When you feel good, your brain is releasing dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, or endorphin. You want more of these great feelings because your brain is designed to seek them. But you don’t always get it, and that’s natural too. Our brain doesn’t release a happy chemical until it sees a way to meet a survival need, like food, safety, and social support. And then, you only get a quick spurt before your brain returns to neutral so it’s ready for the next “survival opportunity.” This is why you feel up and down. It’s nature’s operating system!
Many people have habits that are bad for survival. How does that happen if our brain rewards behaviors that are good for survival? When a happy-chemical spurt is over, you feel like something is wrong. You look for a reliable way to feel good again, fast. Anything that worked before built a pathway in your brain. We all have such happy habits: from snacking to exercising, whether it’s spending or saving, partying or solitude, arguing or making up. But none of these habits can make you happy all the time because your brain doesn’t work that way. Every happy-chemical spurt is quickly metabolized and you have to do more to get more. You can end up overdoing a happy habit to the point of unhappiness.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could turn on your happy chemicals in new ways? Wouldn’t it be nice to feel good while doing things that are actually good for you? You can, when you understand your mammal brain!
Valeria Teles interviews Dr. Loretta Breuning.
She is Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute and author of Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain your brain to boost your serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin levels. As Professor of Management at California State University, and as a parent, she lost faith in prevailing views of human motivation. Her search for answers led to studies of the brain chemistry we share with earlier mammals. Suddenly, everything made sense and she began creating resources to help people manage their inner mammal. The Inner Mammal Institute offers videos, books, podcasts, multimedia, and a training program, to help you make peace with your inner mammal. Dr. Breuning's latest book is Tame Your Anxiety: Rewiring Your Brain for Happiness.
