I’ve gotten really good at managing myself

Being in tune with my dopamine levels

Knowing what low dopamine feels like - it feels like tired and slow and moving through molasses and this itchy feeling to get more

Knowing what high dopamine feels like - it feels like energy and confidence and excitement and good

Knowing what serotonin feels like - it feels warm and fuzzy and loving and happy and content

Knowing that at this point, being tired isn’t a bad thing

Managing being tired - why am I tired? I need to rest. I need to not do as much. I need to not chase the dopamine highs.

Chasing dopamine feels like suffocating.

Allowing myself to rest. Allowing myself to be tired. Allowing myself to recover. Not putting pressure on myself to always have energy. Not trying to optimize energy.

Spending energy where it’s meaningfully spent. Not on worrying. On good work. On meaningful social interactions. On hobbies. Not on ambition. Not on scheming for some grand plans that never quite happen.

Allowing myself to be driven by positive energy.

Not being hard on myself when things get out of whack. Life is unpredictable and things always get out of whack one way or another. It’s not a matter of avoiding it. It’s about keeping cool and not putting pressure on myself to not be out of whack. And being in tune with myself. I’ll rest. Give me a few days and I recover. It’s no problem.

At this point in my life I’m convinced perseverance isn’t a matter of forcing yourself to endure, white knuckling. It’s a matter of managing yourself so you have the ability to keep going at things with positive energy, by maintaining cycles of effort reward and rest.

I’m also convinced that the vast majority of mental health issues can be solved with the above. Adding two small caveats.

1. People who either: snore, wake up at night, feel tired *a lot*, have a thick neck, or are men (maybe more likely if they have some combination of the above) should get tested for sleep apnea (!). This has been weighing on me. I know two people that I’m convinced have sleep apnea but they haven’t been treated. I’ve tried to convince one of them to get checked. I’ve been too shy to tell the other one.

2. Trauma, especially childhood trauma, especially repeated trauma, extended trauma, extreme trauma, can mess up your neural pathways. Waving my hands a bit and likely relying too much on intuition. But. These events can rewire your brain such that you’ll have a more active fight or flight mechanism, parasympathetic nervous system (did I get that right), more adrenaline more dopamine more anxiety more tired more depression. This can be combatted by rewiring your brain to get its serotonin back, in my case I took shrooms and got on Prozac. Because trauma suppresses serotonin and ups the adrenaline. Because it’s literally how our brains are supposed to work. In those situations it serves us to have adrenaline to keep fighting or stay alive or whatnot. But after the fact it really gets in the way of us enjoying life and being happy. Hence the need for serotonin.

3. COMT - some of us are genetically more prone to feeling neurotransmitters, so it’s easier to get out of whack. All of the above still holds. But the caveat here is that getting out of whack might look different for different people. In other words, some people can get out of whack more easily, ie it takes less trauma to develop the same maladaptive traits. Like I said, everything else still holds, this part merely controls the magnitude of the criteria for when trauma becomes a problem.

4. Lastly, I haven’t quite seen this in my personal experience, but I could imagine that some people never experience trauma, but they develop their dopamine pathways from habits alone, to a point where they end up with the same effect as if they’ve incurred trauma. I know some high achievers that may very well be in this category.