how to escape the chronic consumption cycle (right now)

8 steps to reclaim control of your mind

Hi.

Here’s the 8 steps.

We don’t waste time here.

If you’d rather watch/listen to them, you can check out the video podcast on YouTube or Spotify. Click here for YouTube. Or here for Spotify. See you there.

Alright.

Let’s do this.

8 steps to escape the dopamine hole (today, right now, in this moment.)

1. Embark on your hero’s journey.

The only way to actively replace your consumption habits is connect to a higher purpose or narrative.

If you give yourself an epic quest and identify as the hero of that quest, quick hit escapism simply won’t pack as much of a punch.

Start by embarking on the adventure of your lifetime.

2. Give up.

Whoah. That was way too much pressure.

Let’s get back to the drawing board. Going from 0 to 100 is clearly unsustainable and not the best way to climb out of a dopamine hole. Remember, our willpower and energy resources are dangerously low right now.

In no way are we psychologically prepared to enter the unknown to conquer and slay dragons. We have to start with something a little closer to home. A little easier.

When you’re drowning in deep waters, you don’t magically snap into the body of 23-gold-medal-winning-Olympic-swimmer Michael Phelps. You have to cling to the first personal flotation device in front of you. Let’s take a look at that approach.

3. Start smaller than you want to.

Don’t revamp your whole life. Start by stacking a few easy-mode momentum generating tasks like:

• Sitting up

• Standing up

• Walking outside

• Starting the laundry

• Cleaning the kitchen

• Cooking scrambled eggs

• Drinking 32 oz of room temp water

• Walking outside again and standing still in the fresh air

• Switching over the laundry because 45 minutes of easy momentum has already passed

This is where it starts. This is the beginning of the hero’s journey. And even though it feels far from epic, you’d be surprised at how powerful this little snowball of decisive action can become if you continue pushing.

4. Attach significance to the little tasks.

There’s no reason you can’t romanticize these little tasks. Play your “Protagonist Playlist.” Let the cinematic overtures of Hans Zimmer ring out through the household as you reclaim autonomy over your life.

The little actions that move you forward are nothing short of heroic — as long as you give them the narrative significance they deserve.

The stakes of your personal life narrative can be observed and controlled by you, the protagonist. You’re not just the main character. You’re also in the front row of the audience. Clap for yourself. Enjoy the music. This is as immersive and epic as you allow it to be.

5. Get some rest.

After regaining a small sense of forward momentum, we have to sleep off the overstimulation. There’s too much noise in your brain.

Luckily, our brain is really good at digesting all of this. Just like our bodies can digest excess food when we overeat, our brains can do the same when we give ourselves silence.

Start by pouring out your thoughts into your journal. Just let them out. Purge them. You don’t have to write everything down, but see what comes out when you turn on the faucet.

Then — lights out. Get some sleep. Let your brain rest. We can pick this up tomorrow.

6. Reboot.

Ok. It’s tomorrow.

Time to continue the positive momentum.

Scale up your “little heroic tasks” by 1%. Send 1 email for work. Complete 1 homework assignment. Fold your laundry. Whatever it needs to be. Apply the universal principle of “progressive overload.” Make the task incrementally harder so that over time, your capacity gradually increases.

This is easy to understand in terms of strength training, but it can be used in every single domain of life.

Keep the show rolling.

7. Experiment with a creative hobby.

Now we get to find an effective replacement for the chronic consumption habits.

My personal favorite is a creative practice. This can be as simple as the journaling we experimented with last night — or something more involved like visual art, photography, pottery, underwater basket weaving, or coding.

In reality, this creativity can manifest as any single act where you use your human brain and energy to make something that wouldn’t have existed without you. It can take the form of physical work, ideas, or conversation. There are essentially no limits to this.

And what you’ll find is that as you get more immersed in this work, your desire to turn your brain off and escape from the present moment via cheap dopamine sources naturally decreases.

Addition over subtraction. Don’t zoom in on removing all your bad habits.

Just add more fun things to your daily life and the consumption voice will automatically fade into the backdrop as your precious attention is compelled by creativity. No guilt or shame required. Only excitement.

8. Continue // Fail // Restart // Repeat

Lastly, don’t expect perfection from yourself.

Everyone stumbles and falls along the way. As seductive as a “perfect streak” can feel in our brains — this idea that we’ll never, ever fall into a dopamine hole again because we have the perfect system — is a flawed one.

It’s the same black-and-white approach that brought us to this level of chronic consumption in the first place.

Instead, let’s accept that all 8 of these steps constitute a system.

Something we can rely on to get us back on track when we lose momentum in the future. We don’t need to have it perfect. We just need to build the necessary infrastructure to reroute us when we get lost.

Getting back on track is a skill set.

You’ll get better at it over time.

Today’s efforts simply represent another opportunity to practice the skill. It will be easier next time. And then the next time. And then the next time.

You’ve got this, my friend.

And here’s that YouTube video again in case you want me to say all of this to your face.

Love you.

Peace.

- josh