Before you begin anything, raise your baseline state.

The single most overlooked factor in any personal development journey is having full awareness of your staring point. Do you wake up feeling anxious? Is stress affecting most aspects of your life? Are you tired of being tired, from not sleeping properly?

If any of those questions landed, you are not alone, and more importantly, you are not broken. What you are describing is a nervous system that has been running in survival mode for so long that survival mode has started to feel normal.

Whatever your desired destination may be, where you start from matters as much as what you do. You can follow the most well-designed protocol or program in the world and still get a fraction of the result, simply because your baseline state isn't ready to receive it.

Think of it like soil. You can plant the most extraordinary seeds, but if the ground is depleted, they will not grow the way they should. Raise the quality of the soil first, and those same seeds produce something remarkable.

Your nervous system is the soil. Your baseline state is its quality. And raising it, even by a meaningful margin, changes everything that follows.

So, what is your baseline state, exactly?

Your baseline state is the condition your body and mind return to when nothing in particular is happening. It is the background hum beneath your daily experience, the level of tension in your shoulders when you are just sitting still, the quality of your thoughts on a Tuesday morning, the ease or difficulty with which you fall asleep.

For many people, that background hum is set too high. Cortisol levels that should normally drop after the cause of that stress has passed, stay elevated. The nervous system, designed to move fluidly between activation and rest, gets stuck in activation. Sleep becomes shallow. Digestion changes. Mood narrows. And crucially, the brain's capacity to absorb new experience, to form new patterns, to genuinely change, becomes limited.

This is not a character flaw. It is biology responding to circumstance. And, the good news is, it is remarkably responsive to the right kind of preparation.

The Three R's — Regulate, Reduce, Reset

Hein Pijnnaken, founder of the Microdosing Institute, suggested that the best preparation for any transformation journey is to work to three principles which he calls the Three R's – Regulate, Reduce and Reset. 

They are not complicated to follow and only require only 3-5 days of deliberate attention to three things you already know matter but have not yet prioritised.

REGULATE – 

Regulate your nervous system and your sleep patterns. Sleep regulation - consistent timing (same sleep/wake time every day) and reducing blue light input before bed - supports REM architecture. REM sleep is where emotional memory is processed and integrated. Without it, no amount of daytime work lands the way it should.

If sleep is a particular challenge for you, many in our community have found great benefit from using our CBD Sleep Support. 

The CBD works through multiple receptor pathways to reduce hyperarousal and the melatonin component gently cues the brain that it is time to wind down. Together they appear to support a deep, restorative sleep that makes everything else possible. One user said: 

“Thank you! This works better than sleep medication from my doctor. 

It has really made a difference” 

Francesca, Netherlands

REDUCE

Reduce your stress load, not by eliminating the cause of the stress (which is not always possible) but by reducing the physiological burden it places on your system. 

For example, clearing unnecessary obligations from your schedule to reduce time-stress. Spending more time in natural light, preferably in nature, near trees. And, 

consciously allowing yourself to set aside, even temporarily, the things that are consuming your attention without resolution. 

And where anxiety is a persistent companion rather than an occasional visitor, adaptogenic support is also worth considering. Ashwagandha tincture, taken when waking and in the afternoon, has a well-documented effect on the HPA axis, the system that governs your cortisol response. It does not suppress your stress response so much as restore its proportionality, helping the body return to baseline more readily after a stressor.

RESET

Reset the microbiome through dietary preparation. Approximately 90% of serotonin is produced in the gut. A microbiome stressed by sugar, alcohol, processed fats, and inflammatory foods produces a neurochemical environment that is less receptive to change, whether that change comes from a microdosing protocol, a meditation practice, or a coaching programme. Three to five days of reduced sugar, no alcohol, no fried food, more dark leafy greens, more prebiotic fibre, and good hydration produces a measurable shift in gut-brain communication.

Why do the Three R's change everything that follows?

They create solid ground for the good stuff to land.

Without them, a dysregulated nervous system filters every experience through a threat lens and under chronic stress, the brain's actual ability to wire in new patterns is significantly reduced. 

When you regulate first, that changes. The same experiences that would have passed you by now land in a system that is open, responsive, and ready. 

You notice more. 

You retain more. 

You change more. 

And raising your baseline state is not difficult to do either…it is not a lifestyle overhaul. It is not a detox, just 3–5 days of conscious attention.

If you enjoyed this blog it is worth also checking out this one on somatic inversion