Understanding oneself?
Self-reflection
Look at yourself
Anytime we have a problem. We jump to a solution.
Slow down and look at yourself.
What do people miss?
What drive a lot of our behaviors?
Why am I using heroine in the first place?
What is the drive for using heroine?
It's not that you need to change.
Why am I the way I am?
They're not critically thinking.
Laziness is a lazy way at looking at motivation
Where is my motivation coming from?
Motivational interviewing
You don't need to convince, you need to help them understanding
Don't touch pan it's hot. But the moment you touch it and get burned behavior changes.
Experience vs information
You're gaining information but not experience.
You're inexperienced.
Self-help is a coping mechanism.
The brain has evolved to be lazy. Energy conservation.
Go to gym vs watching video about working out.
Feeling like you're making progress vs actual progress.
Emotional catharsis. Lots of dormant intense emotions that is relatively new.
There's a way to talking about problems to trigger emotional catharsis.
Talking about the problem. Therapy as venting. Venting reduces negative emotion in the moment.
Why do we have negative emotions?
It's a signal.
Loneliness. Threat
Anger. Eliminate a threat.
Fear. Warn against danger. Gives us physiological energy to flee.
The primary motivator for change is NEGATIVE EMOTION.
What motivates you the most? NEGATIVE EMOTION
Married for 15 years. One case of infidelity. It's going to make you angry and you should act on it.
How little of a role dopamine
Parkinson = dopamine deficiency
It's just a letter in the neurotransmitter alphabet and it's an oversimplification.
Dopamine = pleasure not contentment, partying, using a lot of drugs, plenty of millionaire playboys tried that and it never works because the brain just develops tolerance 1st time who plays video games is fun but hour 5 it's boring
Serotonin = peace contentment, orgasm = dopamine a ton of pleasure, rise in serotonin = content if serotonin levels are high, you won't feel horny
Serotonin α Peace, Happiness, Contentment
Serotonin is proportional to contentment.
Dopamine exhaustion from overstimulation might be a reason it's harder to fall in love and decling birth rates
Falling in love is dopaminergic. Declining birth rates is because of lack of dopaminergic connection. You feel in love. Two people on a date both on their phones. Tech stimulation will cause us to run out of dopamine. We're exhausting our dopamine because we're overstimulated and we don't have any more dopamine to fall in love.
dopaminergic stimulation ~ (birth rate)^-1