The Emotional Alchemy Podcast

146. Balancing Dopamine is the Key to Staying Grounded During a Launch

• Kat HoSoo Lee • Episode 146

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Join us as we uncover how dopamine, the powerful neuromodulator, influences your motivation, desire, and action, especially during the high-pressure process of launching new offers. 

We begin with a somatic exercise inspired by the book The Molecule of More to understand what dopamine feels like in our bodies before delving into the biological rhythms set by dopamine and how it influences our emotional and behavioral  highs and lows. I offer practices for maintaining long-term motivation and mental well-being by counterbalancing dopamine with molecules like serotonin and oxytocin.

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Kat HoSoo Lee is an Emotional Alchemy Coach, Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Emotional Alchemy Podcast.

She loves playing in the space where science and spirituality converge because this is where we get to experience emotional alchemy. In her work, she educates space-holders about somatic physiology and environmental biology so they can deepen their practices of listening and presence which ultimately helps them expand their capacity to hold space for others.

As a Spiritual Business Mentor, she guides soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. The work bridges the emotional landscape with practical tools which allow them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, relational marketing and purposeful service.


This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.

Speaker 1:

There we go. Hi, natalia, it's good to see you. Okay, so a little bit of an intro into what we're going to get into today. I created this specifically for folks who are in the spiritual entrepreneurship world, and if you've ever felt ungrounded while launching an offer to your community, this is the perfect place for you. We're going to be talking a lot about dopamine, which is a molecule that's responsible for motivation and drive and desire and pleasure, and I want to talk about how this little molecule affects so much, about how we feel and take action as spiritual entrepreneurs, particularly as we're launching an offer to our community.

Speaker 1:

And just as like a little sweet, little snippet, dopamine is what turns on when you have a desire and a craving to do something. It's also that thing that helps you get off of your couch to go do that thing. It's also that thing that helps you get off of your couch to go do that thing. And when you actually get that thing in your hands, you also get a little spike of dopamine, and so that thing could be a pint of ice cream, a new romantic partner, a drug, it could be scrolling on Instagram, a new puppy or new clients, which is what we're going to talk about here today puppy or new clients, which is what we're going to talk about here today. So full disclosure.

Speaker 1:

I felt inspired to have this conversation with y'all because I'm in the middle of launching Business Alchemist Mentorship right now, and dopamine feels very much present. If you're like me, launching can feel incredibly ungrounding and that's why I want to talk about this, because I look around at social media and I look at how other coaches are talking about launching stuff and I see them putting on this like facade of confidence and groundedness and excitement while they're launching and they leave all this uncertainty and fear out of what it is that they show us. And you know that's not what I'm about, and so we're going to talk about it from a different perspective. So, as I sat with my own fears and uncertainty, I could feel dopamine taking up space in my own body. It was taking up space in a way that historically has felt incredibly familiar. So I dust off some notes from school, I reread and some and relisten to some material and some research about dopamine and that is finally helped me just take this like nice big exhale about launching, because everything that I've been feeling for the last several weeks during this launch. Everything that I felt about every other launch that I've done is totally understandable. It's totally understandable that I am a little bit more activated right now, that I'm feeling worried, that it's a little bit harder to sleep, that I'm scrolling Instagram more, that I'm craving a bit of junk food, that I'm living a little bit less presently, a little bit more in the future. All this is understandable and the why is completely explained by this tiny little neuromodulator called dopamine. And now that I understand it, it's my responsibility to find ways on how I can support myself through this launch.

Speaker 1:

And that's really what I want to talk about with you all. I want to share the biology of dopamine and if biology scares you a little bit, don't worry. You don't need to have a history in like cell biology or understand that. I'm going to really simplify things for us and I also want to talk about how it shows up in the life of a spiritual entrepreneur. And I also want to talk about how it shows up in the life of a spiritual entrepreneur, particularly during a launch, when you're seeking clients, that dopamine is all about seeking and getting. And I also want to share tangible tools on how to work with dopamine instead of denying it, suppressing it or letting it control your life. So, by framing it, by framing all this information in the context of this real world example of launching, it's going to give us a opportunity to introduce some tools and frameworks that you can use. But even if I'm using this example of a launch, my hope is that you feel empowered to use this example and then you apply it to relationships, to personal goals and really so much other stuff in your life that involves around seeking and receiving and getting. So, um, I'm getting into the practice of like re-saying. I guess we're in the middle of a rebrand, and so I've, I've like changed how I introduce myself. So I'm, I'm putting myself into the practice of that, and so, in this little safe, cozy container here that's then going to go out into the podcast, I just want to like say that out loud Hi, I am Kat Hosuli. There's some new faces here. There are some familiar faces here, some folks who have been through BAM already, and so I feel like I'm in this like perfect little, like cozy space.

Speaker 1:

I am an emotional alchemy coach, I'm also a spiritual business mentor and I'm the host of the Emotional Alchemy Podcast, and I love playing in the space where science and spirituality converge, because this is where we get to experience emotional alchemy. So in my work, I educate space holders about somatic physiology and environmental biology so that they can deepen their practice of listening and presencing, which ultimately helps them expand their capacity to hold space for other people them expand their capacity to hold space for other people. As a spiritual business mentor, I guide soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice, and the work bridges the emotional landscape with practical tools which allow them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, in relational marketing and in purposeful service values in relational marketing and in purposeful service. So today I tried to do an experiment. I tried to go on YouTube live and I often think about business as a series of experiments and it didn't work out so well. The audio didn't pick up, and so now we're here in Zoom and I get to play this out in real time with you guys, and so thanks for being flexible For those of you who are listening to this on the podcast, I'm really glad that you're here and you get to hear the recorded version of it, because the first 10 minutes of our talk was me trying to figure out audio.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about dopamine. The first thing I'm going to do is let's bring this into somatics, right? So I'm going to invite you all to place your hands somewhere on your body Doesn't matter where, just somewhere on your body and I'm just going to ask you to sink into what that feels like in your body to have your hands on your body. Are you able to feel your body? How's your breath? Maybe? Just do a quick little glance down at your hands. What's within your immediate visual field? What are the sensations that come up when you look down? What are some of the textures that you can feel beneath your hands?

Speaker 1:

For me, I sometimes have to like close my eyes to shift into the here and now, and that shift into the here and now, when the only thing that matters is what's right in front of us, when the to-do list disappears and sensation is the only thing that exists. This is all being modulated by what is being classified as H and N neurotransmitters neurotransmitters, the HNN neurotransmitters. What's included in that umbrella are oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, and endorphins are the body's version of morphine. We have also got endocannabinoids, which is the body's version of cannabis, and what these neurotransmitters do is they allow us to experience and savor and enjoy what's in front of us, or they can help us fight or flight our way out of a sticky situation. Our way out of a sticky situation.

Speaker 1:

So now, by contrast, I want you to focus on something that is just outside of your reach, like focus on an object that's just outside of your reach. It could be something that's just like sitting on your desk, it could be a coffee mug, you know whatever is just kind of like outside of your reach, like you have to go out and get it and now go, actually like touch that thing. Just that simple act of you focusing on an object that's outside of your reach and touching it meant that your body and your mind had to shift from the HNN neurotransmitters and shift into a neuromodulator called dopamine. So dopamine makes us desire what you don't yet have. It drives you to seek new things. It rewards you when you obey it. It punishes you when you don't achieve it. It loves novelty. It inspires our creativity. It is why we become addicted to substances and activities. It fuels our dreams and it gives us the gas to accomplish them.

Speaker 1:

So I am a nervous system nerd. I view the world through the lens of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic branches of our bodies, and I've been doing that for over a decade. It's how I teach emotional alchemy, it's how I teach spiritual business and it's a framework that I, quite frankly, I can't shut that off. I view everything in the context of how threatened or safe does your nervous system feel in different situations? And to me, the nervous system gives us that context of safety, but it doesn't completely explain how we behave sometimes. Why do some people cheat on their partners? Where do addictions come from? Why do some people thrive as entrepreneurs while others struggle at every turn? Why does it seem like we are chronically unsatisfied, even though most of us no longer have to worry about our literal survival? Why do we compare ourselves to others? Understanding dopamine brings in color to what has felt like a black and white painting, and I'm so glad that I get to share a snippet of that with you today.

Speaker 1:

So what is dopamine? Dopamine is a neuromodulator, and what that means is that it is a molecule that communicates from the brain to many, many different types of tissues and systems in the body. At the same time, you'll often hear dopamine being referred to as a neurotransmitter, but it doesn't fully capture its full functionality. Andrew Huberman is a podcaster and he talks about dopamine quite a bit in his podcast and I'm going to use his analogy of how he explains the difference between neurotransmitters and neuromodulators. Just as a note, he has a really great podcast episode that's called controlling your dopamine for motivation, focus and satisfaction. That's worth listening to.

Speaker 1:

So neurotransmitters imagine that you're at a concert and you're sitting next to your buddy. Neurotransmitters are like the two people trying to talk to each other in that concert. It's like a very intimate sort of situation. It's a very you know, bi-directional, I guess sort of a situation. Neuromodulators are like the band, so the band is the beat that gets everyone in the crowd to dance in this like coordinated, organic way, and that is what dopamine is. It's like the band.

Speaker 1:

So this is why dopamine is such a strong influencer. It affects us on the physical, the emotional and the nervous system level. It can invoke responses like how fast our heart rate is moving, involved in people in here. It's involved in our craving for burritos and it is also the driver for how we go get that burrito. Dopamine works in a nervous system to say let's turn on this set of neural circuits. In particular, dopamine has two different pathways that it works through, and we can simplistically call these the desire circuit and the control circuit.

Speaker 1:

And in today's conversation, we're going to speak about the desire circuit because it's the most relevant to our life and experiences as spiritual entrepreneurs, and I also don't want to turn this into like a six hour lecture. I have no idea how long this is going to be, by the way. So, yeah, so, as a reminder, dopamine is all about desire, motivation, craving and drive. So why would this be important to our biology? Dopamine is strongly tied to our survival, not just as humans, but as animals that seek resources outside of ourselves. So dopamine is the universal molecule that is about foraging and seeking. So even earthworms have dopamine because they have to go outside of their own bodies to go find food.

Speaker 1:

Dopamine has everything to do with how motivated you are, how connected you are to your desires and your capacity to push through effort. Now I say forage, which in today's terms, kind of sounds very cozy Instagram, cottagecore, homesteadcore but imagine that you lived in the Paleolithic era when our ancestors were surviving off of what they could just forage, not what they could find in a grocery store. So for our ancestors, going and looking for something was a dangerous endeavor. So to have the drive to go outside of what is known and safe, our ancestors needed a strong boost of dopamine to give them the oomph that's needed to move outside of comfort and safety and into the world of resources. So, in short, dopamine is the molecule that says, hey, you need to go find food, you need to seek social connection, you need to find shelter and you need to reproduce. And because it is also a precursor to epinephrine, that's another way to say adrenaline it also helps create the action to get us to those resources. It also helps create the action to get us to those resources.

Speaker 1:

Now, another thing to keep in mind about dopamine is that we just felt the contrast between dopamine and HNN neurotransmitters, right? These two systems work in counterbalance to each other. So dopamine paints this rosy picture of the future, whereas HNN neurotransmitters help us really enjoy something for what it is, not what it can become. So when dopamine is low, hnns are high and vice versa. And, like biologically, this makes sense, right? So dopamine tells us to crave, to look to pursue things outside of ourselves, to go look for resources and satisfaction, to pursue things outside of ourselves, to go look for resources and satisfaction. It also says let's create some action to go get that. And so then you get a spike of dopamine right as you're fantasizing about something that you're about to pursue, and then also when you get an unexpected reward while you're in that pursuit. H&n's, on the other hand, says I'm enjoying what's right here right now, I'm not focused on this thing, this experience being different, and I'm not focused on what it can become, so there's really no reason for me to move. I can just stay here and I'm pretty happy.

Speaker 1:

Now, the most popular way that I've heard dopamine spoken of is when we talk about social media as a dopamine hit. It is used to describe the why behind addictive behaviors, which all sounds a bit negative, but that's only because we're describing what happens when dopamine is not balanced. Dopamine, when it is functioning how it's intended, is what drives the evolution of our lives. It is functioning how it's intended is what drives the evolution of our lives. The problem is that with human development and technology, there is no shortage of what captures our attention for desire and longing. So, as a result, we develop imbalances in dopamine. So I just want to pause there and just check in with the chat and see if there's any questions.

Speaker 1:

Just about dopamine as a neuromodulator. Just to begin there, you good, okay, all right. So let's talk about how dopamine works. Essentially, we have a baseline of dopamine that's circulating in our systems all the time, and I'm going to walk us through a real world situation to track, like how and when dopamine is released. So let's say you're craving a burrito because you haven't had one in a while. Dopamine's job is to get your butt off the couch so that you can get that dopamine spike, which then converts to epinephrine or adrenaline, and then that creates the action so you can go get that burrito. So for nervous system nerds, yes, dopamine triggers that sympathetic arousal response.

Speaker 1:

So let's say you get to your favorite taqueria and then the server that you've got a crush on is working, and then they sneak you a surprise side of guacamole.

Speaker 1:

As you're eating your burrito, you're fantasizing about your crush asking you out, and so then you get a spike of dopamine there. You get another spike in dopamine from how amazing that burrito is, and then, also because there was an unexpected reward of sorry, jenna, I got distracted by your comment your now official favorite way to talk about dopamine is burrito based. Yeah, same here. There's a reason why I picked burritos because they're amazing. So you're fantasizing about your crush. You get that dopamine spike from eating the burrito, from fantasizing about your crush and then also from getting that unexpected side of guacamole. But now you've eaten the burrito and you're home alone again.

Speaker 1:

You're crushed in, ask you out and your dopamine levels go down. They don't go down just to baseline, but they go actually below baseline. So the bigger the dopamine spike, the lower the Valley. So in other words, dopamine spikes with one, the anticipation and possibility of a burrito. Two, when you are enjoying the burrito. Three, when you receive an unexpected surprise in this case it's guacamole while you're pursuing that burrito. And then four, with the anticipation and possibility of your crush asking you out.

Speaker 1:

So the weird thing about dopamine is that that's not consistent. Let's say you eat a burrito every day for a month Over time because you've come to expect this burrito. It now the novelty that wears off and that dopamine spike becomes associated, that the dopamine spike that you associate with enjoyment as you're like eating that burrito, that no longer happens. So they've tested this on rats in laboratories. So first they track dopamine levels in rats who are given a treat and they get a dopamine spike. And then they turned on a light that was associated with the treat and what they found is that the rats got a dopamine spike with both the light and the treat, but then, over time and repeated cycles of lights and treats, they no longer got a spike with the treat. They only got the spike when the light came on. So this cyclical nature of dopamine is important.

Speaker 1:

Your experience of motivation and drive is related to the fluctuations in relationship to your recent levels of dopamine. Now, dopamine is a bit of a Goldilocks neuromodulator, meaning that you don't want your baseline to be too high or too low, and your dopamine baseline is highly influenced by your actions. So, in particular, if you live your life from a place where you are constantly seeking, that baseline ratchets up and up and up, which then results in you feeling underwhelmed from things that normally brought you joy. But if that baseline of dopamine is set high, the spike has to be that much higher and when dopamine spikes that high, it's going to be a valley. You're going to encounter a valley on the other side of that. That's really low, which is why so many people experience like a hangover after peak experiences. So in extreme cases.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if you can see this thread here, but dopamine physiology is the explanation of addiction. It's not necessarily that the substance or the activity that they're seeking. It's actually the dopamine spike that they're trying to get to. The irony with addiction is that the pleasure loses the sparkle over time, just like that burrito that you ate for a month straight. So dopamine explains why, when you repeatedly engage in something that you enjoy, your threshold for that enjoyment goes up and up and up, and addiction is really a narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. Over time and repetitions of the addictive behavior or substance, what we do is we develop a resistance, and this is another way of saying that the dopamine baseline has ratcheted up to the point that there needs to be more and more stimulation to get that dopamine spike that these people are seeking. You also have to consider the dopamine valley and what that experience is like.

Speaker 1:

I have a history of alcoholism and when I think back to that time it got to the point that I wasn't drinking for that dopamine spike. I was drinking to avoid the dopamine valley, and a hangover doesn't quite adequately describe what it felt like after a night of partying and drinking, because it doesn't explain the emotional low that comes from it as well. It's easier to stay at that low level of drunkenness to avoid the crash of the dopamine valley. So when I listened to the Huberman podcast, he talks about different substances and activities and in relationship to like, how far above the baseline it spikes you. So chocolate spikes one and a half times above baseline. It's pretty transient. It only lasts for a few minutes to a few seconds. Sex the pursuit of and the act of sex spikes you two times over baseline. Nicotine, very, very short-lived two and a half times above baseline. Cocaine, also two and a half times over baseline. And amphetamine is 10 times over baseline. So based on this, we can now see why amphetamine is so addictive compared to, let's say, chocolate. It's because that spike is so high, but also that corresponding value is also really, really low. So folks who get addicted to amphetamines are chasing the high but also trying to avoid the low.

Speaker 1:

So now that we've got a sense of how dopamine works, let's talk about how it shows up during an offer launch, because even subtle fluctuations in dopamine affect how we feel about life. So know that when you're going into a launch, you're voluntarily entering into a moment in your entrepreneurial life that's inherently going to have some ungrounding fluctuations in dopamine. Instead of making something wrong about this or wrong about us or glossing it over, I want to help us understand what's going on so that we can accept what we can and cannot change, and give us some ideas to help us feel grounded Again. I just want to like check in and see if there's any thoughts, comments, questions, before I move into talking about launches, the podcast, andrew Huberman, huberman Lab Podcast, any other questions? We're good, perfect, so let's talk about launching. Think about what a launch is. You are envisioning who you'd like to work with. You're hoping to reach a goal of how much money you'd like to make or how many people you'd like to have in your container. You're tapping into why you do what you do so that you could talk about it in your marketing. So it's not a burrito, but you can see how craving, desire, motivation and drive are all a natural and a normal part of launching. Now it's easier to think about a burrito as a resource that you go outside of your body to go get, but a launch brings in money, which is also an important resource when we live in capitalism.

Speaker 1:

I coincidentally watched a reel on Instagram yesterday. I don't know how these reels end up on my like suggested feed, but it was titled a day in the life of a rich Dubai housewife and it showed this perfectly coiffed woman going through her day eating all these extravagant meals all day long, ordering multiple entrees because she couldn't decide what she wanted. She was drinking cocktails that were laced with 24 karat gold. She's getting her hair and her nails done, getting spa treatments, massages. She accidentally spent $2,000 at Lululemon accidentally spent $2,000 at Lululemon. Like you get the picture right. I couldn't help but view this reel through the lens of her dopamine levels, because I was preparing for this talk. So dopamine spikes are natural and they're an important part of how we move and pursue things. However, when we layer dopaminergic activities, it changes what would be a novel experience into a normal one, and what that means is that we have to then ramp up experiences in the pursuit of a dopamine spike. So it's why this Dubai housewife has to layer multiple experiences into her day to feel fulfilled.

Speaker 1:

Now, my own intention when it comes to how I stay balanced with dopamine is to try to keep my day-to-day experiences as a wave, as it fluctuates between dopamine and HNN neurotransmitters. Now we know that we are going to flow up and down, but we can influence how smooth that flow is through our actions and our mindset. So, knowing that every client who signs on I'm going to have a dopamine peak like that's just a biological process, that's going to happen, and then I'm also going to have a corresponding dopamine valley. So that means that I'm going to be aware of how my body experiences dopamine. In other words, I want the launch to be the dopaminergic experience that it is. I don't want to layer in optional dopamine which is going to raise my baseline, with that corresponding crash that lowers it so.

Speaker 1:

So when I'm in the middle of a launch, I am being very disciplined about eating whole nourishing foods that stabilize my blood sugar. I don't drink alcohol very often these days, but I'm not drinking right now. I'm being really mindful that the sugar that I eat is from fruit and I know that eating processed food layers dopamine. So I make it a point to not eat snacks that are coming from a box or a bag during these times. And I don't abstain from caffeine because you can pry my coffee out of my cold dead hands, but I do limit it. I limit it to one cup of coffee or chai a day.

Speaker 1:

So another way that we layer dopamine is the phone, and the phone is a tricky thing because it's not just this like singular thing. Right, it's a way to listen to music, it's a way to listen to podcasts, it's a way to stay connected to your friends by calling or texting them, it's a way to share your latte art with the world. There's games, there's shopping. All that is dopamine. Because the phone is a novelty machine. I know that I've personally ping-ponged between different apps while I lose complete track of time, and this is because the phone layers a bunch of different ways to access dopamine, and so, of course, it's really hard to stay grounded after that. So during a launch, I'm limiting my phone use. In fact, I have no phone days on the days that my husband and I have off together. So I'll check in on my client messages in the morning and in the evening and I'll check in with my friends in those times, because layering all these dopamine triggering sources causes that crash afterwards.

Speaker 1:

It undermines longer term motivation and drive To bring more pleasure to the things in my life that I really want to enjoy. I have to choose to not layer, and thanks Francisco, he just shared a comment that says wow, that explains a lot. I've been burnt out from the dopamine valley before. I think we all have right. So when I know that my dopamine spikes can't be avoided, the way that I replenish the pool of dopamine is to limit the optional dopaminergic behaviors that I engage in, that I choose to engage in Just as, like a little sidebar, adhd is often associated with this lower dopamine baseline, which is why there are such extreme fluctuations of not being able to focus and stay on task.

Speaker 1:

With these moments of hyper-focus, what we're seeing in ADHD is extreme spikes and valleys of dopamine. Okay, and so remember how I was sharing that the extent to how low the valley is is proportional to how high the peak is. This becomes especially relevant during a successful launch. Marketing coaches are all about that 10K month. So I'm going to work with that example. Work with that example.

Speaker 1:

If you are used to making around 10K per month already, your dopamine during a launch and let's say you make 10K during a launch your dopamine is going to spike a little bit and then it's going to dip a little bit below baseline, so you might not even feel the valley. In this case, however, let's say it's your first time making 10K. You never thought you'd make this much money in your business. You never thought you'd make this much money in your business. So that subsequent valley, from making about 3 to 4k regularly and then jumping up to 10k, and as soon as that happened I fell straight into that dopamine valley. I couldn't explain it, but I had so much anxiety about that first successful launch. Meanwhile, everyone in my group coaching program was so excited for me, even though I was having insomnia and my heart palpitations were coming back. No one normalized this excited for me, even though I was having insomnia and my heart palpitations were coming back. No one normalized this experience for me because everyone thinks about that peak experience and how like exciting that high is. And then we mask that dopamine valley because it seems shameful that we'd be upset when something joyful happened to us.

Speaker 1:

Dopamine is the marker of anticipation and possibility. It idealizes the unknown, and so once that unknown is known, its job is done. So, particularly if the accomplishment took a lot of effort, that valley is going to drop, it's going to bottom out. So remember, in that burrito example example how you were fantasizing about your crush. This is what happens when the dopamine rush of the chase dies down and they actually do ask you out, but it's not grounded with h and n molecules like serotonin and oxytocin. So if you don't make that shift from dopamine to serotonin and oxytocin, you're going to get that value. So frog that first 10K month. I don't know where I spent the money, how I spent the money, but I spent 10K that month. When I frame my behavior in the context of understanding dopamine, the dopamine value was so unbearable that I shopped to get my baseline back up. Shopping is a dopaminergic activity, right? It's no different to what I was doing when I was day drinking to avoid the hangover. So this explains why after peak experiences, we experience a low. If you've ever experienced a vulnerability hangover after you finished up a presentation that you worked really hard on or you felt the post-vacation blues or even postpartum depression, this is happening because your dopamine baseline shifted really, really dramatically outside of your window of tolerance.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to share how I work with the cycles of dopamine in practical ways that help me feel balanced. The first is that I allow myself to rest after peak dopamine experiences, because these experiences are part of the joy and the expression of life. I don't want to shield myself from joy. I don't want to shield other people from joy because they're afraid of that valley. That's not how we have rich and exciting lives. But we should be aware of how your body is going to process that experience. What we experience as a dopamine valley crash is how the body is communicating that you need to rest and slow down and integrate that experience. We are all meant to go through yin states, particularly after high yang states. We have depression after these peak states because capitalism tells us that we need to keep moving and get going towards new goals without integration. So I rest and I integrate and I give my body full permission to slow down for a moment without creating a new goal. This is also the reason why I have long launches.

Speaker 1:

Right now I am halfway through launching Business Outcomes Mentorship. It is a two-month launch and it is two months on purpose and I find that this pace serves me and my clients really well. And I find that this pace serves me and my clients really well, on one hand, when I give my potential clients a long period to consider the program, I know that they my communication with attraction energy, by showing up unapologetically as myself, so that my potential clients can feel the serotonin pull and decide if this is aligned for them or not. My long launches give them space to move through the fantasy of their dopamine spike and say yes, based on alignment and based on regulation. Spike and say yes, based on alignment and based on regulation. A long launch also allows me to not have a layered, concentrated dopamine spike because the enrollments don't come in all at once. Right now I have six folks who are signed up for BAM, with about eight more who have messaged me saying that they're seriously considering it. If I had all 14 people sign up within a week, that dopamine spike would have me completely spinning.

Speaker 1:

This way I get to savor each enrollment with gratitude, and gratitude is another way that I work. Gratitude is another tool that I work with to smooth out those dopamine spikes. Part of the intoxicating smell of dopamine comes from reaching the end result. This is called an extrinsic experience, meaning that the catalyst for the dopamine spike comes from something outside of yourself. So when I lean into the friction of a launch and I find both intangible, intangible layers to celebrate within the launch itself, I am creating small intrinsic which is within myself intrinsic dopamine spikes. So in the BAM private slack group we have a channel called celebrations where we do just this. So in this particular launch I'm celebrating that I was able to successfully receive tons of feedback from BAM alumni so that I can continue to improve how I deliver BAM. I am also celebrating that I figured out that I love teaching live and it's giving me lots of opportunities to do that. And when I'm just going to pause and just take a look at the comment here, tamara says the two months is genius and how you do it and balance and it's so kind to everyone in the process. Yeah, I like kindness. I like kindness in in launching. Yeah, so when somebody signs up for BAM, it's just part of the current and the wave of the launch. It's not an experience that spikes and then valleys me into disassociation. So I recognize that this sounds a little bit counter to what I just shared about layering optional dopamine spikes. But how gratitude is different from me scrolling on my phone is that it brings in the HNN molecules, which allows me to stay present through an experience.

Speaker 1:

I want to have a long-term relationship with my business and long-term relationships are not built on dopamine. I had a pivotal moment that I shared on episode 111 of my podcast, where I realized that I had been holding my business at arm's length and it took my business grinding to a halt for me to pay attention and to actually decide that I want to be in a long-term serotonin-based relationship with my business. So by recruiting the HNN molecules during a launch these are largely molecules that are involved in long-term bonding it is reinforcing my intention that everything is relational. My business and I are in a long-term committed relationship so I actively find ways to activate molecules like serotonin and oxytocin to reinforce that bond. The lovely side effect of this is that when clients choose to work with me, they get to also experience the trust and the security that's folded into my relationship with my business.

Speaker 1:

I like to think of it as going and having dinner with my best friend, christina and her partner John, because they have a secure relationship. I can feel the lightness and the love that's in the room. It's comfortable to be around in the room. It's comfortable to be around their love isn't about me, but I definitely get to experience the side effect of being in the presence of a couple that truly loves and respects each other and they have fun together. It makes it easy for me to be awash in my own HNN molecules when I'm with them. In contrast, I've had dinners with couples who have had a big rift in their relationship. Being a sensitive person, even without them sharing what's going on, I can feel that tension in the air and it forces me to think about the future. I can't stay in the present moment when I'm around people like that. So I'm thinking what do I need to say to make this a little bit more comfortable? How do I iron out this wrinkle here? How do I get out of here, right? So I definitely want my clients to come into a space. That's a lot more like having dinner with Christina and John, and it's my own responsibility to create that kind of relationship between me and my business to invite my clients into.

Speaker 1:

Another thing that I do during a launch is exercise the muscle of intrinsic rewards. During a launch is exercise the muscle of intrinsic rewards. There was a Stanford study done with children. Don't worry, it's not a scary study, even though they involve kids. They took a group of young kids who were already artistically inclined, meaning they didn't need someone to tell them to do art. They were just really excited to do art. The act of creating art was the reward itself for them. All the study did was attach a reward to the art a gold star for their effort. What they found was that the reward spiked their dopamine, which led to a valley which drops their baseline, and now they are less likely to feel motivated to create art. Simply adding a reward to something that they already love doing reduced their desire to engage with art.

Speaker 1:

So when we focus on the reward, we delay the spike in dopamine so that there's less pleasure in the effort and in the doing. If you push for the end goal that comes later, you enjoy that process less, you make it more painful, you become less efficient at it and you undermine your ability to continue to engage in it in the future. So this all comes down to the why behind a launch, particularly when it comes to marketing materials. If everything that I create in my marketing is simply about getting the reward of a full roster of clients at the end, I'm doing the same thing that the researchers did to those artistic kits. Instead, I try to amplify effort through intrinsic rewards by focusing on the striving itself as the reward, by creating content that I want to nerd out about and talk about. Anyway, this talk is one of those things.

Speaker 1:

I spent the last week just like, deeply immersed in researching dopamine and, oh my gosh, my nerdy little heart was so happy. And I also do this by honoring the friction, the struggle of launching. I remind myself that I have choice in this effort. In other words, I smooth out the spikes before I engage in the launch and I smooth out the dopamine spikes after the launch and I learn to create waves of dopamine through the actual effort itself. Francisco, I'm just going to read out your comment out loud here navigating from wild surfing waves to pleasant lake-like waters Exactly, that's exactly the visual that I had as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so another thing about dopamine is that dopamine loves fantasy. Dopamine is the molecule of obsessive yearning. So another way that I stay grounded is I stay rooted in reality, not in fantasy, and I definitely need help with this one. When I'm in the middle of a lunch, dopamine is not rational. It swings wildly from I'm going to have a hundred people sign up for BAM to no one's going to sign up for BAM at all. So I need to do lots more marketing. It's so helpful that I have Andre, who's my business partner, who's been with me from the very beginning, and he reminds me all the time, sometimes on a daily basis. We've been here before. We have X amount of signups right now, so like just chill out. It's also really helpful when my husband reminds me that he has a job as well. So the launch isn't going to be the determining factor of us being able to pay our mortgage or put food on the table or feed my horses. So when dopamine tries to take over, co-regulation is the counterbalance, because it grounds the fantasy both the negative and the positive in reality. So another thing that I think is really important during a launch is to ask for support. Ask for help, and then I try my best and I stay unattached to the results.

Speaker 1:

Dopamine helps us accomplish things, but dopamine can have a bit of a critical voice. Dopamine says you didn't make as much as you did in the last launch and this somehow feels like a failure. Capitalism feeds into this. The expectation in a business is that each year you need to make more than the last year, and then more the following year, and up and up and up into this linear growth land. Hnn help us appreciate things when we get them. Dopamine is focused on always getting more, acquiring more Hunger and satiation is experienced in the here and now.

Speaker 1:

Now, of course, I go into each launch with a number of clients in mind that I'd like to enroll, but in the assessment after a launch, I ask myself about hunger and satiation. The number of students I enroll is not a marker of my success or of my failure. It is information. If I'm still hungry after a launch, I have to think okay, so is there something that I need to do differently next time? What kind of questions do I need to be okay so? Is there something that I need to do differently next time? What kind of questions do I need to be answering for my future clients? How can I set myself up better next time? How many one-on-one clients do I need to open up to make sure that the business continues to run smoothly for the rest of the year? If I am satiated, I celebrate and I also ask myself okay, so what worked this time? What can I recreate for the next launch? Do I need to reduce my one-on-one client spot so that I have the capacity to deliver the care that I really want to to this group? That feels really big? Honestly, at the end of the day, what I've learned is that being with the waves of dopamine has helped me build resilience. By knowing what dopamine feels like in my body, I can create choices around how I want to engage with dopaminergic activities, instead of being a slave to the whims of chasing dopamine spikes and avoiding dopamine valleys.

Speaker 1:

So sit with all this for a moment Again. I want to just like open up the space for questions or comments. How are we doing here? I just threw so much information at you guys. We're doing okay, Okay, so let's sit with all this.

Speaker 1:

How does gaining an understanding of dopamine land in your body? Does it fill in a little bit of color on your spiritual entrepreneurship journey? Now, if you've been in my space, you know that I'm not interested in selling you this story that entrepreneurship is easy and that anyone can do it. If you've been in this world for even a few months as an entrepreneur, you know that this is not true. It's really hard. And spiritual entrepreneurship is hard because we are disentangling threads of trauma and years of misunderstanding. We're restructuring what community support looks like and feels like. We're dismantling extractive business practices and choosing something that, honestly, because we're sort of like pioneers on this forefront of trying to do business in trauma-informed ways. It doesn't always feel like it has form, and this work is actually meant to be hard. It's part of the reason why it feels so fulfilling, and it's not for everybody.

Speaker 1:

Now, if I leverage dopamine in my marketing, I know that I'd like I'd get more enrollments, but what I would do is I would attract entrepreneurs who want to learn how to leverage dopamine in their own marketing, while also clutching onto this, this identity of being trauma-informed. I'd be churning out students who are wolves walking around in sheep's clothing, and I'm not interested in that. Not only that I. It would repel the kind of folks that I know who would find belonging in the BAM community. We are a small army of witchy, sensitive, nerdy, feral weirdos. We've got Tamara in here and she has coined the term feral auntie energy, and that's what BAM is made up of, and we all see business as a spiritual practice, and so if this conversation wakes up a sense of curiosity on how you would like to do business differently, more relationally, um, you can check out my website, which is businessalchemistmentorshipcom.

Speaker 1:

If it's not the right time or the right container for you, no worries, I've got plenty of podcast episodes for you to explore. Lots of conversations happening on instagram and yeah, that's all I got on dopamine and I just want to flick my eyes over to the chat and just see um, how we're doing with all this info. Tamara says this is big, mature wood dragon, energy and modeling Love it, yay, yay. Any other thoughts? I'm also open to to questions or are coaching. If you guys are, are okay with being on the podcast. We're good, okay. Natalia says loved it. Kat, so eye-opening. This helped me find more compassion and understanding for myself and my body when I go through the valley. Yeah, I needed to find an explanation for the valley myself. That's why I I into to nerd mode to figure that out. Tamara, you've got your camera and you popped open your mic for a moment. Did you have anything you wanted to say? We're good.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I was just going to tell you it's just so helpful to oh, I was just going to tell you it's just so helpful to, yeah, have all the chemical neuroscience behind this and the experiences that are so common and just being able to, like, as a neurodivergent person, to understand, like, how my brain is creating more natural peaks and valleys and not having language or understanding that.

Speaker 2:

And now I'm like, oh, this makes so much more sense. I feel like around, um, you know how potentially other people might just be able to brush it off a little bit more or have a little bit more internal lake versus the like tsunamis of chemicals that I feel and that's just kind of a built-in. You know, um, like my normal baseline. So it's interesting to just feel the full spectrum of like, even how we're experiencing someone else's uh, like, yeah, ability to co-regulate or or the differences in baselines and how you need to alter that for your own best practices of of really adding in that gratitude or like saying, all right afternoon cup of coffee, even though you are the greatest part of my day, maybe I'll do a matcha or something that's a little bit less. You know different, a different caffeine, I do that, Um, so, anyway, it's just been really helpful, and I think I'm going to relist this, probably like six or seven times, and make my partner listen to it.

Speaker 1:

There's a great book, um, it's called the molecule of more.

Speaker 2:

if you're wanting to learn a little bit more about dopamine, I really just like scratched the surface on this, but I like the molecule of more because it makes it accessible without dumbing down the science and, um, it also feels really accepting of some of the the the struggles that people have around their dopamine spikes and valleys yeah, the thing you said about the kids and the and motivating, like giving them the star or just like talking about, oh, they naturally love doing art before they got that end reward as the thing to focus on, and I think about that so much and like how I was basically deconditioned to love art by just giving me the gold star or not at the end, you know, and how hard it is to now motivate myself to do those things that I did really love to do naturally, and it is confusing to my brain as to like what happened.

Speaker 2:

Why don't I move towards those things in the same way anymore? And so it's. That's again just very helpful, so I will definitely check out more. You said what is the molecule of more? The molecule of more. Okay, thank you all right.

Speaker 1:

Thanks, tamra, and any other thoughts from from the rest of the crew? If not? I'm really happy that we got to connect. I'm sorry about the technical difficulties. I'm glad that we all found our way here and we'll see you soon. We'll hang out on Instagram or find me on the podcast. Thanks everyone.