How Overstimulation Is DESTROYING Your Vibration...
Aaron Doughty explains how phone and social media overstimulate dopamine, making normal activities feel unrewarding and triggering anxiety and burnout. He outlines a dopamine detox: no phone for the first three hours after waking, one phone-free day weekly, and timed work blocks with scheduled breaks to restore focus and creative output.
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Overstimulation and being in your phone too much is literally destroying your vibration. It's destroying your emotions. It's causing you to feel more lonely, to feel more lost, to feel more anxiety. It keeps your energy scattered and it keeps you stuck. In this video, I'm gonna show you how overstimulating yourself is completely blocking you from manifesting what you want, from elevating your emotional level of consciousness, and from really taking your power back so that you can be who you came here to be. And I'm gonna show you exactly what to do instead, what I'm doing, what has completely transformed my life, and what will do the same for you. Now, first things first, if you're watching this video, then maybe deep down you know that you might be in your phone just a little bit too much, that after a little bit of time on TikTok or on Instagram or on social media, you feel your energy to be more scattered. You feel like there is a knowing within you that this isn't good for you, but yet there's still a desire to keep that energy going. Now, in my own life, I'm making this video literally because it's one of the things that has completely transformed it. This isn't something that normally I put on YouTube and it's like this great, you know, this great keyword thing that's just gonna get so many clicks and so many people to watch. I'm literally making this because I know it's what many people need, but maybe don't wanna believe that they need. And it will completely transform everything about you if you apply it. Now, first off, let me share with you a little bit about where I was and a little bit of where I am and how it's made such a huge difference. Now, first off, about 2 months ago, I went through a breakup. After that breakup, I went through like a month of processing, of releasing, the emotion, the energy, processing the breakup in general. And after I got through that, there was this, I guess this desire or this energy to where I just started going into my phone more and more and more. I'd either be on Instagram, I'd be on maybe some type of dating app or something like that. And it was like a constant. I noticed that the more I would go in there, the more that it was like I would pattern myself to almost wanting or needing or even just being in the habit habit of checking up on things more consistently. Now fast forward to me being in this also space to where I felt like a demotivation to make YouTube videos. I felt a demotivation just in general. I felt like, what's the point of making all these videos? What's the point of even working as much as I used to? I felt just really demotivated and kind of lost, not knowing really what to do in my business. Not knowing where to put my energy, feeling kind of burnt out on YouTube. And this then was something that I just kind of assumed like, oh, maybe I'm just like YouTube videos, I'm just kind of tired of making YouTube videos and I'm tired of all this other stuff and I just don't have this kind of energy. And there was even a moment where I kind of felt depressed. My whole entire life, I never really related when people would say they felt depressed or they felt like, what's the point? I never really related to that. I would hear that, I'd be like, I don't know what you mean. I have so much energy. There's so much cool stuff in the world. What are you talking about? And I just kind of like brushed it off. And these last like 2 months, it's allowed me to really go into myself and also to feel some of that depression, to feel some of that like, whoa, what is this? Like, what is the point of me making YouTube videos? What is the point of me even like making money? Like I've made enough abundance in my life. And it's like, why do I keep needing more and more and more? And there was this emotion of like meaninglessness almost. And that led to me kind of feeling stuck. And even then there were times where I would just, I wasn't even, I was kind of aware that I'm going into my phone a lot, but I would like go into my phone so often and I would be like watching something. At the end of the day, I might watch something on Netflix or HBO. Maybe it was House of Dragons. I'm watching House of Dragons I'm inside my phone texting somebody, I'm checking up on something else, I'm looking at Instagram, I'm literally like isolating between these 5 apps, these 5 things while I'm watching House of the Dragon. And then I'm wondering, why don't I have energy to make videos? Why do I not feel like doing these different things in my business? Why don't I read as much as I used to? What is going on here? And then it started to leak into my sleep as well. There were days where it would be hard for me to sleep at night and I'm like, what is this? And part of that I thought was the breakup 'cause I went through that breakup and maybe it's like my body's adjusting to this transition, this change. So I thought maybe that's just what it was. And maybe some of that was that, you know, I was processing a lot at the time. However, I was then looking at what are my patterns of like before I even go to bed? One of the biggest game changers for my sleep was wearing blue blockers and turning the lights off lights down in the house. That was a huge difference, I will say that. However, I would still be in my phone. I would still be watching something, doing something on my phone and doing like 4 things at once at night. And I was like realizing that there were nights where it was very hard for me to sleep and I'd get so angry that I couldn't sleep because I know how important it is for just like my energy and everything. And then it all came to a peak when one night, I literally slept for like an hour and a half. I slept for like an hour, 52 minutes, and then like an hour and a half. Like 8 hours later, and I laid in bed just tossing and turning. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't sleep. And then it hit me. There was the next day, I was actually synchronistically hanging out with some buddies of mine that were in town. And my buddy Miles was like, listen, like, not listen, he just was explaining to me like, what books are you reading? "Hey Aaron, what audiobooks are you reading?" And he told me about this one book that was called "Stolen Focus." It's a book called "Stolen Focus." And basically it's all about how the way society is set up and how everything is set up is like we live in a generation now to where our energy and everything that we focus on is being completely stolen by these other agendas, by these underweight, these people that may have an agenda for us to feed their purpose, to feed what they want us to look at. And I started to really understand like just how often throughout the day I have been like patterned into these apps and these other things. And even here's the crazy thing, think about this. When we talk about China, think about China and TikTok. China owns TikTok. There's like some crazy terms of service on TikTok when you sign up for it, where they like have all your data, like everything on your phone or something. I remember Joe Rogan reading it on his podcast and it was mind-blowing the amount of power we give up just to use TikTok. And think about people, I've seen and heard of people that can be on TikTok for like 8 hours a day scrolling, 8 seconds, 8 seconds, 3 seconds, 2 seconds, just constantly shifting attention, shifting attention, shifting attention. And think about what that does to your dopamine levels. Your dopamine levels are connected to motivation, the reward centers, the reward molecule, and the anticipation molecule inside your body. And imagine what's happening is when you're on TikTok, you're getting rewarded, rewarded, rewarded, payoff, payoff, payoff, and you just keep staying there because you keep feeling this like dopamine. And what happens is you end up getting so stimulated and overstimulated that it keeps you addicted to doing it. So here's the interesting thing though, In China, if you were on TikTok in China, do you wanna know what you would see? You would see things of kids achieving things. You would see exactly what China wants Chinese people to get good at. Not just like BS prank videos, people like pranking people in public in like grocery stores, people doing crazy things in public or, like starting fights, like that doesn't, you can't even find that if you're in China. They got like firewalls and stuff. And basically what China's doing in China with TikTok is they're kind of like priming the kids and the people that are watching TikTok to like get better, to get smarter. There's like educational stuff. Why? Because there is an agenda there. I know this sounds like conspiracy and it sounds kind of weird, but there's like an agenda there. For Chinese people to grow and for everybody else everywhere else, not only to have their data, but that so that they get more and more scattered so they're more and more powerless. They're more and more like, they're more and more in a dumb state of consciousness. So even think about it, when these apps, these video games make this technology, they literally have people that are focused on how to get people to get addicted to it as long as possible. One of the major things that they did in Instagram is just realizing if you add this little heart, you then, you identify as this external part of you. You of course put the best part of you on social media, on Instagram, and then people can like it. You get that validation, you get the dopamine hit, and you're like, "Ooh, I want more likes, more likes, more likes." Then you go on Facebook and the same thing, likes, likes, likes. And there's this constant desire for more validation or more approval or to shift your attention more and more. That's lit. It sounds like a cool thing maybe, like you could see who likes your photos and stuff, but there's actually a psychological trick behind that to keep you addicted to doing it, to keep you entrained and to keep doing it. And there are people that are like psychologists that get paid to help video games find out how to keep people with the hook on the carrot at the end of the stick, how to keep you on the app. And I believe that in a way, the more you can, the more people are overstimulated, the more powerless they are and the more they question things because they're in a numb state of consciousness. Now, when I realized this for myself, I felt lost, I felt somewhat lonely, I felt somewhat depressed and anxiety and I wasn't sleeping at night. Here's what happened when all I did is I switched one thing. I stopped watching, I stopped being on my phone and doing many things at once. And even last, like last night, what I did is I didn't watch television. You wanna know what I did? I read, I read a book. I read that book, "Stolen Focus." That's why I'm making this video today as well, is like it's kind of fresh in my mind. But the thing is, is if you're always stimulating your brain for more stimulation, more stimulation, more stimulation, What ends up happening is when you go to do something that's a low dopamine reward, you won't even wanna do it. It's like you go every single night, you go out to the most stimulating restaurants, you eat stimulated fatty foods, you eat maybe processed foods, a lot of processed sugar in it, and you feel so stimulated that then if you were to go to eating something that's like healthy, maybe like whole foods or, like organic meat and vegetables, or I don't know, something like that, you'd be like, "Ew, why? That's not gonna stimulate my taste buds enough. I don't want that." Because you're so overstimulated with the other things. Well, in the same way, it's like TikTok, boom, machine gun dopamine in my body. This feels so good, this feels so good. I'm getting rewarded for doing nothing, but I'm getting rewarded, so I'm just gonna keep doing it. And then it's like, "Hey, you wanna go read a book?" You're like, "No." "Wanna go work on your business?" "No." Why? Because there's no immediate payoff from that. It takes time. It takes energy you put into it to where then you get the payoff later. And the whole thing with dopamine is the dopamine is the molecule in the body that's related to desire, to like wanting. And you know, you hear like Tony Robbins and Les Brown, like, "You gotta be hungry." That's like you gotta have your dopamine focused on the things that you want. And one of the most powerful ways to really do that in a healthy way is to actually take away the dopamine that's going through all the BS things. In that book, "Stolen Focus," one interesting thing that he does is like the author realizes just how society is so addicted to all this stuff. So he like takes it, he buys like the most basic phone you can possibly buy, which is like a really crappy phone, which is actually very hard for him to find a phone without a screen on it. Basically, it's just a phone to where it will call a hospital if you fall. And he gets this phone and then he goes off to where he's around nothing really stimulating. He doesn't like watch television, he doesn't get on his phone and social media or anything. And he notices just how he feels and like how his energy changes. The first night he did this, his sleep was incredible. So last night, you know, a few nights ago I had trouble sleeping. Last night I slept for like 9 hours straight, better than I've ever slept. What did I do? I did not for like 4 hours before going to bed, I just read a very low dopamine but like beneficial 'cause I'm like learning things thing. And normally I would overstimulate the crap outta myself before bed. I didn't do that. I read, I wind down at the end of the night. I turned, I actually turned off my wifi. Even right at this moment, my wifi is not on in my house. I have not checked my phone since I've been up and I've been up for like 3 hours now. I haven't even checked my phone. That's rare for me. I normally get up, I meditate, I take a cold shower, then I check my phone, then I'm getting back to my team, then I'm getting back to other people, then I'm checking on Instagram. And it's so easy for me to rationalize because I do social media for a living. I have an Instagram with like 400,000 followers, I have a YouTube with a million followers. Like I've realized how overstimulated I've been with trying to get these YouTube plaques and all of this stuff. Like, ooh, it was something that was like a carrot on a stick that like motivated me for so long. But I'm realizing now that it's come at the expense of my own attention, my own energy, and honestly my own creativity. On YouTube, I felt like, man, I'm just repeating the same thing in so many videos. I'd see comments of people saying that and I'm like, well, I'd like defend it and be like, well, I make it, I've made 1,800 videos on YouTube over 5 years. Of course, many of them are gonna overlap. And of course I'm gonna tell my story many different ways and stuff like that. But part of that I think is just this hamster wheel that I feel on. It's this lack of creativity because I literally had been overstimulating myself with social media, overstimulating myself with like Netflix and these other things that I do, and even doing like 3 or 4 things at once. But when I stopped doing that, I stopped focusing on social media and I took and I kind of like went through a dopamine detox, all my creative energy came back to me. Now what they've proven when it comes to a flow state is when you're in a flow state, there's a book called "Flow." I never can know, it's Mihaly or Mihaly or whatever the guy's name is that like is the profound researcher of all of these things of the flow state. But basically anything great in life to manifest, to create, it takes focus. It takes focus and flow, getting into a flow state. When you are in a flow state, you're in alignment with like what you're doing, you're present to the moment, you literally feel like time flies by. And here's the thing, the more you get into that flow state, the easier it is for you to get in that flow state repetitively. And then what ends up happening is over time, it's like easier for you to focus in that state. And then you're more aware of when your mind goes to different things. It's just that our mind has been so programmed to constantly be switching between 8 different things that it's hard for us to focus for a certain period of time on one thing. Here was the interesting thing, and here's also an interesting point to remember. If you are working in a flow state and your phone goes off and you check your phone, if you check your phone for 1 minute, it's not just 1 minute of wasted time because it may take you 5 to 10 minutes to get back into your flow state. So for every, like, let's say throughout the day, I think there was a study in that book and it says something about like, On average, it's not like that somebody gets interrupted from text messages or from other people or whatever, you know, 2 or 3 hours out of the day. That's actually like 7 or 8 hours of flow state time that's wasted because of all how it accumulates and how it takes you time to actually get back into a flow state. So imagine it's like I normally, back in the day when it was really simple on YouTube, what I would do is I would focus on YouTube and I would make a YouTube video and that was kind of it. I'd make a YouTube video, that was my creative energy for the day. It'd get edited and go up. And when I was only focused on YouTube, that's when YouTube did the best for me because I had my most creative energy inside of it. Well, then what happens, and this happens for a lot of people that start to like grow things, then things begin a little bit more complex. Then I hire a team. Now I have different things going on to where I have courses, I have 21-day challenges, I have my YouTube channel, I have these other events going on. I can do the plant medicine retreats in Costa Rica, 2 or 3 times a year. And with all these different things going on now, it's like my focus is going towards many things. It's hard for me just to focus on YouTube now. So the interesting thing with this, and when you hear someone like MrBeast, for example, who's the number 1 YouTuber, over 100 million followers, he is so passionate about one thing. He says it in every interview. I just wanna make the best videos possible. I just wanna make the best videos possible. I just wanna make the best videos possible. I just wanna make the best videos possible. That's all. He just wants to make the best videos possible. Possible. That's his one focus. Now, part of what he does though is he knows how to like hook you in with dopamine to get you to watch his videos for retention and everything. But nonetheless, in his own creative flow state, that's all he wants is to create the best videos possible. And that's why he's the best at it in the world because that's his one focus. So getting into a flow state is a very key part of you not only not aging and time flying by and you actually loving what you do, but when you're in a flow state, there's a spirit that flows through it. Through you. There's a heart activation that flows through you that then leads to you actually manifesting what you want because it directly affects your vibration. Your vibration is a combination of how you think, feel, and act. And what happens is if these three things are scattered between 20 different things, guess what ends up happening? Your energy is being scattered and you don't have the energy to actually put a specific direction. For me to create my dream life, it required me to completely commit to YouTube. I committed to being a YouTuber. I literally made videos every single day on YouTube no matter what, even though I had a 9-to-5 job at the time. And then eventually that became my dominant reality because that was my focus. Now what happens with dopamine, the reward molecule and the anticipation molecule in the body, is when we are on social media, Netflix, et cetera, we're spiking dopamine. It's literally rewarding us with stimulation. And then anything that gets rewarded, you wanna do more and more of. Now the thing is, is when you then also keep raising the bar of stimulation, you keep wanting more and more and more of it. So no longer is it enough for you to just do like 10 minutes on Instagram. It's like, well, now there's TikTok. Whoa, you get blasted with more dopamine, you feel more dopamine, and then you want more and more and more of it. So the challenge with this and the thing to become aware of is how to moderate your dopamine, to put it towards reward, in a way to reward yourself for being on your purpose, for being on your mission, for being in alignment. So for example, I haven't checked my phone or anything today. I'm making this video. After this video, I will probably reward myself with getting into my phone for a minute to check to see if everything's going good with my team today. I leave for Costa Rica tomorrow. So like there's certain things I need to check, but I might reward myself for 5 or 10 minutes, but then that'll probably be it 'cause then I'm gonna go to other things. The next thing I'm gonna do is I go to the gym here in a couple hours. Normally I go into the gym, I'm in my phone the whole, I'm working out, but in between sets I'm just in my phone looking at things. Oh, what's going on on Instagram? What's going on here? Let me take a photo or something. You know what I'm gonna do now? I'm gonna leave my phone in my car and I'm gonna bring in this little book that I write my workouts in. I see some like hardcore bodybuilders at the gym do that. I'm always like, oh, just use your phone. If I go in and I just write on this thing with no phone, I guarantee you my workouts will be better. I just know it. And I'll probably be quicker. Instead of being there like an hour and a half, probably in about an hour and it'll be a better workout. I'm curious to see what happens. But just in general, the reason I'm sharing this with you is 'cause I know, I feel it within like the core of my being that one of the reasons I wasn't sleeping well, one of the reasons my energy was feeling lost, I was feeling lonely, I was feeling depressed or anxiety, was because I was overstimulated by phone. Sometimes you might go through a breakup, you might go through a big life transition, and then it's like, oh, well, I'm just gonna escape the emotions, escape the feeling, escape focusing on some long-term beneficial thing, and instead I'm gonna dump all my energy into like this numbing sensation, this numbing feeling of avoiding the emotions I'm feeling. But here is what I do instead, and here's what I recommend instead. We'll talk about like a little action plan. Now with this, you will still, like, for you to be watching this video still, it has to be stimulating some level of dopamine inside you. Dopamine isn't necessarily bad, but because dopamine is like, if you didn't release dopamine, that would not be a good thing. However, you want to manage your own dopamine rather than it managing you and you being in reaction. Because basically the things we're attracted to in our lives, we don't realize it, but it pretty much just comes down to brain chemistry. We are attracted to maybe not only checking our phone and social media, but you might be attracted to certain type of relationships because it fulfills some type of brain chemistry need of what feels familiar. So the more aware you become in this process, the better. Now what I would recommend though is going through a form of dopamine detox. And when you go through this dopamine detox, you're gonna reset the levels to your own dopamine. When you reset the levels to your dopamine, you then will not need crazy amounts of dopamine for you to feel stimulated. Even just a little bit, you'll feel much better. You'll feel better and happier with less. You'll be able to read and feel motivated. And right now you might think of reading and you'd be like, what the hell? Why would I read? I got so many other things I could do, so many other stimulation things I could do. But instead what I'm doing is I'm using my motivational mechanism, which we all have the same motivational mechanism. We will move towards what we believe will bring us pleasure and we will move away from what we believe will bring us pain. You talk about like going to the gym. When you go to the gym for the first time, you might not wanna go. You associate pain with working out, with being sore the next day. But then you go and you start to actually feel more dopamine. It's like a healthy form of dopamine. There's, what's it called? Neuronephrine? Neuronephrine? There's other hormone in the body that then feels like a sense of morphine goes through. Sometimes people experience it as like runner's high. When you're working out, you can feel that same thing and then you get this high feeling from it naturally. And then you wanna do it more and more and more and you actually enjoy working out. You actually enjoy the process. But at first you might not because there's this initial period of getting into it. So what I recommend you do is you become more aware. And what I recommend you do is there's a couple of different ways to do this. The action plan that I have for you is for the first 3 hours of your day, in that book "Flow" or in, you know, his work of that author, he pretty much shows that within the first 3 hours of your day, if you get into a flow state and you deeply focus on whatever you're passionate about or whatever that is, maybe even reading it could be, on something you're passionate about learning. But if you do that in the first 3 hours of the day, throughout the rest of your day, you feel more relaxed, you feel more fulfilled, you feel more happy. If right when you wake up, you check your phone, stimulation, dopamine, you are just priming your mind, spiking these neurochemicals in your body to want more, more, more, more, more, more. And instead, for the first 3 hours, what I recommend is no phone. No phone. Maybe get up a little earlier and read or focus on something you're passionate about. And then the other thing some people do is they take one day off. Maybe they'll kind of taper it back throughout the week and then they take one day, no phone at all. And I've seen people that do really well with that. They get more creative ideas. It is incredible how much creativity is in your body that is literally being overstimulated with dopamine and therefore you don't feel that creative urge. You don't feel the desire to focus on your business or to focus on your passion or to apply for that job or to ask that person out. The dopamine is literally just, it's just bringing your energy down. So use your dopamine wisely. You could do one day off. Now here's another thing that you could do is do something maybe like this. I'm making this video and at the end of this, some people, I've seen a video that says this and I like this, one hour of deeply focused work with no distractions. Put your phone somewhere else, tell someone else, put a sign on your door, so that you're not getting like bombarded with people and like switching your attention. For every hour, reward yourself with 15 minutes afterwards of stimulation. Has to be afterwards so that after accomplishing something, then you get rewarded with the dopamine and then you feel good. And then anything that you feel good afterwards of, you wanna keep doing. And at my peak of my business and everything of me with YouTube, my business and everything, it was me doing this kind of thing where I would work in the morning and then reward myself, work out and then maybe watch something a little bit later. And you wanna just be mindful of this energy. You wanna be aware of the dopamine and how you're feeling and what you're being stimulated by. And you wanna be honest with yourself because I could easily rationalize this and be like, well, I'm a YouTuber, this is what I do for a living. And it's very easy for me to just continue to do it because my livelihood depends on it. But I have to be honest with myself and realize that for me to have creative energy in my business, I need to taper back different levels of Instagram and all these other things. So what you wanna do is you wanna do, I would recommend you do one of these things or maybe even all three. First 3 hours of your day, focus on what you're passionate about, focus on your flow state, don't check your phone. And/or one day off a week where there's no phone at all, watch how much creative energy comes back to you. I've had my friends do this by the way, and they are blown away with how much creative energy they get, how many YouTube video ideas they get, how many like inspirations they get. And watch how good at night you sleep, by the way, too. It's incredible. Then every hour of work you do throughout the day of focused work, 15 minutes you can give yourself later on in the day. So if you do, let's say, 5 hours, or let's say if you were to do like 4 hours of that of like, you know, that kind of work, flow state work, You could then give yourself 60 minutes, a whole hour of stimulation later of reward. And I would recommend you just do it later in the day, but like you connect it in your mind to you doing the action and you creating that form of like, that form of reward for something that you did. And as you do this, as you tailor your energy and your vibration in this direction, you will much easier be able to create what you want in your life. You will much easier be able to like feel motivated and enjoy the process. Being in a flow state and being in deep focus feels really good. And the more you do it, the easier it gets. When I was making videos every single day on YouTube, I'd get up in the morning, it was the first thing I did. The more I did it, the easier it got. And then if I stopped doing it for like a week, then it got hard. But it's like you can tailor your focus, you can tailor your flow state and know that when you're in a flow state, you're in a higher vibrational state and you enjoy the process. You're not doing it just to get somewhere else. So with this as well, if you haven't already calibrated your vibration, go to whatsmyvibration.com. This quiz has been completely redone recently. Calibrate your vibration, see what level of consciousness you're at, and get a meditation for getting to the next level. And then also, if you want a video that's gonna show you the 6 steps to completely transform your life in 2023, then check out this video right here. This episode, I'm going to show you the 6 steps that you can use to completely transform your life in 2022. I'm sure you've noticed 2021 has been a massive year of shadow work, a massive year of letting go, and the challenge is that if we
