Hey guys, Mark here. In this video, I'm going to show you how to unf your brain and train your brain to love doing hard things. Now, what most people try to do anytime they go down this whole productivity rabbit hole is they say, "Oh, I need to go on a dopamine detox." Or say, "Oh, no. I just need to lock in and I need to do a monk mode." But the reality of the situation is that neither of these things actually target the real root cause of why you find it so hard to do things that actually get you real results in life and get you success. Whether that's making the most amount of money that you possibly can, starting a business, growing your business, getting your body in shape, it's not targeting the real root cause. In order to understand what the real root cause of the problem is, I have to tell you this and that is our modern environment. The way that our lives are constructed right now in 2025 is not designed for the way that our brains have evolved. We have such a high daily dopamineeric environment. Things like social media, like video games, like porn, all these things that are just vowing for our attention and taking away every ounce of willpower and energy that we have. But in reality, you can construct your environment in a way that literally makes it easy for you to be successful. But most people don't have the discipline and the willpower to actually go through and do this because the problem is actually not your dopamine. Dopamine in and of itself is not the problem. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that has basically been around freaking forever. The problem is not dopamine. The problem is how are you getting it? The way that the world changes, you need to change your environment in your brain that you create an environment that makes it easy for you to be successful. And what you can do to actually make that happen is you have to understand that there's two types of dopamine. And for simplicity purposes, I'm going to call the first type of dopamine just artificial dopamine. This is dopamine from things like social media. It's basically the instant gratification type of dopamine, right? Where you can do something and instantly have this massive spike in dopamine. And then the other type of dopamine is just real dopamine. This is the dopamine that you get from actually getting results in your life. Seeing the hard work that you put in, delayed gratification. Seeing that hard work that you put in actually gets you real results. That's why I love having a good physique because it's not something you can buy. It's not something that you can get instantly. Even if you're taking steroids, which I am not, it still takes work, a little bit less, but if you're natural, it still takes a lot of work for you to actually get results. That's why I love the gym. It's such a fantastic metaphor for the type of dopamine that you should be seeking. And the difference really between artificial and real dopamine is actually very simple. The real thing that causes the problems, guys, that you have to understand with dopamine, like I said, dopamine is not the problem. The real problem is the effect that it has on your brain and on your body. If you think about artificial dopamine, you have this general baseline of dopamine. Let's say it's right here, right? With artificial dopamine, you have these massive spikes and then a very, very aggressive fall off to the point basically of withdrawal and then slowly you'll taper back to your baseline. This is really the crux of the problem right here. This is what I like to call dopamine delta. And when I mean delta, that's simply the change in dopamine and how quickly you see that change. You'll notice a massive spike, a massive fall off, and slowly you make it back. And most people, the first thing that they do when they wake up is they get that massive spike of dopamine. They check their phone, they check social media, god forbid, they watch porn, right? They do all these terrible things for their brain that literally just sets you up for failure for the rest of the day. Now, the difference between artificial dopamine, which is everything that you see here, and what I like to call, again for simplicity purposes, just real dopamine, is that real dopamine instead with your baseline has a natural increase like this and then a very, very natural tapering off. Okay? Say what you want about something like ice baths, but ice baths significantly increase your dopamine. Yet, you don't feel terrible. You don't feel sluggish. You don't feel like you don't want to do work. You feel the exact opposite. Well, why is that? It's because it causes a prolonged increase in your dopamine levels. And this is really what you want to center your life around. So I built a simple little tool here so you guys can understand what I mean. But over here on the right, you have all these high dopamine triggers and you also have these healthy resets, right? The real dopamine, artificial dopamine, real dopamine. If you look at something like scrolling social media, watching porn, binge eating junk food, video games, online shopping. This is quite literally off the charts. Like the chart doesn't even show how high some of these spikes are. You can see how aggressive and how high the dopamine delta is. And that's why it's so hard for you to actually see results and commit to anything. That's why it's so hard for you to ever feel motivated because you're creating an environment that is just centered around this artificial dopamine. And then you wonder why you don't want to do anything. On the other hand, if we just reset the chart real quick, we have all these healthy ways to get your dopamine. And notice it's a prolonged increase. It's not a massive aggressive spike. And you can see this for all these exercise, cold exposure, sunlight, deep work, meditation, long walk. If you compare these side by side, it becomes so freaking clear why you're struggling to actually see any result with anything that you do. Cuz everything that you're doing is against the grain. Like the most successful people that I know, I've had mentors, one of my mentors is known as the most disciplined man in the world. And I know for a fact from learning from him for so long, so closely, he literally just creates an environment where it's impossible for him to procrastinate. He creates an environment where it's impossible for him to watch porn, to watch social media, to binge eat junk food, like all this stuff. He just removes and he creates no friction between where he is and how he can actually be successful and see results with whatever it is that he's doing. Now listen guys, the reason that I talk about the dopamine detox and the monk mode. You're like, "Mark, I don't understand. It's artificial dopamine so bad. Why shouldn't we do a detox?" Well, simply the word detox alone causes problems. Because you go ask any holistic health person how their cute little detox is going. And most people who go on any type of detox, whether that's a social media detox, dopamine detox, anything, they follow the exact same route of what caused the problems in the first place, which is basically this chart, but in reverse. They go from this very, very high level of dopamine where their baseline is all screwed up. And they basically completely remove everything and go cold turkey. Right? The problem with this is that with anything, if you look at the studies, you look at the research, anytime that you go from 100 to zero, you go from doing something a lot every single day to nothing. Number one, most people just don't stick to it. If you look at the success rate of people that go through with dopamine detoxes, that go through with New Year's resolutions, how many of them actually succeed? Very, very little. And that's not what I want for you. I want you to actually see results. And I can get all in front of you and be all raw, say like, "Oh, I need to cut this, cut the social media, cut the crap, cut the bad food." and then you're going to get all motivated in a YouTube video and then leave and nothing's going to change. You're going to stay at it for a few days, maybe a week, maybe a few weeks, but your life is not going to change. I'm trying to actually give you guys real results. And what you need to understand is that to get from the highle dopamine environment that you're at right now to the dopamine environment that you want to be at with all these natural sources of dopamine, you have to do it gradually. Just start with one small thing that you remove. Okay? The best way to be disciplined is through subtraction. It's not through addition. It's not through adding these productivity tools. It's not through adding this, this, this, and that to your calendar. No, it's just through removing everything that's between you and you actually achieving your goals. Being successful, not a game of addition. It's a game of subtraction. The question you should be asking yourself is, what can I remove from my life that is causing me friction between my goals? So, naturally, the question becomes, what are some actual actionable steps that you can take to lower your baseline level of dopamine? Well, I think we all know deep down, to be honest with you. We all know the things that are probably not good for us, but we still do them anyways. You just have to go one by one and remove them. On average, it takes about 66 days for a habit to really be ingrained in stone. That's a long time. For some people takes less, for others more. But 66 days on average is the time that it takes for a habit to be fully solidified. So ask yourself, what is one thing if there's anything that you participate in this particular list that I can begin to remove, right? just one by one to actually see real results and create an environment where I am going to be successful no matter what. And to give you guys an idea, I've been doing this for a long time, one by one. And I find that this is the best way to actually incite real change. It's not to go ball to the wall, start waking up at 4:00 a.m. and rubbing a banana on your face. That's not how you're going to be successful. You'll stick to it for a few days and then you're going to quit cuz you're going against your biology. You're going against everything that you've been doing for so long naturally, unless you're just the most high willpower person in the world. which let's be real, you're not. It's just not going to happen. So, for me, the way that I construct my mornings is I literally create an environment that is the lowest possible levels of dopamine that I can possibly conjure up in my freaking mind. There's a reason why I film all my videos in the dark. When I wake up in the morning, I don't have any food. All I drink is water typically and tea. Tea sucks, man. I'm sorry, but tea. It's terrible. But I drink it anyways because I want the natural bits of caffeine and I don't want any sugar. I don't want anything to boost that dopamine. When I work first thing in the morning and I'm getting into my deep work, I don't even have the color turned on on the monitor in front of me. I have grayscale turned on on my laptop up until about halfway through the day and then I turn it on. I literally ask myself like what are all the ways that I can reduce the overall dopamine, especially first thing in the morning, right? For me, that's some of the most productive parts of my day. I don't want anything getting in the way. And so, I really go all out with this. But keep in mind, I've been doing this for years. And so you want to go one by one and just identify what is the number one thing that I can remove from my environment that's going to make it easier for me to be successful. And again, your goal is to reduce the activities that are triggering this massive dopamine delta. That is your only goal at the end of the day so that you can chase the real dopamine and actually live a life that's worth talking about. If you look at your life right now and you were to die tomorrow, how would you feel? Honestly, how would you feel? Would you feel good? If you're waiting for like the perfect day to do something, guess what? It's never going to come. All that's going to happen is that years and years and years are going to go by. You're going to die and then you're going to be, you know, wherever your soul is, you're going to look back on your life and you're going to feel like because you didn't actually access the innate potential that is hidden deep within you. Don't be that soul. Don't be that person that wastes potential. Every single person watching this video, you have it deep inside of you. All you have to do is construct an environment that makes it basically impossible for you to not be successful. And if you guys like the content like this, talking about dopamine, if you like talking about making money, a lot about AI, I have a free Telegram. It's the first link in the description. You guys can check it out. And if you want access to this this chart here, so you can play around with it and add your own stuff if you really want to, just DM me the word dopamine on Instagram. All right, it's Markbuilds Brands. Send me a DM and I'll send this over to you. Other than that, y'all have a great one. Be legendary. Peace.