Transcript of Why Nothing Feels Interesting Anymore

You have to realize if that's the case, your dopamine system is fried because all day long you're chasing feel-good hits and probably not even realizing it. You're scrolling, you're snacking, you're refreshing, you're buying things. And while your brain loses its ability to basically feel joy in your life, what used to feel good to you now kind of feels like nothing. The good news about this is that you can reset this system. And when you do, the joy will come rushing back into your life.

You will feel good again and more motivated than you probably have in your entire life. So let's talk about it, okay? The reason why you don't feel as much joy as you used to, you're not as happy as you used to be, or even amazing things don't feel like they're as amazing as they should be, like going on an amazing vacation, like you're excited for the first two minutes of getting there and then you're on your phone or something. We have to get something straight, okay? The reason why is because you have too many tiny little dopamine hits throughout the day.

And dopamine, we have to get this straight. It's not about pleasure. Like contrary to what people think, people think that dopamine is about sitting in a bubble bath and eating chocolate and enjoying a nice movie and feeling good. That's not what dopamine's about. Dopamine is about pursuit. Dopamine is the fuel for drive and for motivation and anticipation. Dopamine is literally the chemical of motivation in your brain. And it's the thing that gets you off of the couch to pursue something that is harder.

And I have a couple of quotes from Andrew Huberman that really dive in and talk about this. It's important, okay? One of the things that he said is that dopamine is not the pursuit of pleasure. It's about the pleasure of pursuit. So it's like the actual going for something is what gives you dopamine. Another really important thing that he says about dopamine is that any high amount of dopamine that comes to you without effort before it will eventually destroy you. Dopamine and getting the pleasure of dopamine and the motivation, the feeling of it without some sort of effort that comes before it is a trap.

And the problem is we are drowning in cheap dopamine today. Like we're drowning in it. We have fast, high reward, low effort dopamine hits all day long. Like you order food and you get a dopamine hit without even cooking. You check your inbox just because the ping goes off. Even if it's spam, your brain goes, "Ooh, something's happening." You buy something online and boom, you get instant gratification from the idea of having it. Not even having it itself, just the idea of having it.

You refresh social media over and over again, waiting for more likes or more views or more comments. And you get these micro validation loops that spike dopamine hits so you feel better. You might find yourself swiping through dating apps out of boredom, not because you want connection or because you want romance, but just out of boredom and you want some novelty in your life. You play phone games with fake progress bars and little fireworks that go off and points and dings and wins and all of these things. You pop a pill, you scroll on TikTok, you binge a show, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, all of these things with zero real effort.

And so what happens when you keep flooding your brain with high levels of dopamine without any earning of it? It basically breaks your system. You don't feel as much joy as you used to. And so if you have too much dopamine, you don't have as much joy and your motivation will collapse. So there was a study that was done in 2001 and published in Nature Neuroscience, and they found that increased dopamine leads to short-term spike in motivation, like wanting more of that thing by doing the same thing you were just doing, but long-term depletion of your dopamine.

So the takeaway from that is that overstimulating dopamine systems makes you feel less motivated and less joy over time. And so that's the reason why you probably don't feel as much joy as you used to. And so here's how you actually break the cycle and how, well, let's talk about how the cycle usually plays out more than anything else, okay? So you crave a dopamine hit in some sort of way. You get it from food, from shopping, from social media, from porn, whatever it is for you. You feel good for a real quick second, and then your baseline dopamine drops.

And now normal life feels dull to you. Even the stuff that used to give you joy, that you used to enjoy doing, doesn't give you joy anymore. And you're like, "I feel like I have no joy anymore." Do you see why? The things that you used to enjoy, you don't enjoy because you're getting cheap dopamine all the time. So you chase another hit and another hit and another hit. And eventually, even the high doesn't feel high. It just feels necessary. So it's like a roller coaster that you're on.

And that roller coaster eventually turns into like a dopamine treadmill. You can't get off. You've now just become addicted. And so the reason why things don't feel as good as they used to is because if you're constantly overstimulated, your brain will eventually adapt to this new life. And I think that with all of the stuff that's happening with social media and with phones and with YouTube and Netflix and with AI, our brains have just been flooded and overstimulated past what we even knew we could do over the past 10, 15, 20 years.

So I was like, I need to fix this. I need to figure out what I need to do. So what did I find was the antidote? Well, it wasn't more stimulation. It was less. Less stimulation. If you remove all of the cheap dopamine that you possibly can, eventually your dopamine baseline and your joy will reset and it will go back to normal. And things that used to be pleasurable that aren't pleasurable anymore will now be pleasurable again. Hobbies that you used to love doing, you will love doing again.

And this is extremely important if you are a parent. Listen closely, okay? Because I believe that we need to protect our kids from things like this, from phones, from social media. This isn't about like letting your kid grow up and be like the weird kid or not letting them grow up at all. This is about raising a healthy child into a healthy adult that doesn't have anxiety and depression and no joy in their life. There is a massive link between social media and child depression and anxiety.

There was a study that was done by JAMA Pediatrics in 2019 that found out that children who spend more than three hours per day on social media were at a substantially increased risk of high levels of depressive symptoms compared to those who spent less than three hours a day on social media. Pew Research Center did a study as well, and they found out that 45% of teens say that they are online almost constantly. And those teens reported higher levels of psychological distress than the other ones.

So I recommend now that you know this, and you might not have known it before this episode, so don't shame yourself, but protect your kids. Take them off of social media. Try to take them away from their phone. Put them outside so they're actually social instead of doing it on their phone. Let them be a child again. Don't let their phone and all of these cheap hits of dopamine steal their joy and ruin their dopamine receptors. And so let's talk about how to fix it. So if you are in this situation, you can actually fix it, okay?

This is the dopamine detox blueprint. I'm going to tell you, I'm not going to tell you to just go and move into a cabin in the woods and have no internet, but you do need to intentionally shift from cheap dopamine to what is called earned dopamine, like the kind of that actually fulfills you, okay? And so we'll break it down. The first thing you want to do is make sure that you remove or reduce cheap dopamine as much as you possibly can. These are like the instant gratification. So it's like things to completely get rid of or just limit drastically.

Social media scrolling mindlessly, binge watching shows, processed sugars, or just like snacking out of boredom, porn or excessive like screen stimulation, constant multitasking as well. And try dopamine fasting. Like try, just try it one day a week, a few hours a day, no screens. Like for me, Sundays, I try to do no screens. Go for a walk, journal, stare at a wall. I don't care. Boredom in this situation is actually medicine.

It is the best thing for you. Being bored is you resetting your dopamine baseline. I will be honest with you, okay? It is not easy at first. Your brain will feel agitation. You will start to feel anxious because your brain is addicted to dopamine. And guess what it wants? More dopamine. And so when you're sitting there and you're like, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh God, I want to go, I want to go do something, I got to do something, I'm thinking of this," that's literally mini withdrawals from dopamine. Your body and brain are the drug dealer.

You need to strip away the drugs. Boredom is the path. There's a thing that I'm starting to see on social media that I actually love, and people are calling it raw dogging ADHD. And it's people that will sit down like on a couch and they'll have a timer for an hour and they have ADHD and they're just sitting there and they want stimulation, they want stimulation, and they will just have a time lapse of them just sitting there for an hour and just trying to reset their systems. And so I would just recommend, whether you have ADHD or don't have ADHD, try to get yourself to the point where you can sit there for an hour and do nothing and see what comes up.

Okay, so that's the first thing. The next thing is pursue effort-driven dopamine. Earned dopamine is sweeter. It rewires your system to enjoy life again. Okay? So, for instance, work out and feel the sweat and the pain and the burn and the pride when you're done. Be proud of yourself after you get done with a really hard workout. That post-workout high, that's endorphins and earned dopamine. Learn something hard that frustrates you and just like, "Oh my God, it hurts to try to grow from it."

Push yourself, earn dopamine, create something, write, draw, build, design, learn a new instrument that challenges you, earn dopamine. Cook a meal from scratch, like chop, stir, smell, savor. Don't look at your phone the entire time. Earn dopamine. Go hunting or fishing or gardening for your meal. Like go out and get your meal like our ancestors used to do. That's how our ancestors probably got the most dopamine. The pursuit of the hunt is the dopamine.

Here's what you'll start to notice. When you reset your dopamine system, you'll actually start to enjoy the small things again, like really enjoy them. Your motivation will start to return because you actually want to act to get more dopamine and it makes you more driven for the pursuit. You're not going to need 10 tabs open on your phone just for your brain to feel alive. You start to feel like yourself again. You start to notice these little tiny things. Oh my God, you're more present with your children.

You don't have to be doing 10 different things. When you sit down to eat a meal, you don't have to have the TV on in the background and your phone in front of you. You start to feel like yourself again. Then you're going to start to feel drive and motivation to push yourself and grow. And so just the real quick summarization, putting in, you know, it's like the TL;DR type thing, right? Cut or reduce social media scrolling, sugar, snacks, all of those types of things. Fast content like YouTube Shorts and TikToks and Instagram Reels and all that stuff.

Get rid of gambling or porn or binge shopping and then add more things that are harder for you that require you to pursue. Exercise, even if it's like 15 minutes of hard exercise. Deep work, building something in your life, learning something challenging that makes you have to actually grow. Have some time in nature. Have a real connection. Be bored just for the hell of being bored and resetting your system. And then track your wins. Like write it down when you do something well. Dopamine loves momentum. And so when you actually capture your progress, even if it's tiny, your brain starts noticing this feeling of, "Oh my God, I'm progressing."