As a way to round off the year, the entire Microdose Pro team started a 100-day challenge.
This challenge started at the beginning of September and requires that we perform 4 acts each day.
The required tasks are what you might expect in terms of daily exercise, meditation, journaling, and the like.
The purpose of challenges like these is consistency and not the details of each daily challenge.
This brings me to what I want to discuss with you today; why it can be so valuable to start things badly.
Cue Joe Dispenza
The likes of Joe Dispenza guides us through the implementation of new habits with catchy expressions: Believe, behave, and become.
The structure Dispenza outlines in just 3 words is indeed accurate and very helpful, however, I would argue that it’s a wee bit over-simplistic.
I mean, let’s be honest, how many of us have sworn to start doing something new, to do it every day diligently and consistently?
How many of us promised, hand on heart to quit something that no longer serves us?
Convinced that this time will be IT!
At some point. For some of us, maybe even most of us.
We will stumble in the first few hours, days, weeks ahead.
Then what swiftly follows is a complete abandonment of the initial commitment.
The bumpy start has prompted us to feel a drop in momentum and enthusiasm, so we quit, forget, move on, and do something else.
Discipline is replaced by amnesia of the promises we made.
But what if the magic IS IN the stumbles?
What if we remember that stumbling also means, we are on the path, showing up and doing the thing, albeit imperfectly?
Cold Exposure Case Study
So let’s talk about this whole cold exposure thing and how badly (but tenaciously) I implement this practice into my life.
I purposely live hundreds of meters from the Atlantic Ocean because I want easy access to the freezing Atlantic Sea.
Does this mean that I am like the Octopus Teacher and swimming in the ocean for an hour a day, all year round? Um, nope.
I would like to and sadly, spoiler alert, I am not that kind of superhero.
However, what I can do is start by going down to the beach every morning.
Morning walks are a perfect way to normalize cold water exposure because I will combine and stack these two activities for the ultimate end goal of swimming every morning.
Sometimes, I walk down to the beach and all I can muster is putting my feet in the water.
That has to be enough.
On the days when I do go for a swim, I’m happy with a 3-minute swim.
On the days when I don’t want to walk or swim, I make sure to at least have a cold shower.
The point is to do something, daily, repetitively toward the end goal of cold water exposure. To repeat the attempt so often that it becomes a natural part of my daily life.
Soon enough, these new poorly performed habits are habitual and therefore ripe for improvement, and optimization.
Soon enough, daily exposure to cold water, in one form or another, is just part of who I am, what I do, and how I live.
Cue Momentum aka Kinetic Energy
We cannot cultivate a new habit without repeated attempts.
As we learned in physics, it takes less energy to keep moving when we are already in motion also explained as kinetic energy.
Forward motion from a standstill position is much more energetically expensive and challenging.
In other words, the importance is to get the wheels moving, and then we can start navigating toward a precise direction.
Microdosing Habits
What we at Microdose Pro have learned these past few years is that microdosing goes far beyond the scope of improved focus and creativity.
Our community members often report that once they’ve started microdosing, it’s been easier to stop bad habits and much easier to start and maintain healthier ones.
Habits such as excessive alcohol use and smoking seem to no longer have a place in our lives. We lose the ‘taste’ for them.
These two specific habits are often drastically reduced or eliminated together requiring little to no willpower.
So now that we are less hungover and not smoking as much, we have considerably more time and energy available, cue healthy habits.
Our community concurrently reports that they are also now spending more time in nature, taking daily walks, and/or starting running regularly.
Again, with little willpower just enthusiasm.
We don’t quite fully understand the wide-ranging implications of microdosing but I would hazard a guess that the change in habits when microdosing is neurogenesis in motion.
Cells That Fire Together Wire Together: Neurogenesis
We keep hearing the word Neurogenesis.
Technically, it’s defined as when two neurons are connecting for the first time.
But what does it look like or feel like in our daily lives? Day in and day out?
It looks like the implementation of new habits, routines, and perspectives.
Hello, 2024!
Can you believe that we are over three months into 2024 already?!
The 21st century slows down for no one.
We might have long forgotten about the promises we made to ourselves and the resolutions we pledged in time with the dawn of a new year.
Between, you and I, I’m thinking of starting a new trend called; Purple Heart Mondays.💜 Start on any Monday of the month, just start.
Purple Hearts are for the warriors among us.
A day to remind us to get back to the hopes and dreams we claimed on New Year’s Eve
No matter where you are when you read this. No matter what commitments we have given up on, all is not lost, far from it.
Started working out, but stopped? Start again. Start small. Start microscopically small.
#PurpleHeartMonday
No matter what, start. Again and again. And again.
The previous attempts still count. They count because they point toward our intentions for ourselves.
They point toward the initial desires that remain dormant and unexpressed.
Use the fumbles from these past months as a way to encourage yourself to keep at it.
They still count and hold great value.
We don’t always earn a perfect score, but we can always make an effort to SHOW UP.
If all you do today is show up, then that’s more than plenty.
The least we can and must do is SHOW UP.
First and foremost, consistency is key.
Once we get our consistent rhythm going, then the process can be perfected.
2024 is still yours for the taking.
Do it wrong, but keep doing it!
If you feel that microdosing could be your ally moving forward, be sure to get some here.
Then be sure to tell me all about it in the comments below or our Facebook group and/or in our Discord channel.
As always, now more than ever.
Shine Bright, Do good. Flow strong.
Asha ✨
2 Comments. Leave new
I am a big believer in microdosing and tried it for 3 months beginning August last year. I did however not find it transformative. I was experimenting with the dosage and never seemed to find my sweet-spot.
I am also a bit worried about ordering as truffles are illegal in the country I live in. So I’ve started with your “regular” mushroom caps (mushroom essential complex) and hope to see some positive impact.
Not so much a comment on the excellent article, but thoughts I have had and would love some clarity around.
Hi Daniel,
Thanks so much for sharing your experience with us, it’s so valuable.
So here’s a bit of a long answer to your brief question:
Our Mushroom Essentials Complex of non-psychoactive functional mushrooms is an excellent alternative particularly due to Lion’s Mane nootropic properties.
The sweet spot dose can indeed feel elusive and the changes are indeed subtle.
In order to troubleshoot your experience, I will ask a few questions for you to ponder.
– When you say ‘transformative’, how would you define/describe this word?
– What needed to have happened for it to be considered that impactful?
– What were the underlying expectations when you started microdosing.
– Did you journal daily while microdosing?
– Were you on medication or exposed to high levels of alcohol consumption?
– Did your friends/family/co-workers mention that they noticed something different about you?
– Were children, animals and strangers responding differently toward you?
– Did your handwriting improve at all?
– If you have a health/fitness tracker, were your scores better while microdosing?
– Did you notice an increase of resilience to stress; a new ability to cope?
– Did you experience reduced social anxiety? (if applicable)
– Were you able to stop undesirable habits with more ease? (smoking, drinking, procrastination, etc)
– Were you able to start/maintain desirable routines/habits such as exercise, long form reading, or patience?
Let me know if any of the above resonate, looking forward to your thoughts.
Asha ✨