How to Reset Your Dopamine (And Change Your Life)

So dopamine is this chemical in our brains that we figured out how to hijack in the modern world. Things like our phones and social media, fast food and alcohol, all of these things spike our dopamine and give us instant feelings of reward and pleasure. But the big problem is that we are increasingly becoming addicted to these factors that cause these huge surges in dopamine. So now we find it really hard to actually do more of what actually matters to us. And so many people in the modern world are just struggling to take action towards what they're seeking for. They have dreams in their mind with their careers or they really want to be healthy and they get a little bit motivated for a second and then it crashes. And society really needs to understand that operating and getting this chemical into balance is what's going to enable you to actually get focus and stay consistently motivated.

多巴胺是我们大脑中的一种化学物质，我们已经在现代社会中学会了如何利用它。像手机和社交媒体、快餐和酒精这样的事物都会刺激多巴胺的分泌，让我们瞬间感到愉悦和满足。然而，问题在于我们越来越容易对这些能够导致多巴胺剧增的因素上瘾。这使得我们很难真正去做那些对我们来说重要的事情。现代社会里很多人都在努力去实现他们心中的目标，例如在事业上有所成就或者追求健康，但他们往往只是一时有动力，很快又泄气。社会需要明白，调节这种化学物质的平衡是让我们能够集中注意力并持续保持动力的关键。

This is TJ Power. He's a neuroscientist who runs the Dose Lab which specializes in understanding the four main brain chemicals that influence our day-to-day lives. That's dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins. We're going to be exploring each one of these in this four-part video series and there's going to be actionable tips in each of them to help you increase these brain chemicals in a healthy way to completely level up your life. Fingers crossed. So in this video, which is episode one of the four-part series, we are talking about dopamine. Let's go. Part one, the law of dopamine.

这是TJ Power。他是一位神经科学家，负责运行Dose Lab，专注于研究影响我们日常生活的四种主要脑内化学物质：多巴胺、催产素、血清素和内啡肽。我们将在这个四集视频系列中探索每一种物质，并在每集提供可操作的建议，帮助你以健康的方式提升这些脑内化学物质，从而全面提升你的生活。希望一切顺利。在本视频中，也就是四集系列的第一集，我们将讨论多巴胺。让我们开始吧。第一部分，多巴胺法则。

So dopamine has lots of different functions in our brain, but in our reward system, dopamine is the major currency that motivates us to do stuff. As we evolved as homo sapiens, dopamine was the chemical that motivated us to do things that kept us alive, which is very different to how we live today. Our brain spent 300,000 years developing them for an entirely different lifestyle. A lifestyle we had to wake up, hunt for food, build shelter, connect with each other, fight one another. That's what they're designed for. And dopamine was this chemical that lived deep within us that enabled us to take action toward these challenging things that would keep us alive. In our modern world, we basically figured out how to hack that feeling, that hunting or connecting with people or building shelter, and we'd hack it with things like porn and TikTok and cigarettes, alcohol, whatever it may be.

多巴胺在我们的大脑中有很多不同的功能，但在奖励系统中，它是主要驱动力，促使我们去做事情。随着人类的进化，多巴胺是推动我们进行那些维持生命活动的关键物质，但那和我们今天的生活方式大不相同。我们的大脑用了30万年的时间来为完全不同的生活方式而发展：一种需要我们每天醒来、狩猎寻找食物、建造住所、与他人交流、甚至战斗的生活方式。这就是大脑的设计目的。而多巴胺深植于我们体内，帮助我们去应对这些生存挑战。在现代世界中，我们基本上找到了“破解”这种感觉的方法，比如通过色情、TikTok、香烟、酒精等方式去获得类似的满足感。

And then it goes on to create very big challenges within our dopamine system, specifically with our dopamine base lights. So dopamine is made inside nerve cells called neurons in our brain. We start off with an amino acid called tyrosine, which then gets converted into L-dopa. L-dopa then becomes dopamine. And this dopamine is stored in these vesicles, which are at the end of our neurons. So the dopamine is ready to be released at synapses, which are basically the junctions in between the neurons in our brain and how they communicate with each other. But the really cool thing about this whole manufacturing process is that we make dopamine when we do hard things. And the harder the thing is, the more dopamine we make.

接下来，这会对我们的大脑多巴胺系统带来很大的挑战，尤其是影响到多巴胺基础水平。多巴胺是在我们大脑中的神经细胞（称为神经元）内制造的。首先，我们从一种叫做酪氨酸的氨基酸开始，它被转化成左旋多巴，左旋多巴然后变成多巴胺。多巴胺储存在神经元末端的小泡中，这样它就可以在突触——也就是神经元之间进行交流的连接处——释放出来。这个制造过程非常有趣的一点是，当我们做困难的事情时，我们就会制造出多巴胺。而且事情越困难，我们制造的多巴胺就越多。

Effectively, the chemical evolved within us to be earned. So the whole way in which it operates is that if we do something that is effortful, dopamine will begin to generate in our brain. And dopamine actually operates in little bubbles, they're called vesicles. And any kind of activity that requires hard work will literally manufacture these vesicles in the brain. So if the first thing you do in the morning after waking up is go on your phone and scroll through Instagram or TikTok, then your stores of dopamine are going to get used up and you won't feel motivated to do anything with the rest of your day. It's like bursting all of these bubbles.

实际上，这种化学物质在我们体内进化成需要通过努力来获得的形式。它的运作机制是这样的：如果我们做了一些需要付出努力的事情，脑内就会开始生成多巴胺。多巴胺实际上是在小气泡（称为囊泡）中运作的。任何需要努力的活动都会在大脑中制造这些囊泡。因此，如果你早上醒来后的第一件事就是拿起手机刷Instagram或TikTok，那么你的多巴胺储存会被消耗掉，这样你就可能对接下来一天的事情失去动力。就好像把所有的这些小气泡都弄破了一样。

Whereas if you start your day, for example, by doing something like exercise or making your bed or going outside, then you'll build up your reserves of dopamine instead of depleting them. And you'll have so much more motivation to work towards the stuff you actually want to achieve. And this is basically the law of dopamine. The law of dopamine is to take action when you wake every day. And what I mean by that is as soon as you open your eyes in the morning, the most important thing you can do is get moving effectively.

如果你从早晨开始，比如运动、整理床铺或外出，这会积累多巴胺，而不是消耗它。这样，你就会更有动力去做你想达成的事情。这基本上就是多巴胺的法则。多巴胺的法则就是每天醒来后立刻行动。我指的是你早上睁开眼睛后，最重要的事情就是有效地开始活动。

Dovamine is literally involved in movement. There's actually this really big phenomenon on TikTok at the moment called rotting, which is where people literally can't get out of their bed, and particularly teenage girls call it rotting, where they cannot move. They can't get out of their bed to do anything. And the reason that's happened is because dopamine is so low from the TikTok and the sugar and so on that they can't take action at all.

多巴胺与运动直接相关。现在TikTok上有一个非常流行的现象叫做“腐烂”。这是指人们，尤其是少女，字面意思上无法下床，他们称之为“腐烂”，因为她们完全无法动弹，甚至无法下床做事。这种情况发生的原因是，由于使用TikTok、摄入糖分等因素，她们体内的多巴胺水平过低，以至于完全失去了行动的动力。

If you wake up in the morning and you just immediately get the system moving, even if it feels horrible, actually, the more horrible it is, the more dopamine you're going to generate because it operates in terms of that pain, pleasure, type, balance. And if you start adopting that kind of principle, take action when you wake every day. It just means dopamine is on a very good path from the moment you begin.

如果你早晨醒来后立刻开始行动，即使感觉很糟糕，实际上情况越糟糕，你体内产生的多巴胺就会越多，因为这种化学物质是在痛苦与快乐的平衡中起作用的。如果你开始采用这样的原则，每天醒来就行动，那么从你开始的那一刻起，多巴胺就会朝着一个非常良好的方向运作。

Now, there are two really good questions you can ask yourself to find out if something is good for your dopamine or not. Number one, how quickly does the thing give you pleasure? So things that are naturally pleasurable are going to slowly increase your dopamine levels, and you won't have this massive crash afterwards. But if something gives you a massive hit of dopamine straight away and that feeling of instant gratification, then it's unlikely to be a healthy way to increase your dopamine because it'll just come crashing back down again and you won't feel great.

现在，有两个非常好的问题可以自问，以判断某事物是否对你的多巴胺有益。第一个问题，这件事物能多快给你带来愉悦感？自然愉悦的事物会慢慢提升你的多巴胺水平，并且不会在之后迅速下跌。但是，如果某件事物可以立即给你带来大量的多巴胺以及即时的满足感，那么这很可能不是一种健康的方式来增加多巴胺，因为它会迅速下降，你的感觉也不会太好。

If you suddenly get super high TikTok spike of dopamine, you then put the TikTok down, and you're suddenly like, oh, I feel like shit, you're apathetic, you can't take action towards anything. And it's because your brain is just so confused by the unnatural spike that it crashes out effectively. And then question number two is, is this going to benefit me or someone else in the future? If the answer is yes, then this is healthy dopamine, things like cooking dinner instead of eating out, going for a walk with a friend or smashing the like button for the YouTube algorithm.

如果你突然在刷TikTok时获得了极高的多巴胺刺激，然后放下手机，突然感到糟糕、无精打采，无法对任何事情采取行动，这是因为你的大脑被这种不自然的多巴胺激增搞得很困惑，结果导致“崩溃”。第二个问题是：这是否会对我或其他人将来有益？如果答案是肯定的，那么这就是健康的多巴胺，例如自己动手做晚饭而不是出去吃，与朋友去散步，或者在YouTube上点赞支持创作者。

But if the answer is no, then it's generally not a good, healthy way to increase your dopamine levels. And this might include things like scrolling on TikTok for hours or smoking or vaping or drinking alcohol. I am not saying that you're only ever allowed to do things that contribute to personal development in some sort of way, but if we're interested in how to take back control over our dopamine, if you're finding yourself struggling to focus, get distracted all the time, then it's worth appreciating the role that dopamine plays in this whole system, and maybe like nudging your balance away from instant gratificationy things that just let you experience joy and reward in the present moment, more towards slower things that actually can help improve your life in the long term. If you want, I'm not telling you how to live your life. These are just some suggestions. Feel free to take them or not.

但如果答案是否定的，那么一般来说，这并不是一个健康提高多巴胺水平的方法。这可能包括长时间刷抖音、吸烟、电子烟或饮酒。我并不是说你只能做那些对个人发展有益的事情，但如果我们想掌控自己的多巴胺水平，如果你发现自己难以专注、总被分心，那么就值得了解多巴胺在这个系统中的作用，可能需要稍微调整一下，让你的生活重心从即时满足的事情中转移出一些，比如那些只在当下带来快乐和奖励的事情，逐步转向那些能在长远帮助改善生活的慢节奏事物。当然，这只是一些建议，你可以选择是否接受。我并不是在告诉你该如何生活。

By the way, singing with a group of people or doing exercise with a group of people or working with a group of people makes whatever you're doing feel much better. And that is where the sponsor of this video comes in, which is actually me, because this video is sponsored by our own product Productivity Lab. If you're the sort of person who works from home a lot, maybe in your day job, or maybe on your side hustle or your book project or your memoir or your YouTube channel or whatever, and you find yourself sitting at the computer and then not actually doing the thing that you intended to do, then Productivity Lab is going to be absolutely perfect for you. Essentially Productivity Lab is an online platform and community of entrepreneurs and creators and professionals. And we all get together and we work together through Focus Labs.

顺便说一下，与一群人一起唱歌、锻炼或工作，会让你所做的事情感觉更好。而这就是本视频的赞助方登场的时候，其实就是我本人，因为这段视频是由我们自己的产品 Productivity Lab 赞助的。如果你是经常在家工作的人，不管是在白天的工作中，还是在你的副业、书籍项目、回忆录或者 YouTube 频道上，你可能会发现自己坐在电脑前，却没有做你打算做的事情，那么 Productivity Lab 会非常适合你。基本上，Productivity Lab 是一个由创业者、创作者和专业人士组成的在线平台和社区。我们会通过专注实验室一起协作工作。

We do reflective workshops each week where you reflect on how your week is gone and set goals and plan your next week. So it's sort of serves as an accountability mechanism. I like to think of it as like CrossFit or Peloton for Productivity. You're joining a Zoom co-working session with other people. I join these for three hours each morning because I just get way more work done when I'm in a Focus Lab session, knowing that other people around me on screen virtually are also doing their work. And doing this stuff every day pretty much doubles my productivity. And we've had so many success stories from students in Productivity Lab who've said things like, Hey, you know, I've been procrastinating on starting my YouTube channel for ages. And then I joined Focus Lab sessions and now I've actually done it. Or things like, you know, I've spent five years planning to make this new iOS app that I've been planning to make. And then I never actually did it, but then I joined a few Focus Lab sessions and now I've built my minimum viable product. And so students in Productivity Lab are getting a lot of good results. There's a link down below. You can check out ProductivityLab.com and you can see if it's a sort of thing that might be right for you. And who knows, maybe I will see you in one of our co-working sessions or in one of our reflection workshops or in one of our planning sessions or in one of our book clubs. Or maybe in one of our in-person meetups as well.

我们每周都会进行反思工作坊，在这些工作坊中，你可以回顾过去一周的表现，并设定目标和计划下周。因此，这也算是一种让自己负责的机制。我喜欢把它比作生产力界的CrossFit或Peloton。你会加入一个与其他人一起的线上协作会议。我每天早上会参加这样的会议三小时，因为在这种专注实验室环境下工作，我能完成更多工作，并且知道屏幕上其他人也在认真工作。这几乎让我的效率翻倍。生产力实验室的学生中有很多成功案例，比如有些人说：“嘿，我已经拖延开设YouTube频道很久了，加入专注实验室后，我终于开始了。”或者“我计划做一个iOS新应用已经五年了，但一直没开始，加入几次专注实验室后，我终于完成了我的初始可行产品。”因此，生产力实验室的学生都取得了很好的成果。下面有一个链接，你可以访问ProductivityLab.com看看这种方式是否适合你。谁知道呢？也许我们会在某个协作会议、反思工作坊、计划会议、读书会，甚至是线下聚会上见到你。

Potu, four ways to control dopamine. OK, so now let's look at four actionable ways that we can take back control of the dopamine in our brains. And what I love about these tips from TJ is that anyone can start putting them into practice as pretty much as soon as you finish watching this video. Action number one, phone fasting. Yeah, so with dopamine, the first thing to understand, the most effective thing we've seen in all of our research and training is this concept we've developed called phone fasting, which is just having agreed times with yourself where you will fast quote unquote from your phone. The most important time in your whole life to fast from your phone is when you wake up in the morning. Your brain wakes up. It's seeking for dopamine. It's seeking to attack the day. If it goes straight into the phone, you're really setting yourself on a much more difficult journey. So if you, for example, unlock your phone as soon as you wake up, then probably the best thing to do is to put your phone on charge somewhere outside of your room and use something else as an alarm clock. And then you might want to do these three things straight away when you wake up. Number one, go and brush your teeth. I hope you're doing that every day anyway, so you might as well do it first thing when you wake up. Number two, splash your face with cold water that helps you wake up. And three, make your bed. And all of this is aligned with the law of dopamine because we are physically taking action and you're immediately increasing these stores of dopamine in our brain instead of immediately depleting them. Ideally, we want to be phone fasting for at least 15 minutes every single morning. And then ideally, in the evenings, we would have 60 minutes of time before bed or we're not on our phones. I struggled to do this, which is why I have an app called Opel. They are not affiliated with me in the slightest. I wish they were. I wish I owned the app or invented the app or something. But Opel is a great app that I've been using for several months now and it essentially blocks social media apps from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. Then it's like, if I'm on my phone, I didn't read on my Kindle and I go to bed. Easy. It's just massively improved my quality of life by not being physically able to access these offending apps at nighttime.

Potu，四种控制多巴胺的方法。那么，现在让我们来看一下如何通过这四个实用的方法来重新掌控我们大脑中的多巴胺。我喜欢TJ提出的这些建议，因为任何人都可以在看完这个视频后立即开始实践。第一个行动：手机禁食。关于多巴胺，我们研究和培训中发现的最有效的方法之一就是我们开发的“手机禁食”概念，也就是和自己约定好某些时间段不使用手机。早晨刚起床时是禁食手机的最重要时刻。我们的脑子在醒来时会寻求多巴胺，准备迎接新的一天。如果一醒来就开始看手机，会让你的一天变得更加困难。因此，例如，如果你一醒来就解锁手机，那么最好的办法可能是把手机放在房间外充电，并使用其他东西作为闹钟。然后，醒来后可以马上做这三件事：第一，刷牙，希望你每天都这样做，所以醒来后就先刷牙。第二，用冷水洗脸，这有助于你清醒。第三，整理床铺。所有这些与多巴胺的法则一致，因为我们是在采取实际行动，立即增加大脑中的多巴胺储备，而不是迅速消耗它们。理想情况下，我们希望每天早晨至少有15分钟的手机禁食时间。晚上最好也设定60分钟的时间不碰手机。我自己很难做到这一点，这就是为什么我用了一款叫Opel的应用程序。虽然他们和我完全没有关系，我倒是希望他们和我有关或者我发明了这个应用。但Opel确实是一款不错的应用，我已经用了好几个月了，它主要是在晚上10点到早上9点之间屏蔽社交媒体应用。这样一来，如果我在晚上用手机，我就只会在Kindle上看书然后去睡觉。这种方式显著提高了我的生活质量，因为我晚上不能接触那些让人上瘾的应用程序。

Now, something else I find really interesting about dopamine is that we build up our stores of dopamine when we're bored. But we normally don't let ourselves experience boredom because we're always reaching for our phones or whatever device we happen to have. Actually, in a state of boredom, your brain will be generating dopamine. It goes into this restorative state where it's sitting there thinking, oh, I've got a break right now. So it's going to build some dopamine. If you can't see, just crash your dopamine during your moments of boredom. It's not great for the brain chemical. And this is why TJ recommends that we try and do a two-hour phone fast on Saturdays and on Sundays. And to try best to embrace this feeling of boredom instead of always running away from it.

现在，有件关于多巴胺的事情让我感到非常有趣，那就是当我们感到无聊时，我们其实是在积累多巴胺。然而，我们通常不会让自己体验无聊，因为我们总是伸手去拿手机或者我们随身携带的其他设备。实际上，当你处于无聊状态时，你的大脑会产生多巴胺。它进入了一种恢复状态，就像在想着：哦，我现在有个休息的机会。所以它会开始产生多巴胺。如果你在无聊时，不停地消耗多巴胺，对大脑中的这种化学物质其实并不好。这也是为什么TJ建议我们在周六和周日尽量做两个小时的手机禁用，并努力去接受这种无聊的感觉，而不是总是逃避它。

For me, the way I apply this is when I go on walks, I try and avoid having my phone or I'm listening to audiobooks or podcasts or music or whatever. And I keep my phone with me, my AirPods with me, just in case. And like a little pocket notebook type thing at a pen. And so if I chill in a cafe or a coffee shop or something, I'm a park bench. I can do some little pen and paper journaling. And I like to think that that helps increase overall my dopamine levels over time.

对我来说，我应用这种方法是在我散步时，尽量不带手机，也不听有声书、播客、音乐等。我随身带着手机和AirPods，只是以防万一。我还带一个小口袋笔记本和一支笔。这样如果我在咖啡馆或公园长椅上休息时，我可以用笔和纸写一点日记。我认为这有助于随着时间的推移整体提高我的多巴胺水平。

Action number two, find your flow. Okay, so I'm going to quote psychologist, me, hi, chick, sent me, hi here. Our most rewarding activities are not natural. They demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically enjoyable. Now here at Chick sent me, hi, is describing the flow state, which is something that he came up with in the 1970s. So when we are in our flow state, we are hyper focused on that one thing that we're trying to do.

行动二：找到你的状态。好的，我要引用心理学家米哈伊·契克森米哈伊的话。我们最有价值的活动并不是自然而然的，它们需要一种开始时我们往往不愿意付出的努力。但一旦这种互动开始对个人的技能提供反馈，它通常会变得内在地令人愉悦。这里，契克森米哈伊描述了他在20世纪70年代提出的“心流状态”。当我们处于心流状态时，我们会高度专注于我们正在尝试做的一件事情。

In general, to get into this flow state, there needs to be a match between our skill levels at doing the thing and how challenging the thing actually is. So if something's too easy, then you're likely to feel bored rather than being in the flow state. But if something is too difficult, then you might feel anxious and stressed. And so if you want to get into this flow state, we want to be trying to find that balance between challenge and skill level, and sometimes even artificially adding in a challenge, if we feel like something's too easy, or trying our best to reduce our anxiety and stress associated with something, if we're putting too much pressure and importance on the thing.

要进入“心流”状态，我们需要让我们做事情的技能水平和事情的挑战难度相匹配。如果事情太简单，你可能会感到无聊，而不是进入心流状态。但如果事情太难，你可能会感到焦虑和压力。因此，如果想进入心流状态，我们要努力在挑战和技能水平之间找到平衡。有时候，如果觉得事情太简单，可以人为增加一些挑战；如果对某件事情赋予了太多压力和重要性，我们则要尽量减少由此带来的焦虑和压力。

Now what's really cool is that researchers have done studies where they scan people's brains to see which areas are the most active when they're in a flow state. And these studies tell us that our reward system and dopamine pathways are heavily involved. When we enter this flow state experience, it builds dopamine in crazy, crazy amounts, because our brains are like, wow, they obviously need me right now. You want to think of this dopamine chemical as your friend, and when you're trying to engage in something that's challenging, it's like, oh, he needs support. He needs support, help him focus. So we know that flow is really common in athletes and artists and scientists because their work is highly skilled and challenging. But we can all experience flow in the more mundane things in our everyday life, cooking and studying and cleaning, if we find ourselves in these optimal conditions.

现在，真正有趣的是，研究人员进行了研究，扫描人们的大脑，看看当他们处于心流状态时哪些区域最活跃。这些研究告诉我们，我们的大脑奖励系统和多巴胺路径在其中起着重要作用。当我们进入这种心流状态时，大脑会大量产生多巴胺，因为我们的大脑觉得，“哇，他们现在显然需要我。”你可以把多巴胺这种化学物质看作你的朋友，当你尝试参与一些具有挑战性的事情时，它就会像在提醒自己：“哦，他需要支持。他需要支持，帮他集中注意力。”我们知道，运动员、艺术家和科学家经常体验到心流状态，因为他们的工作需要高度技巧和挑战。但如果我们找到合适的条件，我们也可以在日常生活中更平凡的事情中，如烹饪、学习和打扫时，体验到这种心流。

And on average, it takes about 15 minutes to get into your flow state. So recognize that the first 15 minutes of doing something that might seem a bit boring are always going to be the hardest because that's when your dopamine will be at its lowest. A good example is something like cleaning a bathroom because that's a particularly annoying task in our home. What you'll find is the first five minutes pretty annoying and gradually you begin to what's called gain momentum, effectively. After 10 minutes, you might start getting more and more into it. And then what can happen is the opposite can occur. Rather than thinking, I can't really bother to do this. You actually get more into it than you even expected to. And that's because you're effectively entering cleaning flow state.

平均来说，进入心流状态大约需要15分钟。所以，要意识到做一些看起来有点无聊的事情时，前15分钟总是最困难的，因为这时你的多巴胺水平会最低。一个很好的例子就是清洁浴室，这在家务中是特别让人烦躁的任务。你会发现，前五分钟特别让人讨厌，但慢慢地，你开始逐渐进入状态。大约10分钟后，你可能会越来越投入到这个任务中。然后，你可能会感到相反的情况，不再觉得"我不太想做这个"，反而比预想的更投入。这是因为你实际上进入了清洁的心流状态。

I find this to be a really useful insight. Like the starting bit of anything that you're trying to do is always the hardest. It's like procrastination is generally a difficulty in getting started with a thing rather than in doing the thing. When I'm filming, for example, this is like my job these days to film these quickened videos. And the first hour I always spent just like procrastinating, looking at the scripts and thinking, oh, it's not good enough. I'm thinking, oh, something I'm getting views and thinking, why does anyone care? I think, oh, why am I even qualified to talk about this one? And then when I hit record and just start filming, I, you know, so the dopamine builds up over time. It becomes kind of fun. I start like having a bit of fun with it. I start feeling a bit more animated. And like right now, I'm enjoying filming this video. It's a fun thing to do.

我觉得这是一条非常有用的见解。就像你尝试做任何事情的起步部分总是最困难的。拖延往往是因为难以开始，而不是因为事情本身难做。例如，当我拍摄视频时，这就是我目前的工作，要拍摄这些快速的视频。而我总是花第一个小时拖拖拉拉，查看脚本，想着这不够好；或者想着有什么影片会有人看，想着为什么会有人关心这些，怀疑自己有没有资格谈论这些事情。但是，当我按下录制键开始拍摄时，多巴胺就会随着时间积累，事情变得有趣起来。我开始感到有点乐趣，感觉更有活力。就像现在，我正在享受拍摄这段视频，这是件很有趣的事情。

I recognize this was also the case when I was in med school. It was really hard starting to study for the exam. But then once I got into the flow of it, I had my study with me music playing in the background of parts of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and the whole should bang. It starts to become fun. So if you struggle with starting stuff, recognize that it's completely normal. Your dopamine levels are low and over time they will increase. All right, let's move on to action number three, which is cold water immersion.

我意识到我在医学院的时候也是这种情况。开始为考试学习真的很难。但一旦我进入状态，我会一边学习一边听《加勒比海盗》、《指环王》和《哈利·波特》等背景音乐。学习开始变得有趣。所以，如果你在开始一件事情时感到苦恼，请明白这是完全正常的。你的多巴胺水平较低，但随着时间的推移会升高。好了，我们继续进行第三个行动：冷水浸泡。

And this has actually been shown to cause a somewhat similar increase in dopamine as cocaine. But the key difference apparently is that cocaine spikes are dopamine very quickly in about nine minutes, but then it quickly falls down afterwards. But going into cold water increases our dopamine more gradually over a two-hour period. A brilliant psychologist back in 1998 called ceramic discovered for the first time that cold water immersion can raise our dopamine levels by 250%, 2.5 times.

这实际上已被证明会导致一种与可卡因相似的多巴胺增加。但是，关键的区别在于，可卡因会在大约九分钟内迅速使多巴胺达到峰值，然后迅速下降。而浸入冷水中则会在两小时内逐渐地增加我们的多巴胺水平。早在1998年，一位名为Ceramic的杰出心理学家首次发现，冷水浸泡可以使我们的多巴胺水平提高250%，即2.5倍。

And when you get into this cold water immersion conversation, it's really important to understand this concept called the pain pleasure balance. This pain pleasure balance comes from a really interesting theory published in 1980 by a behavioral psychologist, Richard Solomon, called the opponent process theory of acquired motivation. This basically says that pleasure and pain are opposite emotional states, and we need to keep them balanced on either side of a Cecil.

当你开始讨论冷水浸泡时，理解一个叫做“痛苦-快乐平衡”的概念非常重要。这个痛苦-快乐平衡来自一个有趣的理论，由行为心理学家理查德·所罗门在1980年提出，叫做对立过程理论。这个理论基本上说，快乐和痛苦是相对的情感状态，我们需要在某种"跷跷板"上保持它们的平衡。

So when you eat your favorite food, for example, and it makes you feel great, the Cecil tips towards the pleasure side. But then afterwards, an opposite emotional reaction kicks in like guilt if you're like me and you ate a whole mango sticky rice with ice cream yesterday. And that guilt tips the Cecil back into more of a neutral position in theory. Now, Dr. Anna Lenke is a psychiatrist at Stanford University School of Medicine. And she talks about this in her book called Dopamine Nation, Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. She writes, I tend to imagine this self-regulating system as little gremlins hopping on the pain side of the balance to counteract the weight on the pleasure side. The gremlins represent the work of homeostasis, the tendency of any living system to maintain a physiologic equilibrium.

当你吃自己喜欢的食物时，比如说，这会让你感觉很棒，那么'天平'会倾向于愉悦的一侧。但是随后，就会出现一个相反的情绪反应，比如如果你像我一样，昨天吃掉了一整份芒果糯米饭和冰淇淋，你可能会感到内疚。而这种内疚感理论上会让'天平'回到更加中立的位置。 斯坦福大学医学院的精神科医生安娜·伦克博士在她的书《多巴胺国家：在纵欲时代寻找平衡》中讨论了这一点。她写道，我喜欢将这个自我调节系统想象成小精灵跳到'天平'的痛苦一侧，以抵消愉悦一侧的重量。这些小精灵代表着生理平衡的维持工作，即任何生命系统都有保持生理平衡的倾向。

And things actually get really interesting because, as Dr. Anna writes, with repeated exposure to the same or similar pleasure stimulus, the initial deviation to the side of pleasure gets weaker and shorter, and the after response to the side of pain gets stronger and longer, a process scientists call neuroadaptation. That is, with repetition, our gremlins get bigger, faster, and more numerous, and we need more of our drug of choice to get the same effect. And obviously this drug could be anything that we find addictive like fast food or alcohol or tic-tac-c or whatever.

事情变得非常有趣，因为正如安娜博士所写的那样，当我们反复接触同样或相似的愉悦刺激时，最初感受到的愉悦会变得减弱且持续时间更短，而之后感受到的痛苦反应却变得更强烈且持续时间更长。这一过程被科学家称为神经适应。也就是说，随着重复的刺激，我们脑中的“小恶魔”变得更大、更快、更多，我们需要更多的“心仪之药”来获得相同的效果。显然，这种“药”可以是我们觉得容易上瘾的任何东西，比如快餐、酒精、短视频应用等。

But then the opposite happens when we experience pain first, like going into cold water, as TJ suggests we do to increase our dopamine. At first, it's really hard and uncomfortable to stay in cold water, like having a cold shower or doing an ice plunge or whatever. But then in response to the pain, our body activates reward pathways, so the sea saw tips back into balance towards the pleasure side. And the more you do this, the less intense the initial pain will be, but those feelings of pleasure will happen much sooner afterwards and might even be more intense.

但是，当我们首先体验疼痛时，比如按照TJ的建议进入冷水以增加多巴胺，情况则相反。一开始，呆在冷水中真的很困难和不舒服，就像冷水澡或冰水浴之类的事情。但是，作为对疼痛的回应，我们的身体会激活奖励通路，平衡逐渐倾向于愉悦的一方。而且，你越是这样做，最初的疼痛就会越不强烈，但之后的愉悦感会来得更快，甚至可能更加强烈。

The most sustainable way to do this is just to, every single time you have a shower, have 30 seconds of cold at the end. And that will provide a good natural increase in this dopamine chemical to create a rise in motivation and your capacity to focus. And then the final action, action number four, is what TJ calls my pursuit. And this comes back to the importance of a human always having a very clear mountain that they're climbing in their life.

最可持续的方法是每次洗澡时，在最后用30秒的冷水冲洗。这会自然增加体内的多巴胺，提高你的动力和专注力。最后一个行动，也就是第四个行动，是TJ称之为“我的追求”的内容。这回到了一个人始终需要有一个明确目标的重要性，就像在生活中攀登一座高山。

And this was huge for me. I achieved with someone that struggled a lot with all of the different addictive behaviours our modern world has to offer. And I had to go through the clarification of what am I going to chase instead of all that quick dopamine. And this is where the whole idea of my pursuit came from, that if you are someone that is addicted to all these different things, really the only way to get off of them is to have something else that you're chasing that you're willing to sacrifice for. If you are doing stuff without a clear mission or purpose or goal in mind, eventually your brain is just going to sabotage itself because the brain is very good at recognising when we are doing something that feels fundamentally pointless.

这对我来说是非常重要的一步。我和一个经历过各种现代社会上瘾行为困扰的人一起取得了成功。我不得不思考清楚，我究竟要追求什么，才能替代所有这些快速获得的多巴胺。这就是我追求的理念的来源：如果你沉迷于各种事情，唯一真正的解脱方法就是要有另一个愿意为之牺牲的目标。如果你做事时没有明确的使命、目标或意义，最终你的大脑将会自我破坏，因为大脑非常擅长识别出我们所做的事情是否从根本上来说是没有意义的。

Whereas if you're working towards something, you know, if you're building something or like supporting your family, like whatever the goal is that you're trying to go for, if you have that goal firmly in your mind, it means that all of the stuff you have to do to get there, it feels very directed and it becomes quite like fun to do the thing when you know that you're working towards a particular goal. Now, a question I often get asked is, well, okay, but how do I figure out what my purpose is, what my mission is, what my primary pursuit is. This is the whole thing.

如果你正在为某个目标而努力，比如建造某个东西或者支持你的家庭，无论你的目标是什么，只要你在脑海中坚定地记住这个目标，那么实现目标过程中的所有工作都会显得很有方向性。当你知道你是在为了一个特定的目标而奋斗时，这些事情甚至会变得相当有趣。我经常被问到的问题是，好吧，那我该如何确定我的目标是什么，我的使命是什么，我的主要追求是什么。这就是整个问题所在。

I have a whole three-part playlist about this that talks about how to figure out what you truly value, how to sort of connect it with your own life experiences, how to turn that into goals, that'll be linked up there or down there or something so you can check it out. But TJ's solution to this, which I agree with, is to start spending at least 60 minutes in nature every day without your phone, without music and without a podcast.

我有一个分为三部分的视频播放列表，里面讨论了如何找到你真正重视的东西，如何将其与你自己的生活经历关联，并将其转化为目标。我会在上面或下面放上链接，你可以去看看。但是，TJ 对此的解决方案是，我也很认同，那就是每天花至少60分钟在大自然中，不带手机，不听音乐，也不听播客。

Now, at first, you'll probably feel bored and frustrated, but once you push past those uncomfortable emotions, it becomes a lot easier to answer that question of, what is my primary pursuit? What do I really care about pursuing? In my case, I personally feel most creative when I'm going out and about on walks in Regent's Park in London or something, or if I'm just walking into a local coffee shop and just sitting there alone with my thoughts. And the more you ask yourself this question, the better you'll get at working out what your goals are and figuring out the plans and systems you've got to put in place to achieve them.

刚开始时，你可能会感到无聊和沮丧，但一旦你克服这些不适的情绪，就会更容易回答“我的主要追求是什么？”“我真正想要追求什么？”对于我来说，当我在伦敦摄政公园散步或者只是走进一家当地的咖啡店，独自坐在那里静思时，我感到最有创造力。你问自己这个问题越多，就越能更好地弄清楚自己的目标，以及了解必须制定哪些计划和系统来实现它们。

This is a whole philosophy called a Productivity GPS. GPS stands for Goal, Plan and System. This is like a productivity method that I've been cooking up over the last couple of years. If you're interested in finding out more, this is something I teach as part of my Productivity Lab, link down below, but I'm planning to make more videos about it here on this YouTube channel as well. If you enjoyed this video, then you'll probably likely others in the series that are about oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins, and those will be in this playlist when those videos come out.

这是一种叫做“生产力GPS”的整体理念，GPS代表目标、计划和系统。这是我过去几年一直在研究的一种提高生产力的方法。如果你想了解更多信息，我在我的“生产力实验室”中教授这个理念，下面会有相关链接。此外，我也计划在这个YouTube频道上制作更多相关视频。如果你喜欢这个视频，你可能也会对系列中的其他视频感兴趣，比如关于催产素、血清素和内啡肽的视频，这些视频发布后将会在这个播放列表中找到。

Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you hopefully in the next video. Bye-bye.

非常感谢您的观看，希望能在下一个视频中再见到您。再见！