Your brain, like your boss, prefers success to failure. When it has a success, it re- leases dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter. This actually helps you remember what you did right so you can repeat it. In contrast, when you fail, you don’t get the nice dopamine reward—and so your brain can’t quite figure out what you did wrong. Despite what all those motivation gurus say, failure doesn’t actually teach you much. Success is how you learn. Researchers at MIT found that monkeys (which have brains a lot like ours) repeat the same mistakes over and over. Failure didn’t change the monkey’s behavior or help it do well on the next test. Success did.
Having a “streak”—where you successfully complete a certain habit or task re- peatedly over a period of time—also causes your brain to release dopamine. The more successful you are over time, the more your brain wants you to be successful. So keep track of your brain-healthy habits. For example, every time you get some aerobic exercise, mark it on a calendar. When you review the calendar you’ll see a series of successes and your brain will be motivated to continue succeeding. In other words, you can use your brain to help your brain stay healthy.