Valerie00diamond - Untitled

the most fun a girl can have is finding parallels, noticing patterns, making connections, contemplating

“ dopamine detox ,, and why you should delete all your social media right now

"just five more minutes" and then you end up scrolling on instagram or tiktok for hours. i know that feeling. even if you know rationally that focusing on the really important things ( such as studying, working, learning from books or whatever ) is much healthier for you and your future, you can't help it.

you know that start studying for the exam you have next week will benefit you much more in the long run, but you still prefer watching tiktoks and scrolling on instagram. you could say that is pretty obvious: one activity is easy, and doesn't require much effort, whereas the other one is difficult and implies that you are focused.

but it's actually like this? so then why some people manage to be consistent in studying, or working, or exercising? they simply just have more motivation than you? and how can you start having the same motivation as them?

to answer this question, we have to take a look to a very important molecule produced by our brain: dopamine.

dopamine is often considered a pleasure molecule, but it's a false belief. dopamine is actually the molecule that makes us desire things, and it's that desire that gives us the motivation to complete every kind of task. for example, your brain doesn't release dopamine while you're eating a cheesburger, it releases it while you're going to mcdonald's to buy it, because you anticipate that the food will make you feel good, even if it actually makes you feel worse.

to your brain, it doesn't matter if the high-dopamine-activity is damaging to you.

your brain organizes priorities based off how much dopamine is expecting to get:

if an activity releases too little dopamine, you won't have the motivation to accomplish it.

if an activity releases a lot of dopamine you'll be motivated to do it, and repeat it over and over

so, which activities releases dopamine? basically, any activity where you can get an immediate potential reward releases an high amount of dopamine. but if you know that there's not an immediate reward invoved ( such as in studying, where the reward is in the long run ) your brain will not expect to release much of it and you'll be less motivated to do that task.

nearly everything releases some amount of dopamine, even drinking water when you're thirsty, but the highest amount of it is released when you're getting a reward randomly, for example while playing on a slot machine. even if you loose money, you eventually expect to get a bigger reward.

therefore it is not so surprising that the most additive social networks ( tiktok, instagram, pinterest ) are designed as slot machines. you don't know what the next post or video will be, but you expect something great, so your brain releases a large amount of dopamine.

in today's society our brains are overloaded with stimuli that induce an unnatural production of dopamine ( scrolling on social media, playing video games, watching internet pornograhy, etc. ).

it's frightening that people don't know how harmful this lifestyle is: our bodies have a biological sistem called homeostasis, which means that our bodies keep the internal physical and chemical conditions at a balanced level, whenever an imbalance occurs, our bodies adapt to it, for example, when it's very hot our body temperature rises and we start sweating to cool down.

but homeostasis manifests through tolerance too. for example, someone who hardly ever drinks alchool will be tipsy after one beer, on the other hand, someone who drinks alchool on a regular basis will need two, three, four beers in order to get drunk, because their body has developed a tolerance to it. it's not much different with dopamine.

so if you get used to large amounts of dopamine, you won't be able to do the things that you did before, because they don't produce as much dopamine and it's more difficult to motivate yourself to do them. once your dopamine tolerance gets too high, you are no longer able to enjoy low dopamine activities.

as if you were a drug addict, there's only one way to get out of it: you have to perform a dopamine detox. you have to avoid all high dopamine activities in order to allow your body to adjust to a normal level of dopamine production and start finding motivation again in the things that improve your personal growth.

it's not easy, you will be nervous and frustrated, maybe you won't make it through a full day without social media, but day by day it will get better and better, and eventually you'll be able to appreciate small things again.

imagine that you're eating your favorite food - for example, chocolate cake - every single day. after a while, chocolate cake doesn't taste good as before, even if it's literally the same cake. on the other hand, if you eat it once a month, it will taste great, because it's not something you've gotten used to.

this is exactly what dopamine detox does. be safe guys, and start recovering now.

[ source: https://youtu.be/9QiE-M1LrZk ]

Manuel Ruiz Pipo Jogging on the Beach

We're so fucking lucky.

NASA released the clearest pictures yet of our neighbours in the solar system

Oh and of course us

Honourable mention

the trump administration is already slowly taking away our rights, no longer legally recognizing us and only seeing two genders in america — male and female — and passports no longer taking new gender maker changes or x gender markers. this is just the start of it most likely

they've erased mentions of LGBTQ on government websites and removed pages related to honoring nex benedict and matthew shepard, like they never existed. we know they existed though and we need to keep both nex benedict and matthew shepard's names alive and remember what horrible violence and hate crime took them away from us.

this is not to scare anyone. this is to inform the masses on what our government is doing. censorship is actively happening around us. do you know the world is protesting for us? no? the united states have already started their censorship, their propaganda for this administration. do not let them censor us and hide us from the truth. speak up, learn, adapt, and inform others.

Squamish, British Columbia, Canada

Instagram

Skating on natural ice on a pond under the glow of the Northern Lights...

Canadian Parliament e-petition Open for Signature

[image description: a digital art rendered in a semi realism style depicting a brown skinned, fancy shawl pow wow dancer. they sit down with their left knee propped up and their left arm resting on their knee. They have dark blue, black, and yellow colored regalia. They wear thin blue hair wraps around their braids, a yellow beaded choker, a yellow beaded headband, and blue beaded earrings with yellow accents. Their under dress has medium sleeves and is a shiny, dark fabric that glitters blue and purple in the light. a yellow shawl with a multicolored heart design rests on their right leg, with black fringes. a circular cropped image of an eastern tiger swallowtail resting on green leaves is overlaid next to the fancy shawl dancer, who's regalia and beadwork designs mimic the butterfly wings. end image description.]

"send me a butterfly or moth species and I'll draw a fancy shawl dancer inspired by it" art request series is back up & open again!

Eastern Tiger swallowtail fancy dancer for @crowtoed!

I feel as though I poisoned the act of doing the right thing.