So your “orthopedist” says you have to cut back on “running”? Here’s what’s going to happen in your brain and here’s why it may not be as bad as you expect.
First, you know that the high some people get from “running” is the same high others get from coffee (or heroine or lying or eating deodorant). If you’ve seen a lab rat pawing a lever to get a few drops of payoff punch, you’ve seen what a human does for an extra dose of dopamine. It hits your happy button and you don’t care beyond that.
Your dopamine receptors are satisfied or they’re not. An action like running (or spray painting your sinuses) presses your happy button or it doesn’t. The quantity necessary to fully press the button or how long the button stays pressed may vary, but your primitive dashboard isn’t concerned with degrees. It just shows “Pressed” or “Needs pressing NOW”.
The down side to running less (or playing less FortNite or taking fewer tabasco enemas) is that your happy button is not going to be pressed as much as you’d like. But guess what? You’re already accustomed to that sensation. Everyone is. No ones happy button is pressed all the time so every human is equipped to deal with an unpressed happy button.
More good news is that a happy button not pressed for three minutes is just as unpressed as one not pressed for three days. Your brain will do its best to convince you otherwise, but a not pressed button is a not pressed button.
Once you’ve dealt with the initial change in frequency or duration of happy button pressing, you’ve won a huge battle in the war to cut back on running (or ingesting broken glass or instagramming your poop).
So if it’s time to cut back on the miles you run (or the chalk you snort or the happy pills you pop), give it a go and see if you can enjoy some part of the journey. There will certainly be days or hours you don’t like and seasons that are bleak. But remember they will pass and that a smoother road is ahead.
If you know the downward spiral of needing more and more running (or ash sniffing or urine cocktail drinking) to press your dopamine button, you already know how to make it an upward spiral! Less and less running (or shopping or fast driving) and your button still isn’t pressed, but you are quipped to handle it. And when you’ve distanced yourself a little from the dopamine frenzy, you learn to find calm and contentment without needing to constantly smash the dopamine button. You learn to run (or paint or sip) on your own terms. You learn to live with more freedom.
Just now, this may seem impossible. Maybe the path to a happy place with no happy button seems too long. But now you know the length of the path is not really important. Color me cliche, but the important part of the path is the first step.
Ready? Set? Step!