Dopamine detox leads to Success

How to get your life back together now when I came across this, the first thing that came to my mind was actually a ritual that I invented many many years ago back in college when I was drinking smoking and simply partying way too hard it's a ritual that worked extremely well for me back then and it's something that I still do at least once or twice every single year.

I call it the dopamine fast now in order for this to work you have to treat it like a sort of holiday this is an entire day event that starts from the moment you wake up all the way until the moment you fall asleep and this is a special holiday because unlike most other holidays which are fun and filled with activities the entire purpose of this one is to have a little fun as possible which means that there's a huge list of things that you cannot do that's right things that you consider to be fun entertaining or pleasurable are strictly forbidden.

So this means no food all you're allowed to do is drink water no phone you can leave it on for emergency calls but you can't use it no internet which includes surfing the web and or social media of any kind like Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram no watching of videos so this means no TV no YouTube no Netflix no going to the movies no substances of any kind no alcohol no weed no drugs no cigarettes and nothing with caffeine, no video games, no music, no hanging out with your friends no talking to anyone unless it's an emergency or for something work-related no masturbating and finally no reading of any books fiction and or non-fiction now

Here's what you can do...

You can drink water you can walk around outside you can meditate you can do some light exercise and most importantly of all, you can write using a pen and paper and those are the rules now at this point in time you're probably wondering why in the world would anyone do this to themselves it sounds miserable it sounds like torture well.

I'm gonna show you exactly why the dopamine fast is so effective and how committing to this ritual can force you in to become extremely productive again and I'm also gonna explain why writing is so important during dopamine fast if you're going to be doing a dopamine fast which means you're basically doing nothing all day trust me you're gonna end up wondering what the time is quite often which means you need a watch.

All right so now there are two main reasons as to why it's so effective the first is that it starves your donkey what I mean by this well if you think about it the relationship between your mind and body is sort of like the relationship between a rider and a donkey if you're riding a donkey and you want it to move all you have to do is wave a carrot in front of him this is similar to how if you want to convince your body to do something that's hard all you have to do is think about the reward you get after this is basically how habits work we automatically do things as long as there is a decent reward that follows as long as there is a carrot on a stick.

So what happens to us when our life is a mess is that we've been indulging in too many stimulating things,things like porn,drugs or junk food and binge watching shows all produce a huge amount of dopamine this is equivalent to letting your donkey eat and a buffet of carrots and other tasty donkey vegetables if your dog is been eating in a buffet all week he's not gonna be motivated by a little carrot on a stick anymore because he's full when you come- doing a dopamine faster essentially starving your donkey you giving your body as little stimulation as possible for an entire day and when your donkey is starving you can easily convince him to move by waving just a little carrot in front of him this means when you wake up in the morning after doing a dopamine fast you'll find it much easier to convince yourself to go to the gym or to read some pages of a book by thinking about the reward you will give yourself after the second reason committing to a dopamine fast is so effective is because it prevents you from masking your pain what is the purpose of pain well if you think about it pain is an indicator that something is wrong and needs to be fixed right,it's a sign that there's a problem somewhere.

If your hand is touching something that's too hot you feel pain and your brain goes ah there's a problem over there and it automatically moves your hand pain is necessary for us to fix our problems the same thing applies to emotional pain things like rejection,loneliness and shame these are all indicators that something is wrong in our lives but the problem with us humans is that we love to run away from these feelings we love to self-medicate with pleasure instead of solving the actual problem that's why so many people turn to food drugs sex and alcohol when they're in a bad mood because all of these things can make that pain go away at least temporarily now when you do a dopamine fast you have no way of avoiding your problems because there's literally nothing you can do to mask any of the pain and this forces you to address all of the problems that you've been running away from for who knows how long and here's where writing comes in order to address this pain the best thing to do is to write to organize your thoughts to figure out why you're feeling this pain to begin with and to eventually come up with a plan see every time I commit to doing a dopamine fast I will spend at least a couple of hours writing throughout the day here are a couple of very good questions to ask yourself these are the writing prompts that I'll use most often whenever I commit to doing a dopamine fast

Question Number One:

Do I feel any discomfort today if so where in my body am I feeling it is this an emotion or is this physical pain if it's an emotion try to describe it is it anxiety is it depression is it shame what does it feel like?

Question Number Two:

Ask yourself why do I feel this way, now it's important not to blame a chemical reason or you know genetics or other people because most of the time the reason we feel bad is because of something that we can't control, there are almost always things that you are doing that are causing these issues so ask yourself what things have I been doing that could possibly be causing these issues?

Question Number Three :

What should I do to fix it what are one two three things that I can do tomorrow that will at least somewhat address this pain things that would get me a couple of steps closer to fixing whatever problem is causing this pain?

Question Number Four :

What would my life be like if I did not do any of these one-two-three things for the next five years assume the worst possible scenario and really describe it and

finally

Question Number Five :

What would my life be like if I stuck to these one-two-three things consistently for the next five years assume the best possible scenario and really really describe it now the key to getting the most of these writing prompts is to write a lot the more you write the better but allow yourself to really focus on what you're writing give yourself some time to think between answering each of these prompts right slowly and neatly you have all of the time in the world because quite frankly there isn't much else to do if you answer all of these prompts in detail.

You're gonna have a clearer idea of exactly what you need to do tomorrow you're gonna feel pretty motivated to stick to the one to three things that you wrote about because you'll come to realize that there are things that will get you closer to solving your problems and that's why the dopamine fast is so effective now again this is a ritual that I came up with but worked really really well for me so I'm curious as to whether or not it will have the same effect for you guys if you're trying to get your life back together try this out.