How to go the distance, stay motivated, and reach towards happiness

Originally published on Medium, Feb 9 2018

How can I go the distance, make deep, radical change in my life, and keep my faith and moods elevated?

Lately, I feel like I’m in the middle of the ocean, surfing huge, rolling, 40-foot waves. One after the other, in the dark, without a rescue boat or even a tow-in jet ski. Or maybe like those crazy coast guard ship videos on YouTube (OK, maybe not that scary, but I seriously want to be laughing like this guy when the waves hit).

I’m at the fulcrum of getting through my ocular melanoma experience last autumn (cancer really makes one reassess how one is spending one’s life, yet increases a craving for health insurance coverage), and turning 50 in May (I’m working on getting “Over the Hill” Hallmark products out of my head). On top of this, I am moving towards taking the plunge and leaving corporate life to go work on my life dreams as a transformational travel coach and guide.

Make decisions and stay motivated

What I know about decision-making and taking the leap is that taking action helps momentum, and thinking about taking action causes inertia. Research shows that we have complimentary brain systems that are either thinking or doing.

If you stay in thinking mode, you will get caught up in a life of inaction.

With a longer timeline of several months in which I will work at my corporate job in order to amass a small amount of savings and to have health insurance while I’m still in America, I am feeling decision paralysis and inertia. I do some bit of planning and research and feel a high, and then I go back to the office and feel a low.

Why?

The brain’s deeper signals of “go“ or ”no-go”

My limbic system, which is deeper than my rational brain and doesn’t speak English or have any logic, is responsible for every aspect of my being, from my ability to learn to how I choose to live my life. How can I encourage this part of my being to send positive, motivating signals and not debilitating, demotivating signals?

So I did some reading about motivation this morning.

Positive feedback triggers a reward signal in the brain, reinforcing positive actions that I took, signaling that I should take more of those actions in the future. When I expect something good, whether its a cookie (more likely, a glass of wine) or a life dream, my brain initiates a “go” signal.

The key is dopamine, which is produced deep in the mid-brain and moves up to the motor cortex to control action.

Contrast this with avoiding bad things, like poison or toxic people (the same thing, I ask?). My brain sends a “no-go” signal to stay put, to not reach out. This reaction in the ancient past helped humans not get eaten by sabertooth tigers, so when faced with negative elements or threats, we freeze. Even if it’s a much smaller threat than a tiger (or even just an imagined threat). Freezing often precedes the fight-or-flight response (giving us the delightful word “tharn” from Richard Adams’ rabbit language in Watership Down).

Fear and anxiety can cause us to withdraw and give up, rather than to take action and improve.

Is this the reason so many people give up on their dreams?

The key is to take action!

But because of my timeline. I can’t take action quite yet (thanks, capitalism and the American health care system). So what do I do to maintain positive momentum?

Dopamine and flow states

I found another article: “Brain’s Reward System Earns researchers €1 Million Prize” I thought: THIS LOOKS PROMISING. But then I realized that my brain connected “reward” and “€1 Million” and juiced me with a little dopamine. It’s constant, this mechanism.

“Together, their research has revealed how reward systems in the brain that involve the signalling chemical dopamine influence our behaviour and survival, playing important roles in decision-making, gambling, drug addiction, psychopathic tendencies, and schizophrenia.”

No wonder I feel crazy in the face of all this decision-making. It’s neighbors with some pretty heavy shit!

The dopamine system is the biological process that makes us want to buy a bigger house or better car or get promoted at work. Or, say, live the life of one’s dreams.

The good news is that dopamine production can be triggered through learned cues, even without a reward.

So, how do I structure my life so that I get regular hits of dopamine that will keep me motivated and nudge me towards my longer-term goals?

We constantly update our goals through a dopamine-driven phenomenon called “reward prediction error” (god, I love wonky scientific terms!). Future behavior is dictated by daily feedback on whether anticipated rewards and pleasures are more generous than anticipated, or fail to materialize.

Side note: as we age, we lose 10% of our dopamine-producing neurons, which can deplete a person’s ability to predict future rewards accurately. Is this why dating becomes harder as one gets older? So I definitely need to give myself daily feedback and increase my dopamine production.

Dopamine counteracts depression, helps us resist impulsive behavior, and even overcome self-destructive behavior like certain addictions. It improves memory. It makes you feel more alive.

Making friends with dopamine and motivation

I already read blogs like The Mission and Thrive Global. They help me elevate my perspective, which is positive feedback loops. I also write every morning in longhand, because of the brain benefits. I also have cut back on social media and negative people, because those are negative feedback loops.

I have definitely felt a difference in my positivity since really committing to my morning practice, which allows me to tune into my internal landscape and feel. This morning practice is dedicated to where specifically do I want to go, and how do I need to adjust to get there?

What do I want in life? Much like a the pilot of an airplane, if I don’t have a specific destination and also do course-corrections during the flight, I won’t get to where I want to go. Worse, I might crash.

Here are more things that I’m trying that are proven to boost dopamine production and help with motivation and optimism:

• Discovering new things increases brain plasticity and brings great joy and satisfaction that spills over into other parts of my life. And gives me great get-to-know-you material!

• Celebrating what I’ve already done by writing them down in a place where I can look at all of them triggers the same mechanism that makes checking things off a list so satisfying. Success! It’s addictive. This is also why I can get a little high off of balancing my budget forecast spreadsheet (weird, I know).

• Listen to music, which can literally alter your consciousness, as Oliver Sacks wrote about for his whole career. Bonus points for dancing with abandon and singing at the top of your lungs, because the physical vibration also elevates mood.

• Make stuff that I enjoy making, which also increases my time in a flow state (defined as “an optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best”), which boosts overall mood and feelings of satisfaction.

• Tyrosine, which I consume in the form of bananas, beef, coffee, and eggs, among other things. Maybe this is why chocolate and avocado toast are fetishized?

• Reduce my lipopolysaccharides, also called endotoxins, which make the immune system go haywire. I eat a lot of probiotic and fermented foods (this also helps with the production of serotonin and better mental health), I eat less fatty/sugary foods, and I GET ENOUGH SLEEP.

• GET ENOUGH SLEEP! I apparently cannot overstate this. It is the foundation of health, including mental health.

• I exercise often, and do workouts that are fun (like acrobalance… join me sometime!), not just a slog on the StairMaster (but I do that too, like eating my peas). Exercise is mood-elevating for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that my office-chair backside gets hoisted up into a more pleasing-to-me position.

• Establish a streak… visually. I use all sorts of crazy post-it note tools (my apartment can start to resemble the set of Memento at times), but you can also get a calendar and mark big Xs on it to show your progress to yourself in specific categories like working out or sleeping enough. Where you focus goes your energy. This is a form of focus.

• I meditate, or otherwise practice mindfulness. This means sometimes sitting in silence and just feeling sensations in my body while letting go of thoughts, sometimes it’s moving or walking meditation, and lately I’ve been experimenting with free dance as a meditation, which I quite like. The health benefits are myriad and scientifically studied.

One of the best pieces of advice that I’ve gotten about meditation is to just notice the spaces between all the thoughts and notice if any of the spaces get a little bigger. It works.

Stay tuned! I will keep reporting back on my findings of how to increase satisfaction and forward momentum so we can all live our best, most beautiful lives.

Blessings for a dopamine-filled brain!