Mental Mastery: Hedonism

“The vast majority of us are slaves to our minds. Most don’t even make the first effort when it comes to mastering their thought process because it’s a never-ending chore and impossible to get right every time.”

- David Goggins

Introduction:

Recently, I’ve been wondering: what’s the single most common factor among the world’s top achievers? They all have high-stress tolerance and the tenacity to persevere through difficult times. They set incredibly high standards for themselves & had obsessive work ethics that allowed them to meet those standards. They made sacrifices that the average person would’ve chosen not to make. But what underlying principle allowed them to move with such focus & discipline? 

After researching multiple world-class athletes & entrepreneurs, I was able to draw closure. It was Mental Mastery. Mental Mastery is the ability to remain in a state of focus without allowing external distractions to invade your psyche. Through consistent meditation practices & more dramatic methods like creating alter-egos, these individuals were able to master their minds. This allowed them to propel forward at a rate significantly higher than the average member of society, who constantly remained distracted & diluted in a state of endless consumption.

The modern age war is against Hedonism. 

The Vicious Cycle:

From what I’ve seen, the average human being sleeps late, works an unfulfilling job, eats a diet that primarily consists of junk food, has toxic relationships, & spends a large quantity of their time engaging in meaningless consumption. 

The rest of the cycle stems from consuming unhygienic content. Change your inputs, change your life.

On average, individuals across the globe spend around 3-5 hours on TV daily. That’s around 1,500 hours per year, which, based on the average life span (78 years), means that you’d be spending around 15 years of your life watching TV.

 Mind you, that’s excluding phone & social media usage. You can guess that the numbers would easily double if we took those two things into consideration. To be clear, we’re talking about spending decades of your life on things that don’t yield anything positive. If this is the hedonistic lifestyle you want to live, then there’s no issue—more power to you. You know what to change if you seek a more fulfilling life. 

Just imagine how much talent & dreams have been squandered by dopamine addiction. 

Dopamine Addiction: 

“We must all suffer from one of two pains: The pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is that discipline weighs ounces & regret weighs tons.”

- Jim Rohn

Thanks to neuroplasticity, our minds can adapt to stimuli by increasing tolerance. This is our greatest gift, but most don’t know how to use it. In the case of dopamine addiction, it means that the brain adapts & becomes less responsive to the dopamine-inducing stimulus it’s presented with. To get the same feeling you used to get, you’d have to increase the stimulation. This is why we become so addicted to outlets like social media, drugs, gambling, etc. 

Fundamentally, addictions are simply a behavioral manifestation of obsession, commanded by the pursuit of dopamine. 

What if we could flip the script? There’s usually a negative connotation associated with dopamine. However, evolutionarily speaking, without dopamine, we’d be dead. For over 90% of human history, we’ve been hunter-gatherers. This was our first & most successful adaptation. The actions we took back then were based on survival & dopamine. If our ancestors didn’t feel a rush of dopamine that reinforced their decision to hunt prey, find resources, explore the world, & procreate- we would cease to exist.

In other words, the dopamine system is Mother Nature’s hardwired way of guiding us along the right path. Corporate agendas are manipulating our reward system & we’re allowing them to do so. 

Companies chase profit over ethics, so they exploit our psyche. Social Media giants have the ability to impact the thoughts & feelings of billions of people across the globe. This is significant, given that we live in an attention-based economy. The newsfeed algorithm uses a psychological principle called “Positive intermittent Reinforcement.” We don’t know when we’re going to get something & we don’t know if we’re going to get something, but that’s what keeps us hooked to scrolling—the novelty & suspense.

Here’s the harsh truth: 

The common denominator between a drug addict & a billionaire is obsession. If you’re not where you want to be in life, you’re likely obsessed with the wrong things. Obsession is not the issue. The thing you’re obsessed with is the issue. 

My Story:

I used to be addicted to doom-scrolling on social media. I would scroll for hours & hours on end, procrastinating my responsibilities in pursuit of something new. I didn’t even know what I was searching for, but the comfort from scrolling endlessly & laughing at petty jokes was unmatched. I could’ve learned a new skill or spent some time self-reflecting to improve the quality of my life, but those things took effort & sacrifice- two things I wasn’t familiar with at the time. Things got to the point where I would scroll on my phone, watch a movie on TV, and watch a show on my laptop simultaneously. I couldn’t focus to save my life & I had the attention span of a twat. As a teenager, this was not the position anyone would want to be in. I tried to quit over & over again, but I always kept going back. I felt like I had no hope. Luckily, I came across a David Goggins video just in time. LOL

All jokes aside, If I had continued down that path, my dreams & aspirations would’ve died. It wasn’t until I saw kids a few years older than me go off to college & get 9-5’s that I committed to making a change. My back was against the wall, but that’s precisely when my ego decided to kick in. I didn’t want to be like everyone else. Average. Allowing a little gadget to dictate my life. Pathetic. This perspective change was the key that led me down the road of mental development & mastery. 

At this time, the formula in my mind was simple:

If X = negative effect, then the opposite of X must equal a positive effect. 

What was the opposite of meaningless consumption & hedonism? Meaningful creation & deep work (distraction-free work). But more on that next week.

Closing:

This is a two-part series because there’s too much information for me to distill down into a single post. I wanted to address the problem first to give you some time for self-reflection. Next week, I’ll give you the exact principles I used to break free from dopamine addiction & hedonism.