How To Do a Dopamine Detox and Reset Your Mind
Hey everyone, this is Stephen James from Project Life Mastery. Today I’m going to share with you how to reset your mind. Now, if you’re watching this right now and there’s someone that struggles with depression or anxiety, or overwhelm over whirring in your life. You’re lacking motivation, you feel lazy and you procrastinate a lot or you’re lacking energy. Feel fatigued a lot where maybe you’re dealing with a form of addiction that you can’t quite overcome. Something is really affecting controlling your life or maybe you could, I feel numb throughout the day, from the moment, you wake up to the moment, you go to bed, you kind of like a zombie, you’re lacking that aliveness that passion that joy in your life. Listen, if you Relate or connect it with anything. I just shared with you, then what I’m about to share with, you just might be the most powerful thing that you ever learn about or discover. Because there’s so many people all around the world that are suffering and have a lot of pain from a lot of the symptoms of what I just described. But they’re not even aware about what I’m about to share with you right here inside this video. And I want to share with you and shed some light on this issue. In this problem. That’s really affecting a lot of people’s lives but also provide for you a solution provided with you, a path, a journey that you can take to detox to recover and to get better.
So let me explain, we all have neurotransmitters in our brain that make us feel good. And there’s one neurotransmitter in particular that makes us feel good. Any time that there’s an anticipation of pleasure or a reward. Okay, anytime there’s anticipation of something, good coming in your life and it makes us desire things. It makes us love the novelty. Anything that’s new in our lives. We feel great because of this neurotransmitter. Now, this neurotransmitter makes us crave and desire more but the problem the challenge is that once we get Get what it is that we desired. What it is that we wanted that we initially fantasized about a thought about an obsessed about that would make us feel happy or great, or fulfilled, or whatever it might be. Once you get that, what happens is that neurotransmitter turns off and you don’t quite feel satisfied as you thought that you would in fact you kind of feel a little bit empty. And what happens is you end up craving and Desiring more and you’re in this delusion this illusion really where you repeat that cycle and you never get to happiness and a joy that you want.
Now let me describe what this is. This neural transmitter that I’m talking about is called dopamine. They referred to it as a molecule of more because dopamine fuels our desire. So let me give you a few examples. Let me share with you the the problems that come into play with this one neurotransmitter. Have you ever desired something in your life? Just as an example. Maybe it’s a man or woman. You’re single and you really desired someone that you had a crush on. You know, you maybe meant this man or woman and you fantasize about them. You obsessed over them. You know, maybe you’re falling in love or maybe you’re dating that person. But when you have that experience? What happens is that dopamine is so high, because in your mind, it creates this image. And this fantasy of being with this person anticipation of being with them is so great. And so sure enough you end up dating this person, maybe start a relationship with them and you go through this honeymoon phase. Now this honeymoon phase. Where you feel great? If you’re alive, you feel passionate that’s all fueled by dopamine, but inevitably something happens. Something happens where, on average study shows twelve to eighteen months. The dopamine wears off sometimes sooner sometimes longer, but when that dopamine wears off when that honeymoon phase wears off.
Then a lot of relationships actually and in that moment because there’s no more excitement, there’s no more passion once that first dating and being with that person was new and is exciting, but now you’re just kind of used to them. Now the law familiarity kicks in and the novelty novelty has worn off and now you’re complacent and now you’re comfortable with that person. Now in some cases there’s a lot of man or even women that chase the opposite. Sex is a lot of men for example there, so fueled by dopamine that every time they go out and they approach a woman, they get a girl’s phone number. You get that dopamine hit, maybe you’ll get a woman into bed. But sure enough. What happens for a lot of men? That dopamine wears off, they’re no longer interested and then they move on to the next. The next chase the next Pursuit. This dopamine you can also maybe relate to Desiring that with money and success. You know, dopamine can fuel that to for you to be the best and to make money. Because every time that you get that result every time that you achieve, your goal, every time that you make money, you got that hit of dopamine and that gets you craving and wanting more but inevitably, what happens is sure enough. Once you get the money, the success, whatever it is, when that wears off.
You’re no longer satisfied and it makes you crave more money. More success, have you ever? For example, wanted something really bad like a new pair of shoes or new outfit, or a new car. A new house to travel the world to travel to your dream destination. It’s the dopamine that fuels that the anticipation of it, and then sure enough, you get the new shoes, you get the new outfit, you get the new relationship, you get the new car and then, how long does that last? Maybe a few minutes? Maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months, maybe a few years. But again, it wears off. So, dopamine, it’s not that it’s bad in many ways. It’s incredibly You valuable for us because it forces us to delay, some gratification to actually pursue the goals and the vision that we have. But here’s the challenge and the issue that a lot of people face with this. See there’s a lot of things that we indulge it in our lives that are fueled by dopamine that are problematic for us they’re over stimulations of dopamine they are unnatural ways of experiencing dopamine and so let me describe some of these behaviors and patterns and see if you can relate sugar.
Okay. Sugar is like a drug sugar every time that you have that junk food. That Cookie. That desert. That doughnut. Whatever it is, you are triggered by dopamine. Dopamine is what creates and fuels that craving. So you created your mind? What it’s going to taste like you? Imagine it. You feel it and then sure. Enough. Once you get it depending on, you know what it might be. But most often for most people. Once you have that first bite, you’ll notice the sex. And it’s not as good as the first bite. The third bite is not as good as that. First bite the fourth Byte, etc. It wasn’t quite as satisfying as what you’ve wanted as what you thought it would be rather. And then sure enough what happens is you repeat that cycle. And that can actually create an addiction to sugar and to binge eating, which is something that I had to deal with in my life that I realised that dopamine is a culprit of that. Another example of this could be popping. Another example of this could be pornography, which is a big issue that a lot of men and women face because pornography is you being aroused by a bunch of images on a screen. And by the way, these companies is porn websites. They know how to trigger a dopamine. They know they haven’t set up by providing a lot of novelty, a lot of new and variety images for you and videos that is overstimulated, your brain and dopamine, because.
Statement the anticipation, the fantasy of it. Your dopamine goes, goes off like crazy and sure enough man. They’ll spend hours in front of computer just looking at watching videos and edging is what they call it where they don’t quite orgasm days. Delay that dopamine hit as long as they possibly can and they opened up new tabs and they’re being stimulated by this over stimulated in an unnatural way. And then sure enough, once you orgasm, you’re not quite as satisfied as you thought in fast, a lot of men, feel guilty, and a lot of man end up repeating the same cycle, because it becomes so addictive that dopamine the craving the Temptation you have from, it becomes so addictive to You that you can’t stop man, repeat this habit several times a day every day, every week and it becomes something that they cannot stop and overcome. And it causes a lot of issues and problems in their life. Because now, they struggle being actually aroused and attracted to an actual woman or an actual man.
You know, because they’ve trained and conditioned, their brain to be aroused through all of this variety, and all this different stimulation that doesn’t exist in the real world. In fact, a lot of men even masturbation because you have to engage fantasy, which is also dopamine when you fantasize about something and sure enough, when you’re actually with a real partner, you’re not arouse just by being with them, you’re off in your head fantasizing because that’s what it takes to be aroused. And a lot of men today are dealing with erectile dysfunction. A lot of issues of that dopamine overstimulation, other examples of this is video games. I mean, these video game companies. They know how to trigger a dopamine to get you addicted. I mean, a lot of these games on their smartphone today. They give you different rewards and bonuses for logging in each day, you open the chest, you get all these coins and tokens, and it’s all fueled by dopamine, which creates that addiction. Another example could be checking your social media too much, you know, if you find yourself, always checking your Instagram, your Facebook, checking your email inbox. If you have an online business like myself, maybe he’s always checking your stats hitting. Refresh to see if you got any new sales because every time you do dopamine every time, you see that like every time you see that comments that you got on your post, you get a fuel.
Yeah. Hit of dopamine and a lot of people that are addicted to technology and social media because of that other examples are drinking alcohol other examples. I’ve got some notes list here that I wrote down obviously doing drugs. Alcohol is a drug, but also marijuana cocaine heroin opioids. These are all as more specifically cocaine and ones like that, they really trigger dopamine. They really mess with manipulate your neural transmitters. And that’s what makes it so addictive. A lot of people they can’t get off of it because the dopamine continues to crave and desire more. It’s a never-ending, unfulfilling journey that dopamine puts you on, um, obsessing over chasing men and women being an overachiever and a lot of cases as well. If you look at the most successful people throughout history, they were fueled by dopamine. Whether it’s you know, you look at a Buzz Aldrin, who went to the moon as his lifelong goal and dream to go to the moon. He accomplished it. And it’s all fueled by dopamine to get there. Then sure enough afterwards, when the dopamine wears off, he’s not satisfied in his life. In fact, if you read his biography, he ended up being with depression and being suicidal alcohol addiction. Because you’re looking for something else that can give you that dopamine. And they’re addicted to it if if you look at the top achievers, whether there’s a Michael Jordan, who’s.
The best in the world because of his dopamine, but at the same time when he retired from basketball, they struggle, a lot of these professional athletes. The is Rockstar’s is entertainers. These people that are fueled by the dopamine are looking for new ways to get that. Hit that most often you can’t replace. You know. That’s why I Michael Jordan and many athletes, get addicted to gambling and a lot of other things, which also is fueled by dopamine. In fact, the most profitable thing at a casino is a slot machines and the slot machines, the companies they design it and they understand how dopamine works and so they provide a lot of variety. A lot of different types of slot machines. And they set it up so that you get rewards as you’re as you’re gambling, as you’re doing this locks because just a little reward that you get kiss, you hooked and it gets you fantasizing and anticipating the future award that you can get. So it’s all designed to create an addiction. And there’s many more, there’s many more things that caused this. But anything that gets you into fantasy and gets you away from reality is going to be fueled by dopamine, okay? Now, how is this a problem?
How is this an issue? Well, first thing, I want to make a distinction. I want to say that all the things that I mentioned, it’s not that any of them are bad, okay, I think you can do all of them in a healthy sustainable way in moderation. I’m not anti sugar. I’m not anti masturbation. I’m not anti any of these things. I mean, if you want to indulge once in awhile and Shop or check socially, I’m totally saying that that’s okay. The problem arises is when those things become addictions in your life, and you overstimulate yourself with a lot of those things. And what happens when you overstimulate dopamine is your Baseline level of Happiness of pleasure of joy in your life. What happens is it goes up the bar raises and then what happens is you continue to require and need more of those hits in order for you to feel happier to feel pleasure, to feel that reward and it becomes so much harder. Now for you to feel happy, it becomes so much harder for you, to feel Joy, to feel alive, to feel passionate, you require so much more. And that’s why a lot of people when they overstimulate themselves with this, their neurotransmitters are out of balance and they feel numb, they feel no me kind of feel like a zombie
And they end up dealing with a lot of depression or anxiety or a lot of the symptoms that I described a lot of those symptoms of lacking energy motivation. Addiction are all fueled by over stimulation of dopamine. And then what happens is when you try to stop. Here’s what scary about this guys. When you try to stop, you try to stop watching pornography. You start trying to stop drinking alcohol. You try to, you know with you. No. Stop watching. Um. You know, even binge watching his TV shows and everything. They’re all designed to get you hooked. Right. You stop remote. You remove these things, sugar all this stuff in your life. What happens is you experience withdrawal symptoms. You experience withdrawals where sometimes things get worse before it gets better. Your depression amplifies or you have intense fear and overwhelming in your life. You feel anxiety all the time. You feel tired. You feel all these other symptoms that are the result of you now. Trying to detox. And and you’re you’re having these withdrawals that you now have to go through.
And so sure enough you go back to these crutches, these instant forms of pleasure and gratification that you can experience because you don’t have any other way to give yourself that pleasure and you, you are dependent on them. And then also, what happens to is that we use these, dopamine hits as a way to cover up or emotions or pain boredom. All the emotions we have within us, that we haven’t resolved, we use these dopamine addictions as a ways to cover it up to distract ourselves, right? Because whenever you feel, Feeling comfortable in your life. Whenever you feel stressed, anxiety overwhelmed, oppress whatever it is. You most often go to what will make you feel good? What will change our state? And so sure. Enough. You go and you treat yourself by eating dessert. Sure enough you decide I’m going to play video games. I’m gonna go to YouTube and just watch a bunch of videos. I’m going to check and scroll through my social media and you’re doing that because you don’t like how you feel inside or trying to cover up. That boredom, that anxiety, the stress, whatever it is that you’re feeling when you mask it constantly to distract yourself, then you don’t resolve, what’s going on.
Then it’s causing more challenges and problems in your life and then when you do, try to remove those things. Now all these emotions show up that you didn’t you’ve been masking that you now have to address and deal with and you have to learn how to overcome and that’s a scary thing for a lot of people, so this is what dopamine does. Now, here’s the thing, there is a balance of these neurotransmitters dopamine. Like I said, is the anticipation of the reward and the pleasure, but the other neurotransmitters you have to cultivate to balance things out are called the here-and-now neurotransmitters. Okay here and now and what those ones are serotonin endorphins. Oxytocin Gabba. These are neurotransmitters that allow you to enjoy the present moment. They allow you to feel peace satisfaction calmness complacency, they make you feel appreciation for things connection.
Those neurotransmitters are really the ones that give you lasting fulfillment. Enjoy. These are the ones that in a relationship. If you’re always chasing chasing dopamine, and when that dopamine wears off and the newness wears off and being with that person for the first time, it’s really those other neurotransmitters that will give you that lasting, sustainable happiness and fulfillment. And for a lot of people like I said, the dopamine is so addictive. They don’t cultivate these other neurotransmitters and really build them up and work on cultivating that. So those allow us to enjoy the present moment? Okay. And the way that you can detox this, it’s called a dopamine detox. It’s really the solution for this. And what that means is you want to really cultivate those here now, neuro, neuro, trans emitters. And some of the ways you can do that number one is you slowly remove or immediately remove a lot of these things that you might identify based. On what? I share a few that might be causing issues for you. So maybe decide. You know, I’m going to detox from pornography. I’m gonna detox from social media. I’m gonna detox from, you know, watching Youtube several hours a day. I’m gonna detox from sugar. I’m gonna detox from these.
That that are addictive for you and causing an overstimulation of dopamine and you decide for how long you’re going to detox it. Some people to do a one day detox one day a week, I’d recommend it minimum where you just happen to be on Sunday. Your away from all these indulgences. You’re, you’re giving your mind arrest or allowing it to reset your allowing, that Baseline to go back to a normal level. Now, one day can help but honestly, depending on how severe your addiction is to some of these and how much you’ve used it throughout your life. It can take a lot longer. So, some of these things, for example, you might decide to go with out for 30 days. A 30-day detox. Some of it might take a lot longer to rewire, I know. For example, for pornography and social media, a lot of these things, it can take several months, if not a year, plus for your brain, to rewire itself and reset where your Baseline goes back to normal. And if you’re ever curious, go to Google or go to YouTube, search more about dopamine detox. Search more about these symptoms and hear from other people how their lives have changed when they removed a lot of these things from your life. There’s men that have removed pornography from the life and it’s incredibly challenging if it’s benediction for so long.
But, after days, six months, a year, their whole life’s changed. They just naturally feel motivated. They feel happy and joyous for no reason, they feel energetic in their life, they just feel great. They feel full of energy and life. That’s really what the potential is. When you eliminate some of these things from your life, and you might even decide that some of these dopamine addictions, you might want to eliminate for the rest of your life. Maybe they’re not serving you in your life, maybe it is alcohol. Maybe it is certain drugs, maybe it is pornography or whatever it might be but you can decide if you can’t use them in moderation, maybe for you. It’s In that you no longer want or need a part of your life, because it’s really been holding you back. So the detox is the first part of the solution you detox things. And then the other part is building those here. Now neurotransmitters. And some of the things that get you in that present moment is meditation. I think meditation. So valuable that everybody needs to do it in this day and age because we’re so over. Stimulated meditation, mindfulness meditation is when you just stay present, you close your eyes, you focus on your breathing. And as you’re doing that for maybe 10 minutes a day, you’ll have thoughts come up. You’ll have
All these thoughts about the future. But you gotta do for the day, which is also dopamine. And you know dopamine fields as well, but you’ll have all that going on and all you gotta do just be aware of it. Acknowledge it and go back to your breathe and going back to being present. Now most often people struggle with meditation because their mind is so overstimulated, and that gives even more reason for them to do it that is actually exposing that this is a problem in your life. If you can’t meditate for ten days for ten minutes rather than you struggle with that than this is just showing you how much overthinking and over analyzing living too much in your head, the dopamine all of that is causing a problem in your life. So the meditation helps you reset that. It also builds your prefrontal cortex, which is the fart front part of your your brain that helps with self control and willpower to help overcome some of these temptations. Meditation is great.
Also, socializing being with people being with friends and family spending time because a lot of these things they keep you in isolation you know, pornography and watching, you know, social media and watching videos is are all kind of things to keep you isolated and when you go out, you socialize with friends and family that forces you to be more in the present moment and you have certain neurotransmitters of connection and intimacy that are also in a firing off and really helping you as well working out, exercising yoga. You know, reading books being out in nature and just being mindful of what you’re doing. Like, for example, a lot of people when they eat, they always have to watch something when they eat, whether it’s in front of the computer or the TV. And they need that overstimulation of dopamine versus instead, when you eat your food, okay, don’t have any distraction, just allow yourself.
To enjoy it to be present with it to experience the Here and Now, neurotransmitters of just enjoying what it is that you’re eating and putting into your body rather than needing all these other stimulations in order for you to feel good as you’re doing that. So it’s these little things I noticed for myself, if I’m in an elevator if I’m in a lineup sometimes just being bored and sitting there is challenging. So sometimes I notice myself reaching to grab my phone and just you know I can’t even stand there for a couple minutes. I got to scroll through my Instagram, my Facebook, check my email and You catching yourself in those Pullman’s and saying no, I don’t need to pull out my phone right now. I’m just going to take in my environment when I appreciate the architecture, I’m going to look at the sky and the clouds. I’m going to look at the trees. I’m going to pay attention to be present in this moment. Those are the things that you’ve got to cultivate and build the habit of that balances out that the issues and the challenges that dopamine brain is in this creating in your life.
So if you’re looking to make a change in your life and this is something that you you can connect with and relate to, I invite you to do deeper research on this. I invite you to explore the problems that are caused by these addictions. And like, I said, you can enjoy all of these things. But it’s the overstimulation of it is the ones that are unnatural that are causing a lot of issues and problems to your Ma mind and your psychology and doing a reset during a detox. And then adding back some of those those habits in your life that will allow you to enjoy and appreciate your life that much more, I think and really change your life for the better as it has for myself and for many other people. So listen if you can relate to any of this. If you enjoyed this video, please give this a thumbs up here on Youtube. Subscribe for more videos is like this. If you want to learn more about how to improve every area of your life and leave a comment, leave a comment below.
If you can relate to this in any way, if you’re dealing with anything, I just described any some form of addiction to dopamine. Let us know below just by you sharing and Having the courage to do that. I think it can help a lot of people to bring more awareness to this and certain things that might have helped you things that you might do or commit to doing share that below as well, so that I can read what those are and other people can benefit also. So, thank you so much for watching. Hopefully you enjoyed this video and I look forward to seeing you again in the next one.