I'd become a world class epigeneticist. Epigenetics is above genetics and it's the idea that we can modulate our genes in our own lifetime.
The main approaches I would pursue would be:
- Diet, epi-paleo by Jack Kruse
- Acute physical stresses , working out briefly, interval
- The Opponent Process Theory of Motivation.
There is an Opponent Process Theory of color, of motivation, of emotion. Basically I'm interested in the theory as it applies to emotion and motivation. This Theory attempts to explain drug addictions as follows:
You take a drug and it makes you very very happy. You feel kind of meh afterwards, especially after heroin, meth and though it's not a drug, orgasming. This has to do with dopamine releases in the brain. When dopamine shoots up to OMG super high levels, the body then has to compensate for this using an opponent process, which in this case would be to block dopamine receptors in the brain. This is why crack addicts feel like shit when going through withdraw and why it can take meth addicts years to recover, they literally have their dopamine receptors blocked.
The thing I really love about this theory, which you can see in the graph, is that the opponent process outlasts the initial stimuli. Which means, that drug addicts who over-indulge in the rewarding stimuli then have to wait a long time to get over their addiction. The cool thing about this theory is that it necessarily works in the reverse. Those who do intense acute stresses/obstacles then have a long lasting sense of well-being which is reflected in hormone production and neurochemical receptors in the brain.
For real world examples of the opponent process theory I'd like to remind people of the spartans who ruled fiercely and definitely understood the importance of discipline in building success. Fighting, sleeping on floors, scantly clothed. I'd like to remind people of self-flaggelation by the catholics. Cold Therapy by people around the world notably the russians. There are all sorts of real world examples and I'd like to fine tune them to help me and ultimately others reach their full potential.
