how porn decreases your motivation i'm dr trish lee let me tell you how today we're going to talk
about three primary aspects of how your motivation gets crushed by porn use what happens in your
brain while that's happening and how to get yourself not only motivated to leave porn behind
but more importantly motivated to get on purpose in your life so you can rock it out okay
number one let's talk about where does motivation come from motivation believe it or not comes from
your brain shock me shock me right yep so we think of motivation as this concept but motivation
actually has broken been broken down into three sub-processes that are happening in the brain and
these processes happen in a combination of neural activity and flurry between the frontal cortex and
the reward centers that are more in the midbrain but have been located over your ears but deeper in
so there's this activity in this back and forth between those areas that make it so that
first of all you become motivated and secondly you can maintain motivation stay motivated
towards your life goals so you can be on purpose now we know that porn use disrupts
these neural mechanisms and makes it so not only does it become difficult to leave the habit behind
it also becomes difficult to feel motivated about your life anymore so if there's one takeaway from
this video this is what i want you to know you haven't lost your spark for life you have
not lost your motivation it is being stolen from you on a daily or weekly hopefully not
hourly basis by pornography consumption it is stealing it from you it is in there still
and it is your time to recover that spark and that motivation and grab it teach it to get
moving in the right direction again and i'm going to show you how so this is what i want you to know
we know from the science that when you consume pornography frequently consistently and especially
with any level of intensity that your brain is being damaged those neural circuits are being
they're being fried they are going haywire they are not working the way that they're supposed to
so the communication between those areas is thrown off in the first place and secondly those two
areas frontal lobe and reward center are not working the way that they should so that impacts
your feelings of motivation and it goes back to that dopamine flood that you are giving your
brain in effect you are numbing your brain out so much that it no longer wants to get going in your
life to achieve anything for yourself anymore in terms of your purpose in your work and your
relationships in your hobbies so what happens is when you go back to the screen your brain is being
flooded with dopamine and it's making you feel seemingly good in the moment and i always call
dopamine the neurotransmitter of seeming pleasure well guess what it's actually the neurotransmitter
of motivation towards reward so in this video i would like you to think about dopamine as that
neurotransmitter that's motivating you to go back to the screen over and over and over so when we
change the way that your brain uses dopamine we can heal the reward center in the mid areas of
your brain we can reactivate the frontal lobe and get it moving again and firing on all four
cylinders get those synapses cranking so that you become motivated again okay so let's talk about
the three subprocess processes that are happening in the brain during this overall process of
maintaining motivation so the first process is that reward seeking behavior now this is more of
an automatic process in the brain the brain learns that certain activities are highly rewarding to it
and it becomes linked in terms of that motivation towards that activity through the neurotransmitter
dopamine so dopamine links where you're getting the pleasure to the need to go back to it for in
the case of pornography to take the edge off and to get this dopamine flood but that first initial
more automatic behavior is reward seeking behavior where your brain learns certain activities give
me dopamine so i want to continue to go back there and that's more automatic now number two
is value based decision making and this is a sub process so after your brain learns i can go to
pornography for a reward i can have a beautiful dinner with my friends that gives me a reward
i can go do my favorite hobby of water skiing that gives me a big reward in my work i like to crunch
the numbers the most that gives me a reward not for this girl number crunching that's very low
on the dopamine producing list in terms of work what's high is making videos and helping people
heal themselves but it becomes dopamine rewarding and value-based decision making in terms of
motivation is the second sub process your brain learns where it gets the rewards but it will
start making decisions about where it's going to go what it's going to do to get those rewards
value-based decision making this takes more neural energy and you have to have some conscious control
over it we know that this primarily comes from the frontal lobe executive function think captain of
the ship if you remember back to the video i made about the captain versus the gorilla we want the
captain to be able to make value-based decisions use executive function skills be able to plan and
organize and be able to take small action steps that get small rewards while continuing to move
towards that larger reward and that larger goal in the end executive function so your brain is making
these decisions about the value when you watch pornography and you continue to go back into the
screen your brain learns that there's high value in the screen and there's little or no value
in the work you do and the people you hang out with in the hobbies you have so if you wonder why
aren't i motivated anymore to do the things that i used to like to do why don't i want to do my work
why don't i want to hang out with my peeps why don't i want to go play soccer like i used to
it's because your brain has been taught to make a value-based decision that there's more dopamine
and reward in the screen than there is in your life and so if you just think about it this way
this is the amount of dopamine in the screen this is the amount of dopamine in your life
value-based decision that's where your brain's taking you so you have to re-teach your brain
that albeit there's more dopamine in the screen motivation towards pleasure seeking it's seeming
pleasure because it's going to motivate you to keep going back for pleasure seeking that's
not what you want in life that's not a life of purpose that's a life of constant hyper
stimulation seeking that ends up damaging your brain and in the end making it so that you have
brain fog and you can't think you can't study you can't do your work you're at risk of being fired
you end up ruining your relationships we know that divorce is double breakups are double we know that
you might suffer from erectile dysfunction which is not a thing that i want for you you
will struggle with performance anxiety when you're actually with another human being and
you should be enjoying that experience maximally and not worrying about the performance perception
or having low self-esteem you deserve to be able to thrive so you have to teach your brain
that the value is in those experiences not in the screen the value is in the work that
you love and you contribute to the world and you have fun doing it the value is in being with your
honey and having that be a beautiful experience that's shared and erotic and fun and engaging
and pleasurable and happiness and joy and bonding and connection you teach your brain
that's where the value is you teach your brain that in your hobbies like stand up
paddle boarding where i'm going next is where the value is teach your brain value decision making
i'm not valuing that anymore because it's frying my brain i'm going to value my life irl
in real life that's where the value is okay so the third sub process is
goal directed wait for the word and this is from a scientific study goal directed control
control your brain or it will control you so the third sub process is goal directed control being
able to exercise some control over your neural processes your brain processes to maintain the
motivation back towards the things that give your brain value based upon that value decision making
process and the reward seeking in the first place so you have to decide where the rewards are at on
a moment by moment basis you have to remind your brain through this value decision making process
that's what i value that's where the value is and then you have to control your brain to keep going
back to where the value is for the rewards and when you do that you are able to take those baby
steps towards a larger goal by breaking it down into a smaller goal okay so number three how do
we do that in a practical sense how do we change the way your brain is working so we can get you
motivated back into life and maintain motivation there especially to stay away from the screen
but to create a life that you love you need to create a lifestyle the infrastructure of
a lifestyle and i'm going to talk about that in an upcoming video create the infrastructure for a
lifestyle that you love that gives you dopamine and that has value for you you personally not
society you personally what makes you tick and then create that in your life that is how you
can stay motivated so i like to take concepts and make them into action steps your brain tip for
the day is figure out what that lifestyle would look for you what would it involve in your work
who are the people you want in your life are you really getting value from the relationships
if you're not it's time to have the difficult discussions with those people and get the value
going again in terms of your sex life in terms of your intimacy in terms of your friendships
you have to grow up the emotional maturity to be able to move towards those people
to get it back on track for value because if you don't the screen's going to stay
more powerful in terms of the value and pull you back in so then in your hobbies find the things
that you like to do and start doing them but here's what i'm going to tell you about motivation
is that you have to maintain control to be able to stay motivated and what that looks like to me is
that it is born out of discipline it is born out of commitment and resilience and it is born out of
vigilance for the lifestyle that you want so in the end you're not vigilant against
pornography use you're vigilant and disciplined in continuing to create the lifestyle that you want
across your entire life it becomes very important and i know how easy it is to get sucked back in to
the stressors of life or the overwhelm or the ups and the downs so being vigilant and making sure
that you can stay the course in the life that you want that is how you will stay
motivated in the long run but in the short run you have to figure out what that life is
and secondly create some discipline and commitment and vigilance towards establishing it in the first
place and protecting it so that you can have it for the rest of your life and when you do that
there will be no need for you to go back into the screen because the values just diminished
and gone away okay i hope that helps you out you can get motivated in your life
your motivation is being sucked out of you by pornography i want you to know that it is
shown by science and if you want to get motivated again you can do it make some changes do what i'm
encouraging you to do and you'll get motivated and you'll be back moving towards your full potential
towards thriving let's do this thing uh if you are looking for help on that journey reach out to
me dr tricially.com i'd love to help and as always remember control your brain or it will control you