244 - ADHD, My Oppositional Nature, and MORNINGS!

I've been feeling massively oppositional lately. What can I do but be cool with myself about it...and ramble on about it on my pod! 

Also, we all want these picture perfect morning situations/rituals/habits. Let's talk about how to get one going, for real. 

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https://adhdbigbrother.circle.so/summercamp

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

It really does seem like the most of us adults with ADHD, we have this dream of waking up early. We're gonna do a really awesome morning routine. I'm gonna start the day off right. Let's talk about that. I'm gonna snooze my alarm a couple times. I'm gonna go back to bed, but then as soon as I get back up, let's get into that.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

You are listening to ADHD Big Brother, the podcast for adults struggling with their ADHD, their comorbid depression, their anxiety.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

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 crap tastic. 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.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Welcome to the podcast, Rise and Shine Campers. How are you doing? How are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Speaking of camping, it is an official announcement. Hang on to your hats. Uh ADHD Big Brothers summer camp. Signups are here. This is for adults with ADHD. I probably shouldn't have called it summer camp. Uh, because now you probably think that I rented out some resort in Lake Hakapooy.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

We're gonna have a retreat. We're gonna retreat on out to the retreat and get ourselves some neat treats.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Nope. You know, when I started coaching you guys, y'all's, I was doing it asynchronously, and it was really cool. Uh I made I made my clients' voice notes for their week, uh tailored to them, right? And their week when they checked in. It was really good. And I thought, hey, me, I was a stay-at-home dad, and so my schedule would be like one way throughout the school year, and then it goes straight to hell in the summer, and then all the planning and the vacations and the camps and the play dates and the water parks. Uh, long story short, it really Fs with your schedule. Not great for anybody, but oh my god, does that suck for an ADHD person? So you take an ADHD who sucks at their goals, and then summer comes along, and it's like, okay, I just gotta go survival mode. I'm gonna deal with the world's shittiest transitions, I'm gonna cobble it all together, and then I'm gonna make a change in my life, starting when the kids go back to school, but nothing happens. And then before you know it, it's October, and now we're on the holiday season, and that's three whole months of planning and doing extra shit. Great. So when is it ever gonna be me time? It seems kind of like never. Like there's never a good time to start working on me stuff, and that's what I'm offering to help. Five people. If you were if you're interested this summer, it's only five because bandwidth. I got I only have so much of it. Uh, but if you want to be one, uh link in the show notes. So I'm gonna help adults with ADHD move forward on one goal, even though. So that'll be June 1st through the 31st of July. You don't have to worry about being on vacation, won't affect this. You'll get eight weeks of coaching. No problem. Don't worry about knowing what goal you're gonna work on. I got you. We'll figure it out. You don't have to worry about needing to get your head above water first. Chaos is where we start from. I got you. Do you want to have a summer that where you survived? Yay, and you still move the needle forward on something meaningful to yourself. Like it can be done without burnout. I swear. The whole point is to make it easy and just by virtue of doing a thing, like you and me will do this, we'll make it fun. There will be laughing inside the chaos. Oh my god, there will be laughing. Okay, so click on the link in the show notes to learn more. Um, all right, mental health report. Let's do it. I've been having some really cool conversations with uh on mic with uh community members. We're talking about accountability, so good, and I can't wait to share those with you guys. But I bring it up here because it's it's part of my mental health report. Uh, I'm feeling inspired and I'm excited. There's some folks that joined that are taking advantage of the 10 for 10 that I had going on, and they jumped right into the daily accountability. That makes me so happy. So that's the first part of my mental health. I feel inspired and good. I should back this up. So every episode, we um, in order to normalize talking about our Skull Spaghetti, you know, because it's like sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, sometimes it's weird. So we want to normalize talking about it. We don't want to just bury it all and tell everyone we're fine. We're gonna unmask and reveal, peel the onion, as it were. And so that's what we're doing. And I'll tell you where I'm at every week. I am feeling super oppositional lately. I'm normally oppositional. Emily was pointily pointed out, she loves it about me, so I'm keeping it. It's the quality that I'm just gonna hang on to. But oh my god, I will take an opposing stance to a lot of shit. And I know that's pretty common amongst our ilk, especially in the ADHD world, but man, oh god, you show me, you show me any scientific study, an ADHD study that's just like um, you know, evidence-based solutions. And if it's not 100% conclusive, if it didn't work for everybody, I'm just sort of like, what, 95%? It worked on please. What about Daryl and Charlene? And what about them? Do we just throw them to the wind? Why aren't we giving a shit about poor Daryl and sweet little Charlene? And I don't even oh my god, oh man, and all the I'm broken business, the you're not broken business. Oh my god. I know I'm not your therapist, but geez, the audacity of people to tell me what I am and what I am. I do know that I do feel broken sometimes, I'll be honest with you. Like big fucking deal. It's how I feel. Super oppositional. God, anytime somebody in a YouTube video or whatever tells me why I am or what I am, you're not sad. You just had this happen to you. You're not oh god. I think it would be cool. I think I might have a different opinion if they said it like, hey, if this happens, you might this might be one of the reasons. But they come at me with, this is not you, this is you. Oh, it steams McClams, man. Oh yeah, oh God. I you know, I remember taking an assessment one time, like is like a personality deal, and it was a really good assessment. I really enjoyed it and I learned a lot about myself, and they wanted to review it with me on the phone, and so I was like, okay, cool. And on the phone, this lady was telling me what I am and what I'm not. Like, she goes, You look she I'm gonna be I'm gonna be very, very exaggerated, but it would be like this you don't like the color orange, you prefer the ocean to the mountain, and I'm like, you don't fucking know me. How dare you tell me? Even if I do love the color orange, I'm like, no, I hate it now. Orange is the worst. You just killed orange for me. Oh, jeez. Mental health report. Maybe that's this could be my ADHD. I don't know. Could be that I'm 50 now, and uh oh my this is my curmudgeon time. Could it be that I'm broken? I don't know, and you don't know. What if what if one of my neuron cords is snapped in half in my in my brain case? How would how do you know? But I guess the reframe wouldn't be that I'm broken, it would be that uh I'm not broken, my neurochord is connection impaired or something. So, okay, let's be clear. I, you know, I I caught myself on that one. My personal belief is that like on the soul level, like our spirit, our inner divine being is perfect as is. Okay, I get it. But even then, I'm not a soul expert. How the fuck? That's arrogant of me. I can't prove that your soul is not, you know, connection impaired. How would I know? The audacity of me to declare that your soul is perfect as is, and I don't even know you. Anyway, oppositional, that's me. I'm sorry, I'm can't help it. Anyway, but we're wasting valuable time here. Do we want to get the laundry done? The metaphorical laundry done. Let's just figure out how to do it broken. Why not? And then while you and your spirit therapist person are working out the whole broken piece, I'm broken aware. How about that? I'm a broke, I'm a broken aware ADHD productivity coach. I'm broken informed, okay? I have lived broken experience. Good gravy. Do I know what it feels like? I can meet you where you are. Um I know the feeling. So what if we just start there? You know, screw the chocolate-covered raisin attitude we to put on it. Honest assessment of where we're at. Why not? What do we suck at right now? No judgment, no character flaw in admitting to sucking at something or feeling the feelings. You know, big deal. I feel broken. That's a feeling. Feelings come and go. Feeling broken today, feel on top of the world tomorrow, feel broken again on Saturday. Whatever. God, it's like is this you guys too? This is the life of a depresso for sure. In my in my experience, in my lived experience. I shan't talk about anybody but myself. It's not a character flaw. In my personal opinion about myself, so the question that I postulate is how does a broken person put together a morning routine? That's a great question, isn't it? I feel broken, but I want to get my morning routine down. Let's do it. I'm in. We just admit where we're at. Like if you have a morning routine right now, you're kicking butt. If you don't have one, but you're like, yeah, I need one. Okay. How does someone who currently sucks at morning routines, how does that person get one going? Now, righty, now we're getting into my jam. Let's talk about your morning. There's a lot of aspects to that morning routine, isn't there? Do you guys find that? We could start with some of the big issues. Like we we have to get out of bed. That's the that's the A number one of the morning. But do we want to? God, snooze a holics basically, all of us. Then there's the dream of a million self-care things. Like I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna do Pilates, and then I'm gonna do a light qigong followed with some water. I'm gonna hydrate. And then gonna do 10 push-ups followed by an herbal tea because tomorrow I don't drink coffee anymore. Tomorrow's day one of herbal tea. Then I'm gonna meditate on my Zafu cushion for 10 minutes minimum. And then I'm gonna journal about who I am for five minutes, and I'll practice neuroplasticity. I'm going to reform my brain for another 10 minutes and then journal some manifestation for who I am tomorrow as if I am that today. That point I will then shower and then have my oatmeal, and then I'll get right to fucking work. Look at me go! So we set our alarm for 6 a.m. Tomorrow the alarm goes off at 6 a.m. and we snooze. And then we accidentally hit the button that that shuts the alarm off. We didn't snooze, we ended. So we wake up at 7, we're pissed off at ourselves. Fuck the tea because my head hurts. And I think we're just gonna do it with coffee today because I don't want to deal on this already shitty day. And then the whole routine is a bust. But then I, you know what? I'll get my Duolingo in and then scroll YouTube while I eat oatmeal. I'm gonna call it a win, you know, because you know I ate the oatmeal. It's because I want to feel good about myself. But then for some reason the day seems to get shittier and shittier. And it's like, well, because I'm literally I'm force-feeding winds that I don't really believe in because people told me to celebrate everything. I'm a fan of celebrating all of it, but it if you're gonna like foie gras the winds down your throat, you you gotta kind of believe in them. It's not just I need to feel good about myself, so I'm just gonna say something I don't believe. Doesn't work, doesn't work for meme. I'll say that. Let me caveat that. So instead of me just and and guys, I'm making fun of all this because that's also me. If you were to talk to me 10 years ago, holy balls, I basically just made fun of myself. My recommendation, let's go to the recommendation. This is the ADHD Big Brother recommendation for building a morning thingamadoodle. And keep in mind, this could be the path to that holistic wellness morning routine before you know it. So here's a way to try it. Determine your wake up time and wake up at that time. That's the that's the TLDR, that's the easy version, but it's a lot tougher than that. So let's figure it out. But that is the win. That is that that is it. We gotta win it that before we move on to the next thing. What does it take for you to wake up at that time? To me, that means you get out of bed. I think that's a solid wake-up. Your eyes open, no. Laying in bed, no. It's like uh up and out of the bed, never to return till the end of the day. The other part of this, I is I love black and white rules here. Nuance can be such a tricky mistress to me. All that finding the gray. I come from the land of addiction, you know. So it bear that in mind. Like there's no, you know, I'm I only smoke at parties than on the weekends. Everything's under control, and I know how to moderate something that I was addicted to for 20 years. It's easy for me. I just smoke all the weekends and at parties. No problemy tunes. No, because people want boundaries, but they also want to play in the tiger pit. We go, I'm gonna take the iPad to bed with me, but I'm lights out at 10. That's playing in the tiger pit covered in cat food. I'm only gonna watch one episode of Castlevania on why so specific? Oh, maybe because there was a Russ Jones that brought his iPad to bed and thought he was gonna watch one episode of his favorite anime. I'll watch the whole damn season in one night. That tiger pit is filled with tigers for me. If my phone goes to bed with me, I'm on my phone. If I had like an Instagram account or a TikTok account, I would absolutely be like everybody else. I'd be scrolling senselessly for hours at a time, texting reels maniacally, and wondering why I can't seem to get stuff done. This whole ADHD process is about how to make this life work for the way that we are, right? I don't want to live off of three hours of sleep because I couldn't put down my iPad. Natural consequence there is man, no iPad in bed. It's uh there's no tiger pit. Like I'm I want to be a guy that goes to bed with his iPad. I just want to be that guy. Why? I have never once woken up in the morning and thought to myself, geez, if I would have just watched Netflix in bed all night last night and got no sleep. Oh gosh, I should do that tonight. Never. Anyway, morning routine. Wake up. That's it. Can you do that? The only thing I would suggest adding is exactly what is the first thing that you're gonna do in the morning. Like, know that in advance. If I wake up and my brain is foggy and I'm tired and I don't have a thing to physically move toward, that's when I would typically just be like, Hey, go back to bed. Bed seems nice, bed's an easy answer. And that's easy to follow through on, really. There's my win! Back to bed. So the question is really just tomorrow when I wake up, I will what? What will you do? You put on your pants? If you sleep in your pants, but I don't put on a shirt. Or if you sleep in a shirt, I don't know, put on socks. I don't know. What is the thing that you could do first thing in the morning after you get out of the bed? If you eliminate choice, if you know what your first thing is, uh my belief is that you were just more likely to do it. It wouldn't be something like go to the gym. Like I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna go to the gym. Going to the gym has like a thousand steps to it, right? You have to put on your shoes, grab your keys, get a walk. There's a lot of steps. Um, and that is a potential deal breaker. But if you can just do the first thing, better chances of success. You want to try that for a week? Tell me how it goes. Or are you oppositional right now? And you're like, don't tell me what to do, Russ. God. Okay. Loud and clear. How about this? I bet you can't do it. I'll play, I'll play to your oppositionals. Oppositional that. Suckas. I'm a big fan of this, nice and simple, because it goes against our nature of wanting to do everything all the way perfectly, perfect, 100% successful, right out of the gate. Like, I just want to go hard. If I know the answer, I just want to go hard and do all of it because now I can see how it could all be done. And I've got this, I can make a spreadsheet and then I can track all kinds of levels to this. Maybe try a new way. See what, see what happens. I like this because I mean, let's say you add a new thing to this every couple of weeks where you start stacking. Every two weeks, you add a new thing. And so then you're waking up and you're adding maybe a single yoga pose. And then two weeks later, you add a five-minute yoga routine. So now you got that down. And then two weeks later, you add the next thing. So within a year, you could add 26 new things. That could be pretty cool. It's an it's just not as glamorous as like a 26-step process that I nailed day one. Let's go! But it's also less difficult, it's easier to get started on, and it's more likely to happen, possibly. If you give it a try, let me know how it goes. I'm interested. Uh, and a reminder if you're looking for some one-on-one help this summer, grab the link in the show notes. There is one live call uh that you and I will have a one-on-one call, just to establish that async routine. And I also have a Wheel of Life worksheet and a goal worksheet. So it's it'll help you to figure out your goal, but even that you don't need to have completed before we talk. Um and I just I gotta cap it at five people because you know, energy and all that stuff. Alrighty, any questions about anything? Feel free to reach out via the ADHD Big Brother website and the contact form. Uh that goes right to me. And if you are getting any value out of this podcast, do me a favor. Would you do me a favor? Subscribe, why not? And then share this with one of your friends. And in the meantime, community's wide open, ready to support you, shame free, judgment free, come as you are, broken or otherwise, and we will support you. And with that, I hope you have a fantastic week, and I shall talk to you later.