It's a new year. Why am I exhausted already?

This week I want to talk about dopamine and the kind of reset many of us are actually looking for as the New Year begins. (Pick a behavioral addiction, any behavioral addiction!)

Dopamine is often misunderstood. It’s about motivation not pleasure. It’s what allows us to initiate effort.

Classic animal studies make this clear. Rats with depleted dopamine would eat food placed directly in their mouths, but they would starve if that same food was just a body length away. Literally a few inches away. Desire and enjoyment were intact (at least from the researchers view). What disappeared entirely was the ability to expend effort.

I see this all the time clinically. When someone tells me they’re lazy, I usually stop them. This isn’t about character. It’s about capacity.

I can't stress this distinction enough. When people struggle to change habits or step out of behavioral addictions, the problem is often not willpower or character. Wanting to change and being able to change are not the same thing. Capacity is the nervous system’s ability to initiate effort, tolerate discomfort, and follow through. When the system is overstimulated or chronically stressed, motivation is one of the first things to go offline.

Even simple actions can feel out of reach, despite genuine desire. (Wild right?)

This is why so many people start the New Year feeling exhausted rather than inspired. What they’re often looking for isn’t more discipline or better strategies. It’s a reset. A nervous system reset that allows motivation to return on its own.

So this week, instead of talking about pushing harder, I want to focus on reducing overload, creating space, and letting the system recalibrate in a way that restores the ability to move.

Sometimes the most productive thing to do at the beginning of a new year is reset first.