Neuroscientist: THIS Is How You Stay Motivated FOREVER | Andrew Huberman

- David stands for the ability to override limbic friction, to talk, to convince himself to get up. Top down mechanisms are the beauty of what it is to be a human being. - Speaker A thinks it can be helpful to take on a view of yourself that's living in anticipation of the future state. Speaker A thinks people should use it sparingly to recover from addiction.

We have what are called top down mechanisms. Top down mechanisms are the beauty of what it is to be a human being. Let's say you don't want to get out of bed in the morning. How do you override that fatigue? What you're doing is you're using top down control to say, oh, the fatigue. I feel I'm going to override that fatigue. One of the many important things that David stands for is the ability to override limbic friction. Limbic friction, it's like a booming voice throughout your brain and body. And the ability to override limbic friction can only be created one of two ways. The neural circuits for dopamine and reward and pursuit and motivation largely come from two, what we call parallel pathways. And the main one is the so called mesolimbic reward system. This. I throw out the names not because people need to know them, but if they want to look them up. This is a batch of neurons in the brain that release dopamine. When we are headed toward a milestone, when we can sense a win, we can sense a win. It's not contrary to popular belief. It's not that you get a lot of dopamine when you hit a jackpot. It's when you feel like you're on the threshold of a jackpot. Dopamine is increased by certain drugs. Cocaine, amphetamine, nicotine, by going into an ice bath, will increase dopamine 2.5 x almost as much as cocaine, but it's a very long lasting effect. So, you know, there are behaviors that put us on the threshold of a win and therefore increase dopamine. But we have what are called top down mechanisms. Top down mechanisms are the beauty of what it is to be a human being. The top down mechanisms I'm referring to are the prefrontal cortex, areas of the brain, real estate, that sit right behind the forehead. It subdivides into some regions, but it provides input onto areas of the brain that control things like stress and reward and other features that are what we call kind of vegetative, like the more reflexive, more limbic, if you will. Now, there's a certain friction. I actually call this limbic friction, where let's say you don't want to get out of bed in the morning, you just don't. Maybe you're tired, but maybe you're just not motivated and you force yourself to get up. What you're doing is you're using top down control to say, oh, the fatigue. I feel I'm going to override that fatigue. And much of what's online is how do you override that fatigue, that lack of motivation. And some people say, well, you got to do it out of love. And then other people say, you do it out of anger and it doesn't matter. These top down mechanisms are very subjective. If you are going to do it because you really care about the person that you're going to pick up at the airport and you got to get up early. Well, that's one mechanism. If you're going to do it, because you're a person of your word and you said you were going to be there, you do it. The just do it mantra is top down control. Okay? Now, just. The top down control is also involved in controlling reflexes, the desire to consume something that isn't good for you. You can resist that desire through top down control. The more rested you are, generally, the easier it is to engage top down control. So when I look at people like, I don't know Ronda Rousey, I don't know too much of her story, but I do know David. He's been to my lab and I endorsed his book. And I'm obviously super impressive. David, guidance needs no introduction. Super impressive. And I think one of the many important things that David stands for is the ability to override limbic friction, to talk, to convince himself to do it anyway. That is top down control. And what they've. What he's done, if I may, I don't. I've never. I've never actually figured this out conclusively, but I have a strong sense that what he's done is he's somehow gotten very familiar with the narrative of friction, or the experience of friction, and the narrative of overriding friction. And he knows that a win is coming later. And so what happens is, if you know that overriding limbic friction is going to create a win down the line, that win could be a sense of accomplishment. And what you can do is you can start to thread back that dopamine from the future to the idea by getting out of bed. I'm already starting to experience the wind. You can anticipate the wind. Now, there's actually a paper that was just published on this as a good timing for this question, which is that really points to the fact that delayed gratification is controlled by dopamine. It's a somewhat complex paper, so I don't want to get into the details, but what it shows is that if you know that by delaying gratification, you are going to. It's worthwhile, you start to achieve that dopamine increase earlier. So delayed gratification, as it sounds, is, you know, resisting the staying in bed or whatever it happens to be, but that itself can start to evoke dopamine release. Now, I'm not David Goggins, obviously, I never will be. But the way he describes his process is a little bit different, I think, than just pure, like, oh, I feel great doing it. He talks a lot of times about how it's very, very challenging for him. But when you talk to people who are very good at overriding limbic friction, you start to get the sense that even if it's very challenging for them to do that, they understand the great reward that's going to come later. And I think for a lot of people, the challenge is they haven't experienced or they can't see the win and experience the win. And so it's very hard for them to override limbic friction. And I'm not talking about limbic friction as this mild little thing. Limbic friction is a, is a, it's like a booming voice throughout your brain and body of stay in bed. Sleep is important. I heard on the podcast, sleep is important. Stay in bed. And to override that requires an immense amount of what we call willpower. But willpower is top down control. I mean, if you could get all your sustenance without having to venture out too far, why would you go any further? Now, the evolution, the forward evolution of culture in our species and individuals has been created by people that were willing to push out further and further. Right now, we talk a lot about Elon, right? He's the one that's sort of like, well, why limit yourself to Earth? You know, which is a cool concept, but this exists in every domain, as, you know, rich roll, our good friend, you know, anytime we overcome doubt, challenge, internal doubt and challenge, we're engaging these mechanisms. It's a skill. And there's neuroplasticity in this circuit. That's the thing that's often not discussed, is that the ability to focus is enhanced by forcing yourself to focus. The ability to sleep is enhanced by getting better at relaxing and turning off thoughts. And the ability to override limbic friction can only be created one of two ways. One is to increase your overall levels of alertness through dopamine and norepinephrine. That's why people take Adderall and Ritalin, drink caffeine, smoke, nicotine in order to get more alert. They're trying to. They're biologically hacking their way into the system. I think it's beautiful when people can. Psychologically, I would say I always imagine scruffing myself. You know, like you'd scruff an animal or you'd scruffing myself and forcing myself into it. Because for me it helps to third person myself. What I'm talking about is third personing oneself in service to overriding limbic friction. And sometimes we have this narrative that's so closely tied to our immediate state that we have a hard time forcing ourselves into some other mode of action. And so it can be very helpful to take on a view of yourself that's living in anticipation of the future state that you're going to be in. If we can start to see these reward systems and top down control as things that we can modulate in real time and use it sparingly. I'm not suggesting people do this for everything, right? It could be very exhausting to scruff yourself into the best action all the time. But look, I mean, people are recovering from addiction. They have to do this. It's a. It's a process from morning till.