How to Release Happy Brain Chemicals with Radha Agrawal

DANCING

• When you dance you’re activating pathways in the brain that might have been lying dormant since you were a child.
• Daybreaker: 500,000 people in 25 states, wake up at 6am before going to work and join a dance floor and performance.

BELONGING

• When you belong it releases endorphins: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin (DOSE).
• Within your communities do you feel a deep sense of belonging?
• Phones are casinos in your pocket: you feel like you have to keep up with how new and sexy phones and technology are in the way you run events and foster connections.
• When you design experiences, can you compete with the cell phone by triggering releases of dopamine in the same way your phone does?
• How do you feel a sense of connection? How can you create novel experiences?
• How you enter and exit a room are the parts of an event you remember (primacy and recency effect).

MEMORABLE EXPERIENCES

• The science behind gathering you’re not thinking about.
• Intentional and thoughtful with each aspect of the gathering experience.
• Within Daybreak: dopamine high from ticking off the accomplishment of getting up early, hug at the door, dancing, music, contact with other people.
• You’re missing the connection in your daily life: a study showing Americans touch each other once in a conversation, Mexican 180 times in a conversation.

DOPAMINE

• Dopamine (sense of accomplishment, pleasure): anything you can complete that gives you a sense of accomplishment will give you a rush of dopamine, new and novel experiences.
• Oxytocin: (connection and touch hormone) are you connecting with your friends? How can we connect with our friends more in a way that isn’t sexual?
• Serotonin (sense of worth, connectedness to a whole): identify 3 things you’re grateful for.
• Endorphins (runner’s high): what are you doing to sweat and release endorphins?

LONELINESS

• Offering a pathway out of loneliness.
• Step 1 is to go inside: gentle self-awareness—what are my values? What am I interested in today? What am I good at? What can I bring to a community?
• Going inside will help you to be able to go out in the world and find your people.
• Learn who you are aside from what the world or other people want you to be.
• If you can’t belong to yourself you can’t belong within the rest of the world.
• By knowing yourself, you’re better able to serve others. And when you serve others you’re happy.
• The whole point of self-development is to be able to better connect with others.

ENERGY

• Energy is the backbone of humanity—are you walking in with positive energy or negative energy?
• Who are the 5 people you’re spending your time with? Ask yourself how they’re contributing to the energy in your life.

CHALLENGES

• The biggest challenge for the world right now is to prioritize community and belonging: find your people.
• Stop prioritizing love, romance, and career path, and focus on community and tribe first.
• Getting to know yourself so you can find the right people leads to a life of wealth, health, and prosperity.
• We are nothing without community and friends.
• Harvard study: the most important thing for a happy life is relationships.