The Brain That Works Against You

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00:04:00 The pleasure principle

00:14:18 Time Orientation

00:21:51 “Baseball’s Great Experiment: Your 2017 World Series Champs."

00:24:02 It’s Up to You

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• Another aspect of being unable to move past the present moment and plan for the future is how the neurotransmitter dopamine influences our actions. Humans abide by the pleasure principle; we seek pleasure and avoid pain whenever possible, even subconsciously. Acting self-disciplined very rarely brings you pleasure, and most of the time it actively brings some measure of pain or at least discomfort. That’s a problem. We must change the way we think about pleasure and pain, and who we want to benefit the most: in most cases, your future self.

• Time orientation is yet another problem with self-discipline. Some of us are present-oriented—this will not serve you well because you won’t be able to act in the best interests of future you. Others of us are future-oriented—we think about what we want in the future and work backward to create it. This perspective meshes much better with self-discipline. In the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, the diligent ant is future-oriented and survives the winter, while the hedonistic grasshopper is present-oriented and starves.

• In the end, despite all these obstacles, whether or not you have self-discipline is up to you. This is in a literal sense—the placebo effect has shown that however much you believe you have, that’s what you’ll have. This is empowering and freeing because it means there is nothing between you and what you want—besides you. It’s up to you. This is actually ultimate freedom, not restriction, as self-discipline is sometimes framed. Take it as a challenge to be overcome.

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