ESYB2 003 - Biology and Neuroscience of Entrepreneurship
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[00:00:00] In this video, I want to explain to you the neuroscience of entrepreneurship so that you can deeply understand your emotional experience during the ups and downs of your everyday and actually use that as a tool to help you grow your business. And what we have to do is understand how dopamine works.

Dopamine is a neurochemical that controls your drive and motivation levels. Which is very important in entrepreneurship, obviously. And the way it works is you always have some dopamine in your system, that's called a baseline. And when something nice happens that you look forward to, your baseline increases a little bit.

And the nicer the thing is that You look forward to the more you want it, the more dopamine gets released and the higher it goes above baseline, you experience that as feeling more excited and more motivated. And of course, when you get your business idea and you see you, the vision of you in [00:01:00] 10 years, it's going to be amazing.

The best thing that can ever happen. You dream about it. Your dopamine goes way, way, way higher than baseline. You're so excited. You're so motivated to start your business. It feels fantastic. But that's in 10 years. What happens later today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow? Well, you're still struggling, right?

Just starting your business. Confused, not sure. You get a little rejection, dejection. And suddenly your baseline, your dopamine drops, drops, drops. Even below baseline where you started. Because, you know, it has to kind of rebound. It oscillates. Unless you give it reasons to look forward to things again. And when dopamine goes below baseline, well, you feel very bad, frustrated, unmotivated, don't want to work, and people who don't manage that tend to stop working and work more rarely and more rarely, and that leads to failure.

So what we have to do is figure out a way to manage our dopamine so that it not [00:02:00] only spikes in the beginning, but spikes, but keeps the baseline high. A very helpful way to look at it is to examine the question of whether it's the journey or the destination. Of course, the destination is exciting, that vision of you in 10 years being rich and everything else that you want for yourself, getting all those rewards, that's so motivating and exciting.

But what about the day to day? You see, so if we were philosophers, which is sometimes fun to be, We would really think about it and evaluate the pros and cons, but if we are scientists, like in this video, we are scientists, we have an answer. There is no debate. The answer is that it must be both. The journey and the destination.

Of course, the destination can be that vision that always gives us a little bit of dopamine. It keeps, whenever we picture it, we You get a little rise in dopamine by itself, but if [00:03:00] it was just that, our dopamine levels would drop below baseline and we'd feel bad. So we have to find a way on a day to day level, hour to hour level, to keep our dopamine baseline relatively high and stable.

Of course, it's inevitable we'll have some drops, but we always want to have ways to bring them up. Here is how to manage that. What you want to do. Every day is plan out your day, plan out your week ahead with little goals. Little goals can be goals that might improve your business or things you might learn that benefit your business.

For example, things you might learn would be how to write better emails. Of course, better emails means more sales, more customer engagement and retention, etc. And there are many little skills that go into writing better emails like writing, learning grammar, learning sales copywriting, and perhaps dozens of little things [00:04:00] that can become little tiny goals.

And when you set little tiny goals, that helps to increase your dopamine levels. And when you have a lot of such goals and you achieve them, First, when you set a goal, it increases your dopamine and when you achieve that goal, it increases, it gives you a little spike of dopamine on top. And when you have many such little goals, not just in things you improve in yourself as an entrepreneur, but things that you do daily for your business, like create a large to do list with many little things every day to check off your to do list and accomplish, that gives you a lot of little increases in dopamine, which is going to help you raise your overall baseline.

The average of your dopamine is going to be at a good level, which is going to keep you feeling very good. For example, many days when I plan out my day before, and I have a really concrete strategy for what I'm going to do tomorrow, I wake up energized because [00:05:00] dopamine gives you also adrenaline, which gives you energy.

And this is where you see those people who are always Powering through, they're motivated, they're energetic, this is what's happening in their mind. They're having an increase in dopamine, which is accompanied by an increase in energy. Of course, it's not sustainable, you can't always be like that, you sometimes have to rest.

But, overall, this is it. Plan something really great and impactful the day before. Impactful, you really have to believe that what you are going to do is make a significant difference and impact in your overall journey. And then the work tomorrow will be energy, you'll be energized to do it. You'll be excited and motivated to do it.

You'll do it better because you have all that motivation and excitement and energy. And that's your day to day. And so when you work like that day to day, day to day, you'll feel better day to day. You will enjoy your entrepreneurship experience and you'll perform better. So what's going to happen in six [00:06:00] months, in a year, in two years, in five years, You will gain so many more skills by directly learning them but also by just being active and working every day.

You'll be learning by actually practicing entrepreneurship and working on your business every day. And so by the end of this two years, six months, five years, what's going to happen is you will achieve absolute transformation. You as an entrepreneur will become a stronger entrepreneur. By consistently being motivated to work and working, getting your hands dirty, working, working, working, learning, learning, learning.

And, not only that, you will have absolutely enjoyed your entire experience. It won't be miserable. It won't feel like work. That's the saying. It's that when you're an entrepreneur, you never feel like you're working. It's always kind of things you're excited to do because it's Your ideas, your vision. And that's [00:07:00] really what you want to be after.

Because, guess what? That vision that you originally had for yourself, where you're happy and every day is great? Well, every day's been great, if you've been an entrepreneur. Because every day you woke up motivated, excited about what you're doing, and you have enjoyed every day. That's the profound difference in your experience.

If you manage your dopamine and understand your neuroscience this way, is that you, you don't need your eventual goal. You have lived your best life and you have achieved your best results as long as you manage your dopamine that way and use it as a tool to improve your quality of life and improve the outcome of your work.

