ADHD and Revisiting Structure

I've been having extra anxiety and I've noticed some of my structure slipping away. Let's discuss what that looks like and how to get back some of that structure!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We hear the word structure a lot, don't we? I mean, I know I've talked about structure. It feels like a prison sentence. Anyone chained to structure? Don't tell me what to do. Even if it's me. It feels like I'm shackled to the walls of structure. I know it's a little bit dramatic, but can we just agree that unbridled chaos isn't really working? Let's revisit maybe like a teaspoon of structure. Let's go. 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 podcast. Glad you guys showed up today. I have a lot to talk about. Uh first. That was such a oh my god. First, I'm gonna do a mental health report. This is just my attempt, just a guy on a podcast with a certain kind of skull spaghetti. I'm talking about it, normalizing the conversation. Sometimes we're good. Sometimes we're real good. Sometimes we're bad. Sometimes we're in a shitty mood state or a depressive episode, or we're losing our mind with like overwhelm and anxiety. And sometimes we're just kind of weird. So rather than just fly under the radar and tell everyone, you know, hey, I'm fine. You know, weather's the weather's nice out, you know, and I'm doing fine. Because we're not always fine. Fine is boring. So let's just share. I'll go first, as we do on the podcast. I have been super overwhelmed this past week. Anxiety big time. I usually fall prey to like financial anxiety. I think that's probably the solopreneur dad in me, you know, but I also really like it. So what to do, right? I find that I can usually point to a lack of structure when my overwhelm is at its peak. Like I notice that I haven't been scheduling in maintenance type stuff, like cleaning and organizing, or I'll notice that my holistic things that are good for me, they haven't been happening. Things like meditating or exercising. So it's timely for me to talk about structure because it's top of mind for me right now. I'm rerailing my train. I also notice like my girlfriend is on a vacation right now with her kids in Japan. And so it's interesting to me, like that. So she's gone and you know, she's a part of my structure, and that's missing. And so that derails me. Without self-awareness and community, I'd be off the rails. Easily off the rails. One of the things that I've been doing to maintain some semblance of structure is I'm ending my workday between 3 to 5 p.m. It's like depending on when I start the day. Like if I start at seven, I'll shut it down around three. This is really hard to do as a solopreneur person because we are our business and there's always something to be working on or getting done. And so I'm very prone to just keep going. And then I'll get so wiped out that I'll usually spiral into the dark places. So I've been ending my day after a good day's work, right? And then I do non-work things like play video games with my kids, talk to them about their stuff, do bullshit chores, meditate, other than work stuff. So I'd say mental health-wise, right now I'm going after the anxiety. Like I'm upping my meditation. I'm working to be cool with myself on my work days. And a huge part of what will help is the behavior change of exercise, which I invited you guys to, I think last podcast episode. This will tie into what's happening at ADHD Big Brother. I'm doing what I normally do, which is like I make my world visible to the members and like what I'm working on and what I'm gamifying. And then starting in August, I'm doing a three-month behavior change for exercising. I'm making it extra visible. So it's extra likely to happen. And you're invited to come make a behavior change with me. So this is my particular world and my journey. I only speak to of my world and where I'm at in my journey. This is me coming to you literally. Like, who is Russ Jones as of Sunday, July 26th? That's when I'm recording this. I don't put these like in the can. I got three months of season five in the can, and we're gonna roll them out, and they're generic and who I was five months ago. This is me now, what I'm working on this week. This is how I believe we do this. It's visibility, the truth of who I am, where I'm at, accountability, having the courage to put remedial things on display to get support, and then allowing the support. Can I just say failing publicly at stuff inside my membership has been the most helpful and beneficial and my most expedient process for growth? And like we keep sharing who we are at whatever stage of growth we're at. I have since come to terms with my own fact that trying to do this on my own, it's an awful way to live. I'm not into it. Um, you know, we all have these egos and these like feelings like, you know, blood, sweat, and tears, gotta just suck it up, gotta do it. I gotta be able to prove to the world I can do it. And I'm like, I'm not into that. So long story short, my mental health is feeling anxious, but I'm on top of it. I'm feeling confident in my approach, which is meditate and talk about it. If it gets too bad, I typically do the whole nervous system reset where I try to push the wall over. So I guess the long story short of it all is my mental health is I'm dealing with the anxiety. The exercise behavior change thing that I'm doing in August is aimed at eliminating the anxiety and just taking care, putting the self-care stuff top of mind, making it visible, and uh we'll see what happens. Uh so ADHD Big Brother, business-wise, I've been busy. So I have a few things that I can share. Uh, the first thing is that I created a thingy where you can type in your struggle, and the magical robot will tell you a couple of ADHD Big Brother podcast episodes that might help out for that particular struggle. I've done a lot of episodes, and it's like the idea that maybe you have a struggle, and what are you gonna do? Scan 255 episodes and maybe they're not worded, maybe the titles aren't perfectly clear. So I created a thing. In the spirit of getting on the other end of our struggles and eliminating as many friction points as possible, you can type in your struggle, you'll get a couple episodes. Maybe they'll help. And if you're a member already inside of ADHDV Brother, it'll suggest how you can use the membership to get support, ideas, and help. Uh, so the link is in the show notes for that, and I'd be super curious how it works for you. We've played around with it in the community, and so far the answers it's giving are great. It's a fun new toy. Enjoy it. Links in the show notes, it's free. You don't have to give me your email. There's no signups or anything like that. So enjoy. Also, I have become a teacher on Insight Timer. There's a meditation app that I love called Insight Timer, and there are people who reached out to me and asked if I wanted to set up a teacher profile, share my ADHD insights. This is not a sponsorship thing or anything like that. Um, I just I'm that's I just said I would do it. Um, I'm doing short talks and I'll share more here as I do it. I like doing the guided meditations on there because you never know. I'll do like, you know what? Let's let's do it. Let's cut the cord on some people. Let's do uh let's find my Akashic Records. Let's hook me up with my spirit guide. Let me ask him what the fuck is going on. Why doesn't he do a little more guiding? I love him. Um, and so I'm gonna be doing some ADHD talks on there. We'll keep you posted. Also, work-wise, my one-on-one slots are full right now. But if you're a person that is looking for behavior change and you want weekly one-on-one coaching, you can feel free to email me through the contact form, ADHD Big Brother, and I'll keep you on a short list. I don't think that it's gonna open up until at least September, but you're more than welcome to email me. If you are ready to do the work, but the work is hard and you keep finding yourself stuck and you can't seem to do it on your own. I can help you uh if you're willing to participate in daily accountability with me. It's over text. I can help you. I have four spots for that available. You have to be willing to keep stuff visible while it's uncomfortable. So if that's you, if you want behavior change, I will get in the mud with you. This is why I call myself ADHD Big Brother. It's I think that's what we are to each other. We've all walked certain paths a little bit more than the other in certain areas of life. I prefer to be in the mud with you. A lot of you know what's going on. You know it's ADHD, you know it's a time management problem, you know it's a motivation problem. You see, you can speak so good about your fucking dopamine and your executive function and all the wonderful reasons why your environment is off and blah, blah, blah, and why ADHDers can't get started because that there's no interest or novelty or urgency, and but nothing is getting done. You get your AI ADHD coach bot to spit exactly what's going on, so then what's up? The discomfort of the behavior change will never go away, no matter how badass your system is. And the way I view this is that we can see the ideal version of ourselves. Like we know the behavior change that we want to make. And the visual for this for me is like we're standing on the edge of a round pool of thick mud. Directly across from us is the wonderful new behavior. And so the easy way to go is to walk around the mud pool, right? But as we walk, the behavior change walks too. So no matter what direction we walk around the pool, we're always directly across from the behavior change. So the easy way doesn't work. The only way to get the behavior change is through the mud. And the second we walk into the mud, it's waist deep. We move slower than we know we're capable of. It kind of drags us down. There's nobody to encourage us because, you know, we should just be able to suck it up across the stupid mud pool on my own. You know, I got blood, sweat, and tears at an ego. I'm an adult. I know how to make behavior change. Why can't I just do it? No behavior change there. So this ties into structure. To this day, I can tell if my structure has gone away. I go so far off the rails. This can look like not using my bullet journal to plan, pivoting back into trying to manage my day from my head, because you know, a lot of things are urgent. So I'll just go off of what feels most right and is most top of mind. Probably not the most effective, but at least I'm doing stuff. That is so far off the rails, but it feels okay sometimes because I'm doing shit. I'm getting some shit done. It's just not effective. We need structure. The way I view this is that we are like hamsters running in an open field, zigging and zagging, and it feels amazing because we're free. We get to follow our whims. We can go this way, we can go that way. The entire field is our playground. But this is where we're open prey to the hawk. So, how do we keep the feeling of freedom but protect ourselves? This is structure to me. If we could just get our four walls and a roof, then we are safe from the hawk. But we still have a large amount of space to be free in. What we end up doing is buying into the need for structure, be like, yeah, structure's a good idea. And then we create the ultra-structure system with every minute of every day accounted for and allotted for, and it looks like a maze. We've taken the structure and we've destroyed all the freedom by putting walls everywhere, tons of friction points. This is how I move people into structure. You pick one area of life, one aspect to put a little more structure on, and that's your four walls and a roof. To me, this is the thing that you use daily accountability for. If you're a member of ADHD Big Brother, this is the daily accountability club. Making a promise to a bunch of people and keeping that promise top of mind is just the right amount of structure to build on. Picking one area to improve and putting extra structure on that thing the rest of your day, even though you know how to do structure. And hey, wouldn't it be great if you applied this thing that worked today to every single aspect of your life? No, the rest of your day is freedom and chaos and whims and fun and anxiety. It's basically your life. Only in this one aspect of the day do you double down on structure and make it visible and allow for support, makes it more likely to happen. That's my challenge to you. What is one area of your life where you can add a little bit of structure to? Just a teaspoon, just a pinch of structure to get you experiencing it. Some days it's gonna suck, some days it's gonna feel amazing, some days you're gonna forget, and some days you're gonna want to add more, and some days you aren't gonna be able to add more. Okay. And you make it visible. You join ADHD Big Brother, you make it visible to us, you schedule a call with me. Let's see if your daily accountability with me is gonna work for you. Crossing the mud to get to the new behavior, the person that can get started on shitty tasks, right? The person that can plan their week, the person that can meal plan or the person that can do the workouts consistently, crossing the mud to that new you is gonna suck. That's why people stay on the edge and they just read books and they watch videos and they try to muster up the juice to get into the mud. And then for those that maybe try to cross the mud on their own, no support, how often do we fail? Because the mud shouldn't be this hard to cross. We must be doing something wrong. Let's just stop, let's go back to the shore, reassess, build a new system, makes it easier. Or maybe you like we're in like a coaching or weekly coaching or whatever, and we move. We're inspired into the mud, but with no daily accountability, most of us we just forget. We just stay still in the mud all week and we don't move. And then maybe we move back a little bit. And then the next week, oh, let's get re-inspired back into the mud. How much faster can this be? We jump in the mud alongside with someone else who's jumping in the mud for their shitty thing. And oh my god, misery loves company. Let's all make the slog less sloggy. Let's hang out in the mud together. That is my vote. And that's literally the world I built in ADHD Brothers. It's just a whole bunch of people all in the mud together, nudging each other forward so that we can get to the other side quicker. More, more quickerized. This is my world. Behavior change, I fucking love it. What do you want to do? Share it, make it visible, make a simple commitment with myself or others, and let's get across the mud. Alrighty, I hope that helps. If you want to try out the podcast finder, it's totally free. Link is in the show notes. And oh my God, if you're ready to make a behavior change, if you want to do daily accountability with me, uh my capacity is four more people for that, for the daily accountability thing. Book a chat. We can talk about what it looks like and all if you can do it and blah, blah, blah. Proximity to support for the win. Let's see what's up. Link for that is in the show notes. And as always, if you have any questions about this, just reach out. adhdbigbrother.com. I am reachable. And with that, I hope you have a fantastic week, and I shall talk to you later.