Speaker 1: Don't mean it's a chemical that the human being so
Speaker 1: deeply desired and we've now been given very quick ways
Speaker 1: to access it. Are you wanting a life where you're
Speaker 1: in the pursuit of pleasure and just like momentarily feeling
Speaker 1: good or do you want like a really happy, fulfilling
Speaker 1: experience a life.
Speaker 2: He's a neuroscientist and author TJ.
Speaker 1: Power. Pornography is like this secret addiction, and that's why
Speaker 1: I think it's being massively underestimated.
Speaker 2: You have habits and systems to increase concentration and deep
Speaker 2: focus by forty eight percent. Yeah, what are they?
Speaker 3: The number one health and wellness podcast.
Speaker 2: Jay Shedy J Sheddy Only Sheet. Everyone, Welcome back to
Speaker 2: On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.
Speaker 2: Thanks to each and every one of you that come
Speaker 2: back every week to listen, learn and grow. Today's guest
Speaker 2: is someone that I've been really excited to speak to.
Speaker 2: His name's TJ.
Speaker 3: Power.
Speaker 2: He's a neuroscientist and author dedicated to understanding how modern
Speaker 2: lifestyle habits shape brain chemistry and emotional well being in
Speaker 2: the digital age. His upcoming book, The Dose Effect is
Speaker 2: out very soon and focuses on how we can optimize dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin,
Speaker 2: and endorphins through practical, everyday changes. TJ's research highlights the
Speaker 2: impact of social media, nature, and technology on mental health,
Speaker 2: and through his work, he empowers individuals to take control
Speaker 2: of their minds and lead healthier, more balanced lives. If
Speaker 2: you don't already follow TJ across social media, you're going
Speaker 2: to want to follow him right now and straight after
Speaker 2: this conversation. Please welcome to On Purpose Tjpower. TJ is
Speaker 2: great to have you.
Speaker 3: Here, BADJ, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: This is surreal for me, and I'll explain why to
Speaker 2: the audience. Because eleven years ago I met your dad. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and Thomas Power became a mentor of mine. When I
Speaker 2: just left the monastery, I had started working at Accentia.
Speaker 2: Your dad had been brought in as an external consultant
Speaker 2: to help the company with different aspects of its digital strategy.
Speaker 2: You we became good friends. He became a mentor, he
Speaker 2: became a coach, and I'd always say to him, how
Speaker 2: can I repay you? What can I do for you?
Speaker 2: Because he did so much for me, helped me build
Speaker 2: my mindset when it came to work and life and
Speaker 2: business there's so much influence that your dad's had on
Speaker 2: me in a very deep way. And he'd always say
Speaker 2: to me, I'll coach you, and one day you'll coach
Speaker 2: my kids. And now I feel bad because I can't
Speaker 2: take any credit for your career success, and so I
Speaker 2: actually didn't live up to my end of the bargain.
Speaker 2: He was absolutely wonderful to me and watching you rise. Honestly,
Speaker 2: and by the way, I just want to put it
Speaker 2: out they can't take any credit for anything you've done.
Speaker 2: The incredible rise that you've had and the content you're
Speaker 2: making is so powerful. It's having such an impact. And
Speaker 2: I'm having you on the show because I'm a fan
Speaker 2: and knowing your dad's a bonus, but I think the
Speaker 2: work that you're doing is phenomenal. So congrats, Bud, and
Speaker 2: I'm so excited to have you here after having so
Speaker 2: many dinners and lunches over the years and watching you grow.
Speaker 2: But the work's so impactful. Thanks for turning up.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me man.
Speaker 1: You've inspired me so much over this last decade when
Speaker 1: I became fascinated by this world of mental health and
Speaker 1: helping people thrive. You're like that person that I turn
Speaker 1: to on the internet. So it's a magical moment for
Speaker 1: me to be here.
Speaker 2: Now, Oh thanks man, But yeah, let's dive into the
Speaker 2: work because there's so many exciting things to discuss. The
Speaker 2: first thing I want to ask you is you've got
Speaker 2: this phrase dose, and dose means so much more than
Speaker 2: what we think the word means, and it's based on
Speaker 2: this idea of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and doorphins. I think
Speaker 2: we know very little about these chemicals. We kind of
Speaker 2: hear these as buzzwords and trend words, and I think
Speaker 2: what you've done is really demystified them and unpack them
Speaker 2: for us in a really simple way. Can you walk
Speaker 2: us through what each of these do for us and
Speaker 2: how we interact with them on a daily basis one
Speaker 2: hundred percent.
Speaker 1: I think with these chemicals, you see them talked about
Speaker 1: a lot on the internet now, and you see them
Speaker 1: all called kind of feel good and happy hormones, which
Speaker 1: there is truth in that. But the fascinating thing about
Speaker 1: really understanding dose is each of these chemicals have a
Speaker 1: very specific function, and when you begin to understand the
Speaker 1: symptoms of being low or high in them, you then
Speaker 1: begin to understand your brain and body much better and
Speaker 1: you start responding to the different challenges that the modern
Speaker 1: world brings us in a much better way. If you
Speaker 1: were to look at dopamine, primary function of dopamine would
Speaker 1: be motivation, and it also has a secondary function of
Speaker 1: our attention span. If you find yourself in a situation
Speaker 1: where you feel like low and deflated and flat and
Speaker 1: you can't get yourself to take action and do things,
Speaker 1: it's a very clear sign that dopamine is low and
Speaker 1: you need something to boost dopamine. You have oxytocin, the
Speaker 1: connection and the love hormone. If you felt lonely and
Speaker 1: a little bit unconfident and disconnected, we'd be guided towards oxytocin.
Speaker 1: Serotonin has a massive impact on our mood and energy,
Speaker 1: so if you're tired or a bit sad, serotonin would
Speaker 1: be beautiful. And then endorphins have this incredible function of
Speaker 1: destressing our brain. In our modern world, the cord sole
Speaker 1: hormone has become the big stress hormone, which is really
Speaker 1: accurate dress hormone, but in dolphins, as we'll go on
Speaker 1: to explore, also play a vital role in calming our
Speaker 1: brain when it's experienced extreme stress.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating to me because I don't think we understand
Speaker 2: how our daily habits affect these chemicals. So walk us
Speaker 2: through what's actually happening in our brain when we're doom
Speaker 2: scrolling on social media.
Speaker 1: Effectively, this all comes down to this concept called phasic
Speaker 1: and tonic dopamine release. This psychologist called Drea really popularized
Speaker 1: this back in twenty and eleven. And what you basically
Speaker 1: see is when we interact with social media, you get
Speaker 1: a rapid rise in dopamine, which is why when you
Speaker 1: open the social media app you immediately feel extremely good.
Speaker 1: Just to put that into context, the whole of dose
Speaker 1: is built upon something called the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis. This
Speaker 1: was created by Gluckman, and it's basically this idea that
Speaker 1: our brain spent three hundred thousand years evolving out in nature,
Speaker 1: developing these chemicals to help us survive and thrive in
Speaker 1: that kind of environment, hunting and making fire and building
Speaker 1: shelter and looking after one another. And with dopamine specifically,
Speaker 1: the only way we were capable of accessing it was
Speaker 1: through hard, challenging activities. We had to effectively earn the
Speaker 1: increase in dopamine, and we might have experienced that like
Speaker 1: once or twice a day, like the fire finally lit
Speaker 1: or we successfully caught some food or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: In the modern world, this social media example, you experienced
Speaker 1: that same level of dopamine increase, but you experience it
Speaker 1: instantaneously within a few seconds because it rises so fast.
Speaker 1: It then causes this really significant crash in dope me
Speaker 1: because your brain tries to get back to balance. And
Speaker 1: so many of us struggle today with this idea of
Speaker 1: just taking action on what we want to do. Like
Speaker 1: we're sitting there and we think, yeah, I need to
Speaker 1: do that bit of work, or yeah I need to
Speaker 1: go and cook myself a healthy meal, or yeah I
Speaker 1: need to go and do some exercise, but we can't
Speaker 1: be bothered and we just like procrastinate it. And that's
Speaker 1: heavily connected to this overstimulation through social media.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating to hear that we used to have to
Speaker 2: earn dopamine. Yeah, how quickly does it diminish? And what
Speaker 2: does that crash look like.
Speaker 3: It would be experienced within our behavior.
Speaker 1: There's actually this big topic you get see, you get
Speaker 1: seen talked about on TikTok called paralysis, and they also
Speaker 1: have this phrase called rotting on TikTok where people literally
Speaker 1: can't move, they can't get themselves to move don't mean
Speaker 1: right at the core of its function, even impacts our
Speaker 1: motivation to physically move our body. And if you're in
Speaker 1: that state where you just can't get yourself to do anything,
Speaker 1: and loads of us experience this like it's a Saturday morning.
Speaker 1: We think, oh, I don't have work today, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to scroll my phone way more and we sit
Speaker 1: there and we get into this doom scrolling cycle of
Speaker 1: feeling that elevation in dopamin, this rapid increase of dopamine,
Speaker 1: and then we eventually find ourselves saying to our mind,
Speaker 1: like our instinctive mind comes on and says put the
Speaker 1: phone down, like go do something else, and then you
Speaker 1: don't really want to.
Speaker 3: And then even if you do.
Speaker 1: Put it down, you just can't get yourself to do anything.
Speaker 1: So it's that symptom of paralysis, not being able to
Speaker 1: get going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what do we do? I believe it all.
Speaker 1: Starts with how the beginning of your day begins. And
Speaker 1: it's really important to understand this. Throughout sleep, there's regenerative
Speaker 1: processes taking place that are creating elevations in dopamine as
Speaker 1: part of that restoration. And you can imagine this. All
Speaker 1: of our work is built upon this hunter gather idea
Speaker 1: of a human being far before our world, in this
Speaker 1: modern world we live in, had to wake up and
Speaker 1: do hard things. It was so important to our survival.
Speaker 1: When we woke up, we'd have a nice amount of
Speaker 1: dopamine and we'd immediately take action and do challenging stuff. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: the opposite of that occurs. We wake up, we've got
Speaker 1: this abundance of dopamine sitting there, and then it's straight
Speaker 1: to the phone. And I understand, like, this is hard
Speaker 1: to break. My whole work in this space comes from
Speaker 1: my own addictions to these things. Like I got a
Speaker 1: iPhone when I was like eleven years old, So to me,
Speaker 1: my whole life has been sitting on an iPhone basically,
Speaker 1: and I spent ten to fifteen years waking up going
Speaker 1: straight into the phone. And fundamentally, if you develop the
Speaker 1: discipline to have a thirty minute window before you go
Speaker 1: into the phone, and we can talk through what the
Speaker 1: steps in there would include to resist it, that's going
Speaker 1: to then set that discipline within your life to I
Speaker 1: have the capacity to resist it, and then once you
Speaker 1: start training this discipline in your capacity to resist it
Speaker 1: in other times in your day will grow as well.
Speaker 2: The fact that you've been using a phone since you're
Speaker 2: eleven years old kind of puts into perspective because I
Speaker 2: got my first phone when I was fourteen, but it
Speaker 2: was one of those phones where you still had to
Speaker 2: like key in a ring tone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you had to earn the do.
Speaker 2: I used to sit there for like thirty minutes keying
Speaker 2: in a ring tone so that I could have my
Speaker 2: favorite song be my ringtone.
Speaker 1: For sure, and I had like a few songs on that.
Speaker 1: You didn't have loads of novelty, loads of different staff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so fascinating, this idea of earning something. And
Speaker 2: I feel like when you wake up in the morning,
Speaker 2: it's almost like we want life to be easier and simpler,
Speaker 2: and everything in our lives has become so instant, whether
Speaker 2: it's food, coffee, anything, like right, we're looking for something
Speaker 2: that's quick. How do we train ourselves to be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I should earn something, Like how do you even make
Speaker 2: that mindset shift of actually earning something's good versus having
Speaker 2: it be ready made for me.
Speaker 1: I think right at the core of that, it comes
Speaker 1: down to, are you wanting a life where you're in
Speaker 1: the pursuit of pleasure and just like momentarily feeling good
Speaker 1: or do you want like a really happy, fulfilling experience
Speaker 1: a life. And I struggled a lot with various addictions.
Speaker 1: I struggled a lot with alcoholism, and I have discussed
Speaker 1: social media, pornography, all these very dopemina activities. And ultimately,
Speaker 1: if you really spend some time with your mind, I
Speaker 1: think you have to spend prolonged period of times in
Speaker 1: nature chatting to yourself about your lifestyle. And if you
Speaker 1: start really considering, like, is this current lifestyle I have
Speaker 1: where I work a bit and then I get my
Speaker 1: pleasure from my phone, and then I do another activity
Speaker 1: and then I get my pleasure from my phone. Is
Speaker 1: that ultimately creating a life that you're really loving or
Speaker 1: is it just creating momentary experiences of pleasure? And I
Speaker 1: think when you begin having those conversations with yourself and
Speaker 1: observing more closely how you feel. And this is why
Speaker 1: I really like people to understand the symptoms of whether
Speaker 1: you're lower high in these chemicals, because then people start
Speaker 1: thinking like, Okay, this is why I'm feeling that way,
Speaker 1: and then they tie it to the phone and then
Speaker 1: they're like, okay, I need to start phone fasting, which
Speaker 1: is what we call it, these prolonged breaks from it.
Speaker 1: So I think it's that mindset shift around pleasure versus happiness.
Speaker 2: What's the longest you've ever done a phone for us?
Speaker 3: I did three years ago.
Speaker 1: I did seven days no phone whatsoever, no phone seven days.
Speaker 1: I actually wouldn't recommend that as a solution. It's really
Speaker 1: interesting because I've been really niching into this world of
Speaker 1: the phone connect. I think fundamentally, when you look at
Speaker 1: mental health, there has been a lot of quick dopaminergic
Speaker 1: activities for the last hundred years, be that alcohol or
Speaker 1: cigarettes or sugary food or whatever it may be. But
Speaker 1: mental health has shifted rapidly since the iPhone became a thing.
Speaker 1: And then if you look at since COVID, when we
Speaker 1: start really scrolling the short videos, mental health has declined
Speaker 1: even further. And I think the big reason that's the
Speaker 1: case is because we can more frequently engage with dopamin
Speaker 1: via the phone than the dopamine we used to get
Speaker 1: from those other sources. You might eat sugar three times
Speaker 1: a day, you might drink once a day, you might
Speaker 1: watch pornography once a day social media. Like with the
Speaker 1: DO Lab where we do our research, we see people
Speaker 1: opening their phone about one hundred and forty to one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty times a day. So it's that frequency
Speaker 1: of increase which is challenging, which brings us to that
Speaker 1: phone fasting idea. Now, I tried seven days off. I
Speaker 1: tried three days off. The difficulty is because we're operating
Speaker 1: in such a rapid society with the amount of information
Speaker 1: coming at us on our email and what's happened with
Speaker 1: our jobs. I think big breaks from it can actually
Speaker 1: be very stressful when you turn the phone back on.
Speaker 1: And what we've seen in our research is if people
Speaker 1: commit to short, frequent breaks where they know the morning
Speaker 1: is a frequent break, they'll always do. They have a
Speaker 1: sixty minute phone fast in the evening, they have a
Speaker 1: prolonged one in the middle of the day. If they
Speaker 1: have these frequent breaks rather than long breaks, that actually
Speaker 1: seems to be more effective. Definitely for me as well.
Speaker 2: I could agree with you more. I've done those phone
Speaker 2: fast as well. For a while, and there are times
Speaker 2: in my year where I think that that can be important.
Speaker 2: But overall, I fully agree with you that I think
Speaker 2: if you're going oscling between these extremes, you just keep
Speaker 2: kind of pinging back and forth, and so you go
Speaker 2: from being really addicted to doing the phone fast and
Speaker 2: going back to being really addicted, and that can get
Speaker 2: really exhausting and really really tiring. And so what has
Speaker 2: been your best set of tips that you've found for
Speaker 2: someone who doesn't want to look at their phone first
Speaker 2: thing in the morning or to not turn to that
Speaker 2: because you said the morning is so important. What do
Speaker 2: we do? Because I feel like that's the first thing.
Speaker 2: You know, eighty percent of us to look at our
Speaker 2: phones first thing in the morning lasting at night. We
Speaker 2: look at it before we look at our partners and
Speaker 2: our kids after we look at them at night. Our
Speaker 2: phone gets more FaceTime than the people we love, Like
Speaker 2: that is our life. What do we do?
Speaker 1: We have these four underlying laws for each of the
Speaker 1: chemicals dopmine, oxitose, and serotonin, and dolphins. The underlying law
Speaker 1: from all of the research we looked into, Like in
Speaker 1: this book, there's like two hundred and fifty studies we
Speaker 1: explored around these topics. Fundamentally, the law that we found
Speaker 1: to be most appropriate with dopamine is take action as
Speaker 1: soon as you wake every day, and that fundamentally means
Speaker 1: you wake, you don't snooze your alarm. As painful as
Speaker 1: it is, but simply beating that challenge of oh I
Speaker 1: could just lie in bed and stay in this comfort
Speaker 1: and doing something that's difficult is beginning that dope mean increase.
Speaker 1: We then get people to if they really struggle with snoozing,
Speaker 1: to literally when the alarm goes off, just sit at
Speaker 1: the side of the bed and just get themselves out
Speaker 1: of the prone position effectively and sit there. We then
Speaker 1: get them to go straight to the bathroom if you can.
Speaker 1: You then start brushing your teeth. Brushing your teeth is
Speaker 1: an annoying slow activity. Again, you're earning dopemine. Like if
Speaker 1: you do it for twenty seconds, you always know that, oh,
Speaker 1: I feel a bit guilt for the fact I just
Speaker 1: did twenty seconds. You do the two minutes you think, yes,
Speaker 1: task and play. So you go to the bathroom and
Speaker 1: brush your teeth, You splash cold water on your face,
Speaker 1: and you come back and you make your bed. There's
Speaker 1: this brilliant psychologist called Walton that looked at the relationship
Speaker 1: between dopamine and effort, and it's very clear that if
Speaker 1: you utilize effort right at the beginning of your day,
Speaker 1: your dop means starting on that nice slow curve, motivation
Speaker 1: then builds and then your capacity to further resist the
Speaker 1: phone and maybe get outside for a walk or do
Speaker 1: some exercise, or get to your desk or make your
Speaker 1: kids breakfast. It's going to come from an easier place
Speaker 1: than the wake up, spike, dove, mean and crash and
Speaker 1: then try and get going from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great advice. So I think one thing that
Speaker 2: helped me out for a while was I have a
Speaker 2: few instrumentals or music that I like, and I'll have
Speaker 2: that on my phone. So I'll wake up and I'll
Speaker 2: put this song on because I know I have the
Speaker 2: urge to pick up my phone and I'll press plate
Speaker 2: and then the phone's with me while I'm brushing my teeth.
Speaker 2: But I'm not now scrolling because I'm now listening to something.
Speaker 2: And I know people do it with podcasts, people do
Speaker 2: it with audio meditation, whatever it may be. For me,
Speaker 2: it's it's music. That reminds me of being back in
Speaker 2: the monastery. And so I'll play that and it's just
Speaker 2: like the soundtrack to My Morning Nice And it may
Speaker 2: have birds chirpping, it may have nature sounds, it may
Speaker 2: have a bit of water like it's these and for me,
Speaker 2: that allows me to feel like there's something distracted. Is
Speaker 2: that bad? Is that good? Like? What's your take on that?
Speaker 2: Be honest with me.
Speaker 1: It's interesting and there is so much nuance with how
Speaker 1: the beginning of the day starts, and we get these
Speaker 1: questions all the time in our training and things like that. Fundamentally,
Speaker 1: the appslue gold standard would be you don't see a
Speaker 1: phone for thirty years.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: However, there are scenarios where definitely a phone is not
Speaker 1: disadvantageous to these chemicals. So if you think about listening
Speaker 1: to music as long as you're not rapidly tapping through
Speaker 1: it and just listening to a song, that's okay. If
Speaker 1: you woke up and it's part of your routines, go
Speaker 1: straight into a meditation utilizing a meditation app.
Speaker 3: Again, that's a good use of your time.
Speaker 1: I know many people like, because of the brainwave state,
Speaker 1: to go straight into meditation when they wake.
Speaker 3: This is the where it gets interesting.
Speaker 1: You really want to make sure that the phone doesn't
Speaker 1: charge directly by your head.
Speaker 3: That's like a gold standard rule.
Speaker 1: It can't be charging there because our willpower goes up
Speaker 1: and down depending actually on our dopmein levels and different
Speaker 1: areas of our brain being activated. Willpower in the morning
Speaker 1: is going to be slightly lower if the phone is there.
Speaker 1: It's irresistible. I always have this like when I come away,
Speaker 1: for example, we're here at the moment, I don't have
Speaker 1: my alarm, so then my phone has to become my alarm.
Speaker 3: And suddenly it's like where is the phone going to be?
Speaker 1: And I have to make sure that it charges the
Speaker 1: other side of the room so it still wakes me.
Speaker 1: But I don't have that moment. I might just quickly
Speaker 1: check with that in mind. When you do check, if
Speaker 1: there's a whole stream of notifications, again, it's going to
Speaker 1: create this anticipatory rise in dopemin. Then you're going in.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be able to resist it. So
Speaker 1: you need to really be on airplane mode when you're
Speaker 1: going to sleep, so you wake up and there's nothing there.
Speaker 1: You then have these really nuanced components of if you
Speaker 1: want to go into meditation app, like I have these
Speaker 1: things that I want to do, I would open the phone,
Speaker 1: click the app, then on aeroplane it so you haven't
Speaker 1: seen a notification, do your meditation, come back out, go
Speaker 1: away from the phone. But fundamentally, we've trained like fifty
Speaker 1: people in dose. It is so clear that if people
Speaker 1: have thirty minutes when they wait without going on their phone,
Speaker 1: it creates a radical shift in their experience of life.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I remember when I first trained myself, I had
Speaker 2: to have to lock my phone in my car outside
Speaker 2: because it was just so addictive. And I found, especially
Speaker 2: in moments of high anxiety and high tension, like whether
Speaker 2: there's something in the news cycle, whether there's you know,
Speaker 2: just everything that we get sucked into. I found that
Speaker 2: having my phone out of the room is like a must,
Speaker 2: because I found like how hard it is to get
Speaker 2: good quality sleep when your phone's right there and you're
Speaker 2: either on it at night or you're on it first
Speaker 2: thing in the morning, and you're getting sucked into the
Speaker 2: latest updates, the latest news, whatever it is, and the
Speaker 2: anxiety and stress that you're taking on is colossal for sure.
Speaker 1: And the nighttime component is really key as well to consider,
Speaker 1: like it's almost quite pleasurable just lying bed and just
Speaker 1: like doom scroll, your brain sleep. We train a lot
Speaker 1: of schools and a lot of kids literally will just
Speaker 1: go sleep in TikTok.
Speaker 3: That's just how their brains sleep.
Speaker 1: And we look at all their screen times and some
Speaker 1: of them have like sixteen seventeen hours a day of
Speaker 1: screen time, but we look into that and they're about
Speaker 1: nine to ten hours in the daytime. But it's larger
Speaker 1: that TikTok just stays open throughout the night because if
Speaker 1: they wake, they then just click next videos, so sound
Speaker 1: continues because a lot of I struggle with like the quiet.
Speaker 3: Effectively, if you.
Speaker 1: Need some kind of stimulation at night time, of course,
Speaker 1: like reading would be incredible if that's an option for
Speaker 1: you and you could achieve doing reading, that would be
Speaker 1: a perfect act. But if you were going to think, okay,
Speaker 1: I need some kind of stimulation, you want to think,
Speaker 1: how can I do something that's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a slower release dopmine activity that's still on technology. So
Speaker 1: for me, there will be evenings where I think I
Speaker 1: really want to watch a podcast. For example, if you
Speaker 1: were to sit and you were to put like a
Speaker 1: tablet across your bed and you would sit and watch
Speaker 1: a podcast that's nowhere nearest stimulating as like an Instagram
Speaker 1: reels feed because the novelty is different. Like you sit
Speaker 1: and you watch a podcast the first like five to
Speaker 1: ten minutes, you're kind of getting into it and you're
Speaker 1: getting hold of the storyline, and your dopemin is gradually increasing.
Speaker 1: You open social media, it's like rapid, Okay, now I'm
Speaker 1: in and I'm engaged. That difference is really important to
Speaker 1: understand because if we're just burning our dope mein before
Speaker 1: we go to sleep, it's highly likely we're going to
Speaker 1: wake up in this more deflated, low willpower type state.
Speaker 1: If you can have a slower dopamine technological activity at night.
Speaker 3: It's going to be better for those mornings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's actually happening though? So I love that idea
Speaker 2: of slow release versus instant release, But what's actually happening
Speaker 2: in a fast release and why does that lead to
Speaker 2: lower willpower and lower motivation.
Speaker 1: It's really important to just understand that the brain chemical
Speaker 1: evolved simply to be earned over a long period of time.
Speaker 1: Like if you actually imagine the challenging activity of being outdoors.
Speaker 1: You have a family and you have to spend ten
Speaker 1: hours in the cold building a shelter. Your brain wasn't
Speaker 1: designed to just give you a really quick dopain he
Speaker 1: because then you think, oh nice, I feel good now
Speaker 1: I'm done, far before the task was complete. So it
Speaker 1: evolved to slowly increase dope. Meine operates with these little
Speaker 1: vesicles in your brain. You can imagine them as little
Speaker 1: bubbles that go across your synapses. Those bubbles are desired
Speaker 1: to slowly transfer across the signapses as more more effort
Speaker 1: is engaged. As soon as you open the social media
Speaker 1: immediately a ton of those vesticles are rapidly going across
Speaker 1: the sign apps. And that's why your brain is like, wow,
Speaker 1: this feels really good. Your brain starts thinking like, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be able to cope with this. This
Speaker 1: is unusual for my brain to be increasing at this level.
Speaker 1: And then you have the brain seeking to try and
Speaker 1: get yourself back into balance. Our brain always seeks homeostasis,
Speaker 1: as does our body. And if you think about a
Speaker 1: medical show you may have watched on TV before, when
Speaker 1: you see someone having an issue with their heart, you
Speaker 1: see this rapid increase then rapid decline, rapid increase, rapid decline,
Speaker 1: And that's because the heart is increasing because of some
Speaker 1: kind of physiological difficulty, but it keeps trying to slow
Speaker 1: it down because it's trying to keep it at a
Speaker 1: balance level. The exact same thing happens with the dopamine,
Speaker 1: because it experiences a rapid increase and then goes, oh
Speaker 1: my god, try and slow the productions, Try and slow
Speaker 1: the production. It slows the production. Then as we have
Speaker 1: less vesicles happening because of the social media, we're then like, oh,
Speaker 1: can't Boss do anything? We procrastinate against this low will
Speaker 1: power experience.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks for explaining that. I was like, I've never
Speaker 2: heard that before. So it's super useful to get what's
Speaker 2: going on behind the scenes, because I think naturally, when
Speaker 2: we're doing it, we don't see any of that you
Speaker 2: were mentioning a few seconds ago, this idea, the difference
Speaker 2: between how we can sense whether we're high or low
Speaker 2: in each of these chemicals, is that right for sure?
Speaker 2: Could you walk us through some of the symptoms and
Speaker 2: you can either choose to start a dopamine or if
Speaker 2: you think we've talked about that, switchtoxotocin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so just to remind the dopmin If you're procrastinating,
Speaker 1: you're lower motivation, you can't focus, is a clear sign
Speaker 1: that you need some kind of challenging activity. I'm very
Speaker 1: aware that in that state, that's the worst thing you
Speaker 1: want to do. You're like, I don't want to do
Speaker 1: anything difficult right now. This is why, for example, cold
Speaker 1: showers have become so popular in our modern world because
Speaker 1: they're absolute hell, pure pain, very challenging, and they will
Speaker 1: rebuild the dopamine. So, dop mean, if you're in that
Speaker 1: low motivation state, that's when you need a challenging activity.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you that question. Actually, so what are
Speaker 2: the other So how do we build dopamine in a
Speaker 2: healthy way?
Speaker 1: First one would be the phone fast when you wake up.
Speaker 1: Second one would be any kind of discipline in your
Speaker 1: home environment. That's not like a super sexy way to
Speaker 1: build it, but it's very clear.
Speaker 3: That it has a positive effect.
Speaker 1: If I give you the example of having to change
Speaker 1: and wash our bedding, we all hate that activity. It's
Speaker 1: like you wake up one day and you think, wow,
Speaker 1: that bed looks like it needs washing. A week later,
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, I definitely need now wash. You take
Speaker 1: all the sheets of jam it in the washing machine,
Speaker 1: then you have to wait for it to dry, and
Speaker 1: that's so boring, and then you have to go the
Speaker 1: proce of actually butting it, buttoning it all back up.
Speaker 1: Eventually that evening, though, you find yourself getting into your
Speaker 1: freshly washed bed and it's literally one of the most
Speaker 1: rewarding human experiences when the sheet is tight and it's
Speaker 1: all really nice as you get in. You never get
Speaker 1: into your bed and think, I feel really annoyed that
Speaker 1: I bothered to wash my bedding today. It's like the
Speaker 1: opposite experience, whereas you do sometimes feel annoyed at yourself
Speaker 1: for overscrolling. And this is our brain having very sophisticated
Speaker 1: guidance mechanisms. Don't mean it's here just to reward anything
Speaker 1: that's advantageous. So you have the phone fast any kind
Speaker 1: of discipline in your home environment. And I do want
Speaker 1: to stress that one like we all have to do
Speaker 1: this annoying to empty dish washes, take out bins, and
Speaker 1: if you start framing it in your head as something
Speaker 1: that's actually elevating your motivation and elevating your experis alive.
Speaker 1: It shifts, what those annoying tasks are for us all.
Speaker 1: We then have cold water immersion. There's been a big
Speaker 1: topic Andrew Human has been really popular on this. There's
Speaker 1: that amazing study that came out back in two thousand
Speaker 1: that show we have a two hundred and fifty percent
Speaker 1: increase in dope mein when we put ourselves into a
Speaker 1: significantly cold environment. So if you can do the cold,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. Our next one is this one called my Pursuit,
Speaker 1: and this is really really key to understand with dopamine.
Speaker 1: There's the chat from Cambridge University called Schultz who in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight looked at the different times in which
Speaker 1: dopamine increases, and what you fundamentally see is that dopamine
Speaker 1: is actually at its highest point just before we achieve something,
Speaker 1: not actually when we achieve the goal itself. And this
Speaker 1: is really important to consider in our lives because if
Speaker 1: you go back to that hunter gatherer example, given the
Speaker 1: dopamine is the motivation and attention molecule, it's very useful.
Speaker 1: So you were hunting for an animal, just before you
Speaker 1: hunt it, you need the most dopamine. When you've actually
Speaker 1: got it, you don't necessarily need as much as just
Speaker 1: that moment period to really motivate you to push.
Speaker 3: The final part.
Speaker 1: When we look at our life today, a lot of
Speaker 1: us can think that our happiest life is when we
Speaker 1: achieve the thing. But it's very clear from a research
Speaker 1: point of view that our happiest life is actually simply
Speaker 1: when we're in the pursuit of the goal itself. And
Speaker 1: we get people to go out for about thirty minutes
Speaker 1: into nature without their headphones. Were always promoting to be
Speaker 1: in nature without headphones and simply for a whole thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: ask themselves the question, what is my primary pursuit right now?
Speaker 1: Once they start considering what it is, maybe they have
Speaker 1: a creative pursuit of pursuit with their family, their work,
Speaker 1: their health. They ask themselves why is that? And they
Speaker 1: spend another ten minutes really trying to clarify why that's
Speaker 1: the case. Then they go into the process of how
Speaker 1: the hell am I going to get towards that goal?
Speaker 1: And a consistent daily pursuit, a consistent daily striving for
Speaker 1: something that's beyond your comfort zone is so incredible for
Speaker 1: this system.
Speaker 2: It's so interesting to me because I feel like when
Speaker 2: you're in that space. Like you said earlier, it's the
Speaker 2: last thing you want to do. But I've realized over
Speaker 2: time that things are good for me feel terrible before
Speaker 2: and feel amazing after. And that's the open yeah, And
Speaker 2: things that are unhealthy for me are bad for me
Speaker 2: feel great before and terrible afterwards. Right like what you
Speaker 2: just said about if you've got to clean your bed
Speaker 2: sheets and all of that, when you're doing it, you're like,
Speaker 2: this is the biggest waste of my time. After when
Speaker 2: you get in bed, it feels great, whereas leaving a
Speaker 2: dirty feels good and like being lazy and just be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I can't be bothered whatever. But then when you get
Speaker 2: in bed, you're like, oh, this is filthy, right. And
Speaker 2: so it's interesting how I've I've had to consciously focus
Speaker 2: on how I feel after something, like even now I've
Speaker 2: been I had surgery last year, and then so I
Speaker 2: got no two years ago and I had surgery, couldn't
Speaker 2: really lift weights for a while. I got back into
Speaker 2: lifting probably consistently only a couple months back. Nice, and
Speaker 2: so I've been working out, you know, five days a
Speaker 2: week for the last just over a month. It's been great,
Speaker 2: and I don't enjoy. Like, if you ask me to
Speaker 2: play sports, I can play sports any day. You ask
Speaker 2: me to play football, I'd love to play football. You
Speaker 2: tell me we go work out at the gym. I
Speaker 2: don't really love it, but I know it's important for me,
Speaker 2: especially with my age and what I'm trying to do
Speaker 2: with my body. And so I've had to convince myself
Speaker 2: of how I feel after a workout to get in
Speaker 2: the gym. And I know for a fact that I
Speaker 2: never regret going to the gym after it, but before
Speaker 2: I'm always tempted to text either my mate or my
Speaker 2: trainer and go, don't want to forget it. I'm just
Speaker 2: tired today, right, And so it's almost like what does
Speaker 2: it take to kind of let go of that immediate
Speaker 2: instant feeling that we all have of like press the
Speaker 2: snooze button, message my mate and cancel the hike, cancel
Speaker 2: on my trainer, don't turn up to that class, even
Speaker 2: though I already paid in advance. Like what do you
Speaker 2: do with that tiny little thought that pops in that
Speaker 2: kind of sets us all off on the wrong course?
Speaker 2: Do you relate to that? By the way, is that yeah?
Speaker 2: So much?
Speaker 1: I literally struggled so much with the addiction to everything
Speaker 1: I live. For ten years in a life where I
Speaker 1: just wasn't completing the challenging activities that life has to offer.
Speaker 1: I lived an easy dough for me, so I relate massively.
Speaker 1: We tried to convince ourselves.
Speaker 3: To go to the gym this morning. It was brutal
Speaker 3: to get ourselves there.
Speaker 1: But I had this today and I was thinking, no,
Speaker 1: I'm going to elevate my dopemins through this hard work
Speaker 1: in the gym. That's going to put me in a
Speaker 1: more motivated state. It gives me a highlightlihood to have
Speaker 1: a good attention span during this conversation.
Speaker 3: So I think considering the.
Speaker 1: Ultimate outcome of the action and how it's going to
Speaker 1: impact your day ahead is key. There is this fundamental
Speaker 1: principle of dopamine that I really want people to understand though.
Speaker 1: And then with this idea, rather than needing to go
Speaker 1: on Instagram and think, Okay, what those good doping activities
Speaker 1: and what are the bad ones, with this simple principle,
Speaker 1: you just know. And whilst obviously it's good to look
Speaker 1: at those posts on Instagram that's what I post all
Speaker 1: the time, having this base understanding is very motivating. This
Speaker 1: chemical evolved within us for a very long time, and
Speaker 1: it evolved for one simple reason, to promote the survival
Speaker 1: of our specie. Without dopamine, we simply wouldn't be here.
Speaker 1: We would have never pushed ourselves to scratch rocks together
Speaker 1: for three hours to make the fire to keep our
Speaker 1: family warm. We would never would have gone through a
Speaker 1: Sahara desert for three hours in order to find a
Speaker 1: little bit of fruit to keep our family alive. It
Speaker 1: was rewarding the ridiculously challenging actor that kept us alive,
Speaker 1: just as doth Mean for all that time, had a
Speaker 1: very sophisticated way of communicating with humanity to keep us
Speaker 1: doing the hard things. Nowadays, we're experiencing the opposite message
Speaker 1: from this chemical. Fundamentally, doth Me knows at its core
Speaker 1: that over engaging with pornography and no longer having sex
Speaker 1: with people is not good for the survival of our specie.
Speaker 1: Eating too much sugar and not eating enough protein is
Speaker 1: not good for the survival of our specie. Living a
Speaker 1: very isolated teenage life and no longer building friendships and
Speaker 1: working in your school life and scrolling social media is
Speaker 1: not good for the survival of humanity. And it's really
Speaker 1: important to understand that whenever you're engaging in activity, if
Speaker 1: you simply observe the activity and think, ultimately, does this
Speaker 1: increase or decrease my survival and you think xcise obviously,
Speaker 1: increase protein, obviously, increase sugar, obviously, decrease pornography ultimately does
Speaker 1: technically decrease because it's reducing procreation. And then you have
Speaker 1: this fundamental principle when you then are looking at your
Speaker 1: activities and thinking how am I going to engage with
Speaker 1: my day?
Speaker 3: You really want to be thinking how am I going.
Speaker 1: To do activities that are going to lead to my
Speaker 1: day being the best experience it can be. And this
Speaker 1: comes downs that difference of do I just want to
Speaker 1: feel short term pleasure or do I want to feel
Speaker 1: really happy? And I had these questions with myself in
Speaker 1: my mind, I went on these walks every day in nature.
Speaker 1: I literally equate the entirety of my career, my working life,
Speaker 1: my ability to find my beautiful partner to walking in
Speaker 1: nature every day and having a proper, truthful conversation with
Speaker 1: myself of am I only in the pursuit of pleasure?
Speaker 1: And is that going to be my experience of life
Speaker 1: or am I going to experience a life that feels
Speaker 1: really happy and fulfilling? And when I wake in the morning,
Speaker 1: like this morning, and I think, Oh, I wonder what's
Speaker 1: been happening on social media? I want how many likes
Speaker 1: I got on this thing, whatever it might be, I
Speaker 1: asked myself the question do I want pleasure or do
Speaker 1: I want a really happy, fulfilling day, And that ultimate
Speaker 1: conversation leads to better decision making.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great way to look at it, and
Speaker 2: I'm glad that you laid it out across the board.
Speaker 2: I mean, you've mentioned pornography a few times, and I
Speaker 2: feel like that's become just such a big issue now
Speaker 2: where I feel like when I was growing up, it
Speaker 2: was less of an issue. Then when it kind of
Speaker 2: took off, it was something that you kind of heard
Speaker 2: and people didn't talk about it as much, and now
Speaker 2: it's become like totally public, Like you know, there's talk
Speaker 2: about it in mainstream news, and not in a positive sense,
Speaker 2: but in the sense of you just see it becoming
Speaker 2: more normalized. But that doesn't mean people are using it less,
Speaker 2: if that makes sense, Like, yeah, for sure, does that
Speaker 2: definitely rapidly rise, and yeah, it's rapidly right. It's definitely
Speaker 2: at least now getting communicated about it is getting communicated about, yeah,
Speaker 2: but it isn't necessarily like, oh, we're talking about it more.
Speaker 2: You'd hope that, like, for example, when we talk about
Speaker 2: mental health more, you'd hope that it gets destigmatizing then people,
Speaker 2: whereas with pornography, it's kind of like it's being talked
Speaker 2: about more, but it's usage is like going through the roof,
Speaker 2: and so it's like, what, what have you seen work
Speaker 2: for people there? You've worked with people in doughs. I'm
Speaker 2: sure you've worked with people who've had like really deep
Speaker 2: pornography addictions.
Speaker 1: Pornography addiction is fascinating because it's very different to alcohol
Speaker 1: and social media and sugar because it's very private. And
Speaker 1: when you say, for example, get really into alcohol and
Speaker 1: you become an alcohol like or maybe you just slightly overdrink,
Speaker 1: it becomes very apparent to your family and your friends
Speaker 1: that you're drinking a lot, whether you're going out partying
Speaker 1: a lot, or like every time you socialize, you're always
Speaker 1: requiring wine and beer in order to have a good time.
Speaker 1: The same happens with the phone like you're always engaging
Speaker 1: with it. The same happens with sugar. Pornography is like
Speaker 1: this secret addiction that society has, and that's why I
Speaker 1: think it's being massively underestimated. And where with these other
Speaker 1: actions things like eating chocolate, we know it has one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty percent increase in dove mean from baseline,
Speaker 1: causing the spike and crash. When we engage with something
Speaker 1: like alcohol, it's a two hundred percent increase, cocaine two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty percent increase. All of these different studies
Speaker 1: are showing us a lot about those actions, but very
Speaker 1: little is showing us much about pornography because it's a
Speaker 1: very private behavior. When we look into how people solve it, fundamentally,
Speaker 1: people need to become very clear as to how it's
Speaker 1: actually impacting their life. There's the whole moral and ethical
Speaker 1: side of pornography, and if that can motivate someone away
Speaker 1: from it, that's incredible. We're obviously looking with the dough
Speaker 1: lab more at what is it actually doing to your
Speaker 1: experience of life and your motivation and your dopamine levels.
Speaker 1: And for me, I grew up as someone that started
Speaker 1: engaging in porn I was like thirteen fourteen, I just
Speaker 1: heard that was a thing, searched on Google, discovered it
Speaker 1: was a thing, massive amount of pleasure, and then watched it.
Speaker 1: For like ten years of my life. I didn't think
Speaker 1: anything of it or my friends watched it. I didn't
Speaker 1: even feel any real guilt or shame around watching it
Speaker 1: because it was so normalized in the world that I
Speaker 1: grew up in, and it's very unusual to even be
Speaker 1: in this moment now, Like I never thought, oh, pornography
Speaker 1: is going to be something I hope I talk about
Speaker 1: one day on a show. But this really needs to
Speaker 1: be considered with mental health. It's something that society is
Speaker 1: definitely underestimating because if you think through the lens of
Speaker 1: sex versus pornography, and this idea of earning dopamine, sex,
Speaker 1: especially like a nice, intimate, loving experience of sex, is
Speaker 1: a slow progress. It's like you have a period of
Speaker 1: time together and maybe you have dinner together, and then
Speaker 1: you cuddle and then you kiss, and then eventually you
Speaker 1: have an intimate experience and then eventually have sex. It
Speaker 1: might be like twenty thirty minutes before that moment has happened.
Speaker 1: Pornography is very different. It's I'm scrolling Instagram, or that
Speaker 1: person's pretty good looking. Now I'm on a porn website,
Speaker 1: and within sixty seconds, it's like, you're all the way there.
Speaker 3: Your don't mean it's so high.
Speaker 1: We then went through the process of getting people to
Speaker 1: just try and have seven days without watching it. Just okay,
Speaker 1: seven days, you're not going to watch it. If you
Speaker 1: need to engage with the activity, you simply watch it.
Speaker 1: You simply do the activity, but you use your imagination,
Speaker 1: and even with that, you try and reduce it to
Speaker 1: maybe twice a week rather than what a lot of people,
Speaker 1: particularly men, but I think women struggle with this as well.
Speaker 1: That's what we're seeing in our research and now doing
Speaker 1: it sort of seven days a week, you have seven
Speaker 1: days off and you very closely observe your motivation, your
Speaker 1: attention span, and your general kind of enthusiasm and excitement
Speaker 1: for life. People then come off it for the first time,
Speaker 1: maybe in their whole life, because they never even considered
Speaker 1: it was a factor in their mental health. They spend
Speaker 1: seven days off it, and they start genuinely noticing a difference.
Speaker 1: They're like, wow, I actually feel different without this activity.
Speaker 1: I felt so different when I first came off it.
Speaker 1: I remember texting some of my friends and they're like, God,
Speaker 1: what is teaching going to have us doing?
Speaker 3: Now there's like, now we've got a gret porn doing.
Speaker 1: They then came off it for seven days and they're like, wow,
Speaker 1: I actually noticed a very signific difference. You then extend
Speaker 1: that to two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, very rapidly.
Speaker 1: You see a significant difference as a result of your
Speaker 1: dopemein baseline beginning to not have this constant destruction. Once
Speaker 1: you have that period of absidence, a beginning of a
Speaker 1: seed is planted within your brain and body that it
Speaker 1: begins to see the pornography in a different way. As
Speaker 1: the frequency reduces, the motivation rapidly rises in your life
Speaker 1: and you start thinking, oh, maybe it's something I could
Speaker 1: let guy.
Speaker 2: What about people who are saying like, well, if it's
Speaker 2: it's natural, it helps me destress. It's what I turn to.
Speaker 2: You know, it feels easy, It gives me a release,
Speaker 2: like anyone who's coming up with any of that. And
Speaker 2: for the people who did it for those seven days,
Speaker 2: who were like, well all I was thinking about was
Speaker 2: porn the whole time, Sure, easily like I'm sure that
Speaker 2: was a reaction. How do you encourage those people to
Speaker 2: deal with that kind of a notion or that instinctual
Speaker 2: reaction to being like, well, that's what I feel like
Speaker 2: I want to do naturally right now.
Speaker 1: Wanting an orgasm is a very natural experience for the
Speaker 1: brain and body. It's of course amazing if you can
Speaker 1: have those experiences with your partner, but we go through
Speaker 1: period where we're away from our partner, or maybe we
Speaker 1: don't have a partner and we're still seeking for an orgasm.
Speaker 1: When someone is seeking to de stress through that experience,
Speaker 1: the orgasm is all they need. It's not the pornography
Speaker 1: that's also needed. And if you go through the experience
Speaker 1: the process of masturbating without pornography, you also notice the
Speaker 1: same dopamine curve of your earning the reward, and it's
Speaker 1: a slower process and you have to get yourself into
Speaker 1: that experience. Eventually you experience the rise of dope, mean
Speaker 1: you feel pleasure and afterwards you don't feel this really deflated,
Speaker 1: flat feeling that you do when you watch porn. And
Speaker 1: it's really important to understand that someone can just go
Speaker 1: through a period of time of utilizing their imagination whenever
Speaker 1: they're seeking for that activity. If it's impossible with your imagination,
Speaker 1: you could look at a photo. But similar to that
Speaker 1: example I gave earlier where at night you're trying to
Speaker 1: go towards long form content over short form. With pornography,
Speaker 1: you're just trying to get away from really rapid stimulation.
Speaker 1: So if reducing it down to one video was like
Speaker 1: the possible thing to do, then reducing it down to
Speaker 1: a picture, then going down to imagination, that progressive journey,
Speaker 1: if you're finding it superredictive, it's super hard to quit,
Speaker 1: would be a path that you could follow.
Speaker 2: It's such an interesting conversation when you're looking at it
Speaker 2: through dose. Like, I think that's what's so interesting because
Speaker 2: I think for so long people have talked about moral reasons,
Speaker 2: ethical reasons, or whatever it may be. Now when you
Speaker 2: hear about it from a scientific perspective, you're just like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, Like I had no idea what I'm doing
Speaker 2: to my brain for sure, And I'm hoping that everyone
Speaker 2: who's listening and watching and struggling with these things. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't think meal TJ judging anyone or make anyone
Speaker 2: feel bad about it, But really realizing what we're doing
Speaker 2: to ourselves. For sure, when I have it's don't change.
Speaker 1: And the judgment piece on all this doth me stuff
Speaker 1: is so important to consider, Like I would have zero
Speaker 1: judgment for yourself if you currently wake up and scroll
Speaker 1: your phone for an hour, or if you eat a
Speaker 1: lot of sugar.
Speaker 3: Or if you watch pornography all the time.
Speaker 1: We didn't all wake up one there's babies and set
Speaker 1: up the world that we're all living in today. We've
Speaker 1: just been born into it. These are the options we have.
Speaker 1: Dopin is a chemical that the human being so deeply desires,
Speaker 1: and we've now been given very quick ways to access it.
Speaker 3: There is no judgment.
Speaker 1: I over engaged with everything, worse than probably everyone that's listening,
Speaker 1: and it's really important to understand that there is a
Speaker 1: path where you can come away from judging yourself from it,
Speaker 1: but start considering is this ultimately leading to me having
Speaker 1: my happiest experience alive. The only reason people are sitting
Speaker 1: and listening to these podcasts is because they want to learn.
Speaker 1: They want to feel happier or more fulfilled and more
Speaker 1: connected to people, whatever it may be. And this is
Speaker 1: a fundamental component optimizing our dopmine and getting it back
Speaker 1: into balance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and You're right about this secret hidden addiction, because
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people struggle with like, like,
Speaker 2: if you saw your partner drinking too much, you could
Speaker 2: talk to them about it. If you saw them on
Speaker 2: their phone too much, you could talk to them about it.
Speaker 2: And I think people always feel very betrayed when they
Speaker 2: find out that their partner's been using porn or whatever
Speaker 2: it may be, and like there's a feeling of not
Speaker 2: knowing how to bring it up and how to talk
Speaker 2: about it. And I've had I've had a lot of
Speaker 2: people reach out to me recently because it's been such
Speaker 2: an issue in their relationship, and I've said to them,
Speaker 2: it's kind of you've got to treat it like the
Speaker 2: other ones, in a for sure, compassionate, understanding way to
Speaker 2: raise it with your partner. It's not something that just
Speaker 2: calling it out will help.
Speaker 1: Definitely, my partner and I met earlier this year, and
Speaker 1: it was definitely a conversation we had. I spent like
Speaker 1: the last five years coming off it. A few years ago,
Speaker 1: I really like cut the cord and there would be
Speaker 1: these moments where once a month, once every two months,
Speaker 1: I'd be sitting there and think, oh, yeah, I could
Speaker 1: watch pornograph. I could have that stimulation that de stress
Speaker 1: as we talked about before, and having a good open
Speaker 1: dialogue around This is why I used to engage with it.
Speaker 1: This is how we could potentially enhance our sex life
Speaker 1: and our experience together in order to fulfill that aspect
Speaker 1: of what you're seeking for in porn. I think many
Speaker 1: people are struggling with things like their sex drive and
Speaker 1: their sexual connection with their partners, and porn is just
Speaker 1: the easy outlet. It's like, you want to have an orgasm,
Speaker 1: you can go to the bathroom and have that in
Speaker 1: a few minutes with pornography instead of having like a
Speaker 1: slow intimate experience with your partner. Ultimately, for all of
Speaker 1: us as human beings in this modern world to feel
Speaker 1: our happiest, anything that provides slow pleasure is the pursuit
Speaker 1: that we should be on. We're in a society right
Speaker 1: now where this is brand new, all this quick stuff,
Speaker 1: and we really need to consider it, like, let's have
Speaker 1: a conversation. Let's not judge one another for engaging with it,
Speaker 1: but let's consider how we could enhance our relationship in
Speaker 1: order to come away from that activity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have habits and systems to increase concentration and
Speaker 2: deep focus by forty eight percent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what are they? This is a really interesting area
Speaker 3: of dopamine.
Speaker 1: There's this brilliant scientist I love called gold that looked
Speaker 1: into the relationship between dopamine and what we call flow state.
Speaker 1: Flow state being when we get incredibly deeply immersed in
Speaker 1: a task. Again with that hunter gatherer example, they live
Speaker 1: their lives in flow state building. You get so into
Speaker 1: deep flow state, making fire, hunting, foraging for food. Big
Speaker 1: proportions of their day were spent deeply focused on one activity. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: we're basically doing like five hundred activities a day. I
Speaker 1: even saw recent research shows that we have thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand decisions that we're making a day now, comparably to
Speaker 1: an estimate with them of about two and a half
Speaker 1: thousand decisions a day. So we're just doing much more
Speaker 1: different stuff than the things we did when we were
Speaker 1: living our former lives. And when we look at increasing
Speaker 1: someone's time span, fundamentally, all of the dopaminergic stuff is
Speaker 1: going to impact it because you need an abundance of
Speaker 1: doping in your brain in order to concentrate. So waking up,
Speaker 1: not going on the phone, things like the big morning
Speaker 1: routine of the cold water on your face and brushing
Speaker 1: your teeth and making your bed. Then at least your
Speaker 1: doping is coming into a good place. You then have
Speaker 1: to sit down at your desk and think, how the
Speaker 1: hell am I going to increase my attention span by
Speaker 1: forty eight percent. Fundamentally, the phone cannot be anywhere near you.
Speaker 1: It needs to be physically separate from you, So you
Speaker 1: need to select the task. If your phone is required
Speaker 1: for your calendar or your tasks, whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: one task has to be selected. Never select multiple at once,
Speaker 1: because our brain simply cannot get into a deep state
Speaker 1: of flow if we're in that kind of experience. We
Speaker 1: then have this process of gamifying the experience of trying
Speaker 1: to get into a deep state of concentration. We get
Speaker 1: people on their computer, so once they've selected their task,
Speaker 1: they've separated themselves from their phone. To click on a
Speaker 1: new tab and just search the word stop Watch on
Speaker 1: Google and you'll see a Stopwatch appear. It's very important
Speaker 1: to it by that, not with the phone. You then
Speaker 1: go on the starfat once you're ready to start the task.
Speaker 1: You click start, you begin the task, and very quickly
Speaker 1: you find yourself beginning to feel bored or too difficult,
Speaker 1: too challenged by the task itself. These are the two
Speaker 1: things that take us out of flow, something being boring
Speaker 1: and too easy effectively, or something being too difficult. In
Speaker 1: the moment that you have that first experience arise, you
Speaker 1: say to yourself the sentence I'm going to fight the
Speaker 1: urg You repeat this as a mantra, I'm going to
Speaker 1: fight the urge for the distraction effectively. You do that
Speaker 1: as many times as you can, maybe you successfully do
Speaker 1: at three, four or five times.
Speaker 3: I'm going to fight the urge.
Speaker 1: Eventually you find yourself irresistibly needing to go on YouTube
Speaker 1: or needing to go on to Twitter or whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. In that moment, you can do that, but
Speaker 1: before you do it, you head back to the stopwatch
Speaker 1: that you had on one of those tabs, and you.
Speaker 3: Look at the number.
Speaker 1: You look at the number, and the first time you
Speaker 1: ever do it, it says six minutes and twenty seven seconds.
Speaker 1: That's what we then call your baseline attention span. That's
Speaker 1: how long you manage to push yourself for to stay
Speaker 1: in a state of concentration. We know from recent research
Speaker 1: that it takes about fifteen minutes for the brain to
Speaker 1: start to lock in, for the attention span to really
Speaker 1: start to zone into one place. Maybe you've got six
Speaker 1: minutes the first time, the next time, you get twelve. Eventually,
Speaker 1: once you get to fifteen, that's when your brain is
Speaker 1: really locking in. It's staying centralized on one thing. What
Speaker 1: we've then found is because it's very difficult to get
Speaker 1: to fifteen minutes of only focusing on one task, when
Speaker 1: you fight the urge, you give up and find the urge,
Speaker 1: and you look at the stopwatch and you see it's
Speaker 1: beyond fifteen minutes, you think, wow, I've actually managed to
Speaker 1: climb here. I've actually managed to get to the number
Speaker 1: that I was targeting. And then people have this elevated
Speaker 1: motivation to maybe I should just stay in this. We're
Speaker 1: way more productive. We complete tasks forty percent less time
Speaker 1: if we get into flow state, so it's extremely advantageous.
Speaker 1: We go through that process, separate from the phone, select
Speaker 1: the task, open the stopwatch on a new tab, target
Speaker 1: the fifteen minute number, and if you can get beyond
Speaker 1: it into thirty forty five minutes, that's incredible for flow state,
Speaker 1: incredible for dopamine.
Speaker 2: That's so powerful. Man, that's such a great, great system.
Speaker 2: I really hope people are going to try it out.
Speaker 2: And I can honestly say that I saw myself over
Speaker 2: the last twelve months see my attention diminished. I've always
Speaker 2: prided myself on having like really great attention, being able
Speaker 2: to immerse myself deeply into things. And I found that
Speaker 2: because I live quite a regiment to disciplined life, my
Speaker 2: phone became what I did in every gap. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: so because that was the only time I really had
Speaker 2: for my phone, I could be in the studio like
Speaker 2: this for four to six hours a day, and so
Speaker 2: every gap I could get grab my phone and fill
Speaker 2: in the gap. And sometimes I saw that gap actually
Speaker 2: being thirty minutes, and I used to think of it
Speaker 2: as a gap, and actually I was like, I used
Speaker 2: to think I couldn't be productive in those thirty minutes
Speaker 2: because I got so focused on my phone. But recently
Speaker 2: I've been leaving my phone out of the room, and
Speaker 2: those thirty minutes have been transformative. And so it's so
Speaker 2: easy to think, even as someone who I consider myself
Speaker 2: to have very good concentration and focus and flow state.
Speaker 2: I found that just diminishing daily because it was so
Speaker 2: easy to get lost and everything else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's so important to understand. Even if
Speaker 1: it wasn't productive, like doing work in that thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: it would arguably be prettyductive just to go and sit
Speaker 1: on the sofa and not go on your phone, or
Speaker 1: just to go and stand outside for a period of time,
Speaker 1: or to cool someone and talk to a human being.
Speaker 1: But the nuance of this is so important to understand
Speaker 1: because this is huge. Everyone basically completes one task on
Speaker 1: their list and then seeks for some kind of rewarding.
Speaker 1: It's like, now I've wroted my next opening hit on
Speaker 1: the phone, next task, next opening hit. And it's not
Speaker 1: even necessarily a whole task. Sometimes we do a little
Speaker 1: bit of a task and we think that's enough of
Speaker 1: this task done. Now I deserve my dope mein hit.
Speaker 1: And this is something I've struggled with massively. Like I
Speaker 1: grew up with no attention span, I really struggled with
Speaker 1: hyperactivity in school, really struggled for my whole life to
Speaker 1: get into states to focus. It was in the process
Speaker 1: of writing this book that I had to figure out
Speaker 1: how the hell do I concentrate for a prolonged period
Speaker 1: of time. And in those moments where I'm about to
Speaker 1: go onto the phone, I actually consider, like, what is
Speaker 1: the ultimate impact that's going to have on this task,
Speaker 1: Because as soon as you go on the phone through
Speaker 1: that dopmine lens, you're not just rewarding yourself for a
Speaker 1: little bit and going back to the task. You're spiking
Speaker 1: the dop mein crashing it out. Then you're trying to
Speaker 1: come back to the task from a low dopamine state,
Speaker 1: which is then really hard to get back into that
Speaker 1: stuff concentration. Or maybe at the beginning of our working day,
Speaker 1: we sit down at our desk and we're thinking we
Speaker 1: really want to be productives there.
Speaker 3: I want to have a good day with my working life.
Speaker 1: And then we're like, okay, just before that, I'll just
Speaker 1: have like ten minutes of Instagram just before I start.
Speaker 1: But then we spike and crash it, and then we
Speaker 1: try and enter the state of concentration from low base side.
Speaker 1: Don't mean and it's so difficult, but if we were
Speaker 1: to sit there, try and resist the phone, get into
Speaker 1: the state of focus, then go it's going to be
Speaker 1: so much better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how can someone increase their sleep quality by fifty
Speaker 2: four percent?
Speaker 3: Sleep is a fascinating topic.
Speaker 1: It's one that our world has become very clear that
Speaker 1: it's extremely valuable to all aspects of our physical and
Speaker 1: mental health. I think it all starts with how your
Speaker 1: day begins. When we wake up in the morning, we
Speaker 1: need to see sunlight as quickly as we possibly can.
Speaker 1: You could imagine for our hunter gatherers, they probably saw
Speaker 1: sunlight pretty fast given they were sleeping outside. When we
Speaker 1: woke up in the morning, we get the sunlight. We
Speaker 1: then need to consider the amount of physical activity throughout
Speaker 1: our day. It's very important that our body physically requires
Speaker 1: sleep when we get into bed. Many of the people
Speaker 1: that go through our dose experience really struggle with quite
Speaker 1: set entry lifestyles, as many of us do today, like
Speaker 1: we spend our whole life seated. So I'd say sunlight,
Speaker 1: making sure you have some kind of physical activity that
Speaker 1: slightly exhausts your body throughout the day. Then I think
Speaker 1: it really comes down to your approach in the evening.
Speaker 1: It's very clear from a research point of view that
Speaker 1: sugar really interrupts our quality and depth of sleep. If
Speaker 1: we're going to have sugar, I'd be moving the sugar
Speaker 1: earlier in the evening and if possible, towards a healthy
Speaker 1: form of sugar, fruit and honey and so on like
Speaker 1: that kind of sugar away from the modulage process type sugar.
Speaker 1: And then with the nuance of our phone in the evening,
Speaker 1: obviously that's the hyper stimulation the phone being charged by
Speaker 1: our bed, with the phone being utilized at night, when
Speaker 1: you're watching TV in the evening, I would consider that
Speaker 1: another period where you're phone fasting. So you're having this
Speaker 1: period of destimulating from your phone. Many of us struggle
Speaker 1: with work life balance or addiction to our phone, and
Speaker 1: a's largely cause because we just sit watching TV while
Speaker 1: scrolling our email and slack and so on. So in
Speaker 1: the evening, the TV becomes an environment where it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is a phone fasting experience, and that's why we
Speaker 1: called it phone fast, not technology fast. Watching TV is
Speaker 1: nowhere near as bad for our dopamine system as when
Speaker 1: we're scrolling the phone. After you watch TV for a bit,
Speaker 1: you're then going to want your next phone check before
Speaker 1: you go to bed, and you can have it.
Speaker 3: You can have a little bit of WhatsApp. You don't
Speaker 3: go back into a scroll.
Speaker 1: It's very useful doing that phone check to be standing
Speaker 1: up instead of lying prone on your bed. Like if
Speaker 1: you're lying on your bed, you're entering the deep loop.
Speaker 1: If you have to like stand in the kitchen while
Speaker 1: you do your few messages and you check one notification
Speaker 1: or DM on Instagram, whatever it may be. If you're standing,
Speaker 1: it then causes action to continue. You then make sure
Speaker 1: the phone doesn't charge by the bed, you get into
Speaker 1: the bed. If you can't go sleep with the choir,
Speaker 1: you opt towards podcasts and audio books and things like that.
Speaker 1: I would say that process is the most important factors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so interesting to me how screen time has
Speaker 2: become like five screens where it's like you have your
Speaker 2: phone and your laptop out, your partner has their phone
Speaker 2: and their laptop out, and then you have a screen on.
Speaker 2: So you've got five screens in between you and you're
Speaker 2: staring and being distracted by three different types of media.
Speaker 2: And you're so right. I've been doing that too, with
Speaker 2: the phone fast outside of me, and rather they are
Speaker 2: watching a show together. I've been leaving my phone in the.
Speaker 3: Kitchen yeah, it's better if your relationship as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's better for everything. But I used to find
Speaker 2: myself doing that all the timmer on board of what
Speaker 2: I'm watching on TV. So I'm just going to scroll
Speaker 2: away and now she's watching the TV. And then brother's like, well, Jay,
Speaker 2: are you watching this with me? You know, are we
Speaker 2: doing it? And I'm like, oh yeah, And then she
Speaker 2: gets to start to on her phone. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: you're with me, and it becomes this really ridiculous thing
Speaker 2: where you're both bored of what you're watching on TV.
Speaker 2: You're kind of, you know, scrolling to make up for it,
Speaker 2: and now it's disrupting the relationship as well.
Speaker 1: This boredom thing is really important to consider because boredom
Speaker 1: is something our mind experienced in abundance for most of
Speaker 1: human history.
Speaker 3: We spend losers of our time board.
Speaker 1: Even if you think back to being a kid, like
Speaker 1: how much time did you sit around and say Mom,
Speaker 1: I'm bored? Like that was a big thing and now
Speaker 1: that's not a thing. People don't really experience boredom because
Speaker 1: we've got the tablets and we've got the phones to
Speaker 1: always stimulate us. We've discovered this thing called the boredom
Speaker 1: barrier effectively. And I'm someone that really struggles with this.
Speaker 1: So they said, like, I really struggle with that high peractive.
Speaker 1: See if I sit and do very little, it's like
Speaker 1: what can I do?
Speaker 3: What can I do?
Speaker 1: So I relate to the experience and when I try
Speaker 1: to start trying to see these phone fast in the
Speaker 1: evening and watch TV, like I'll put on a movie
Speaker 1: for example, and I think this used to entertain me,
Speaker 1: and this is so boring now this film. We were
Speaker 1: watching Gladiator the other day, great movie. I know Gladiator
Speaker 1: two is coming out, so I was like, okay, let's
Speaker 1: watch Gladiator one. And you're sitting there and you're thinking, wow,
Speaker 1: this is pretty boring watching this experience. The important thing
Speaker 1: to understand is we see a boreding barrier about twelve
Speaker 1: to fifteen minutes of being bored. So for that first period,
Speaker 1: you're going to have your brain and body literally physically
Speaker 1: fighting to try and recover that experience of stimulation. So
Speaker 1: it's trying to get it to get up and go
Speaker 1: to the fridge and get the sugar. It's trying to
Speaker 1: get you to get the phone and open the social media.
Speaker 1: It's trying to seek to get back to that state
Speaker 1: that it was in of highly elevated dope mein. If
Speaker 1: after about twelve to fifteen minutes, the brain begins to discover, Okay,
Speaker 1: the dope mean is not coming back. I'm going to
Speaker 1: have to stay in this state. The brain and body
Speaker 1: will settle, the heart rate will slow, that desire for
Speaker 1: stimulation will occur, will reduce, and in that moment will
Speaker 1: then begin to find like a more peaceful state in
Speaker 1: our body. And we think it feels peaceful scrolling our phone,
Speaker 1: but really it's just numbing our dopin receptors. That feels
Speaker 1: like it's peaceful, but that is not restorative. That is
Speaker 1: not the actual rest our brain and body is needing.
Speaker 1: The one thing I'd add to this is if you
Speaker 1: try and phone fast and watch TV, it's very important
Speaker 1: that other people do it, like you were saying with RADI,
Speaker 1: because there's this fascinating area of dope mein called anticipatory
Speaker 1: dope mein, which basically means that our dove mein will
Speaker 1: rise simply at the thought of accessing dopemin. That's why,
Speaker 1: for example, if you like drinking alcohol and you walk
Speaker 1: past the bar and you see some people having some
Speaker 1: like glass of wine in the sun. You're standing at
Speaker 1: this massive urge of I want a glass of wine.
Speaker 1: I want a glass of wine. Your dope mein has
Speaker 1: risen just at the thought of having it. The same
Speaker 1: thing is happening with the phones. Like you're sitting at
Speaker 1: dinner with your partner or your kids. One person gets
Speaker 1: their phone out and immediately the entire table have them
Speaker 1: out and they's simply because everyone's brain has experienced this
Speaker 1: anticipatory dope mean which has then driven us into action
Speaker 1: towards the dope meine that they were receiving. So if
Speaker 1: your phone fasting is a family and with your partner,
Speaker 1: it has to be a group commitment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the group commitment, I guess makes it much
Speaker 2: more collaborative and effective because there's a feeling of like
Speaker 2: we're kind of trying to do this together. It's a
Speaker 2: common commitment. I think that accountability is really important too.
Speaker 2: I'm intrigued and if you're comfortable to share, like, how
Speaker 2: do you keep each other accountable without making each other
Speaker 2: feel bad? Because I feel like that's a really important
Speaker 2: thing for me and Rady like, and I think that's
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why I think me and Rady
Speaker 2: have been able to be together for as long as
Speaker 2: we have, and why I feel happy in my relationship
Speaker 2: is because Raddy's never judged me and made me feel
Speaker 2: bad for even my bad habits, but slowly coached me
Speaker 2: and nudged me out of them, which I'm so grateful
Speaker 2: for because I think if I would have had someone
Speaker 2: who would have judged me and kind of pointed fingers,
Speaker 2: I think I would have my ego probably would have
Speaker 2: like defended myself and not been comfortable with that. But
Speaker 2: this approach that she's taken, which she comes to her
Speaker 2: quite naturally, I feel like has helped me kind of
Speaker 2: become better in so many ways.
Speaker 1: I think, as you've shared there, the way in which
Speaker 1: it's communicated is very important. If it's an attack type
Speaker 1: communication of put your phone out, why you on your phone?
Speaker 3: Watch the TV.
Speaker 1: If it's that attack type energy, it's only going to
Speaker 1: create like cord style stress rise within that person, and
Speaker 1: then they're going to feel more of a desire to
Speaker 1: resist the guidance that's coming their way. So I think
Speaker 1: that's a component gentle, nice, loving communication. The other aspect
Speaker 1: of this is utilizing this dose language effectively. We have
Speaker 1: loads of parents that join our dose process, and it's
Speaker 1: really interesting. A lot of them are trying to help
Speaker 1: their really young kids understand these frameworks. They've got like
Speaker 1: eight year old kids or ten year old kids or
Speaker 1: twelve year old kids. They're trying to get them to
Speaker 1: reduce their like scrolling on the tablets or the phones
Speaker 1: or whatever it may be. And I get so many
Speaker 1: messages on Instagram saying my eight year old kid now says, Mommy,
Speaker 1: put your phone down. It's screwing up your dopamine. And
Speaker 1: using the language of dopamine and dose instead of having
Speaker 1: other words is actually really useful because it's not like
Speaker 1: a judgmental place. It's just you've got a brain chemical
Speaker 1: and this is something that's negative for it. So utilizing
Speaker 1: that as a communication framework, maybe sharing this podcast with
Speaker 1: them so they can understand it as well, would be
Speaker 1: a good process.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk a bit about oxytocin and serotonin. Which
Speaker 2: one do you want to go?
Speaker 3: For?
Speaker 1: Oxytocin? Okay, way, because you're mister oxytocin. Okay, go and
Speaker 1: tell us your pursuit of life over the last ten
Speaker 1: years has been oxytocin and not dopamine. Ultimately, it's led
Speaker 1: you to have great dopaminergic, pleasurable, successful experiences. But your
Speaker 1: pursuit of life has been service to humanity. And when
Speaker 1: you look into oxytocin, oxytocin increases whenever we make some
Speaker 1: kind of contribution to the world. There's this brilliant scientist
Speaker 1: called marsh who really looked into this. It's alongside a
Speaker 1: lady called Algo, and they've basically found that any time
Speaker 1: in which we do something kind for another human being,
Speaker 1: whether that's through physical touch, acts of service, grateful thoughts,
Speaker 1: celebrating someone's progress, anything that's kind for other human beings
Speaker 1: drives this chemical. And it's really clear that we as
Speaker 1: a society have become dopamine driven and less in the
Speaker 1: pursuit of oxytocin. I deeply believe that for much of
Speaker 1: our ancestors' lives, oxytocin was the dominant desire within us.
Speaker 1: How do our group survive and thrive and stay connected.
Speaker 1: I think we've moved towards a more pleasure dominant society
Speaker 1: that's dot mein driven and a little bit more so focused.
Speaker 1: When you get more into that lane of in, I'm
Speaker 1: living my life to serve. I'm living my life to
Speaker 1: build oxytocin. You have a much more fulfilling and happy experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And what's the enemy of oxytocin, Like, what's holding
Speaker 2: it back?
Speaker 1: It's interesting because dop mean is the only one we've
Speaker 1: managed to discover how to hijack effectively. We can't rapidly,
Speaker 1: in a kind of fake way, increase the oxytocin or
Speaker 1: the serotonin or the endorphins. Ultimately, when we look into
Speaker 1: the research, it's not that something can rapidly increase it
Speaker 1: and crash it out, but it's that someone might have
Speaker 1: a low level of oxydocin production through things like a
Speaker 1: lack of social connection in social moments, always having phones
Speaker 1: that are disrupting the quality of the connection. Things like
Speaker 1: how we connect with ourself in the conversation with we
Speaker 1: have with ourself is a factor here. Things like criticizing
Speaker 1: our appearance and being unkind to ourself is a big factor.
Speaker 1: So if you look down that lane of lack of
Speaker 1: human connection or disconnection from yourself, that's reducing the production. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that's how we can sense it as well,
Speaker 1: right for sure, Like if you're finding you have a
Speaker 1: very critical voice in your mind.
Speaker 3: That's very hard on yourself.
Speaker 1: It's really important to understand that that's an oxytocin relationship
Speaker 1: happening there. You don't have necessarily a lot of love
Speaker 1: for yourself going through your brain. Just like with a dopamain,
Speaker 1: I would have no judgment for yourself. If that's the case.
Speaker 1: We live in a world now it's mass comparison. We've
Speaker 1: got the mirrors, we've got the selfies, we've all got
Speaker 1: social media profiles where we're trying to create what we
Speaker 1: look like, dating profiles that need to be amazing in
Speaker 1: order to get a match. Like it's very hard to
Speaker 1: not really really care for your appearance, but going down
Speaker 1: that lane of constant judgment is really challenging for this chemical.
Speaker 2: Yeah so yeah, and I find that that kind of
Speaker 2: bleeds into all of our relationships as well. We see gossip,
Speaker 2: unhealthy competitiveness, comparison. You're seeing that idea of not being
Speaker 2: we've talked about this before, not being able to be
Speaker 2: happy for other people's success, not being able to acknowledge
Speaker 2: someone that you even may believe that you like or
Speaker 2: love and being able to be happy for them, and
Speaker 2: you know, reveling that success and so, and it almost
Speaker 2: feels like we find friends who kind of cement that
Speaker 2: negativity bias or that gossip bias, and so we'll find
Speaker 2: a bunch of people who also dislike something or some interest,
Speaker 2: and we kind of feel closer to people when we
Speaker 2: do that. It's that weird balance where it's like you're
Speaker 2: becoming closer to people by all hating on the same person.
Speaker 3: That's definitely how our world is working.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so what are some of the antidotes to
Speaker 2: getting away from that and how does that affect the oxytocin.
Speaker 1: Right at the beginning, the gratitude piece is so fundamental,
Speaker 1: and I think our world is very aware now that
Speaker 1: we need grateful thinking. The comparison and the negative thinking
Speaker 1: is largely fueled by what do I not have? Effectively,
Speaker 1: and gratitude is very simply the reminder to your brain
Speaker 1: of what you do have. And whilst I think society
Speaker 1: is very aware it's important and people have grass Jude
Speaker 1: channels and all kinds of things, I think still a
Speaker 1: huge percentage definitely in the research that we're doing don't
Speaker 1: actually have like a consistent daily practice whereby they're asking
Speaker 1: themselves what they're grateful for and then most importantly, why
Speaker 1: they're grateful for that action or activity or experience that
Speaker 1: they have within their life life. And adding to that
Speaker 1: morning routine, we eventually try and get all these chemicals
Speaker 1: in so someone goes through that dopaminergic process of getting
Speaker 1: that into balance. When they step outside, we get someone
Speaker 1: to find a bench that they will typically walk past
Speaker 1: on a frequent basis. Whenever you habit, stack or pair
Speaker 1: environmental cues with a habit, it makes it stronger and
Speaker 1: we get them to always sit down on the bench.
Speaker 1: We then get them to have a grateful thought and
Speaker 1: ask themselves why they actually feel grateful for that thing.
Speaker 1: Frequency of gratitude is the most important factor. Just once
Speaker 1: a week thinking oh, yeah, I'm kind of grateful I've
Speaker 1: got my house. It's great for your mind. But to
Speaker 1: really get the oxytocin production, we need it to be
Speaker 1: frequently occurring, and that's going to reduce our mind constantly
Speaker 1: focusing on others and move yourself into that state of Okay,
Speaker 1: I do actually have quite a lot in my life
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think gratitudes underrated. And sure we talked about
Speaker 2: like you're saying like it's like you hear it everywhere,
Speaker 2: you see it everywhere. But I love that you said that.
Speaker 2: If you actually look at the research of how many
Speaker 2: people are doing it on a daily basis, it's very few.
Speaker 1: Because it's not like something like super sexy, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: cold showers booshed over mean by this percentage, it's not
Speaker 1: got that same thing. But in terms of the effectiveness
Speaker 1: on your experience in your life and your mental health,
Speaker 1: it's so right at the core of exactly what our
Speaker 1: brain needs. We help a lot of people with overthinking.
Speaker 1: Overthinking is just like a massive challenge in our world
Speaker 1: where our brain rapidly spirals into negative scenarios. You hear
Speaker 1: a piece of news about your family, or your work,
Speaker 1: or your health, and our brain goes so quickly into
Speaker 1: worst case scenario. It's very clear that in an overthinking state,
Speaker 1: gratitude is such a powerful practice to start settling the
Speaker 1: mind back down, because in the overthinking, it's like fear, fear,
Speaker 1: what's not going right, what's not going right? Gratitude is
Speaker 1: this safety, safety, Okay, I have some things. I'm okay,
Speaker 1: I have some kind of stable foundation to build on.
Speaker 1: Such a powerful antidote to so much of the pain
Speaker 1: we have now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad you brought up overthinking, because I do.
Speaker 2: You're right, that's a lot of people are struggling with
Speaker 2: procrastination and overthinking. What do you see is the difference
Speaker 2: between procrastination and overthinking and how should people think about
Speaker 2: them differently?
Speaker 1: Procrastination is largely spent on the phone. People aren't often
Speaker 1: procrastinating while sitting doing nothing, like if you were to
Speaker 1: sit on the sofa. I doubt that's often the state
Speaker 1: people in when they're procrastinating. I imagine they're more likely
Speaker 1: scrolling their phone. So I would see procrastination more as
Speaker 1: a dopaminergic challenge, whereas I would see the overthinking more
Speaker 1: as a conversation that's happening in your mind a little
Speaker 1: bit of oxytocin, and then also something that's happening with serotonin.
Speaker 1: Serotonin really inconnects with the state of our body and
Speaker 1: our nervous system, and I think when we're in an
Speaker 1: overthinking type state, our body is actually getting into fear
Speaker 1: and over arousal, whereas procrastination would be kind of under
Speaker 1: arousal and lack of action. So I'd see it's quite
Speaker 1: different things.
Speaker 2: To be honest, yeah, yeah, nood, It's good to know
Speaker 2: that difference, because I don't know. I just feel like
Speaker 2: there's just a sense that the critical voice we talked
Speaker 2: about earlier, the overthinking of a scenario, focusing on what's
Speaker 2: the worst that could happen, Yeah, focusing on nightmare scenarios.
Speaker 2: That all takes away action. It takes away accountability, it
Speaker 2: takes away respons ability, it takes away any sort of
Speaker 2: feeling like I can change, I can do something. How
Speaker 2: do we switch from that powerless feeling of I can't
Speaker 2: do anything about this too? This is what I can
Speaker 2: focus on. I mean, I feel like I'm sure you
Speaker 2: do this. I talk to friends all the time, and
Speaker 2: I find everyone I talk to and I try and
Speaker 2: coach myself out of this. But everyone I talk to
Speaker 2: is constantly focused on what they can't control. And it
Speaker 2: seems to be like the most common thing, Like everyone
Speaker 2: will list out a list of reasons that they can't
Speaker 2: do something or something won't happen, But rarely is someone saying, hey,
Speaker 2: I've got ten strategies here, the ten things I'm working
Speaker 2: on right now. You know, this is what I'm focused on.
Speaker 2: How do we shift from what we can't do to
Speaker 2: what we can do.
Speaker 1: I think it's natural for the mind to focus on
Speaker 1: what isn't going to plan Like evolutionarily, it's very useful
Speaker 1: for it to consider, Okay, the hut isn't built well enough,
Speaker 1: or our food system isn't going to provide well enough,
Speaker 1: so our brain will naturally orient towards the negative. I
Speaker 1: think in these states of paralysis of I can't get
Speaker 1: myself to take action and I'm fearing, and I'm in
Speaker 1: a state of all the worries of what I can't control. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: we need to separate ourselves from the modern world for
Speaker 1: a little period of time and spend some time with ourselves.
Speaker 1: And this is where and we really push this within
Speaker 1: those but periods of time on your own in nature
Speaker 1: are very, very, very important and very underestimated. People know, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: nature's good, like your nature would make it feel good
Speaker 1: you see in COVID like apparently walks a good for
Speaker 1: your mental health. But we're really missing the trick on
Speaker 1: how important this actually is. If you're in a real
Speaker 1: state of I'm worrying a lot, I'm in a real
Speaker 1: I'm in constantly thinking about what I can't control. I'm
Speaker 1: in fear I'm not taking action on what the goal is.
Speaker 1: The best thing you could do would be throw the
Speaker 1: phone away from you, because I imagine it might be
Speaker 1: in your hand during that moment. At least that's what
Speaker 1: we see. Throw the phone away from you, count yourself
Speaker 1: down from five seconds. Once you've counted yourself down, you
Speaker 1: go and put your trainers on, and you leave the
Speaker 1: house without your phone in your hand. If you have
Speaker 1: to bring the phone from a safety perspective, in the
Speaker 1: bag airplane mode, so that you've got physical separation and
Speaker 1: for a period of time out there in the quiet
Speaker 1: ultimately if possible in nature, but maybe it's walking around
Speaker 1: your local town, if it's a little bit further to
Speaker 1: get to you just have a really honest conversation with yourself.
Speaker 1: And when you say people having all these negative thoughts,
Speaker 1: like judging themselves and stuff, some of these thoughts and
Speaker 1: messages we do need to hear.
Speaker 3: Like if your mind.
Speaker 1: Saying, oh, stop scroll on your phone so much, stop
Speaker 1: getting so drunk on the weekend, stop being sugar. That
Speaker 1: is really clever that it's doing that. Like there's a
Speaker 1: component of maybe I need to be grass to you.
Speaker 1: Maybe it needs to be more grateful for the way
Speaker 1: my brain is so sophisticated and operating in a way
Speaker 1: of guidance. If it's focusing on other things, it's just
Speaker 1: like this state of let's listen to these thoughts. Let's
Speaker 1: not constantly distract myself from the thoughts. Let's hear the
Speaker 1: message I'm trying to be sent. And then once I've
Speaker 1: heard it, let's try and let's try and calculate some
Speaker 1: kind of smart response to this rather than this constant distraction.
Speaker 2: And what about if people are getting close to like
Speaker 2: high stress and burnout.
Speaker 3: I think that's the other end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's happening a lot in the workplace now right
Speaker 2: Like there's a overworking, crazy hours, always on, always connected.
Speaker 2: We've talked about that, that pressure of like what if
Speaker 2: my boss emails me at midnight? What if an email
Speaker 2: comes to th at six am and I just got up,
Speaker 2: you know whatever it is, there's this high performance mixed
Speaker 2: with high stress, high burnout environment.
Speaker 1: This is where I come to that idea if we've
Speaker 1: become a dopamine driven society rather than an oxytocin driven society.
Speaker 1: Oxytocin being this love hormone. Love is the most beautiful
Speaker 1: experience a human can have. Nothing is as pleasurable and
Speaker 1: as enjoyable as the experience of love with your partner,
Speaker 1: your parents, having a child, whatever it may be. That's
Speaker 1: ultimately what humanity is here to connect with the experience
Speaker 1: of bonding with humans. When you're in that world of burnout,
Speaker 1: it's very likely that you've become slightly overly focused on dopamine.
Speaker 1: Whether that's in the pursuit of pleasure through burning out,
Speaker 1: through partying and having fun, or if it's from a
Speaker 1: work perspective, you've probably got a little bit too focused
Speaker 1: on your financial win and your career progression.
Speaker 3: And so on.
Speaker 1: That's then leading you towards dopamine burnout effectively, which many
Speaker 1: of us experience with that in mind. And I experienced
Speaker 1: this myself, like like you, like I have a striving
Speaker 1: desire within my career to make progress and help and
Speaker 1: so on. I really, in your mind would be asking
Speaker 1: yourself how much oxytocin am I getting? And is it
Speaker 1: balancing out the dope mean? And with that that means
Speaker 1: how good is the connection that I'm experiencing in my
Speaker 1: life right now? Am I making time to FaceTime and
Speaker 1: call my mum and dad and ask how their lives
Speaker 1: are going, and sit for a whole conversation and just
Speaker 1: ask questions and not say loads about you and what's
Speaker 1: going on in your life and how amazing you are
Speaker 1: in your career, but just simply ask them how are
Speaker 1: you doing? That might be connecting with your children more,
Speaker 1: your partner more, But fundamentally, you see that if we
Speaker 1: get more oxytocin, it moves our mind towards that close
Speaker 1: connection that a human so deeply needs. And currently we're
Speaker 1: all in dope mean dating apps, dms, all that world.
Speaker 1: We need to move towards more intimate connection with the
Speaker 1: people that are really close to us, our family and
Speaker 1: our friends and our kids and our partners.
Speaker 2: What do you think that's actually going to take to do? Like,
Speaker 2: when you really think about that, it feels like we're
Speaker 2: so far gone from that. Now, what's that actually going
Speaker 2: to take for us to really value connection for what
Speaker 2: we know it can do.
Speaker 1: I think ultimately society needs a massive shift on the phone.
Speaker 1: I think people really need to start reconsidering this phone.
Speaker 1: I think when you look at the quality of the
Speaker 1: connection you have with your family, you go around to
Speaker 1: your parents' house to see them or you go see
Speaker 1: your friends. And if you really start observing from the
Speaker 1: moment you've listened to this podcast, how much is that
Speaker 1: phone actually disrupting the experience I have with these people
Speaker 1: that I love. It's very significant, and I think families
Speaker 1: and partners and kids need to adopt the mentality of
Speaker 1: considering this is phone free time I walk through my parents' door.
Speaker 1: I actually now have found that I have to leave
Speaker 1: my phone at home when I go to my parents' house,
Speaker 1: simply because I'll talk to them for a bit and
Speaker 1: then I'll be going to the bathroom and it's like
Speaker 1: phone now, okay, Instagram.
Speaker 3: Email, what's happened.
Speaker 1: Then my mind leaves oxytocin and returns to dopamine desire.
Speaker 1: It's so important to have these prolonged dopamine detoxes where
Speaker 1: oxytocin is the primary goal and the phone is the
Speaker 1: primary thing disrupting that. If we can start becoming comfortable
Speaker 1: with the idea of wow, I'm going to spend two
Speaker 1: hours off my phone. I'm going to spend an hour
Speaker 1: off my phone, and my only goal is going to
Speaker 1: be to listen to these people, to look them in
Speaker 1: the eye, to ask them good questions and to give
Speaker 1: them love. I think that fundamentally is going to shift
Speaker 1: the way society operates.
Speaker 2: TJ. I love that you've been amazing talking today, and
Speaker 2: I'm glad that people are going to read the dose
Speaker 2: effect to dive into more on dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins.
Speaker 2: We only touch the tip of the iceberg today, but
Speaker 2: we learn so much. I feel like I've gained so
Speaker 2: much great self talk material from listening to you, and
Speaker 2: I think that's what I really value, and I think
Speaker 2: we undervalue about when you're listening to a podcast, when
Speaker 2: you're reading a book, the goal is to get so
Speaker 2: much more of a new script in your mind as
Speaker 2: to how you talk to yourself about the challenges you have,
Speaker 2: how you talk to others about the challenges you have,
Speaker 2: and then how you talk yourself out of making bad
Speaker 2: decisions and into good decisions. And as I've been listening
Speaker 2: to you, I feel like you're such a hub of
Speaker 2: incredible insights and information and so well researched where I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: now I'm going to hear TJ's voice in my head.
Speaker 2: Remind me of that when I'm brushing my teeth and
Speaker 2: I got my phone out, or you know, when I'm
Speaker 2: about to go to bed, and even the idea of
Speaker 2: standing up before I lie down, or there's so many
Speaker 2: things you've said today where I'm like, I think there's
Speaker 2: just these mini shifts and nudges that hopefully will save
Speaker 2: me and everyone who's been listening a lot of stress
Speaker 2: and a lot of trouble. Is there anything I haven't
Speaker 2: asked you that you wanted to share, or something that's
Speaker 2: on your heart or mind that you really want to
Speaker 2: share with my community.
Speaker 1: I would love everyone, after listening to this podcast to
Speaker 1: plan in the next seven days to spend sixty minutes
Speaker 1: in nature without their phone, considering what their primary pursuit
Speaker 1: is in their life right now. It can be a
Speaker 1: bit uncomfortable when you go into the choiet. Remember that
Speaker 1: idea of the bard and barrier. Your brain will settle,
Speaker 1: it will come Worries might come into your mind at
Speaker 1: the beginning of that walk, But I promise you by
Speaker 1: the end of that sixty minutes, you're going to be
Speaker 1: incredibly clear as to what you're truly seeking for in
Speaker 1: your life. Maybe the phone is impacting you. Maybe you
Speaker 1: want a stronger relationship with your partner. Maybe you think
Speaker 1: porn could be a factor in my life today. Maybe
Speaker 1: your work needs to be a greater priority in your life.
Speaker 1: But we need as a society long periods of time
Speaker 1: in nature without our phones.
Speaker 2: I love that challenge, and everyone who's going to do
Speaker 2: that challenge tag me and TJ when you're out in
Speaker 2: nature so we can see pictures of you on walks, hikes,
Speaker 2: taking your dog out, whatever it may be. We want
Speaker 2: to see the amount of time you're spending in nature.
Speaker 2: And if you get to sixty minutes, tag us and
Speaker 2: tell us the time as well. Let's go be amazing
Speaker 2: to see TJ. We end every episode of On Purpose
Speaker 2: with the final five. These questions have to be answered
Speaker 2: in one word to one sentence maximum. Okay, so TJ Power,
Speaker 2: these are your final five. Question One, what is the
Speaker 2: best advice you've ever heard or received?
Speaker 1: To take action as soon as you wake up? I
Speaker 1: received this guidance from a number of people in my life.
Speaker 1: I realized that waking up and scrolling my phone was
Speaker 1: the worst thing in my experience. Take action as soon
Speaker 1: as you wake great advice.
Speaker 2: Second question, what's the worst advice you've ever heard or received.
Speaker 1: That it's fine to constantly drink tons of alcohol and
Speaker 1: that to be like a normalized aspect of society, and
Speaker 1: that that isn't negatively impacting you.
Speaker 2: Expand on that for me as to why that really
Speaker 2: helped you and why that was a path you decided
Speaker 2: to take.
Speaker 1: I just grew up in a world where alcohol was
Speaker 1: just the most normal thing. It was, let's get drunk
Speaker 1: three four days a week, and it was so strongly
Speaker 1: like disrupting my experience of happiness, my capacity to pursue
Speaker 1: my goals. And because it's so normalized, I just think
Speaker 1: it's something that society is just so deeply immersed in.
Speaker 3: I don't have judgment for it. Like alcohol is a
Speaker 3: big thing.
Speaker 1: It's very pleasurable, but I think so many of us
Speaker 1: are under estimating what it's doing. I literally had to
Speaker 1: leave all my friends in London, move into a very
Speaker 1: lonely life for like three years before I met my partner,
Speaker 1: just to separate myself simply from alcohol, because I think
Speaker 1: people are underestimating what it's doing to their capacity to
Speaker 1: get to their dreams.
Speaker 2: How do you think it was affecting motivation, discipline, capacity?
Speaker 2: What was it doing well?
Speaker 1: I was drinking while still understanding dose, and we of
Speaker 1: course get the physical hangover experience. Well I've got headache
Speaker 1: and I feel sick or whatever it might be. But
Speaker 1: we so deeply underestimate that it takes about seventy two
Speaker 1: hours for that alcohol to fully leave your system. Throughout
Speaker 1: that seventy two hours, alcohol then drops very significantly. And
Speaker 1: in that period on the Monday and Tuesday, in this
Speaker 1: very low dope mein state, we get into that low motivation.
Speaker 1: We overthink loads, we feel fearful, and we can't take
Speaker 1: action on our goals. And I was someone that had goals,
Speaker 1: like I had things I wanted to achieve. I was
Speaker 1: beginning to build dough, I was beginning to build the
Speaker 1: research lab, and I was thinking, how the hell am
Speaker 1: I going to live a life that I'm really happy
Speaker 1: with if alcohol remains.
Speaker 2: I love that. Thanks for sharing that question Number three.
Speaker 2: What's something you're trying to value less?
Speaker 1: Maybe social media following, And that's really hard because it's
Speaker 1: like a double edged sword where it's so beautiful to
Speaker 1: know more people are hearing the message. But there's a
Speaker 1: really nuanced perspective of am I seeking for? Like the
Speaker 1: dopamine of the progress and the more followers, or am
Speaker 1: I seeking for the oxytocin of this is serving people,
Speaker 1: And I really am constantly trying to consider when I'm
Speaker 1: looking at likes and views and followers, am I chasing
Speaker 1: dopamine here? Or am I chasing service in oxytocin? And
Speaker 1: it's very easy to get into the dopamain. So I'm
Speaker 1: trying to move my mind on that.
Speaker 2: Nice question number four, What's something you're trying to value?
Speaker 1: More intimate time with my partner where we really make
Speaker 1: sure there's no computers and phones. We work in the
Speaker 1: same world. My partner's are nutritionist. I'm a neuroscientist. So
Speaker 1: it's this difficult interplay of us constantly wanting to work,
Speaker 1: and it's very important we have times where we adjusting.
Speaker 3: TJ and Georgia land and not in the land of dose.
Speaker 2: Fifth and final question, which we asked every guest has
Speaker 2: ever been on the show. If you could create one
Speaker 2: law that everyone had to follow, what would it be.
Speaker 1: That the entirety of humanity would spend sixty minutes on
Speaker 1: their own in nature every single day without their phones.
Speaker 2: I love that, TJ. You've been incredible with the books
Speaker 2: called The Dose Effect. I hope you go and grab
Speaker 2: your copy Small Habits to Boost your Brain Chemistry highly
Speaker 2: highly recommend this book. And TJ, how else would you
Speaker 2: like people to connect with your work? You kept referring to
Speaker 2: the dose app there as well in the research you're doing.
Speaker 2: How can people connect more deeply with that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you go to the Doose lab dot
Speaker 1: com on Google, that begins your opportunity to start your
Speaker 1: journey with dose. And if you go to at Tjpower
Speaker 1: on Instagram or my guidance is on there, I love it.
Speaker 2: TJ. Thank you so much for joining today. I can't
Speaker 2: wait for people to share this episode with their friends,
Speaker 2: their family. We covered so many different themes and topics,
Speaker 2: and I want to thank you for your personal vulnerability
Speaker 2: in so many of those topics as well. I think
Speaker 2: takes a lot of courage to be someone who's sharing
Speaker 2: so many great insights and share personal challenges, and I
Speaker 2: think you beautifully shared both.
Speaker 3: So thank you so much, man, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: He's magical.
Speaker 2: Appreciate you. If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my
Speaker 2: interview with doctor Daniel Aman on how to change your
Speaker 2: life by changing your brain. If we want a healthy mind.
Speaker 2: It actually starts with a healthy brain. You know. I've
Speaker 2: had the blessing or the curse to scam over a
Speaker 2: thousand convicted felons and over.
Speaker 3: One hundred murderers, and their brands
Speaker 1: Are very damage