How to Stop Falling into the Dopamine Trap
The Amplified Impact Podcast
May 18th, 2023
Today, I’m talking about something that’s been on my mind a lot lately: falling into the dopamine trap.
It’s something we’ve all done, whether we realize it or not. You know those cheap dopamine hits like junk food, porn, Netflix, video games, smoking, drinking? Yeah, those.
They make you feel good for a little while, but then they wear off and you’re left feeling like a sad sack.
But here’s the thing: those cheap dopamine hits aren’t really cheap.
They end up costing you more than you think…and the worst part is that the bill doesn’t come due until years down the road when it’s too late to do anything about it.
The problem is that it’s hard to think about the future. Future you is a problem for, well, future you.
But the actions you take now are going to determine who you are down the road.
Now, I know it’s easier said than done. It’s so much easier to give in to that instant gratification, to eat that pizza or watch that Netflix show.
But the truth is…easy choices lead to a hard life. Hard choices lead to an easy life. It’s a simple concept, but it’s so true.
So you gotta ask yourself: do you wanna be the person who’s always chasing the next cheap dopamine hit, or do you wanna be the person who’s taking care of themselves and their future?
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“The things in life that are cheap in the moment almost always end up being the most expensive things in the long run.” – Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to the podcast. I want to talk about something I’ve been thinking so much about recently as it pertains to my own life and the struggles that I have falling into the dopamine trap. And I think by sharing some of my struggles, then maybe you can also get some benefit out of this. Because I think we all fall into this trap. And the trap is this we we seek what people will call cheap dopamine. And these are things like junk food, pornography, it could be Netflix, it could be video games, it could be smoking, it could be drinking. All these things that are very easy to do in the moment. You pick it up and it gives you that dopamine rush and you feel good for a couple of minutes, maybe a couple of hours, and then it wears off.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:50]:
And the problem with this cheap dopamine is that there is no such thing as truly cheap dopamine. It’s just that you don’t really fully understand the price that you’re paying in the moment. So when it comes to these really quick hitting dopamine bursts, which a lot of our lives these days is like a modern human is designed to give us this intense amount of dopamine in a very short period of time. Whether that’s scrolling on social media that’s getting that very sugary treat that’s the hyper stimulating pornography there’s a lot of things that are designed to stimulate our brains to the nth degree. And I think it’s really important just to recognize that these cheap dopamines, they cost more than you realize. Like the things in life that are cheap in the moment almost always end up being the most expensive things in the long run. And we could just draw this out, right? Like if you were to give into the junk food every single day, you have that sugary sweet because it feels really good, or you get that Frappuccino from Starbucks every single day, then in 30 years from now, you’re going to have metabolic disease, you’re going to have diabetes, you’re going to have just an unhealthy life in general. Right? That’s not probably what you want, right? In the same way that if you are constantly drinking or smoking, we know what the long term ramifications of those things are.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:11]:
But here’s the problem, and it’s such a hard one for me, is the cost that’s going to be paid for these cheap dopamine bursts, it’s not going to be paid by you. It’s going to be paid by future you you down the road. And this is problematic for so many of us because on the one hand, that you, that future you, it is you, but it’s also not you, right? It’s not your problem right now. It’s not current you’s problem. It’s a price they have to pay. And so it could be very, very hard to associate ourselves in a deep, empathetic way with who we are going to be in 1015, 2030 years from now and realize that the actions that we’re taking right now are leading us to become that person. And so it’s very much easier to give in to the instant gratification, that sweet treat, whatever. That could be the digital treat, it could be the physical treat, whatever.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:06]:
It’s easier just to give into it right now and just put out of our minds the cost that’s going to come, the bill will come due and it’s only going to get more and more expensive over time. And we know this from pretty much every aspect of our life where things that allow us to get into it for inexpensive in the beginning end up being very expensive down the road. For example, your car payment, you get in for like $4,000 and then you have a $300 car payment every single month. And then in the next five years you finally pay it off. But you ended up paying $5,000 more for the vehicle than you would have if you had just paid for it all up front, right? Same with the mortgage. You go in, you buy a house for maybe $15,000 down over the next 30 years. You’re going to be paying your interest on it for like four or 5%. And then at the end you’re going to pay more than what you would have if you had just paid cash at the outset.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:52]:
Same with subscription agreements. You get in and for $20 a month you can be on the subscription plan, which is if you just paid the full year upfront would have been way, way cheaper right now. I know going back to the mortgage example, you can take that money and if you can get the mortgage for 4%, you can go and invest it somewhere else for more, whatever. Maybe it’s not quite the cost, but generally things that are easy to get into in the beginning, like your credit card payments, they’re going to end up costing you more down the road. And so one of my favorite quotes on this topic came from a guy named Jersey Grigorick who wrote a book called Happy Body. He says, Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life. And the beauty of that very simple sentence, two sentences rather, is that it encapsulates the whole game.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:42]:
When you make the easy choices, in the moment you choose that dopamine burst, you fall into that trap, then your life down the road is going to be very much harder, right? You’re not going to be living in alignment with your greatness. So that’s one sort of discontent. But then also the financial, the physical relationships, the health, all the ramifications that come from these short term easy decisions, they compound and then they become very heavy at one point. And now there is no turning away from the person that you are. You either have to accept that you are just not where you want to be and you’re miserable or now you have to try and change it and that’s going to be very hard because you have all these costs you have to pay off. Whereas, by comparison, if you make the hard choices in the moment, if you choose the hard thing, which is to eat the healthy food, to go do the workout, to put in the time, in the relationships, to not give in to the social media trap. And instead you go and create and you work on your business or whatever it is. If you do those things and down the road, you’re healthy, you’re fit, you have people who love you, you have money, you have all these things in life that people look to and say, you’re a success.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:45]:
But goddamn, were they hard to get to because they were a succession of very difficult choices that you made in the moment because you knew that they would compound into something greater, into something better and creating an easy life overall. The thing that’s so interesting about this is that when we make the easy choices in the moment, when we fall into the dopamine trap, we’re making a decision that says future you is going to have to pay for my mistakes now. And future you is going to look back on past you and be resentful and think 50 year old you is going to look back at 30 year old you and think, why did you do this to me? Why did you eat like this? Why did you not put in the time into the relationships, into putting into your kids and putting into your spouse, into putting into whatever. Like, why didn’t you do the hard work then? Now I’m having to pay it. Now you’re a resentful old person, not that 50s old but you get what I’m saying. And what’s interesting about this is you can conceptualize what that’s going to be like because you right now are the result of all the decisions that you’ve been making over the entirety of your life up to this point. And if there is any past version of yourself that you look back on and you resent right now, like if you’re not where you want to be physically in your relationships, romantically, financially, it’s the result of the decisions that your past self made. Think about that.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:07]:
Your past self chose the easy choices and now you as a result are living the hard life. And so we can conceptualize on the one hand that the choices we’re making in this moment are going to lead us down a road where future you is going to hate current you and be pissed off. But hey, that’s a price for them to pay and it can be so hard to attach to that because they’re so far in the future. But I think what can help is to recognize right now in this moment you are past use future you okay, let’s say that again. You are past use future you. And if past you is making decisions that prioritize the short term dopamine burst over and over and over and over, then you’re probably not where you want to be in life. And probably you look back at past you and think that guy was a dick. I wish I hadn’t done that.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:54]:
I wish I had made different choices. And so now we can connect our current past used self with our soon to be future selves, right? We can take the past, we can connect it to the future, and we can realize, fuck, I am the result of the decisions that I’m making right this minute. So use that knowledge as fuel to make the hard choices, to do the hard thing in the moment, to not prioritize that cheap dopamine. Because the truth is there is no such thing as cheap dopamine. You just don’t understand the price that you’re paying. So I hope this brought you guys a little bit of value. I hope maybe this can change the way that you go about your day. For me, I’ve been thinking about this a lot in terms of a couple of areas in my life that I fall prey to the dopamine trap, which is and I’ll just share them, very transparently social media scrolling, that’s a big one for me.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:51]:
And I can hide behind it as I’m a social media creator. So I need to be, I keep my finger on the pulse of what other people are doing, so I can see what’s trending, so I can see what’s working, so I can engage, I can use all these excuses, but it’s not true. Most of the scrolling that I do on social media is not for work, it’s not for personal benefit. It is just mindless dopamine seeking behavior. Two is chess. I play a lot of online chess and again, this is like a video game but we have a different relationship with chess in our culture where it’s a smart person’s game or something because it’s so basic or maybe it’s like just not very stimulating. People don’t look at it in the same way as a video game, but it is exactly that and I struggle with it to this day. And then three is analytics checking analytics compulsively, whether that’s in my businesses, at revenue, at customer acquisition or it’s on social media.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:42]:
And again saying how does video perform and how are people liking this podcast. Those are the three things that I’m constantly seeking my cheap dopamine. And so I encourage you to look at your own life, maybe reflect today and do a little bit of journaling on what are the three areas that you are prone to giving into the cheap dopamine. Identifying them I think is step one to then creating a plan to avoid them in the future so that you can be prepared to make the hard decision in the moment when those opportunities present themselves. And this is what psychologists called creating an implementation intention, which we’ve talked about on previous episodes. I would highly recommend you just go back and find those episodes about implementation intentions, because that is one of the most powerful ways to correct this type of dopamine seeking behavior is to come into that activity with a plan, knowing, hey, when this thing occurs, when I have this urge to smoke, to drink, to do this other thing, that this is how I’m going to react instead, like it’s creating that intention. This is what I’m going to do instead of doing that negative thing. So hope this brought you a little bit of value.
Anthony Vicino [00:10:49]:
If it did, do me favor. Hit that like the subscribe button. Hit it. Share it with somebody. Hit all the buttons, all the bells, all the whistles, all the things. And guys, as always, thanks for being here. I can’t wait to see you back here tomorrow. Until then, stay hyper focused, my friend.
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