ļ»æEpisode 255
Title: Overstimulated & Understimulated: Digital Addiction In All Ages
Host: Dr. Nicole Rivera & Dr. Nick Carruthers
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Transcription:
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Integrative View Radio. You have Dr. Nicole and Dr. Nick here. I don't know why I'm talking like that. Sometimes the weirdest things come out of my mouth. I think I need lunch is what's happening. So I have been seeing so much about this specific topic all over social media.
And it's a topic I've definitely talked about in the past, but I almost feel like the route we want to go talking specifically about this idea of a dopamine imbalance is it's different based off of the current times. And I think that this is an era right now where there are so many people that are overstimulated.
while simultaneously being understimulated. And if you want to put it in different words, so many people that are restless, but at the same time bored. And don't get me wrong, I think that there has been times that we have also felt like this. And we've attributed to a few things that we're going to talk about today.
But I want to take a step back really quick and just talk a little bit more about the foundation here. people might be like, what is dopamine? What are you talking about? So most of us are very familiar with the neurotransmitter serotonin. And serotonin is one of our primary feel-good hormones. But I think less talked about until now is dopamine. And dopamine is a neurotransmitter that does play a role in feeling good.
But it also plays a very big role in motivation, which obviously leads to productivity. But there is a big misconception around this idea of motivation to inspiration. And so what we find is that most people are doing things to try to be motivated because they're not inspired.
Dr. Nicole Rivera (02:22.286)
And if you've listened to podcasts before, one of the primary ways to be inspired is to know more about yourself, to know what you truly value and what are the things that are going to allow you live each day feeling energized and fulfilled and satisfied. And usually, we feel energized and satisfied when we're doing things that we like that are in our value system. But most of us are
getting stuck in the wheel of doing everything that we have to do. And there's maybe a 90 to 10. So 90 % is of our day, of our week, of our month is all the shit we have to do. And 10 % is what we want to do. And some people that might be even more imbalanced. Yeah, another easy way to think about it, or at least I always think about it, is with food, because I love food, is that, you in
You reward yourself with that piece of chocolate cake or pie or gelato ice cream, whatever, like it gives you that dopamine boost because it's dopamine is connected. It feels good, but it's connected to that reward center. So when you think about rewarding with the mind and the day, it's all about productivity. So when we're not productive, you're not rewarded. No dopamine. But when you are productive, guess what? You feel good. There's that reward.
because you were productive, you accomplished a lot, and that accomplishment actually served you. So when you think about productivity, productivity is connected with the hierarchy of your values. The highest product of action you can take is connected with what's most important to you, your number one highest value. The lowest productive action you can take is gonna be connected with the lowest value. And there's 2,300 combinations of different values you can have. So it's really about step one, taking the time to figure out
What's that hierarchy of values for you? Get crystal clear on those top three and then connect everything to serve those top three because then you don't need to really care about the dessert. You don't need to reward yourself externally like Nicole was talking about. You can reward yourself internally by being the person doing things and then having that end result from you inside, not having to look for it externally.
Dr. Nicole Rivera (04:43.98)
And I think another way to explain this because I know that we have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to our podcast and there's this idea of the zone of genius and I'm totally blanking on the author of the book, but this was, this is also when you are in your zone of genius and going back to this idea of like productivity, getting things done.
There are certain days that you end your day and you're like, damn, I crushed it. You're really proud of yourself. You feel really lit up. You feel really energized. And then there are other days where you're doing things that are out of your zone of genius, more low productive. you're not just drained at the end of the day. You're drained throughout the duration of the day. And it's very funny because for myself, as an example. And that's when you want the wine and chocolate. Yes. Well, we're going to get there.
For me, I used to work 15 hours a day and I was teaching, educating, mentoring, and I was doing a lot of investigative work as well because of the nature of what we do in integrative medicine. And all of those things are in my zone of genius. They light me up, they energize me. There's many people that wouldn't be energized by this, but I could easily work very long hours.
and feel totally fine at the end of the day. But as soon as you want me to work on some type of digital marketing, write a blog, this or that, I'm like, no, no. I always told my team, I'm like, please do not ask me to write anything. Not that I'm a bad writer, I just don't like it. I'd rather produce a video where I can feel like I'm connecting with someone through my body language, through the tone of my voice. Hence why we've had a podcast for so many years.
And so everyone is different with the things that are going to allow them to feel really productive. But when we live in a place that we're constantly doing things that are in those lower productive actions or not in our zone of genius, and some of us have jobs that literally put us in that place all day of low productive actions, we don't feel like we're making a difference. We don't feel stimulated. We don't feel any of that. We don't feel challenged.
Dr. Nicole Rivera (07:03.094)
At the end of the day, middle of the day, you're looking for the dopamine fix. And what's most accessible, especially in our work days, are things that Dr. Nick mentioned. You can go grab your chocolate latte, or frappuccino with your little sugar boost or your chocolate boost. You can run to the vending machine and get something with a high amount of salt or a high amount of sugar. Then you can end your day, go for the glass of wine, go for a tequila cocktail.
And all of those things are acting as dopamine boosts. But the problem is that there's a root cause to why those things are palliating, why you're looking for them. And so this is a huge driver of addiction as well. But this isn't just about food. And that's really what kind of brings us to the deeper layers of this podcast is it's also about consumerism.
It's about entertainment. It's about social media browsing. It's about all of these things that we're using to distract us from the fact that we are not in that zone of genius. We're not doing things that make us feel accomplished. And we're distracting ourselves. And we're going from this.
We're under-stimulated because we're not getting these challenges. We don't feel like we're using our brains or our skill sets to our maximum capacity. But then we're overstimulated by constantly being on these digital products or online shopping for two hours at night or going out and about with friends so that we can feel more normal because our day sucked.
Dr. Nicole Rivera (08:57.088)
It all comes back to the balance. The under and over was pretty awesome. I never heard it like that specifically because like if you're understimulated internally, you're to have to overstimulate yourself externally. And that's the externally is, you know, the what people call the addictions, you know, whether you're addicted to food or you're addicted to porn or you're addicted to alcohol or whatever your addiction is has nothing to do with that. It has.
nothing to do with the alcohol, the porn, the food, the whatever. It's because inside your body isn't functioning and it can't function right because the biochemistry is the low dopamine is just a reflection of how you're spending your day and how you're spending your day is a reflection of the choices that you're making from the quality of the thoughts you have. So you have to go back and say,
This addiction, this dopamine issue, this problem is a thought problem. It's nothing else. So you have to go back and balance the thoughts out. You have to have the awareness to say my days and low productive action. There's nothing that's going to change until A, I get clarity on what's a high productive action. And then how can I rearrange my schedule, my day, my time, my space?
to be able to be in alignment with that. I think this is, we're talking very specifically right now about adults, but the same exact thing applies to the tablet iPad addiction in kids. We've seen this with our own child. He's going to be three next month. And there are times that Q is acting buck wild. And it's because he's under-stimulated.
and overstimulated. So if he sits with the nanny, and for some reason the nanny even against our wishes, is the TV's on for most of the day. So he's overstimulated from the TV and the blue light and everything else. But at the end of the day, he's really understimulated because he's a really, really smart little kid. So we've found that when we're with him, that when he's acting a little wild,
Dr. Nicole Rivera (11:18.54)
we go and get something that's going to challenge his brain. Like a lot of times we make dough and we get him and he starts rolling the dough and we give him these little things to cut shapes into the dough and he's totally fine. And it's because now he's using his hands. He's very tactile, our child specifically, a lot of little boys are. So there's by giving him something that he gets to use his brain, he gets to use his body, he gets to use his tactile touch.
Now he's stimulated in a positive way and he's not asking for TV. He's not asking for a snack. He's not asking for any of that. So we really need to think about this because this is happening in all different age groups. And I know that there's a lot of parents that are so frustrated with the fact that their kid always wants a fricking tablet. I literally we're walking around Sorrento. I don't know if you heard this, but we were walking by and this kid, he was probably
seven or eight. And he goes, mama, bored. And she's like, I know, honey, you're always bored. You're the only time you're not bored is when you have a tablet. I know, honey, let's just come on. Like, let's keep walking. And it's just he doesn't want to walk around. Sorento, he probably wants to do something that stimulates him. I don't know the kid. I don't know what does, but he's not stimulated.
by things that he's doing on a regular basis. So the way he's getting stimulated is through technology. So it's like, what if his parents took the time to really understand what was a challenge for him? What is some type of activity, if it's a mental activity, a physical activity, that he would be more challenged by that would stimulate him in a positive way? An inspiring challenge. Exactly. And so.
Going back to my entrepreneurs, because I really want to hit all of our groups here, is Nick and I are obviously have been entrepreneurs for over 13 years now. this, don't get me wrong, this is not necessarily just relevant to entrepreneurs. But everything that we're talking about right now goes back to not just the foodstuff and how we are boosting our dopamine through these different foods, these vices.
Dr. Nicole Rivera (13:41.218)
But it's also about the consumerism and what I call the hustle to reward. Because many of us are, again, we're quote-unquote, we're hustlers, we're hard workers, we pride ourselves on that. But we're doing a bunch of things on a regular basis that are not challenging, not stimulating in a positive way. So we get home, listen, I'm going to say this because this was me, get home and I'm browsing
on different platforms, online shopping. And my mindset is, I deserve this because I busted my ass today. I busted my ass this week. I busted my ass this month. And you accumulate all this shit that at the end of the day, end of the month, end of the year, you're like, I forgot I had this shirt. I forgot about these shoes. gosh, I have no space. I have so much crap. you know, half of the stuff that you buy
to give you that dopamine boost, to give you the reward, how much of it ends up in your garage, ends up in your basement? And then we complain that we don't have enough money to invest in our health, we don't have enough money to travel, we don't have enough money for these other things. And then we perpetuate the cycle. We perpetuate it because then we're all, feeling bad. I got to work harder. I got to work harder. How many people would be terrified if they actually calculated?
on an annual basis, how much money they spent on things on Amazon, on, you know, different platforms for shopping, eating out. I still to this day, we lived in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and we went to this very nice restaurant that was right at the bottom, pretty much the bottom of where we lived. And I'm like, I would never in a million years want to know how much money we spent over the four years we lived there. Like, I really would never want to know.
We compensated just a little bit. We used to be stressed from doing things that we didn't want to do. I would look at Nick at the end of the day and say, it's a mashed potato night, which meant we were going to Pascal and we were going to drink wine and eat mashed potatoes. Maybe a bourbon.
Dr. Nicole Rivera (16:02.83)
But I mean, looking at all this, it's a simple concept to understand, is that there's always a cause and effect and a lot of the causes for the effects of the body is an imbalanced mind. And when we realize that and take ownership of that, we can, A, save a lot of money by constantly trying all these things to change the body when the body's actually being changed primarily by the mind.
So if you want to work really hard at changing something, work really hard at changing your mind and a little hard at changing the body. feel like a caveat that we need to plug here is that there's a level of discipline with this. And I say that because we live in a world of distractions. the biggest thing that people are trying to get is your attention. And most people don't understand the depths of that, but
that the attention of someone is the currency of life because that energy flows where attention goes. And if you can control the attention of one person, then you're going to control how their body is feeling. You know, we even saw this during COVID and the shutdown of misinformation and a lot of fear and all this. And people got sick just because of that isolation of fear, like
everything, but then you take, you know, all if you directing everybody's thought process in a specific community or state or country, and that's pretty easy to do because every country has their own pretty much private system of the news and their information and you know, what's being streamed and they have their algorithms for the internet of what's being shown and what's not being showed and what's being censored, et cetera. So it's understanding that a lot of
A lot of what we hear and what we see isn't really the full truth. And to be able to have that running in the back of your mind when going through and you're feeling these things, a lot of the times it's, it's a belief system that isn't true. It's a belief system that we've been taught that we have to relearn the truth. And part of that is us figuring out our truth because everybody has a different truth. There is really no truth in the world.
Dr. Nicole Rivera (18:31.822)
The truth is what's going to best serve you. Yeah, I think it's just, you know, the discipline that I was mentioning is around the fact that taking the time to get more aligned with the things that are going to take you away from meeting those dopamine hits, it's work that can easily get derailed.
because it's easier to scroll on TikTok. It's easier to scroll on social media. It's easy to, like we're living in a world that it's very, very easy to be distracted. And yes, there is a lot of information being peddled on these different platforms that can further skew the way we think about things. It takes us more away from what is right for us. And
this is definitely something that can keep us on the hamster wheel of this overstimulation to understimulation. There were periods of time that we decided to really, I don't want to say cut ourselves off from social media, but limit it to a big capacity so that we could really decipher what thoughts and decisions are really ours versus what's being influenced by what is out there on the media.
And it's interesting because when we were talking about this podcast before getting on, you talked about this idea of fantasy to a nightmare. And I do think that there is a lot of fantasy that is circulating on these social platforms. You know, I can't tell you, like the worst I ever was in business as a leader in our business was when I was watching what other people were doing.
and feeling badly about what I was doing or feeling like I needed to pivot or feeling like I needed to do more or do less. And that takes you away from what's right for you. The last thing you want to do is implement something because someone else is doing it and it looks like they're succeeding with it. And that's one of my frustrations with social right now is sometimes I go on there and there's some really cool stuff that I see.
Dr. Nicole Rivera (20:51.042)
But right now, like there's so much, I'm in the algorithm clearly, but it's like, in business, if you're not doing this on your Instagram, if you don't have these settings on, if you don't do this on TikTok, if you don't have your website do that, if you don't have a proper working funnel, you're an idiot. and it's just so fucking overwhelming. And at the end of the day, like that is so blanketed. Like how?
How is that? We've talked about this the other day. We were quoted like $50,000 for someone to do a funnel for us. And I was like, we don't have a digital product other than meditations that we could sell thousands, hundreds of thousands of a product to make sense of that cost. So we primarily work one-on-one with clients doing integrative medicine and business coaching. And we run retreats. Both of those are capped.
at a certain amount of people, certain amount of members. And that's OK. That's what we want from our business. So it would make zero rational sense to make a very large investment in a funnel. And so people need to start to weed through the bullshit and understand that there's only certain things that apply to you. There's only certain things that align to you. Because we can go down this rabbit hole of
further perpetuating the need for these dopamine hits when we think we're not enough, we're not doing enough. And again, it's because we're not taking the time to get that clarity on what makes the most sense for me, what makes the most sense for my family, what makes the most sense for my kids, what makes the most sense for my business, what makes the most sense for my career. And I'd say to end, specifically on the dopamine with serotonin is the feel good. When we are
trying to get a short-term feel good, you're going to be highly volatile. You're going to have a lot of ups and a lot of downs and you're going to waste a lot of energy. And that's when, you know, things start falling apart, both around you and inside of you. So the goal is always to get into that homeostatic state, the balance center, and be more focused on the vision. And this is one thing we haven't talked tons about.
Dr. Nicole Rivera (23:12.826)
we talk a lot about values, but equally important is a clear vision. And the farther you can extend the clarity of that vision, the less volatile your life will be because you'll see that there things just happen. lot of things happen outside of our control because it's outside of our cycle that we've created. And when it's outside of our cycle, it's a larger macro cycle that
we can intelligently see, pick apart, understand it, and then use it for us. So right now there's a lot of change happening around the world. One of those changes we can easily see is the financial system. And when we can pick that apart and really understand what's happening, we don't have to be scared about it. We can use that to serve ourselves. So it's just understanding whatever's happening around us, it's happening for a reason.
whether you can control or not, doesn't honestly matter because you have the tools to be able to figure out what's going on, how can I use this to serve me, let's take action. How long is that action is in alignment with the top values and the vision, you're going to be good. Well, that's why our major focus actually when we do our experiences in Italy is we take people through a true in-depth understanding of their values and the first iteration of their vision.
Because that's the two things that we feel like transform people to start stepping into their 2.0 life. And don't get me wrong, there's execution tools after that. But if you don't know your values and if you don't have a vision, it's the laws of entropy. If you are not clear on how you structure your day, your week, your month, your life, then it will get filled with chaos. If you do not have a clear...
use for your money, if it's investments, savings, etc., then you will get hit with unexpected bills. This was honestly Dr. Demartini is the one who said this and I was just like, holy shit. So it's like people will just let money sit in a certain place. Even if you let it sit for a week or two weeks, there's a strong probability based off of the laws of entropy that there's going to be bills that come into your life because you did not get really, really specific on how you're using that money yet.
Dr. Nicole Rivera (25:36.194)
So I want to kind of end with this is I keep seeing all of these things about dopamine detoxes. I think there's a book floating around about a dopamine detox. There's people running online courses about a dopamine detox. And one thing that I keep seeing is this idea of slow living. And I'm kind of going to laugh as I'm saying this. So most of you at this point know that Dr. Nick and I have moved to Italy and talk about slow living.
And I really honestly don't love the term of slow living because it's not for everyone. And I know for me, it was very beneficial for me to slow down. But do I want to just have a slow life? Not necessarily. But what I do want is to have a focused life and really have focused living and present living.
And finding that balance of really being able to be focused on the focus of that part of my day, my week, my month, if it's going to be family, if it's career, if it's impact and contribution. So this isn't necessarily just about slowing down and, you know, not doing as much. This is about getting very focused and intentional.
and living a life that's aligned to the things that make you the most satisfied, fulfilled, and energized. So again, if you guys are looking for a great starting point here, definitely check out our link so that you can start to work on your values. And if you get stuck, this is something that we work directly with clients to help them to really get clear on what their values are and their vision.
But we have a fantastic online course and guide and workbook that can start that process for you. All right, guys, until next time.
