Dopamine Playlists
Listen - sometimes the world is a difficult place and we just want to crawl into a comfy spot and watch something and not think for a while. I hear you and I've thought of how to make a life hack for it!
Dopamine Playlists. These are playlists of songs, videos, tiktoks, shows, movies that just give your brain a little boost of sweet, sweet dopamine. It doesn't matter if they're weird, random, dumb, or you don't understand why you like them - you like them and you deserve to enjoy them when you're feeling a severe lack of the "feel good" hormone and you don't want to think, just listen to music or watch something.
How to build your own Dopamine Playlists
Personally, I have three: music, YouTube, and tiktok; however, you can use any audio or video formats or platforms that you enjoy.
Examples of the formats and platforms you can use:
Tiktok playlist
YouTube playlist
Typed lists of TV shows and movies that includes where you can watch each one (DVD, computer file, streaming platform)
Music mixtape(s)
Music playlist on streaming services
Podcast playlist on streaming platform
Computer file folder containing music, videos, or podcasts
How you set up the playlist(s) will depend on the format and platform, but the general way is all the same (and very simple!):
Think about any of the songs, videos, TV shows, etc that you remember getting stuck in your head and add them to the playlist(s)
Any time that you come across a song, video, TV show, etc that just gives you an extra shot of happiness - add it!
Don't worry about if it's "weird", not what you usually go for, or what someone else might think - this is for YOU!
Then the next time that you feel down, want to just crawl into a hole, and the world just feels like it sucks, find a comfortable spot, open your dopamine playlist(s), and hit shuffle (if it's not a series!
You don't have to or need to share it with anyone, but I'm not shy, so here's a sample of one of mine: my YouTube playlist:
