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So, guys, I know a lot of you guys reading this article are feeling incredibly stuck in your lives. You have these incredible goals, dreams, and aspirations, but you just don’t know how to accomplish them. If that is you, I need you to pay attention to the rest of this article because, in today’s article, I’m going to be talking about how you can reclaim your life using the dopamine detox
Now, real quick, let me tell you the first place that you probably suck, because most people think that they lack energy or knowledge, aka know-how, and that is why they are not where they want to be in life. Well, that’s wrong. The main thing that you are lacking in focus is that when you are a person who has a lot of focus and can focus on a particular thing, then it’s very easy to get the know-how and the tangible knowledge needed to accomplish your goals, and second, when you’re focusing on a particular task and you can do that for a long time, you start to enjoy it.
Now, how do you cultivate focus? This is really where the dopamine detox comes in because, let me tell you the state of normal people right now: most people are at their desks and have three different devices: an iPad, an iPhone, and a computer. Each one has bell notifications going on while that’s running on a separate tab; they’ve got their Twitter feed running 24/7. And for me, one of the funniest things is seeing people with multi-display setups. For me, one of the ways that I was able to get to six (6) figures after tax by the age of 21 was through focus, and one of the ways I was able to focus was that I have always had one monitor in front of me, I’ve always had one screen in front of me, and I’ve always made sure that I just have the window that I need open and any windows that I’m not using are closed and can get reopened later.
Another example is that even when I was 14, 15, and 16, I was really getting into the world of self-help, starting to read a book a week, and just working on myself and my capacity to focus and work. I was notorious for always just having my phone on airplane mode most of the day, and then when I needed to use it, I would just take it off airplane mode. The reason I do this sort of stuff is because I want to make sure no one can rob me of my focus.
So, as I said, if you’re at a point in life where you have these goals, but it feels like when you sit at your desk, you just can’t get to them, like, it’s just too hard, you’re just constantly distracting yourself, that means that you need to work on your focus, and to work on your focus, you need to reset your dopamine levels. Now, I'm sure you guys have seen plenty of articles online and on YouTube about dopamine detoxes, what they are, and what they can do for you. how it can help you achieve your goals.
Well, in today’s article, what I'm going to do is give you a framework for the next seven days of what to do to reset your dopamine levels tangibly. what it's going to feel like, what you’re actually going to like, and how your experience of the world is going to be different seven days from now, and then most importantly, how to integrate that because here’s what happens a lot of times: people will do dopamine detoxes and then from there, one bad habit will creep back in. like, for example, their phone is the first thing they check in the morning and they’ll creep back in for two or three days and then they’re like, Ah, when I’m doing work, I might as well just have a podcast or YouTube music playing in the background and these bad habits start to sneak back in.
So I'm going to show you exactly after the 7-day dopamine detox how to integrate this back into your life. Now everyone might have varying opinions on how long you should do a dopamine detox. For me personally, I think seven days is a good benchmark, and there are four key pillars to resetting your dopamine levels.
Now you need to understand that a detox in itself insinuates that it’s going to be a short burst, so dopamine detox for me, as I said, is not a lifestyle; it is a hard reset that you press to reset your levels. That way, you increase your capacity to focus, to be disciplined, and increase your output levels. For the next seven days, starting tomorrow, here are the four things I need you to do in order to practice a dopamine detox.
Before I say this, I said that some people have radically different approaches to it. These are just the four that I would recommend over the space of the last ten years, ever since I was 14, so from 14 to 24, I practiced different dopamine detoxes at different points of the year.
1. One hour of screen time on your phone
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So the first one is one hour a day of screen time on your phone. If you open up your iPhone right now, I’m sure there must be a version of this on Android where you can add your screen time as a widget onto your home screen, so allow yourself one hour of off-screen time every day for the next seven days.
Now if your job involves your mobile phone for some reason, which, by the way, most of the time it doesn't, you can even, if you need to use WhatsApp for your work, just use WhatsApp desktop. Of course, you’re still technically using WhatsApp, but it’s just a lot more focused and purposeful than just being on your phone.
So, as I said, one hour a day of mobile screen time is used for the next seven days, and even if you need to use it for your work, just find some sort of workaround. As I said, this isn’t something that you do for the rest of your life; this is just something to reset the button, so that was pillar number one of the seven-day dopamine detox reset, which is one hour a day of mobile screen time.
2. No YouTube
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Now pillar number two of the seven-day reset is no YouTube, none whatsoever. I don’t care if you think it is productive, and from what I’ve seen, I’d say 90 percent of people who watch self-help YouTube watch it, are self-help junkies, and just don’t apply it. and what it is to them is like productive procrastination. You’re still procrastinating; you’re still not doing or accomplishing anything, but in your mind, you’re thinking I’m watching a video on how to focus better while at the same time frying your focus.
It's quite ironic, so no matter how much value you think you get out of YouTube, and by the way, I will say YouTube is a very valuable place if used correctly. I’ll give you a perfect example of how to use it. I’ll give you something tangible right here if you’re using Chrome, you can use a Chrome plug-in, and there are many of them out there that hide YouTube recommendations That way, when you go into YouTube, the only thing that will show up is your subscriptions, and it doesn’t offer any recommendations on the side so that way you can be very very specific about who you subscribe to and what content you take in. So that way, you are using YouTube productively rather than just looking for the next hit of self-help junkie articles. So, as I said, that is a tangible tip that you can take after the seven days.
3. No adult content
photo on thririshsun
Now the third pillar of the seven-day reset is, I’m not sure if I can say the word, so we’ll say adult films, so no sort of adult films, no 18+ stuff, you guys know what I’m talking about, none whatsoever. Now that I know that some of you guys are so addicted, you literally cannot self-pleasure yourself again, lol. What is he saying for seven days? haha, so that’s why I thought I would rather give you guys a fair chance to see this thing through than just be super strict Maybe only ten percent of you guys accomplish this, so you can do whatever you want down there, however, many times a day, multiple times a day. but I recommend cutting it down as much as humanly possible. If you can do seven days without it, then perfect, but as I said, I know some of you guys can’t. But the big thing here is just no imagery, and by the way, that also means none of these Instagram baddies that all of you guys follow. Haha, hard, I know, right? You're a little sad. I don’t know why you guys follow all these Instagram models.
I don’t get it unless you know this person in real life and have a chance of sparking some sort of connection with them. unless this is someone with whom you have a chance. As for me, just unfollow all these Instagram models that you follow and stuff like that, and I’ll be honest with that. I don’t need to derive pleasure from something digital and not from an actual physical connection, so once again, just a little side note, but it all ties into the fact that for the next seven days, there will be no adult films. If you do have to self-pleasure, use your imagination the old-school way.
4. 10 Minutes a Day of Meditation
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right, so moving on to pillar number four of the seven-day reset is 10 minutes a day of meditation. If you can do more, if you can do 20 to 30 minutes an hour, it's fine. I’ll be honest. I know a lot of you guys here have lots and lots of time a day, so you might as well do 30 minutes. That’s incredible, but, as I said earlier, I want to set you guys up to win and accomplish all of these things.
So that is the fourth pillar: just 10 minutes per day of meditation, ladies and gentlemen. When you accomplish this for the next seven days, what it is doing is just hitting the reset button. Things that before you found no enjoyment from just looking at the view or just walking down the street with no music playing, just literally the sound of the street, you’re going to derive pleasure from things like that. When you didn’t before, even just the 10 minutes a day of meditation the first day, it’s going to be super hard, but by day seven, you’re going to be like, I actually kind of enjoy this thing. So the amount of stimulation you need to get any pleasure from something is going to reset; that’s what the dopamine detox does.
So that means that when you sit at your computer and read the things that you found difficult, or, let’s say, when you pick up your Kindle or a book to read the things that you found difficult before, now you’re like, Oh wow, I’m enjoying this. So that’s what I meant when I said that most people get it wrong when they think that they need more energy or knowledge. That is not true; instead, what you need is more focus, and to have more focus in your life, you need to be able to enjoy and derive enjoyment from just the simple things you do.
so this is truly the reset that you need to achieve your goals now As I said, this is just seven days You might be wondering what I do after this Well, this is where something called monk mode comes in. Now, monk mode is something that I started using about two years ago. I think there have been some books and stuff written about it, or I think it’s been like a general thing that’s been floating around for I don’t know how long, but around two years ago I started sharing my month mode protocol, and just within my sort of cult following it became a thing, so what you want to do after these seven days is you want to go from dopamine detox to monk mode, so monk mode is really more of a way of life now monk mode is something that I do six months of the year and three months a year.
I want you to leave a comment down below and share what your experience has been so far And just remember, focus is the thing that you need to be optimizing for The more that you can have a particular focus on the task that you are trying to accomplish, the more that you’re going to win in life So on that note, I’ll catch you guys in the next article