Under The Microscope

Going From Resolutions to Results

• Malik

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Most resolutions don’t fizzle because we’re lazy—they fail because our brains misjudge the tradeoff between effort and reward. We break down the science of dopamine and show how this powerful neurotransmitter influences whether you focus on benefits or get stuck on perceived costs. From the striatum’s caudate nucleus to real-world habit design, we connect research to practical steps you can use today to make goals in fitness, money, and health actually stick.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Under the Microscope Podcast, where we use the latest scientific research to present solutions to the various health impediments and problems that plague our community today. Welcome everyone to today's episode. We made it to a new year. It's 2026. With the new year comes something that I'm sure many of you all who are listening are familiar with, and that's resolutions. Resolutions are a fainty way of saying I'm going to set a goal for myself, whether professionally, personally, health-wise, and I'm going to stick to it. And before the new year arrives, I will have hopefully accomplished or reached that goal, right? But as many of us also may know, most resolutions that are set around December, sometimes January, don't really get accomplished, unfortunately. And this is also backed up by statistics as well. According to a 2023 study, approximately 6 to 8% of individuals who set a quote unquote resolution, New Year's resolution, will not stick to that resolution past the month of June. That would imply a non-accomplishment rate of roughly 92 to 94%. So we're setting these goals, we're setting these resolutions, but for some reason, we're having difficulty reaching or accomplishing the goals or completing or fulfilling those resolutions. The top three resolution categories, typically year to year, are number one, fitness, number two, money and finances, and then coming in in third place, health. So with these categories comes something that, again, we're very familiar with, and that's a challenge or some kind of associated difficulty with setting that goal or setting that resolution. So what we want to do today is we want to take a look at a very critical aspect to accomplishing goals, and it actually is something that's ingrained in us as human beings. And it's a very important neurotransmitter called dopamine. Now, if you're familiar with dopamine or you've done research on dopamine, you know that that plays a significant role in our ability to not just goal set, but also accomplish goals. So we want to take a look at dopamine, the role that it plays in accomplishing or achieving goals, and also how do we tap into it a little bit better? Because as I mentioned earlier with the research, right now we're looking at a non-accomplishment rate of 92 to 94%, meaning we're setting goals, but we're not accomplishing them. And dopamine plays a huge part in being able to accomplish or complete these goals. So what is dopamine? Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, again, and what it does exactly is it operates as a chemical messenger in the brain, and it plays a central role in motivation, learning, uh reward processing, which we're going to talk about extensively today, and movement control. So it's very important. How does this work, though? Truly, how do we tap into this neurotransmitter, this chemical messenger, to help us with accomplishing goals? Because it seems like, based off of the start of this episode, that we're just not good at it, or maybe the dopamine isn't doing what it's supposed to do. And that's not necessarily the case. It's not per se that the dopamine isn't doing what it's supposed to do. And it may not even be that we're not doing what we're supposed to do, or we're not serious about the goals, but the level of dopamine that exists or uh is neutral in our brain is very important to and impacts how we actually go after the goals. Okay. So let's start off with goal setting, which is where everything starts. Again, you have your resolutions, uh, be it December, be it January. Sometimes we have some late starters in February, but that's where it starts, right? We set the goal. Uh, I'm gonna go to the gym four times a week. I'm gonna uh start that business I've been wanting to start, I'm gonna get my health better, or whatever the case may be, but that's where we start. We start off with setting our goals. So when we set goals, it's our job to make sure, firstly, that the goal is realistic and ambitious, which is pretty straightforward. We have to make sure that it's a goal that we truly desire to go after and that it's a realistic goal. Because setting unrealistic goals can do the opposite of what we actually want to do. So if I've never gone to the gym before, never touched a weight in my life, and my goal that I set, if uh my resolution is getting stronger, right? I want to get stronger, and I set uh a mini goal of the first, after the first three months, I want to be able to bench press 500 pounds. Well, if I've never lifted a weight before, if I have no experience weight lifting whatsoever, that can be unrealistic to achieve naturally. But uh, and what that could do is that could actually lessen your my desire to go into the gym and put in the hard work that comes with building muscle and getting stronger because we set an unrealistic goal for ourselves. So we have to be careful with that. We have to make sure that during this process, our brain evaluates the task or the goal, and then it determines if it's worth the mental fortitude, but also the physical fortitude and the physical effort that comes with it as well, depending on what the goal is. Uh, this evaluation process is exactly exactly influenced by the level of dopamine in our brain, which is what we just talked about earlier. So the levels of dopamine in our brain actually plays a role in this goal setting evaluation process. Okay? So there was a study conducted in March of 2020 that examined the cardic nucleus, which is a specific region of the striatum, uh, in individuals ages 18 to 43. Uh, and the cardic nucleus is where dopamine typically exists. What they found was those individuals, age range 18 to 43, uh, that had higher dopamine levels in the cardic nucleus were likely to focus on the benefits and choose to accomplish or go after the difficult mental task, right? Those with lower dopamine levels were more sensitive to the perceived cost or task difficulty. So just putting a pause in it right there. Basically, what this research study found was depending on the levels of dopamine in the individual's cartic nucleus, they either focused on the benefit of that was attached to going after that goal or going after that task, versus someone who had lower dopamine levels didn't focus on the benefit, they focused on the effort that it would take. Okay? So basically, what that research article is highlighting is the higher your and my dopamine levels in our cardiac nucleus, in our brain, the more likely we are during that evaluation process of goal setting to focus on the benefit rather than the quote unquote perceived cost. What is it gonna take for me to do this? Right? We're focused on the benefit, or the individuals with higher dopamine levels in the cardiac nucleus are focused on the benefit more than the cost. Lower dopamine is focused on more of the cost than the benefit. So, what time does this mean I'm gonna have to get up? How many days do I have to do I have to go to the gym? Uh how what is my diet gonna look like? Do I have to give up the candy bars or what that's the difference in perception or the difference in the evaluation of the goal setting? So this is very important. Again, the dopamine is not just the get up and do it uh neurotransmitter. It plays a significant role in our evaluation process when we're setting these goals for ourselves. So the research study continued, uh, and we found that increasing dopamine in individuals who had the low dopamine levels boosted how willing those individuals were willing to choose to go after the more difficult mental tasks. And it did this by changing their cost-benefit sensitivity. So the individuals with lower dopamine levels, when the dopamine was increased, which we're gonna talk about towards the end of today's podcast, when they were increased, it changed their sensitivity and changed their analysis of focusing more on the cost to shifting more towards the benefit. And a good example of this that I want to use to paint this picture and wrap up that study, just imagine or recall when we were younger. Especially for those of us who uh we grew up uh I guess you could say pre-social media, you know, we were always outside, or if you weren't outside, you were inside, but you were doing something, right? Just so just remember those days, not trying to age anybody, but just remember those days. Typically, uh, and this is also backed by research as well, adolescence, so roughly around the mid-teen years, uh, appears to be the period where relatively elevated dopamine receptor availability and signaling capacity in the striatum occurs as compared to adult levels. So basically, when we're in our mid-teens, we have higher dopamine levels, higher dopamine receptor availability, and signaling capacity than we do when we're an adult. So if you recall, this is typically why during our younger stages or that area of our life, mid-teens, some of us earlier, we typically get in the most not dire situations, but a lot of our injuries came during that time, or we took greater risk during that time, right? You got uh you were flying a kite with your friends, and the kite got stuck in a really, really high tree, and you were 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. You were more likely to get your friends and stand on top of each other's shoulders and climb that tree to get that kite because your dopamine capacity, signaling capacity and available dopamine was so high that the thought was not, oh my God, that tree is really, really high. I could possibly fall and break my arm. The thought was, hey, we were having fun flying that kite. I want to go get that kite. And if I get the kite, we can keep having fun. So guess what? I'm about to go get that kite, right? Um, cheating on a test, right? There was a lot, there was a there was a risk factor in that. You could get caught, you could have got in trouble, uh, you could possibly, uh, depending on your school, be expelled. But if you're the benefit, we're focused on the benefit due to those higher dopamine levels and higher signaling capacity. So we were more willing to go after that, and in this case, it's kind of kind of wrong, not promote cheating at all, but we were more likely to go after it because we're focused on the benefit, right? Maybe you're taking a uh a class that you don't like, it's not your strong suit, and you really need to pass that class. And if you cheat on that test, you benefit by passing the class. Again, not promoting cheating, but that's how our dopamine levels impact our perception or analysis of setting this goal. I can go on and on, pranking a best friend or a sibling, uh sneaking out of the house. There's always a cost associated with whatever task we were trying to accomplish. You might have snuck out to go to go to a party or go hang out with friends to see a movie you weren't supposed to see. And if you got caught, you maybe got um you got some uh timeout time, or you know, depending on the type of parents you had, you got a form of what they would call corporal punishment. But you were more focused on the benefit than the perceived cost during those years. And it's due to the higher dopamine capacity in the brain and firing or signaling capacity as well. So we were more likely or more focused during those years on the benefits or potential benefits than we were with the perceived cost or the difficulty. All right. So now that we know that and we see that dopamine plays a role in our evaluation of even taking on and completing these goals, how can we increase our dopamine levels? Since research proves that or has shown that increased dopamine levels and signaling capacity changes our sensitivity from cost to benefit. How do we increase our dopamine? So you have different stages to it, and in it on this episode, we're gonna take two different approaches. We're gonna go from increasing the dopamine process, that's gonna be the first step, to looking at the mindset that we should take as we increase our dopamine levels because they go together. So increasing or boosting dopamine is actually very simple to do. You can start off with things like aerobic exercises. So exercising as a whole can increase your or my dopamine. It's just a very simple way to start. Uh, adequate quality sleep, blue light exposure impacts quality sleep. So our phones that we utilize every day, our laptops that have blue light, blue light exposure can impact our sleep. So getting a good grasp on quality sleep, uh, being mindful of our caffeine consumption and things of that nature and the sources of caffeine that we're getting as well, uh, reducing stress can help improve dopamine and our nutrition, dieting can improve or increase the levels of dopamine uh in our brain in that cardiac nucleus region. So those are just some simple solutions that you can start right away, that we can start right away to kind of help give our dopamine levels that boost. And we're gonna have another episode where we focus on uh improving dopamine levels as a whole. So now, with improving the dopamine levels in our brain, we now want to shift to what mindset should we have when it comes to achieving the goals. So boosting the dopamine helps us to change our perception, our evaluation. We go from focusing on cost to benefit. Now, we have to make sure that while we're working on these goals, because for most of you listeners, we're adults now, we have a process to accomplishing the goals that we set. So we have to be consistent, right? This is not something that's just us, you know, you snap your fingers and boom, it's right there. It takes a while. So, what mindset should we take while we're uh going through the process of achieving our goals? And what I want to talk about or refer to, just to summarize it all, is a mindset that I developed and learned from uh two sources. First one was uh my father watching him uh do what he did as a husband uh and as a father to seven children, myself being the oldest, and also uh my mother, she did the same as well. She actually had, when I was younger, had me watching a lot of nature shows. And I noticed a difference in mindset when it came to animals and creatures in nature, when it came to how they accomplished their goals. So I developed what I like to call the R method. A R E is an acronym. It stands for attack, recover, evaluate. Attack, recover, and evaluate. And the words are chosen for a specific reason. So it starts off with an attack. Now that sounds very aggressive, and that's exactly the point. So for us, when we decide to go after a goal, um, we we set a goal, we we we plan, we put things in motion, and then we go, we typically go in a start motion. And what I mean by a start motion is any type of progress will do. And that's sufficient. That's okay. But if we truly want to go after our goals and be consistent, it has to come from an attack mindset. So now when you think about an attack mindset, it's very calculated, it's intentional and it is aggressive. Uh, we can start something sometimes with just a start, but it's not aggressive. We want to be aggressive in accomplishing our goals. So we want to have that attack mindset because that's very important. We want to go after it aggressively. We want to be calculated, we want to be intentional about what we're doing. While we're attacking that goal or attacking that plan, we also want to have moments of recovery because, again, it takes time to accomplish goals. If it's health, if it's finances, if it's uh entrepreneurship, whatever the case may be, it takes time. So we want to have those moments of recovery. Now, I use the word recovery and not reward on purpose because we oftentimes are our biggest obstacle to achieving our goals, and one of the assets or um avenues rather that we inhibit or slow or sometimes even completely stop our progress is through what we like to call rewarding ourselves. Okay? We have to be careful with the reward. It should be recovery, right? If you think about someone who's recovering, take an athlete, for example. When an athlete recovers, they're recovering with a purpose. We talked about intent with attack. They're recovering with a purpose or intent to be able to get back out there and play another game. If it's NBA, if it's football, if it's soccer, volleyball, uh, I might have ding my knee, my shoulder is hurting. So I'm gonna go to recovery, not so I cannot play anymore. I'm going to recovery so I can be ready for that next game. Or if it's a significant injury, I want to recover the best way possible. So the next season, I'm ready to get back out there. So we want to recover, not reward, because we oftentimes mess up our progress through rewards. And to give you an example, I'll use a show. I was watching uh an episode of The Office with my wife, and there's an episode where uh if you've seen The Office, you know what I'm talking about. If you have not, I highly recommend it. It's a great show. Uh, very funny. But there's an episode where the office, the team, has a competition where they're competing with other offices to see which office can lose the most weight collaboratively, right? So it's hilarious. They go down to the basement, they get on this huge scale that they use for like large uh warehouse equipment, and they would they would weigh themselves every, I think it was every week, to see, you know, how much weight they were losing. So uh Michael, who's the who's the the boss, the manager, he's like, okay, guys, we're gonna, you know, this is the goal. We're gonna we want to lose X amount of weight by this time to beat the other offices. And so they start and they that you know, they're eating celery, they're doing all this stuff, and they get to a point where they start to lose weight, which is a good thing. While they are losing the weight, the team is happy, you know, the they're celebrating. Everybody in the office is like, hey, we could do it. And a couple of the members of the the office, the team said, Well, we're doing such a great job, we want to reward ourselves. And the reward that they were looking to do was eat some cake. And um, I'll never forget the camera pans to Michael Scott and he says, What is wrong with these people? And I just burst out laughing, but that's what we look like when we reward and not recover. So in their minds, we're doing a great job, we're making progress. We've earned the right to, you know, eat some cake. But the goal was not accomplished yet. The competition wasn't over. They weren't declared the winners yet, so they were going to engage in a behavior that would inhibit or slow down their progress in the name of being, in the name of rewarding themselves. So we have to be careful with that. You want to recover, not reward. Recover means you're gonna engage in something that is going to allow you, allow me to keep going, keep pushing, keep fighting, and reach our goal. Okay, so recovering and then evaluating what's contributing to my success in pursuing this goal, what's getting me closer, what's not. And then based on those results, that should be incorporated when you get to round two of that attack. Uh, if it's waking up earlier, if it's not hanging out with certain people, if it's staying off social media, whatever it is you find out and I find out during that evaluation process, we move that into the attack when we get ready for that next attack and we continue to go, and that'll help us with being consistent and get to the point where we ultimately reach and accomplish our goal. Uh, I hope there was something in this episode that you all found purposeful, useful, and instrumental. Uh, if you like what you heard, leave a comment below in the chat or in the comment section if you're on social media. If there's another topic that you would like for us to speak on, uh definitely leave that feedback as well. We read the comments, we listen to your feedback, and we want to make sure that we're servicing you, the listeners, as best as we possibly can. I thank you all for joining us on this episode of Dopamine and Goal Setting. You all have a great one. We'll see you on the next episode.