How to dive into the dreams it destroys your motivation and how to stop it

Why do we like to dream and make plans

Probably everyone sometimes likes to dream: imagine how fulfilled any desire to think about vacation, to visualize a victory in the competition.

At this point you just imagine the achievement, but do not make it actually. Why, then, without a real basis, the thought of victory and the rewards are so pleasant and attractive? All the matter in the neurotransmitters dopamine, which supports our motivation.

For a long time, dopamine, associated with pleasure, but long-term studiesDopamine Not About Pleasure. John Salamon proven that this hormone is responsible not so much for pleasure as for his expectation.

From the level of dopamine depends motivation for action. For example, mice with low levels of dopamine always chose a shorter route to the production, even if passing through some trials promised a much greater reward.

In humans, the relationship level of dopamine and desire to do something clearly visible at depression. Decreased levels of dopamine does not allow people to look forward to the pleasure of future events, so they do not want anything.

Due to the low level of dopamine people and animals lose the desire to do something for a reward, so dopamine longer responsible for the motivation and the analysis of costs and benefits, than the pleasure itself.

John Salamon (John Salamone), a researcher from the University of Connecticut

Pleasant images and dreams increases the production of dopamine, which brings the pleasure of anticipation and pushes us to achieve the desired. Ideally, the circuit should be: anticipation → → execution preparation.

But the habit of dreaming and build unrealistic plans exclude from this scheme, the last two points. Making and Receiving replaced by constant scrolling head pleasant thoughts about non-existent victories. As a result, it becomes enough to dopamine release of some fun.

Unfortunately, our body is configured in such a way that we can not get long pleasure from the same and still maintain the same intensity of sensations. Empty dreams, like any other enjoyable activities can develop into addiction.

How is the relationship

When a dependent person sees the stimulus associated with its dependence in the striatum of the brain dopamine level risesDopamine in drug abuse and addiction: results of imaging studies and treatment implications. That makes him buy drugs, eat cake, smoke a cigarette.

However, the constant stimulation of the reward systems with high doses of dopamine causes the brain to adapt to the increased levels of the neurotransmitter.

In dependent humans reduces the amount of dopamine D2 receptors and produces less dopamine in the striatum. Moreover, the reduction in the number of D2 receptors in the striatum of the brain associated with reduced activity of the orbitofrontal cortex - a region associated with motivation and compulsive behavior, as well as the cingulate gyrus, responsible for behavior the control. This leads to the loss of control over their behavior, which is typical for addicts.

Thus, the constant production of large doses of dopamine have a negative effect on your receptors and job promotion system as a whole. Every day, artificially stimulating yourself with pleasant dreams, you get a large amount of undeserved dopamine, which adversely affects to have fun on your ability on what is happening in reality.

As a function of dreams prevent you achieve goals

When you get pleasure only from a dream or a plan, you cease to feel the need to reaching. What is the meaning to achieve something, if you have already received your reward?

The only thing that you are doing - scroll pleasant thoughts in your head and get your dose of dopamine.

It is harmful even in the concept of "thinking determines being." After all, for the umpteenth time introducing some unrealistic scenarios, and doing nothing to bring them, you're missing the real opportunities, which no longer seem so attractive.

How to get rid of dependence

To return to the joy of the reality and stop living in dreams and fantasies, we must wean ourselves from the experience of non-existent victories.

One good way to learn to see the good in reality - meditation. Less than five minutes a day to sharpen your perception of reality and you start to notice the pleasant things that have seemed commonplace.

In addition, meditation teaches you to leave the intricate mazes of their fantasies and concentrate on the present moment - on what is happening in your mind, in the body around.

After retiring from his fantasies, you will see that in the outside world a lot of pleasant and stopping mental stimulation, you will save up their dopamine receptors and can achieve much more in life.