I feel like we've all been lied to about what happiness really is.
It's why people have midlife crises.
It's why throughout your 20s you'll feel so lost and confused.
It's why, even when you reach the top of your goals, you never feel quite right, as if something's missing.
And I first experienced this back in 2022, when I reached one of my biggest goals ever, which was to reach 100000 subscribers on YouTube.
To me, that was the huge indicator of success.
I graduated uni didn't apply to a single job and really wanted to prove to myself that I could make my passion for social media a full-time job.
Now that I was earning from it and I had the plaque and statistics to prove it, I thought everything would fall into place and I would feel like I had it all.
But it was quite the opposite.
I actually felt extremely down and upset and lost, and that's when i first discovered something called arrival fallacy, which we'll go into later.
But ever since then i've been on my own personal journey on learning how to truly build long-lasting real, authentic happiness.
So consider this video your full reset.
This is the structured, ultimate guide video that's going to help fix your dopamine addiction, rebuild your ability to feel joy again and help you become the best version of yourself.
Since we're on this topic, I have to mention journaling.
It's something I've been doing for over five years now and it's truly helped me so much in my self-development, self-love and happiness journey.
It's something I recommend to everybody, regardless of how you wanna journal, it's completely up to you, but it's something you need to start immediately.
Whether you want to do it once a day or once a week is completely up to you, but if you've never tried it before or if you feel like you're always inconsistent, please give it another go.
I specifically designed these guided journals to help other people on their growth and manifestation journey so that they can become the best version of themselves and reprogram their belief systems and their subconscious mind so that they can break down any of the obstacles standing in their way to true happiness and fulfillment.
So feel free to check it out.
It's down below in the description, along with a bunch of other links to things I do to help you guys on your self development journey.
I also want to give a huge thank you to Squarespace who are the sponsors of today's video.
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That's squarespace.com forward slash Tamco.
Okay, chapter number one, happiness myths that are keeping you stuck.
This is so important to start the video with because there were so many assumptions that I had about happiness which I mostly learned from other people, and I know a lot of people still think this way about happiness, which is what is keeping them in the rut of never understanding why they don't feel fully satisfied yet.
Myth number one, pursuing pleasure will make you happy.
In our current quick fix culture of constant dopamine hits that we get from social media, it's so easy to assume that we're doing the comfortable fun, happy thing by scrolling when we want to or ordering food when we want to, because of the associated dopamine rush that we keep getting every time we do those things.
While it feels so good in the moment, it is hurting you so bad in the long run.
It's basically frying your brain.
This is a form of dopamine burnout, which not enough people are talking about right now.
This is when you're so addicted to those quick dopamine fixes like having 40 tabs open, scrolling through seven second TikToks, ultra processed food notifications every five minutes and always picking up your phone to answer them straight away.
You are getting so much dopamine too fast.
And not only that.
You're getting it all from doing nothing, from sitting down, hitting a button, scrolling through another thing, watching another episode.
But in reality our system is supposed to work in a way that we get dopamine fixes through things that we learn, through things that help us grow, through movement.
And now all of a sudden we're not.
The whole system has been wired backwards.
And because your brain has grown so accustomed to getting dopamine from these quick fixes like scrolling or from eating a bunch of fast food.
When you actually sit down to do the tasks that should be giving you real dopamine, your brain doesn't know how to respond.
It wants to stop working.
When you want to sit down, you want to read, you want to study, you want to work, your brain isn't releasing dopamine.
The same for those things.
That's why you feel so unmotivated all the time and frustrated that you can't do tasks in the way that you used to or the way that you're supposed to.
And really, how are you supposed to feel happy at that?
That the work tasks you're supposed to be getting done, or the studying you really want to be good at, isn't coming out because you can't produce it, because you can't sit down for long periods of time.
Then you get frustrated with yourself, you hate that you're procrastinating, you're self-criticizing and you label yourself as the type of person that simply can't get it done, therefore leading to long-lasting self-doubt and self-criticism.
Myth number two, happiness is a destination.
Now, this was the trap that I fell into that I hinted at at the beginning of the video.
Myself and I know many other people imagine that once they arrive at a certain point in their life whether it's settling down and having a family, hitting a certain career goal, acquiring a certain amount of wealth I know is a big common one the dream job, the ideal weight, the love of their life that's when they're gonna get to this destination of happiness and everything's gonna feel great.
But in reality, happiness isn't an end point like that.
It is an ongoing journey.
And it's completely normal for it to fluctuate through different seasons of your life, depending on what you're currently experiencing and going through.
Basically, if you're trying to find the thing that's going to give you happiness, or the experience, if you're trying to get to a place or destination in your life that you think will give you that fixed state of happiness, you're just setting yourself up for disappointment, because that is nobody's normal.
That's not how it's supposed to happen.
Happiness is an ongoing process that ties into our current circumstances and actions.
So instead, think of it as a state to approach each day with the decisions that you're making for yourself.
But we'll go into that later.
And that links into myth number three.
Happiness means feeling good all the time.
Absolutely not.
You are here living this life because you are meant to experience the full spectrum of human emotions and you are going to experience those daily weekly, To deny yourself that that in itself is part of the journey of experiencing happiness.
If you never experienced any other emotion, you wouldn't feel the euphoria of what it's like when you do experience joy.
I think it's really important to reframe happiness as a skill.
Like.
Think about how happy you feel when you've overcome some sort of adversity or when you've overcome a negative emotion or a negative phase in your life.
It's like the two literally go hand in hand.
So don't knock down one in pursuit of happiness when they really connect.
You gain so much happiness just from the experience of learning how to navigate your ups and downs in life.
And myth number four, happiness should be pursued above all else.
Now, this was a trap that I fell into and something that I believe to be true.
I thought the purpose of life is to be happy, so I should just put all of my effort into trying to be happy.
But there are various studies that have actually proven this fact to be wrong.
In reality, it's shown that the people with long-lasting authentic, rich happiness are actually people who organize their life around their goals, around their relationships, their hobbies, meaningful and engaging experiences, rather than directly trying to chase happiness itself.
And I actually think this is so nice because it's freeing you from needing this one thing and this one emotion and instead showing you that just pursuing your life as normal gives you happiness along the way.
And I'll give you a really good example of this.
Every single week.
I write a script for my YouTube videos, for example, like the one I'm filming right now.
And before I sit down to film these scripts sometimes, I feel bored.
I don't want to do the work sometimes.
I want to go do something else.
I might feel overwhelmed that I have to think so hard for a couple of hours to produce a really good piece of work, because I want to provide value to my audience.
Sometimes it feels a little bit too much and I can't be bothered to put the work in.
If I was focused on chasing happiness, I would avoid the task and not do it at all.
While it feels a little bit uncomfortable and stressful while I am doing it, the happiness I feel once I've written it, once I'm reading it back, once I'm realizing how good the script is and how proud I am and how much I can't wait to share these facts with other people.
Then I film it and put it out and see how people are engaging with it.
I experience more happiness than ever.
But I had to sit through the discomfort and the initial boring process to get there.
I had to go through the experience of building it and the experience of life to experience happiness along the way on that journey.
Chapter number two, mindset shifts for happiness.
Before we get to the actual actions that you can implement into your routine and your life at the end of the video.
First, I want to talk about how we can rewire our beliefs, how we can work on the way that we think, because I think that is equally as important as whatever actions we are putting in.
Mindset shift one is to learn how to fall in love with resilience.
Because it's truly what life is about, growing through every experience, no matter how good or bad.
Because, even through our adversities, it's truly about the kind of person that we evolve into at the end of going through them.
That's so magical and can give us so much satisfaction that we are constantly stepping into new versions of ourselves that are stronger and more resilient and more confident.
Like I said before, happiness isn't about never having a bad experience.
It's about the pride you feel after you've dealt with it.
Going through something difficult and asking yourself, how can I grow from this?
Or what did I learn from this that will show that my life is going to change course now?
Or I've learned lessons that will make sure I'll never be in a situation again.
That itself is happiness.
Knowing that you'll never be put in a situation like that again or you're more well equipped for life after having gone through that experience.
Mindset shift number two is all about arrival fallacy.
Arrival fallacy is like what I said before.
It's when people assume that happiness is a certain destination or goal.
And, like me, you equate 100000 YouTuber, subscriber plaque and milestone as the epitome of success and happiness.
And then you get it, you realize that's not what happiness equals.
And you kind of have to start all over again in finding what happiness actually is.
And you've put so much pressure on it and you've put so much expectation on reaching that goal that when you reach it and it doesn't feel so amazing like how you thought it would.
Instead, you feel so disappointed and so flat and sad.
A rival fallacy is like the people who will buy a mansion and a private jet and be a billionaire and then wonder why they still feel miserable.
Yes, those things are nice, but none of them actually equal happiness.
And so the answer is simple.
The happiness is in the journey, not the destination.
I have never experienced that sadness that I spoke about when I hit 100,000 subscribers ever again.
When I hit a million, I felt so stable and so secure because I had learned my lesson, and I learned not to attach happiness or satisfaction when reaching it.
I congratulated myself and I celebrated myself, but I don't try to find happiness in those things anymore.
Instead, I find so much joy in the journey to actually reaching it, in recognizing where i started and the hurdles i overcame and the qualities and personality traits i had to adopt in order to get to where i am today.
That's what gives me happiness the journey to becoming the type of person who could have achieved that goal not the goal and not the thing itself.
And the last mindset shift is actually something i learned really, really recently that is changing my life, and that is stop ruminating on the past and shift into future, self-thinking instead.
I've identified a certain pattern in my life which is every time I'm busy or I can keep my hands busy, or I have an action, or I have something I'm passionate about that I can dream about and think about and focus on and aspire to do something.
There is no space left in my brain to think about the past, to cringe at embarrassing things I did, to wonder about people that I knew years ago, because I'm so passionate and I'm so motivated and I'm so tunnel vision on where I want to be and building right now, in the present moment, to get there.
But I found, when I have too much free time, when I'm procrastinating, when I said I was going to do something, but all day I'm kind of wandering around the house and not actually doing it, because I definitely have days like that.
That's when weirdly my brain just gives me flashbacks randomly of the past.
I didn't ask for them.
I was not trying to think of them, but my brain is showing them to me like a movie and I'm so confused, because why am I thinking of scenarios and things that I have no care in the world for?
Then, because it's in my brain, I'm ruminating on it.
It's causing this spiral where I'm thinking of other scenarios that happened also at that time in my life and then I can't get it out of my brain.
And this always happens when I'm not being productive.
And when I say productive, this doesn't need to be work.
This doesn't need to be like sitting at your desk for 10 hours a day.
It could be getting lunch with your partner.
It could be calling a friend and seeing how they are.
It could be doing a hobby and something you enjoy.
It could be pouring into yourself.
It could be doing yourself care.
Literally anything, okay?
Having a bubble bath is something that is feeding your mind and your soul and your peace.
But just sitting around or scrolling and wondering what you're going to do next, without actually being busy and taking action on your life, on your dreams, on yourself, is when your brain craves the familiarity and the comfort of your past.
Why?
Because with your past and ruminating on it, your brain knows exactly how the ending is.
That's why it loves to ruminate on it.
That's why it loves to play back those moments to you.
It's weirdly comforting and entertaining to replay the past and think about the what-ifs and to analyze it.
But that experience itself is so low vibrational and not good for you at all and is not contributing to your growth or where you want to be in your life whatsoever.
What's really helped me is anytime I feel like my brain is going there.
I'm like what can I do right now that's actually gonna feed into my peace and my joy and put me in a higher vibration.
Do I wanna bake something?
Do I wanna draw?
Do I wanna spend time with a loved one?
Or do I wanna get some work done?
All of those experiences because I'm achieving something in the process, whether it's making a cupcake or having some good conversation with my friend or building a skill towards my goal while I'm working along on my desk.
It makes me happy because I'm growing in the process and I'm achieving something and I'm getting a little bit closer to who I've always wanted to be and the life I've always wanted to live.
And finally, chapter number three, actions to be happier, aka the homework chapter.
These are all a bunch of actions you guys can start implementing today to put everything I've said in this video actually into practice.
Keep your hands busy, like I just said, and do real, trackable, physical things.
Action number one, my favorite, because I've been doing it so much recently and I can feel the change already.
Anchor your days in meaning, not your mood.
I used to be the kind of person like I thought the most self-loving thing I could possibly do was like wake up every day and be like how do I feel?
What do I want to do?
And don't get me wrong on certain days where maybe you're feeling a bit slower or run down or you need your self-care, that is a great way to approach things, but every single day, yeah no.
Instead of chasing how you feel, chase what your values are, chase what you believe in, chase what you want to be instead, and then do it.
Put the action in, regardless of how you're feeling, because listen, I know you can relate to this.
So many times I've said, I don't want to go to the gym.
I can't be bothered.
And then I go and then I feel fantastic after I do it.
Because it's like, oh, I showed up for myself and I contributed and prioritized my health today.
And I took care of myself today.
And I did the hard thing because it was good for me.
I feel amazing.
Like that right there is real happiness.
It just goes to show like the initial discomfort that's kind of part of the journey to achieving the happiness.
Action number two, journaling has been proven by multiple studies to boost happiness.
You can journal in a plain notebook or you can try a guided journal.
Like I said, I've got my own business.
You don't have to use this if you don't want to.
I journaled in a plain notebook for years, but then I started drawing out my own template of how I wanted to journal, which is what my growth journal includes.
So it's completely up to you and just deciding what is gonna best suit your needs.
Regardless, I think everybody needs to try it at least once.
It will change your life.
It's been proven to change your life and it changed mine.
I've been doing it for five years.
Yes, you are gonna go through seasons where you're gonna be a little bit more consistent, or you're gonna fall off and you won't.
Regardless, it's not a reason to quit.
There are also so many ways to journal, whether it be Googling prompts online to journal, or whether it be manifestation journaling or just writing a few things you're grateful for, or just keeping a diary of what's happened in your day.
I think that's so cute.
It's like a little time capsule that you can read.
I actually have a basket up here that's filled with about four or five journals from the last few years and sometimes I read them and it's like I'm literally transported back into that day and it's so nice to see how far I've come.
It's cute.
While it is also a nice time capsule just writing what's happened in your day is such a good way at releasing and letting go, so you're not harboring any feelings and you're not leaving anything unprocessed that then can build up and stress you out for the next few days.
My personal favorite way to journal is identity work, belief rewiring, making my subconscious work in a way that favors me and helps you manifest my goals.
That is why I use both the growth and the manifestation journal.
Right now, my absolute favorite is the manifesting because we're in winter arc.
So I'm like going so hard on my manifesting.
But if you're just starting with journaling, and especially if you've got a lot of goals, I'd recommend the growth journal, because that will allow you to track your actions, your progress, write down your goals, keep a checklist and keep accountability.
Whereas manifesting is all about doing the identity work, self-concept and changing your mind, not worrying about what actions you're putting in action.
Number three is keep growing and keep learning, regardless of what it's about.
It doesn't need to be studying, it doesn't need to be work, it can be a hobby, it can be something you're so passionate about, but this is what humans innately desire to do, so we need to keep feeding into it.
Learning a new skill, keeping your hands busy, creating something, working on a meaningful project all of these, time and time again, have been proven to build you high levels of happiness and fulfillment, and that personally, is why i fell in love with self-development when i was like 13, 14 years old and why i still speak about it on the internet today.
I could have said i was done years ago, but i just love the process of it.
I love who i'm becoming.
I love all of the alter egos i've had.
I love teaching myself skills that i thought i would never have, because I used to be a really shy quiet, introverted girl.
But I've adopted so many skills on this journey that make me feel so good about myself, because it really goes to show when I put my mind to something, when I feel I need something to propel me into the kind of future that I want, I can do it, because I have so much evidence that I have been able to do it.
And the final action, the most important.
I saved the best till last, and that is dopamine.
Detoxes are key.
If you relate to anything I said at the beginning of the video that you know you're really addicted to the cheap dopamine of like fast food and scrolling and Netflix binges then you need to try these actions to break out of it, reprogram your mind so that you can then get more healthy dopamine rushes and have more long-sustaining, stable happiness.
A dopamine reset helps you reclaim your balance.
It's not about quitting everything.
It's just about resetting your baseline for where you're getting your dopamine and your happiness from.
So an example of this might be no social media for a month, or maybe two weeks, if that's too hard for you.
Cutting out video games, cutting out sugar.
That's what I did.
No ultra processed snacks for 30 days.
Most people say whatever you're going to cut out, cut it out for 30 days because clinically, that's how long it takes for the brain to reset.
And also a lot of people say it's 21 to 30 days that it takes to make or break a habit.
So here are some ideas for your dopamine detox to make your brain work in your favor again.
One move your most distracting apps off your home screen, like reorganize it, because it will literally stop you in your tracks.
Sometimes you'll go on your phone.
You'll know exactly where tick tock is, so you'll hit it before you.
You've even tried to look for it with your eyes.
So i always like to reorganize mine and kind of place an obstacle because it stops me before and makes me think do i really need to do this right now to replace endless scrolling with reading, whether it's fiction or non-fiction?
I started doing this in bed, so i'll put my phone on charge, but i'll always keep two or three books by my bedside always, so i can choose out of fiction or non-fiction what i want to do instead, and it's so much better.
The third thing I do I actually spoke about this on my vlog channel.
If you haven't already subscribed, you should, because that's where you can see me living out all of my advice in real time.
But what I did was my morning routine sometimes involves me having to be on my phone because I have apps on my phone, like my habit tracker or Duolingo or Substack articles I read every morning.
So I need a device to use.
However, I found whenever I was using my phone, if an email or a text came up, I'd be automatically distracted, or a notification.
I'd be scrolling on TikTok first thing in the morning and nobody wants that.
So I found a really old iPad that I was never using and I basically set it up so it only has my healthy morning routine apps on that and no social media.
That is my only device for the entire morning.
I'm sure there are also ways to do this on your phone if you use screen time or like a social media locking app, but something to consider.
Some more great ideas, meditating.
I do this every single morning.
It will help you with your attention span.
It will help you with your focus and your dopamine.
Another idea is going on a walk in silence.
No music.
I started doing this.
I actually love it.
Like hearing the ambiance.
You're more focused on like people watching, which is so fun.
A lot of people do cryotherapy or a cold shower because that can help reset your baseline as well.
Personally, not really my thing, but...
It's a good thing to try.
And that brings us to the end of this video.
I hope you guys enjoyed it.
This was such a fun video to film.
This was actually my idea for this week's video, because it's a journey that I've been on for the last couple of months, anyway.
So I've just been learning so much about it and I've been learning through my own trial and error, with all the experiences and the things that i've been trying to do, because i was a victim to dopamine addiction okay, i was.
It got me the cheap dopamine, got me um, and i'm still on my journey right now and i'm still learning.
But this is all the stuff i've learned so far, so i really hope it helps.
Please comment down below and let me know what you thought.
What was your favorite tip?
What are you going to implement?
My camera's about to die, so i'm gonna have to say bye, lovelies.
I appreciate you so much.
Thank you for being here.
Make sure you check out all the links below in the description and i'll see you next time for a.
