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Game Apps are Easy. Studying is Hard. Want to make the Hard thing seem easier again? How about going on a MEDIA FAST in the near future?
I'm sure most of you can sit at your work your smartphone, tablet or laptop for two or three hours on social media, playing games, surfing the net or watching videos.
But you would have a hard time spending that much time reading a textbook, a non-fiction book or its pdf or ebook equivalent.
The first is entertainment and the time dilates...those three hours pass in what seems to be 10 or 20 minutes. The opposite is true with the non-fiction book..20 minutes seems like 3 hours.
Why is that?
In spite of the fact that studying, building a business, doing the yard, cleaning a closet or and attic will greatly benefit you in the long run, you still MUCHLY prefer to play the video games, watch TV while eating junk food, and surfing social media.
One is easy. The other, hard. Yet some people have no problem doing the hard; they even actually enjoy doing the hard things.
Many successful, personally-developed people of astounding greatness are up at 4am every morning, doing their first tweet-storm of the day, before anyone in the press even thinks about rolling out of bed. Their days are filled with meeting after meeting and they never go to bed before midnight.
They must really enjoy it because, who would want to work that many hours, taking on that much responsibility, in constant danger of a stray word or action that might blow up their entire career or empire... and that's when they're having a good day,... when they could be enjoying a multi-million or even a multi-billion dollar retirement...why would they do that if they didn't love their work?
So, here's the question. Is there a way to make difficult things seem easy? Or, easier? To make the hard things a bit more enjoyable?
Yes, there is...and that is to increase the level of the brain chemical Dopamine for the hard tasks. God knows, you don't need to increase it for the easy, entertaining stuff.
Dopamine is a brain chemical that scientists have associated with pleasure. But really, it is the brain chemical that gives us....desire....motivation. When you desire to do something, when you are motivated to do it, it's the dopamine that is actually responsible for that feeling.
You've probably heard about the experiments, where scientists inserted electrodes in the pleasure center of the brains of rats and put a button in their cages that triggered that electrode. The rats would push the button over and over until they fell over from exhaustion or the electricity burned out their pleasure center. The rats were actually stimulating a dopamine charge every time the current was applied.
Most people don't know about the opposite experiment...that's where the scientists blocked that dopamine pleasure fix in another group of rats, and the rats didn't feel motivated to eat, drink, have sex, or do anything but lay around in the cage. If they actually put food or water in their mouths, they would chew and swallow, but they would not get up to go over to the food and water dispensers just inches away.
Hmmm...seems almost like a government program or two that we've all heard of. I wonder if they read about the scientists' experiments with the rats?
So, dopamine is a brain drug that triggers desire or motivation. The take-away is that it IS a drug, a drug where you need higher and more frequent doses to give you the same kick.
How do you make the hard thing seem more interesting? Or, how do you get motivated to do the hard thing instead of fiddling around on social media?
The same way you get a life if you're on cocaine or alcohol.
You quit, you go through withdrawal, and then the hard things don't seem so hard.
How do you withdraw from video games, social media, TV?
First you pick a week, if you can't handle that, then try 3 days...or just a day....or just an hour....you gotta start somewhere, or some..when. You turn off your phone and park it in a drawer. You disconnect your TV from the AC socket so that is would take several minutes for it to reboot and come back on should you have a moment of weakness...USE that DELETE Button. Oh...and you don't use your computer, at all.
By the way, let your friends know what you are up to before you disconnect,...they might have watched an episode or two of BONES and the detectives might come knocking on your door to see if you're still alive. “Just doin' our jobs, ma'm.”
Then you go through your days without any of those things that YOU ARE ADDICTED TO.
You exercise, do yoga, take time to cook meals from scratch, converse...with other people face to face, if you dare. You get a real pen and a real notebook and you journal, you write down how your feeling, your experience with this MEDIA FAST that you're on. Any thoughts, ideas, or inspirations that come to you, you write 'em down.
Maybe imagine the perfect day in your future where you have had outrageous success or are your perfect weight and fitness, your perfect house, career, life, retirement if money was no object. Write some goals, a mission statement of your life. Meditate, pray, think about the 7 infinite qualities of God. Read a spiritual or personal development book...or the Bible if you dare.
Anyway, this will withdraw you from the dopamine and simple things, even hard things will be more desirable to do. And as a maintenance plan, some people do a MEDIA FAST one day a week....hmmm...that almost sounds like the SABBATH....but that could just be my imagination....running away with meeee.....
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