Your Goals Might Be Ruining Your Life

How to “dopamine hack” your way to improved progress.

Jiu-Jitsu Comic Con last weekend :P

There’s a famous quote by Muhammad Ali that has always concerned me a little bit. You’ve probably heard it.

“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.’”

Maybe I’m just not that tough, but I don’t hate every minute of training. Training is pretty fun to me.

I’m all for some inspiration, grit, and resilience, but I really don’t like this quote. While Muhammad Ali was one of the greatest boxers of all time, he and I view motivation very differently. He was a world champion in boxing, but that does not mean that he’s the person you should trust for advice on how to get better at whatever your chosen skill is.

Someone who I do trust when it comes to understanding the neuroscience of motivation is Andrew Huberman, neuroscientist, and professor at Stanford University.

On one of his recent podcasts, Huberman explained how dopamine plays a role in motivation, mental health, and skill development. The episode made me realize that many things that I’ve been taught about motivation and discipline are completely wrong.

The truth is, dopamine is the key to getting better at anything, increasing your motivation, and developing the motivation to stick with seemingly impossible tasks.

That said, here’s how your goals, dreams, and dopamine addictions from ruining your life.

Getting injured made me happier.

In September, I injured my back, strained some muscle in my hip, and popped something in my rib all in the same week.

I train and compete in Jiu-Jitsu pretty much full-time, so not being able to do what I love made me very depressed for quite a while. I even had to pull out of the 2021 IBJJF No-Gi World Championships, a tournament that I thought I could have done really well at.

Regardless of potential, my goals, and my discipline, my body broke down and I was forced to sit on the sidelines for about 3 weeks. I couldn’t do anything physical. I was forced to rest, which is something that I am notoriously bad at. For 3 weeks, the closest thing to working out that I did was teaching kids Jiu-Jitsu, and even that was a bit too demanding at times. Once, I had to have my co-coach demonstrate some moves on one of the 11-year-olds in the class, while I explained the process.

But once I came back to training, something funny happened. I was deliriously motivated for 6 weeks. I cut 17 pounds in 3 weeks easily to get down to my weight class for my next tournament, and though I wasn’t exactly 100% healthy, I was incredibly excited to be back training, competing, and “living my dream”.

From a neurochemistry standpoint, my dopamine levels were several times higher than normal because I was exercising constantly and doing fulfilling activities every single day that I hadn’t done in weeks.

I worked hard to prepare for back-to-back competitions in early November, but then after the competitions were over, I felt depressed as hell.

Doing “what I love” made me depressed

I love competing in Jiu-Jitsu. It’s exhilarating, fun, and it forces me to confront my anxiety head-on.

At this point, competing is something that makes me anxious, but my nerves do not affect my performance at all. I’ve literally fought my anxiety out of that aspect of my life.

However, that doesn’t mean that my brain isn’t affected by the intense emotions that happen on tournament day.

Whenever I compete, my reward center in my brain is flooded with dopamine (and other brain chemicals, like epinephrine). This happens during any exciting life event, whether that’s eating chocolate, having sex, or doing anything else that’s exciting and feels good.

However, the problem isn’t the spike in dopamine, the problem is an addiction to that spike in dopamine.

After I spent weeks training for my tournaments and then experienced the massive dopamine dump on fight-day, my system was shocked. I just didn’t feel awesome because my brain’s dopamine receptors were literally burnt-out fried.

After I elevated my dopamine baseline by doing exciting stuff for weeks on end, I was struggling to get the same pleasure out of normally enjoyable activities. I needed louder music, sugary food, and more validation from other people to feel whole. I felt mildly depressed from doing my favorite thing 2 weeks in a row.

The solution isn’t more dopamine

Despite the fact that my dopamine baseline is probably a bit elevated right now, the solution to my feelings of restlessness and discontent is not going to be improved by more cookies, some porn, or any other “quick-hit” of dopamine.

Likewise, however, the solution also isn’t for me to go find another Jiu-Jitsu match to compete at that will “make me feel normal again”.

If I do that, the excitement and joy of “doing what I love” might just further flood my dopamine receptors and make me even more depressed.

Without even knowing it, I lived like this for years, and looking back, I think that a “dopamine addiction” is part of what made me severely depressed and stuck in constant derealization 3 years ago.

I also can’t just find a different source for my dopamine, because that does not address the root problem of my dopamine addiction. If you’re addicted to eating sugar, and then you quit eating sugar and start watching porn instead, you might lose some weight, but you’re not fixing anything. You’re replacing one bad habit with another and ignoring your problem.

The solution is to become more mindful of exciting things that happen in life and notice the way that you react to them. If you experience something exciting and notice yourself craving that exciting thing, again and again, you might want to consider deliberately depriving yourself of that thing in order to rewire your brain.

You don’t need to do month-long dopamine fast, but fasting can help treat dopamine addiction. Some people actually feel better from fasting (dopamine produces dopamine for them). You can also use caffeine (in appropriate doses), or control your diet.

Really, it seems that all you need to do is train yourself to derive dopamine from tasks themselves, not their rewards. This is easier said than done, but when you’re motivated by the task itself (not the sensations you get before or after your practice), then you will be able to unleash lasting happiness (and lasting progress).

Closing thoughts

Intrinsic motivation is more reliable than extrinsic motivation.

If you’re only working for long term goals, dreams that are far off in the future, and rewards that you believe you can only get from being miserable all the time, it’s going to become really hard to sustain the focus and effort into your work that will propel you to success and skill development.

I do Jiu-Jitsu and write stuff all day. I love everything I do, even when my dopamine baseline is off. I’ve done this through careful examination of my life and the people around me. I’ve trained myself to love hard work. Without careful thought, honest reflection, and lasting love, progress will be difficult in anything.

You can work as hard as you want, but your best work will always feel like play. Sometimes, it’ll just feel like you’re playing the game on a more difficult level. That’s where grit comes into play, but that’s a story for another time.

---

Other Articles Published in the Last 7 Days

Life Is Too Short to Be a Stoic

How I Completely Changed Myself in 3 Simple Steps

What I Learned From 3 Months of Writing on Quora

---

My Top Quora Answer of the Week

How do I become mentally strong?

I learned about mental strength from wrestling.

The picture above was taken moments after my second career win. I had just pinned a guy who had pinned me earlier in the season, and the intensity of the experience apparently made me look like I had just seen a ghost.

This was the exact moment that I realized how powerful mental strength can be for sustained long-term success. It was also years before I built any mental strength.

See, mental strength doesn’t come from wrestling, mental strength comes from thinking.

---

You have to train your mind the way you train your muscles.

Mental strength is built through the ability to process pain and discomfort. To develop a strong mind, it’s not enough to just work out, wake up early, and read books. You need to process the shit that you do in your life.

If you think about it, this makes sense. The strongest minds are the ones that get used the most.

The reason that mental strength can be built through difficult things like wrestling isn’t that you have to do a lot of pull-ups. Mental strength is built by facing your demons every time you step on the mats. Mental strength is built by developing the discipline to lose 7 pounds in one day in order to make weight for a competition.

You don’t need mental strength to do these things, you build mental strength by doing difficult things and then reflecting on the difficult things you did.

---

So, what does this mean for someone who’s never wrestled or has no interest in rolling around with sweaty people in a singlet?

This means that you have to do stuff that's hard for you.

Do you desperately want a great body, but hate going to the gym? Go anyway.

Do you want to be a great writer, but fear receiving judgment on your work? Publish it anyway.

Then, after you do the scary thing, reflect on what you did. Think about the sensations that you felt as you did it. Think about what you’re going to do next time you do the scary thing.

Meditate and visualize.

If you desire mental toughness, it’s likely that there is something that’s holding you back. You need to reflect, process, and figure out what’s holding you back.

If you can process the things you go through (no matter how big or small they may be), the world really is your oyster.

---

As always, if you enjoyed what you read, feel free to share the article from Medium. It helps me more than you know.

Wishing you the best,

—Chris