Mike Dillard explains how both subconscious programming and physiology drive destructive spending habits. He argues media and corporations weaponize human neurochemistry (cortisol spikes followed by dopamine/serotonin-driven purchases), producing a default ‘‘spend to soothe’’ pathway for most Americans. He contrasts this with people (e.g., Warren Buffett) who experience reward from saving, calling this an "inverted dopamine response." Practical interventions he recommends include awareness, box breathing to interrupt cortisol-driven impulses, deliberately transferring small amounts into savings and celebrating those transfers to rewire reward associations, and using vivid imagination to simulate the reward of a purchase so you can choose the money alternative.
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I've accumulated a shit ton of money and I've lost it many times. Yes. For that reason. So start with the physiological cycle. Yeah. Well, you got to. You got to do both. You've got to start with the subconscious programs, and then you have to address the physiology. And ideally, you're doing those at the same time. Yeah. And the physiology piece is just gets down to, literally, neurochemistry, which you're an expert in. So we're talking about dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, cortisol, endorphin. And so an example of this would be when we feel stress or anxiety, that is our body dumping cortisol into our system to say we don't like what's going on, we want to make you uncomfortable so that you'll go to a different place or stop doing what it is that you're doing. And then when we do that, it gives us dopamine and serotonin. Right. To extinguish that cortisol in our system. And what most people don't understand here in the west is that the media and corporations have basically weaponized this knowledge, their knowledge of our biology against us, which has made it very difficult for people to amass wealth here in our country. And I'll explain why. So what happens when we get on social media or turn on the news or read a newspaper or magazine or whatever it is? Right. We're inundated with things that cause us anxiety and cause us cortisol to course through our system, whether it's Covid or Russia or political stuff, whatever it may be, you turn it on and you're just inundated with that. And then what do you see? You immediately see ads for beer, ice cream, pharmaceuticals, purses, shoes, cars, whatever it is that's going to give us dopamine and serotonin that's going to make us feel good. So they get the cortisol rise and they give us something to buy. In order to extinguish that, all of us have our go to default mode for how we extinguish that cortisol. Based in a Western society, which usually 99% of the time requires us to spend money. It could be as simple as going into a refrigerator and getting a pint of ice cream, getting a glass of wine, cracking open a beer or going onto Amazon or going on to Instagram and window shopping on Instagram or going down to Best Buy or for me, Sportsman's Finest and buying a gun, right? So in the past, for me, it was cars and so if you've got this adrenaline and this cortisol going through your system, and now you want to extinguish it, in order to extinguish it, you have to go spend money, even if it's five bucks on a pint. And after doing that for years, that neural pathway just becomes the default highway. And before you know it, every one of us has been there. If you're stressed out, you've got a pint of ice cream or a glass of wine in your hand, and you didn't even know how it got there. Right. It's just like what you do by default. And so what this has done in my personal construction of this is it's created what I call an inverted dopamine response, meaning how we get dopamine is basically upside down when it comes to our relationship with money. And so if you look at, let's say, Warren Buffett, on the other hand, Warren Buffett does not get dopamine by spending money. He gets dopamine by making and saving money. Spending money stresses him out, which is why he's still in the same house after 50 years.
The dude eats McDonald's to save money.
Right. And we all have a couple of friends like this. Not a lot, but one or two friends that the idea of spending money or buying a sports car to them stresses them out. They just get frazzled, right? Yeah. And spending money stresses them out. Buying a designer purse or pair of shoes stresses them out. And saving that money, though, gives them pleasure. And so if you look at those two groups of people, which one of them becomes rich automatically and which one of them becomes broke automatically? It happens by default. The path you're on is you're on it whether you like it or not. And I'm going to say again, 99% of Americans are on the default path to being broke because their addiction is to spending money and to extinguish the stress that they have in their life. And so that was certainly the case for me as well. I'll say everybody watching this can judge for themselves which path they're on. And so once you become aware of that, well, now that's the key to all of this, is awareness. Now, I can see it when I'm exhibiting this behavior. I can interrupt the pattern, and then I can retrain a new pattern. And so for me, there's just two very simple ways that we. We share with folks on how to do this. The first is using the breath. Yeah. Key to the nervous system. Right. So if you're in this agitated high cortisol state and you're wanting to go buy something, it's stop what you're doing, pull over, do box breathing for six cycles, wait until you feel your saliva glands click in, wait until you feel your body get a little heavy and relax. And by the time that happens, that automated behavior and path you were on has stopped and it's been interrupted. And now you can make a decision to go do something else. Go to the gym, turn around and go back home. Close the, close the window on Instagram, whatever it may be. And you've interrupted that pattern. But then we need to establish a new pattern. And that's where the system comes in in the program, which is we want to put a little bit of money, it could be a dollar a day, it could be whatever you want, into a richer everyday account. But more importantly, not just make that transfer, celebrate it. So getting your emotions involved, getting your neurochemistry involved, feel the dopamine, celebrate it. And retrain your brain to associate saving money with reward. The other kind of, I guess, tool or strategy that is really useful for people especially, I'm just going to say guys, because I haven't been in the place of a woman, obviously, but we have a natural tendency to hunt shit that we want, right? And the modern day version of hunting is buying stuff. For the most part, we're hunting the car that we want, the computer that we want, the new microphone that we want for the podcast studio, whatever it may be. And I don't know about you, but I'll get in research mode for days or weeks on something, you know, the more expensive it is, the longer I'm going to research it.
I did that for my truck and.
I'm studying my prey, right? I'm studying my prey. And the longer you do that, the more committed you are, the more brain power you're spending on this, the more neurochemistry has been invested into buying this thing. And you know, the longer you spend it on, the more likely you are you're going to end up buying this, this whatever it is. But at the end of the day, all that your brain wants is the dopamine or serotonin that it would get from making that purchase. It doesn't give a shit about you actually buying the computer or the car. All it wants is the chemical. And the neat part about it is that you can generate this chemical on your own with your imagination, right? So whenever this is happening, I'll go into, just lay down on the couch and go through an Imagination process where I'm going to envision me going out and buying this new car. And I'm going to envision going into the dealership and picking it up. I'm going to envision opening the door and smelling it for the first time. I'm going to envision sitting it down and feeling the wheel. I'm going to envision firing it up and hearing the engine come to life and what it's going to feel like with me driving down to the road, back to the house, and what it's going to feel like every single time I walk out of the garage or out into the driveway and see it there. And all of these amazing, really good things that I'm going to feel, right? Joy, satisfaction, accomplishment, whatever it may be. I'm going to feel those things in as much detail as I can. And then I'm going to say, okay, cool, that was really nice. I'm going to go forward a couple of weeks. And then now I come out into the garage and it's rained and the car's dirty. It's got, you know, I open it up, there's dirt on the floor, on the floor mats. Fire it up. Okay, cool. I've got to go get gas. It's on empty. Oh, it's 120 bucks to fill up the tank. But it's still fun. Cool. I still get some enjoyment for it. And then I'm going to go forward six months. And now how do I feel about the car when I come out? You know, the newness is certainly gone. I understand what the experience was, and that initial thrill is dissipating. It's gone. And now it's just kind of the car I drive every day. And at that point, you can then imagine yourself with, you know, a pile of money on one hand, let's say $250,000, or the car, the dirty car that's in your garage, on the other hand, and say, which do I want?
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