How to Control Your Mind Like the Top 1% (No Bullsh*t)

0:00 I've created 900 podcasts with people who believe to be in the top 1% of humankind. This is what I've learned over the last 6 years of my career sitting across the grades and seeing the common patterns in all their lives. We live in a world that's all about disruption. Over the course of this documentary, I'm going to present game plans, templates, and architectures for you. the average 20some, the average 30some, the kind of skill sets you need for success are constantly changing. Considering the revolution that artificial intelligence is bringing, the only thing truly in your control are your personal systems, which should be built using the systems that the greats have used in order to become the greats. This entire documentary is divided into seven chapters. Each chapter will lead you into developing a game plan for your day, for your year, and for your decade.

1:02 We bring you our first documentary. This is how you design your life to break into the top 1%.

1:36 Cristiano Ronaldo, Elon Musk, Priyanka Chopra, Serena Williams, Kohley. None of these people scroll on their Instagram reels or Tik Tok for 3 hours before they go to sleep because all of these people have likely mastered their own dopamine systems. According to studies done by frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, dopamine is highlighted as a critical driver of behavioral activation. That means it helps organisms overcome effort costs to obtain rewards.

2:12 The first rule is that everyone's different. If I just tell you what the top 1% did in terms of their time management, you're going to have 900 different cases of time management. But the one commonality in all these 900 cases is that each of them were extremely self-aware. They knew exactly what it takes to move forward in their career. And they also knew exactly what habits pull them back from moving forward in their career. First things first, it's not about managing just your time. Eventually, if you work hard enough, you'll figure out how to manage your time. Firstly, you've got to learn how to manage your own subjective dopamine systems.

3:03 Now to truly understand how dopamine affects our daily lives, let's look at relatable cases. Case one is of a regular young person today lying in bed scrolling through reals, shorts, Tik Toks. Dopamine hit after dopamine hit. This is the modernday version of smoking cigarettes. Every swipe gives you that tiny little reward. But let me ask you, do you remember even 20% of the total short content pieces that you watched yesterday? Likely no. The only effort that you're putting in is using your finger to move on to the next reel. But here's the science of what's happening.

3:48 When you get a big spike in dopamine without earning it, your brain reacts by dropping your dopamine levels below where they started. So, there's something called baseline dopamine, which is where your dopamine levels began, perhaps before you ever started using reals. Every time you consume a real that you like, of course, you're getting a dopamine spike. But once that spike of dopamine settles down, your baseline dopamine doesn't stay where it was, goes a little lower, and you end up feeling like crap. You end up feeling demotivated. That's that headache you get after using short content for that long. And this is one of the basic points that you need to understand about dopamine before we move forward. That an excess of anything can drop the dopamine levels in your bloodstream and can basically leave you feeling like crap.

4:43 This is what we call a dopamine crash. The higher the high, the deeper the crash. And that crash can last for hours or even days. depending on how intense the stimulation was. Imagine that this is your bloodstream. This is your dopamine reserve in your bloodstream. Currently, you're feeling fresh. Your dopamine levels are regulated. But if you try getting yourself intoxicated or you try enjoying yourself or if you wish to give some energy to your work, if you want to do something productive, in both cases, your dopamine system releases some dopamine into your bloodstream. Now, clearly the levels of dopamine that are available in your body are lesser because some of it has already gone to your bloodstream.

5:38 So, this glass needs time to be refilled. The higher the degree of indulgence or hustle, the longer it'll take for your dopamine levels to get regulated. We use the reals example to explain it from a daily life perspective, but all forms of addiction that leave you feeling like crap work in the same manner. The worst part of being in that low phase with lower levels of dopamine is that your brain craves more dopamine when there's a lack of it in your bloodstream. So you pull out your phone again, you start scrolling again, you open up that pack of cigarettes again, you roll a joint again, you eat junk again, but each time you do that, you're digging a deeper hole for yourself because eventually every drop in dopamine is going to be lower than the previous drop. The game is all about fixing these drops in dopamine. You have to start earning your dopamine again through effort, not shortcuts. And that's the core of every successful person in the world. They focus on the slow release of dopamine over the course of a 24-hour period or over the course of 25 years of human life. The issue isn't with dopamine itself, but it's with your relationship with dopamine.

7:00 Over stimulation leads to depletion. That's a misuse of our dopamine circuitry. It's ignoring the fact that dopamine is not infinite in its availability. Your first cigarette will always feel much better than your 1,000th cigarette. What the world calls addiction is effectively your dopamine systems malfunctioning in the long term. But remember that glass needs time to refill. There's a reservoir of dopamine in your body and it can be depleted, but it can also be replenished.

7:41 This is probably the most important chapter in this whole documentary. It's called Dopamine Green Flags versus Dopamine Red Flags. Your decisions can either fix your dopamine system or abuse it and in the long term end up abusing your health. Earned dopamine equals green flags. This is the kind of dopamine that's aligned with how our brains evolved. This is an outcome of effort, consistency, and long-term thinking. The easiest way to get long-term sustainable domain is working hard at your career. The second building long-term fitness or health by the same consistent boring routines. The third is consistent studying or upskilling for self-development. Constant knowledge accumulation. Next, starting a business and gradually increasing your profits.

8:34 Finishing a workout. Meditating for a certain amount of time every day. Journaling. Learning something new every day. Learning something challenging. Solving a complex problem at work, deep conversations that lead to some kind of growth, cooking a meal from scratch, volunteering or helping someone or adding value to society in some way. This kind of dopamine trains your brain to value effort. It creates long-term satisfaction, not just quick pleasure.

9:08 But it's also important to understand hijacked dopamine or the red flags. This is where the system goes wrong. Modern tech and lifestyle and the urban society around us can trigger dopamine without any real effort and that's what's dangerous. Firstly, any kind of stimulant, cigarettes, vapes, excess coffee, any kind of quick addiction. Second, as we spoke earlier, doom scrolling obviously. Third, shopping just to feel something without really needing the clothes or the accessories.

9:42 Next one, super common addiction, or even casual hookup cycles. Next, we're talking about binge eating, binge drinking, or even gambling. All of these red flags give you short bursts of dopamine, but the more you use them, the more they drain your baseline motivation. Eventually, nothing feels exciting anymore. And here's the brutal truth. Your life is a sum total of which dopamine side you choose to live on. You can train your brain to chase things that actually improve your life, or you can train it to respond only to cheap, fast hits of stimulation.

10:28 Now to explain this next input better, I'm going to pick up the examples of Priyanka Chopra, Virat Kohli and Arnold Schwazenegger. The templates associated with how these people designed their own careers and their own systems can be applied to any other industry. Of course, all the entrepreneurs I've spoken to also fall under the same bracket. Now over the course of 900 podcasts what I found in common about the 1% is that all of them have identified an industry that they wish to flourish in but have also identified one core skill that they invested a lot of time in in order to get better than the others in that industry. The richest industries are often also the most competitive industries and the truth about careers is that you need to be really really good at one thing. Priyanka Chopra progressively got better as an actor over the course of her career. She focused on being prepared. Virat Kohli or any other cricketer that I spoke to focused on their core skill of batting or bowling through repetition. They put in more hours repeating the same processes until the skill got polished.

11:50 Anel Schwazenegger who had multiple successful careers within one lifetime. He found success because his core skill was communication. You need to identify one core skill that's required for you to flourish in your industry and give that skill maximum hours. But also keep in mind, you need to choose a skill that you actually enjoy getting better at. That's how you manage your own dopamine systems. You need to feel a rush from what you're working towards. As Naval said, the trick is to choose a job that looks like play to you, but work to others.

12:34 Your practice should leave you with a higher sense of energy than you felt before you began practicing. take one skill really really far. Now, additionally, what all of the great do is that they focus on three additional skills other than that one core skill. A cricketer's obviously got to focus on fitness, branding as well as other cricketing skills like fielding or bowling. An actor has to understand social media, has to understand communication, has to understand PR.

13:09 Every single entrepreneur that I've ever spoken to on the show constantly speaks about the need for reinvention over the course of business as well. And that reinvention is only going to be an outcome of you putting in hours of studying additional skills that you add along the course of your journey. But the only additional pattern that I've recognized over all these podcasts is that over a decade, you'll figure out how to upskill yourself for the sake of your growth. After that 10ear mark, it becomes all about managing your physical health as well as your personal relationships that aid your career.

13:49 Personal relationships fuel your mental health positively and the physical health leads you to having higher energy levels to go about your upskilling process faster and to be more productive at your workplace. Have a look at all these photos. The right side represents people who have learned how to use their dopamine systems correctly. The left side represents people who've abused those same dopamine systems. The same mechanics have led to mega success on the right and the destruction of life on the left. Keep in mind where you end up in terms of productivity or career success or legacy is heavily dependent on your own choices.

14:38 That's the case with the 900 people I spoke to. Not everyone has fully cleaned up their life. Everyone's got one vice or another. Your job is to understand what each of those vices are and how each of your habits are affecting your long-term career prospects. In the long term, your career is heavily dependent on chemistry. But from a very practical daily life basis, you need to pay attention to the next chapter in order to self analyze.

15:19 This chapter is all about selfanalysis. How do you figure out your own dopamine systems and your own dopamine spikes? And this chapter matters because if you want to retrain your brain and reclaim your focus, your energy, your motivation, you need to first understand your dopamine related habits. Most people go through life unaware of what's hijacking their attention. And hopefully this chapter will help you break that loop. Step one, the dopamine journal.

15:53 Grab a notebook. Firstly, list down five things that you're addicted to or feel dependent on. Be completely honest. Nobody else is going to see this. And ask yourself, are these activities giving me effort-based dopamine or are they giving me instant dopamine? Step two, learn to spot the imbalance. Here are the signs that your dopamine system might be misfiring. Firstly, maybe you need constant stimulation to feel okay. Then maybe you're bored with everything and even things you used to love just seem very dry now. You procrastinate even on goals that you genuinely care about. Maybe your energy crashes randomly throughout the day. Or you find it hard to feel excited without a screen or a substance. But you've got to keep in mind is that it's not about being perfect. No one's perfect. No one's life is all about green flags. You don't need to be David Gogggins. You're allowed some kind of escapes. Make sure that your escapes are conscious. The goal is not to remove dopamine spikes from your life. It's to try earning them as far as possible and educating yourself about your own cravings and then making informed choices. Now, by this point, you've probably figured out what's holding you back in life versus what you need to do to move forward in life. But that's step zero in my eyes. Step one is all about action with respect to your career. But in order to move faster, in order to break into that 1% faster, you have to go ahead with a game plan, with a bit of a strategy. And that's what will be explained to you in the next chapter.

17:40 This next chapter contains what we call the rewire protocol in order to re-engineer your life to break into that 1% bracket. Now, this kind of framework is not a detox, but it's an optimization of your daily systems. It will help you reset your life one step at a time. So, let's talk about rewiring your life. R stands for reviewing triggers. Firstly, assess the frequency. Go back to your red list.

18:15 How often are you engaging in each activity? Once a week, every day, multiple times a day. Ask yourself, which is what brings us to E. E stands for exchanging habits. The replacement principle. The best way to cut out any dopamine related addiction, any kind of intoxicant, any kind of red flag activity is to replace it with something better. Ideally, use your own green list. If those things don't excite you, discover new ones. dance classes, martial arts, team sports, trekking, music, regularly consuming value adding content. Moving on to W, wake and reset.

18:59 Designing a daily reset routine. Waking up and stepping into the sunlight. This boosts your natural dopamine and supports your energy for the entire day. Next, we move on to I, which is introducing friction. Add friction to all the red flag oriented dopamine triggers. Make it hard to access addictive habits. Log out of social media. Keep your phone in another room. Disable autoplay notifications. If it's an intoxicant you're dealing with, don't keep it at home. Try understanding that if it's a friend of yours who's responsible for your intoxicant addiction, try keeping some distance from that friend for some time. You have to catch yourself before you begin to play with your own dopamine systems.

19:50 Next are rally mini wins. Build momentum with mini wins. Motivation follows action. So start small. Just wear your gym clothes. Just write one sentence. Just clean one corner. These small wins compound and naturally rebuild your dopamine drive. E energize and restore. Rest is not a luxury. Rest is your brain's pause button in order to replenish that glass. Replenish your dopamine reservoirs.

20:25 Practices like yoga nidra or NSDR, non-sleep deep rest. These can increase baseline dopamine by up to 60%. Going about a cold plunge or a cold shower releases dopamine for a longer duration. So train your brain to earn its rewards. That's how you build lasting motivation, focus, and peace. The rewire protocol followed correctly over an extended period of time is exactly what leads people into this 1% bracket. When people say that your routines become your story, this is what they mean. All of them have applied a version of the rewire protocol in their own personal lives.

21:19 Over the course of a 10 year career, I figured that for me and my personal headsp space, I need a break every 2 and 1/2 to 3 months. That's what really keeps me going. Like I will visit every vacation spot with a lot of negative energy, with a lot of heaviness, with a lot of exhaustion, but I'll always leave with positivity irrespective of where I go because there's something about a new environment, new surroundings, so much data for your mind to absorb, so much of a change for your heart to feel. I think that's what replenishes dopamine reserves in the first place because every single place I visited three or four days in I'm raring to get back to Mumbai and get back to creating videos.

22:14 I have so many new ideas. I have so much freshness. I think the 10 year YouTube career has been sustained through breaks like this. But this video is about the science. So when it comes to these quarterly breaks, here's what you need to know. Right from school to college to your job, this is your longest most effortbased phase of your life. Everything that you achieve in the material world. All the money that you're making is an outcome of your dopamine systems being in the right place. Your dopamine systems are trained through this journey. So whether it's the great grade you got in school or college or that fat pay package, it is an outcome of your dopamine system. What you're doing through watching this video is also your dopamine system being at play. But here's the catch. It's important to know when to use it. If you want to have a long arc life, if you wish to achieve sustained success and a long arc career, your goal has to be all about mastering these transition states as well. Because transition states allow us to replenish the dopamine reserves after a high dopamine activity. Every time you see negative outcomes in a person's life, it's this exact science at play. They've not mastered their transition states.

23:42 All forms of success first and foremost come from discipline. But as Khabib once said, what's more important than discipline is sacrifice. Your life is an outcome of your routines. And your routines should be shaped up by sacrificing on all the red flag dopamine activities. Whether it's Naval Ravi Kant, Priyanka Chopra, Karina Kapoor, Ronaldo, Messi, Lamin, Yamal, name any achiever and at the center of their life you'll find routines and beneath those routines, you'll discover their sacrifices. That is the secret of dopamine.

24:22 Ladies and gentlemen, this was our first the show documentary. I'd love to receive feedback from you and I hope that you gained immense value over the course of this entire game plan that we've chocked out for you. The description box contains scientific research papers to back everything that we've said, but it also contains a document that contains this framework that will help you improve the quality of your life. Many more documentaries are coming your way. Keep sending in feedback and keep sending us topic recommendations. Thank you for listening in.