How to Increase Motivation & Drive | Huberman Lab Essentials

welcome to huberman lab Essentials where

we revisit past episodes for the most

potent and actionable science-based

tools for mental health physical health

and

performance I'm Andrew huberman and I'm

a professor of neurobiology and

Opthalmology at Stanford school of

medicine today we're going to talk about

an extremely important topic that's

Central to our daily life and that's

motivation we're going to talk about

pleasure and reward what underlies our

sense of pleasure or reward we're going

to talk about addictions as well we're

going to talk about the neurochemistry

of drive and mindset but for now let's

just talk about the Neuroscience of

motivation and reward of Pleasure and

Pain because those are Central to what

we think of as emotions whether or not

we feel good whether or not we feel

we're on track in life whether or not we

feel we're falling behind so motivation

is fundamental to our daily life it's

what allows us to get out of bed in the

morning it's what allows us to pursue

longterm goals or short-term goals

motivation and the chemistry of

motivation is tightly wound in with the

neurochemistry of movement in fact the

same single molecule dopamine is

responsible for our sense of motivation

and for movement it's a fascinating

molecule and it lies at the center of so

many great things in life and it lies at

the center of so many terrible aspects

of Life namely addiction and certain

forms of mental disease so if ever there

was a double-edged blade in the world of

Neuroscience it's dopamine there's a

fundamental relationship between

dopamine released in your brain and your

desire to exert effort and you can

actually control the schedule of

dopamine release but it requires the

appropriate knowledge this is one of

those cases where understanding the way

the dopamine system works will allow you

to leverage it to your benefit let's get

a few basic facts on the table dopamine

was discovered in the late 1950s and it

was discovered as the precursor meaning

the thing from which epinephrine or

adrenaline is made epinephrine is the

same thing as adrenaline except in the

brain we call it epinephrine

epinephrine allows us to get into action

it stimulates changes in the blood

vessels in the heart in the organs and

tissues of the body that bias us for

movement dopamine was initially thought

to be just the building block for

epinephrine

however dopamine does a lot of things on

its own it's not always converted to

epinephrine dopamine is released from

several sites in the brain and body but

perhaps the most important one for

today's discussion about motivation and

reward is something that sometimes just

called the reward pathway for the

afficianados it's sometimes called the

misol limic reward pathway but it's

fundamentally important to your desire

to engage in action and it's

fundamentally important for people

getting addicted to substances or

behaviors so how does this work well

you've got a structure in the Deep part

of your brain called the VTA the VTA or

vental tegmental area contains neurons

that send what we call axons little

wires that spit out dopamine at a

different structure called the nucleus

accumbent and those two structures VTA

and nucleus accumbent form really the

core Machinery of the reward pathway and

the pathway that controls your

motivation for anything you can think of

them like an accelerator they bias you

for Action however within the reward

pathway there's also a break the break

or restriction on that dopamine which

controls when it's released and how much

it's released is the prefrontal cortex

the prefrontal cortex is the neural real

estate right behind your forehead you

hear about it for decisionmaking

executive function for planning Etc and

indeed it's responsible for a lot of

those it's this really unique real

estate that we were all endowed with as

humans other animals don't have much of

it we have a lot of it and that

prefrontal cortex acts as a break on the

dopamine system and that brings us to

the important feature of motivation

which is that motivation is a two-part

process which is about balancing

Pleasure and Pain so when you're just

sitting around not doing much of

anything this reward pathway is

releasing dopamine at a rate of about

three or four times per second it's kind

of firing in a low level if suddenly you

get excited about something you

anticipate something not receive an

award but you get excited in an

anticipatory

way then the rate of firing the rate of

activity in this reward pathway suddenly

increases to like 30 or 40 times and it

has the effect of creating a sense of

action or desire to move in the

direction of the thing that you're

craving in fact it's fair to say that

dopamine is responsible for wanting and

for craving and that's distinctly

different from the way that you hear it

talked about normally which is that it's

involved in pleasure so yes dopamine is

released in response to sex it's

released in response to food it's

released in response to a lot of things

but it's mostly released in anticipation

and craving for a particular thing it

has the effect of narrowing our Focus

for the thing that We crave and that

thing could be as simple as a cup of

coffee it could be as um important as a

big board meeting it could be a big

final exam it could be uh the person

that we're excited to meet or see

dopamine doesn't care about what you're

craving it just releases at a particular

rate if we just take a step back and we

look at the scientific data on how much

the dopamine firing increases in

response to different things you get a

pretty interesting window into how your

brain works and why you might be

motivated or not motivated let's say

you're hungry or you're looking forward

to a cup of coffee or you're going to

see your partner well well your dopamine

neurons are firing at a low rate until

you start thinking about the thing that

you want or the thing that you're

looking forward to when you eat that

food the amount of dopamine that's

released in this reward pathway goes up

about 50% above

Baseline sex which is fundamental to our

species continuation and reproduction

sex does release dopamine and it

increases dopamine levels about 100% so

basically doubles them Nic

increases the amount of dopamine about

150% above Baseline cocaine and

amphetamine increase the amount of

dopamine that's released a thousandfold

within about 10 seconds of consuming the

drug however just thinking about food

about

sex about nicotine if you like nicotine

or cocaine or amphetamine can increase

the amount of dopamine that's released

to the same degree as actually consuming

the drug now it depends in some cases

for instance the cocaine user the addict

that wants cocaine can't just think

about cocaine and increase the amount of

that's released about a thousandfold

it's actually much lower but it's just

enough to put them on the motivation

track for to Crave that particular thing

now there are reasons why you would have

brain circuitry like this I mean brain

circuitry like this didn't evolve to get

you addicted brain circuitry like this

evolved in order to motivate behaviors

toward particular goals water when

you're thirsty sex and in order to

reproduce these things and these brain

areas and neurons were part of the

evolutionary history that led to the

continuation of our species things like

cocaine and amphetamine are disastrous

for most people because they release so

much dopamine and they create these

closed Loops where people then only

crave the particular thing cocaine

amphetamine that leads to those massive

amounts of dopamine release most things

don't release that that level of

dopamine now nowadays there's a ton of

Interest in social media and in video

games and it there have been some

measurements of the amount of dopamine

released video games especially video

games that have a very high update speed

where there's novel territory all the

time novelty is a big stimulus of

dopamine those can release dopamine

somewhere between nicotine and cocaine

so very high levels of dopamine release

social media is an interesting one

because the amount of dopamine that's

released in response to logging onto

social media initi could be quite high

but it seems like likely that there's a

taper in the amount of dopamine but and

yet people still get addicted so why why

is it that we can get addicted to things

that fail to get to elicit the same

massive amount of pleasure that they

initially did being addicted to

something isn't just about the fact that

it feels so good that you want to do it

over and over again and that's because

of this pleasure pain balance that

underlies motivation so let's look a

little bit closer at the pleasure pain

balance because therein lies the tools

for you to be able to control motivation

toward healthy things and avoid

motivated behaviors towards things that

are destructive for you there are a lot

of reasons why people try novel

behaviors whether not those are drugs or

whether not those are Adventure

thrill-seeking things or you know they

take a new class as you'll notice I'm

not placing any judgment or value on

these different behaviors although I

think it's fair to point out that for

most

people addictive drugs like cocaine and

amphetamine are very

destructive actually we know that about

15 to 20% of people have a genetic bias

towards addiction that you know you

sometimes hear that the first time that

you use a drug you can become addicted

to it that's actually not been shown to

be true for most things and most people

but for some people that actually is

true but in any case the way that

addiction works and the way that

motivation Works generally in the

non-addictive setting is that when you

anticipate something a little bit of

dopamine is released and then when you

reach that thing you engage in that

thing the amount of dopamine goes up

even further but as you repeatedly

pursue a behavior and you repeatedly

engage with a particular thing let's say

you love running or you love chocolate

as you eat a piece of chocolate believe

it or not it tastes good and then

there's a shift away from activation of

dopamine and there are other chemicals

that are released that trigger a

low-level sense of pain now you you

might not feel it as physical pain but

the craving that you feel is both one

part dopamine and one part the mirror

image of dopamine which is the pain or

the craving for yet another piece of

chocolate and this is a very important

and subtle feature of the dopamine

system that's not often discussed people

always talk about just as pleasure you

love social media so it gives you

dopamine and so you engage in that you

like chocolate it releases dopamine so

you do that but for every bit of

dopamine that's released there's another

circuit in the brain

that creates you can think of it as kind

of like a downward deflection in

pleasure so you engage in something you

really want and there's an increase in

pleasure and then there's a without you

doing anything there's a mirror image of

that which is a downward deflection and

pleasure which we're calling pain so for

every bit of pleasure there is a mirror

image experience of pain and they

overlap in time very closely so it's

sometimes hard to sense this but try it

the next time you eat something really

delicious you'll take a bite it tastes

delicious and part of experience is to

want more of that thing this is true for

any pleasureful

experience now the Diabolical part about

dopamine is that because it didn't

evolve in order to get you to indulge in

more and more and more of something what

happens is that initially you experience

an in an increase in pleasure and you

also experience this increase in pain

shortly after or woven in with the

pleasure that makes you want more of

that thing but with each subsequent time

that you encounter that thing the

experience of dopamine release and

pleasure is diminished a little bit and

the Diabolical thing is that the pain

response is increased a little bit and

this is best observed in the context of

drug-seeking behavior the first time

someone decides to take cocaine or

amphetamine they will experience a huge

dopamine release and they will feel

likely very good however the next time

they take it it won't feel quite as good

and it won't feel even as good the third

time or the next time but the amount of

pain the amount of craving that they

experience for the drug will increase

over time so much of our pursuit of

pleasure is simply to reduce the pain of

craving so the next time you experience

something you really like I don't want

to take you out of that experience but

it's really important that you notice

this that if there's something you

really enjoy part of that enjoyment is

about the anticipation and wanting of

more of that thing and that's the pain

system in action and so we can

distinguish between dopamine which is

really about pleasure and dopamine which

is really about motivation to pursue

more in order to relieve or exclude

future pain let me repeat that dopamine

isn't as much about pleasure as much as

it is about motivation and desire to

pursue more in order to reduce the

amount of pain and we are now talking

about pain as a psychological pain and a

craving although people that Miss a

lover very badly or that really crave a

food very badly or that are addicted to

a drug and can't access it will

experience that as a physical craving

and a mental craving the body and brain

are linked in this way it's almost

they'll describe it as painful they

yearn for it and I think the word

yearning is one that's very valuable in

this context because yearning seems to

include a whole body experience more

than just wanting which could just be up

in the mind mind so your desire for

something is proportional to how

pleasureful it is to indulge in that

thing but also how much pain you

experience when you don't have it and

you can now start to let your mind

wander into all sorts of examples of

addictions or things that you happen to

like um I'll use the example that I

sometimes use on here which is my love

of croissants the taste of that

croissant makes me want to eat more

croissant now eventually blood sugar

goes up satiety is reached Etc what

happens then what is s isfaction and

satiety about well that's a separate

neuromodulator that's about the

neuromodulator serotonin it's about

oxytocin it's about a hormone system

that involves something called prolactin

so we're going to talk about all all of

those in the book The molecule of more

wonderful book uh those were described

as the Here and Now molecules the ones

that allow you to experience your

Sensations and pleasure in the present

and for which the brain stops projecting

into the future so now let's talk about

craving and and the these so-called Here

and Now molecules and how those engage

in a kind of pushpull balance that will

allow you to not just feel more

motivated but also to enjoy the things

in life that you are pursuing to a much

greater degree we have neurons in an

area of our brain called the rap r a p

he e the RAF releases serotonin at

different places in the brain serotonin

is the molecule of bliss and contentment

for what you already have I've talked

before about exteroception exteroception

is a focus on the outside world

everything beyond the confines of your

skin I've also talked about

interoception a focus on things that are

happening internally within the confines

of your

skin dopamine and

serotonin can be thought of as related

to exteroception dopamine makes us

focused on things outside us that are

beyond what we call our personal space

where we actually have to move and take

action in order to achieve things

and serotonin in general has to do with

the things that are in our immediate

Here and Now hence the description of

these as the Here and Now molecules so

it's interesting to point out that the

body and the Brain can direct its

attention towards things outside us or

inside us or split our attention between

those just understand that dopamine

biases us toward thinking about what we

don't have whereas serotonin and some of

the related molecules like the endoc

canabo if you picked up on the word

cannabinoid yes it's like cannabis

because cannabis attaches to endoc

canabo receptors and the endoc canabo

are receptors and chemicals that the

cannabinoids that you naturally make

that are involved in things like

forgetting but you make these molecules

that bind to these receptors that make

you feel kind of bliss out and content

in the present so you got these two

systems they're kind of like a push pull

and if you were to say do the um you

know in the book wherever you go there

you are John katzin talks about this

meditation practice that's different

than most meditation prct ractic is

where you eat one almond and you focus

all of your attention on the Almond the

taste of the Almond the texture of the

Almond that's really a mindfulness

practice that's geared towards trying to

take a behavior which is normally about

Pursuit normally feeding is we going we

engage in feeding because of dopamine we

pursue more of a food because of that

pleasure pain relationship I talked

about before the focus on the one almond

or the or becoming very present in any

behavior that normally would be a kind

of extra receptive Pursuit behavior and

bring it into the here and now that's a

mental trick or a mental task that the

mindfulness Community has really

embraced in order to try and create

increased pleasure for what you already

have it's really trying to accomplish a

shift from dopamine being released to

serotonin in the cannabinoid system

being involved in that behavior dopamine

has the quality of making people kind of

rabidly in pursuit of things drugs like

marijuana the opioids anything that um

really hits the serotonin system hard

tend to make people rather lethargic and

content to stay exactly where they are

they don't want to pursue much at all so

you've got these molecules like dopamine

that make you focused on the things you

want and the things you crave and then

you've got the molecules that make you

content with what you have so the most

important thing perhaps in creating a

healthy emotional landscape is to have a

balance between these two neuromodulator

systems so at about this point in the

podcast I'm guessing that some of you

are thinking okay great I want more

dopamine I want to be more motivated I

don't want to procrastinate as much and

I want to be able to experience life I

want these Here and Now molecules to be

released as well well there is a way to

do that but you have to understand the

source of procrastination is not one

thing there are basically two kinds of

procrastinators or so says the research

the first kind are people that actually

really enjoy the stress of the impending

deadline it's the only way they can get

into action there are other

procrastinators for which they simply

are not releasing enough dopamine for

those people there are a variety of

things that can increase dopamine I do

suggest you talk to a psychiatrist or

doctor I've talked about makuna purines

which is

99.9% L Doopa the precursor to dopamine

there are anti-depressants like

Wellbutrin Bryon is the other name for

it which increase dopamine and

epinephrine

however if you think back to our earlier

discussion about

dopamine dopamine if it's very high

creates a sense of pleasure and the

desire for more so you can also become a

person for which enough is Never Enough

the only thing that dopamine really

wants is more of the thing that releases

dopamine and so one of the things that

you can do in order to generally just be

a happier person especially if you're a

person in pursuit of long-term goals of

any kind is the longer that you can

extend that positive phase of the

dopamine release and the more that you

can blunt the pain response to that the

better and you can actually do this

cognitively I used to joke with my lab

that when we'd publish a paper I would

get really excited but I wouldn't allow

myself to get too excited what I wanted

to do instead and what I've still tried

to do is try and extend the Arc of that

positive experience as long as I

possibly can simply by thinking back

like oh that was really cool I really

enjoy doing that work I really enjoyed

the discovery I really enjoyed doing

that with the people that I was working

with at the time what a pleasure that

was so you can extend pleasure without

having to engage in the behavior over

and over that's extending the Arc of

that dopamine release as well it offsets

some of the pain of not having that

experience occur over and over and over

again now for the high performers out

there you're probably familiar with this

many people who have a big achievement

their first thoughts are well now what

what am I going to do next how am I ever

going to exceed that and indeed many

people who are very high on this kind of

dopamine sensation and novelty-seeking

scale uh are prone to addiction they're

prone to the Rabid pursuit of external

goals of exter reception to the neglect

of these internal mechanisms that allow

them to feel calm and happy so for

people that are very driven very

motivated adopting a practice of being

able to engage in the here and now the

sort of omen type practices we talked

about earlier um of learning how to

achieve a really good night's sleep on a

regular basis through tools and

mechanisms I talked about in previous

podcast gives us sort of balance to the

pleasure seeking and offsetting of pain

and the pleasure in the here and now so

pleasure is really two things it's a joy

in

Pursuit but it's also the joy in what

you have the cool thing is you can

actually regulate this whole system in a

way that will steer you or lean you

towards more positive anticipation of

things in life and less disappointment

it's simply a matter of adjusting what

we call the dopamine schedule in order

to understand how to control the

dopamine system how to leverage it for a

better

life you need to understand the results

of a very important

experiment this experiment was able to

separate pleasure from motivation it's a

very simple but like many simple

experiments a very elegant experiment

what they did and this has now been done

in animals and in humans

they offered rats food it was a food

that they particularly liked and the

animals would lever press for rep pellet

of food kind of classic experiment

they'd eat the food and they presumably

like the food because they were

motivated to press the lever and eat it

great they took other

rats they eliminated the dopamine

neurons you can do this by injection of

a neurotoxin that destroys these neurons

so they actually had no dopamine in

their brain they have no ability to

release dopamine

and they gave them a lever the rats

would sit there and they'd hit the lever

and they'd eat the food they're still

enjoyed the food so you say well okay so

dopamine isn't involved in motivation it

isn't involved in pleasure no it

absolutely is they could still enjoy the

food but if they moved the rat literally

one body length away from the lever what

they found was the animals that had

dopamine would move over to the lever

press it and eat and the ones the rats

that did not have dopamine available to

them wouldn't even move one body length

one rat length to the lever in order to

press it and get the food dopamine

therefore is not about the ability to

experience pleasure it is about

motivation for pleasure and so many of

you are probably thinking wow I'm not a

very motivated person like you talked

about the one kind of procrastination

earlier what about when I just feel kind

of meh about life now for some of you

there may be a real clinical depression

and you should talk to a professional

there are very good prescription drugs

that can really help people there's also

great non-drug treatments of uh

Psychotherapy and other treatments that

are being developed in addition to

psychotherapy and the various kinds of

psychoanalysis Etc that one can use I

think the data really point to the fact

that a combination of pharmacology and

talk therapies are generally best and

there are a huge range of these things I

know many of you are in these

professions so we're not going to talk

about that right now there is a compound

that's kind of interesting in the

supplement space that isn't um munan

alopa it's not El tyrosine that isn't

promoting massive releases of dopamine

or even dopamine alone but a combination

of dopamine and serotonin and it's an

intriguing molecule it's um sold over

the counter again you have to check with

your Healthcare um uh provider before

you would take anything or remove

anything that's very important but it's

phenol ethyl amine or

pea pea

or beta phenol ethyl aiming releases

dopamine at low levels but also

serotonin at low level so it's kind of a

cocktail of the motivation molecules as

well as the quote unquote Here and Now

molecules and people's response to this

varies widely but many people report

feeling heightened sense of mental

acuity well-being Etc it is a bit of a

stimulant like anything that triggers

activation of the dopamine and

norepinephrine pathway but is an

interesting supplement so now let's talk

about what is a dopamine schedule and

how you can leverage this in order to

have heightened levels of motivation but

not get so much dopamine that you're

experiencing a crash afterwards and also

so that you can experience heightened

pleasure from the various Pursuits that

you are engaged in in life and here's

the key

principle dopamine is very subjective

meaning you can either allow yourself to

experience the pleasure of reaching a

milestone of a achieving or some craving

or not it's actually pretty powerful

what one can do with the subjective

system in fact I'm going to describe you

an experiment that highlights just how

powerful the subjective readout or the

subjective interpretation of a given

experience really can be even at the

level of pharmacology and the title of

the experiment is expectation for

stimulant type modifies caffeine's

effects on mood and cognition this was

done in college students it's a f

fascinating study what they did is they

gave college students either

Placebo essentially nothing or 200

milligrams of caffeine 200 milligrams of

caffeine is about what's in a typical

coffee like a medium coffee that you

would buy a drip coffee so they took 65

undergraduate

students in college they randomized them

to either Placebo or caffeine and they

told them that they were either getting

caffeine or adero

now Aderall cognitively carries a very

different um expectation college

students know Aderall to be a much

stronger stimulant than caffeine they

know it to create a sort of high this is

the way the students described it and

they thought that it would increase

their level of focus and their ability

to perform work so what's really

interesting is there

was definitely an effect of placebo

versus caffeine that's not surprising

however right you take a placebo you may

or may not feel more alert

um but you take 200 milligrams of

caffeine very likely you're going to

feel very alert but there was also an

effect of whether or not the students

thought they were getting caffeine or

Aderall the subjects receiving caffeine

reported feeling more stimulated anxious

and motivated than the subjects that

received the placebo okay but the ones

that expected Aderall reported stronger

amphetamine effects they performed

better on a working memory test and in

general they had all the increased

cognitive effects that would have been

seen with adol but they were only

ingesting caffeine so it led to

heightened performance simply because

the students thought they were getting

Aderall and I think this is very

important because I think that it points

to the fact that the the the top down

the kind of higher level cognitive

processes are impacting even the most

basic fundamental aspects of say

dopamine release or our uh adrenaline

release or epinephrine release in ways

that can positively impact performance

in this case it was a positive

Improvement in working memory and focus

so today we've talked a lot about the

dopamine system and and those kinds of

schedules that will allow craving or

addiction but what's the schedule of

dopamine that's going to allow you to

maximize on your pursuit of pleasure and

your elimination of pain and we get the

answer to that from our good friend

gambling the reason gambling works the

reason why people will throw their lives

away the reason why people go back again

and again and again to places like Las

Vegas and Atlantic City is because of

the hope and anticipation it's a those

are cities and places built on dopamine

they are leveraging your dopamine system

and as a friend of mine who's a

certified addiction treatment specialist

tells me that you know gambling

addiction is a particularly Sinister

because the next time really could be

the thing that changes everything unlike

other addictions the next time really

could change everything and that's

embedded in the mind of the gambling

addict and rarely does it work out uh in

favor of the well-being of the gambling

addict and their family however the

intermittent reinforcement schedule was

discovered Long Ago by scientific

researchers so this is the slot machine

that every once in a while gives you a

win to keep you playing this is the the

probability of winning on the craps

table or the roulette table or at

Blackjack just often enough that you're

willing to buy tickets head out there

play again go downstairs again from your

room even though you swear you were done

for the night intermittent reinforcement

is the most powerful form of dopamine

reward schedule to keep you doing

something so we can export that we can

use it for good if there's something

that you're pursuing in life whether or

not it's an academic goal or a financial

goal or relationship

goal one of the things that you can do

to ensure that you will remain on the

path to that goal for a very long time

and that you will continue to exceed

your previous performance as well as

continue to enjoy the dopamine Rel that

occurs when you hit the Milestones that

you want to achieve is to occasionally

remove reward subjectively let's say you

set out a goal of making I'm going to

make this quantitative with respect to

finances because it just is an easy

description but this could also be in

sport this could be in school this could

be in music could be in anything

creative Endeavors but let's say you set

out a certain Financial goal or let's

say you want to get a certain number of

followers on whatever social media

platform as you reach each one of those

goals you should know now that the

amount of dopamine is not going to Peak

it's actually going to diminish and make

you crave more the key to avoiding that

crash but to still keep it in healthy

levels that will allow you to continue

your Pursuit is as you are staircasing

toward your goal you actually want to

blunt the reward response for some of

those intermediate goals now I'm not

telling you you shouldn't celebrate your

wins but I'm telling you not to

celebrate all of them or as a good

friend of mine who uh recently uh

fortunately for him uh had a great

financial success he asked me and

somebody else a good friend of mine

who's very tuned into dopamine reward

schedules understands how they work at a

really deep level and he said I don't

know what to do next and we said oh well

that's simple you should just give most

of it away and this wasn't a ploy to

receive any of the money ourselves this

was really about reducing the impact of

that reward now hopefully giving him

money away if you already have enough of

it would be something that was rewarding

in and of itself but if you're a student

who's pursuing goals in University or

you're an athlete who's pursuing goals

it actually makes sense from a rational

perspective once you understand these

mechanisms to hit a new high point of

performance or to get that A+ or for you

if it's an A minus Etc and to tell

yourself okay that was good but to

actually actively blunt the reward to

not go and celebrate too intensely

because in doing that you keep your

dopamine system in check and you ensure

that you're going to stay on the path of

continued Pursuit not just for that

thing but for all things big increases

in dopamine lead to big crashes in

dopamine and big increases in dopamine

up the anti so you can lift the uh what

Las Vegas and Atlantic City and other

gambling uh mechanisms and places have

known for a long time they lifted it

from the scientists you can now take it

back and you can start to leverage that

and you just make it intermittent you

reward yourself not on a predictable

schedule so not every other time or

every third time or every 10th time but

sometimes it's three in a row then not

at all for 10 days so reward is

important self-reward is critically

important but make sure that you're not

doing it on such a predictable schedule

that you burn out these dopamine

circuits or that you undercut your own

ability to strive and Achieve hopefully

you now know far more about the dopamine

system reward and motivation than you

did at the beginning of this podcast

hopefully you also understand the other

side of dopamine and reward which is

pain and the balance of this pleasure

pain system as well as the molecules

that we call or that were described in

the molecule of more book I should say

as the Here and Now molecules things

like serotonin and the endoc canabo

finally I want to thank you for your

time and attention today I hope you

learned a lot and that you learned a lot

of possible tools that you could

incorporate into your life as it relates

to motivation and emotions thank you for

your interest in science

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