How to Make Life More Exciting

When we think about excitement in life, the examples that come to mind are normally exterior to ourselves. But everything in life--good and bad-- is actually experienced inside, in our minds and hearts.

Take the adventurer who finds "excitement" crossing Antarctica-- it isn't really Antartica and all its wild terrors that is exciting. After all, that continent has been there many, many years, and no one felt any excitement. It only becomes exciting when a human brain encounters it, and its neurons fire, and emotions rise, adrenalin rushes, and dopamine is released.

Excitement exists SOLELY in the head, not in the outside world. We simply use the outside world as a "tool" to create "mind altering" circumstances to cause us to feel things on the inside.

Some people have tried to take a shortcut, by artificially turning on their own brain's pleasure reception ability through mind altering drugs. Physically, they may be in no interesting place at all, but they have plugged their brain into an "pleasure enhancing" substance. Oh they feel it, but it is destroying them.

There is actually a limit to how much excitement a brain can feel, before it starts taking measures to protect itself --kind of like a circuit breaker, or voltage regulator, protecting electronic equipment. If the voltage is too high, the safety mechanisms go to work. God created us with similar kinds of protections in our brains.

This happens through the interchange of dopamine producers and receptors in the brain. Dopamine, a chemical naturally created and released by the body, is what causes us to feel pleasure. It gives us focus, attention, energy, and makes us feel "alive."

But if too much dopamine is released, the body reacts--but NOT by reducing the production of dopamine. In fact, the brain CAN'T reduce the production of dopamine, because that is triggered by external stimuli. Instead what the brain does is turn off the RECEPTORS, so that even though the dopamine is flowing, we feel it less.

This might be a little bit like your ears ringing, after hearing a very loud noise. Your ability to hear is actually reduced temporarily, and replaced with that ringing sound. While in that condition, softer sounds you might normally hear disappear under the ringing. This is called a "threshold shift," and fortunately, it is temporary.

But let's apply this knowledge of how hearing works, to how the brain works. The temptations and sensations of the internet--what they actually do, is release dopamine in your brain. That's why we enjoy it, and keep coming back. But too much dopamine causes the dopamine receptors to shut down. When they do, the rest of life, which is operating at a normal healthy level, seems flat and boring.

SEEMS is the key word. It is not actually flat and boring, but you are experiencing temporary brain damage, a sort of pleasure "threshold shift" that makes it feel that way, and it is uncomfortable.

Your natural response is to flood your brain with more stimulation, to get that feeling back, but--in your current state, it takes MORE stimulation than it did the first time, to create that same feeling. If you think this sounds like an addiction cycle, you are right, but its actually worse than that.

It is not "like" an addiction cycle, or "similar to" an addiction cycle, it IS an ACTUAL chemical addiction cycle, caused by the hijacking of your brain's dopamine producing ability, through artificially enhanced external stimulation. The internet is actually creating "mind altering" circumstances, that have physical effects on your brain. Doesn't this sound a little bit creepy?

You might wonder, what is this doing to our brains long term? Actually, no one knows. When supercomputers went out "brain hacking" on an entire global population, the long-term effects were never examined in any scientific test study. In a way, the whole world population today is like guinea pigs, in the biggest physio-social experiment ever devised.

If your ears are ringing from a loud noise, if it is quiet for a while, the ringing will stop, and your hearing will return to normal. But we know that under constant exposure to a loud noise, the ears will lose their ability to recover. The sensitivity to softer noises is lost, and permanent hearing damage occurs.

Could it be that the brain works the same way? If a constant flood of unnatural levels of dopamine are surging through it, perhaps, the brain adjusts permanently. We would call this condition, "brain damage." The end result for this person is that NOTHING in life, is exciting. Everything is dull and flat. They have experienced a permanent "pleasure threshold shift." Who would want to live that way?

If you have been following so far, you are probably catching on that the way to have a more exciting life, has very little to do with the outside world around you, and much to do with how you are managing and protecting the 7 inches between your ears. When God created the garden of Eden, he put man in an environment where the maximum amount of natural pleasure could be experienced, without causing harm to his physiology. Has that changed? Is the physiology of man any different now?

But what HAS changed, is we now have the ability, through technology, to artificially surge our brains to levels they were never intended to operate. And outside of that surge, life seems...boring.

There is not a happy end to this cycle, but rather misery, and often drugs or suicide. Could it be, that the internet, while promising you excitement and pleasure, is actually stealing away your ability to experience it? Would not that be evil and devious? But what can we do about it?

The way up, is down. The way to make life more exciting, is not to chase higher levels of stimulation. Rather, if you can get your stimulation back down to normal levels, the way God intended it and designed you to operate, then your sensitivity to normal pleasure recovers, and life gets more fun and interesting. And, it is healthy long term, both for yourself, and for everyone around you.

There are multitudes of small pleasures in life; you are surrounded by them constantly. They are natural, and God created them for you to enjoy. If you are not seeing them, it may be because you have been under a constant threshold shift.

But, if your brain is given time to heal, the natural God-given pleasures will come back into your awareness. You will feel that as joy, and life will be more exciting than ever!

(Link to the 30 day digital restart)