Maaaan Chris should me an absolutely awesome fuckin dude on YouTube named Jason Capital. He told me WHY I felt anxious and depressed, why I don’t feel motivated, and it all falls down to two things: Dopamine consumption and counting small wins (“w”s).
What does that mean for me?
It means I’ve gotta prioritize saving my dopamine and keeping small – but stacking – promises to myself.
I think it’s best if I wrote this as a list:
Dopamine & Counting Wins:
- Instead of getting up in the morning and going for coffee, drinking a ton of water so you’re not dehydrated. You’ll feel much better and water itself actually gives you energy!
- Brush my teeth every morning
- Make my bed every morning
- When I do a task, instead of feeding my brain dopamine by playing music or having “background noise”, exclusively focus on the task at hand. The feeling of accomplishment and the fact you’ve made even the tiniest progress counts as a W in your brain. Stack ’em brutha
- Remember every small thing you accomplished that day and count ’em. Wins and losses go in stacks. If you keep winning, you’ll keep going on that win streak. However, if you keep losing, you’ll continue losing.
- Don’t just “try” to be happy, actually DO SOMETHING. Set a goal for myself. In this case, focus hard on building my portfolio for freelance writing for 6 weeks or I want to make $500 a month in 4 months. Work on it hard. And whatever progress I make – no matter if it’s landing my first client or writing a paragraph for my website – count it as a WIN.
- Beware of dopamine consumers like scrolling through Reddit or watching consecutive YouTube vids. They’re time consumers and eat up your mental energy like no other.
- When negative self-talk comes into my head, just ignore it and focus on whatever goal I’m working on.
- Don’t think, research, or determine how I’m going to accomplish my goal too much – just do.
- Avoid shitty food, cigarettes or porn which give you a fake spike in dopamine. This insidious fiend usually kicks in when you’ve experienced too many losses. Since your brain doesn’t like the feeling of constantly losing, it searches for an alternate source to experience comfort. Consequently, this leads you down a FURTHER STEAK OF LOSSES. Since you usually feel terrible after indulging in said vice.
- When I wake up, do not hit the snooze button. Your ass is AWAKE. Hit those feet on the floor.
- Avoid Reddit, they are full of losers. Only a select few subs are useful like r/freelancewriting or r/digitalnomad. Shit that has a purpose.
- Do not reach for my phone while in bed. Get the fuck up and do what you need to do (ie. make bed, brush teeth, get ready for work).