Think of something you really want to achieve, maybe it’s recognition, or living in a specific kind of house, being wealthy or meeting a specific kind of lover.
Now imagine having achieved these things, see yourself in this house, or with this person, or running that company you’ve had your eye on. That buzz you’re feeling, the good feeling, is triggered by a hormone called dopamine, it’s in your brain.
When you get that ‘good-feeling’ buzz from closing a deal, getting a woman/man to say yes to your request, basically thinking of accomplishment (or accomplishing) something you want, the dopamine kicks into your brain.
That buzz is associated with what you consider as a good feeling, a reward that becomes wired into your brain through the production of dopamine hormones.
Dopamine is the hormone that gives you hope for a better tomorrow.
In this article we want you to understand the role of the dopamine in your brain in controlling your emotions.
The Dopamine hormone will have you up and at work by 6 am to finish your proposal. Because of this hormone, you can bare the sight of that terrible colleague or boss, and work very hard knowing that the job you have is your transition to better opportunities. Transition to a better job with higher income, a big house where your family can relax, or to running your own business.
Our brains can be very primitive. We seek to “feel better” about our bad situations through ways that are unrelated to why we’re feeling bad.
For example instead of working hard at your job, in spite of the terrible boss, you can decide to get to the office and spend two hours watching YouTube videos on ‘dogs that love children.’ Or you can have a cigarette. Both of these actions will trigger higher amounts of dopamine in your brain, but none of two is beneficial for you.
This primitive nature of the brain seeks to make us feel better. That is why someone craves and orders fast food when feeling depressed, smokes a cigarette when they’re pissed off or watches porn when they receive their monthly bills. The brain, in this case is acting as though you have achieved something good; it’s releasing dopamine because you actually need to feel good.
These actions, completely unrelated to why we feel bad, momentarily change the chemicals in our brains and makes us believe we are feeling better. But that euphoric feeling is short lived.
Happiness comes from many small achievements, every day
Feeling good is related to your expectations. When you expect something and achieve or receive it, your dopamine levels increase. But it only increases for a short while, and that buzz fades away as quickly as it came.
You’ve probably heard people saying that happiness comes from having small achievements every day. Small achievements produce several ‘feel-good’ moments. It’s the reasoning behind having a diary and a list of tasks to cross off as a sign of achievement.
These days diaries have weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly goals highlighted in them. This truncated way of working towards a big goal allows you to have the dopamine effect of achieving many small goals that lead to the big goal.
You will feel good more often than most people.
It’s all about helping your brain meet the expectations you set out for it. And setting short, mid-term and long-term expectations that you can meet. When an expectation is met, your dopamine levels goes up, and you feel good.
So what are your expectations? Do you have expectations for the day, the week, the month and the year? Do you cross them out?
Achieving one goal triggers the achievement of the next goal, as you seek the dopamine effect of feeling good.
Your goal is to be happy throughout the experience of achieving whatever big goals you have set out for yourselves. Once you achieve a goal, you’ll temporarily feel good, and a new expectation of feeling good will be created again, and the dopamine effect triggers your movement towards achieving the next goal.
This is why it can be so hard to make someone (other than yourself) happy. Their feeling of happiness is momentary, and it passes as soon as you meet their first expectation.
When you meet their first expectation, you can be sure that they will set the bar even higher. At some point, you might not be able to satisfy their needs.
Most you can do is to ensure you’re not a stumbling block to someone’s path to achieving success.
