Hello, and welcome back to the quit vaping podcast. As always, I'm your host, Andrew Cipriano. And I hope that this is one of the last episodes you have to listen to, to be a non vapor by choice, of course. So, as you know, I'm a life coach. And what that means is I help people understand their brains. Their emotions and their actions so that they can create the lives that they want.

So if you have not listened to episode two yet, I would recommend you go back to episode two, because I give you my framework for how I help people quit vaping. Now, today we're going to talk about something I call the desire trap. And the reason I call it a trap is because You and I, and everyone that lives in like a modern society have been trapped into doing things that aren't necessarily in our best interest because of how our desire works in our brain.

So before I get going, I want to just describe what desire is and define it. So desire is based off Google, a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen. Cool. So pretty much this is like a want and it's important to understand that this is a limited or a finite substance.

So again, think of desire as a limited substance. And the reason it's so important to understand this is because when you are constantly desiring things like nicotine, sugary foods, alcohol, gambling, porn, all the things that have been artificially concentrated for our brains to love in society, we don't have much desire left for meaningful goals.

So our brain works off a very simple dopamine reward system for anyone who doesn't know dopamine is the happiness chemical. So pretty much when you feel something that feels good, it's because dopamine has been released and there's a lot of things that naturally release dopamine and it's things that have traditionally kept us alive.

So things like food, warmth, shelter, connection, love, sex, those things naturally release dopamine and how it goes is. We do that thing, we get dopamine, it rewards us, it reminded us, and it sets a trigger in our brain that that thing feels good. So next time we do it again, it's a very simple reward system.

Now the problem with our modern society is that it takes things that naturally releases dopamine and it concentrates them. So for example, sugary foods, nothing like that ever existed in nature. The closest thing to refined sugar that exists in nature is honey. And when human beings found honey, they found a limited amount of it.

So it wasn't like there were. Every day eating sugary foods are going and getting like, uh, 50 grams of sugar and a coffee. And then they're eating like cake at nighttime for a birthday and they're doing Oreos that is artificially concentrated. And what that means is when you have a dopamine response in your brain, it's a really heavy dopamine response.

Now, nicotine does this too. When you use nicotine, you have a really, really big, disproportionately large. Dopamine response triggered in your brain. So it makes you think that thing is really important. Now imagine if you live your life where you're playing video games, you're on social media, you're vaping, you're eating sugary foods, you're drinking alcohol, you're watching porn and you're gambling.

Like all those things are setting off abnormally. So not naturally large. Dopamine responses in your brain. Now, when we're constantly using things that set off really big dopamine responses in our brain, remember these things are fake, artificially concentrated, then the things that used to set off dopamine responses aren't so important feeling anymore.

Now that's a problem because it becomes a trap. So when we are constantly using things like nicotine, like alcohol, whatever, all the things I've listed that are unnaturally large and concentrated dopamine response, what we're left with is a very, very limited. Feeling of dopamine and it's fulfillment and happiness.

When we do things that would have naturally fulfilled us. So what happens is we have a very strong desire for these artificial substances. And then our desire for natural things like real, genuine connection, setting big goals, starting businesses, going after things that we want that are slightly uncomfortable.

We have a desire that's very limited for those things. And this is why it becomes a trap. Now, remember, I don't think that all these things are bad. Like, I don't even think that nicotine is inherently bad. But the problem when we're using it constantly is that it totally messes up with our desire systems.

So a lot of people, they come to me and I primarily help people start businesses and move forward in their lives. In that way, entrepreneurially, they'll come to me and they say, I completely lost my life. I have no idea what I want. And we start with this. It's like, well, let's look at how many substances are using because when you're using substances all the time, you're left with very, very little desire for things that would actually move you forward.

Like natural interests, like genuine connection, setting goals for yourself, starting a business, like go to and get a job that you want. Those things don't seem so important when you're constantly using those artificially high dopamine releasers. So I want you to imagine that you have desire as it's like a finite substance.

So let's say you have a hundred units of desire in a day. All right. So we're going to imagine that this is a Friday night. So today it's Friday. Uh, you to go to work, you have a hundred units of desire. So work, we're just going to say it's probably something you don't have a strong desire to do. Uh, and then you vape.

So let's say that nicotine uses 30 units of your desire out of the hundred for the day. And the reason why it's so high is because Although vaping just takes up a fraction of time. That's not all the desire you're using on it. Like imagine all the thoughts you're having about vaping, all the desire, all the times you want to hit it, all the drama around it, like every.

Single time that you hit your vape is one small fraction of all of the desire that it creates throughout your day. When I was vaping, I was probably having a thousand thoughts a day about vaping. I mean, they were constant. So it wasn't just the time I was vaping, it was everything that came along with the addiction.

So let's say that you're gonna drink alcohol tonight, so you're excited to go to the bar. So let's say let's throw 30 more units of desire there. Um, on your break, you're going to get McDonald's and then you're going to get some more fast food on the way home. So let's say 30 more units of desire for concentrated food that you think about all the time.

And then that leaves about 10 percent of desire or 10 units. So 90 units of your desire is used on concentrated things that are honestly artificial, concentrated things. And then you have 10 units of desire left. To go through things like school, starting a business, setting goals for yourself, like education, like anything that would give you a natural and steady dopamine release from accomplishment.

And I want you to think about it too. When you use things like nicotine, what's happening is you're getting really, really heavy spikes of dopamine and that's not natural. What you really want to create in your life. If you want to create a long term plan for success and overall well being is steady hits of dopamine throughout the day.

And when you're using artificially concentrated things, you're never getting a steady hit. It's always a very spiked hit of dopamine. So it's like all over the board. You're going up and down and up and down and up and down and you end up living for the times when you're spiking dopamine. But if you want to have a successful business or you want to create a life that's fulfilling and enjoy being around your family without having to be addicted to substances, you're going to have to learn to get things that are steadily releasing dopamine over time, like setting goals for yourself, exercise, um, creating connection with your family without having to use all the substances to be around them.

Those are going to release natural amounts of dopamine over a steady amount of time, which is the goal. If you want to create a life that's overall fulfilling. Purposeful and meaningful without being addicted to a thousand things to tolerate your life in the meantime. And I always like to remind you guys that I'm not anti nicotine.

I'm not anti alcohol. I'm not anti porn or anything like that. But when we are not living the lives that we want to live. Cutting those things out is a really good first step because if you're not sure what you want to do with your life, I would recommend that it's probably because you're using too many artificially concentrated substances throughout your day and your dopamine and your desire is all messed up.

So you don't know what you want. You just think that you're lost, but really the problem is that you're addicted to five different things and it's stopping you from understanding naturally what you're interested in. And moving forward with that, when you're constantly using artificial substances, the natural ones don't seem so important.

And it actually throws you off from knowing what you want with your life. So I remind you, you know, the reason that I am doing the nicotine stuff as a life coach, it's because of the life that stops you from living the person that you want to become, that has natural desires and interests that will follow those interests and actually create something they want out of their life.

That person doesn't exist when you're addicted to nicotine and when you're addicted to all these things. And remember, I'm not saying that anyone who vapes is not creating the life that they want, but if you're not creating the life that you want, vaping is most likely a contributing factor to what's going on.

And this is a really good way to check what's going on in your life. If you remove nicotine from your life, what would be left? Often, we're using substances to tolerate a life that we're not happy in. So if you remove nicotine, and alcohol, and social media, and porn, and gambling, or whatever your other vices are, for just like a week, what's left of your life?

Are you in a job that you hate? Are you in a relationship that you can't stand? Are you not making enough money? Are you not enjoying the people that you're spending your time with, organically, without having to be on substances around them? Are you living somewhere you want to live? Are you in the house that you want to own?

Are you driving the car you want to drive? Are you working for the place you want to work? Are you creating the business that you want to create? Remove all the distractions and what you want with your life becomes much more clear. That's why it's so important to see the life coach's perspective on vaping, because it's not about the vaping.

It's about what your life can't be when you're addicted to things like nicotine. This has been a very heavy episode. I recommend that you listen to it a few times. This is really, like, if you can spend this 10 minutes of this episode, listen to it three or four times and really deeply understand this material.

It will change your life. It will change your legacy. There's nothing inherently wrong about nicotine, but often we use it. It's a way to stop us from becoming the person that we really want to become in the inside. Thanks for listening. Good luck out there.