“The simple act of smiling makes you feel better because it causes dopamine to be released, the brain’s pleasure juice.”
Source: The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion
“There is now good scientific evidence that expressing appreciation for what you have has a remarkable effect on your self-judgment system and your overall well-being, most likely because it confronts negativity and increases the production of dopamine—your brain’s pleasure juice. Scientific studies have also revealed that the simple act of looking for things to be grateful for is as important as finding them.”
Source: The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion
“Concentrating on the little things hidden in your daily routines and actions that you might otherwise take for granted. These positive droplets create a micro-squirt of dopamine (pleasure) and serotonin (happiness).”
Source: The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion
“One of its primary roles is in motivation and reward. You probably know of dopamine because of its reputation as the brain’s pleasure juice. When you feel pleasure, you are getting squirted on by dopamine.”
Source: The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion
“Reward. The feeling you get once you’ve done or are doing the behavior. For new behaviors that aren’t intrinsically pleasurable, you might need to pair a separate reward (something that does provide a dopamine squirt) with the new behavior so you still feel good after completion.”
Source: The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion
“A great way to open the dopamine floodgate is to watch and listen to inspirational stuff about the activity you are prone to quitting at. Unlike meme-turds, videos are a more immersive sensory experience, and virtually all capitalize on the dopaminergic power of music. Music has the ability to not just arouse pleasurable feelings but also increase craving or wanting—two critical elements of sports motivation.”
Source: The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion
“The neurological beauty of segmentation is that once the segment is completed, you get a mini-squirt of dopamine (pleasure juice) that resets the coping clock. Use this principle to your advantage by exploiting how your brain reacts to completion and accomplishment.”
Source: The Brave Athlete: Calm the F*ck Down and Rise to the Occasion
“French parents don’t just think these separations are good for parents. They also genuinely believe that they’re important for kids, who must understand that their parents have their own pleasures. “Thus the child understands that he is not the center of the world, and this is essential for his development,” the French parenting guide Votre Enfant explains.”
Source: Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting
“Letting children “live their lives” isn’t about releasing them into the wild or abandoning them (though French school trips do feel a bit like that to me). It’s about acknowledging that children aren’t repositories for their parents’ ambitions or projects for their parents to perfect. They are separate and capable, with their own tastes, pleasures, and experiences of the world. They even have their own secrets.”
Source: Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting
“The French don’t valorize a pregnant woman’s anxiety. Instead, in the word cloud of French pregnancy, terms like serenity, balance, and Zen keep popping up. Mothers-to-be are supposed to signal their competence by showing how calm they are and by making it clear that they still experience pleasure. This small shift in emphasis makes a big difference.”
Source: Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting