Neuroscientist Reveals: THIS 60-Minute Rule Will FIX Your Dopamine Addiction (Try This!)

DOP mean is a chemical that the human being so deeply desires and we've now been given very quick ways to access it are you wanting a life where you're in the pursuit of pleasure and just like momentarily feeling good or do you want like a really happy fulfilling experience of Life he's a neuroscientist and author TJ power pornography is like this secret addiction and that's why I think it's being massively underestimated you have habits and systems to increase concentration and deep focus by 48% what are they the number one Health and Wellness podcast Jett J

shett the one the only Jett you've got this phrase dose and dose means so much more than what we think the word means and it's based on this idea of dopamine oxytocin serotonin and endorphins I think we know very little about these chemicals we kind of hear these as bud buzzword and Trend words and I think what you've done is really demystified them unpack them for us in a really simple way can you walk us through what each of these do for us and how we interact with them on a daily basis 100% I think

with these chemicals you see them talked about a lot on the internet now and you see them all called kind of Feelgood and happy hormones which there is truth in that but the fascinating thing about really understanding dose is each of these chemicals have a very specific function and when you begin to understand the symptoms of being low or high in them you then begin to understand your brain and body much better and you start responding to the different challenges that the modern world brings us in a much better way if you were to look

at dopamine primary function of dopamine would be motivation and it also is a secondary function of our attention span if you find yourself in a situation where you feel like low and deflated and flat and you can't get yourself to take action and do things it's a very clear sign that dopamine is low and you need something to boost dopamine you have oxytocin the connection and the love hormone if you felt lonely and a little bit unconfident and disconnected we'd be guided towards oxytocin serotonin has a massive impact on our mood and energy so if

you're tired or a bit sad serotonin would be beautiful and then endorphins have this incredible function of de-stressing our brain in our modern world the cortisol hormone has become the big stress hormone which is really accurate it is a stress hormone but endorphins as we'll go on to explore also play a vital role in calming our brain when it's experienced extreme stress it's fascinating to me because I don't think we understand how our daily habits affect these chemical course so walk us through what's actually happening in our brain when we're doom scrolling on social media

effectively this all comes down to this concept called phasic and tonic dopamine release this psychologist called Drea really popularized this back in 2011 and what you basically see is when we interact with social media you get a rapid rise in dopamine which is why when you open the social media app you immediately feel extremely good just to put that into context the whole of dose is built upon something called The evolutionary mismatch hypothesis this was created by glockman and it's basically this idea that our brain spent 300,000 years evolving out in nature developing these chemicals

to help us survive and thrive in that kind of environment hunting and making Fire and Building shelter and looking after one another and with dopamine specifically the only way we were capable of accessing it was through hard challenging activities we had to effectively earn the increase in dopamine and we might have experienced that like once or twice a day like the fire finally lit or we successfully caught some food or whatever it may be in the modern world this social media example you experience that same level of dopamine increase but you experience it instantaneously within

a few seconds because it rises so fast it then causes this really significant crash in dopamine because your brain tries to get back to balance and so many of us struggle today with this idea of just taking action on what we want to do like we're sitting there and we think yeah I need to do that bit of work or yeah I need to go and cook myself a healthy meal or yeah I need to go and do some exercise but we can't be bothered and we just like procrastinate it and that's heavily connected to

this over stimulation through social media it's fascinating to hear that we used to have to earn dopamine yeah how how quickly does it diminish and what does that crash look like it would be experienced within our Behavior there's actually this big topic you get see you get seen talked about on Tik Tok called ADHD paralysis and they also have this phrase called rotting on Tik Tok where people literally can't move they can't get themselves to move dopamine right at the core of its function even impacts our motivation to physically move our body and if you're

in that state where you just can't get yourself to do anything and loads of us experience this like it's a Saturday morning we think oh I don't have work today so I'm going to scroll on my phone way more and we sit there and we get into this Doom scrolling cycle of feeling that elevation in dopamine this rapid increase of dopamine and then we eventually find a saying to our mind like our instinctive mind comes on and says put the phone down like go do something else and then you don't really want to and then

even if you do put it down you just can't get yourself to do anything so it's that symptom of paralysis not being able to get going yeah so what do we do I believe it all starts with how the beginning of your day begins and it's really important to understand this throughout sleep there's regenerative processes taking place that are creating elevations in dopamine as part of that restoration and you can imagine this all of our work is built upon this hun gather idea of a human being far before our world came this modern world we

live in had to wake up and do hard things it was so important to our survival when we woke up we'd have a nice amount of dopamine and we'd immediately take action and do challenging stuff nowadays the opposite of that occurs we wake up we've got this abundance of dopamine sitting there and then it's straight to the phone and I understand like this is hard to break my whole work in this space comes from my own addictions to these things like I got a iPhone when I was like 11 years old so to me my

whole life has been sitting on an iPhone basically and I spent 10 to 15 years waking up going straight into the phone and fundamentally if you develop the discipline to have a 30 minute window before you go into the phone and we can talk through what the steps in there would include to resist it that's going to then set that discipline within your life I have the capacity to resist it and then once you start training this discipline in Your Capacity to resist it in other times in your day will grow as well the fact

that you've been using a phone since you're 11 years old kind of puts into perspective because I got my first phone when I was 14 but it was one of those phones where you still had to like key in a ringtone yeah you had to earn the dopam earn the dopam I just to sit there for like 30 minutes keying in a ringtone so that I could have my favorite song be my ringtone for sure and you had like a few songs on there didn't have loads of novelty loads of different stuff yeah that's so

fascinating this idea of earning something and I feel like when you wake up in the morning it's almost like we want life to be easier and simpler and everything in our life become so instant whether it's food coffee anything like right we're looking for something that's quick how do we train ourselves to be like oh I should earn something like how do you even make that mindset shift of actually earning something's good versus having it be ready made for me I I think right at the core of that it comes down to are you wanting

a life where you're in the pursuit of pleasure and just like momentarily feeling good or do you want like a really happy fulfilling experience of life and I struggled a lot with various addictions I struggled a lot with alcohol as you and I have discussed social media pornography all these very dope and energic activities and ultimately if you really spend some time with your mind I think you have to spend prolonged period of times in nature chatting to yourself about your lifestyle and if you start really considering like is this current LIF style I have

where I work a bit and then I get my pleasure from my phone and then I do another activity and then I get my pleasure from my phone is that ultimately creating a life that you're really loving or is it just creating momentary experiences of pleasure and I think when you begin having those conversations with yourself and observing more closely how you feel and this is why I really like people to understand the symptoms of whether you're low or high in these chemicals because then people start thinking like okay this is why I'm feeling that

way and then they tie it to the phone and then they're like okay I need to start phone fasting which is what we call it these prolonged breaks from it so I think it's that mindset shift around pleasure versus happiness what's the longest you've ever done a phone forast I did uh 3 years AG guided seven days no phone whatsoever no phone for seven days I actually wouldn't recommend that as a solution it's really interesting because I've been really niching into this world of the phone connection I think fundamentally when you look at mental health

there has been a lot of quick dope energic activities for the last 100 years be that alcohol or cigarettes or sugary food or whatever it may be but mental health has shifted rapidly since the iPhone became a thing and then if you look at since Co when we started really scrolling the short videos mental health has declined even further and I think the big reason that's the case is because we can more frequently engage with dopamine via the phone than the dopamine we used to get from those other sources you might eat sugar three times

a day you might drink once a day you might watch pornography once a day social media like with the DOA where we do our research we see people opening their phone about 140 to 150 times a day so it's that frequency of increase which is challenging in which brings us to that phone fasting idea now I tried seven days off I tried 3 days off the difficulty is because we're operating in such a rapid Society with the amount of information coming at us on our email and WhatsApp and with our jobs I think big breaks

from it can actually be very stressful when you turn the phone back on and what we've seen in our research is if people commit to short frequent breaks where they know the morning is a frequent break they'll always do they have a 60-minute phone fast in the evening they have a prolonged one in the middle of the today if they have these frequent breaks rather than long breaks that actually seems to be more effective definitely for me as well I can agree with you more i' I've done those phone fast as well for a while

and there are times in my year where I think that that can be important but overall I fully agree with you that I think if you're going oscillating between these extremes you just keep kind of pinging back and forth and so you go from being really addicted to doing the phone fast and going back to being really addicted and that can get really exhausting and and really really tiring and so what has been your best set of tips that you found for someone who doesn't want to look at their phone first thing in the morning

or to not turn to that because you said the morning's so important what do we do because I feel like that's the that's the first thing you know 80% of us look at our phones first thing in the morning last thing at night we look at it before we look at our partners and our kids after we look at them at night our phone gets more FaceTime than the people we love like that is our life what do we do we have these four underlying laws for each of the chemicals do me oxy and serotonin

endorphins the underlying law from all of the research we looked into like in this book there's like 250 studies we explored around these topics fundamentally the law that we found to be most appropriate with dopamine is take action as soon as you wake every day and that fundamentally means you wake you don't snooze your alarm as painful as it is but simply beating that challenge of oh I could just lie in bed and stay in this comfort and doing something that's difficult is beginning that dopamine increase we then get people to if they really struggle

with snoozing to literally when the alarm goes off just sit at the side of the bed and just get themselves out of the prone position effectively and sit there we then get them to go straight to the bathroom if you can you then start brushing your teeth brushing your teeth is an annoying slow activity again you're earning dopamine like if you do it for 20 seconds you always know like I feel a bit guilty for the fact I just did 20 seconds you do the 2 minutes you think yes task complete so you go to

the bathroom brush your teeth you Splash cold water on your face and you come back and you make your bed there's this brilliant psychologist called Walton that looked at the relationship between dopamine and effort and it's very clear that if you utilize effort right at the beginning of your day your dopamine starting on that nice slow curve motivation then builds and then your capacity to further resist the phone and maybe get outside for a walk or do some exercise or get to your desk or make your kids breakfast is going to come from an easier

place than the wake up Spike DOP mean and crash and then try and get going from there yeah that's that's great advice I think one thing that helped me out for a while was I have a few instrumentals or music that I like and I'll have that on my phone so I'll wake up and I'll put this song on cuz I know I have the urge to pick up my phone and I'll play press play and then the phone's with me while I'm brushing my teeth but I'm not now scrolling because I'm now listening to

something and I know people do it with podcasts people do it with uh audio meditation whatever it may be for me it's it's music that reminds me of being back in the monastery and so I'll play that and it's just like the soundtrack to my morning nice and it may have birds chirping it may have nature sounds it may have a bit of water like it's these and and for me that allows me to feel like there's something distract is that bad is that good like what's your take on that be honest with me it's

interesting and there is so much Nuance with how the beginning of the day starts and we get these questions all the time in our training and things like that fundamentally the absolute goal standard would be you don't see a phone for 30 minutes okay knew however there are scenarios where definitely a phone is not disadvantageous to these chemicals so if you think about listening to music as long as you're not rapidly tapping through it and just listening to a song that's okay if you woke up and it's part of your routine to go straight into

a meditation utilizing a meditation app again that's a good use of your time I know many people like because of the brain wave state to go straight into meditation when they wake this is the where it gets interesting you really want to make sure that the phone doesn't charge directly by your head that's like a gold standard rule it can't be charging there because our will power goes up and down depending actually on our dopamine levels and different areas of our brain being activated will power in the in the morning is going to be slightly

lower if the phone is there it's irresistible I always have this like when I come away for example we're here at the moment I don't have my alarm so then my phone has to become my alarm and suddenly it's like where is the phone going to be and I have to make sure that it charges the other side of the room so it still wakes me but I don't have that moment oh I might just quickly check with that in mind when you do check if there's a whole stream of notifications again it's going to

create this anticipatory Rising dopamine then you're going in you're not going to be able to resist it so you need to really be on air plane mode when you're going to sleep so you wake up and there's nothing there you then have these really nuanced components of if you want to go into meditation app like I have these things that I want to do I would open the phone click the app then un airplane it so you haven't seen a notification do your meditation come back out go away from the phone but fundamentally we've trained

like 50,000 people in dose it is so clear that if people have 30 minutes when they wait without going on their phone it creates a radical shift in their experience of Life yeah I I remember when I first trained myself I had to have to lock my phone in my car outside because it was just so addictive and I found especially in moments of high anxiety and high tension like whether there's something in the news cycle whether there's you know just just everything that we get sucked into I found that having my phone out of

the room is like a must because I found like how hard it is to get good quality sleep when your phone's right there and you're either on it at night or you're on it first thing in the morning and you're getting sucked into the latest updates the latest news whatever it is and the anxiety and stress that you're taking on is is colossal for sure and the nighttime component is really key as well to consider like it's almost quite pleasurable to just lie in bed and just like Doom scroll your brain sleep we train a

lot of schools and a lot of kids literally will just go to sleep watching Tik Tok that's just how their brains sleep and we look at all their screen times and some of them have like 16 17 hours a day of screen time but we look into that and they're about 9 to 10 hours in the daytime but it's largely that Tik Tok just stays open throughout the night because if they wake they then just click next video so sound continues because a lot of us struggle with like the quiet effectively if you need some

kind of stimulation at night time of course like reading would be incredible if that's an option for you and you could achieve doing reading that would be a perfect ACT but if you were going to think okay I need some kind of stimulation you want to think how can I do something that's a little bit of a slower release dopamine activity that's still on technology so for me there will be evenings where I think I really want to watch a podcast for example if you were to sit and you were to put like a tablet

across your bed and you were to sit and watch a podcast that's nowhere near as stimulating as like an Instagram reals feed because the novelty is different like you sit and you watch a podcast the first like 5 to 10 minutes you're kind of getting into it and you're getting hold of the storyline and your dopamine is gradually increasing you open social media it's like rapid okay now I'm in and I'm engaged that difference is really important to understand because if we're just burning our dopamine before we go to sleep it's highly likely we're going

to wake up in this more deflated low willpower type state if you can have a slower dopamine technological activity at night is going to be better for those mornings yeah what's actually happening though so I love the idea of slow release versus instant release but what's actually happening in a fast release and why does that lead to lower willpower and lower motivation it's really important to just understand that the brain chemical evolved simply to be earned over a long period of time like if you actually imagine the challenging activity of being outdoors you have a

family and you have to spend 10 hours in the cold building a shelter your brain wasn't designed to just give you a really quick dopamine here cuz then you think oh nice I feel good now I'm done far before the task was complete so it evolved to slowly increase dopamine operates with these little vesicles in your brain you can imagine them as little bubbles that go across your sinapsis those bubbles are desired to slowly transfer across the synapses as more and more effort is engaged as soon as you open the social media immediately a ton

of those vesicles are rapidly going across the sinapse and that's why your brain is like wow this feels really good your brain starts thinking like I'm not going to be able to cope with this this is unusual for my B brain to be increasing at this level and then you have the brain seeking to try and get itself back into balance our brain always seeks homeostasis as does our body and if you think about a medical show you may have watched on TV before when you see someone having an issue with their heart you see

this rapid increase then rapid decline rapid increase rapid Decline and that's because the heart is increasing because of some kind of physiological difficulty but it keeps trying to slow it down because it's trying to keep it at a balanc level the exact same thing happens with the dopamine because it experiences the rapid increase it then goes oh my God try and slow the production try and slow the production it slows the production then as we have less vesicles happening because of the social media we're then like oh can't ball do anything we procrastinate against this

low will power experience well thanks for explaining that I was like I've never heard that before so it's super useful to get what's going on behind the scenes because I think naturally when we're doing it we don't see any of that you were mentioning a few seconds ago this idea the difference between how we can sense whether we're high or low in each of these chemicals is that right sure could you walk us through some of the symptoms and you can either choose to start a dopamine or if you think we've talked about that switch

to oxytocin yeah so just to remind the dopamine if you're procrastinating you're low in motivation you can't focus is a clear sign that you need some kind of challenging activity I'm very aware that in that state that's the worst thing you want to do you're like I don't want to do anything difficult right now this is why for example cold showers have become so popular in our modern world because they're abs hell pure pain very challenging and they will rebuild the dopamine so dopamine if you're in that low motivation State that's when you need a

challenging activity let me ask you that question actually so what are the other so how do we build dopamine in a healthy way first one would be the phone fast when you wake up second one would be any kind of discipline in your home environment that's not like a super sexy way to build it but it's very clear that it has a positive effect if I give you the example of having to change and wash our bedding we all hate that activity it's like you wake up one day and you think W that bed looks

like it needs washing a week later you're like yeah I definitely need to now wash it you take all the sheets off you jam it in the washing machine then you have to wait for it to dry and that's so boring and then you have to go to the process of actually butting it buttoning it all back up eventually that evening though you find yourself getting into your freshly washed bed and it's literally one of the most rewarding human experiences when the sheet is tight and it's all really nice as you get in you never

get into your bed and think I feel really annoyed that I bothered to wash my bedding today it's like the opposite experience whereas you do sometimes feel annoyed at yourself for over scrolling our brain having very sophisticated guidance mechanisms dopamine is here just to reward anything that's advantageous so you have the phone fast any kind of discipline in your home environment and I do want to stress that one like we all have to do this annoying empty dishwashers take out bins and if you start framing it in your head as something that's actually elevating your

motivation and elevating your experience alive it shifts what those annoying tasks are for us all we then have cold water immersion this has been a big topic Andrew huan's been really popular on this there's that amazing study that came out back in 2000 that show we have a 250% increase in dopamine when we put oursel into a significantly cold environment so you can do the cold that's awesome our next one is this one called my Pursuit and this is really really key to understand with dopamine there's a chat from Cambridge University called Schultz who in

1998 looked at the different times in which dopamine increases and what you fundamentally see is that dopamine is actually at its highest point just before we achieve something not actually when we achieve the goal itself this is really important to consider in our lives because if you go back to that Hunter gather example given that dopamine is the motivation and attention molecule it's very useful say you were hunting for an animal just before you hunt it you need the most dopamine when you've actually got it you don't necessarily need as much it's just that momentary

period to really motivate you to push the final part when we look at our life today a lot of us can think that our happiest life is when we achieve the thing but it's very clear from a research point of view that our happiest life is actually simply when we're in the pursuit of the goal itself and we get people to go out for about 30 minutes into nature without their headphones but always promoting to be a nature without headphones and simply for a Whole 30 minutes ask them themselves the question what is my primary

Pursuit right now once they start considering what it is maybe they have a creative Pursuit a Pursuit with their family their work their health they ask themselves why is that and they spend another 10 minutes really trying to clarify why that's the case then they go into the process of how the hell am I going to get towards that goal and a consistent daily Pursuit a consistent daily striving for something that's beyond your comfort zone is so incredible for this system it's so interesting to me because I feel like when you're in that space like

you said earlier it's the last thing you want to do but I've realized over time that things that are good for me feel terrible before and feel amazing after and that's do me yeah and and things that are unhealthy for me or bad for me feel great before and terrible afterwards right like what you just said about if you've got to clean your bed sheets and all of that when you're doing it you're like this is the biggest waste of my time after when you get in bed it feels great yeah whereas leaving it dirty

feels good and like being lazy and just being like I can't be bothered whatever but then when you get in bed you're like oh this is filthy right and so it's interesting how I've I've had to consciously focus on how I feel after something like even now I've been I I had surgery last year and then so I got no two years ago had surgery couldn't really lift weights for a while I got back into lifting probably consistently only a couple months back nice and so I've been working out you know five days a week

uh for the last just over a month now let's go man it's been great and I don't enjoy like if you ask me to play sports I could play sports any day like you ask me to play football I'd love to play football you tell me to would go work out of the gym I don't really love it but I know it's important for me especially with my age and what I'm trying to do with my body and so I've had to convince myself of how I feel after a workout yeah to get in the

gym and I know for a fact that I never regret going to the gym after it but before I'm always tempted to text either my mate or my trainer and go don't want to forget it I'm just tired today right and so it's almost like what does it take to kind of let go of that immediate instant feeling that we all have of like press the snooze button message my mate and cancel the hike cancel on my trainer don't turn up to that class even though I already paid in advance like what do you do

with that tiny little thought that pops in that kind of sets us all off on the wrong course do you relate to that by the way is yeah so much I literally struggled so much with the addiction to everything I lived for 10 years in a life where I just wasn't completing the challenging activities that life has to offer I lived in Easy dopamine so I relate massively we tried to convince ourself to go to the gym this morning it was brutal to get oursel there but I had this today and I was thinking no

I'm going to elevate my dopamine through this hard work in the gym that's going to put me in a more motivated state it gives me a high likelihood to have a good attention span during this conversation so I think considering the ultimate outcome of the action and how it's going to impact your day ahead is key there is this fundamental principle of doping that I really want people to understand though and then with this idea rather than needing to go on Instagram and think okay what are those good dopamine activities and what are the bad

ones with this simple principle you just know and whilst obviously it's good to look at those posts on Instagram that's why I post all the time having this base understanding is very motivating this chemical evolved within us for a very long time and evolved for one simple reason to promote the survival of our species without dopamine we simply wouldn't be here we would have never pushed ourselves to scratch rocks together for 3 hours to make the fire to keep our family warm we would never would have gone through a Sahara Desert for 3 hours in

order to find a little bit of fruit to keep our family alive it was rewarding the ridiculously challenging activities that kept us alive just as dopamine for all that time had a very sophisticated way of communicating with Humanity to keep us doing the hard things nowadays we're experiencing the opposite message message from this chemical fundamentally dopamine knows at its core that over engaging with pornography and no longer having sex with people is not good for the survival of our species eating too much sugar and not eating enough protein is not good for the survival of

our species living a very isolated Teenage life and no longer building friendships and working in your school life and scrolling social media is not good for the survival of humanity and it's really important to understand that whenever you're engaging an activity if you simply observe the activity and think ultimately does this increase or decrease my survival and you think exercise obviously increase protein obviously increase sugar obviously decrease pornography ultimately does technically decrease because it's reducing procreation then you have this fundamental principle when you then are looking at your activities and thinking how am I going

to engage with my day you really want to be thinking how am I going to do activities that going to lead to my day being the best experience it can be and this comes down to that difference of do I just want to feel short-term pleasure or do I want to feel really happy and I had these questions with myself in my mind I went on these walks every day in nature I literally equate the entirety of my career my working life my ability to find my beautiful partner to walking in nature every day and

having a proper truthful conversation with myself of am I only in the pursuit of pleasure and is that going to be my experience of life or am I going to experience a life that feels really happy and fulfilling and when I wake in the morning like this morning and I think oh I wonder what's been happening on social media I wonder how many likes I got on this thing whatever it might be I ask myself the question do I want pleasure or do I want a really happy fulfilling day and that ultimate conversation leads to

better decision making yeah that's that's a great way to look at it and I'm glad that you laid it out across the board I mean you've mentioned pornography a few times and I feel like that's become just such a big issue now where I feel like when I was growing up it was less of an issue then when it kind of took off it was something that you kind of hid and people didn't talk about it as much and now it's become like totally public like you know there's talk about it in mainstream news and

not not in a positive sense but in the sense of you just see it becoming more normalized but that doesn't mean people are using it less if that makes sense like it does that res definitely rapidly Rising rapidly Rising is definitely at least now getting communicated about it is getting communicated about yeah but that but it isn't necessarily like oh we're talking about it more you'd hope that like for example when we talk about mental health more you'd hope that it gets destigmatized and then people whereas with pornography it's kind of like it's being talked

about more but it's usage is like going through the roof and so it's like what what have you seen work for people there you you've worked with people in dose I'm sure you've worked with people who've had like really deep pornography addictions pornography addiction is fascinating because it's very different to alcohol and social media and sugar because it's very private and when you say for example get really into alcohol and you become an alcoholic or maybe you just slightly over drink it becomes very apparent to your family and your friends that you're drinking a lot

whether you're going out and partying a lot or like every time you socialize you're always requiring wine and beer in order to have a good time the same happens with the phone like you're always engaging with it the same happens with sugar pornography is like this secret addiction that Society has and that's why I think it's being massively underestimated and where with these other actions things like eating chocolate we know it has 150% increase in dopamine from Baseline causing the spike and crash when we engage with something like alcohol it's a 200% increase cocaine 250%

increase all of these different studies are showing us a lot about those actions but very little is showing us much about pornography because it's a very private behavior when we look into how people solve it fundamentally people need to become very clear as to how it's actually impacting their life there's the whole moral and ethical side of pornography and if that can motivate someone away from it that's incredible we're obviously looking with the dose lab more at what is it actually doing to your experience of life and your motivation and your dopamine levels and for

me I grew up as someone that started engaging in porn I was like 13 14 I just heard that was a thing searched on Google discovered it was a thing massive amount of pleasure and then watched it for like 10 years of my life I didn't think anything of it all my friends watched it I didn't even feel any real guilt or shame around watching it because it was so normalized in the world that I grew up in and it's very unusual to even be in this moment now like I never thought oh pornography is

going to be something I hope i' talk about one day on on a show but this really needs to be considered with mental health it's something that Society is definitely underestimating because if you think through the lens of sex versus pornography and this idea of earning dopamine sex especially like a nice intimate loving experience of sex is a slow progress It's like you have a period of time together and maybe you have dinner together and then you cuddle and then you kiss and then eventually you have an intimate experience and then eventually you have sex

it might be like 20 30 minutes before that moment has happened pornography is very different it's I'm scrolling Instagram oh that person's pretty good-looking now I'm on a porn website and within 60 seconds it's like you're all the way there your dopamine is so high we then went through the process of getting people to just try and have seven days without watching it just okay days you're not going to watch it if you need to engage with the activity you simply watch it you simply do the activity but you use your imagination and even with

that you try and reduce it to maybe twice a week rather than what a lot of people particularly men but I think women struggle with this as well that's what we're seeing in our research and now doing it sort of 7 days a week you have seven days off and you very closely observe your motivation your attention span and your general kind of enthusiasm and excitement for life people then come off it for the first time maybe in their whole life because they never even considered it was a factor in their mental Health they spend

seven days off it and they start genuinely noticing a difference they're like wow I actually feel different without this activity I felt so different when I first came off it I remember texting some of my friends and they're like God what is Tj going to have us doing now it's like now we've got a great porn doing they then came off it for seven days and they're like wow I actually noticed a very significant difference you then extend that to two weeks 3 weeks four weeks very rapidly you see a significant difference as a result

of your dopamine Baseline beginning to not have this constant destruction once you have that period of abstinence a beginning of a seed is planted within your brain and body that it begins to see the pornography in a different way as the frequency reduces the motivation rapidly rises in your life and you start thinking ah maybe it's something I could let go what about people who are saying like well if it's it's natural uh it helps me d-stress it's what I Turn to You Know It Feels it feels easy it it gives me a release like

anyone who's coming up with any of that and and for the people who did it for those seven days who were like well all I was thinking about was porn the whole time right like I'm sure that was a reaction how do you encourage those people to deal with that kind of a a notion or that instinctual reaction to being like well that that's what I feel like I want to do naturally right now wanting an orgasm is a very natural experience for the brain and body it's of course amazing if you can have those

experiences with your partner but we go through periods where we're away from our partner or maybe we don't have a partner and we're still seeking for an orgasm when someone is seeking to d-stress through that experience the orgasm is all they need it's not the pornography that's also needed and if you go through the exper the process of masturbating without pornography you also notice the same dopamine curve of your earning the reward and it's a slower process and you have to get yourself into that experience eventually you experience the rise of dopamine you feel pleasure

and afterwards you don't feel this really deflated flat feeling that you do when you watch porn and it's really important to understand that someone can just go through a period of time of utilizing their imagination whenever they're seeking for that activity if it's impossible with your imagination you could look at a photo but similar to that example I gave earlier where at night you're trying to go towards long form content over short form with pornography you're just trying to get away from really rapid stimulation so if reducing it down to one video was like the

possible thing to do then reducing it down to a picture then going down to your imagination that Progressive Journey if you were finding it super addictive and super hard to quit would be a path that you could follow it's such a interesting conversation when you're looking at it through dose like I think that's what's so interesting because I think for long people have talked about moral reasons ethical reasons or whatever it may be then when you hear about it from a scientific perspective you're just like oh wow like I had no idea what I'm doing

to my brain for sure and and I'm hoping that everyone who's listening and watching and struggling with these things you know I I don't think me or TJ judging anyone or or making any anyone feel bad about it but really realizing what we're doing to ourselves for sure when when I habits don't change and the Judgment piece on all this doy stuff is so important to consider like I would have have zero judgment for yourself if you currently wake up and scroll your phone for an hour or if you eat a lot of sugar or

if you watch pornography all the time we didn't all wake up one day as babies and set up the world that we're all living in today we've just been born into it these are the options we have dopamine as a chemical that the human being so deeply desires and we've now been given very quick ways to access it there is no judgment I over engaged with everything worse than probably everyone that's listening and it's really important to understand that there is a path where you can come away from judging yourself from it but start considering

is this ultimately leading to me having my Happ happiest experience in life the only reason people are sitting and listening to these podcasts is because they want to learn they want to feel happier or more fulfilled or more connected to people whatever it may be and this is a fundamental component optimizing our dopamine and getting it back into balance yeah and and you're right about this secret hidden addiction because I think a lot of people struggle with like like if you saw your partner drinking too much you could talk to them about it if you

saw them on their phone too much you could talk to them about it and I think people always feel very betrayed when they find out that oh their partner's been using porn or whatever it may be and like there's a feeling of not knowing how to bring it up and how to talk about it and I've had I've had a lot of people reach out to me recently because it's been such an issue in their relationship and and I've said to them it's kind of you've got to treat it like the other ones in a

compassionate understanding way to raise it with your partner it's not something that just calling it out will help definitely my partner and I uh met earlier this year and it was definitely a conversation we had I spent the last five years coming off it few years ago I really like cut the cord and there would be these moments once a month once every two months I would be sitting there think oh yeah I could watch pornography I could have that stimulation that d-stress as we talked about before and having a good open dialogue around this

is why I used to engag with it this is how we could potentially like enhance our sex life and our experience together in order to fulfill that aspect of what you're seeking for in porn I think many people are struggling with things like their sex drive and their sexual connection with their partners and porn is just the easy Outlet it's like you want to have an orgasm you can go to the bathroom and have that in a few minutes with pornography instead of having like a slow intimate experience with your partner ultimately for all of

us as human beings in this modern world to feel our happiest anything that provides slow pleasure is the pursuit that we should be on we're in a society right now where this is brand new all this quick stuff and we really just need to consider it like let's have a conversation let's not judge one another for engaging with it but let's consider how we could enhance our relationship in order to come away from that activity yeah you have habits and systems to increase concentration and deep focus by 48% yeah what are they this is a

really interesting area of dopamine there's this brilliant scientist I love called gold that looked into the relationship between dopamine and what we call Flow State Flow State being when we get incredibly deeply immersed in a task again with that hun gatherer example they live their lives in Flow State Building you get so into deep Flow State making fire hunting foraging for food big proportions of their day were spent deeply focused on one activity nowadays we're basically doing like 500 activities a day I even saw Recent research shows that we have 35,000 decisions that we're making

a day now comparably to an estimate with them of about two and a half thousand decisions a day so we're just doing much more different stuff than the things we did when we were living our former lives and when we look at increasing someone's attention span fundamentally all of the dopaminergic stuff is going to impact it because you need an abundance of dopamine in your brain in order to concentrate so waking up not going on the phone things like the big morning routine of the cold water on your face and brushing your teeth and making

your bed then at least your doping is coming into a good place you then have to sit down at your desk and think how the hell am I going to increase my attention span by 48% fundamentally the phone cannot be anywhere near you it needs to be physically separate from you so you need to select the task if your phone is required for your calendar or your tasis whatever it may be one task has to be selected never select multiple at once cuz our brain simply cannot get into a deep state of flow if we're

in that kind of experience we then have this process of gamifying the experience of trying to get into a deep state of concentration we get people on their computer so once they've selected their task they've separated themselves from their phone to click on a new tab and just search the word stopwatch on Google and you'll see a stopwatch appear it's very important to do it by that and not with the phone you then go on the stopwatch once you're ready to start the task you click Start you begin the task and very quickly you find

yourself beginning to feel bored or too difficult too challenged by the task itself these are the two things that take us out of flow something being boring and too easy effectively or something being too difficult in the moment that you have that first experience arise you say to yourself the sentence I'm going to fight the urge you repeat this as a mantra I'm going to fight the urge for the distraction effectively you do that as many times you can maybe you successfully do it three four five times I'm going to fight the urge eventually you

find yourself irresistibly needing to go on YouTube or needing to go on to Twitter or whatever it might be in that moment you can do that but before you do it you head back to the stopwatch that you had on one of those tabs and you look at the number you look at the number and the first time you ever do it it says 6 minutes and 27 seconds that's what we then call your Baseline attention span that's how long you manage to push yourself for to stay in a state of concentration we know from

Recent research that it takes about 15 minutes for the brain to start to lock in for the attention span to really start to Zone into one place maybe you got six minutes the first time the next time you get 12 eventually once you get to 15 that's when your brain is really locking in it's staying centralized on one thing what we've then found is because it's very difficult to get to 15 minutes of only focusing on one task when you fight the urge you give up on fighting the urge and you look at the stopwatch

and you see it's beyond 15 minutes you think wow I've actually managed to climb here I've actually managed to get to the number that I was targeting and then people have this elevated motivation to maybe I should just stay in this we're way more productive we complete tasks 40 in 40% less time if we get into Flow State so it's extremely advantageous so we go through that process separate from the phone select the task open the stopwatch on a new tab Target the 15minute number and if you can get Beyond it into 30 45 minutes

that's incredible for Flow State incredible for doer man that's so powerful man that's such a great great system I really hope people are going to try it out and I can honestly say that I saw myself over the last 12 months see my attention diminishing I've always prided myself on having like really great attention being able to immerse myself deeply into things and I found that because I live quite a regimen to disciplined life my phone became what I did in every Gap yeah and so because that was the only time I really had for

my phone I could be in the studio like this for four to six hours a day and so every Gap I could get I'd grab my phone and and fill in the Gap and sometimes I saw that Gap actually being 30 minutes and I used to think of it as a gap and actually I was like I used to think I couldn't be productive in those 30 minutes because I got so focused on my phone but recently I've been leaving my phone out of the room and those minutes have been transformative and so it's so

easy to think even as someone who who I consider myself to have very good concentration and focus and Flow State I found that just diminishing daily because it was so easy to get lost in everything else yeah I think it's so important to understand even if it wasn't productive like doing work in that 30 minutes it would arguably be productive just to go and sit on the sofa and not go on your phone or just to go and stand outside for a period of time or to call someone and talk to a human being but

the Nuance of this is so important to understand because this is huge everyone basically completes one task on their list and then seeks for some kind of reward and it's like now I've ownn my next dopamine hit on the phone next task next dopamine hit and it's not even necessarily a whole task sometimes we do a little bit of a task and we think that's enough of this task done now I deserve my dopamine hit and this is something I've struggled with massively like I grew up with no attention span I really struggled with hyperactivity

in school really struggled for my whole life to get into state to focus it was in the process of writing this book that I had to figure out how the hell do I concentrate for a prolonged period of of time and in those moments where I'm about to go onto the phone I actually consider like what is the ultimate impact that's going to have on this task because as soon as you go on the phone through that dopamine lens you're not just rewarding yourself for a little bit and going back to the task you're spiking

the dopamine crashing it out then you're trying to come back to the task from a low dopamine state which is then really hard to get back into that state of concentration or maybe at the beginning of our working day we sit down at our desk and we're thinking I really want to be productive today I want to have a good day with my working life and then we're likey just before that I'll just have like 10 minutes of Instagram just before I start but then we Spike and crash it and then we try and enter

the state of concentration from low Baseline dopamine and it's so difficult but if we were to sit there try and resist the phone get into the state of focus then go it's going to be so much better yeah how can someone increase their Sleep Quality by 54% Sleep is a fascinating topic it's one that our world has become very clear that it's extremely valuable to all aspects of our physical and mental health I think it all starts with how your day begins when we wake up in the morning we need to see sunlight as quickly

as we possibly can you can imagine for our hunter gatherers they probably saw sunlight pretty fast given they were sleeping outside when we woke up in the morning we get the sunlight we then need to consider the amount of physical activity throughout our day it's very important that our body physically requires sleep when we get into bed many of the people that go through our dose experience really struggle with quite sedentary Lifestyles as many of us do today like we spend our whole life seated so I say sunlight making sure you have some kind of

physical activity that slightly exhausts your body throughout the day then I think it really comes down to your approach in the evening it's very clear from a research point of view that sugar really interrupts our quality and depth of sleep if we're going to have sugar I'd be moving the sugar earlier in the evening and if possible towards a healthy form of sugar fruit and honey and so on like that kind of sugar away from the more Ultra processed type sugar and then with the Nuance of our phone in the evening obviously that's the hyper

stimulation the phone being charged by our bed the the phone being utilized at night when you're watching TV in the evening I would consider that another perod where your phone fasting so you're having this period of Des stimulating from your phone many of us struggle with like work life balance or addiction to our phone and that's largely cause because we just sit watching TV while scrolling our email and slack and so on so in the evening the TV becomes an environment where it's like hey this is a phone fasting experience and that's why we called

it phone fast not technology fast watching TV is nowhere near as bad for our dopamine system as when we're scrolling the phone after you watch TV for a bit you're then going to want your next phone check before you go to bed and you can have it you can have a little bit of WhatsApp you don't go back into a scroll it's very useful during that phone check to be standing up instead of lying prone on your bed like if you're lying on your bed you're entering the Deep Loop if you have to like stand

in the kitchen while you do your few messages and you check one notification or DM on Instagram whatever it may be if you're standing it then causes action to continue you then make sure the phone doesn't charge by the bed you get into the bed if you can't go to sleep with the choir you opt towards podcast and audio books and things like that but I would say that process is the most important factors yeah it's it's so interesting to me how screen time has become like five screens where it's like you have your phone

and your laptop out your partner has their phone and their laptop out and then you have a screen on so you got five screens in between you and you're staring and being distracted by three different types of media and you're so right I I've been doing that too with the phone fast outside of with me and Ry are watching a show together I've been leaving my phone in the kitchen yeah it's better for your relationship as well yeah it's better for everything but I I used to find myself doing that all the time I'm bard

of what I'm watching on TV so I'm just going to scroll away and now she's watching the TV and then R's like well J are you watching this with me like you know are we are we doing and I'm like oh yeah and then she gets distracted on her phone I'm like oh are you with me and it becomes this really ridiculous thing where you're both bored of what you're watching on TV you're kind of you know scrolling to make up for it and now it's disrupting the relationship as well this boredom thing is really

important to consider because boredom is something our mind experienced in abundance for most of human history that we spend loads of our time bored even if you think back to being a kid like how much time did you sit around say Mom I'm bored like that was a big thing and now that's not a thing people don't really experience boredom because we've got the tablets and we got the phones to always stimulate us we've discovered this thing called the boredom barrier effectively and I'm someone that really struggles with this as I said like I really

struggle with that hyperactivity if I sit and do very little it's like what can I do what can I do so I relate to the experience and when I try started trying to do these phone fasts in the evening and watch TV like I'll put on a movie for for example and I think this used to entertain me and this is so boring now this film we were watching Gladiator the other day great movie I know Gladiator 2 is coming out so I was like okay let's watch Gladiator one and you're sitting there and you're

thinking wow this is pretty boring watching this experience the important thing to understand is we see a board and barrier at about 12 to 15 minutes of being bought so for that first period you're going to have your brain and body literally physically fighting to try and recover that experience of stimulation so it's trying to get you to get up and go to the fridge and get the sugar it's trying to get you to get the phone open the social media it's trying to seek to get back to that state that it was in of

Highly elevated dopamine if after about 12 to 15 minutes the brain begins to discover okay the dopamine is not coming back I'm going to have to stay in this state the brain and body will settle the heart rate will slow that desire for stimulation will occur will reduce and in that moment we'll then begin to find like a more peaceful state in our body and we think it feels peaceful scrolling our phone but really it's just numbing our dopamine receptor so that feels like it's peaceful but that is not restorative that is not the actual

rest our brain and body is needing the one thing I'd add to this is if you try and phone fast and watch TV it's very important the other people do it like you saying with r because there's this fascinating area of dopamine called anticipatory dopamine which basically means that our dopamine will rise simply at the thought of accessing dopamine that's why for example if you like drinking alcohol and you walk past a bar and you see some people having some like glass of wine in the sun you st to get this massive urge of I

want a glass of wine I want a glass of wine your doine has risen just at the thought of having it the same thing is happening with the phones like you're sitting at dinner with your partner or your kids one person gets their phone out and immediately the entire table have them out and that's simply because everyone's brain has experienced this anticipatory dopamine which has then driven us into action towards the dopamine that they were receiving so if you're phone fasting as a family and with your partner it has to be a group commitment yeah

and the group commitment I guess makes it much more collaborative and effective because there's a feeling of like we're going to try to do this together it's common commitment I think that accountability is really important too I'm intrigued and if you're comfortable to share like how do you keep each other accountable without making each other feel bad because I feel like that's a really important thing for me and rad like and I think that's one of the reasons why I think me and rad have been able to be together for as long as we have

and why I feel happy in my relationship is because Rad's never judged me or made me feel bad for even my bad habits but slowly coached me and nudged me out of them which I'm so grateful for because I think if would have had someone who would have judged me and kind of pointed fingers I think I would have my ego probably would have like defended myself and not been comfortable with that but this approach that she's taken which she comes to her quite naturally I feel like has helped me kind of become better in

so many ways I think as you've shared there the way in which it's communicated is very important if it's an attack type communication of put your phone out why you're on your phone watch the TV if it's that attack type energy it's only going to create like Cordo and stress rise within that person and then they're going to feel more of a desire to resist the guidance that's coming their way so I think that's a component gentle nice loving communication the other aspect of this is utilizing this dose language effectively we have loads of parents

that join our dose process and it's really interesting a lot of them are trying to help their really young kids understand these Frameworks they've got like 8-year old kids or 10y old kids or 12y old kids they're trying to get them to reduce their like scrolling on the tablets or the phones or whatever it may be and I get so many messages on Instagram saying my 8-year-old kid now says mommy put your phone down it's screwing up your dopamine and using the language of dopamine and dose instead of having other words is actually really useful

because it's not like a judgmental place it's just you've got a brain chemical and this is something that's negative for it so utilizing that as a communication framework maybe sharing this podcast with them so they can understand it as well would be a good process yeah let's talk a bit about oxytocin and serotonin which one do you want to go for oxytocin okay why because you're Mr oxytocin okay go on tell us your Pursuit Of Life over the last 10 years has been oxytocin and not dopam mean ultimately it's LED you to have great dope

energic pleasurable successful experiences but your pursuit of life has been service to humanity and when you look into oxytocin oxytocin increases whenever we make some kind of contribution to the world there's this brilliant scientist called Marsh who really looked into this alongside A lady called algo and they've basically found that any time in which we do something kind for another human being whether that's through physical touch acts of service grateful thoughts celebrating someone's progress anything that's kind for other human beings drives this chemical and it's really clear that we as a society have become dopamine

driven and less in the pursuit of oxytocin I deeply believe that for much of our ancestors lives oxytocin was the dominant desire within us how do our group Survive and Thrive and stay connected I think we've moved towards a more pleasure dominant Society that's dopamine driven and a little bit more self-focused when you get more into that lane of I'm in I'm living my life to serve I'm living my life to build oxytocin you have a much more fulfilling and happy experience yeah and what's the enemy of oxytocin like what's what's holding it back it's

interesting because dopamine is the only one we've managed to discover how to hijack effectively we can't rapidly in a kind of fake way increase the oxytocin or the serotonin or the endorphins ultimately when we look into the research it's not that something can rapidly increase it and crash it out but it's that someone might have a low level of oxid doin production through things like a lack of social Connection in Social moments always having phones that are disrupting the quality of the connection things like how we connect with oursel and the conversation with we have

with oursel is a factor here things like criticizing our appearance and being unkind to oursel is a big factor so if you look down that lane of lack of human connection or disconnection from yourself that's reducing the production yeah and so that's how we can sense it as well right for sure like if you're finding you have a very critical voice in your mind that's very hard on yourself it's really important to understand that there's an oxytocin relationship happening there you don't have necessarily a lot of love for yourself going through your brain just like

with the dop me I would have no judgment for yourself if that's the case we live in a world now it's Mass comparison we've got the mirrors we' got the Selfies we've all got social media profiles where we're trying to create what we look like dating profiles that need to be amazing in order to get a match like it's very hard to not really really care for your appearance but going down that lane of constant judgment is really challenging for this chemical yeah so yeah and I find that that kind of bleeds into all of

our relationships as well we see gossip unhealthy competitiveness comparison you that idea of not being we've talked about this before not being able to be happy for other people's success not being able to acknowledge someone that you even May believe that you like or love and being able to be happy for them and and you know Revel in that success and so and and it almost feels like we we find friends who kind of cement that negativity bias or that gossip bias and so we'll find a bunch of people who also dislike something or someone

and we kind of feel closer to people when we do that it's like that weird balance where it's like you're becoming closer to People by all hating on the same person same that's definitely how our world is working at the and so what are some of the antidotes to getting away from that and how does that affect the oxytocin right at the beginning the Gratitude piece is so fundamental and I think our world is very aware now that we need grateful thinking the comparison and the negative thinking is largely fueled by what do I not

have effectively and gratitude is very simply the reminder to your brain of what you do have and whilst I think Society is very aware it's important and people have grass D journals and all kind of things I think still a huge percentage definitely in the research that we're doing don't actually have like a consistent daily practice whereby they're asking themselves what they're grateful for and then most importantly why they're grateful for that action or activity or experience that they have within their life and adding to that morning routine we eventually try and get all these

chemicals in so someone goes through that dopaminergic process of getting that into balance when they step outside we get someone to find a bench that they will typically walk past on a frequent basis whenever you habit stack or pair environmental cues with a habit it makes it stronger and we get them to always sit down on the bench we then get them to have a grateful thought and ask themselves why they actually feel grateful for that thing frequency of grass tude is the most important factor just once a week thinking oh yeah I'm kind of

grateful I've got my house it's great for your mind but to really get the oxytocin production we need it to be frequently occurring and that's going to reduce our mind constantly focusing on others and move yourself into that state of okay I do actually have quite a lot in my life as well yeah I I think gratitude's underrated and over talked about like you're saying like it's like you hear it everywhere you see it everywhere but I love that you said that if you actually look at the research of how many people are doing it

on a daily basis it's very few CU it's not like some like super sexy oh my God cold showers boost your dopamine by this percentage it's not got that same thing but in terms of the effectiveness on your experience in your life and your mental health it's so right at the core of exactly what our brain needs we help a lot of people with overthinking overthinking is just like a massive challenge in our world where our brain rapidly spirals into negative scenarios you hear a piece of news about your family or your work or your

health and our brain goes so quickly into worst case scenario it's very clear that in an overthinking State gratitude is such a powerful practice to start settling the Mind back down because in the overthinking it's like feia feia what's not going right what's not going right gratitude is this safety safety okay I have some things I'm okay I have some kind of stable Foundation to build on such a powerful antidote to so much of the pain we have now yeah I'm glad you brought up overthinking because I do you're right that's that's a lot of

people are struggling with procrastination and overthinking what do you see is the difference between procrastination and overthinking and how should people think about them differently procrastination is largely spent on the phone people aren't often procrastinating while sitting doing nothing like if you were to sit on the sofa I doubt that's often to State people in when they're procrastinating I imagine they're more likely scrolling their phone so I would see procr ination more as a dopam energic challenge whereas I would see the overthinking more as a conversation that's happening in your mind a little bit of

oxytocin and then also something that's happening with serotonin serotonin really interconnects with the state of our body and our nervous system and I think when we're in an overthinking type State our body is actually getting into fear and overarousal whereas procrastination would be kind of under arousal and lack of action so I'd see it as quite different things to be honest yeah yeah no it's good it's good to know that difference because I don't know I just feel like there's there's just a sense that the critical voice we talked about earlier the overthinking of a

scenario focusing on what's the Worst That Could Happen yeah focusing on nightmare scenarios that all takes away action it takes away accountability it takes away responsibility it takes away any sort of feeling like I can change I can do something how do we switch from that powerless feeling of I can't do anything about this to this is what I can focus on I mean I feel like I'm sure you do this I talk to friends all the time and I find everyone I talk to and I try and Coach myself out of this but everyone

I talk to is constantly focused on what they can't control and it seems to be like the most common thing like everyone will list out a list of reasons that they can't do something or something won't happen but rarely is someone saying hey I've got 10 strategies here the 10 things I'm working on right now you know this is what I'm focused on how do we how do we shift from what we can't to what we can do I think it's natural for the mind to focus on what isn't going to plan like evolutionarily it's

very useful for it to consider okay the Hut isn't built well enough or our food system isn't going to provide well enough so our our brain will naturally Orient towards the negative I think in these states of paralysis of I I can't get myself to take action and I'm fearing and I'm in state of all the worries of what I can't control ultimately we need to separate oursel from the modern world for a little period of time and spend some time with oursel and this is where and we really push this with indos but periods

of time on your own in nature are very very very important and very underestimated people know oh yeah Nature's good like yeah nature would make it feel good you see in Co like apparently walks are good for your mental health but we're really missing the trick on how important this actually is if you in a real state of I'm worrying a lot I'm in a real I don't I'm in constantly thinking about what I can't control I'm in fear I'm not taking action on what the goal is the best thing you could do would be

throw the phone away from you cuz I imagine it might be in your hand during that moment at least that's what we see throw the phone away from you count yourself down from 5 seconds once you've counted yourself down you go and put your trainers on and you leave the house without your phone in your hand if you have to breing the phone from a safety perspective in the bag airplane mode so that you got physical separation and for a period of time out there in the choir ultimately if possible in nature but maybe it's

walking around your local town if it's a little bit further to get to you just have a really honest conversation with yourself and when you say people are having all these negative thoughts like judging themselves and stuff some of these thoughts and messages we do need to hear like if your mind is saying oh stop scrolling your phone so much stop getting so drunk on the weekend stop eating sugar that is really clever that it's doing that like there's a component of maybe I need to be grass maybe I need to be more grateful for

the way my brain is so sophisticated and operating in a way of guidance if it's focusing on other things it's just like this state of let's listen to these thoughts let's not constantly distract myself from the thoughts let's hear the message I'm trying to be sent and then once I've heard it let's try and let's try and calculate some kind of smart response to this rather than this constant distraction and what about if people are getting close to like high stress and burnout like I think that's the other end yeah that's happening a lot in

the workplace now right like there's a overworking crazy hours always on always connected we've talked about that that pressure of like what if my boss emails me at midnight what if an email comes through at 6:00 a.m. and I just got up you know whatever it is there's this high performance mixed with high stress High burnout environment this is where I come to that idea of we've become a dopamine driven Society rather than an oxytocin driven Society oxytocin being this love hormone love is the most beautiful experience a human can have nothing is as pleasurable

and as enjoyable as the experience of love with your partner your parents having a child whatever it may be that's ultimately what humanity is here to connect with the experience of bonding with humans when you're in that world of burnout it's very likely that you've become slightly overly focused on dopamine whether that's in the pursuit of pleasure through burning out through partying and having fun or if it's from a work perspective you've probably got a little bit too focused on your financial win and your career progression and so on that's then leading you towards dopamine

burnout effectively which many of us experience with that in mind and I experienced this myself like like you like I have a striving desire within my career to make progress and help and so on I really in your mind would be asking yourself how much oxytocin am I getting and is it balancing out the dopamine and with that that means how good is the connection that I'm experiencing ing in my life right now like am I making time to FaceTime and call my mom and dad and ask how their lives are going and sit for

a whole conversation and just ask questions and not say loads about you and what's going on in your life and how amazing you are in your career but just simply ask them how are you doing that might be connecting with your children more your partner more but fundamentally you see that if we get more oxytocin it moves our mind towards that close connection that a human so deeply needs and currently we're all in dopamine dating apps DMS all that world we need to move towards more intimate connection with the people people that are really close

to us our family and our friends and our kids and our partners what do you think that's actually going to take toj like when you really think about that it feels like we're so far gone from that like what's that actually going to take for us to really value connection for what we know it can do I think ultimately Society needs a massive shift on the phone I think people really need to start reconsidering this phone I think when you look at the quality of the connection you have with your family you go around to

your parents house to see them or you go to see your friend friends and if you really start observing from the moment you've listened to this podcast how much is that phone actually disrupting the experience I have with these people that I love it's very significant and I think families and partners and kids need to adopt the mentality of considering this is phone free time I walk through my parents door I actually now have found that I have to leave my phone at home when I go to my parents house simply because I'll talk to

them for a bit and then I'll be going to the bathroom that's it's like phone out okay Instagram email WhatsApp and then my mind leaves oxytocin and returns to dopamine desire it's so important to have these prolonged dopamine detoxes where oxytocin is the primary goal and the phone is the primary thing disrupting that if we can start becoming comfortable with the idea of wow I'm going to spend two hours off my phone I'm going to spend an hour off my phone and my only goal is going to be to listen to these people to look

them in the eye to ask them good questions and to give them love I think that fundamentally is going to shift the way Society operates TJ i l that you've been amazing talking today and I'm glad that people are going to read the dose effect dive into more on dopamine oxytocin serotonin and endorphins we only touch the tip of the iceberg today but we learned so much I feel like I've gained so much great selft talk material from listening to you and I think that's what I really value and I think we undervalue about when

you're listening to a podcast when you're reading a book the goal is to get so much more of a new script in your mind as to how you talk to yourself about the challenges you have how you talk to others about the challenges you have and then how you talk yourself out of making bad decisions and into good decisions and as I've been listening to I feel like you're such a hub of incredible insights and information and so well researched where I'm like oh now I'm going to hear TJ's voice in my head remind me

of that when I'm brushing my teeth and I got my phone out or you know when I'm about to go to bed and even the idea of standing up before I lie down or there's so many things you've said today where I'm like I think there just these mini shifts and nudges that hopefully will save me and everyone who's been listening a lot of stress and a lot of trouble is there anything I haven't asked you that you wanted to share or something that's on your heart or mind that you you really want to share

with my community I would love everyone after listening to this podcast to plan in the next seven days to SP to spend 60 Minutes in nature without their phone considering what their primary Pursuit is in their life right now it can be a bit uncomfortable when you go into the quiet remember that idea of the boredom barrier your brain will settle it will calm worries might come in your mind at the beginning of that walk but I promise you by the end of that 60 Minutes you're going to be incredibly clear as to what you're

truly seeking for in your life maybe the phone is impacting you maybe you want a stronger relationship with your partner maybe you think a porn could be a factor in my life today maybe your work needs to be a greater priority in your life but we need as a society long periods of time in nature without our phones I love that challenge and everyone who's going to do that challenge tag me and TJ when you're out in nature so we can see pictures of you on walks hikes taking your dog out whatever it may be

we want to see uh the amount of time you're spending in nature and if you get to 60 Minutes tag us and tell us the time as well be amazing to see TJ we end every episode of on purpose with the final five these questions have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum okay so TJ power these are your final five question one what is the best advice you've ever heard or received to take action as soon as you wake up I received this guidance from a number of people in my life

I realized that waking up and scrolling my phone was the worst thing in my my experience take action as soon as you wake great advice uh second question what's the worst advice you've ever heard or received that it's fine to constantly drink tons of alcohol and that to be like a normalized aspect of society and that that isn't negatively impacting you expand on that for me as to why that really helped you and why that was a path you decided to take I just grew up in a world where alcohol was just the most normal

thing it was let's get drunk three four days a week and it was so strongly like disrupting my experience of Happiness my capacity to pursue my goals and because it's so normalized I just think it's something that Society is just so deeply immersed in I don't have judgment for it like alcohol is a big thing it's very pleasurable but I think so many of us are underestimating what it's doing I literally had to leave all my friends in London move into a very lonely life for like three years before I met my partner just to

separate myself simply from alcohol because I think people are underestimating what it's doing to their capacity to get to their dreams how do you think it was affecting motivation discipline Capac what what was it doing well I was drinking while still understanding dose and we of course get the physical hangover experience I've got headache and I feel sick or whatever it might be but we so deeply underestimate that it takes about 72 hours for that alcohol to fully leave your system throughout that 72 hours alcohol then drops very significantly and in that period on the

Monday and Tuesday in this very low dopamine State we get into that low motivation we overthink loads we feel fearful and we can't take action on our goals and I was someone that had goals like I had things I wanted to achieve I was beginning to build do I was beginning to build the research lab and I was thinking how the hell am I going to live a life that I'm really happy with if alcohol remains I love that thanks for sharing that uh question number three what's something you're trying to Value less maybe social

media following and that's really hard because it's like a double-edged sword where it's so beautiful to know more people are hearing the message but there's a really nuanced perspective of am I seeking for like the dopamine of the program ress and the more followers or am I seeking for the oxytocin of this is serving people and I really am constantly trying to consider when I'm looking at likes and Views and followers am I chasing dopamine here or am I tracing service in oxytocin and it's very easy to get into the dopamine so I'm trying to

move my mind on that nice uh question number four what's something you're trying to Value more intimate time with my partner where we really make sure there's no computers and phones we uh work in the same world my partner's a nutritionist and I'm a neuroscientist so it's this difficult interlay us constantly wanting to work and it's very important we have times where we are just in TJ and Georgia land and not in the land of dose uh Fifth and final question which we asked every guest who's ever been on the show if you could create

one law that everyone had to follow what would it be that the entirety of humanity would spend 60 Minutes on their own in nature every single day without their phones I love that uh TJ you've been incredible the book's called the dose effect I hope you go and grab your copy small habits to boost your brain chemistry uh highly highly recommend this book and TJ how else would you like people to connect with your work you kept referring to the dose app there as well and the research you're doing how can people connect more deeply

with that yeah so if you go to the dob.com on Google that begins your opportunity to start your journey with do and if you go to TJ power on Instagram all my guidance is on there I love it TJ thank you so much for joining today uh I can't wait for people to share this episode with their friends their family we covered so many different themes and topics and I want to thank you for your personal vulnerability in so many of those topics as well I think takes a lot of courage to be someone who's

sharing so many great insights and share personal challenges and I think you beautifully shared both so thank you so much man thank you for having me that was magical appreciate you if you love this episode you'll enjoy my interview with Dr Daniel aan on how to change your life by changing your brain if we want a healthy mind it actually starts with a healthy brain you know I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and over a hundred murderers and their brains are very damaged