Dopamine Hits and Loss of a Creature

 I enjoyed Walker Percy's short story, "The Loss of the Creature" I think because it spoke truth. The first idea is that our expectations determine the level of enjoyment regardless of the objective reality, if it could be measured. Percy uses the example of the Grand Canyon to say that most tourists are little bit let down by the sight of it because they have prepared themselves for the sight to be absolutely amazing. On the other hand, if you're just driving by not expecting anything great, you're gonna be astonished by the Grand Canyon. 

This reminds me of a podcast I listened to with the top interviewer, Tom Bilyeu, and neuroscientist and Stanford professor, Andrew Huberman. Huberman was speaking to dopamine and how it correlates with motivation.  Essentially, as we develop habits our brains come to associate certain actions with dopamine spikes. This is how motivation works, our brain craves this dopamine so we set out to do certain actions in order to release it. However, if we become accustomed to a specific action and don't carry out on it, our brain levels drop below our baseline creating disappointment. This is why quitting anything cold turkey is so tough. Rather than releasing dopamine (like our brains would usually completing a certain action), we drop below average and crave the certain thing we're quitting as our brain knows it will lead to a dopamine spike. Often times, we think that this disappointment is proof that we need it so we get back on it and often fall into a deeper addiction. However it's a natural occurence in the process of quitting. It's a short-term sacrifice for long-term gain. 

I believe this is what happens when we are disappointed by expected experiences. We have a picture in our mind of what we expect of the experience. Our brains then release dopamine matching our expected level of arousal. When we come to physically experience it, it's almost never as good as we expected so our brains don't release as much dopamine as it thought it would leading to disappointment. So is the key to just have low expectations? Or is the answer to put effort into the planning of our experience so that it matches our expectations?