ADHD Big Brother - ADHD and Depression Solutions, Laughter, and Thoughts
Adult ADHD and Depression can be sucktastic! Let’s have a laugh or two while we work to get on the other end of our unique skull spaghetti. Nominated for best male host in the 2024 Podcasters People's Choice Awards, and currently a top 2% global podcast!
Subscribe to the ADHD Big Brother podcast if you want short, entertaining episodes, delivered weekly, that will nudge you forward on managing those adult ADHD symptoms. If you are stuck; if you have no motivation to do boring things; if you can’t get started; if you have choice paralysis; if you live with craptastical self-loathing, have a million unfinished projects, and no time management skills... I can help.
I’m Russ Jones. I’m a former actor/comedian and a professional ADHD Coach. I’m diagnosed with ADHD and Depressive Disorder, and my mission is to help adults who struggle the same way I did. You know, like a good big brother would. I’m trained in integrative wellness coaching with years of specialized experience in ADHD-specific coaching.
Beyond the podcast, I lead an award-winning membership community where we turn these strategies into action together. Join us!
Visit https://www.adhdbigbrother.com to learn about our membership community, coaching, and how I’m helping adults with ADHD get unstuck, gain confidence in their ability to be consistent, and ultimately learn how to coach themselves. We can do hard things!
ADHD Big Brother - ADHD and Depression Solutions, Laughter, and Thoughts
227 - The ANY System Approach to ADHD
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We all want a system. We all wish we had a perfect system so that we could achieve our New Year's resolutions. This episode is the truth burrito for you. Gobble it up! And then I'd like to discuss how we will make it actually happen for you!
Try the FREE ADHD Big Brother Episode Finder! Type in your struggle, get two matching episodes. No emails, no sign-ups. Find your episodes →
Learn more about Russ and ADHD Big Brother and the various ways I'm helping adults with ADHD by visiting https://www.adhdbigbrother.com.
Okay, here we go. It's the end of the resolutions. We're right around Quitter's Day. So enough is enough. It's about time for the gym to become a ghost town again. And that uh the new year planner, the one that we that was gonna change everything. Oh god. And it was so crystal crisp and clear, the pages, and we had to fill in that contact page. Like because if it's lost, you gotta make sure you contact me with my phone number, and because I it's gonna have everything in it. It is gonna be my everything. We've already misplaced that. I think it's in the living room. I think that's the last place that I put it was in the living room. Anyways, this we had good plans, good intentions. Fuck them there. The resolutions are done. Let's now, let's today get back to it. Regular style. Oh, it's just a nuke. 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. Alright, welcome to the podcast. That's my really enthusiastic woot. Woot! W-O-O-T. Woot. Um, though this is it. This is it. We're about two weeks in, and so this is where everyone bails on their New Year's resolutions. Or I don't know about bails. Maybe forgets. Can't summon the willpower? Uh they don't stick. They just don't stick. How long are they supposed to stick for? The rest of my life? How long must I resolute for? At some point, the resolution is just a dumb old goal. It's just a regular, everyday, wouldn't it be great if I dot dot dot um insert whatever, you know, insert a goal. But if you really want to get your resolution going, if it's a big deal to you and if there's a lot at stake, um, or even if there's not a lot at stake, even if there's just a little bit at stake, I want to help you do it. So I'm gonna help you here in a minute, but let's kick this off with a mental health report. This is where we're normalizing talking about our school spaghetti. We do it every week. The good, the bad, the weird, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because we're not always fine. You know what I mean? Sometimes some shit's going on. Uh, so we gotta be able to talk about it. So let's just, you know, take the mask down and reveal ourselves to one another. That's not creepy. Let's reveal ourselves to each other. All right, look at me. This is who I am. Um, I'm in love. Yeah. That's my fucking school spaghetti right now, and I'm not gonna apologize for it. I guess that's my heart health, though. Not necessarily my mental health. Uh, it kind of ties in. But I'll tell you something. This is what I noticed. She's a hundred percent cool with all of me. The imposter syndrome bits, the self-loathing bits. She knows that I know that it's all a bunch of shit, but there's times when I'm just ebbing and not flowing, and she's so there when I'm ebbing. Emily is the shit. And I can say that to her. Emily, you're the shit. And she'd be like, oh my god, that's so sweet. So those are really poetic words, and she's a hosier fan. Or a hosier? Hosier. Hozier fan. Fan of hosier, hosier. She's a fan of hosier, and that guy's poetic. That guy says has some words. Um, so I'm right up there. Jesus. Anyway, it's nice to be in a relationship where like the honeymoon phase is still going after a year. Uh, and when I look back, I've had a few depressive episodes. So it's like, wow, she's stuck through that bullshit. She's just the best. Uh, mental health-wise, um, so I guess that's my heart health, I guess. So, but my mental health, my real go-tos on the negative side of things is it's really it's always imposter syndrome. It's really the heavy negative self-talk. And I gotta say, the more that I talk about it out loud, the more I do the things, even though I have those thoughts. Like coming up in January, uh, which I'm gonna talk about, we're doing these workshops for the members, even though my brain is uh telling me I'm a fraud. I don't feel compelled anymore. Like, I don't feel like I need to convince myself that I'm not a fraud. I'm really getting better at letting my brain think whatever the fuck it wants. It's like if somebody I didn't know came up to me and was like, you're a fraud. I'm like, okay, you think that. Uh I'm gonna try and help some people anyways. All right. But you're a fraud. I'm like, yeah, yes, you were very clear the first time. I, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go to try and help some people anyway. Fraud! Good lord. I always I get into trouble when I engage. You know, when I when I'm like, tell me more about what do you think about me, and no, I'm gonna notate the distortion in my thinking and I'm gonna look at alternative ways of thinking. I don't know, man. I'm like, I don't want any more fucking homework for this, you know, asshole brain. Uh that's mean to me all the time. It's like not to shit on CBT, the cognitive behavioral therapy type stuff, but yeah, as everything has its place, but I currently lean more towards like the at-home dialectical behavior, the at-home kit. Uh I use over-the-counter DBT lotions. Yeah, that's it's my favorite. I'm a big fan of even though, because I got stuff I want to do, and I'm not waiting around anymore for my brain to be like rewired about it. You know, maybe someday it will be kind to me uh in the meantime. Got stuff I want to do. Until then, I'm just like, whatever. I'll I'll say it's easier now, having successfully coached for a while. It's like, you know, you help people and they give you testimonials, and I'm not even talking about the ones that you know that go on the website where you, you know, you're like, check out what people are saying about my work. It's like the private ones that you get, like when you're on a call and when when the helping and the coaching works really good, and the gratitude that comes at you, that's it's really impactful on me, big time. Like if I was writing a book on how to feel good about yourself, it would be to help someone else. It does wonders for the soul. Um and it really puts a shine on those internal dark spots. So I'm finding that to be very helpful. That's the mental health report, I guess. Uh, to summarize, uh, I'm in love, I don't like myself, and I enjoy helping people. What a trifecta! But seriously, on a serious uh note of things, I have not been dwelling in that self-loathing. So I've been pretty darn good lately. So there's I have a lot of gratitude about that. So, all right, let us dig our heels in to what we're gonna be doing in this coming month. Um, I know we all want a system, right? A way of being and doing. And we talked about that a couple episodes ago, I believe, in like relationship to tension in the moment. Um, but sometimes creating or building or adopting a system for managing your ADHD is really fucking hard when you're trying to do it on your own. Um, and this is why people hire ADHD coaches, you know, it's a thing that's needed. I want to share something about systems in general, like they all work, they all have the potential to work. So, you know, so you bought a specific planner or you paid $1,500 to learn some guru system. Cool, you know, I bet it works if you use it. I don't think people create systems that don't work. It worked for the guru. The problem that I see with living in today's world is we have like, I don't man, we have like 18,000 personality quizzes. You know, are you an EFJ? You know, what's your Myers Briggs, your Colby index to find your strengths and your Enneagrams, and what kind of a cheese are you? And if you were a tree, what kind of bark would you have? Um, we basically have created a wonderful charcuterie board of reasons why a thing like justifiably doesn't work for me. Like it doesn't adhere to my strengths, or it does not match my Myers-Briggs, or it's easy to point to the reasons why. And I know this message isn't for everyone, but it's for those of us who are perpetually looking for the perfect system that has no iteration, right? That it's just perfect right out of the box, implements without any troubleshooting. This is for every ADHD year that bails on a system after the first fail. So that's what we're gonna be focusing on in the membership in January and February. I'm doing multiple workshops. It's called Conquering Your Turn Mountain. Uh, why? Because I I'm a professional and I want professional titles. Thank you. It's multiple workshops, but it's gonna be the same one. I just want a maximum of seven people in an in an in an in a single workshop. So that's why I created a bunch of times. Um so that way we can really dig into each person individually. So if you need this help that I'm gonna be talking about, just join for one month, no big deal. It's $49 down the drain, if that's how you see it. Um instead of $1,500, maybe to learn a guru supersystem, it's $49 and we'll fine-tune what you already have. That's so much easier. Okay, so I'm gonna say get it now because the spots are already being scooped up by the current members. So get in. Um, as your ADHD coach, I can tell you that the effectiveness of any system of managing your ADHD life in terms of productivity and time management, really, it's having proper answers to six questions. These questions are around uh it's about how you capture ideas, how you decide um of those ideas, what are you gonna do, the calendar that you use, how do you set appointments, how do you give yourself permission to forget, right? Reminders or alarms, and how do you deal with time in the moment? And how do you handle your tantrum when the time to do the thing occurs, right? Because you could put all the work in, man, you could radically shift your mindset, you could fucking become the new you, you can meditate yourself into self-love and confidence, journal yourself silly into some, I'm a mega productive person that does stuff, it's the new me. And in the moment, that thing is still gonna suck. It's you're not gonna want to do it. Something else will be a more important for sure, you'll and you'll say you'll do it later. Brain is not gonna want to do it. I mean, it's working out for God's sakes. It's exercise. Barf. It's working on your resume. Are you kidding me? I'd rather be punched in the testicles. So this is what we're working on. And part of the workshop is uh like because I will like you, I will talk about how I answer these questions. I have solutions for myself. Myself, all of my different personalities, myselves. Yes, all myself are gonna be showing up for the workshop. I can't wait for you to meet them. Um I've got solutions for myself, which currently work for me in varying levels. So I'll help guide the workshop with my examples as well. And when you're a member, you also get access to all the things we do collectively to do the thing, like body double rooms, weekly support calls. We have a book club and the beating heart of ADHD Big Brother, which is our daily accountability space. We turn your shitty tasks into like a game. So, you know, click and read the testimonials on the sales page if you need to. Like those people are still members. The people that are on those, they're current members. You can join and ask them, like, what the fuck is going on in here? Why are people doing things in here? I don't get it. Just come on in and see. Um, and this isn't a Facebook group, by the way, because I don't like that place. ADHD Bay Brothers is its own entity on uh I use the circle software. Super cool. But okay, back to your system. Every single ADHD is unique, which is beautiful. I love that. And the novelty of learning somebody else's cool like way of doing things, that helps because it allows us to keep our system fresh. Can you be cool with fluidity in your system? As long as it effectively answers the questions, you're good. Like maybe an aspect of your system goes stale does not mean that your system sucks, it means that you suck as a person. Could you imagine? I'm joking. That's how we feel though, right? Um, it feels like that. And that you got, oh god, now I gotta find another system. It just means that an aspect of it might need an iteration or an update, a change, you know, whatever the word is that you want to use. So it just helps to be part of a community that embraces that process, and that's what we embrace in our cult. Welcome to our I mean our community. Did I say cult? I'm so sorry. We're not a cult, I swear. Although I may or may not have accused some of our members of being in a notion cult. Oh my god. How many of you are notion people? Oh my god. The learning curve on that goddamn platform. Maybe I'm just jealous. I don't know. But man, when people are good at it, it's really cool. So when you join the community, if Notion is your thing, uh, I will introduce you to our Notion cult follower. I mean, our Notion enthusiasts. I'm so sorry. All right, my challenge to you this week is to lean into whatever system you used last. Or like what do you currently use? Or the one that you've got the closest to be working for you. Just start using that. Jump in, suck at it, and be non-judgmentally curious about the details that aren't working, as they aren't working, and then join ADHD Big Brother, literally, right now, after you're done listening to this podcast, and then when you butt when you get in, click on the member events and pick one of the conquering Turd Mountain events, and let's start talking about your system in the Turd Mountain Talk Space. This is how we do it together. You don't have to wing it, you don't have to pretend you're a grown-up and you should be able to do A, B, and C. The goal is to do shit. And if we succeed quicker and easier with the help of others, let's kind of do that. You wanna? Alrighty, guys, that'll do it. If you get value out of this podcast, please share it with your friends and on your social media platforms that you use. I don't really use them, so any help you could give me in that arena would be great. Um, I appreciate it. And just let me know if when you do it, so I can say thank you and get all excited about it. Um, alrighty, with that, I hope you have a fantastic week, and I shall talk to you later.