How to Harness the Power of Dopamine to Help You Reach Your Goals

There’s nothing more frustrating than a setback. Maybe you’ve been consistent about your exercise and diet, but you’re not seeing the scale move as much as you think it should. Maybe you’ve been working on your relationships, or studying, or even trying to grow a business…but your world isn’t drastically changing despite so much effort. What differentiates those of us who persevere from others who throw in the towel? And what can we learn from biology that might help us when we’re stuck wondering if all our hard work will ever pay off?

From a biological perspective, learning to harness your dopamine is key. Dopamine is a molecule that activates the neural circuits involved in motivation, drive, and desire. Dr. Daniel Lieberman coined it “the molecule of more,” the title of his book on the subject, and this is why it plays a powerful role in addiction. It causes you to crave something – a substance, a feeling, a person, an experience.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter – a molecule in our brains – that is usually released at a stable, baseline level. Dopamine peaks in response to the anticipation of something rewarding, like having an alcoholic drink, going on vacation, or reaching a big goal. The problem is, once you’ve achieved a dopamine peak, your dopamine levels actually will return to a lower baseline than before. As Dr. Andrew Huberman, a professor of Neurobiology at Stanford, explains, the higher the dopamine peak, the lower your new dopamine baseline will be after you achieve that peak. This explains those feelings of emptiness after a big event, such as the birth of a child (which we call postpartum depression), a graduation, or any other milestone.

So how does this help us? Knowing the physiology of dopamine can help us outsmart ourselves by re-setting the timing the dopamine peaks and avoiding the drops in its baseline. The trick is to use our forebrain – the area of executive functioning – to find joy, appreciation, and ultimately dopamine during the work. The adage “it’s about the journey, not about the destination” couldn’t be more salient in terms of dopamine physiology. If we routinely and deliberately tell ourselves that the experience of hard work is pleasurable, and if we avoid dopamine spikes before and after the work, our daily grind will intrinsically be more rewarding. If this sounds like lying to yourself, it is, at first. Except that it works.

One example that Huberman cites is a study at Stanford of young children. They took children who naturally liked to draw pictures, and then gave them a gold star whenever they drew something. Then the researchers stopped giving the kids the gold stars. What happened? The kids stopped drawing so many pictures – even though they’d liked to draw before the stars came into play. This shows that if you can avoid extrinsic rewards for your work, the work itself becomes the prize. The striving is the end goal. Sounds very zen, doesn’t it?

Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck calls this process-focused work the “growth mindset.” People who embrace a growth mindset recognize that their skills are adaptable. You can cultivate new qualities through effort, especially when things are not going well. In that way, failure does not define you; the process of error is an opportunity for growth. People who see a setback as a new challenge are more likely to persevere, whereas those who let failure define them (which she calls a “fixed mindset”) are more likely to give up. According to creativity researchers, having a growth mindset is the number one ingredient in creative achievement. We can cultivate this by continually affirming to ourselves that our work is the goal. The challenge is the reward. With practice, new neural networks will form over time, and you will be more likely to overcome setbacks in the future.

If you’d like to learn more, this research has been put into play by Navy SEALs like David Goggins. Goggins has multitudes of YouTube videos on the subject and has been on podcasts such as Joe Rogan, Rich Roll, and Tim Ferris. He has spoken extensively about our tremendous capacity for perseverance and how a mindset of “embracing the suck,” as he calls it, is a principal component of success.

Food for thought: what challenges are you facing in your life right now, and how can you harness dopamine to help you persevere? Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or experiences you’d like to share!