124 - Iterating and the Sand Castle Art Metaphor

We get all excited about doing a thing, a project, a goal, and at the first sign of tension, we quit. Sometimes that's just the natural order of things for us. But what if it's actually something we'd like to keep doing? What then? Let's talk about that. 

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Transcript

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How do you stick to stuff when the juice of it goes away? Like I was so excited to do this thing. And then I got going. And then something pops up and then it's just, it's over. It's not for me. Like, how do you stick to the thing? What's the glue? Who's got the adhesive? I have an idea. Let's go in the workshop and you are listening to ADHD Big Brother, the podcast for adults struggling with their ADHD and comorbid depression symptoms. I'm your host, Russ Jones, author of The Standing to the Top, believer that you can actually have a smile in your life despite this diagnosis. So let's make some sense out of this struggle. Let's learn some stuff. Let's laugh at some stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, here's some stuff. Welcome to the the podcast. The one and only happy, hope you're having a great day today, day, today. It's it's happy, have a great day, day today. What are we going to do today? What if I had no idea? It's like, I don't know. Let's just throw some skull spaghetti at the wall. We'll see what sticks, whatever pops up. You know? Yeah, some people, some people will um they'll do the 30-minute chat, and people wonder, like, well, what do you do? What is it that I do? You know, this podcast is not just me fucking around. I can do that on my own. My mission with ADHD Big Brother, it is to serve the population of people who don't fit into the box. And specifically those who want to do shit, like, but are befuddled by their inability to do so. Like, I know what I want to do, and I'm not doing it. And pretty much, you know, I let me throw out a bullshit statistic that I'm completely making up, but is based on my personal experience. 75% of you guys know exactly everything about ADHD, probably even more than me. And if you have depression, you know all about that. And many of you are even seeing a therapist and way to go for that, high five. And almost all of you are not doing the work. What? Why? What's going on? I I'm laughing because I that's that's exactly me as well. So um, you know, we pay a lot of money for courses and we start them, we don't finish them, we go on retreats. I've never been on a retreat, sadly, but my guess is that you get all juiced up on the retreat, you got a whole notebook full of ideas and things that you're gonna do to change your life, and then you're not doing any of them. I even had a course that I had created for ADHD Big Brother, and I literally just deleted it from existence prior to the release of this episode because it's everything that, you know, I don't want my work to be. I'll give you a case in point here. If you listen to the podcast, you're familiar with nudges, uh, my viewpoint on ADHD goals. It's like a perspective where we start our journey at the top of the mountain, you know, as opposed to an arduous uphill climb and our goals at the bottom. And all it takes to get moving forward is like a, you know, just a nudge, just a just a push and a gentle push on our back, a small step, and then we're rolling, building momentum toward our goal. That's a nudge. I believe people with ADHD do better with these kind of metaphors that make things easy and they play with how we get shit done. And unless it's hyper focused, like if it's dumb, boring crap, it often requires a nudge in the form of an ADHD tool, you know, like the easiest point of entry, specificity, timers, yada yada, yada. And so in my course that I had made, it was this whole bunch of bingeable videos offering tools for task paralysis, lack of motivation, finishing what you start, right? These are these three major obstacles, these major hurdles for ADHD. And then afterwards, there were 14 days of nudges. People bought the course, they binged all the videos, and nobody did the nudges. So that informed me. That in for like this is just another thing where people learn and they go, Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I'm gonna I should do that. That should, that's that's on my to-do list now. But then we don't do it, and the growth is in the doing. And I ultimately I just have the whole thing in the forum, the whole course, uh, all the videos. The ADHDB Brother Forum, that's the place that's a thousand percent accountability. It's posting what we're doing, zoom chats about what we're doing, monthly goals about what we're doing, year-long goals about what we're doing, support for what we're doing. It's really doing centric, if if I'm being clear about it. And the people that are showing up in the forum are moving their needle forward. It's great, that's what I'm about, 100% doing. And I'll say even that for uh one-on-one clients that I have, it's still about the doing. People have stuff that they wish they could do and they aren't doing it for whatever ADHD or otherwise reason. And I don't see my work as coaching. It's like I'm I'm an accountability buddy, really. That's kind of what it is. Maybe my gift is that I have uh a genuine interest in you uh as a person. So some of the questions that I have, they I I'm not afraid to ask questions. I guess that's it. But really, the excitement is that the work comes from the individual. In my experience, you guys know exactly what you need to do to do the thing you want to do. And it's a process of like, we got to hang up the ego, we gotta, or you know, put up the shame cloak or take off the embarrassment earrings or the humiliation hat. Whatever that piece of clothing is that makes us feel like, oh my God, I'm a grown adult human being and I'm such a loser because I can't do this basic bullshit. That really just stokes my inner fire for people. Like my vision is that we all get to a place where we recognize that it's okay to ask for help or even to need help for basic stuff. You know, it's not meant to be lifelong. Get with a trainer, learn how to exercise, and then go off and do it on your own. You know, and the same thing would be with therapy, right? Go to get a therapist, process your garbage, and then, you know, break out of the cocoon. Hopefully, there isn't a bluebird waiting to eat you, you know. But I I don't know what's gonna happen. I I'm not a fortune teller. And then so the podcast here, that's purposeful work for me in that it's meant to offer insights and ideas and other challenges in the service of the doing. My God, I think that was the longest ramble ever. And I'm not really sure how we started that. Um anyway, today I wanted to touch upon the doing of a thing that started out great and then went away. Like we gave up. It wasn't perfect, so we abandoned it, then we forgot about it, or we just can't bring ourselves to get back to it. And many times that's the case, right? It's and that's okay. Moving on, right? But what if we really wanted to finish? What if we it really was a thing that we wanted to do? What then? Let's explore that. I view this as the sandcastle art metaphor that I'm totally making up right now. I think I know I made it sound like a this is a common metaphor used in the in the old 1920s productivity book by Gordon Schlossenslinger. Sandcastling through life, a step-by-step guide. You know, it's like the sandcastle metaphor, you sillies. So I get this idea to do a thing. It's a sandcastle that I want to build. And it would be so cool. Like it's a legit medieval sandcastle, like something that you'd see on those beach competitions where the people they build these amazing sandcastles. It's like a new art form. So then I have this thought like it's very hard to keep at a thing when it seems like I suck at it. I have a pretty high standard for myself, you know. I think a lot of us do. And we live in a time when we can instantly reference magnificence uh online on Instagram. We can see magnificent art uh from multiple people and judge ourselves accordingly based on that. So I have this thought, right? I see this amazing sand castle, and I'm like, I want to do that. Like these giant skyscrapers made out of sand that look like legit skyscraper buildings, and there's even like a sand window washer. Like, how did they get the sand to stick out on the side like that? And oh my god, it looks so cool. I want to do that. And then so it begins. The learning about the trade. We go into total learn mode. You know, uh, if you remember when you were first diagnosed with ADHD, do you remember that? Like when you, oh, then you got all the books, you read all, you joined all the YouTube channels, and Jessica McCabe's YouTube channel, and and you all the Instagram channels, and you went overboard. It's like we got the tools, we bought all the tools, and then getting out there in the sand and making a go of it. No problem getting started on something that I'm juiced up for. But then a wave comes, hits my sandcastle, and I'm just like, are you fucking kidding me right now? I just put all this work into this thing. You know what? Screw it. And then I chuck the tools into the ocean without even thinking about it. And mind you, these aren't the buoyant, cheap sandcastle tools. These were the expensive ones that I paid top dollar for. These are the sinkers, right? They are sunk in the ocean. I'm not getting them back. And so I'm done with sandcastling. And I never really truly started. I wanted to go from not having an ability to do a thing to doing it perfectly, blah, blah, blah, perfectionism, right? Stop being a perfectionist. Okay, all right. I'm happily imperfect now. You just told me not to be a perfectionist, and I instantly became a non-perfectionist. Hmm. It's like, yeah, and then can you help me with my black and white thinking? Yeah, you just gotta be nuanced. You gotta find the gray. Oh, okay. Instantly I'm chiseling the black and white out of me. I'll tell you what's helping for me. Like, this is how I'm doing things for the podcast, for the ADHD Big Brother Forum, for ADHD Big Brother in general, the whole biz side of things, the big brothering biz. Every time a wave comes and hits my sandcastle, I want to quit. There is a sense inside of me that says, Man, you're such a fakeo McBaco. And the only difference between me now and me then is my response to that. I've had a so many times when I quit at the first time of frustration or negative response or negative feedback or tension or whatever. If the thing doesn't feel good the way it used to feel, I'd quit. There would be this inner compass in me that's like, this must be wrong, so stop it. And a lot of times when we embark on these journeys in life, it feels like we're expecting the ride to go smooth, even though we know it's not, even though we know on paper, like the cliches and everything. Oh, it's gonna be tough. Okay, you gotta pick yourself back up. Okay, try, try again, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's very hard in the moment when our inner compass is like, this is fucking wrong, dude. This is not for you. I would have quit the podcast so many times uh if I went off of that compass. And the way I used to do things would be like, okay, I build the sandcastle, the water wrecks it, and then I build the sandcastle in the same spot the next time. I'm not taking into consideration that the location of my sandcastle might be an issue here. I'm not looking at this as an opportunity to iterate from my insights, you know, water kills my sandcastle. If I want to build, I should move inland. The real world example of this uh would be me sitting at my desk to do some creative writing, let's say. And then every time I sit at my desk, my creativity dies. I am never able to create anything when I sit down to create, quote unquote. The second my ass hits the chair, poof, it's gone. I enter a void of blankness. I would happily draw it for you, but there would be nothing to put on the page, completely blank. Not realizing that it's sitting at the desk that is caging my creativity. I'm thinking, why, oh why, gosh darn it. What if I moved my sand castle? When I sit on my meditation cushion to meditate, that's when I get hit with ideas, creativity, all that stuff. But you know, but then I'm not meditating right. Then I'm doing it wrong. They say you gotta let that stuff go because that's not meditating. And I'm like, okay, so that's I okay, that's not meditating. Oops, I'm doing it wrong. So sometimes I will bring my bullet journal to the meditation cushion and I quote unquote meditate. Don't tell anyone I use that word. And if and when inspiration hits, I creatively write. I'm just moving my sandcastle tools to where I can build it. If building sandcastles is what I want to be doing, then what can I do? Specifically me, in order to reach my vision of sandcastle mastery. That's the joy of my journey. So, okay, so we have the waves. All right, I move it farther in. So now I'm cranking out a pretty cool sandcastle, but now I notice that the sand is different and it's too powdery or something. I don't know. I'm not I'm just making this up. I'm not a sandcastle expert. Um, so instead of quitting, I iterate. I solve the obstacle, and then I do the thing. So I go from building to overcoming an obstacle, and then I try again, and then I get it figured out, and then the wind blows my sandcastle over. Okay, new obstacle. Let's put some windbreakers in some strategic spots. Let's try that. Okay, I get almost finished, and then uh suddenly a giant sandworm monster pops up from the ground, tries to eat me, okay? And I didn't see that coming. Nobody would have seen that coming. Because those are out of some apocalyptic like fantasy action movies, okay? So that's a big problem. If sand castles are my thing and this is the beach, am I gonna quit? No, I'm going to use my ADHD tools to create work sessions on how to trap and destroy sandworms. And I'll probably try to locate the queen because I think as as common as we all would probably assume in the sandworm world, is like if you get the queen, you get everybody. I think that's just how it works with that kind of stuff. And this is a bigger obstacle that can become an even bigger obstacle because uh my solution was to kill them, okay? That was just the first thought that came to my head, and now I don't know that they are exclusively found on this one beach and that they're endangered, right? So now I'm in court defending myself because I can't afford a lawyer, you know, and you're thinking, dude, just quit. Just give it up. And to that I would say, yeah, okay, that was me, like right around episode 113 of the ADHD Big Brother podcast. I think that was right around my big depressive episode. And, you know, my will to build my ADHD Big Brother Sandcastle was fraught with all that fake O'Mcbaco stuff. You know, you may know it as imposter syndrome. But really, it's just another obstacle. If we know what we want to do, and we've done like the pre-like, if we front loaded ourselves, like we know that yes, I've done the mental work, I know that this is truly a thing that I want to do, even though I don't feel like it in the moment. And it's in us. We know we want to see this to fruition. Frui fruition. We would like to say this through for to fruition, to completion. I don't need to come up with big fucking words, man. Fruition. Oh my god. So then we focus on the obstacle. I study up about sandworms, done and done. That has nothing to do with sandcastles. It's a total side quest, but I'm not gonna get the sandcastle built until I'm allowed back on the beach. Remember? I'm the crazy sandcastle guy that was murdering. I'm a hero to some of them, and I'm a villain to others. Like it's pretty black and white out there. So, what I'm trying to say in this really incredibly complicated metaphor that is pretty much just me entertaining myself with sandworm knowledge, uh, and I get that. It's that iteration is the process. By definition, it means to repeat the same thing with the intent to improve each time. So in this case, it's about eliminating obstacles and then doing it again, discovering a new obstacle, then doing it again. There's an idea out there that I carried with me for a long, long time that I have to know everything about a thing, and I have to be good at it before I even start on it. And I think it's helpful for me to know that it's cool for me to suck. I can suck my way to the top. Um maybe not that. I can fail forward. That's a much ch No one's gonna confuse that. Wow. My ultra takeaway from uh doing this week's thought work. Thought work. When I was thinkorizing on this episode, you know, I think my biggest takeaway was that uh I'm I'm not gonna try to be different than who I am, but I will iterate and learn as I go. And my opinion on all this, it could change over time. I'm open enough to that concept. This is who I am now, I may be somebody different later. My challenge to you guys this week is to commit to yourself or or like your commit to your spouse or me. You can send me an email, or you can join the forum and you know, pop it in the monthly goals chat. Commit to your sandcastle. What are you gonna build and then commit to continue iterating? Is it gonna be your health or it could be your finances, your eating? What are you gonna get good at that you've wanted to get better at? Will it be finally recording your own podcast, becoming a coach, becoming a therapist, going back to college, or you know, legit actually becoming a professional sandcastler or I don't know what you'd call your a sandcastlist, whatever it is, what will you do and then do do, do do do do, do we and do again? Make that commitment. I dare you. And then use your ADHD tools that you learned from episode one through and nudge yourself forward. And if you ain't nudging yourself forward, join the forum and I will nudge you right in your face, brah. Alrighty, I hope that helps. Guys, if anything about this episode is uh you need clarification on, you're like, what in the hell were you talking about? And are sandworms real? Please respond. If you guys need to talk about any of this stuff, you can reach out to me through the contact form of the website. It's adhdbigbrother.com. That is the website. And I hope you guys have a fantastic week. I'm gonna talk to you. I will talk to you. There will be another talking too, and it will happen later.