Music Is The Enemy.
what you see in the image above is wrong. Here is why.
When it comes to pleasure, our brains are wired to chase it.
For 4 billion years, it was evolution that chose these settings for our own benefit.
And that’s for a reason.
Our brains are basically a bunch of neurons wired together, specifically speaking, more than 86 billion neuron wired together to form our consciousness and every experience we have.
Evolution chose to make a neurotransmitter called dopamine between each neuron and the other.
That’s important, because without it, our brains would either learn everything we experience or learn nothing.
They can’t choose something in between, or to switch between the two.
We perceive dopamine releases as pleasure.
And music can hijack this system.
Because, for some reason we don’t know, our brains perceive music as pleasure.
And so, each time you listen to music, dopamine along with other feel good chemicals are released between neurons in the brain.
Making you feel pleasure along with it.
But, that’s not the problem.
The problem is what happens after…
When your brain gets a good amount of dopamine from music.
It starts releasing less dopamine for harder tasks.
Because your brain wants the best for you.
So It always chooses to make you motivated to do the tasks that give you the highest amount of pleasure possible.
Without as much energy consumption.
It does that by, you guessed it, dopamine fluctuations, and It goes like this:
- High pleasure expectation from a task > brain chooses to release dopamine to make you motivated.
- low pleasure expectation from a task > brain chooses to lower dopamine release to make you preserve energy for the rewarding tasks instead of wasting it on the boring ones.
So what should you do to prevent this?
How to hack your hormonal system to increase motivation:
- Tilt your pleasure-pain balance towards pain:
That may seem odd, but it works. Your body will respond to pain by releasing hormones that force your brain and body to work more efficiently,
That’s why eating before workouts lowers energy levels, and it’s also why taking a cold shower does the opposite. Click to read a study on that.
- Stop eating sugary foods:
Too much sugar increases blood glucose levels, more blood glucose means more insulin release from the pancreas,
More insulin release means less energy hormones(cortisol, epinephrine, norepinephrine, dopamine, endorphins),
Less energy hormones means lower performance and motivation, and therefore lower productivity. (studies on the effect of insulin on cortisol here).
- Switch your body’s metabolism into fat burning:
And that’s fasting.
When you fast, your body uses the glycogen stored on your liver for energy, it converts it to glucose before burning it, your body runs out of glycogen at some point, and then it shifts into a fat burning state,
The thing is,
Fat has more energy than glucose, and also, fat usage requires energy hormones to be released, and so your body will benefit from an energy boost, and a performance boost at the same time when fasting,
And what’s even more interesting, is that your body stays in that fat burning state even after eating,
So following an intermittent fasting routine will keep you always energized and motivated while also keeping you fit and healthy.
- Exercise often:
Exercising has the exact same effect as fasting, the only difference is that you can stop the exercise because you got tired, but you can’t stop fasting just because you got hungry,
Fasting only requires a little bit of discipline but exercise requires the right amount of energy hormones to be released,
And so, you can’t push yourself to it’s limit when exercising, because you will just stop way before your energy is low, but with fasting you can prevent that,
So that’s why I suggest you exercise while you are on a water only fasting, that will significantly increase energy hormones and therefore give you the strongest boost in energy.
- Take a cold shower every day:
Your skin has cold receptors inside of it, and each time the surrounding temperature decreases, they send electrical signals to the brain to trigger the release of cortisol which will induce vascular constriction to preserve heat.
The thing is, your body doesn’t want to stay in this state for a long time,
And so in order to get away from it, your adrenal glands start releasing more and more energy hormones the more you are in the cold until you reach a powerful state of flow and creativity that was supposed to save you from freezing as evolution has developed you to.
You can use this biohack to increase your productivity and performance
Use at your own risk, you may hurt your heart if you are not adapted enough to physical stress, so it should be a step by step adaptation…
- Enter a flow state at least two times a week:
A flow state is a state of consciousness in which we perform our best and feel our best,
It’s a highly rewarding state because nature has developed it to save us when resources were scarce, and wise nature has chosen this state to be triggered by two important triggers:
- deep intense focus on solving a challenging problem that stops in your way.
- Physiological stress (fasting, cold water immersion,…).
So, to sum up all of this in a short paragraph ,there are many more ways to increase your productivity and motivation, but they all have one important player: pain.
Simulate it’s conditions by fasting, exercising, and taking cold showers, and your body will do the rest, which is making you a better version of yourself, hoping that one day, pain will finally stop.
But It wouldn’t, because It was on purpose : )
That’s it for today, I hope you liked this article.
Stay curious, and see you guys in the next one.
