Brendan Mahan on Goal-Setting and the Wall of Awful™

Internationally renowned ADHD expert Brendan Mahan, M.Ed., MS., takes center stage to present this exclusive goal-setting workshop hosted by Shane Thrapp and the Men's ADHD Support Group!

As host of the ADHD Essentials Podcast and a thought leader on ADHD, executive function, anxiety, and neurodiverse parenting, Brendan leverages decades of wisdom to equip you with powerful frameworks, including:

● Strategies to overcome productivity barriers - like the Wall of Awful™
● A step-by-step system using the S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting techniques
● Doing a "Pre-mortem" planning for obstacles and possible failure points

With unparalleled insights honed from coaching and the ADHD conference circuit, Brendan delivers a masterclass in goal-achievement tailor-made for ADHD success.

Level up your goals with practical wisdom from this globally respected ADHD Educator! If you want more information or want to sign up for his group coaching, check him out at www.adhdessentials.com!

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Transcript

Welcome to the Men's ADHD Support Group in conjunction with ADHD Essentials.

Brendan Mahan is one of our board members. He is the wizard to the King Arthur's Table that is our board membership. I really appreciate him taking the time to give us his wisdom, be the devil's advocate that we don't want sometimes.  But we need, we need that voice of reason. 

 I just want to say thank you to everyone who supports us, who was willing to donate to come to this event. Y'all support means the absolute most to me and I just want to from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much. I really mean it. and all that being said, Brendan, take it away. 

Yeah, sure.  My name is Brendan Mahan.  I'm the host of the ADHD Essentials Podcast. I'm the creator of the Wall of Awful. I'm on the organizing committee for the ADHD conference, and I am on the board member for the Men's ADHD Support Group. I work 

with parents in, I run online parent coaching groups that actually start in February on the 12th. 

So if anybody cares, send me an email. And I also do one on one with folks as well. I work primarily with adults one on one because the time when I would work with a kid is when my kids are home and need help navigating freshman year in high school, so they win because they're my kids and yours aren't, and I don't mean that cruelly, it's just the nature of the beast. 

So today we're going to talk about, just.  A lot of stuff. We're going to talk about goal setting. We're going to talk about the wall of awful. I want to invite you, if you have a notebook that you're writing stuff down in or you've got something open on your computer or whatever, if you're listening to this later on,  like, yeah, okay, take notes.

Sure. I'm going to say some stuff that is hopefully smart.  What I really want you to do is write down goals, like use this.  To start setting some goals as we talk about how to do that and why we would do that.  That way,  you're, you're in, in a spot where you're applying this information immediately, as opposed to just all remember that and do it later,  particularly where this is being recorded.

It will be shown later. So if you come back to it later. Find the YouTube episode, find the podcast episode,  and actually use this as a guide as much as possible to do the goal setting that you probably need to do. I know I do. I'm, I'm setting goals just like everybody else is.  It's January.  So when it comes to the wall of awful, that's my model for the emotional impact of repeated failure that comes with ADHD.

It comes with neurodiversity. It comes with neurotypicality. Like, everybody has a wall of awful,  but people who have ADHD  have more walls and their walls tend to be bigger.  So when it comes to  navigating these walls, we want to know how.  Let me first start off by describing.  How a wall gets built, and then we'll talk about how to get past them. 

So,  the wall of awful is built from emotional bricks, right? Every time we fail, we get a failure brick in our wall. And along with the failure brick, we get a disappointment brick.  And we get,  possibly, a rejection brick. Because that disappointment brick is not just for ourselves, we also get one for everybody whose opinion of us matters as it relates to this particular failure. 

So if we're feeling like, Oh man, my boss. Is going to be so mad at me and isn't going to like me anymore, or is maybe going to fire me because I screwed up on this thing at work.  There's a rejection brick. It doesn't matter if we've been rejected. It doesn't matter if our boss is disappointed in us. It only matters that we think that that's going to happen. 

We'll find out when we talk to him whether it really did or not.  But those bricks land anyway, unless we're careful and we talk back to those.  Voices in our head that are like you're  like, Jim is going to be so mad at us. He's going to fire us. This is our last chance. We're done.  Yeah, but is that true? Maybe it's not. Maybe they're what that was true a year and a half ago, but  since then we've improved and everything is going smoothly. And this is the first time we've messed up in a year and a half and we're reacting to it.  In the same way that we would have back then, even though it's not a valid reaction and we should be working to respond instead. 

Things along those lines are what we want to be paying attention to. These walls that get built by these negative emotions, some of them are valid. Some of them we can talk back to and maybe reduce their strength  or keep them from landing entirely.  When it comes to those of you who are bosses or parents.

You can help keep those bricks from landing for the people who you're with, right, for your kids and your, your,  like, reports. By talking to them honestly and openly about like, yeah, you messed up, but it's, it's okay. It's not the end of the world. We can move on from this. It's just a small problem.  Folks with ADHD, with our rejection sensitivity, we tend to respond more strongly to failure  because what we're responding to really. 

Is the fear of rejection that is hiding behind that failure.  So  be prepared for that.  

The wall of awful is also a model  for the abstract concept of negative associations, right? Negative emotional associations.  It's a way to make that more concrete. It's a way to talk about difficult emotions  with our peers, with our kids, with our spouse, with our friend, with our boss, with our reports, with our co workers, with our clinicians, with our coaches, with whoever, right? 

It's a way to just think about this in a more concrete terms.  It's also a trauma model  and that matters. I really want to be clear. The wall of awful hides trauma.  So if you're thinking about what your walls of awful are, you might find that some stuff comes up for you.  If you don't have supports for that, be prepared to find them, right?

Be prepared that you might need to go find a clinician, find a mental health support person.  If that's not something that's in place for you right now, don't go overboard on trying to figure this stuff out because we don't want to end up going down a road that's not safe. For and particularly if you're doing this with someone else, like your kid or something, know that something might come up for your kid and be prepared to manage that stuff.

It doesn't have to be anything big. It can just be like, my teacher's really mean to me. You gotta be able to handle that.  When it comes to getting past the wall, there's five ways people try to get past the wall. Two of them don't work. One works but isn't healthy, and two work pretty well.  The first one that doesn't work is staring at the wall.

That's  a really big wall. I just, wow, it's so overwhelming. I don't want to go anywhere near it. I'm totally overwhelmed by this task. That's not useful.  The second one is  when we're looking at the wall and we're just sort of like,  I can go around that. I'm going to go around that. I'm going to try to go around it. 

You're not going around this wall. It's a metaphor, and it's infinitely wide. I know, because I made it up.  What's going to happen is you're just going to get distracted. You're going to end up doing something else instead.  So be prepared for that eventuality. Be prepared for like, oh, something else might happen that is not  what I want to be doing, right? 

When it comes to  the first way that gets us past it, this is where we're getting into some stuff that can be a little bit damaging.  You got the first two, we're just not getting anything done. The second one, we're going to get there. We're going to get to the other side,  but we're going to do damage on the way because the first way is smashing through the wall. 

We might smash inwardly, we might smash outwardly, but we are smashing and that is damaging.  So if you're someone who tends to go, I suck, what's wrong with me? Why am I the worst ever? I hate my ADHD. I hate the fact that I can't do anything. I'm such a bad dad, brother, husband,  employee, boss, whatever. If you're that person.

That's you smashing inwardly, right? Like if I can't do this, I don't deserve to fill in the blank.  If that's what happens,  you're going to use that energy and those emotions to crash through the wall. 

And you're going to probably engage with the task, but you will have hurt yourself in the process.  Not great, not useful. 

The first way that gets us to the other side of the wall that actually is useful and does work is to just climb the wall  and climbing the wall looks like  processing these emotions.  Sitting with the dread, right?  Dealing with the fact that this makes me uncomfortable, but I still have to do it.  What am I going to do about that?

How am I going to come to terms with this?  That is, like, workshops after workshops after workshops. I'm going to kind of gloss over that. But that's a big deal. It's not something that's necessarily easy to do.  So I want to honor the fact that this is bigger than what I'm talking about right now.  The second way to get past it, that it works and is healthy, is to put a door in the wall.

That's just changing your emotional state.  So, those of you who are like, I need to go to the gym, I gotta go to the gym, and you're not going to the gym, and then you turn on Metallica, or, I don't know, tupac, or the Rocky iV soundtrack, and you're off to the races, now you can activate, because the music is getting you going, that's putting a door on the wall.

Music is great for that, because music is built  to affect us emotionally. That's its, pretty much its entire job. 

So that's the wall of awful, right? We just, there's these barriers that get in our way.  It's important that we know that they're there when it comes to goal setting. It's important to know how we typically respond to them  when it comes to goal setting. It's important that we know what do we have walls of awful for when it comes to goal setting. 

Because those walls of awful are going to get in the way. We're going to have to be able to come up with ways to get past them.  And that's where we're going to start with our goal setting.  The first tier of goal setting.  is not writing down the goal necessarily.  The first tier of goal setting is figuring out what your motivation is. 

What's going on? What is motivating you to get to this goal?  Are you trying to move towards something? Or are you trying to move away from something? Or maybe you're doing both, right? Like, I'm trying to get into better shape. That's me moving towards something.  But I'm also moving away from being in not good shape and, and away from not feeling as strong as I would like and being heavier than I would like. 

So it's both, right? It's not just one thing. So sometimes we're moving towards, sometimes we're moving away, and sometimes we're doing a little bit of both. And that's useful. Because oftentimes when we're moving towards something, when we have a goal, moving towards something helps us start on the path  and then moving away helps us stay on the path.

There's all kinds of studies that are finding this. This is the case. We're often positively motivated initially, and then as we start going, we become more motivated by avoiding a consequence.  and avoiding the negative results of not doing the thing that we've now started to do.  Just know that. Sometimes your motivation is going to have to pivot. 

If we are moving towards something,  broadly speaking, so think about whatever goals you guys might have going on right now.  What is it that you're moving towards? Is it some purpose that you're trying to fulfill?  Is it, is that what's up? Are you like, this is my life's work. This is really important stuff.

I want to Like help animals,  manage the, better manage the environment,  be a useful person to my family, whatever the case may be,  be a better dad, be a better boss, be a better,  I don't know, carpenter.  So is there some, some purpose you're moving towards?  Also, is there a way that you want to feel, this is a really good one, if you're not and you have no idea where to go with goals,  start thinking about how do I want to feel this week, this month, this year,  how do I want to feel, do I want to feel  motivated all the time, do I want to feel committed, do I want to  Happy?

Do I want to feel strong? Do I want to feel healthy? How do I want to feel?  Once I know how I want to feel, now I can start figuring out what goals are going to help me feel that way.  And then connected to that, moving towards something, again,  are you trying to establish a new behavior? Are you moving towards some new habit in the hopes that this new habit will  pay dividends in the long run?

Right? Like, well, if I go to the gym three days a week,  I will feel healthier  and I want to feel healthier because one of my goals and purposes  this year is to earn my black belt.  So, going to the gym more often will make me feel healthier and more energetic and stronger. That will help me fulfill  earning my black belt. 

And earning my black belt will make me feel,  right, like it'll make me feel strong, it'll make me feel powerful, it'll make me feel good.  Like, whatever, right? It might make me feel like I got a little status out of the deal. I don't know.  Maybe you're moving away from something. Right. Maybe there's something you're trying to get out of or avoid. 

Is there a way you want to stop feeling? Right? Are you feeling some kind of way about something and you don't want to feel that way anymore? You don't want to feel useless. You don't want to feel ineffective.  You don't want to feel less than.  Guys, I am the longest ranking brown belt in my dojo.  I want to earn my black belt because I want to move away from being the longest ranking brown belt.

I just want to be black belt by now.  I took time off for a master's degree and starting a business and now I'm the longest ranking brown belt.  So some of my black belt is moving away  from being a brown belt. I'm kind of sick of being a brown belt.  You might also be moving away from a problem, right?

Maybe there's a problem and you're driven to solve it. You're like, we just got to fix this.  It's not okay that our budget is a mess and I just have to fix the budget. So I'm going to set goals that will help me improve the family budget or my own personal budget.  Or maybe there's a behavior that you're trying to end.

Maybe there's something that isn't serving you, right? Maybe you're drinking too much wine.  And you just want to drink less wine. Or maybe you get angry and fly off the handle at the drop of a hat. Or so you think. It's probably not really the drop of a hat. But maybe you want to get your emotional regulation improved and you want to change those behaviors.

That's moving away from something. That's okay too, right? So we want to be thinking about if we're moving towards something, what are the good feelings and emotions and, and, and benefits and rewards for moving towards that thing? 

And if we're moving away from something,  what are the emotions, probably painful emotions, and, and, sort of consequences,  maybe even punishments, that go along with the thing that we're trying to move away from? 

And being really clear on what those things are can help us follow through on our goals and figure out how to set them too.  Because maybe we've got a goal that isn't going to move us far enough away from something or isn't going to get us close enough to something else. 

Staying on this tier, this will be, we'll wrap it up here with Tier 1, these motivation things.  How do other people factor into your motivation?  Are you doing this for yourself? Are you doing it for other people? Is it both? Is it one or the other?  And also, are you doing this by yourself,  or are you doing it with other people?

Or maybe it could be sometimes both.  That matters too, because people with ADHD are often externally motivated. We don't, we're not always that great at motivating ourselves internally, unless we're interested in the thing and then it goes okay,  but our external motivation means we often need to be doing something for someone else  in order for us to prioritize it. 

Because then it increases the interest, it increases the urgency, and now, oh yeah, I'll do that for them,  even though I wouldn't do it for me, even though it's maybe the same thing, right, like,  there's plenty of people out there who couldn't quit smoking, couldn't quit smoking, couldn't quit smoking, and then they flipped it and said, I want to see my kid graduate, or get married, and all of a sudden they were able to quit smoking, because if they weren't doing it for themselves anymore, they were doing it for their kid,  that's,  something we need to pay attention to, right? 

Figure out when it comes to other people, are they going to help you? Are they going to hinder you? How much do you need those people involved in your goal setting? And should they know about what's happening? If they should, cool, talk to them. 

And when it comes to doing it with other, doing stuff with other people, you can always ask for help. That's always, always, always a choice.  We just don't always do it, especially when it comes to the men's ADHD support group, the ADHD essentials, people are often more moms. They're usually better at asking for help. 

Men are typically not that good at it. Cause we feel like we have to do everything by ourselves and that's just not the case. 

So men often are more likely to struggle asking for help.  Ask for it. I'm a guy who is not that great at asking for help too. I asked for help three times today for the same problem. So three different people.  It's working out right. I'm finally learning how to ask for help. It's taken me years and years and years.

But I want to throw that part out there too.  Tier two of goal setting.  Probably one you guys have heard about, but we're still going to talk about it because you can't talk about goal setting without doing it.  And that's SMART goals, right? We want to set SMART goals. SMART is an acronym. S M A R T.  The S stands for specific.

We want to have a specific goal. We want to get as clear as possible.  on our goal. So we really know what it is that we're doing. What,  what is my goal? Is my goal to quit smoking? Cool. When,  right? Like quitting smoking is not a goal.  We got to put a date on it. We got to go deep into what is, what do we mean by quitting smoking?

When do you smoke?  Where do you smoke?  How are you going to quit?  When are you going to quit by? Are you going to just stop tomorrow? Are you going to whittle down and go from three packs a day to what, to a pack, two packs a day to one pack a day? Well, I don't know. Like it depends on how that. How that habit works for you. 

The more clear we are on our goal, the easier it's going to be to visualize it, which is going to make it easier for us to get that motivation and those emotions on.  And it's going to be easier to attack that goal, because we're going to be able to know what are the steps, right? If we're clear on it, we can then figure out the steps that are going to lead us to the goal.  

M in SMART is measurable. We want to be able to quantify our results.  So, quitting smoking, right? Dope. How are we going to measure that? Are we measuring it by the number of packs per day going down? Is it just zero? Like how do we know when we, when we're done?  Or a goal that I have to set a lot of the time that I have to smart goal is my email.

I really struggle with my email trying to get better at it. One of the things I have to do is I have to say every day I am responding to five emails today at a minimum  because like there's days when I get three or four emails and that's it. And then there's days when I'm inundated and overwhelmed. 

So right now I'm rolling at about, I can do five emails a day and it's an okay pace, right?  I have a couple of days a week where I need to do 10. 

I had to make it measurable because when I just think I'm going to, I need to check my email, right? That doesn't work. Checking my email just means I read it and then I checked it, I guess. But reply to five emails is a very different animal and it gets me engaging with my emails in a different way.  We also want to make sure that our goals are achievable.

That's the A in SMART.  So is this something you can actually do? Are you actually capable of achieving this goal?  Right? I mentioned my goal of trying to get a black belt. By the end of the year, I intend to have my black belt. Is that achievable? Yeah, that's achievable. If I was a white belt, it wouldn't be, but I'm a brown belt. 

It's a little tight. I'm not totally positive that I'm going to be able to be ready because I have a lot of other things going on in my life that also factor into me getting a black belt.  I'm writing a book. I'm running online parent coaching groups. I'm With my friend Caroline later on, I have a podcast that I post.

My kids are freshmen in high school and need more help than they did. Like they sort of needed a lot of help at the beginning of the year. Then they didn't need any help anymore. And now we're back to them needing more help. So that's slowing me down a little bit. There's other stuff that factors into me achieving my, my black belt. 

I'll even something as basic as like, my wife wants to dance more. Yeah. My wife matters to me. I'm going to go dancing with her.  Cause that relationship is important to me and we enjoy dancing together. So I will sometimes put down a Kempo thing. in order to go dancing with, with Amy. Or I might put down an ADHD thing to go dancing with my wife, which then means I need to put down a Kempo thing later so that I can pick up the ADHD thing when I would otherwise do the Kempo thing. 

We gotta know, is this goal achievable?  I'm hoping the black belt thing is, cause man, I'm sick of being a brown belt.  But it means I have to be focused and  really attend to it.  

Then the R in SMART is relevant. 

Is this goal relevant? 

If anything, that's where the black belt one might fall down and that makes it less achievable, right? Because relevant means are you prioritizing this goal? Is this a goal that matters enough for you  to make it a priority?  I just rattled off a whole lot of stuff that I could theoretically be prioritizing over earning my black belt.

And that's relevancy.  If any one of those things would just slow down, I could  earn my black belt in a heartbeat.  But I have a lot of different tendrils of attention  dancing around in my life with various things I need to focus on.  That means that the thing that is fun,  like, is the thing that's going to get put down more often than not.

And as important as Kempo is to me, it's, it's a fun thing. It's a hobby.  It's not something that's going to earn me money. It's not something that's going to, like, help my family be healthier and better.  So sometimes it's the thing that I can't prioritize as much as I might want to.  And it's also a thing that requires a ton of practice in order to get good at. 

These things combine, right? The relevancy matters.  The last letter is T. That's our final letter for SMART. And that  means time bound. That's what it stands for.  We got to put a deadline on our goal. We have to know when. When are we done? So my sensei tests for black belt in the summer and in the winter. I don't think I'm going to be ready by the summer.

I don't think I'm going to be physically in the kind of cardio shape that I need to be in.  But I can swing it by the winter.  So  I'm aiming for the black belt at the end of the winter. So like roughly a year from now, a little bit less. It'll be December.  That time bound stuff matters, right?  My email goal is the same way.

That's a daily goal. Every day reply to at least five emails, maybe 10.  Time bound. That's every day. Every day I'm doing that. One of the things I need to do for the black belt is put black belt goals every day, right? Like practice. One pinion practice, five kata,  do a bunch of pushups, go run a mile, whatever.

I need to plug stuff in daily  so that I'm building towards my black belt. Cause excellence, excellence is built with consistency,  mostly. I need to get more consistent  with that particular goal. 

Moving into tier three.  Tier three is something called a premortem.  Some of you might have heard of this if you're like engineering and stuff or big in a business, big business stuff.  A premortem is when we 

look at our goal, look at the thing we want to do,  and then pretend that it went horribly wrong. Like everything blew up in our face. 

And then we go, all right, why?  Right? So the first step is,  we've got this goal. How are we going to accomplish this goal? How? What are the steps?  So we can't just say, I want to lose 20 pounds. Cool, how?  Are you going to eat different? Are you going to exercise? Are you going to cut your arm off? Like, how are you going to lose those 20 pounds? 

Once we know how,  then we can look at what are the steps involved, right? Like, if I eat terribly right now, I need to lose 20 pounds.  Is it realistic of me to say I'm just going to eat salad for lunch every day? Probably not.  But can I eat one cookie instead of two cookies? Probably I can do that. Can I add a salad to go along with my hamburger that I eat at lunch every day?

Probably yes.  Could that mean I could have a smaller hamburger? Yeah, that probably I could do that. Right, like these kinds of things.  We want to be as detailed as we feel is appropriate. And really, like, be a little more detailed than you feel like you need to be, because most of you have ADHD, and you're either going to get really detailed, and if that's you, maybe  pump the brakes, but most ADHD folks are less detailed.

We need to be a little more. My ADHD autism folks, probably you can be a little less detailed, unless that helps you motivate and activate.  Step two of the premortem, once you've got this plan, is we go, cool, let's think about how this could go off the rails. Why might this blow up in my face?  Be as bananas as you want. 

If you want to like go, well, an asteroid could hit the earth. Sure, cool. Do that, right? A safe could fall on my head. All of these things could happen. But once you're done being ridiculous,  bring it back down to earth and think about what's realistic, right? What might happen situationally that could undermine you achieving your goal?

I did this earlier when I talked about my black belt, right? I might have to prioritize my kids over ADHD. Which might mean I have to prioritize my black belt, my, I might have to prioritize ADHD over my black belt. I think the example I used was dancing with my wife, but the kid one is also there, right?

There's a cascade effect that happens when one thing interrupts something else,  then that goes down, right? It just keeps rolling down the hill till the thing that is least important. is the one that gets kicked off.  Also, let's be honest with ourselves and think about how our ADHD may undermine our facing down of this goal.

What might it do  to make it harder for us to achieve this goal?  It's going to do something.  If, if ADHD wasn't getting in the way, we wouldn't have ADHD,  but we're living life on hard mode. And as long as we are living life on hard mode,  we may as well be honest about it. Right? I might not  do the best job checking my email because I might forget.

I might not lose 20 pounds because I tend to eat impulsively,  or I tend to forget to pack a healthy lunch and then I end up eating something crappy on the road because my job. takes me all over the place, right?  Now we've got the situation of you travel around a lot for your job  being added into ADHD,  which is causing you to often forget to pack a healthier lunch. 

That might mean we need to systematize packing a healthy lunch.  What other habits or tendencies do you have that could undermine achieving your goal? What else might get in the way, right?  If you have a habit of always having a cup of coffee with a whole lot of cream and sugar and stuff in it every morning,  it's gonna make it harder to lose some weight. 

If you  Have a habit of  like, not dressing your best, but you're also trying to go out there and be and impress folks, but that might undermine things, right? Maybe, maybe the environment you're going out into  requires a shirt and tie and a suit and you're like, but I really like hoodies and you're wearing a button up, but there's no tie and there's no suit code.

It's a button up with a hoodie over it. If that's what's going on, but it doesn't suit it.  The  the environment that you're traveling into that might cause some problems, right? So  what are your habits and tendencies and how might they undermine  in big and small ways?  And are there any plausible unexpected events that might undermine your goal? 

This is really my way of saying what haven't you thought of right? Like what what have you not thought of that is probably something that could happen or at least maybe  Because as ADHD folks we get stuck in a rut sometimes and we get really drilled down  Into this is what's going to happen, right? And then we don't necessarily draw the connections we might want to draw.

This happened with this workshop for me.  It's not the perfect example, but it's a pretty good one.  We had this booked for Tuesday at first, Shane and I.  And I was just compartmentalizing, like, I looked at the date, I was like, cool, the 23rd is dope, like, I'm clear on that Tuesday. I probably didn't look at the date, I probably just looked at my calendar.

I'm clear on that Tuesday, is it the 23rd? Okay, cool, let's book it for the Tuesday.  Because what I was doing was going  When do I have open slots? Wednesday, I tend to spend with my kids. Thursday is Kempo. I'm not there right now because I'm here. Friday is unpredictable because kids have friends over, friends of ours want to see each other.

That makes it hard to do something quiet like this. Monday is maybe an option, but I don't think that, I think there's another reason on the men's ADHD support group why Monday didn't work. So I'm like, Tuesday, cool, let's do it.  And then, I don't know, like two days later, I looked at my calendar because I was scheduling stuff for my kid's birthday. 

which was Tuesday.  I just didn't make that connection when we first booked this pork shop. So we had to change the date to today, which meant I had to skip Kempo, which is fine, right? But there's that cascade effect. Kempo is the thing that gets skipped.  At least I'm consistent. So we want to think about, like, what might we be missing? 

Because we do, we compartmentalize. I just, I was in work mode. My kid's birthday is family mode.  The wires didn't cross, right? It just didn't work out. 

Once we've done all of that with our goal,  then we want to determine our failure points. So step three of a premortem is let's determine the failure points.  What are the things that are most likely to occur?  And what are the things that, if they do occur, will have the most severe consequences?  And if they're the same, great.

That's kind of best. But sometimes you've got something that's unlikely, but if it does happen, it's going to be a horrible nightmare. And other stuff that will probably happen, but it's not that big of a deal, and we can kind of roll with it. We want to know what those things are so we can plan for them.

Step four is planning proactively.  We want to plan on ways to manage and maybe completely avoid whatever those failure points are.  How are we going to navigate this stuff? How can we  dodge some stuff? Absorb some other things?  What's the plan? How are we going to do that? And if we can develop single strategies that are going to address multiple challenges. 

That's the best case scenario.  Going to the gym three days a week is one of those for me.  When I go to the gym, I am hitting a bunch of my goals. I'm working towards losing weight. I'm working towards getting into better physical shape so I can do the black belt stuff.  Also, it helps me focus and be more productive during the day. 

So the more often I get my cardio in, I get my weight lifting in, the better off I am.  It's a, it's a single strategy that hits a bunch of my goals and helps me avoid a bunch of pitfalls. 

It's great. I just wish that I had.  the kind of time I need to be doing it more than three times a week.  Step five of the premortem  is to keep the possible challenges that are,  that you're not addressing directly in the back of your mind. Right? What is, what's the stuff that you thought of, but it seems unlikely, so it's  not really a priority.

We're not going to plan for it. We'll just kind of  know it's there. We don't want to not plan for it and then pretend it doesn't exist.  We want to recognize that it might happen and be  a little ready with something small or, or at least we know, okay, cool. We won't get caught in an emotional storm because we're like, I knew this could have happened.

I just didn't plan for it. Let's keep those things in the back of our mind, so they don't catch us off guard. And throw us for a loop,  so that is the wall of awful. That's 3 tiered goal setting. I'm a little early, but that's probably okay.  What are your questions? Let's do  we'll just go deep on questions. 

So  I've got a question on this one because we were kind of talking about it beforehand. And so I'm going to take executive privilege and jump in front of everybody. This gives y'all time to think of y'all's questions. So, one of the things that I've always been trying to figure out was,  how, so my goal setting is really weird, I mean, it's very easy for me to goal set when I'm doing it on behalf of other people, it's what made me a great project manager, but for some reason I've never been able to apply any actual consequences or rewards for myself that really mean anything.

I don't know why, but that's just not something that clicks for me. Like I don't get the same dopamine reward if I'm achieving something on my own versus achieving it on other people's, which is  probably a people pleasing thing, but it's just not measurable for me to 

I'm with you. I have similar challenges.

So whenever you are doing that, how do you, how do you utilize that? Right? Setting goals for other other people or using that as a reason for you setting goals for other people and not cross over into the people using abusive. Self, yeah, yeah, 

yeah aspect,  a  couple of things 1, I don't have a history of being in an abusive relationships, so I have some level of inoculation on that.

Some degree. I don't know about you, but just for those of anyone who's listening who's wondering about that so that's there.  One thing that works for me, this is gonna sound so obnoxious, like so obnoxious, but I wanna, I'm gonna say it anyway.  I've done enough work in my career now that people tell me that I do good stuff, right? 

And, and I know that that is true for you too, Shane, so I'm gonna, I'm just gonna say that out loud at you.  Own that! I don't like, yeah, I'm dope. Like, I'm really good at this.  Like I am amazing and that's good. Right. And.  I don't mean that obnoxiously, because I will also own all of the ways that I trip and fall down, and all of the ways that I suck, right?

To me, if I'm going to own that stuff as hard as I do,  Taoism and balance says that I must also own the things that I'm good at, and accept that that is true for me. And this is a weird way to approach stuff, but hear me out.  Sometimes, I am doing something. That is for me, right?  But that's not motivating. 

But you know what is motivating? Is doing it in a way that other people will see it. And then they'll be like, that was cool! And then I'm like, yeah it was! So I'm doing it for me, but I'm kind of doing it for other people. Like I'm, I'm sometimes looking for the praise. Cause the praise means that I've impressed someone else. 

And that allows me to execute on the thing that I'm trying to do. Does that make sense?  

In fact this makes me sit here and think of just that thing that happens to so many of us. I think I said something very similar to somebody else earlier this week,  which is like, recognize your greatness that you're already doing.

Like, and  I hate that sometimes, like how often, and this is for everybody, how often have you given somebody else advice that you yourself are just like, Completely not doing  and  I did, I literally did this last week 

and  playing around with this a little bit more, right? Like, sometimes I have to go 2 and 3 layers deep to make what I'm doing be for someone else,  right?

Like,  my parent groups are not launching that great right now. And some of that is I've been prioritizing other things over chasing people down to sign them up and not pretend that isn't true because I'm having trouble motivating myself to do that stuff.  Because I've been putting off these things that I'm doing for years,  and they have to happen, so I'm kind of trying to balance the two, my balance isn't great. 

I have to go, alright, I've got to launch the parent groups, because money.  I am not a person who is motivated by money, I do not care, it's not a thing that is important to me. But. My wife will feel a heck of a lot safer if we have more money in the bank  and my kids will be able to, like, have better experiences if we have a little more money in the bank, right? 

So me focusing on that stuff, that next tier down, now me doing my ADHD work. isn't for me, even though it is. It's for my family because they're going to pay the dividends of whatever is going on. And I have to go that deep a lot of the time because I'm just not a guy who's motivated by money. And I have to think about, well, if we have a little more money, that means we could do this, do that.

Even things like, man, if I can make a little more money, I can donate more money to the men's ADHD support group, right? Like that's a genuine motivator for me. That's a real motivator, and I've, I've hired a buddy who lost his job, so I also have the motivation of, if I can make more money, I can hire him on for more hours, pay him more, help him and his family feel safer, like that, those are the kinds of things that I have to pay attention to,  so that I can do the stuff that I'm sometimes struggling with when it comes to activation. 

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Sam had asked earlier in the chat. How do you restart when you start, fail, and then fail again?  Oh, I wish I would answer this question. Oh my god, I love this question so much.  

Like some, some of it,  how do you restart when you start, fail, and then fail again?  So, first, start different.  That's step one, right? Like, I just gave you some new things to do. Do a pre mortem with whatever you're failing at,  because you have data. You failed twice at that thing. That's awesome, because that tells you  a little bit what you're, what you're facing and what, how you're failing, right?

Maybe there's a pattern in there. Usually we need three to find a pattern, but we can extrapolate from two.  If, if it's the same thing, cool. What does that mean? Does that mean this isn't a thing worth doing and I should try something else? Does that mean that this is still something worth doing and I can figure it out, but I have to think harder and plan more before I execute? 

Possibly  like that, that kind of stuff. What one thing we can do is we can stop looking at failure as the end,  like failure can be success if we're getting information from it, learning from it, and able to move forward. I, I, but I want to say like.  The cushion for failure varies person to person  and family to family, right?

I don't want to, I don't want to pretend that like someone who does not have much money has as much space for failure as someone who has a lot of money  because they just don't. And I want to honor that up front. But the more we can learn from our failures, the more we can roll on into success.  And, and also like your failure doesn't have to reflect on you.

It doesn't have to be your fault. It doesn't have to make you a bad person. It just, it's just.  Like, learn, right? Failure typically comes from a lack of skills or a lack of resources.  What are the skills and or resources that you're missing?  How do you get them?  Reengage once you've got them.  And Shane, if you've got thoughts on this, like, I don't have to be the only person who knows stuff.

Yeah, 

so you touch, I mean, you've definitely talked about it. Like, look, we need to understand that failure is literally the only way we grow.  That's it. There's no way we get anywhere as a person, as a family, as a business, or as a society, unless we fail,  right?  And a lot of us get stuck in that comfortable bubble of safety.

Which means we may have cut off a lot of people around us. We may just be kind of in our bubble of, I don't have to try hard because if I try hard, I'll fail and I don't have to do that. So I'll just be in my bubble. And this is where we have to start really breaking through once we understand. Our motivations, why we do things.

We talked about this in the Dr. Dodson things, NICU, novel, interesting, challenging, urgency, passions. Once we start understanding that, that's how we start taking these chances using, using our motivation factors, not the things that we were taught as kids, because a lot of us were taught incorrectly. And so we have to use, utilize our own skills.

So when you're looking at that failure,  take time to go through and figure out how can I make this novel?  How can I make this interesting? How can I challenge myself? The time bound is especially important, important to this, because that's what gives us the urgency of. Being able to follow through with it.

And like,  you know, whenever you're thinking about the  relevant, is this follow a passion that you really have Brendan talked about it. He's passionate about karate, but is he more compassionate about karate than is he is educating people on ADHD  or working with people or group coaching or teaching or things of that nature.

Where's the passion levels at. And that's how we prioritize things. Not so much by a.  Like a, you know, 24 hour time period. Yeah. And 

did you fail at it or is it just not important enough right now? Right. And that's okay. It's okay. If stuff isn't important enough right now, like  I've been a brown belt for like 10 years, like an excessive amount of time.

I've been a brown belt because it wasn't important enough. It was more important that I got a master's degree. It was more important that I started a new business. It was more important that I helped my kid when he was struggling with mental health issues. Like that stuff all one. And all of that stuff. 

Amounts to almost all of those 10 years.  So  it wasn't me not prioritizing it when I had the space to prioritize it. It was just. I didn't always have that space. 

Yeah, 

The other thing I was gonna say about that just popped in my head as you were talking. Did you fail because you didn't ask for help?

I know, I know Brendan said that, but we need to really be clear on that one. A lot of the times there's things that we could do if we asked for help from people. And again, as men, that is something we struggle with. Steve, you had a question. And if 

you've been offered help? Take it. Yeah.  Steve, go ahead. 

So, I'm trying to think of how to phrase this, but how, how do you come to peace with like mourning the things you have to sacrifice to meet your goals? Because  like when I'm setting my goals, you know, rationally and if I can get there emotionally, I know  like that the things I want to achieve are much more important than X, Y, and Z over here.

But like with ADHD,  I already feel like  just like this. That this like  I have this unfair thing on me where I just don't get to do as much as other people, you know, I like,  I love video games and I only like  last year I like I probably only like played four video games and now I have like a 14 week old and like, yeah, no, that's not happening this year and  like I want to be able to like,  like enjoy these things in life that I enjoy but like  But knowing that this other thing I've agreed earlier is more important, and in my heart I know it's more important, but you know,  not in the moment. 

How do you handle that? 

 I'm  a unique cat when it comes to this stuff, so  I want to own that up front. But this might be helpful.  I handle that because I  do my level best to live my values.  And I've been that way since I was a kid.  So that's part of why I'm a little bit of a unique cat in here. Integrity is incredibly important to me. 

So,  when I'm making decisions, even if I'm not aware of it, they're almost always based in value.  So if I'm not going to play video games, right,  because they're not a value. They might be a want, they might be a fun thing, they might be nice to have. But they're not lining up with any of the values that are the most important ones for me. 

So my values are my family, my values are helping other people.  I have value around, like, learning and teaching and that kind of stuff.  Fun  doesn't really  land as a value for me,  which doesn't mean that it can't for other people, right? You might value that, and that's great. There's no criticism at all. 

But no, right? Like, no, what are your values? And what, where's the conflict within those values? Because  sometimes that happens, right? We can have that occur. And that might be what part of what you're talking about is you're like, you know what? I really do value leisure time. I value mental health. I value self care, like, and that's what video games are for you. 

Dope. Great. I love that.  Maybe it's social time with friends and you value that. Also great.  What's the other value that's conflicting that you're putting  that's causing you to prioritize this other stuff over it? Or  maybe after talking to me, you're like, you know what? I feel like I can prioritize video games because. 

I see how that lines up with my values. I see how that is in line with self care. When I play video games, I am less stressed and anxious.  And that allows me to then  present to the world in the way that I want to present, that I don't get to do when I don't play video games as much.  And so, turns out I should be valuing and prioritizing video games and I haven't been and that's been causing some anxiety and internal conflict for me.

Like that totally could be what's going on. So a lot of the time the answer for me is values and like, what are your values and how does that work?  And  that, but sometimes they conflict and that's tricky, right? I'm trying to value my stuff. Video games would be an example of that, right? Like I, sometimes when I'm overwhelmed, I go play Breath of the Wild  and I'm like, I'm, I need to decompress. 

I'm bad at prioritizing my stuff. And, and so  I'm trying to treat it as a value so that I can do it better so I can then present more effectively in all of the other ways that I help the world. Am I answering this in a way that's  useful? Useful. 

I'm not sure. Like, it, it,  I definitely had, like, my brain definitely works differently.

Like it is a value of mine, like joy and self care and like are. But also, that's not always the reason that I'll turn on a video game. And I guess that's partly just ADHD and like, 

Some of it might be scheduling too. Like, like when, maybe you could sit down and go, when can I actually play video games?

You might have more time to do it than you think, but it might be in times that you don't always associate with video games. Maybe you're like, you play video games in the evening. Turns out you've got an hour every morning that you could be playing video games, but you don't look at it that way. Cause you'd think of video games as being an evening activity.

I don't know. I'm just, yeah, but that might be there too. 

I want to jump in here because I'm with you, Steve. Okay. So gaming for me is something that is a high priority. It's something that is integral to my healing process from burnout and trauma and stuff like that, because. It is just me getting away from the world.

It's very similar to why I play Dungeons and Dragons. I get to be other things. But I'm not masking myself in the real world.  I get to put on my mask and use them for fun. So that's one of the ways that my therapist and I really worked out. How do I stop masking so much?  Give myself permission to mask here, which is fine.

And it's for fun and do my best to start pulling that person out of that real me out in, in, in, in the real world and just try to have fun and be comfortable in that that person, which honestly, I'm not gonna lie to you has taken me a decade, right? And I've seen a massive amount of improvement once I joined the men's group and was around people who got me right.

And we've seen this in our weekly calls and everything, but. You know, as far as, like, timing wise, it's exactly what Brendan said. Like, I'm, I used to sit here and think of gaming being my evening  thing. However, my evening thing is when I'm most creative. I need to use that time for something constructive.

So, I've gotten used to, and I, this is something I tell my clients, plan for two hours of  fuckery out of every day.  Put two hours somewhere in there in a block where if Your kids needs to get picked up because they're sick of school or your wife needs you to do this thing or you forgot to Do this thing if you plan for that every day  Then  if you don't need it It's extra time to do something you enjoy or to pull one of them old tasks out that you want to do That's not really that important, but you can go ahead and knock it out or you can play a video game  Right?

Yeah. You're kind of rewarding yourself for setting up the structure in your day, being productive for the 5 to 6 hours that you are naturally going to be productive and then 2 hours just in case something comes up.  

And we did, you did that Monday. We rocked out for like 2 hours doing productive stuff over zoom, just by doubling each other.

And then at like 12 o'clock, you were like, I'm going to 1 o'clock. You're like, I'm going to go do some video games and decompress and reset. I'm like, 

yeah. 

 And that's what video games are for me. Is that decompression or reset. I will say this, the joy of having dual monitors, I can also have one of my education things that I'm learning about nonprofits going off over here.

And I'm kind of osmosis learning from it. And I'm playing something mindless, like grim Dawn. So  Andy, you had a question. 

Yeah, I did actually. Well, more of a comment. You know, you talk about allowing for that 2 hours of fuckery a day. I've always,  I've always kind of, I guess use the metaphor that my brain is a horse.  A plow horse and I've just been riding it hard all day. Well, you know, when,  when a horse is done with his work for the day, they take the gear off and what's he do?

He goes out in the field and he rolls around.  He, you know, he he gets himself refreshed  and  you know, we work  twice as hard than neurotypicals. 

At achieving the same accomplishments. So,  you know, we should be twice as tired and it's a good  way to just let that, you know, let, let your brain go for a while. My thing is half hour of tick tock videos and then maybe reading stuff, you know,  but I've, you know, I've been behind the steering wheel for. 

11 hours. I've been in a hyper focus  I'm, I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I need that fuckery, you know? Yeah. That's all 

I had.  

Yeah. And I'm not being critical of that. Like I genuinely not, right. Like I don't, I hope I didn't come across that way. Um,  it, it, it's all in what your values are. Right. And I, I'm not saying that, that self care and goofing around and doing, and that stuff isn't a value.

It, it is and it's an important one because it's part of how we reset and really. Really, it's not even that you're, like, the value there is self care.  It, the video games or whatever, it's just the window dressing. And as long as it's not getting in the way,  you're good, right? Because, I mean, you could also make a case that, like, well, a glass of wine is self care.

Yeah, but a whole bottle. Now we're starting to have some problems, right? Same idea with video games. As long as you're controlling it and spending an appropriate amount of time on it, and it's not getting in the way of doing the other things you need to do, you're good.  

Well, 

and I don't feel like you know, you can't let it interfere with those other responsibilities, you know, take the time that you need, but don't take too much  you know, you need to,  you know, you need to prioritize things and yeah, we need that break, we need that  hour or two of mindlessness, but then.

Get back at your responsibilities because,  you know, at the end of the day, there's still more day to go.  

And I only bring up the time thing because I've certainly worked with clients who,  they were like, five, six hours of video games a day.  How come you're not getting anything done? You're not getting anything done because you're spending five or six hours on video games a day. 

You can't. You don't have enough hours in the day.  

I will say on that one, I do have to set an alarm. And, and, Me and Alexa have a good relationship she is my other wife, my wife knows about her, it's a polyamorous thing, y'all can deal with it. However, I get to yell at her, because she's a computer,  and until Skynet goes in place, I'm good.

So, it's much better for me to get mad at Alexa for telling me, hey, you've got 15 minutes to play your game.  I can live with that because my wife isn't having to come in here and tell me you've got 15 minutes on your game and having to take on that responsibility. Right. And my wife has been so amazing for me.

And I kind of said this about this in a chat, part of how I get myself to do things that are things I don't enjoy are because I know that. So a lot of these things that I don't enjoy doing, my wife would appreciate. And she's been so good to me that she deserves me to really try and move forward and be the husband that I can be for her.

And that's hard  because a lot of my brain sits here and says, you're not worth her.  Right. And we heard that as from childhood on, we hear that all the time. You're not worthy. And she's always worked so hard to make me feel worthy. And I got to respect that. And that's one of those things that secondary.

Importance can actually help us if we put it into NICUP, right? Novel, interesting. This is the challenge I have for myself. And she gives me deadlines that help me quantify when she needs things done in a kind manner with grace. Right. And that's, that's a passion for me. So this is kind of how we have to twist things to make sure that that works within our strengths. 

Since this is the men's ADHD support group,  and I think we only got one. Person here from my world.  I'm going to  pivot out of ADHD for that one and pivot into man  for a second.  Here's what's up. If you feel like you are in a situation where your spouse or who your job or whatever where you're like I'm not worthy because ADHD has been said or having ADHD has caused that message to get sent to you a lot 

You know, I like tap into that man stuff a little bit and go earn worthy  Like, look at it from that angle, right, like,  cause I hear, I get that, right, I was playing above my head when I got my wife, playing way above my head when I married my wife.  In terms of like, she's, she's made more money than I have the whole time. 

I, but I earned worthy, right, like I figured out what my contributions were and what I brought to the table.  And how I could earn my worthy of my being worthy of her.  And, and  probably my wife has felt that way at times too, but it's very much a man,  like male culture and male value stuff comes up with like, you got to earn it and pay your dues and brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr, brr.

Like that stuff. Tap, like, tap into that in a healthy way, not in a toxic way. Tap into that a little bit and see how that reframes stuff. Instead of going, I'm not worthy, I just suck.  I'll go earn worthy then. Like, if I'm not, I'll just go earn it. Do do do. Right? That might be useful. 

Any other questions that are out there? By the way, Brendan, thank you very much. I appreciate that.  Any other questions out there for anybody? Feel free to ask them.  If not, I'm just going to sit here and start riffing and bouncing ideas off of Brendan.  

Yeah,  I'm looking through the chat and seeing what's been being talked about too. 

It's a lot of like, strategies and stuff.  

Oh, Steve, you asked, you said about I need an alarm and usually need someone else to know that I plan on stopping at the time. The alarm won't cut it.  I actually have a trick on this 1 that worked for me because the alarm is too easy for me to snooze.  So, I got an app called Alarm Clock Extreme it's X T R M E M E. 

All of my alarms are defaulted to having to solve a mathematical equation to be turned off.  And I'm,  and my phone is loud enough that if it's on, and that alarm goes off, and even if I have my headphones on, my wife will hear it, and then she'll get to come in here and tell me, or something along those lines, or my kids will hear it, and they'll come in like, Daddy, your alarm's going off, right?

So sometimes we actually have to make the alarm more difficult to turn off.  Or more, you know, or something along those lines, or have redundant alarms, because that can be a thing too. 

I had four at my wedding. Make sure I woke up I 

got another one.  

I got it. I got another idea.  Feel free to hate this, like all of my ideas. 

You could, if you have trouble getting out of video games,  theoretically, if you have a coffee maker,  you could set the timer on your coffee maker so that it will start.  Like three or four minutes after you need to be done playing video games,  and then just don't put the pot under the coffeemaker. 

You're trying to 

burn my house. You're trying to burn down my house. If you don't stop playing 

video games and go put that pot underneath that coffeemaker, you're gonna have a mess in your kitchen.  

The Men's ADHD Support Group do not support burning down your kitchen. It's not gonna 

burn anything down. It's just gonna pour coffee all over your counter and floor. 

I will say another thing for me, Steve was having a voice actually say it, which is why I actually lean on Alexa. There's a difference in our brain when we hear a dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad. That's annoying. Having somebody actually say something can actually trigger it out of our heads.  

So, and I use a three tier thing for Alexa too, not just for goal setting.

I have three tiers for Alexa  where when I set my Alexa for a reminder, the first reminder goes.  Brendan, this is your reminder,  go stop playing video games, right?  The second one says no, the first one says this is your reminder, stop playing video games.  The second one says this is your reminder, Brendan, stop playing video games. 

And the third one goes, this is your reminder, oh my god, stop playing video games.  And so it like escalates, kind of, I mean, it's like a robot voice. So there's no emotional content, but the, Oh my God, is me trying to put that in there  and that helps, it helps me know where we are. 

I will say when I, when I say that I need someone help me get out of video games, it's that's not a, that's something I do proactively and it actually helps me a lot as I will say, like, I will tell someone that I, I. I want to be off by a certain time and I don't, I I importantly don't make them get me.

If I'll not finish that, I'll don't lie to us. Sorry. This is a safe place. . I'll not make them ask me to go off. I will I will say.  If it's my wife, I'll say like, I'm going to be off at this time. And she sees me get  stopped playing video games.  And if she's not around, I will text someone and say, Hey, at nine o'clock I'm going to stop playing and I'm going to send you a text and let you know, I'm done playing.

If I know it's a night that I really need to be done at a certain time, I can't do that like every single time I play, but that's usually the most powerful thing for me. And  I mean, That'll only work if you're not honest and I'm not going to lie about something that 

trivial. 

Yeah, right. I mean, and honestly, what you're describing is what I do use Alexa for is because yes, I can like logically and all that stuff, but there is something about the tone, like the, the words coming out that really does resonate with me the same way as if I was to get somebody to text me or something like that.

But that's because.  I mean, if you don't find Alexa important, then it's not going to register for you. So that's why I was like, these are suggestions and to think about different ways of doing things  as far as that's 

concerned. 

And also, there's nothing wrong, right? Like, like, you're in the chat, you're talking about you want to.

You want someone to see that you're not playing the switch game anymore. You want that acknowledgement and that credit. There is nothing wrong with that,  right? Like that. And knowing that that's a motivator is important because we can use it.  I,  for the, I now do the dishes kind of whenever I can, right?

Like I just do them on my own. But for the longest time, and Sam, who is coming from ADHE Essentials World, heard me, has heard me tell this story many, many times, because she's been to a lot of my workshops. I would do the dishes when my wife came home, because I needed that credit, right? Like, I would, my wife came home around 4.

30 at the time, she gets home a little later now, different job, but 4. 30. And so around 4. 30, I'd be kind of hovering in the kitchen, just waiting for her to pull in the driveway. And I would immediately turn the water on and start doing dishes.  Because I needed her to see me doing the dishes. I needed that kind of credit.

Which I fully, like, acknowledge is bananas, right? Because if my wife leaves the house and there's dishes in the sink, and she comes home and there's no more dishes in the sink, It's not like someone broke into our house and did the dishes, right? Like, obviously I did the dishes, but that's not enough. It's not immediate enough for my brain.

I need the immediate credit. I need her to see me doing the dishes. And,  like, if my wife was more of a cheerleader than she is, it might have been different. But my wife is not someone who's going to be like, Hey, you did the dishes! Yay! Right? Like, she's not going to do that. She's going to be like, move on with her life, right?

But I need that dopamine, right? That credit gets me the dopamine. That acknowledgement gets me the dopamine.  It's part of my treatment plan, because my Concerta also gets me dopamine.  And so, like, when I talk to, to married couples and stuff, like, and parents, I'm like, yeah, be their cheerleader, because it's part of their treatment plan.

It doesn't mean you're belittling, it doesn't have to be that you're belittling them or being, like, giving them credit for something that they shouldn't get that much credit for, like, all that stuff. No, you're rewarding them neurologically in a way that they can't reward themselves. And, and sometimes we can do it on our own, which I know that they saw me and that lets me feel like I get credit.

I'm, I'm a guy who's credit too, man. There's a reason that I do all this public speaking.  

Yeah. 

And I think you're doing 

a great job tonight. Yeah.  

Like I, that's one of the things I've always been so that when I was sitting here talking about this earlier, like one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about making my wife happy and saying that she deserves it is from literally early on in a relationship.

She said, what do you need for me?  I was like, and of course.  I, of course, when she asked me that, I had no fucking clue what I needed from her, because that's, that was an on the spot question, I had no clue. But anyways, the more that I thought about it, the more safer I felt around her, I started telling her the things I needed.

And one of them was, I needed to know if I'm doing a good job,  right? If I sit here and I say I'll be done in ten minutes, and I get done in ten minutes,  You know,  great, thank you.  And she goes, oh, I did that anyways, don't worry about it, I got you. But, I could then tell that she actively went out of her way to make sure that when she came home and saw that the additions were done, she said something about the kitchen.

And she's done it for a decade now, and she's running strong. So, that's what I mean by, when we find those relationships, or when we find that way to go forward,  I kind of agree with Brendan here, or not kind of, but I agree with Brendan here.  It's okay to find acceptance from people outside of yourself to do that, because we've gotten so much non acceptance all of our lives.

There is a wave of awesome  that can be used to crash over the wall of awful. And that's more where you're going, right? Cause the wave of awesome and intentionally, right? A wave has momentum, a wave has energy in a way that stuff that is awful does not. So that's why that's the companion piece.

And it connects, of course, to my Today's Awesome stuff I do on Facebook and all that stuff. But, yeah. 

All right.  We don't have any other questions. So I'm gonna go ahead and wrap it up today.

I want to do some house The work at this point, we are a non profit organization, so please, please, please, if you feel that we have given you a lot of value today, please check out our men's ADHD support group dot org slash donate website, and that will give us the opportunity for Giving more donations or if you're interested in volunteering, we're really doing a big push for volunteer work that we have in place.

We have blogs that we're trying to get written from different perspectives, including women's perspectives on being married to a husband with ADHD and how. You supported them or how you've worked with them. That would be amazing perspective. We're looking for trans men representation. We'd love to get some trans men with ADHD to talk about what they have.

We'd love to get some educators and other coaches or psychiatrists or therapists who want to provide a library of knowledge for us to provide on the men's ADHD support group. We're looking for audio editors, video editors, people who can work with me on  Editing all of the different content that we're providing out there,  you know content creators like artists We would just love to have some work with that.

Even if you're a memer I would love to have some people out there who know how to use the memes and the Gifts to get the point across that we want  anything we're also looking for people to help us with administrative work along the lines of that similar stuff. So, if you go to the same website, feel free to volunteer if you'd like to the final thing is check out our meetup group. 

And our Facebook group for events that we have going up the next 1 that we have is going to be on our financial Friday with Rick Webster. And that is going to be actually going over financial goals, where we're going to talk about how to set up savings accounts that actually make you money, you know, relatively speaking, and talking about how to curb impulsive spending or things of that nature, how to get out of debt.

We're going to kind of cover a little bit of a whole gamut of that different stuff. And that's going to be February 2nd at 7pm.  So, Brendan, thank you so much for this. Greatly appreciate it. Thank you for having me.  Thanks everyone out there. There's a lot of stuff coming up for the men's group.

Please check out our newsletter. If you'd like to be a part of it, you'll get asked that on the website when you go there. So, check us out and we really appreciate all of you. Thank you.