Learning how things work...and about dopamine and how to use it and not abuse it...

(Click on the title of this post to see the entire post.)

Instead of building a life, we flit back and forth, and go nowhere, following our cravings for relief or stimulation.

Part of the problem is that we don't bother (indeed, skip right over) learning "how things work" and then "how to work them" (effectively).

Or, as quoted in the link below:

"If we do not know how things work nor how to work them, we remain the victims of them."

                                                The BuddhaKahuna

For instance, we fail to understand dopamine at a sufficient level not to act like a dope. We know it "feels good" and, mostly unconsciously, sense or have "learned" what will give us the "hit" from dopamine.

So, we end up chasing shiny objects, for the hope of stimulation that they will give us.  (Chasing shiny objects and not sticking to a path has caused many high potential and highly intelligent people to live far below the success they could experience.)

We fill our lives with unrealistic hopes that divert us from the good we could otherwise get from life.

We use either substance drugs or emotional drugs, from smoking and/or eating sweets all the way over to "distractions", to give us a "hit" of dopamine.

These all "work", in a sense, but they do not work for our good in the long run.

[You might want to read Living Life As A Rat Pressing The Dopamine Lever - Wasting Our Lives - A Huge Pity!]

That naive behavior just takes away from our lives, dissipating much of it to nothingness and taking us off the magnificent life building process that is the ONLY path that will lead us to the greatest life.

Read Dopamine - The Anticipatory Reward Motivation Chemical - and then go about managing yourself to gain realistic hope and realistic sound progress that gives us a shot of "feel good" dopamine but does not harm us.  In fact, as you learn how all the "instruments" of life work, you gain the ability to orchestrate a great harmony in playing the music of life and creating a life of true beauty!

It is my hope for those who are now behaving like dopes some places in their life now "see" what they've been doing and that they never go back to being the naive victim. Does this apply to you...maybe....d'ya think?!!!?

____________________________________

If you find any of this useful and think it could be useful to others who are seeking to live their best lives, share this by clicking on the envelope right below this post and sending them an email.

There is potential, I think, that starting (or getting back on) this path of learning and implementing could dramatically improve one's life and help to create the greatest life for each person choosing to fully utilize it.  (See The Only Sure Path To The Greatest Life.)

Living a life avoiding "loss", holding onto the "old moldy peanuts of life"

(If you receive this via email, click on the title to see the rest of the post.)

BEING "VAGUE" ABOUT "LOSS", LIVING IN FEAR

Those who have not yet learned that "loss" is not necessarily a threat and who still govern their life through fear as the primary motivator and emotion, remain stuck in life, obsessed with the avoidance of loss.  They narrowly focus on what it takes to avoid the loss and give up what the gains in life that are possible.  They can't seem to choose what is most valuable in life, even if the "know" what is, as they are driven by that fear which is upfront, right there, pressing against their faces, and insisting on being calmed down.  .

["Fear" as an emotion is a broad umbrella, under which are it various forms, such as anxiety, shame, guilt, feeling pressure, etc.  The bottom line is that this creates the negative chemicals of life, destroying one's emotional well being.  The irony is that most of the causes are faux, false, not real, and unnecessary!!!!]


HOLDING ON, "STUCK"

In growth seminars, probably LifeSpring, they have used the example of the "old moldy peanuts" that monkeys hold onto for dear life, unfortunately trapping their hand in a jar, at the expense of letting the trapper capture them.  See The Lesson Of The Old Moldy Peanuts - The Sad Tale Of Avoiding Loss.

One of the problems of trying to avoid loss is that our behavior becomes addictive.  While we do not gain anything from avoiding loss in most cases, we do get "relief" (of a temporary nature) from what we are stressing ourselves about.

One of the most insidious and disabling (to a large degree) addictions is that of "getting approval" or, even worse, "avoiding disapproval".  The latter is highly compelling, where people think it is life itself.   The problem with an addiction is that it often drives one to giving up one's "life" (aliveness potential) to get one's emotional "fix".

A sub-part or related part is perfectionism - driving something so far that it causes damage elsewhere by diverting efforts from where they could produce far more value in life.  (Read Perfection - The Path To Hell.  Note that people often don't think they are perfectionists, because they only see it in those who actually appear to perform to perfection.  But perfectionism is where one pushes the avoidance of non-fault, non-defect efforts so far that they damage the rest of life, like our archetypical overachiever/overavoider Daniel.)

How bad can it get?

See Living Life As A Rat Pressing The Dopamine Lever - Wasting Our Lives - A Huge Pity!

Or, it can dissipate into being temporarily partially disabled, seeking relief by withdrawing or numbing down to lessen the pain.  (The "pain" is real, but almost always the cause is NOT real or not necessary at all!)  Read the series on what happens in such a life, starting at PokeyMan, going through the frog aspect and groundhogs, into the drift...


THE ONLY "WAY OUT" IS "THROUGH"

While we can hope these bad emotions just go away on their own, miraculously, from no real cause, that might not be a very successful strategy. (Duh!)

The only way out is to actually do the necessary learning to see the basics of how life works and how to work it, the basics of how the brain/body/emotions work and how to work them, and then the basics of restructuring beliefs (and viewpoints).   That is a bit of a trek, involving homework and time, but very doable in a reasonable period of time, especially if you read the pieces on the site that are designed for being more directly practical and concise (but not stupidly so).  Just follow "the path".  (Actually, you might want to start with a quicker read The Short Path To An Overview Of all Of Life, which is reading sequence of selected pieces.  Then you would go to the changing beliefs section, quickly looking at the simplest belief changing forms to use in :

We must "cure the cause and not just the symptoms" or we'll keep getting/repeating the symptoms over and over in life.