Dopamine Detox: We Are Seeking Progress, Not Perfection
Perfection is the enemy of moving forward in life, and we need to focus on progression. How do we do that?
I found myself seeking perfection rather than progress.
I always wanted to detox all of my bad habits. What I mean by that is that I don’t get addicted to those bad habits again and start building good habits to improve my life. I want my life to be clean and free from those chains of sin and bad habits.
It feels like my life is not improving, and I keep on degrading over and over again with those bad habits.
So, I decided to start a detox. I tried to reset my brain, just like dopamine detox or dopamine reset, where I don’t do all of my bad habits and avoid all of my triggers of those bad habits for 30 days.
I learned that the average of resetting dopamine from bad habits is 30 days, and it could vary for other people, but the number is usually 30 days.
After I decided to stop for 30 days, I avoided all of my triggers, like Youtube, gaming, smoking, cornography, etc. All of those I avoided for 30 days by not seeing them or interacting with them. This resetting is actually not easy because when I’m resetting, I can’t do anything, which leads to boredom.
I usually watch YouTube videos when I have free time, but now I can’t watch them. When I wanted to smoke when I was stressed, I couldn’t do it again because I’m in my dopamine detox. Then, of course, I became stressed because I was bored and did not know what to do.
The problem with most self-improvement advice
The problem with this is that sometimes we are lazy enough to do good things if we are trying to detox our own bad habits.
There is much advice to go out and socialize with people while in dopamine detox, but not all of us actually want to do that. There are people who like to be in their room for the rest of the day and socialize if needed. This is actually pretty hard for people who don’t like to socialize because triggers and cravings are pretty strong when we are alone or not doing anything.
I failed many times to reset the dopamine baseline because of this problem.
I don’t like going out, but I love to spend my time writing or doing something productive in my room. The problem is that sometimes I need a break or some rest. While in my breaks, sometimes I just want to consume some content, like scrolling on social media, etc. So, this problem is actually pretty hard to fix because I now don’t know what to do because I’m in my dopamine reset protocol.
On day 5, I failed and relapsed again on watching cornography. I tried again and successfully lasted for 7 days. Then I failed again on day 8 because of the same bad habit. Then I tried again and successfully got through 21 days, but after that, I failed on day 22, and I feel very hopeless. I feel like I wasn’t meant to be successful.
Then, I keep on trying and trying and trying for months and even years. I didn’t succeed and kept changing plans to reset my dopamine and eliminate all of my bad habits. I felt hopeless and depressed. I don’t feel any success in my life, and I feel like I can’t live without my bad habits.
Suddenly, I learned something from the movie The Equalizer. I watch the scene where there’s someone who’s trying to lose weight but fails to strictly focus on his diet. He ate a sandwich, if I’m not mistaken, with chips in it. The man who is the main character was trying to help him lose his weight so he could get into the police test. I forgot about those details, but the main point he made is that we are seeking progression, not perfection. Even if he ate one of those sandwiches with chips on it, which maybe violated his diet rule, he was actually not a failure. He just wasn’t perfectly achieving his success, which we called progress.
Progress is doing what we need to do to achieve our goals. Whether you failed once, twice, or many times, you are still continuing to achieve them without giving up. That’s what we called progress, and it’s what I realized that day.
I realized that I was making progress and not becoming a failure.
I may have failed many times, but what I see in my progress is that I keep decreasing the amount of time I relapse. I don’t relapse more than I did before, but I know for sure that I will achieve my goals one day. Then I was happy about it and kept on trying again and again. I befriend my failures, and I start having a positive mindset that I will succeed in this dopamine reset.
The key is that you are not failing, and you are not a failure.
You are just progressing toward something that is bigger than what you are aiming for.
You might think that this is not according to what you have planned. You didn’t achieve according to the deadline that you already set, and you felt like a failure because of the many failures that you have experienced. Even so, if you keep on trying and never give up, you are actually getting closer to what you are aiming for.
Failure is actually a delayed success.
Failure is actually a recipe for success.
Failure is actually progress toward success.
You can achieve what you want in life, but you have to deal with failures. Don’t think of failure as if it’s not working or anything (if you decide to keep on moving on).
Look at it as progress toward achieving your success because we are seeking progress, not perfection.
“Progress, not perfection.”
–Robert McCall from The Equalizer
New Substack! ✨
I was thinking about how to make my articles more structured and exclusive, which I found in Substack Newsletter.
I’ve made 2 substacks, which is
- Kevin Nokia Writing: My personal journey from struggling through depression to becoming a successful individual.
- I Am Literate: Learning how to become a reader and a writer from 0 to 1 and a community to build your reading and writing habits.
In the future, there will be more community and exclusive articles; come and join!
About Me
Twitter: @ItsKevinNokia
Instagram: @Kevin_nokia
FREE Changing-Life Blueprint: Click here
FREE My Booknotes Template Out NOW: Grab one!
