August 1, 2023 • 17 mins
Imagine having the power to tap into your brain's chemistry to unleash your creativity. That's what we're promising in this enlightening exploration, where we uncover the pivotal role dopamine plays in our creative processes, fueling our ambition and enhancing cognitive flexibility. We delve into the fascinating world of neurology and art, investigating the concept of dopaminergic drive and how understanding it can increase your artistic productivity. We equip you with valuable insights into the relationship between dopamine and creativity, taking inspiration from Jordan Peterson's insightful perspective on the subject.
But that's not all. We also explore how discipline, harnessed correctly, can direct our dopamine-driven motivation toward productive and rewarding creative pursuits. We discuss the importance of intrinsic motivation and the surprisingly contagious nature of creativity. Plus, we dive into the power of social media as a platform for connection, motivation, inspiration, and how it can help you achieve your artistic dreams. With tips on boosting your online presence and following your dreams, this episode is an invaluable resource for artists and creatives seeking to maximize their creative output.
Borin Doulos is a singer-songwriter, composer, and musical intercessor at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, MO. He's released many musical works varying in style from instrumental piano to Christian experimental rock.
Instagram: instagram.com/borindoulosmusic
Music: https://linktr.ee/BorinDoulosMusic
Email: Create@BorinDoulosMusic.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Borin Doulos (00:00):
Hey, this is Borin Doulos with the Creative Ache
Podcast, where we discuss theGod-given passion, pain and
purpose for the creativeindividual.
Hello and welcome to theCreative Ache Podcast.
(00:24):
I'm your host, Borin, and I'm amulti-instrumentalist singer,
songwriter and composer, as wellas a musical intercessor at the
International House of Prayerin Kansas City, Missouri.
I have several music albums outunder varying artists and
genres.
Wherever you stream music, andwith this podcast, it's my
desire to encourage and exhortartistic people to faithfully
(00:49):
steward their God-given CreativeAche.
Today, we are going to bediscussing one of my favorite
subjects.
It's pretty sciency.
I'm definitely not aneuroscientist or psychologist
or anything like that, so I'mjust going to be discussing a
lot of my personal perspectiveon one of my favorite subjects,
and particularly how it relatesto your creativity and that, my
(01:14):
friends, is dopamine.
Now, dopamine we often think ofin terms of happiness and
pleasure.
Right, we think of doping up onsomething as something that
gives us a whole bunch ofpleasure, but dopamine is
actually not really responsiblefor those feelings.
That's usually in dolphins, andthey actually usually come
(01:36):
after waves of dopamine.
Dopamine itself is aneurotransmitter that is
associated with motivation,reward and the subsequent
pleasure.
Really, the pleasure that comesfrom.
Dopamine comes from thepleasure of anticipation, a
motivation to get something thatis pleasurable.
(01:57):
Dopamine plays a crucial rolein the brain's reward system.
It reinforces behaviors thatare perceived as pleasurable or
rewarding or beneficial.
Even Dopamine helps regulateattention, focus and the
generation of new ideas duringthe creative process, and that
(02:23):
is what I want to focus on today.
Dopamine is a naturallyoccurring neurotransmitter.
There's nothing you can do tomake it not be part of your
biological process, and Ibelieve God designed that
especially for creatives, as away to help us have creative
output, as a matter offaithfulness, of stewardship.
(02:45):
Now let's dive deeper intounderstanding dopamine and
creativity.
Dopamine itself impactscognitive flexibility, or, in
other words, divergent thinking,which is the fancy word of
saying.
It's the generation of newideas, or the creative process
(03:08):
in and of itself.
Whether you're a painter or amusician or any other form of
art, you're constantly lookingfor a way to adjust what you
know or what you see or whatyou're hearing into something
new, something that rewards youwith feelings of pleasure or
feelings of reward, feelings ofsomething beneficial happening.
(03:31):
That's dopamine at work.
There is a measurable linkbetween optimal dopamine levels
and increased motivation,enthusiasm and productivity in
artistic behaviors.
So understanding this iscrucial in gaining the ability
(03:55):
to output more and moreauthentic creativity, more art.
Now, for some people, includingmyself, the way that this feels
is there's almost an angst or adrive to go and produce music
(04:16):
or whatever art form you expressin, and it's a lot like hunger.
If you think of hunger,dopamine is actually released in
high levels when we're hungryand considering how to get food.
In fact, dopamine is whatdrives you to the decision
(04:36):
making and action of going intothe fridge and getting something
that you want to eat.
Now, what's fascinating is themoment you have that thing,
dopamine actually subsidesdramatically because now you've
got it, even if you haven'tnecessarily eaten it.
The start of you eating thatfood causes your brain to signal
(05:00):
a drop in dopamine levelsbecause you no longer need the
motivation to go and get thething.
You have it.
So now we can apply this interms of artistry, and I know
for myself I've felt oftentimestremendous pain in this desire
to have this music that I hearinside of me expressed.
(05:25):
That's dopamine at work for thecreative process.
Now, again, dopamine is thething, but the action that we
take, or really the feeling thatwe have, is called dopaminergic
drive or, more simply put,ambition.
But dopaminergic drive isdefined as the level of dopamine
(05:47):
activity in the brain and itsimpact on motivation and
goal-directed behavior.
Now that sounds very calculated.
It usually doesn't actuallycome out or manifest itself as
calculated behavior.
It's more just like I feel likedoing this or I feel like
getting this, and so I do or Idon't, but there's the drive
(06:10):
nonetheless.
That is dopaminergic drive, andhaving a healthy dopaminergic
drive fuels passion, persistenceand the pursuit of artistic
goals.
Now I'm sure you can reflectfor a moment, like me in this
(06:31):
moment, on times where I had alot of passion and a lot of
energy to pursue an artisticgoal.
I felt restless.
I stayed up until 3, 4, 5 inthe morning, several nights in a
row to finish a song that Ijust can't stop working on.
In those seasons I had highdopamine levels, which was
(06:54):
accompanied by lots ofdopaminergic drive.
But then I've also had timesand usually they follow shortly
after those kinds of momentswhere I go long periods of time
thinking I should write somemusic, but I don't really feel
like doing it and that's usuallybecause of a low dopaminergic
(07:17):
drive.
We don't feel that passion, wedon't feel that desire to pursue
our artistic expression.
Jordan Peterson, who's apsychologist, has a fascinating
quote about dopamine andcreativity and he says the
dopamine rush of a creativebreakthrough is worth a thousand
(07:40):
hours of fruitless labor.
I think that's reallyfascinating because what he's
saying is the moment you havethe breakthrough in creativity,
and what he's not saying isyou've finished your creative
work.
He's talking about nowsomething has opened up and I
suddenly feel wind beneath mywings in whatever artistic
(08:01):
pursuit I'm in right now.
He's referencing the thousandsof hours that led up to it,
where you didn't feel anything.
You felt like you were justlaboring and nothing was
becoming fruitful.
That's actually part of theresponse that we should have to
this thought of dopaminergicdrive, because, like I just said
(08:23):
about myself, I've had timeswhere I have lots of
dopaminergic drive, lots ofambition, and then I have other
times where I don't have any,and a good artist, a fruitful
artist, a successful artist,rarely actually has that passion
fueling them, and it's mostlythe rigor of being faithful to
(08:46):
do their creative thingregardless of how they feel.
And that's really, I think,what Jordan Peterson is leaving
for us to get in that quote isthat there are thousands of
fruitless hours that then leadto a sudden breakthrough in our
creativity.
We have to do the labor.
(09:08):
It's challenging because what wefeel, what we're experiencing
as that lack of ambition, isactually an imbalance in our
dopamine levels, particularlyexcessive dopaminergic drive
that might be directed at otherthings, and a lot of times that
manifests, at least for me, waysthat I waste time pinging out
(09:30):
on a lot of food, watching abunch of YouTube videos,
scrolling on social media.
Those are actually anexpression of very powerful
dopaminergic drive, but we'reactually applying it to
something that really doesn'thelp us at all.
It's been intercepted, more orless, so we really want to
(09:53):
understand what's going oninternally, because that's a
behavior that was reinforced.
Whenever we are activelypursuing things that don't bear
any fruit and we're not pursuingcreative things, it's because
we've told our brain hey, justgo for this quickly pleasurable
thing and don't do the thingthat we know is actually
fulfilling.
(10:13):
We need to divert our time andour energy even if we don't feel
like it, because thatreinforces this excess of
dopamine to being directed tosomething that's actually
fruitful, which then shifts ourdopaminergic drive away from the
things that waste our time andinto the creative pursuit.
(10:37):
So let's talk about trainingand harnessing the power of
dopaminergic drive.
And to start that off, I wantto say it this way we, as
artists, have to understand thebalance of using dopamine as the
thing that drives us, but usingdiscipline as the anchor of our
(11:02):
creativity.
The more we are disciplined inour creative pursuits, the more
we're retraining thosedopaminergic responses to
associate our art as somethingthat is rewarding, something
that is ultimately what willgive us the pleasure we are
looking for.
So we need to have disciplinein order to get to the place
(11:27):
where our dopamine drives us tobe more fruitful and more
productive in our artwork.
Some practical tips are settingclear and obtainable goals.
We need to have things that wecan reach for, things that we
can measure in our own lives.
For myself, it's taken a lot ofdiscipline, but one of the
(11:49):
techniques I've done as amusician, as a songwriter, is
I've set aside time in my dailyschedule where I will write
music, no matter how I feel, andmost of the time I don't feel
like it.
But when I looked back at themusic I've released, I sometimes
go years with hardly anymusical productivity.
(12:10):
But whenever I changed my lifearound to start setting a daily
time apart for writing music.
My creativity has skyrocketedsince then.
Most of the time I enter intothat session not feeling a
dopamine urgent drive.
I'm not excited, I'm notambitious about writing music,
(12:34):
but once I get started, usuallywithin 10 to 15 minutes, my
dopamine is now being redirectedaway from wanting to scroll on
Facebook or watch YouTube videosand into.
I have to find this harmony.
I have to lay down this nextbeat.
I have to find the right chordto express what I'm feeling
(12:54):
needs to go here, and so it'sreally about the discipline as
that anchor that then reinforcesthis sense of drive or ambition
Again, this dopaminergic driveto accomplish my creative
pursuit.
Something that's reallyimportant is the intrinsic
motivation that we get, andthat's really what I'm talking
(13:17):
about when I'm saying now I feellike writing the intrinsic
motivation or finding the joy inwhat we do.
Dopamine is designed again byGod in a way that, when we're
operating in it right, itactually begins to reinforce the
right pattern, instead of mefeeling like I need to do these
(13:38):
time wasting senseless things.
I want to do a creative pursuitand in the process of doing it,
I'm finding joy, I'm findingmotivation, which my brain
associates as a good thing.
So then it keeps telling itselfhey, we need to redirect this
(14:01):
neurotransmitter to drive us tokeep Coming back to this thing.
That is for me, writing music,for you it's whatever artistic
pursuit but again, this appliesacross the board.
Whatever you were designed to do, the enemy has laid all kinds
of traps to intercept yourcreativity in a big one it's.
(14:24):
However, he can distract youand get that dopaminergic drive
redirected to somethingfruitless.
You have the power to walk withthe Holy Spirit, express
yourself with discipline in away that reinforces the way God
designed you as an artist Towant to create, to be motivated
(14:48):
to express your art.
So that's gonna be it fortoday's episode.
Again, there's a lot in thissubject that I personally did
not cover, and there's way morethat I Don't know, but I would
encourage you to look more intothis.
Dopamine, again, it's a lot ofpeople are gonna take a certain
(15:09):
approach to it, but it was givento us by God as part of our
biological makeup and it'seither gonna harm us or it's
gonna benefit our work for thekingdom and you as a creative
individual.
You were designed with aparticular Dopamine-ergic
expression, a motivation insideof you to create.
(15:29):
So we want to lean into that wewant to lean into that ambition
.
We want to reinforce and trainthat Sense of I have to express,
I have to create, I have to dothis art and Finally, as Albert
Einstein said, creativity iscontagious.
(15:50):
So pass it on as we live outthis lifestyle.
Not only are we going toreplicate our art, we're gonna
replicate the pattern of anartist, somebody who's faithful
to do the work of art.
So thank you so much for tuninginto this episode.
If you want to keep morecontact with me, see more of
(16:13):
what I'm up to, you could followme on Instagram at born doulos
music, and if you're watchingthis on YouTube, please like
this video, hit subscribe.
I've got other Podcast episodesthat I'll be releasing on here,
but I also have a lot of othermusic content that I do
regularly, so make sure yousubscribe to keep up with me in
that, and I will see you on thenext episode of the creative
(16:38):
ache podcast.
You.
Hey, this is Borin Doulos with the Creative Ache
Podcast, where we discuss theGod-given passion, pain and
purpose for the creativeindividual.
Hello and welcome to theCreative Ache Podcast.
(00:24):
I'm your host, Borin, and I'm amulti-instrumentalist singer,
songwriter and composer, as wellas a musical intercessor at the
International House of Prayerin Kansas City, Missouri.
I have several music albums outunder varying artists and
genres.
Wherever you stream music, andwith this podcast, it's my
desire to encourage and exhortartistic people to faithfully
(00:49):
steward their God-given CreativeAche.
Today, we are going to bediscussing one of my favorite
subjects.
It's pretty sciency.
I'm definitely not aneuroscientist or psychologist
or anything like that, so I'mjust going to be discussing a
lot of my personal perspectiveon one of my favorite subjects,
and particularly how it relatesto your creativity and that, my
(01:14):
friends, is dopamine.
Now, dopamine we often think ofin terms of happiness and
pleasure.
Right, we think of doping up onsomething as something that
gives us a whole bunch ofpleasure, but dopamine is
actually not really responsiblefor those feelings.
That's usually in dolphins, andthey actually usually come
(01:36):
after waves of dopamine.
Dopamine itself is aneurotransmitter that is
associated with motivation,reward and the subsequent
pleasure.
Really, the pleasure that comesfrom.
Dopamine comes from thepleasure of anticipation, a
motivation to get something thatis pleasurable.
(01:57):
Dopamine plays a crucial rolein the brain's reward system.
It reinforces behaviors thatare perceived as pleasurable or
rewarding or beneficial.
Even Dopamine helps regulateattention, focus and the
generation of new ideas duringthe creative process, and that
(02:23):
is what I want to focus on today.
Dopamine is a naturallyoccurring neurotransmitter.
There's nothing you can do tomake it not be part of your
biological process, and Ibelieve God designed that
especially for creatives, as away to help us have creative
output, as a matter offaithfulness, of stewardship.
(02:45):
Now let's dive deeper intounderstanding dopamine and
creativity.
Dopamine itself impactscognitive flexibility, or, in
other words, divergent thinking,which is the fancy word of
saying.
It's the generation of newideas, or the creative process
(03:08):
in and of itself.
Whether you're a painter or amusician or any other form of
art, you're constantly lookingfor a way to adjust what you
know or what you see or whatyou're hearing into something
new, something that rewards youwith feelings of pleasure or
feelings of reward, feelings ofsomething beneficial happening.
(03:31):
That's dopamine at work.
There is a measurable linkbetween optimal dopamine levels
and increased motivation,enthusiasm and productivity in
artistic behaviors.
So understanding this iscrucial in gaining the ability
(03:55):
to output more and moreauthentic creativity, more art.
Now, for some people, includingmyself, the way that this feels
is there's almost an angst or adrive to go and produce music
(04:16):
or whatever art form you expressin, and it's a lot like hunger.
If you think of hunger,dopamine is actually released in
high levels when we're hungryand considering how to get food.
In fact, dopamine is whatdrives you to the decision
(04:36):
making and action of going intothe fridge and getting something
that you want to eat.
Now, what's fascinating is themoment you have that thing,
dopamine actually subsidesdramatically because now you've
got it, even if you haven'tnecessarily eaten it.
The start of you eating thatfood causes your brain to signal
(05:00):
a drop in dopamine levelsbecause you no longer need the
motivation to go and get thething.
You have it.
So now we can apply this interms of artistry, and I know
for myself I've felt oftentimestremendous pain in this desire
to have this music that I hearinside of me expressed.
(05:25):
That's dopamine at work for thecreative process.
Now, again, dopamine is thething, but the action that we
take, or really the feeling thatwe have, is called dopaminergic
drive or, more simply put,ambition.
But dopaminergic drive isdefined as the level of dopamine
(05:47):
activity in the brain and itsimpact on motivation and
goal-directed behavior.
Now that sounds very calculated.
It usually doesn't actuallycome out or manifest itself as
calculated behavior.
It's more just like I feel likedoing this or I feel like
getting this, and so I do or Idon't, but there's the drive
(06:10):
nonetheless.
That is dopaminergic drive, andhaving a healthy dopaminergic
drive fuels passion, persistenceand the pursuit of artistic
goals.
Now I'm sure you can reflectfor a moment, like me in this
(06:31):
moment, on times where I had alot of passion and a lot of
energy to pursue an artisticgoal.
I felt restless.
I stayed up until 3, 4, 5 inthe morning, several nights in a
row to finish a song that Ijust can't stop working on.
In those seasons I had highdopamine levels, which was
(06:54):
accompanied by lots ofdopaminergic drive.
But then I've also had timesand usually they follow shortly
after those kinds of momentswhere I go long periods of time
thinking I should write somemusic, but I don't really feel
like doing it and that's usuallybecause of a low dopaminergic
(07:17):
drive.
We don't feel that passion, wedon't feel that desire to pursue
our artistic expression.
Jordan Peterson, who's apsychologist, has a fascinating
quote about dopamine andcreativity and he says the
dopamine rush of a creativebreakthrough is worth a thousand
(07:40):
hours of fruitless labor.
I think that's reallyfascinating because what he's
saying is the moment you havethe breakthrough in creativity,
and what he's not saying isyou've finished your creative
work.
He's talking about nowsomething has opened up and I
suddenly feel wind beneath mywings in whatever artistic
(08:01):
pursuit I'm in right now.
He's referencing the thousandsof hours that led up to it,
where you didn't feel anything.
You felt like you were justlaboring and nothing was
becoming fruitful.
That's actually part of theresponse that we should have to
this thought of dopaminergicdrive, because, like I just said
(08:23):
about myself, I've had timeswhere I have lots of
dopaminergic drive, lots ofambition, and then I have other
times where I don't have any,and a good artist, a fruitful
artist, a successful artist,rarely actually has that passion
fueling them, and it's mostlythe rigor of being faithful to
(08:46):
do their creative thingregardless of how they feel.
And that's really, I think,what Jordan Peterson is leaving
for us to get in that quote isthat there are thousands of
fruitless hours that then leadto a sudden breakthrough in our
creativity.
We have to do the labor.
(09:08):
It's challenging because what wefeel, what we're experiencing
as that lack of ambition, isactually an imbalance in our
dopamine levels, particularlyexcessive dopaminergic drive
that might be directed at otherthings, and a lot of times that
manifests, at least for me, waysthat I waste time pinging out
(09:30):
on a lot of food, watching abunch of YouTube videos,
scrolling on social media.
Those are actually anexpression of very powerful
dopaminergic drive, but we'reactually applying it to
something that really doesn'thelp us at all.
It's been intercepted, more orless, so we really want to
(09:53):
understand what's going oninternally, because that's a
behavior that was reinforced.
Whenever we are activelypursuing things that don't bear
any fruit and we're not pursuingcreative things, it's because
we've told our brain hey, justgo for this quickly pleasurable
thing and don't do the thingthat we know is actually
fulfilling.
(10:13):
We need to divert our time andour energy even if we don't feel
like it, because thatreinforces this excess of
dopamine to being directed tosomething that's actually
fruitful, which then shifts ourdopaminergic drive away from the
things that waste our time andinto the creative pursuit.
(10:37):
So let's talk about trainingand harnessing the power of
dopaminergic drive.
And to start that off, I wantto say it this way we, as
artists, have to understand thebalance of using dopamine as the
thing that drives us, but usingdiscipline as the anchor of our
(11:02):
creativity.
The more we are disciplined inour creative pursuits, the more
we're retraining thosedopaminergic responses to
associate our art as somethingthat is rewarding, something
that is ultimately what willgive us the pleasure we are
looking for.
So we need to have disciplinein order to get to the place
(11:27):
where our dopamine drives us tobe more fruitful and more
productive in our artwork.
Some practical tips are settingclear and obtainable goals.
We need to have things that wecan reach for, things that we
can measure in our own lives.
For myself, it's taken a lot ofdiscipline, but one of the
(11:49):
techniques I've done as amusician, as a songwriter, is
I've set aside time in my dailyschedule where I will write
music, no matter how I feel, andmost of the time I don't feel
like it.
But when I looked back at themusic I've released, I sometimes
go years with hardly anymusical productivity.
(12:10):
But whenever I changed my lifearound to start setting a daily
time apart for writing music.
My creativity has skyrocketedsince then.
Most of the time I enter intothat session not feeling a
dopamine urgent drive.
I'm not excited, I'm notambitious about writing music,
(12:34):
but once I get started, usuallywithin 10 to 15 minutes, my
dopamine is now being redirectedaway from wanting to scroll on
Facebook or watch YouTube videosand into.
I have to find this harmony.
I have to lay down this nextbeat.
I have to find the right chordto express what I'm feeling
(12:54):
needs to go here, and so it'sreally about the discipline as
that anchor that then reinforcesthis sense of drive or ambition
Again, this dopaminergic driveto accomplish my creative
pursuit.
Something that's reallyimportant is the intrinsic
motivation that we get, andthat's really what I'm talking
(13:17):
about when I'm saying now I feellike writing the intrinsic
motivation or finding the joy inwhat we do.
Dopamine is designed again byGod in a way that, when we're
operating in it right, itactually begins to reinforce the
right pattern, instead of mefeeling like I need to do these
(13:38):
time wasting senseless things.
I want to do a creative pursuitand in the process of doing it,
I'm finding joy, I'm findingmotivation, which my brain
associates as a good thing.
So then it keeps telling itselfhey, we need to redirect this
(14:01):
neurotransmitter to drive us tokeep Coming back to this thing.
That is for me, writing music,for you it's whatever artistic
pursuit but again, this appliesacross the board.
Whatever you were designed to do, the enemy has laid all kinds
of traps to intercept yourcreativity in a big one it's.
(14:24):
However, he can distract youand get that dopaminergic drive
redirected to somethingfruitless.
You have the power to walk withthe Holy Spirit, express
yourself with discipline in away that reinforces the way God
designed you as an artist Towant to create, to be motivated
(14:48):
to express your art.
So that's gonna be it fortoday's episode.
Again, there's a lot in thissubject that I personally did
not cover, and there's way morethat I Don't know, but I would
encourage you to look more intothis.
Dopamine, again, it's a lot ofpeople are gonna take a certain
(15:09):
approach to it, but it was givento us by God as part of our
biological makeup and it'seither gonna harm us or it's
gonna benefit our work for thekingdom and you as a creative
individual.
You were designed with aparticular Dopamine-ergic
expression, a motivation insideof you to create.
(15:29):
So we want to lean into that wewant to lean into that ambition
.
We want to reinforce and trainthat Sense of I have to express,
I have to create, I have to dothis art and Finally, as Albert
Einstein said, creativity iscontagious.
(15:50):
So pass it on as we live outthis lifestyle.
Not only are we going toreplicate our art, we're gonna
replicate the pattern of anartist, somebody who's faithful
to do the work of art.
So thank you so much for tuninginto this episode.
If you want to keep morecontact with me, see more of
(16:13):
what I'm up to, you could followme on Instagram at born doulos
music, and if you're watchingthis on YouTube, please like
this video, hit subscribe.
I've got other Podcast episodesthat I'll be releasing on here,
but I also have a lot of othermusic content that I do
regularly, so make sure yousubscribe to keep up with me in
that, and I will see you on thenext episode of the creative
(16:38):
ache podcast.
You.
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