Did you know, it might feel better to set and start your goals during a specific time in your menstrual cycle!? This magical time of extra motivation is brought to us thanks to the hormone estrogen.
But for real, during Phase Two when estrogen levels are high (and progesterone levels are low) many of us experience greater responses to rewards. This is because as estrogen increases there is also an increase in dopamine levels. You know when you feel good when you have achieved or accomplished something? That’s from a surge of dopamine in your brain. Yup, those feelings of satisfaction we get from starting or working on goals can literally change depending on where we’re at in our cycle!
So why haven’t you heard about this before? Well not everyone gets the Phase Two Feel Goods. Just like Goldilocks you don’t want your dopamine levels to be too low or too high but just right. So while this extra boost of dopamine thanks to estrogen in Phase Two helps many people hit the dopamine level jackpot, for others it actually pushes them out of that zone.
For those of us with the Phase Two motivation superpower, consider setting and starting your goals during this week, when you’ll respond best to building your new habits!
Happy goal setting!
Science, Feminism and Love.
Dreher, J. C., Schmidt, P. J., Kohn, P., Furman, D., Rubinow, D., & Berman, K. F. (2007). Menstrual cycle phase modulates reward-related neural function in women. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(7), 2465–2470.
