Dopamine is our reward chemical – the one that makes you feel good, get up in the morning, and achieve your goals. But it can be hard to get your brain producing enough dopamine if you’re not looking after yourself and putting your body and mind in its best state. Here are three things you can do to manage your dopamine levels and ensure you can have better motivation and focus.
Step Away from Your Smartphone
The smartphone is one of the greatest inventions of the 21st century – it allows us to connect, interact, and learn on the go. However, it’s also easy to let a smartphone take over your life. We all know how easy it is to get distracted by a notification or tempting video, or that moment you realize your five-minute social media break turned into a two hour one.
Your phone is an amazing way to get dopamine. Whether it’s the reinforcement from messages, game rewards, or recognition on social media, there are so many ways we are rewarded through our phones. But the reward is constant; in fact, the average person checks their phone 58 times a day. This desensitizes our brain – we need more to feel the same effect, and we need our phones more. It can even become quite addictive, but more importantly, we don’t feel the same dopamine doing other things in our life. Stepping away from your phone can help refresh your brain and help you feel more motivated and focused by the real world rather than the online world.
Get Enough Sleep
Sleep is one of the best things you can do for your brain and your body – it plays a vital role in repairing any stress or wear and tear on the body, as well as renewing and regenerating to help keep you feeling fresh and ready. This is especially important to refresh the neural connections and pathways – including the dopamine pathway – and keep them functioning and healthy. Sleep generally makes you feel a lot more energized and ready to take on the day, as well as help encourage healthy dopamine regulation.
This means making sure you get at least eight hours of sleep at night. It’s also important to try and fit this around your circadian rhythm – that is, the natural sleep cycle for humans. Keeping a regular routine will help you wake up feeling fresh and ready, as your brain learns that this time is specifically for being productive.
Consider Supplements
It’s true that changing your lifestyle is important for improving dopamine production. But it can also require a lot of effort and work, as well as time that you may not have. For example, sleep may be hard to control if you do shift work, or you may require phone access in your job. If you’re running low on dopamine, it can also be hard to find the motivation to make these changes.
This is where taking supplements can come in handy. If you use a natural supplement, this can encourage your body to help along its dopamine production. This in turn can give you a lot more energy, allowing you to feel motivated and focused. It can also help you regulate your dopamine production; by taking it at a similar time each day (like sleeping at the same times each day), your body can learn to work around these times and help you feel a much steadier flow of energy.
Running low on dopamine is chaotic for your energy levels, but by monitoring your screen time, getting regular sleep, and taking dopamine-focused supplements, you can help improve your motivation and focus and live the life you want to live.
