Why Nothing Brings You Joy Anymore

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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I am your host, Rob. Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. I put out episodes four times a week to help you learn who you are to grow yourself. Because if you can grow yourself, you can make your life better. So if you want to make your life better, hit that subscribe button. Today I'm going to be talking about why nothing brings you joy anymore. Why it feels like the joy has kind of been just stripped from from your life. Have you ever thought, why don't I feel as happy as I used to? Like, you're not numb, your life doesn't suck, but you just feel like it just doesn't have as much oomph as it used to, right? You have to realize if that's the case, your dopamine system is fried. Because all day long you're chasing feel good hits and probably not even realizing it. You're scrolling, you're snacking, you're refreshing, you're buying things. And while your brain loses its ability to basically feel joy in your life, what Used to feel good to you. Now kind of feels like nothing. The good news about this is, is that you can reset this system. And when you do, the joy will come rushing back into your life. You will feel good again and more motivated than you probably have in your entire life. So let's talk about it. Okay? The reason why you don't feel as much joy as you used to, you're not as happy as you used to be. Or even amazing things don't feel like they're as amazing as they should be. Like, going on an amazing vacation. Like, you're excited for first two minutes of getting there, and then you're on your phone or something. We have to get something straight. Okay? The reason why is because you have too many tiny little dopamine hits throughout the day. And dopamine. We have to get this straight. It's not about pleasure. Like, contrary to what people think, People think that dopamine is about sitting in a bubble bath and eating chocolate and enjoying a nice movie and feeling good. That's not what dopamine's about. Dopamine is about pursuit. Dopamine is the fuel for drive and for motivation and anticipation. Dopamine is literally the chemical of motivation in your brain, and it's the thing that gets you off of the couch to pursue something that is harder. And I have a couple of quotes from Andrew Huberman that really dive in and talk about this. It's important. Okay? One of the things that he said is that dopamine is not the pursuit of. Of pleasure. It's about the pleasure of pursuit. Right? So it's like the actual going for something is what gives you dopamine. Another really important thing that he says about dopamine is that any high amount of dopamine that comes to you without effort before it will eventually destroy you. Okay, this is a word for word quote. Okay, I want to say it again. Any high amount of dopamine that comes to you without effort before getting that dopamine or will eventually destroy you, let that sink in dopamine and getting the pleasure of dopamine and the motivation, the feeling of it without some sort of effort that comes before it is a trap. And the problem is we are drowning in cheap dopamine today. Like, we're drowning in it. We have, like, fast, high reward, low effort. Dopamine hits all day long. Like, you order food and you get a dopamine hit without even cooking. You check your inbox. Just because the ping goes off, even if it's Spam, your brain Goes, ooh, something's happening. You know, you buy something online and boom, you get instant gratification from the idea of having it, not even having it itself, just the idea of having it. You refresh social media over and over again waiting for more likes or more views or more comments and you get these micro validation loops that spike dopamine hits so you feel better. You might find yourself swiping through dating apps out of boredom, not because you want connection or because you want romance, but just out of boredom and you know, you want some novelty in your life. You play phone games with, you know, fake progress bars and little fireworks that go off and points and dings and wins and all of these things. You pop a pill, you scroll on TikTok, you binge a show. Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, all of these things with zero real effort. And so what happens when you keep flooding your brain with high levels of dopamine without any earning of basically breaks your system? You don't feel as much joy as you used to. And so if you have too much dopamine, you don't have as much joy and your motivation will collapse. So there was a study that was done in 2001 in, it was published in Nature Neuroscience and they found that increased dopamine leads to short term spike in motivation, like wanting more of that thing by doing the same thing you were just doing, but long term depletion of your dopamine. So the takeaway from that is that overstimulating dopamine systems makes you feel less motivated and less joy over time. And so that's the reason why you probably don't feel as much joy as you used to. And so here's how you actually break the cycle and how let's talk about how the cycle usually plays out more than anything else. Okay, so you crave a dopamine hit in some sort of way. You get it from food, from shopping, from social media, from porn, whatever it is for you, you feel good for a real quick second. And then your baseline dopamine drops and now normal life feels dull to you. Even the stuff that used to give you joy that you used to enjoy doing doesn't give you joy anymore. 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And I think that with all of the stuff that's happening with social media and with phones and with YouTube and Netflix and with AI, our brains have just been flooded and overstimulated past what we even knew we could do over the past 10, 15, 20 years. And so when you're constantly stimulated, your brain adapts, and your baseline dopamine levels actually drop, which means hobbies that you used to love doing feel boring, your relationships feel flat, hard work for something feels too hard, and life just kind of feels like, meh. Like, you're not depressed, but you're desensitized is what you are. And I have been here before. A few years ago, I felt like somebody just, like, turn the saturation down in my life, and it went from, like, color to, like, black and white. And I was like. And it wasn't bad. Like, it just felt less vibrant. And there wasn't anything that was bad happening in my life. Like, I have an amazing life. Everything was great. And I was like, why do I not feel joy when everything is amazing? And so I had to figure out what was going on with me. And this is actually what was going on. And then I started finding out that so many people are in the exact same situation. So I was like, I need to fix this. I need to figure out what I need to do. So what did I find was the antidote? Well, it wasn't more stimulation. It was less. Less stimulation. If you remove all of the cheap dopamine that you possibly can, eventually your dopamine baseline and your joy will reset, and it will Go back to normal. And things that used to be pleasurable that aren't pleasurable anymore will now be pleasurable again. Hobbies that you used to love doing, you will love doing again. And this is extremely important. If you are a parent. Listen closely, okay? Because I believe that we need to protect our kids from things like this, from phones, from social media. I don't. This isn't about, like, letting your kid grow up and be like, the weird kid or not letting them grow up at all. This is about raising a healthy child into a healthy adult that doesn't have anxiety and depression and no joy in their life. There is a massive link between social media and child depression and anxiety. There was a study that was done by JAMA Pediatrics in 2019 that found out that children who spend more than three hours per day on social media were at a substantial, substantially increased risk of high levels of depressive symptoms compared to those who spent less than three hours a day on social media. Pew Research center did a study as well, and they found out that 45% of teens say that they are online almost constantly. And those teens reported higher levels of psychological distress than the other ones. So I recommend now that you know this and you might not have known it before this episode, so don't shame yourself, but protect your kids. Take them off of social media. Try to take them away from their phone, put them outside so they're actually social instead of doing it on their phone. Let them be a child again. Don't let their phone and all of these cheap hits of dopamine steal their joy and ruin their dopamine receptors. And so let's talk about how to fix it. So if you are in this situation, you can actually fix it. Okay? This is the dopamine detox blueprint. I'm going to tell you. I'm not going to, you know, tell you to just go and move into a cabin in the woods and have no Internet. But you do need to intentionally shift from cheap dopamine to what is called earned dopamine. Like the kind of that actually fulfills you. Okay? And so we'll break it down. The first thing you want to do is make sure that you remove or reduce cheap dopamine as much as you possibly can. These are like the instant gratification. So it's like things to completely get rid of or just limit drastically, you know, social media, scrolling mindlessly, binge watching shows, processed sugars, or just like snacking out of boredom porn, or excessive, like, screen stimulation, constant multitasking as well and try dopamine. Fasting, like, try, just try it one day a week, a few hours a day, no screens. Like for me, Sundays, I try to do no screens, right? Go for a walk, journal, stare at a wall. I don't care. Boredom in this situation is actually medicine. It is the best thing for you being bored is you resetting your dopamine baseline. I will be honest with you, okay? It is not easy at first. Your brain will feel agitation. You will start to feel anxious because your brain is addicted to dopamine. And guess what? It wants more dopamine. And so when you're sitting there and you're like, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh my God, oh, my God, I got to go. I want to go do something. I got to do something. I'm thinking of this and that. That's literally mini withdrawals from dopamine. Your body and brain are the drug dealer. You need to strip away the drugs. Boredom is the path. There's a thing that's I'm starting to see on social media that I actually love, and people are calling it raw dogging adhd. And it's people that will sit down like on a couch and they'll have a timer for an hour and they have ADHD and they're just sitting there and they want stimulation. They want stimulation, and they will just have a time lapse of them just sitting there for an hour and just trying to reset their systems. And so I would just recommend whether you have ADHD or don't have adhd, try to get yourself to the point where you can sit there for an hour and do nothing and see what comes up. Okay? So that's the first thing. The next thing is pursue effort driven dopamine. Earned dopamine is sweeter. It rewires your system to enjoy life again. Okay, so for instance, work out and feel the sweat and the pain and the burn and the pride. When you're done, be proud of yourself. After you get done with a really hard workout that post workout high, that's endorphins. And earn dopamine. Learn something hard that frustrates you and just like, oh my God, it hurts to try to grow from it. Push yourself. Earn dopamine. Create something. Write, draw, build, design. Learn a new instrument that challenges you. Earn dopamine. Cook a meal from scratch. Like, chop, stir, smell, savor. Don't look at your phone the entire time. Earn dopamine. Go hunting or fishing or gardening for your meal. Like, go out and get your meal like our ancestors used to Do. That's how our ancestors probably got the most dopamine. The pursuit of the hunt is the dopamine, right? So think about that. Finish a book if you want to. That finishing of the book where you feel good about, that's earned dopamine. You know, feel proud about your business, getting another sale, that's earned dopamine. Going on a hike and finishing the whole thing and you get back to your car and you're exhausted. You know that feeling, though, that's earned dopamine. Do hard things and don't rescue yourself from discomfort. Stop going for cheap and easy dopamine and look for and go on the pursuit of earned dopamine. And watch the joy and the motivation come back into your life. Here's what you'll start to notice when you reset your dopamine system. You'll actually start to enjoy the small things again, like really enjoy them. Your motivation will start to return because you actually want to act to get more dopamine and it makes you more driven for the pursuit. You're not going to need 10 tabs open on your phone just for your brain to feel alive. You start to feel like yourself again. You start to notice these little tiny things, oh my God, you're more present with your children. You don't have to be doing 10 different things. When you sit down to eat a meal, you don't have the TV on in the background and your phone in front of you. You start to feel like yourself again. Then you're going to start to feel drive and motivation to push yourself and grow. And so just the real quick summarization putting in, you know, it's like the TLDR type thing, right? Cut or reduce social media, scrolling, sugar snacks, all of those types of things. Fast content like YouTube shorts and TikToks and Instagram Reels and all that stuff. Get rid of gambling or porn or binge shopping and then add more things that are harder for you that, that require you to pursue exercise, even if it's like 15 minutes of hard exercise, deep work, building something in your life, learning something challenging that makes you have to actually grow, have some time in nature, have real connection, be bored just for the hell of being bored and resetting your system and then track your wins, like write it down when you do something. Well, dopamine loves momentum. And so when you actually capture your progress, even if it's tiny, your brain starts noticing this feeling of, oh my God, I'm progressing. And progressing feels good. We all want to feel like we're progressing. And so that would be the recommendation for you. If you feel like joy is being stripped away from your life and it's all of these cheap dopamine hits, get rid of all of the cheap dopamine or as much as you possibly can and start pursuing earned dopamine. And I promise you, because I've been on this path, I've done this, I've had to do it, there is a lot of discomfort, but you will feel a whole lot more joy in your life. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in Obdial junior R O B D I A L J R and if you want to learn more about coaching with me outside of the podcast, go to coach with Rob.com once again, coachwithrob.com and with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

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