I have always considered myself a highly-motivated, highly-disciplined person. I used to pride myself on outworking and outperforming my teammates–and especially my opponents. But when I went from being an elite athlete to a regular person in 2018, I realized perhaps I wasn’t as motivated as I thought I was. I had been a Division 1 soccer player for four years, but after graduating and not landing a professional contract, I decided to enter the real world. And just like that, I left behind the structure and routine of constant training, competing, and performing. Truth is, when you’re in an organized sport like soccer, staying disciplined and motivated is easy. The structure is set for you by coaches, leagues, referees, etc. All you have to do is show up, and showing up is pretty easy when you really don’t have a choice, right?
When I found myself living on my own with no coaches telling me I had to wake up for training, I realized motivation is pretty hard to find on your own. I knew I wanted to stay in shape. I even had specific goals like running a half-marathon, but I couldn’t get myself to train. My discipline was a mess. Consistency was non-existent. I ran my first half-marathon with virtually no training. If it weren’t for the tiny amount of residual soccer fitness I had left, I probably would have died. Still, I basically crawled across the finish and could barely walk for a week after.
These days, I can proudly say that I’ve created a deep well of motivation and I am as consistent as ever in my training. I wake up early, eat healthy, and work out almost every day. Of course, every week has its ups and downs but for the most part I’ve stayed consistent. So what changed?
Well, for one, I traded my marathon delusions for climbing goals. Sometime shortly after the height of the pandemic, I walked into a climbing gym and was absolutely fascinated by the otherworldly strength of some of the climbers. I wanted to be like them. I was hooked.
My infatuation with a new sport provided some much-needed motivation. I finally started training more consistently. But, like with any newfound fling, infatuation dissipated. Pretty soon I was back to hitting snooze on the alarm, skipping workouts, and eating poorly.
I first came across neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman in 2020 when I read Scott Cairney’s book “The Wedge”, which explores how humans can–in Cairney’s words–rewire our brains and control our response to stress. But that’s beside the point. A few months later I rediscovered Dr. Huberman on his own podcast, the Huberman Lab Podcast, in which he lectures on basically everything about how our brains work. And, I’ve been listening pretty much every week since.
While listening to one of his episodes on motivation, I first learned about dopamine and the so-called ‘dopamine wave pool’ and it completely reframed the way I think about motivation in every aspect of my life. I mean, this stuff should be taught in elementary schools. It’s that important.
Dopamine is a neuromodulator. It’s often referred to as the ‘pleasure molecule’ and is usually associated with pleasure or reward. As far as I understand it, dopamine is actually responsible for the pursuit of the reward rather than the actual reward. According to Dr. Huberman,
“The simplest way to think about dopamine is that when our dopamine levels are elevated, we tend to focus our attention on outward goals — the things we want — and we feel motivated to pursue them.”
Ever since learning about dopamine, I’ve been in love with it, more so as a philosophical concept than a scientific compound. In other words, I love the idea of dopamine and what it does, but couldn’t tell you how it’s made or anything about its chemical structure or where it comes from.
To me, dopamine is a sacred and finite resource that we can leverage in our favor to stay motivated in our physical training, as well as in every facet of our lives.
This is where the ‘dopamine wave pool’ comes in. I’ll try to explain it in layman’s terms as best I can. Bear with me, and if you get confused I defer to the Huberman Lab Podcast, or if you like reading, Dr. Anna Lembke’s book “Dopamine Nation” is one of the best books I read in 2022 and a crazy-good masterclass on all things dopamine.
Most people think dopamine increases exponentially, taking us further and further into pleasure and away from pain. Basically, if you consider that pleasure and pain are the opposite ends of the same spectrum, then people think the more dopamine I get, the more my baseline levels of dopamine will increase and move my baseline away from pain, right?
The truth is, dopamine actually functions like a wave pool. If pleasure is the peak and pain is the trough, then that means the higher the peak of the wave the lower the trough.
But pleasure and pain are relative. Higher highs equal lower lows. And that means that just because someone has access to more resources that create dopamine, doesn’t mean they are exempt from the pain that comes with it.
So what does this all have to do with working out consistently? Well, in my case, after learning about the wonderful concept of dopamine, I realized why I was struggling so hard to find the energy and the drive to hit the gym.
We live in a world absolutely replete with free and very unhealthy forms of dopamine. What do I mean by free? Well, we’ve grown so accustomed to getting dopamine without needing to work for it at all. It’s no wonder we are so turned off by the idea of getting dopamine from an hour-long gym session.
Think about it. Every time we turn on the TV, that’s free dopamine. Every time we pick up our phone to read a text, that’s free dopamine. Every time we see something entertaining on Instagram, that’s free dopamine. If free dopamine is like junk food, then Tiktok is the Double-Whopper-Jr of dopamine.
Free dopamine is everywhere. We are constantly raising our dopamine peaks higher and higher until the wave comes crashing down and we find ourselves at the bottom of a trough. Then suddenly, going to the gym becomes an insurmountable mountain of a task. Your ambitions to go to the gym are competing with highly addictive, far more rewarding activities like scrolling Instagram or binging YouTube videos.
When I started paying attention to where I was getting my dopamine from, I started managing my motivation a lot better. I’ve already written a lot about my relationship to social media and I’m not saying that using social media is necessarily bad or that watching TV is wrong. I’m not some kind of luddite. But when it comes to dopamine, we need to be disciplined and cognizant, especially when it’s so easy to get ahold of.
Having said that, whenever I go on social media or do any sort of high-dopamine digital activity, I always noticed a sharp drop in mood immediately after. This is me flying from the peak down to the trough. On the other hand, whenever I do something mildly painful, like go for a run, take a cold shower, or intensely physical activity, I feel the opposite effect: a sharp and steep rise in mood.
If we spend too much time at the artificial dopamine peak–caused by social media, TV, or even drugs–then we will be forced down into an equal and opposite trough. But if we spend time deliberately in the trough, like running, exercising, or doing things that scare us, then we will be forced up into an equal and opposite peak. This is why that post-workout exhaustion can feel so damn good.
The key is to live somewhere in the middle of the dopamine spectrum. I can’t let myself get too high on the dopamine wave or too low. And when I do get high so-to-speak, I have to try to make sure it’s something that I had to work for. When I work for the dopamine reward I am training my brain to understand that there is a process required for reward.
Additionally, having a goal in mind is helpful, but if I start to fixate on the achievement of the goal, then I’m bound to fall into an unhealthy cycle. What I mean is that if I set a goal for myself, obsess over the outcome, and then subsequently achieve it, then I am going to experience the same sharp rise and painful fall in dopamine.
As Dr. Huberman often says, we will feel much stronger and more sustainable motivation “if we learn to associate the dopamine reward with effort itself.” In other words, we need to fall in love with the process of achieving our goal, not the actual achievement.
When we start to love the process, we get our dopamine hits somewhere in the middle of pain and pleasure. And we start to slowly nudge our baseline dopamine upwards.
In my case, I stopped fixating on an end goal, like running a half-marathon or climbing an outdoor V7 boulder and started rewarding myself for each step of the process of achieving those goals. That’s when I really started to feel generally better about everything in my life and feel way more motivated to get up, get out, and get after it the next day.
Working out consistently isn’t just about waking up early, forcing yourself out of bed, and dragging yourself to the gym when you are mentally exhausted and don’t want to do anything, much less workout. I mean, sometimes it is, but that just-do-it mentality is not sustainable long-term. If we pay attention to our daily habits and how they affect our minds, then we can leverage dopamine to work in our favor. Being selective about dopamine intake is the first step toward building consistency and deep sustainable motivation in any area of our lives.
Great article! I particularly appreciated your insights on the role of dopamine in motivation. It's fascinating to learn about the dopamine wave pool and how it influences our focus and attention towards our goals. Your personal experience of transitioning from being a highly structured athlete to finding motivation on your own really resonated with me. Your journey towards a consistent training routine and discovering new interests, like climbing, is an inspiration to those of us who may struggle with maintaining motivation outside of organized sports. Thank you for sharing this valuable information and I look forward to reading more of your posts.
Great read. The constant dopamine rush from TV, social media, etc... can be quite exhausting. Finding other forms of entertainment or activities has been beneficial to finding happiness in my life. That last paragraph was awesome too. I completely agree with how "... that just-do-it mentality is not sustainable long-term." Brute forcing life isn't sustainable.