Not feeling motivated today?

No “oomph” ?

Has your “va-va voom” got up and slinked away?

Are you waiting to be inspired and uplifted but not seeing any of that right now?

Its all about dopamine- but not the way you are thinking.

There is new research to show that there’s more to motivation than meets the eye.

Its all about dopamine and no, it doesn’t work in quite the way that we thought.

We all know that when you are working towards a goal there are small amounts of dopamine secreted in your brain. The anticipation of reaching your goal causes your brain to make quite a lot of dopamine.

Then once you have got to your goal , yes there is more dopamine!

But what has not been recognised is that there then comes a reduction in dopamine to BELOW the previous resting level.

The Dopamine Wave

Homeostasis is the problem.

That is why, often the anticipation of something (obviously cake in my case!) is more uplifting than achieving the goal.

When we finally get the goal, we do get some more dopamine, but not as much as we were expecting.

To make matters worse, we then get a dopamine crash as our bodies try and regulate the levels of dopamine back to baseline levels (and overshoots).

So what do we do then?

We go after another goal, or eat more cake to try and induce higher levels of dopamine to counteract the dopamine crash.

It has been shown is that we are, in effect, riding a wave of dopamine while we are moving and working towards the goal. Once we get there the dopamine reduces to below basal levels. We then try a lot of different things to get the dopamine levels back up. These are often not healthy for us, or for those around us. Alcohol, sugar, cigarettes, gaming, shopping and sex for example.

Just Stop.

However, rather than leaping to that next promotion, career break, secondment OR reaching for that next slice of cake – just stop! The biologists amongst us would say just that – stop! Why not pause and wait and take the time to regroup and reflect?

The time will allow the dopamine to come back to base levels. When the dopamine comes up to base levels we will be in better position to be motivated.

The reflection will allow us to clearly identify what we want. We can plan some steps we will want to take to get there.

This will allow us to go for a goal that we REALLY want.

When we are ready..

Then, when we are ready, we can get up, raise our heads and go for the goal. The goal that we believe in and that we are aligned to.

We will get to ride the dopamine wave once more. This time with more purpose and the realisation we are moving towards what we want.

Are you in a funk? Do you feel you need a shot of dopmaine to get going?

Come and book a call with me at The Professionals Coach. Lets have some time and space to work out what you really want to do. More importantly, how you can get there.