By Kevin Kolodziejski
Mick Jagger’s been around seemingly forever, as well as the song he’ll be linked to for just as long: “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” But hey, hey, hey, that’s just what I say.
If what you say is that there’s no reason to mention this in a cycling column, I won’t tell you how white your shirts should be. I’ll just tell you that you’re wrong . . . and what some guy far smarter than I says about the song.
Arthur C. Brooks on Satisfaction
Arthur C. Brooks is a Harvard professor and bestselling author, who also hosts a weekly and well-followed podcast, “Office Hours with Arthur Brooks.” In the episode titled, “3 Ways to Want Less and Be Happier,” he says something that just might explain why so many serious cyclists can go full guns for months and then — when there’s seemingly no reason to do so — go weeks without going around the block. While solving that riddle is not his intention, one of yours should be to keep such a cycling cessation from occurring — or ever occurring again. Either way, it would serve you well to consider what Brooks says about the nature of satisfaction.
It’s not that you can’t get no satisfaction. No, no, no. It’s that you can’t keep it.
Brooks explains we all have a “neurobiological tendency” that makes it hard to continue to feel satisfied over the long term with just about anything. In order for listeners better understand one important element to this “phenomenon of not being able to keep satisfaction,” Brooks tells a story about a caveman given the task of hunting to provide sustenance for his clan.
Arthur C. Brooks on the Caveman
After his initial attempts to track down a gazelle prove unsuccessful, the caveman decides to go “over there,” a place he’s never been before. He finds a watering hole, a gazelle drinking from it, and immediately receives a “neurochemical reward.” It’s the secretion of the feel-good chemical dopamine, and it’s the same reward you receive in an equivalent modern-day circumstance. If the caveman makes the kill, he’s rewarded again with another hit of dopamine. If he later receives praise from his clansmen for feeding them, he gets a third.
Besides its feel-good function and among its many others, dopamine is also produced “so that we can learn new skills that are rewarding to us.” So the next time the clan needs food, the caveman heads back to the newly discovered watering hole. The possibility of success once again produces a “little spritz” of dopamine. But if he sees no gazelle, his dopamine production and the feel-good feeling end there. If he sees an entire herd, however, he’ll get a bigger hit than before, making him feel like the “king of the Troglodyte tribe.”
The modern-day caveat to experiencing such an “unbelievable sense of reward” is pretty clear. For the things available to us capable of creating such intense pleasure are also capable of creating addiction, cycling included. That’s why I like to say I’m an “almost, but not quite cycling junkie” and take pause (albeit a mental one) when family and friends call me a liar. That cycling conundrum discussed to start this article — cyclists not riding for a time for no apparent reason — becomes pretty clear, too, as Brooks explains the third possible outcome when the caveman revisits the watering hole. That he sees a single gazelle once more.
Yet his body produces no dopamine this time.
The Caveman Off Dopamine
That’s because the caveman now expects to see a gazelle there, and expected situations don’t create a feel-good dopamine hit. In fact, our biological tendency is for expected situations often to produce the opposite, which is why “you feel the need to run faster and faster on the hedonic treadmill and [that] pretty soon you’re running out of fear.” Why a modern-day car dealer who’s selling as many vehicles as he was three years ago feels bad about it — and like a loser. Why Brooks often mentions what Jagger should really be singing about is not that he can’t get no satisfaction but that he can’t keep it.
And why I say that regardless of your modern-day job, you need to see cycling (all your exercise, really) as your side gig — as well as ask yourself the question that serves in part as the title of today’s article: “Could it be time to rethink your cycling goals?” It’s not that you can’t get no fitness, no, no, no. It’s that after riding for a while it becomes harder and harder to increase it. And if you don’t increase it, the thrill of cycling can go south, sometimes far enough to keep you from riding.
At least for a while.
Now your cycling goals are probably different from mine, so hey, hey hey, what I say keeps me cycling and fit may not work for you. But we both can learn a thing or two from what Brooks tells us what to do if we want to keep feeling satisfied.
To Keep Feeling Satisfied
“You can’t be doing what you used to be doing. If you want satisfaction to stick around, you’ll have to start doing things that don’t feel natural,” which is “devilishly hard to do.”
But if you can do these seemingly unnatural things, “Life’s going to get better.”
The same, my friend, is true for cycling.
Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.
A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.