Non psychedelic self improvement

Your brain’s Neurology responds to inputs and can be altered by implementing

• life lifestyle changes of various kinds (non psychedelic based changes like sleep, diet, exercise etc)**,
• journaling to learn and observe patterns of success and failure
• and doing both of these over a significant period of time (1-2 months).

This combination is particularly good for managing anxiety, depression and ADHD symptoms like ‘scatter brain’ or an inability to focus and other symptoms without the use of pharmaceutical drugs.

**If we want we can add the benefits of psychedelics but this is not 100% necessary to achieve results.

Table of Contents:

• You’re brain is malleable when it comes to Neurology:
• Non Psychedelic methods for self improvement
  • Behavior / lifestyle changes and replacements
  • Journaling / Mindfulness for behavior and lifestyle change:
  • ADHD / Anxiety / Depression:
• Should I add Psychedelics?
• Community & Private Coaching

You’re brain is malleable when it comes to Neurology:

“Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change and adapt in response to the internal and external factors that shape it. The connections, functions and structures of the neurons reorganize themselves in response to repetitive input.” – Neuroscientist Nicola Vignola author of ‘Rewire – break the Cycle, alter your thoughts and create lasting change‘.

From this quote I can say that your brain has the ability to adapt to internal and external factors through “Neuroplasticity”. Also, very important to note from this quote is, that ‘neurons… reorganize themselves in response to repetitive input‘.

My main takeaway from this is that we are able to change our brain’s structures based on the inputs we give them. This is the basis of ‘reprogramming’ our brains’ and behaviors.

Non Psychedelic methods for self improvement

Behavior / lifestyle changes and replacements

Our Neurology is maleable as we have discovered but how do we actually change it? To understand this fundamentally its useful to think of our Neurology and our behaviors as the same thing. Our Neurology is created based on our thoughts and behaviors.

With this understanding we can make behavioral, thinking and lifestyle changes to be more in line with the way we would like to be. Often these are based in fundamentals like**,

• diet,
• sleep,
• exercise,
• fostering time in nature,
• using meditation and mantra,
• as well as modern modalities to reprogram like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
• or Internal Family System (IFS)

to create the repetitive inputs that Nicola Vignola (mentioned above) says we need to create new brain structures habits and thinking styles in line with our goals. Importantly, ‘lifestyle changes’ means replacing old habits with new ones and it can be hard to leave our hold habits behind.

** In general the methods one uses will be different but I can provide a ‘menu’ of sorts with these tools and you can choose what feels right for you.

Journaling / Mindfulness for behavior and lifestyle change:

The problem with making lifestyle changes is that often we unconsciously move through life making decisions based on habit and emotion. Hence, many of the behaviors we want to change and replace with others are done on autopilot. This can lead us to have problems because in order to change the behaviors we need to overcome out ingrained and unconscious habits and emotions. Journaling can solve unconscious decision making and habits by making us observe ourselves during the implementation of behavior changes over time allowing us to analyse why and under what circumstances we have been choosing certain patterns of behavior and thoughts.

In order to make effective change here we need to

• do multiple lifestyle changes at the same time
• track them day to day (or several times a week at least) via Journaling
• continue these lifestyle changes for 1-2 months.

When we do this we, via journaling, we can observe when and under what conditions we have success and failure in implementing lifestyle changes. This removes the unconscious part from our behavior and illuminates it with conscious understanding. Each day we can see why we had success or under what circumstances we failed. If we failed we can seek to minimize this in future and support conditions which succeeded. Because we do this over a significant period of time (1-2 months) we are able to catch a large chunk of our behaviors – enough to make significant change.

This is basically a ‘mindfulness practice’ for our lifestyle where we observe and fix bahavior leading to Neurological changes as we do it. If we do these Neurological changes for a period of 66 days we then, according to Neuroscientists, can hardwire changes in behavior into Neurology making the behaviors easier and easier over time aka ‘forming lasting habits’.

I use this approach in my own life and find it very effective. For example I notice,

• I fall off my diet (which helps me with Arthritis) when I travel and also when I have emotional events in my life.
• I noticed these patterns over several weeks of journaling while attempting to implement lifestyle changes and once observed that I failed in keeping my diet after a few days travel and a particularly emotional conversation I had with a family member.
• I noted these in my day to day journaling and could now understand why I had failed implementing lasting change earlier.
• Now when I have an emotional event I know its a trigger and I can more easily avoid it with this knowledge.

ADHD / Anxiety / Depression:

Using the above method on lifestyle changes and journaling over a significant period of time we can actually with ADHD symptoms and negative emotions like anxiety and depression very well without psychedelics or pharmaceutical medication. You could also use them in combination with either of these as suits you.

To do this it is important to choose the ‘right lifestyle changes’. I like to focus on,

• an effective sleep routine. Quality sleep helps greatly.
• A low inflammation diet like Carnivore or low-carbohydrate diets like Ketogenic. Inflammation plays a large role in anxiety and depression and ADHD symptoms.
• Exercise regularly and
• daily time in nature and sunlight which is very grounding for us.

I noticed that when I did the above my ADHD symptoms (indecisiveness, inability to stay on task etc) reduced massively . As a result my anxiety and depression also was hugely helped. My anxiety and depression was able to be lowered because I was able to actually take actions to deal with any issues I was worried about and I was able to complete more tasks and projects and this led to me having a much greater confidence in my ability to simply navigate the world successfully.

Should I add Psychedelics?

You may implement the above lifestyle and journaling changes to significant results but in addition you can add the use of Psilocybin (in micro and/or macro doses as you like) to take advantage of their ability to promote natural Neuroplasticity greater than what we have naturally. Our brains have a natural amount of ability to create new Neurology based on behavior changes but this natural ability can be greatly increased with the addition of psychedelics.

Community & Private Coaching

If you would like to talk more about this process come and say hello on one of our community platforms where we can chat more. There is also the opportunity for private coaching if you want me to walk your through the process.