Beyond Baseline: Are You Creating Moments Worth Remembering?

Welcome to the Beyond Baseline Newsletter

Your weekly dose of high-performance insights, powerful mindset shifts, and real-world strategies to optimise your health, leadership, and resilience.

This week, we’re diving into the neuroscience behind your happiest memories, sharing the power of challenge, connection, and novelty and highlighting one of the most exciting brands joining us at the BetterMan Retreat.

Real growth begins where reading ends. If anything here resonates, try it on. Let it shift your next decision, your next conversation. Then do us a favour and let us know. The breakthroughs, the shifts, the questions, we want to hear them.

We're investing significant time and effort into this newsletter as a community piece designed to elevate lives.

Let’s dive in.

FLOURISH & FUNDAMENTALS

THE NEUROSCIENCE OF HAPPY MEMORIES

Think about your happiest memories for a moment.

What elements were present in those experiences?

As someone who specialises in neuroscience, I’ve studied what makes certain moments stand out in our minds. Research consistently shows that our most meaningful and joy-filled memories typically contain three critical elements:

1. Challenge

   A challenge means you’re stretching yourself. Pushing your boundaries mentally, physically, or emotionally.
   
   The intensity matters. A light workout might be a small challenge, while something like my burpee world record attempt pushed me to the absolute edge of my capacity. But in both cases, that element of stretching beyond comfort creates a powerful imprint in memory.
   

2. Connection

   Human connection - whether creating new bonds or deepening existing relationships - amplifies our experience.

   
   When we share challenges with others, something transformative happens in our brains. The connection creates a neural cocktail that enhances both performance and memory formation.
   

3. Novelty

   Our brains are wired to pay special attention to new experiences.

   Novelty exists on a spectrum. Reading this email is novel in a mild way because you’ve never read these exact words before. But imagine receiving this information while parasailing over a school of bottle-nosed dolphins in Malibu. That’s novelty at a different intensity altogether!

What’s fascinating is how these elements compound. When you combine meaningful challenge, authentic connection, and genuine novelty, you create experiences that don’t just feel good in the moment - they become treasured memories that shape your life narrative.

THIS WEEK'S EXPERIMENT

As we prepare for The Gauntlet (our upcoming fitness challenge), I’m consciously incorporating all three elements: pushing my physical boundaries, strengthening connections with the BetterMan community, and embracing the novelty of a first-time experience.

I invite you to design one experience this week that intentionally includes all three elements:

1. Choose a challenge that stretches you (but remains achievable)

2. Invite someone to share the experience with you

3. Add an element of novelty - something you’ve never done before

The beauty of this framework is its versatility. You can apply it to physical challenges, creative pursuits, intellectual endeavours, or social experiences. The key is intentionally combining all three elements.

RESEARCH CORNER 🧠

SOCIAL CONTAGION: HOW YOUR NETWORK SHAPES YOU

Following last week’s discussion of the Law of 33%, many of you asked about the research behind the idea that "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with."

A landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Christakis & Fowler, 2007) found that if your friend becomes obese, your chances of becoming obese increase by 57%. Obesity literally spreads through social networks - people’s weight often falls within 5–8% of their close friends.

And this isn’t just about physical health. Research from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that emotional states are also contagious. Your levels of happiness, optimism, and even anxiety are significantly shaped by the people around you.

We'll be sharing more on this over the coming weeks, because the science of social influence runs deep.

COMMUNITY INSIGHT ✨

WILL POWDERS: NUTRITION REIMAGINED

We’re thrilled to announce our collaboration with Will Powders for the upcoming BetterMan Retreat. Founded by the remarkable Davinia Taylor.

Will Powders is revolutionising the way we think about nutrition.

Davinia is a double Sunday Times #1 bestselling author, a biohacking pioneer, a self-described “plate spinner,” and a mother of four boys. Her personal transformation wasn’t the end of her story, it was the start of something bigger.

Her mission to halt the suffering caused by low-fat, low-nutrition products and misleading health messaging aligns powerfully with what we’re building at Beyond Baseline.

Retreat participants will receive premium Will Powders welcome packs, including:

• Bovine collagen

• Nootropics

• Keto creamer with grass-fed butter

• And much more…

We’re proud to be partnering with a brand that shares our obsession with evidence-based wellbeing and high-performance living.

Stay tuned for more updates, insights, and ways to push beyond your baseline every week.

Until next time,
Ross Anderson
Beyond Baseline Founder

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Beyond Baseline: Helping ambitious professionals achieve their goals without sacrificing well-being.