mind might take a while, but 24 hours is a great start!

3. The partial dopamine detox. Here, you can eliminate one activity that eats your energy and time. For example, you can limit social media usage or take a break from streaming services.

It may sound scary initially, but if you do your best to follow small steps, your mindset shifts from the unknown to the possible. Let’s take a look at how to begin.

Step 1 — Make a list of “Dos” and “Don’ts” during your detox: What are your greatest distractors? We provided some examples, but listen to what feels right for you.

Step 2 — Implement friction: How can you avoid overstimulation? For example, if you struggle with Instagram, a good idea might be to delete the app and only use it with a browser. Write ideas like this in your list of “Dos” and “Don’ts” next to each activity.

Step 3 — Start your day with a calm morning routine: Another idea might be adding something to your morning routine that deepens your focus. For example, stretch and listen to relaxing music. Planning your day gives you clarity and a feeling of control. Start with it first thing in the morning.

Action: To avoid procrastination, set intentions for your day.

How To Dopamine Detox - 05

 Trick your brain before dopamine stimulants do

You procrastinate not because you are not disciplined enough, not capable, or not deserving of your dreams. You procrastinate because you are overstimulated. How often do you feel calm and focused?

Think about this: You wake up in the morning, check your phone, scroll through social media, make breakfast, and decide to watch a video while you’re eating. You chat with someone, drink another coffee, reply on Instagram, and scroll through stories for 40 minutes. Back to TikTok, send a random email, and do your laundry. You are on a hamster wheel of small tasks that give you a quick dopamine fix. Your essential duties seem uninteresting and dull compared to these tasks. Boom! Welcome to procrastination! You may say that it’s not precisely your pattern of morning procrastination, so think about what your distraction loop looks like.

Action: Learn to find joy in simple and non-stimulating activities.

Here are the top four lies your mind will tell you to trick you into overstimulation:

1. You can return to work anytime. What difference will 10 minutes make? Wait, is that you laughing I hear? The truth is, if you are not in control of your actions, there is a high chance you will lose hours.

2. You can postpone the task for later. But wait, how many goals have you failed to achieve because of delays? There is a risk it will become a habit.

3. Do something else because it’s fun and exciting. Exciting doesn’t mean fulfilling. Both feelings are important but separate concepts; a comfortable balance should exist between them.

4. You will miss opportunities if you don’t check your social media and emails. But possibilities are everywhere; there will always be plenty of new things.

Rate these lies on a scale from 1 to 10 to reflect what keeps you feeling overstimulated.

Productivity consists of three main components: consistency, impact, and focus. Consistency means developing a routine; the impact is choosing what’s most important for you. To be more focused, follow these points:

• Eliminate distractions.

• Practice being at the same place at the same time for work.

• Inspiration and concentration also come from doing, so simply starting the task can help.

• Work without interruptions for a while; you can do 45-minute cycles of work and a 10-15-minute break.

How To Dopamine Detox - 04

Make space for meaningful things

Humans have evolved for millions of years; many of your present behaviors exist because your ancestors believed they were crucial for survival. For example, consuming sugar and fat produces dopamine. In the past, sweet and fatty food helped people survive; it contained energy and provided more calories. So, you must thank evolution for your taste preferences, as those who liked sweet and fatty food had more chances to survive and reproduce. Overstimulation and craving more comes from sugar and fat, as well. So, reflecting on your daily dose is a good idea.

Similarly, social media makes you expect fast feedback through a like, comment, or message. It programs people to desire quick results, which differs from how you reach your long-term goals.

It’s easy to fall for short-term gratification and feel good immediately. But this keeps you from pursuing long-term happiness as you jump from one fleeting pleasure to another, aiming to fill the void of emptiness and unfulfillment as quickly as possible. But the funny thing is sometimes you need that void; you need it to fill up with things that make you truly happy. And when you overload it with junk food or excessive use of social media, you have no desire to pursue your deeper values.

Action: Resist the urge to check for updates and messages constantly. 

You dive into this world filled with success stories and feel insufficient. And when you feel jealous or not enough, the hustle to suppress it with quick dopamine and overstimulation is even greater. Here are the main things you can do in this case:

• Ask yourself, “What feelings do I invite with the activity I am doing now? Do I want it to be this way?”

• Then, ask, “Where is my focus right now? Where do I want to be?”

• Practice patience to help you pursue more meaningful things.

• Get rid of the distractions that leave you feeling restless.

• Develop long-term thinking about your goals. Remove or reduce whatever stands in your way.

"Dopamine and constant stimulation can impair your ability to think long term." ~ Thibaut Meurisse

Did you know? Steve Jobs didn’t allow his kids to use iPhones or iPads because of the underlying dangers and risks of addiction these devices can pose. Bill Gates didn’t give his kids phones until they were 14.

How To Dopamine Detox - 03

Your life is what you focus on

There are dopamine traps you can fall into by seeking constant stimulation. The more you encourage the release of dopamine, the more you crave it again, which can become an addiction. You can get in a loop of constant shopping, Netflix, sex, work, or alcohol, leading to lost focus, low productivity, and no fulfillment. There are many ways to seek short-term rewards or gratification; it’s no surprise they may trick your brain.

Your focus is so valuable that major corporations want it. Amazon, Facebook, and YouTube strive to steal your attention with sophisticated algorithms. You watch one video, and the app recommends another, trying to keep you there as long as possible. But these algorithms don’t have your best interests in mind; they aim to show you advertisements and make you buy things. Tons of notifications scream at you to stop whatever you are doing and give your time to them. That’s how the dopamine neurotransmitters in your brain are hijacked and manipulated.

Adjusting your focus to concentrate on the right things isn’t easy. Yet, when you act on the knowledge you’ll discover in this summary, you’ll be more powerful than those billion-dollar companies.

Whenever a notification pops up, you expect a like or a message from a friend. You check your emails or YouTube, hoping to find something exciting or fun. And then comes overstimulation and loss of focus.

Action: Limit notifications to minimize constant digital interruptions.

Overstimulation happens when you excessively engage in activities that create bursts of pleasure, anticipation, and reward. The feelings you get from it are incredibly fleeting and short-term, and pursuing goals that give you long-term fulfillment doesn’t feel like fun. Why would you strain yourself for a real reward when the world offers you a bonus at this exact second? The problem with short-term rewards is that they leave you as quickly as sand through your fingers. And then you feel empty. Instead, you can dedicate time and energy to building a sandcastle you value so much that you want to nourish it over the long term.

How To Dopamine Detox - 02

Hacking happiness

Your brain is like a city filled with buildings called neurons. These buildings must communicate for you to move, feel, and think. They send messages to each other with chemical substances known as neurotransmitters, which then travel from neuron to neuron, making you feel, know, or do something. Dopamine is one of these neurotransmitters.

Dopamine is not solely responsible for pleasure; its release in response to an event does not necessarily mean it is enjoyable. On the contrary, feeling empty immediately after the reward is common.

Action: Rediscover offline joys, like nature walks, journaling, and art.

Humans seek the stimulation of dopamine through engaging with the world and mistakenly think that this arousal of senses will lead to fulfillment. Remember that day you spent lying in bed, watching Netflix with chocolate crumbs all over the blanket? At times like this, you feel like the world stops, and you need a rest from constantly performing. But how did you feel afterward?

Action: Find balanced, healthy ways to achieve happiness.

Sometimes, being human is tough; you want to hit pause and hide under a warm blanket. We all know these moments, and let’s give them a round of applause for keeping us alive and rested. But constantly escaping reality due to fleeting satisfactions will not fulfill you. It will not make you feel love, connection, belonging, or a sense of purpose. So, take care of yourself by being attentive to your deeper aspirations and desires.

What satisfies you? How does it make you feel? You lose control and focus by pursuing these things for a quick dopamine release. Then, you trade your dreams or time with your loved ones for time-wasting activities like social media. It's a slippery slope of distraction.

Dopamine is an essential element in your evolutionary backpack — whenever you do something beneficial for your survival, it pushes you to repeat it. But society has created new ways to trigger dopamine, and not all of them contribute to our well-being. So, remind all these new dopamine-stimulating inventions who is in command! Don’t miss out on embodying what you value most.

How To Dopamine Detox - 01

Stuck on step one

Have you ever felt strongly about your dreams, but your enthusiasm evaporated when it came to taking action? The gap between wanting and doing can feel too wide to leap, but thankfully, a power player in our brains can help us.

What is dopamine? Dopamine is a neurotransmitter responsible for reward anticipation. It makes you look forward to good things like chocolate or a kiss, and then your brain stores pleasant memories and motivates you to act this way again.

But what if dopamine — your brain’s personal cheerleader — starts juggling too many pom-poms at once? Procrastination and fuzzy focus sneak in if you get lost in the need for immediate entertainment and distractions. And when you perform fewer tasks, you might start thinking less of yourself. Confidence wanes while apathy and despair enter the picture, and before you know it, you end up sidetracked, fussing over the little things and pushing your big dreams to the sidelines.

Sounds familiar? It's a sign you might benefit from a dopamine detox.

A dopamine detox is a period of abstaining from the quick-fix, high-reward behaviors (like incessant smartphone use) that flood our brains with dopamine. The idea is to make us appreciate more meaningful pleasures in life.

Undergoing a dopamine detox also creates time for reflection. When you declutter your mind, you can take a better look inside. That’s a great way to get closer to your wishes and stay on the right path. 

Action: Write down your fears and try to understand what they mean.

Imagine you can create order and peace in your current emotional state. Your level of emotional well-being is invisible, but it’s a mighty bubble that either fills you with energy or weighs you down. Stick around to discover the scientific magic a dopamine detox uses to create a more positive emotional bubble.

Does intuitive eating really work?

It’s the phrase on everyone’s lips – when they’re not chowing down. But is eating what you want when you want it a recipe for wellbeing or a slippery slope?

Those of a Monica Geller-esque nature will argue that well-placed rules make life more fun, but more and more people are shrugging off healthy-eating statutes and choosing to, well, go with the flow. Intuitive eating is based on 10 mindset-changing principles, including ‘rejecting the diet mentality’, ‘honouring hunger’ and ‘making peace with food’. It’s related to mindful eating, which encourages you to increase your awareness of real versus emotional hunger.

Both share the aim of using your body’s in-built regulatory systems (feelings of hunger and fullness) to help you decide what, how much and when to eat, rather than following a diet plan.

It sounds like a sensible way to cut through the nutrition noise. Yet, decades of research have helped us identify the healthiest food choices – should you really ignore the science and just eat what your body tells you it needs? And what if it turns out it ‘needs’ millefeuille for breakfast?

Well, in reality, it probably won’t. Research suggests that restriction-free eating doesn’t necessarily lead to overeating or poor dietary choices. This is thanks to a process known as habituation, the idea that the more you’re exposed to certain foods, the less inviting they become. Plus, being able to discern genuine hunger from the emotional kind means you can make a choice to adopt non-food-related coping strategies, which are arguably more effective in the long term.

In the 1990s, psychologist Jean Kristeller found a six-week mindful eating programme was effective in reducing binge-eating in overweight women. Since then, various studies have confirmed that mindful eating practices can reduce emotional eating and regulate portion size in adults of all weights.

Studies of intuitive eating show similar results – less emotional eating and improved body appreciation and self-esteem. Last year, in a review of 68 studies looking at intuitive or mindful eating, researchers found evidence that it led to a reduction in problematic eating behaviours, with a positive shift in food habits and portion sizes in some cases*.

While the results look good for improving eating behaviours, the outcomes for weight loss are less clear cut. Intuitive eaters tend to have lower BMI scores than those who rely on calorie counting or external cues (like the clock) to decide when and how much to eat, but studies that looked at intuitive or mindful eating for weight loss show varying results. In one six-week study pitting intuitive eating against calorie restriction, the calorie-counters lost significantly more weight – although it’s worth bearing in mind that longer-term studies have shown better outcomes for intuitive eating.

So, should you eat intuitively? Yes, if you’re looking for a way of eating that frees you from the tyranny of chronic dieting and restriction. If weight loss is your goal, gentle education around energy balance (what you’re putting in versus what you’re burning) is useful, too, but tuning into and honouring your body’s hunger and satiety is ultimately the route to a more relaxed relationship with food.

Why do I need to wee so much after having one small drink (#notpregnant)

Is that one small drink an espresso by any chance? ‘Tea, coffee and alcohol are diuretics – this means they make you pass urine in larger volumes and more often,’ explains Dr Daniel Fenton, clinical director at London Doctors Clinic. But your brain is important, too. ‘If you’re anxious, your brain takes over and your bladder can become more sensitive,’ he adds. But if none of the above, see a doctor. It could be a UTI, but this tends to involve pain when passing urine. It could also be an STI, a sign of diabetes (often accompanied by thirst), uterine fibroids (you might also have heavy periods) or, in very rare cases, ovarian cancer. A GP visit should put your mind at ease

Meal prep feels like a waste of a summer Sunday evening – will it really make a difference to my gains?

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: you can’t out-train a bad diet. Yes, meal prepping will save you money – and that’s a bonus. But the reason dietitians love it is because it takes the emotion out of eating. ‘When you’re short on time, like on your lunch break, you’re more likely to make poor choices based on your mood or what’s available,’ says nutritional therapist Sonal Shah.

‘Having a balanced, nutritious meal ready to go is always preferable to grabbing an unhealthy alternative.’ It also helps with maintenance. If time is of the essence because you’ve got better things to do than spend your evening cooking up mountains of chicken, Shah suggests using tins of protein, like beans, chickpeas and lentils, and making three or four dishes from one ingredient.

A bag of sweet potatoes could do you for some spiced wedges, hearty mash and a bowl of soup, for example. And if you really can’t face leaving your Sunday barbecue early to go home and meal prep, might we suggest making the most of the light mornings by getting up an hour earlier on Monday? We’ll pretend we didn’t see that eye-roll.

I smoked cigarettes and weed when I was younger. I haven’t touched either in five years, but will it have damaged my fertility?

If all we’re talking about here is a few puffs on the odd night out and the occasional toke on a joint, you needn’t worry about lasting damage down there. If you lit up regularly, however, it’s a bit murkier. ‘Current cigarette smokers take longer to get pregnant, have increased complications and have lower pregnancy rates after fertility treatments,’ explains Dr Sheeva Talebian, an NYC-based fertility specialist. ‘In women who used to smoke, these same findings are noted, but to a lesser degree,’ she adds. It’s also known that smoking accelerates the rate of egg loss.

Unfortunately, a lack of research means that we don’t know as much about the fertility consequences of cannabis use. ‘I think it’s very likely we’ll find a negative impact similar to that of tobacco, as smoking marijuana exposes you to some of the same toxins,’ says Dr Talebian. ‘Our reproductive organs are exposed to everything we ingest and inhale, so we can’t totally erase the consequences,’ she adds. But don’t self-flagellate: quitting is hard, and by stopping when you did, you’ll have exercised significant damage control. Now keep it up.

What is fascism?

Fascism is nationalism taken to the extreme. In a fascist state there is no free market or capitalistic competition. Everything is owned by the government and everyone works for the benefit of the nation.

So instead of three car companies competing to sell the most cars there is only one car company that makes all the cars for the whole country. That goes for all industries in the country.

It's a little different from socialism in that the focus is on the strength of your particular nation over all others, but the practices within the nation may be similar to socialism.

The Nazis were fascists because they wanted to further their own way of life and conquer Europe to make it all like them. Everyone else be damned.

What Einstein meant when he said, "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

20th century science demonstrated conclusively that space, time, energy and matter all operate in ways that are profoundly counterintuitive to the human mind. Our perceived reality bears little resemblance to the outright weirdness that is the quantum world. We are just monkeys with a mind that evolved to solve monkey problems.

He was referencing the idea that it is impossible to prove that anything exists other than what's in your mind. So, reality can be viewed as only what is in your mind - which can be viewed as an illusion.

Why does it feel better to curl up in a ball when you have a stomach bug?

It seems that lying in the fetal position (curled up in a ball) has some sort of deeply comforting physical and psychological effect on people. Many people who have gone through severe trauma will go into this position. Most people also sleep in some variant of this position - lying on their side with their knees tucked up and body curled forward. People also tend to be comforted by having a thick blanket put on them. For this reason emergency workers have such blankets on hand for victims of trauma.

Even some animals respond to this - blankets are used in rehabilitating orphaned elephants to provide psychological comfort. So one reason that curling up makes you feel better could be psychological comfort.

The other thing is that curling up reduces the tension on your abdominal area. If you lay out all straight or stand up, your abdomen is being pulled taught and increasing the pressure/stimulation to your GI tract. As you probably have experienced even something usually insignificant like a waistband or seatbelt can worsen nausea. So a position that decreases stimulation in that region would help you feel better.

Why do manufacturers always exclude batteries with their products i.e. 'batteries not included?'

• Makes their product cheaper
• Gives the consumers choice about what kind of batteries they want to us
• Safer and easier to ship
• Don't have to worry about the shelf life of the product

In a Democracy, if nobody knows which candidate anyone else voted for, how do we know we can trust the results of an election?

Audit trails and exit polling.

Audit trails allow you to demonstrate that the final tally declared in the end is directly derived from the physical votes cast. This is one of the major arguments against electronic voting: electronic records can be erased and overwritten relatively easily (just look at your hard drive). You can't remove and replace paper ballots without a physical act. The ballots go somewhere, and systematically getting rid of thousands of ballots and replacing them with new ones would be much more difficult to fake than changing digital data.

Now, of course, there exist lots of countries that have exactly this problem. This is common in Africa (Zimbabwe, South Africa, Kenya) and other countries. Iraq claimed Saddam Hussein was elected with 100% of the vote in 2002. In these instances, the fraud is able to be carried out because of the oppressive and essentially autocratic regimes -- everyone knows the fraud is happening, but no one can do anything about it.

But let's assume for a second that a government does systematically change the election results. Even then, in a free country with free press, there exists a check: exit polling. News stations typically poll people as they leave a sample of polling places to see how they voted. these exit polls are how they make their predictions about who won before any votes are even counted. These exit polls are based on interactions directly between the people and the news agency -- the government is not involved. So, if a government did anything more than tilt a close election one way, it would show up as a major departure from the exit polls and prompt an investigation.

The only way for a government to systematically manipulate the results of an election would be to both manipulate the results and manipulate every single news agency reporting on the results. Given the radically different biases of the news agencies, that isn't likely to happen in most civilized countries. It's far, far cheaper and easier to manipulate elections by selectively preventing or encouraging people from voting in the first place.

How/why do old games like Ocarina of Time, a seemingly massive game at the time, manage to only take up 32mb of space, while a simple time waster like candy crush saga takes up 43mb?

A large chunk of a game's size comes from things like textures and audio files. Older games had very small, simple textures if they used them at all. In contrast, newer games tend to use high-resolution images that take dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of megabytes just by themselves.

Likewise, audio in old games was pretty simple. Older systems synthesized sounds, allowing the game to just supply some basic instructions to control them. Now, audio is typically recorded and stored with the game, making the overall size larger.

Why is a Cover Band allowed play gigs and make money, but if they upload those same songs to YouTube and try to monetize them they are breaking copyright laws?

A cover band is not allowed to make recordings of cover songs or even perform them live without paying licensing fees to the original copyright holder. However, in the case of live performance, it's the venue who will pay the fees through a performance rights organization. So if the band is performing at a venue that does its job, then they don't have to worry about the licensing issues.

For recordings (or youtube), they need to pay a standard licensing fee. The copyright holder of the original song can't demand a bigger fee or forbid the use of their song outright, they have to accept the standard licensing fee.

What use are our wisdom teeth to us? And why haven't we evolved to not need them?

The most common theory is that human ancestors ate more plants and needed the extra molars to help grind down the plant material. As human diets changed, we didn't develop as largeand now they aren't quite big enough for wisdom teeth. This makes them a vestigial body part - a part that is no longer really useful for an organism, but has stuck around. We haven't evolved to not have wisdom teeth because the evolution of our jaw happened faster and having the extra wisdom teeth wasn't enough of a disadvantage to our ancestors that those without them were able to pass on their genes significantly more successfully.

Generally, I think the better question for evolution is "why did this evolve?" rather than "why not this?" A lot of times we can't know why something did not evolve because evolution often comes from random mutations so whatever evolutionary trait that happened to pop up is the one we get. However, we can usually make a good guess as to why a particular part of the body was useful.

Why can't we choose to rotate our eyes individually like a chameleon?

The same reason we don't manually control our digestion system: We have no need to.

Deeper explanation: Predators have their eyes both facing forward so they can judge distance (depth perception) when hunting prey. If we want to look left, we can look left. If we want to look right, we can do that too. It doesn't take long for you to look left and right and have an idea of your surroundings. Whilst true that it takes more energy to keep looking left and right, the quality of our vision is better because you have this contant depth perception.

Animals which are hunted from all directions (like fish) have eyes on the sides of their head so they can have a greater arc of vision to see oncoming predators. This requires less energy, but they have no depth perception. Luckily, they don't need it. They don't need to know how close a predator is, they need to know WHERE it is, and swim as fast as possible in the opposite direction.

We're predators. We need to see what's infront of us so we can hunt and navigate more easily.