The Mel Robbins Podcast
How to Get Motivated: #1 Dopamine Expert’s Protocol to Build Willpower & Get Things Done
22 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Let me ask you something. Why is it so hard to do the things you know you need to do? Why can't you just get motivated to work out, eat better, stop scrolling, write the email, go to bed, clean the garage, whatever it is. You want to do it. You keep telling yourself, ah, you'll start tomorrow, but somehow you don't.
You stay stuck. You keep scrolling. You order the takeout. You waste another hour on your phone, and then you feel like crap about it. Sound familiar?
Chapter 2: Why is it so hard to get motivated?
I hear this all the time from friends, from listeners emailing in, from my own kids, and I've lived it too. But the problem isn't you. The problem is your brain. It's been hijacked and it continues to be hijacked. You're not unmotivated. You're overstimulated. You've been trained by modern life to chase easy dopamine. that feel-good chemical in your brain all day long.
Food, social media, porn, gaming, constant multitasking, and that's rewired your brain to avoid anything that feels hard, even when you want to do it. But here's the good news. you can take your brain back. You can rebuild motivation, focus, and energy. That's why today, we're talking about how to get motivated even when you don't feel like it with the world's number one expert on dopamine.
And the shift doesn't take a six-month cleanse. You just need this episode. Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're here. I'm fired up for today's conversation. It's such an honor to be together and to spend this time with you.
And if you're a new listener or you're here because somebody shared this with you, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. Today's guest is the world's foremost expert on dopamine and its effect on your brain and your habits. I'm talking, of course, about Dr. Anna Lembke.
Today, you're gonna get her protocol for motivation, happiness, and getting things done. Dr. Anna Lembke is a professor and the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. And she's chief of Stanford's Dual Diagnosis Clinic, where she treats people dealing with addiction and mental health issues.
She's trained hundreds of physicians through the Stanford Addiction Medicine Fellowship, where she serves as program director. She's double board certified in both psychiatry and addiction medicine. She is the New York Times bestselling author of two books that have been translated into over 30 languages, Dopamine Nation and Drug Dealer MD.
She's testified in courtrooms, advised national policy, and she's published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers. Put simply, she is the greatest dopamine mind in the world. And today, she's going to teach you her protocol for motivation, happiness, and getting things done. So without further ado, please help me welcome Dr. Anna Lemke to the Mel Robbins podcast.
Thank you for inviting me. I'm absolutely delighted to be here.
Dr. Lemke, could you tell me if I take everything to heart that you're about to teach me today, and I truly apply all this research about dopamine and motivation and happiness and pain and pleasure centers, and I apply it to my life, how could my life change?
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Chapter 3: What is the role of dopamine in motivation?
And it's that moment that we cross from... sort of mutual love and respect to, I'm actually using you to, as a drug, essentially, I'm using you to kind of help me modulate, you know, my emotions, which again, in and of itself is not necessarily bad because- Well, everyone's well, of course.
Yeah. But when it becomes the baseline- Yes. And for me- What I started to ask myself is, wait, am I reaching out because I want to connect with this person? Right. Or am I reaching out? As a drug. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'd grab a glass of wine.
Yes. And here's where the technology has become so destructive and insidious. even just 20 years ago, if you wanted to reach out to your daughter living across town, I mean, essentially you had to go over there, right? And it took a little bit of time and it took some effort. Now with the devices, this reaching out really has become drugified. Whether it's
And I do this too, you know, we're newly empty nesters and it's been very difficult for me to be at home without any kids there now. And, you know, I kind of got to a point where I was like literally stalking my kids on Find My iPhone. I love you. And I'd be like... My daughter was like doing an internship in D.C. and I'm like, are you at a Goodwill in D.C.? She goes, mom, that's weird.
Like, you know, I don't want you to use find my iPhone with me if you're going to like be stalking me. And it's been this is a real area I'm working on because my kids occupy a lot of my mental real estate.
Right.
And their well-being. I do use it as a drug to make myself feel better. And when they're doing well and I get little information from them that they're doing well, I feel good. And when they're not doing well, I ruminate and I worry and I feel bad. But here's how this is so, you know...
counterproductive and potentially harmful for me and my kids is that my kids then get trapped in this thing where we can't actually tell mom that things are not going well because we have to be doing well for her to be okay. And it's very subtle. But this creeps up on you.
I'm so glad you're talking about this.
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Chapter 4: How does the pleasure-pain balance affect our habits?
We need human connection. But now we have these devices that are so... reinforcing because of their dynamic design features that they create the illusion of connection even when there's no real connection happening. And more importantly, they hijack our reward system so that we don't want to disengage even when we've exhausted their utility, right?
So these digital media are great when we use them as a tool, not great when we use them as a drug to change the way we feel.
All right, I'm just going to come out and say it. This conversation is intense. I mean, in the best way, Dr. Lemke. It's like someone just opened a window in your brain and flipped the lights on. And if you're like me, you are already thinking, holy cow, my partner needs to hear this. My kid needs to hear this. I need to play this back tomorrow morning.
So while you text this episode to somebody who needs a motivation reset... We're going to take a quick break and let our sponsors shine, but don't go anywhere. Dr. Lemke is about to walk us through exactly how to reset your dopamine when we come back. Stay with me. Welcome back. It's your buddy Mel Robbins.
Today, you and I are getting to learn from the number one dopamine expert in the world, Dr. Anna Lemke. And we're learning her protocols for resetting your dopamine, building willpower, getting things done, being happier. So Dr. Lemke, the next thing I wanted to ask you about was this.
Why is it so damn hard to do the simplest things like going to the gym, eating healthy, or just getting started on that project or on studying? You know you need to do it, but you can't seem to get the get up and go to do it.
We evolved to reflexively approach pleasure and avoid pain. Gotcha. In a world of scarcity. Okay. Where we would have to do a lot of upfront work for a tiny little bit of reward.
Got it. So we are designed to move toward what's easy now, towards what's pleasurable now, and we are designed to move away from the gym or away from the project that we don't want to do.
Yes. And again, that is a great built-in mechanism to keep us alive in a world of scarcity. But in this world of overwhelming overabundance, It's a very bad mechanism because now we're exposing our brains to this fire hose of dopamine. We're getting into this dopamine deficit state. Now we've narrowed our focus. All we want to do is keep pursuing pleasure to bring ourselves back up to baseline.
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