3-2-1: On "Chemical Imbalances", Shame, and Taking Control Of Your Life
Wisdom Wednesday #2
Hey fam,
It’s time for Wisdom Wednesday — a weekly newsletter packed as densely with wisdom as I can currently muster :-)
Today I'll be sharing 3 idea-bites from me, 2 quotes from others, and 1 mini-blog.
Yes, I totally stole this format from James Clear. It’s not perfectly the format I want but i’ll mess with it more next week ;-)
3 Idea-bites From Me:
Guilt and shame are obsolete emotions. They used to serve as tools to keep us from doing in public things that were socially harmful. But in the post internet world, privacy no longer exists. Now your only choices are to feel constantly guilty/ashamed or to “Own Your Shit”: embrace, accept, and stand behind your actions, publicly and privately— Or don't do them.
If it takes less than 5 minutes: do it now. If it takes more: schedule it. If its not your strength: delegate it. If its not important: archive it.
A man who cannot bear to live without something will always lose it. He will compromise himself too much in an effort to maintain it. Accepting the finitude of all things and being willing to lose them is a prerequisite to a living a bearable life.
2 Quotes From Others:
"A man with options has power, and from these options and this sense of power, a natural sense of confidence will manifest itself" - Rollo Tomassi
“If you have to fight a dragon, you should go to it’s lair before it comes to your village.” - Jordan B Peterson
1 Mini Blog:
𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝘿𝙤𝙣𝙩 𝙃𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝘼 𝘾𝙝𝙚𝙢𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙄𝙢𝙗𝙖𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙔𝙤𝙪 𝙃𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝘼 𝙇𝙞𝙛𝙚 𝙄𝙢𝙗𝙖𝙡𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙚
Biologically, dopamine serves one primary purpose: to give us a short term reward to keep us motivated toward things that are in the best interest of ourselves and our tribe in the long term.
But, as with all systems, what you measure eventually finds a way to stop being a means to an end, but an end in and of itself.
90% of our dopamine rewards today — whether it be Facebook likes, pornography, calorie dense foods, video games, drugs, social media, you name it — have become completely detached from the long term aims they were designed to serve.
You can be drowning in dopamine all day, yet never achieve any of the things it was designed to move you toward (social status, resources, relationships, influence, purpose, physical health, etc).
Never before in human history was this possible anywhere close to the degree it is today.
And it's exactly why depression, anxiety, drug abuse, etc. are sky rocketing.
Imagine: If you worked all day every day 16 hours a day and after a decade had nothing to show for it. It'd be entirely reasonable to assume that either you or the world or both are defective.
But as far as your brain is concerned, with how many dopamine rewards you are constantly being bombarded with, this is exactly what's happening!
Too much dopamine + not enough of the things that are supposed to come from it = depression, self attack, nihilism, misanthropy, etc.
If you want to be less miserable, the number one thing you can do is learn how to take conscious control of your dopamine rewards and divert them back toward the things they were naturally designed to serve (for more actionable steps on this, stay tuned for more installments to How To Become Addicted To Doing Things That Are Good For You).
That's all for today. Hope you enjoyed it! (If you did, please give it a like on the website).
If you know someone else who might find it helpful, please share it with them.
Want more content like this? I post daily to Instagram (best place) Facebook (IG + some mini blogs), and Twitter (IG + lots of idea-bites), as well as weekly to Youtube (low production long form rants). Check em out!
— Matt