(excerpt from the book: NeuroAdventures)
What if we could find simple ways to deliberately induce the positive emotions most of us seem to experience somewhat randomly in life?
What if we could uncover natural opportunities to attain the same intense feelings that some turn to recreational drugs to experience?
What if we could find activities to switch on ancient neurological rewards mechanisms that evolved over hundreds of millenia to encourage hunting and gathering activities, pursuits that enabled our species to survive and later thrive in nearly every environmental niche on the planet?
Starting August 2018, I had the opportunity to do just that. I would visit a different outdoor mecca each month for a year to engage in activities deliberately chosen to stimulate natural neurotransmitter pathways of happiness in the brain. The basis for which adventures to emphasize on these journeys was simple: As mentioned, they had to trigger the same mental rewards substrates that traditional hunting (and gathering) tasks in prehistoric times would have done. To do this: They had to be performed outdoors (to pump up the serotonin levels). They had to be ones I could do both on my own (for practical reasons) and with others (for raising oxytocin levels). They should also enable strong levels of excitement (for adrenaline), novelty (for dopamine), and physical effort (for endorphins + anandamide) – all critical pathways in the brain’s happiness landscape, especially for the Hunter personality type.
And so I started this journey with the specific goal to emphasize the best aspects of our favorite (and most important) activities during this critical and formative paleolithic period (while also trying to avoid the worst!). Thus began a year of hunting and gathering Happiness. Thus began a year of NeuroAdventures.
* * *
NeuroAdventures: it’s a made up word. But it makes sense for this journey’s purpose. It’s a mash-up of two words. “Neuro” is short for “Neurological.” “Adventures” stands for, well, Adventures. This portmanteau also symbolizes the basic strategy for the journey: First, identify the primary neurological substrates of the brain associated with positive emotions (Neuro); next, select activities (Adventures) that stimulate as many of these substrates as possible to elicit (hopefully enduring) feelings of happiness.
The main activities I chose included the Hunter-oriented sports of mountain biking, surfing, and snow skiing. I also planned to participate in occasional Gatherer-like activities that would include road cycling, snorkeling, and hiking. For those of us interested in a formal analysis of these and other Hunter- and Gatherer-oriented pursuits as compared to spear hunting and berry picking (our paleolithic reference activities), I have included in the Appendix lists of current-day activities we can perform, along with a rating system for which neurological pathways are stimulated by them and at what intensity level. Anyone interested in reviewing a data-centric study of over 50 of the most popular outdoor activities available to us today should have a look!
Besides describing “what” activities (Adventures) we can perform to stimulate these ancient mental Happiness substrates, this book will also try to answer: “Why?” For this, we will look to cutting-edge findings in the fields of neuroscience, biology, and even physics. Over the last few decades, we’ve learned how experiences, both real and imagined, can activate neurological pathways correlated to mentally rewarding emotions. And we can begin to understand how and why these emotional pathways evolved to reward actions necessary for survival in a world very different from the one the vast majority of us live in today.
In other words, some key problems in reaching this “happiness” space arise since 99.95 percent of us alive today no longer live as hunter-gatherers. So it takes directed effort to activate these ancient rewards pathways in a sufficient and meaningful manner. Ultimately, this book will attempt to answer the question:
Will regularly going on NeuroAdventures increase our personal levels of happiness, both day-to-day and long term?
But we may also want to inject another relevant sociological question into the discussion:
Can we identify natural methods to elicit the same intense feelings that some turn to recreational drugs to experience today?
By doing this, can we provide alternative routes to drug use for people – especially young people – to experience these intense feelings naturally?
Before we go further, I am going to answer all these questions now with an emphatic “Yes,” just by following two simple directives for increasing day-to-day happiness. (The rest of the book gives in-depth scientific explanations and subjective examples for why these two directives work.)
First, the best way to turbocharge all the neurological pathways of happiness that evolved in our ancient past (“Happiness Directive 1”) is to:
Find Flow in Nature
Executing this directive is done by participating in outdoor adventures regularly; at least weekly, and three or more times per week is optimal. Ideally, these activities should be ones where all our focus is on the activity itself, in the present moment – the essence of “Flow Experience.” More on this important concept in Chapter 3, but in a nutshell, doing this will activate—and replenish our reserves for—all the neurochemical systems that evolved to encourage and reward our ancient Hunting and Gathering activities. It also becomes an “anchor point” to keep us grounded in a constantly-changing technological, social, and political world. Also notice that when executing this first directive, we’re not out pursuing happiness specifically; we’re out pursuing peak-performance flow adventures in a natural environment, and the “Happiness” thing just comes along for the ride.
In other words, Happiness Directive 1 is saying that we need to “Go Wild” every week, in order to get back to our “true selves.” To do so, we should look for outdoor activities available to us today which generate brain patterns that closely resemble the neurological rewards “thumb prints” of the ancient versions, due to a cocktail of the neurotransmitter chemicals that are released at equivalent levels—mainly epinephrine/norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and anandamide.
This first directive is not a new idea. Even the Father of Modern Medicine understood the benefits of spending time in Nature for our overall health:
Nature itself is the best physician.
Hippocrates
Secondly, in between these peak flow experiences in Nature, we should try to follow Happiness Directive 2, which is simply to:
Be Kind
To follow this directive, we can attempt to perform our myriad day-to-day activities (work, school, family time, social time, community time, even NeuroAdventure time) with compassion, which we define for now as “loving kindness”—for self, and for others. This second directive for increasing Happiness seems to be the simpler of the two. But in practice (and especially in my own life!), it is the far more complicated and difficult one to follow. In fact, some of my biggest regrets are those moments when I didn’t follow this directive when engaging with someone or with some living, sentient creature. So, to minimize such regrets, we should keep this directive front and center as we go through our daily activities.
This is ancient wisdom, as well, often referred to as “The Golden Rule.” As Tenzin Gyatso, a well-known modern-day teacher and practitioner of this concept, has said:
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
the Dalai Lama
Besides holding its place as a central tenet to many of the world’s great religious faiths and spiritual philosophies, neuroscientists have discovered that concern for the well-being of others is a key component of happiness as well. From the brain/body standpoint, treating others with kindness will generate, for both ourselves and others, large quantities of oxytocin, one of the most powerful emotional rewards chemicals that we can produce in our brains and bodies. Furthermore, practicing compassion regularly and mindfully can actually rewire our brains to automatically substitute negative ruminations about past and future with more positive thoughts.
Once again, when we incorporate compassion into our daily lives, we’re not deliberately pursuing happiness. Instead, we’re mindfully seeking ways to contribute to the positive subjective experience of others, especially those we come in contact with most often—self, family, friends, community. We practice compassion until it becomes a habit, something automatic, our default course of action throughout the day, and our personal Happiness just increases organically as a result. Yet while I understand this directive logically, scientifically, and intuitively, I can certainly tell you that I am still learning how to apply it properly. In this regard, we are all still “works in progress;” we are all still bound to slip up and make mistakes when attempting to follow this directive in the messy, hyper-competitive, and oftentimes divisive societies we’ve created for ourselves here on this awesome little planet. But in the end, that’s really the best we can do: try to become better versions of ourselves, everyday. And somewhat counterintuitively, just by making the effort we will improve our overall level of contentment.
So while on my journeys, in order to fulfill Happiness Directive 2 to Be Kind, I would mindfully seek a compassionate course of interaction with the people and living creatures I encountered along the way. I would try to be sensitive to the cultural and economic circumstances of the people and places I visited. I would learn about the flora and fauna of the areas and understand how my impact and the impact of humanity as a whole is affecting them. And, in between these adventures while back at home, I would make an effort to stop getting so mad at all the a-holes driving on the freeways! (Although, really, is this possible, even for the Dalai Lama??)
But enough about testing personal limits of compassion for my fellow human beings, especially in the Southern California traffic-nightmare-from-hell environment where I live most of my days. Instead, let’s review what someone much smarter and wiser than me has said about this topic recently. As the Dalai Lama reminds us:
Our purpose in life is to be Happy.
However, conflict often arises during our quest for this elusive life purpose because:
The mathematical algorithm for our Meat Computer (brain+body) is to act in ways that increase its probability of making copies of its DNA replicator molecules (genes).
This “Meat Computer” algorithm is fulfilled, quite simply, by creating organisms that survive long enough to have offspring containing (at least half of) these same replicator molecules. This same math is in play for all living species on earth, from single-celled bacteria through Homo sapiens, and helps drive both the physical and behavioral traits that define a given species.
But:
The logical algorithm for our “Individual Entity Awareness” is to seek positive (i.e. rewarding or fulfilling) experience over negative (i.e. unpleasant or stressful) experience.
This Individual Entity Awareness (IEA☼) algorithm would apply to us, of course, but also to any living thing on earth with even a minimal level of conscious subjective awareness of itself in its environment, and can serve as a crude definition of Happiness for any such sentient entity. But this algorithm applies exponentially to entities with advanced forms of meta-awareness (awareness of one’s own awareness), such as we human beings possess. This is because meta-aware entities would presumably have more capability for agency—the essence of free will—than those entities with lower levels of conscious awareness, which can serve to direct the actions and behaviors of Meat Computers where such meta-awareness operates towards rewarding (positive) subjective experience, instead of just waiting for it to happen through serendipity in the environment. And the greatest gift of meta-awareness is Mindfulness:
Once we become aware we’re Aware
Brain and Mind can switch roles
Master becomes servant
And the NeuroAdventures can begin.
So, for us humans, the IEA☼ algorithm applies irrespective of why, when or how this capacity for meta-awareness arrived or emerged in us, and no matter where else it may be found, on earth or even elsewhere in the universe.
Sometimes the two algorithms of our Meat Computer and our Individual Entity Awareness are in perfect harmony. But frequently, they are not. And conflicts that arise between these algorithms can cause unhappiness (suffering) for both ourselves and other living entities with subjective awareness. A key point to remember is that genes encoded Meat Computers for survival but not necessarily for happiness. (Hence, our species’ propensity to focus on the negative!) Nonetheless, with a deeper understanding of the physical underpinnings of our mental experiences, we can seek ways to guide the trajectory of our lives in an attempt to fulfill both algorithms with minimal conflict. And going on NeuroAdventures regularly can help us do exactly that: provide alignment of our Meat Computer and IEA☼ algorithms.
Of course, in between metaphorically hunting and gathering these peak flow experiences while immersed in Nature, most of us still need to make a living in the modern world. And to fulfill the second directive for Happiness, we should pursue these daily tasks guided by the compass of compassion—loving kindness. As mentioned, this activates the brain’s oxytocin reward circuitry, which prehistorically helped to fulfill the Meat Computer’s gene-replication algorithm by creating a cooperative species that survived because we teamed up—as a tribe or band or originally an extended family of between 50 and 100 related individuals—in order to work together for the welfare of both ourselves and of our communities.
This in turn allowed us to outcompete other species in the environments where we initially evolved and later expanded into. But this second directive for Happiness—to Be Kind—also satisfies the logical algorithm for all aware entities to seek positive subjective experience (for self and others). Basically, cooperation (tempered by compassion) was and still is one of the most mentally and evolutionarily rewarding activities we could do and can still do as a species.
So, that’s a quick overview of how the oxytocin rewards pathways helped us survive and thrive. But what about other neurochemical pathways of happiness that encouraged the Hunter and Gatherer to succeed in prehistoric daily life? How (and perhaps why) do all these pathways affect our moods and behaviors in predominantly positive ways, still today? And, if known, how were these pathways carved by the slow but precise grinding wheel of evolution? Let’s explore this in the next chapter: Neuro101!
If you enjoyed this first chapter, you can purchase the book NeuroAdventures at: books2read.com/neuroadventures
NeuroAdventures 