Welcome to the last week of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. We hope you have had a laugh with your loved ones looking at all of the things that bring more fun into your life, and maybe even had a laugh at each other’s posts on the Facebook page. We have loved seeing all of the things that bring you joy.
This week it’s time for the rewards, and we don’t just mean the reward from us, we mean you rewarding yourself. Sam keeps on saying “points mean prizes” and she’s right, because in life, that every time you score a point, that fabulous recording system inside your cranium rewards you with a prize. That prize is a funky little chemical called dopamine.
You may have heard of the Big D before: she gets talked about a lot, because sciencey types seem to love doing things to rats to see if they can get their ratty brains to light up. And dopamine sure does that. In fact, when you do something that excites your reward centre, you get a hit of Big D, and immediately three other areas of your brain ping, so that you: have an emotional response making you love the reward, you remember how you got the reward and lastly, you know how to get more of it.
No wonder we love making that reward centre sing.
Of course like all ups, there’s a down, and one of the big downs with dopamine is that it causes a chemical called serotonin to decrease. Sero is the fella that is involved with feelings of satiation, so pretty soon we feel less than satisfied with the rewards. Which of course drives us our brain crazy, yelling “More points, more points” like some demented game-show host. So we move to the next up: getting another reward.
Now you can probably guess, this is the thing that drives us to do bigger and better things (yay), and it’s also one of the ways addiction works (boo) so we have antidote, and that is: creating an anchor to the reward. To stop for a minute and enjoy that moment of reward. To take it all in. That could be to savour the taste, to breathe it in deeply, or to take a moment to feel the gratitude. You might want to take a pic, or even record a video of your feelings. Whatever way you choose to relish the moment, the important part is to NOTICE it and whisper to yourself, “This is what success feels like.”
This is the real prize, after all.
Here’s your Week 4 challenge: every day we want you to set yourself at least one challenge. The rules are it must be something you can achieve in the day, and it works best if it’s a little stretch. So even though it might be tempting to write “get dressed” your brain will know that’s a bit of a cop out, and your reward won’t be as great. So maybe you might decide to do some sit ups, to make a necessary but uncomfortable phone call, or to complete a task for your business that you keep on putting off. To earn 5 points: post the task at the start of the day, and then just say “done” (on that some post) when it’s complete, for another 5 points. Remember to whisper to yourself, “This is what success feels like,”
Have fun!