Be Careful What You Microdose - This Isn’t About Drugs
Microdosing is “the action or practice of taking or administering very small amounts of a drug in order to test or benefit from its physiological action while minimizing undesirable side effects.”
Mostly used with psychedelics like LSD or psilocybin (magic mushrooms) to get the lower-level positive effects like focus, boost in mood and reduced levels of anxiety, without the unnecessary effects like hallucinating, by taking very small amounts each day.
But when I say be careful what you microdose, I’m not talking about drugs at all. I’m talking about repeated actions, thoughts, people or environments that aren't exactly causing huge noticeable side effects, but produce smaller amounts of negative side effects that compound over time.
We’d all agree that training consistently over time is the key element to growing your muscles, just as we’d agree that one can get very wealthy over a long enough period of time by saving small amounts of money and letting it compound.
But why do we disregard this same principle when it comes to our jobs, or people that suck the energy out of us, or the self-limiting mantras we have on repeat in our minds?
In my previous job, a thought popped into my head which I thought was worth noting down:
“I’m microdosing claustrophobia”
When things are just okay or even bad, but not awful, we tend to put up with them for a lot longer than we should.
If every day I went into work and it was just unbearable, I probably would’ve left much sooner. As this would be more like throwing a handful of LSD tabs in the bad of my throat. But it wasn’t, so instead of literally suffocating, it was more like living in a constant state of restricted breathing, hence “Microdosing claustrophobia”.
Not bad enough to leave on the spot, but bad enough to cause a low-level feeling of suffocation that built over time.
But what else might we be microdosing that’s having a net-negative effect on us that we’re just putting up with for the sake of ease and comfort? And what might leaving it under the rug do to us over time?
What habits do you refuse to quit? How do you greet the person you love every time they walk through the door? What negative people do you just keep putting up with? How do you talk to yourself every single day?
If it seems small, but appears daily, then it’s anything but, so remove it as soon as possible.
Microdosing isn't optional; it's every little thought, action, belief, and person we have in our lives daily. What is optional, however, is what we choose to microdose, and that choice will shape our entire lives.
If there’s a way that you’re feeling or a life that you’re living that you’re just unsatisfied with, it might be time to look at what you're microdosing and go cold turkey.