226 - Resolutions and ADHD

First episode of 2026! Let's make sure we get our stuff squared away before all our big plans get forgotten into the abyss of all the resolutions we failed in the past! 

Don't forget to reach out and tell me how you capture ideas! Experience that judgment-free, shame-free support! Here's the link to reach out

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's 2026. Homing air. The Earth made it around the sun one more time. We didn't think it was gonna happen, but here we are. We got past Y2K back in the day, didn't we? This Earth keeps going. But what about your New Year's resolution? They say Quitter's Day is like two weeks in. That's when everybody bails on their New Year's resolution. I don't know. I think we ADH years can beat that. I think we could I think we could kill that New Year's resolution in 24 hours. Easy. Anywho's, let's fix that. You are listening to ADHD Big Brother, the podcast for adults struggling with their ADHD, their comorbid depression, their anxiety. Oh, it's just a new. I'm your host and your ADHD Big Brother, Rush Jones. I've got ADHD too. I've got depression as well. It's crapastic. So let's learn some stuff. Let's laugh at some stuff. Let's make some commitments to do some stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, here's some stuff. Welcome to the first podcast of 2026. Hi! Oh my god, you guys look so different. Oh my goodness. Let's get into this right now. This it's the new year. We don't have time for shenanigans. We literally, we're two weeks before we all forget the big thing that we're working on. So let's get in as much as possible. We don't have much time. I'll do the Aviation Big Brother biz stuff in the podcast because it kind of ties into some of the stuff here. So let's just kick it off with the first mental health report of 2026. YX, yes, yes, yes, yes. Did we effectively normalize talking about our Skull Spaghetti last year? Hmm. Does everyone talk about and accept our wacky mental health? Is it okay to say I'm in a depressive episode in public? Or do people still look at you like you're fucked in the head when you tell the truth? Yeah. No? Yeah? No? Okay, well let's just keep it up then. Eventually we will normalize talking about our mental health. The good, the bad, the weird, the bizarro. Um, we're not always fine. So here we go. Here's me. I'm currently really good. Thank you. Emily and I went to my parents in Arizona. Nobody brought kids. It was just my parents, myself, my two brothers, and all our significant others. My mom created these photo books for us. Uh oh man. It was like these pictorial or pictorial. Pictorial or pictorial? Pictorial. I don't want to Google that. It's a book of photos. It's a history from when my mom and dad were kids all the way up to present day. I couldn't get through it without tears. I'm such a softie for nostalgia. Uh I I just I was really blessed with a functional family and the joy of being around everyone. There also comes now with uh like a sorrow uh from leaving. So I'm usually bummed out for the first few days after leaving my parents' house. Um, this time it was easier though, because I was with Emily and we stayed at a hotel in Phoenix uh for a day after and hung out with her bestie uh over there. So it was like a smooth transition. Um so that was great. So I'm currently in a positive mood state. I really am, even though you're gonna hear me shit talk uh New Year's. I really wanted to not even bring it up. Like anything that everyone does, I just I want to be the opposite. So bad. I hate feeling like cattle. Like this is what all the humans do. We gather around the calendar and it renews itself annually, and then we look at the sky at the gunpowder colored explosions, and we all pretend to reset and make massive changes. I don't know. I don't like it. I don't like it. So this is my this is my this is just my philosophy about New Year's. So it's you know, it's my opinion. We all uh know the statistic of things. Uh most of the audience that listens to this podcast, it's like we're a 40 plus crowd. I'm 50, but you know, like in our community, it's a high percentage of like the 40 plusers. There are some youngsters in our membership, but it's mostly, you know, my age. So it's like we're not strangers to the New Year's resolutions that come and like it's like let's go. This year everything's gonna be different because I read a book about it and I put together a new system. And I don't know, maybe it feels like I'm a Debbie Downer on that, you know. But the statistic is what's fucking sad about it. It's like 80% or something of New Year's resolutions fail. So what are we gonna do? Pretend? Like, no, this year it's gonna be different. I swear, let's go. So I'm like, I don't so, anyways, that's why I started. I just started my push-up and pull-up challenge a couple weeks ago. Like, I'm not waiting around for some nice round number like January 1. Like, what is that? What is it about nice round numbers? We start things at the beginning of the month, or maybe at the beginning of the week, or if we're gonna plan something, we plan for it at the top of the hour. Nobody ever makes a lunch plan for 1217. I think we should do that. I think that would be hilarious. So that's my commitment. That's my commitment this year. I will never I will never propose a round number for anything. Give give people I hope I remember that. Like next time your friend wants to meet you sometime, give them the most random number and just see what happens. Like, yeah, yeah, we should go out for dinner. Uh house uh 623 for you. Great. All right, we'll schedule it. Try not to be late. And then we're like, I dude, I was here at 623 at 6.30. Now you're seven minutes late, Derek. What's your problem? You guys know I'm in service of doing the work. That's kind of, I don't know, that's what I say all the time. January 1 is neat and all, but the day doesn't create change, it doesn't manifest willpower or turn you into somebody else. We're all the same person on January 1 that we were on December 31st. That is the cold hard truth. That's the 35 degrees of truth, the blizzard-y reality. Maybe we muscled up a mindset shift that's gonna last a week or so, but we're still the same person. The autopilot is still there. We're we're still riddled with ADHD, suffering from depression, anxiety. The calendar number is different and neat. Big furgan deal. So that being said, so that being said, I want to help you get your news resolution. What is it? What is it? What are they? Tell me, you son of a bitch. What I can't be excited for you if I don't know what it is. Is it diet and exercise? That's is it more muscle, maybe less fat? Or do you want to do the splits? That would be kind of cool. Look what I can do. Make more money, maybe finally get your house in order, clean up all that shit that's everywhere. Like no more sea of clothes on the floor, maybe the garage can fit the car finally. Like, what is it for you? Here's what I would love for you this year. This is my New Year's resolution's hope for you. I want you to become proficient at the behaviors that the ideal vision of yourself does. Like, you know, the person that is the person that does the New Year's resolution? Like, who is that person? It's not you now. What does the fit person do? What does the organized person do? Like, they don't just clean up one time, right? They have a routine in place. Like, what is that routine? And how do you today do what you in the future naturally does because it's like a habit? I guarantee you, it is going to suck. I read recently that it takes like six months for a thing to become truly habitual, autopilot habitual. That's a long fucking time of doing a task that reeks of like, not now, I'll do it later. Or I'll start tomorrow. So, how do we do that behavior? This podcast, it can tell you the things to do and try, but the doing of the work is seriously the most elusive thing for adults with ADHD. That's why we're so prone to like, you know, we'll read a new book, learn a new magical way of doing things, and we think that will eliminate the tension and make us, I don't know, like want to do it or something. Or we create an AI ADHD coach to help us, which I think is super cool, by the way. But you still have to do the work. There's there's still work to be done. My greatest hope is that if you're an adult struggling with ADHD and depression, anxiety, blah, blah, blah, that you put the learning down and start practicing doing shitty things. Live in the misery of the moment. I know it sounds awful, but oh my god, it's glorious on the other side. It is truly magical. Start actively looking for shitty things to do that you know would feel great if you did them, but they're just shitty. For me, I love a clean kitchen. I do. I am miserable doing the dishes though. I'm 50 years old. I am grateful that I have a dishwasher, but the feel, the grossness, the slog of doing the dishes is and always will suck. Takes less than 10 minutes, but it feels like I'm damned for an eternity in that moment. That is the dramatic inner workings of my particular tension. I need a place where I can rant if I want to, where I can gamify, where I can figure out ways to make the dishes more palatable. This is best done with other ADHDers. I profitize this basically. It can be hard to complain about life's basic things like the dishes and the laundry to the normies. You can complain with other ADHDers about how shitty it is. Rant about how stupid these dumb tasks are that we all have to do in life because they suck. They don't become unshitty. Like there's no book, there's no YouTube video or podcast that is going to permanently eliminate the sting of a shitty task. That to-do list is full of turds. The turd mountain of crap. It's never going to be like, oh my god, I can't wait to open up my bullet journal and look at all the wonderful things I have to do. Oh, look, it's tax season again. Oh, I can't wait. Oh, I you mean I get to call the insurance company? Yeah. That is I'm so lucky. No one's in the mood to do admin work. It's not real. Here's my challenge. Here's a challenge for you. I challenge you to take whatever system that you currently use. Like, who's the most recent guru that you threw money at? Like, use that system. I think I mentioned this before, but like nobody writes a book about a shitty system. It all worked for them. Actively use that every day, even when it doesn't work. Even when it's like, oh, this doesn't work for me in my life. Keep going. But stay curious. Why? What in what didn't it work for you specifically today? What could you tweak about that system to make it work for you today, specifically? These are the conversations that are imperative for us, in my opinion. Like that's what keeps us rolling down the hill towards an effective system for managing our ADHD lives. We tend to be the people that are like, oh, it doesn't work perfectly. It's so it's it's not for me. It doesn't work for me. That just kills it. Literally, every single system is going to be like that at some point. It will fail to meet perfection. So what do we do? I think this is about the questions that we ask ourselves. These are the fundamental. There are fundamental questions. It's not necessarily about the system. It's about whether or not the system provides effective answers. And yes, please allow me to explain one. I'll tell you one right now. This is what I'm going to be doing in the membership for January. Um, end of January, I'm doing four workshops. It's all gonna be the same workshop, uh, but we have members all over the world. So I want to make sure everybody has an opportunity and it it'll keep the numbers smaller so that way the members can get more out of it. You know, these are all gonna be live. I'm not gonna record them because I want people to feel comfortable. Uh, and we're gonna open up a couple new spaces in the community so that we can have an active discussion going on about this stuff. It's called Conquering Your Terd Mountain. That's what it is as of today. Maybe I'll change it, I don't know. But it's really a professional ADHD systems audit. I've been coaching for years now. I believe there are certain things that are required to effectively manage ADHD, but there's no one system. So, what we're gonna do is a systems audit. We're gonna look at how you handle your turd mountain of tasks, and we're gonna experience what it's like to maybe discover the holes in the armor or where we maybe realize that we actually have a pretty tight running ship, and maybe you can inspire somebody else to change in in their system. It's just it requires a little vulnerability to share where you may or may not be sucking at this stuff. No biggie, we're a judgment free community, and so that's I I don't want to make these like recordings that you know it's it's meant for you to feel safe, right? So I'm going to share all the questions that need to be answered to have an effective quote unquote system. Um, one of them, I'll tell you right now, is for example, is how and where do you capture ideas? The turds, those shitty tasks, like I gotta remember to pay that bill. How and where do you capture them? That's a question that needs an answer. And sometimes when we answer and we feel the shame of like, no, I'm just gonna try to remember. Or I write it down on whatever's nearby, like maybe a post-it note or an envelope, you know, or maybe it's like I jot it down in my notes app, you know, very like I I do have a place for it. And then the follow-up is, okay, so when was the last time that you looked at your notes app to review the things that you wrote down? None of this is shame, but it's what what it does is it opens up to like, oh, so you don't maybe you don't have a way of retrieving that information or doing something with it. Interesting. It's it's not a judgmental thing, it's not a I'm a piece of shit because of that. It's that now we have something to talk about. No judgment, just a conversation because we are all so much the same, even though we maybe have different approaches. This is what ADHD coaching is to me, and we're gonna get this going in the membership. I am not gonna do this as a public free event. Uh, you're gonna have to join. You could just do this as a one-month membership if you want, just pay for one month. Um, because I want to work with people throughout the month. I'm just not up for educating and off you go. Like I'm so over that. It's not exciting to me. It's kind of demotivating for me as a coach. So, you know, I'm not gonna do it. Not gonna do it. Um, if you're an ADHD or who can hear a thing, learn a thing, and then implement the thing, successfully stay curious about it on your own and iterate your process without judging yourself, then you're fucking crushing it. I high-five you, you don't need this. Resources are free and they're literally everywhere. So enjoy. Um, but this is why I built a community. I'm a decade into this. This is what I need. My mission with the podcast is to challenge you, but statistically, people just don't do the work. That's just the that's just the stuck. Nobody is doing the work. We never do. We buy the course, we binge, and we move on with our lives. So we need a new way of doing, and I want to be in the sandbox while we do stuff. Like if that's interesting to you, then join. Just join. Join for a couple of months and be a part of people that are doing the work, myself included. I'll tell you one thing I did in the community. This is what made uh makes the year exciting for me. Um, I got a wild hair. So we easily in the community, we have literally like over 30 challenges that we've built over time in the community. So you can start them at any time, and then what happens is like you get a badge when you complete it. Maybe it's a 30-day challenge, maybe it's a seven-day challenge, whatever it is. You get like these badge icons for your profile. And I had 25 badges by the end of the year, and so I wiped them all off my profile. I deleted every single one of my badges. And my goal now is how many badges can I get in one single year? Can I beat 25? That's how I add novelty to this. That's how I make the slog fun. It sounds like, oh, you're just playing a bunch of games. Well, I'll tell you, if I earn 26 badges, I will most likely be in impeccable shape. I will continue to be alcohol free. I'll probably have given up caffeine. Uh, that's on my radar, and there'll be an amazing amount of positive changes, both in my personal and professional life, because I'm playing a bunch of games. Other people are rooting for me. How cool is that? Or, I mean, I could just try to do everything on my own and just be quietly miserable and judging myself every night because I'm never meeting a standard of excellence that I know I'm capable of, but I just can't seem to do. I'm a piece of shit. I don't know. One of those just sounds a lot more fun than the other. Oh, but man, if you so if you're struggling, just please join for a month. Be vocal about what's going on in your life, and you'll see. You cannot do it right, but you can be proud of how shitty you will be at this and how embarrassing it will be when you fail in front of others. And that is the quickest way out of the swamp. You will see people struggling and you will see people succeeding, and it flip-flops. Sometimes the person succeeding fails, and inevitably the person that's failing has a success. You just you gotta see it. And so if you're still in that mentality, too, of like, well, uh everything I try fails. This is just gonna be another one of the things that fails. Great. It's okay, so it's a $49 experiment where you learned a thing that doesn't work. Okay, fine. At least it wasn't $1,500, right? At least that's the cost of it now. I should caveat that. If you're listening to this podcast in 2028 and the community is now $150 a month or something, I'm sorry, where were you two years ago? I'm sorry. And also, if you want to suss it out, just join for seven days. If it and if it's not right, email me to tell me, dude, this isn't for me. I'll just give you your money back. Done and done. I mean, I'm only here to help the ones that want the help. If you want the help, if you need the help, just come get it. Risk it for the biscuit. I'll dare you. My challenge for you this week is you know, once you join ADHD Bay Brother, that's that's the first challenge. Come on in. Um, but the second one is why not answer that question I asked earlier. How do you capture ideas? How do you collect your turds on your turd mountain? Do you have a special notebook or a special app? And if you want to reach out, let me know. Use the contact form at adhbrother.com and see what it feels like to tell someone something stupid, like, I put ideas in a notebook. I can't believe I'm 43 years old and I'm telling someone where I put ideas. Do it. Do it even though that I will respond and I'm gonna show you what judgment free feels like. Or see what it feels like to admit that you suck at something. Like I just try to remember. I've never been good at this. I suck at these things. Okay, great. Now it's top of mind, and I'm gonna give you a judgment-free response and maybe follow up with a challenge. Experience it. Gives you a taste of good old-fashioned ADHD support. Alrighty, that'll do it. I'm looking forward to all of us getting our shit together this year. It's gonna be great if you know anyone that would benefit from the systems audit. Please share this episode with them. Uh, the link to um join the community, and then you'll see where the systems audit is in the calendar of events. Um, I'll be talking about it next week for sure. It's there's gonna be emails coming. Get ready for the emails. It's promotion time. Um, so links to join are all in the show notes. And with that, here we are, guys. It's 2026. Hope you have a fantastic week, and I will talk to you later.