Change Your Brain Every Day - Here is How Humans Experience Feelings of Happiness

Episode Date: November 14, 2018

Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen continue their discussion on inspiration by giving you tons of simple and effective tips to increase that “dopamine drip,” leaving you feeling healthy and positive. You can find plenty more examples of these feel-good techniques in Dr. Amen’s brand new book, Feel Better Fast and Make it Last, out now at book retailers everywhere.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome back. We're so grateful that you are with us and gratitude drips dopamine. So we're talking about Feel Better Fast and Make It Last. You can go to feelbetterfast.com and get all sorts of free gifts when you pre-order or order the book out November 13th. We're so excited.

And we're in the middle of our BrainXL formula. So we've talked about optimizing your brain, your rational mind, your attachments. And we're now doing the I part of BrainXL with his inspiration. And your inspiration for us are the reviews that you write. You have another one? Yeah, this one's really short, but I really like it because it's just, it's so good. So even though I'm self-aware and psychologically minded that I figured this one out on my own, it felt good to hear you talk about it. I like that I have power over my mind and what I'm holding onto

because being a victim sucks. I love that. That is actually dripping dopamine by feeling empowered. So here's what I like is that this person sort of figured some of this out and has done the work, but they're aware enough to know what they listen to and what they do matters. So whether you know it or not, and you already have known it, you need to keep doing it. It's like, I already have a black belt. I still go to karate all the time because I, it's like, you need to stay in it. You need to keep doing it. If you want to think that way, move that way. And it's just something you do. You

know, if you're a warrior, you keep doing it. So I like that. It's good. All right. So we're talking about how do you keep your pleasure centers healthy? You stop activities that dump dopamine, whether it's cigarettes or excessive caffeine, scary movies, jumping out of airplanes, things that dull your pleasure centers that ultimately lead you to feel sad and dissatisfied. But rather, because dopamine is very important, you drip it. You find what are the small ways I can activate my pleasure centers. So let's see, I almost got to work and I was thinking about you and I called you. You called me. It was so sweet.

And I just told you you were my best friend. And when you do that, it makes me happy. I drip dopamine for us both. Yeah, and I'll now and then just text you out of the blue. You do? Yeah, it's fun. So we have a lot of dripping going on here. Interestingly, sunlight drips dopamine interesting vitamin d but i mean people who don't get enough

sunlight get depressed so that makes sense so i figured the next one out on my own when i was very young because i had a tendency to not to feel a little blue and like fuzzy and not feel that great and um i figured out man i became i think it almost dumped dopamine for me. Well, when you over exercise, it can dump dopamine. But it felt, I didn't feel normal without it. Exercise is one of those things I've never felt normal without exercise. It also boosts serotonin and dopamine at the same time. It's sort of like the perfect antidepressant. Yeah, it really is. Meditation and yoga does it. Massage therapy, Pleasurable music. Green tea. We talked about green tea. Oregano, of all things.

And magnesium. And if you haven't listened to our other podcasts with Barry Goldstein, they're so good. Because he has studied what kinds of music work. Not all music. Meditative music doesn't work for everybody. Different types of music work for different people so for me I've never understood why rock music makes me feel good and you don't like my kind of music and I

don't like a lot of the music you listen to from the 70s because of what it's attached to in your head right but on top of that like bass for some people is what makes them feel grounded and good and then for other people they like a more treble like more light airy kind of music it's fascinating I love listening to his studies on music.

So really good. Yeah. I like the A Star is Born. Oh, that's one we all agree on. If you haven't seen that movie, we're huge fans. And our dear friend was Bradley Cooper's coach. Which we did a podcast with. We did a podcast with him.

Roger Love. Yeah. Also trained Bradley Cooper for A Star is Born. So good. So it's better to drip dopamine to keep your pleasure centers healthy. Purpose drips dopamine. Volunteering drips dopamine. You took our niece yesterday to Disneyland.

You surprised her. Yeah. Took her out of school. You can't say that out loud. Disneyland you surprised her yeah took her out of school but today just doing something nice for someone you love prayer lasting love like ours you mentioned looking at a baby we have a brand new. I texted Caitlin yesterday, I need new Haven pictures. And she's like, the city? That's hilarious. Holding hands. Yes. Drips dopamine, as long as you hold the hand of somebody you really like. Teamwork. Gratitude. I mean, we're so grateful to the people that listen

traveling actually looking at your photo album of places that you've been like us when we went to Venice pumpkin seeds help drip dopamine that's weird they boost dopamine.

Oh, interesting. Fish oil. That was one I didn't know about. SAMe, the supplement, SAMe, tyrosine. So omega-3 fatty acids, SAMe, tyrosine, all available from BrainMD. So I just want you to be thinking about, am I dumping dopamine with my, am I like overdoing it with the pleasure things that wear out my pleasure centers that mean I'm more likely to do those things just so I don't feel depressed or am I getting into the habit of dripping

dopamine? 00,00,00,00 into the habit of dripping dopamine. Right. The next thing I wanna talk about, so we've talked about four ways to create lasting joy. Know what you want. Avoid things that dump dopamine. Do things that drip dopamine. And the fourth one is to focus on living each moment with passion and purpose. So does the food you are eating, the conversations you are having, your exercise, your activities, your friendships fit the reason you are on this planet?

Do they fit your purpose? So under rational mind, I like, is it true? I love these three word questions. And under inspiration, does it fit? Does it fit the goals? Well, and if you're doing something that you know doesn't, then I really like the one that you taught me, which is then what? If I do this, then what? Then what happens? Right. Right. If I dump dopamine, then what happens?

And one of my favorite all-time books, like, ever, is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. If you haven't read it, you should read it. And he's a psychiatrist during World War II who was a prisoner of the Nazi concentration camps. And he wrote about his experience on people who survived and people who didn't. And he said it basically came down to meaning and purpose. And he says if it's meaningful, I'll do it.

If it's not meaningful, I don't have time for it. We did an amazing podcast with, he's not only a dear friend of yours, but he was on Viktor Frankl's, was he on his board or whatever? Yes, and he helped distribute his materials worldwide, Dr. Jopzak. So Frankl says there's three ways to create meaning. One, purposeful work or being productive. So you and I do that all the time. Asking questions such as, why is the world a better place because I am here? One, purposeful work or being productive. So you and I do that all the time. Asking questions such as why is the world a better place because I am here or what do I contribute?

The second one we also do is love. Loving the people who nieces and your sisters. And then the third one is courage in the face of difficulty, shouldering whatever difficult fate we have and helping others shoulder theirs. You know, one thing that, and I actually learned this from our other friend, Tony Robbins. He had come here and he just taught me a couple of strategies at a time when I was really struggling. And I really like this because it's always easy to say to do these things, but the time that you actually need to do them, it's not always easy to do them if you're not in the right frame of mind.

So putting yourself, like how you look at, okay, I need to do a loving thing for this person, but I'm really busy and I have stuff to do and I don't have time. And so if you go down that road, that makes loving, doing a loving thing for that person really hard. And what I really like about some of the strategies I learned, um, through his work was it's how you, and we do the same thing in our own way, but how you, it's this loving thing that I'm doing for that person, how you say it, how you position it makes such a powerful difference. By doing this thing, my life is better too. And you like all, like if you just flip that really quickly, it just makes it easier. How you write it down, how you think

about doing that thing for that person makes a difference in the amount of stress in your life and whether you get that dopamine drip or not. So we've talked about knowing what you want, one page miracle, avoiding behaviors that dump dopamine, doing things that drip dopamine and focus on living each moment with passion and purpose. When we come back, we're going to talk about two more ways to create joy every day in your life. Stay with us. Use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way

and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month.