169 - ADHD and Suffering

My friend Bryan and I have created a challenge that puts some novelty to the suffering that achieving goals often creates. Have a listen and send me the answer to this: What suffering are YOU choosing?

Mentioned in this episode is the game Surges and Setbacks. If you would like a free pdf copy of the game we created in the community, click here.

For those of you that are wondering why nothing is sticking, why you read things and don't do the work, why you have epiphanies about what could work but it goes nowhere...Join myself and others at ADHDBB.  There is a 'team' component to managing ADHD. Join our team. 

Transcript

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This month things are really ramping up, aren't they? We gotta buy presents, got a whole bunch of extra stuff to do, and with that chaos and that routine destruction, it gets easy to give up and go with with the path of least suffering in the moment. But in my case, the path of least suffering ends up being the path of greatest suffering. Let's talk about that. 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 podcast. It's the podcast. Welcome to it's it's a podcast. Welcome to a podcast. Uh there are many of them out there, and I'm thankful that you chose this one to listen to during this particular moment in your life. Thank you. Uh, we're now in December. Oh my god, this is the final month of 2024, and it's been a roller coaster of a year for me. How's it been for you? Lots of ups and downs this year. A couple of side-to-sides. I think there was a diagonal in there as well, whole shitload of squiggles. Squiggles all day long. Uh, this is the ADHD way. This is the Mandalorian of ADHD. This is the way. Today I'm coming at you with a challenge. Uh my buddy Brian and I are undertaking this over the next 30 days, and I'm gonna put it out into the community uh to see if anybody wants to join us, and I'm gonna share it here in case you want to participate as well. But first of all, my mental health. I want to share first of all, my mental health. What's going on with me? Um, I just got back from visiting my parents, and that is always such a fun time. My parents are great, uh, and it always comes with uh a sadness because we're getting we're all getting older, you know. I'm 50 next year, which just blows me away. I mean, I feel like I still feel like I'm 32. I feel like a 32-year-old in this skin suit. I still have a lot to learn, I've got a lot of ambitions, I still have a lot of energy to give to fill my purpose. My spirit is a solid 32. My body, though, my body feels 78, shit hurts, random pains appear, and they will hang out for weeks. My catchphrase is like, oh my back. I grunt when I put on my shoes or when I'm standing up from a chair. That's kind of new. And so Brian and I, we were on our weekly walk and we're both heavier than we'd like to be. That's how I'm gonna just politely say it about us. Um, my extra weight comes with health concerns, so it's important for me to get to where I need to get. Uh, I would like to be off my blood pressure medicine, and I would also like to get off my depression medicine. And many of you know that I can't take ADHD medicine because the fucking side effects are preventative for me. They suck. Long story short, I doubt I opt not to. And I just would prefer to manage my life uh by natural means and the tools and strategies. So it's that's kind of a blessing, but it's a very difficult, struggle-tastic blessing. The idea for this challenge, it came from Dr. Shane uh Calhoun's episode that we did last week. To really get the most out of what we learned from him, I would encourage you to give a listen to episode 168. It's the one, you know, just before this one. Uh, I'm going to use myself as the example to talk about how we got to where we got with this with this 30-day challenge. First and foremost, I have to say, none of these changes take place without external accountability. I cannot tell you guys how important that is for us, for us ADHDers. I do it with my friends and I live in the ADHD Big Brother online community. So it's structured specifically for this type of thing. Um, it's ADHD coaching by community. So I have that going for me. I'm I'm set up to be successful here. So having external accountability adds that extra needed level of support, especially when we're at the beginning stages of change. I'm just gonna say that it's necessary for ADHD. Uh, and as the ADHD Mandalorian would say, it is the way. So I'm currently overweight. Uh, I personally want to drop 30 pounds. Brian has a similar goal. I don't think it's quite 30, but we're both on a mission here. Uh, and that extra weight is directly related to my grunting when I stand up, my back stuff, my blood pressure stuff, and my energy levels. It's gotta go. The weight's gotta go. And this is where it gets extremely difficult for an ADHD or to make change. We are moment-to-moment people. So in the moment, we choose what feels good. We choose whatever will make us feel better in that moment. For me, that's alcohol and tortilla chips and or nachos. Uh, for me, that's cheeseburgers and fries and maybe extra fries. For me, that is chicken burritos to go with the chips and the salsa and beer. It doesn't matter that I know that the burrito is going to put me in a coma and make me gain five pounds because in the moment that I'm eating it, I'm in heaven. It doesn't matter that if I drink a beer, I just want to drink another beer and then another beer, and that's all just a bunch of empty calories, and it doesn't matter that it will fuck up my sleep because in the moment I'm enjoying myself. Many of us are missing that element of future thinking that is required to make a good decision now. And I would even wager that most of us know this. We're fully aware, and yet we're still chained by it. You know, if I just choose better, and what happens to many of us, if not all of us, is that we know to choose better. We don't choose better, we choose the moment, and then we beat ourselves up and we suffer more later. That's how our brain works. So let's say now that uh me binge eating tortilla chips, because it feels good in the moment. Uh those salty chips are uh a delight. And it just feels like the perfect complement to watching Deadpool and Wolverine with a couple of beers, and that's gonna have me up past midnight, even though ideally I'm in bed by 9:30, so that I can wake up and do my healthy walk before I take Alistair to school. So even though I have this feel-good moment, it's not a feel great. This isn't some peak experience I'm going after. I'm just doing what feels good and right in the moment. I suffer later with the bad sleep, I gain weight, and if I drank too much, then maybe a headache in the next morning, and I spend half of the day at quarter speed because I'm recovering from that short bit of momentary satisfaction. And what was so great with uh Dr. Shane, what he shared last week, was that there's going to be suffering. It's inevitable, but we all have the opportunity to choose how we suffer. Will I suffer with the stomachache from eating flaming hot Cheetos? Or will I suffer for a bit right now because I'm not having a fun snack? And this is not a podcast episode where I'm advocating for moderation, you know, which works. It works for many people. It does not work for me. I'm black and white, I'm all or nothing. So this concept of like, hey, well just, you know, just have five flaming hot Cheetos and maybe just half of a beer. That's just not how it works for me. You know? Well, you know, just take 10 minutes to eat that Cheetos. Really savor it. I can't. I can't. I can't, Troy. I have to eat the whole bag. You don't have to. Shut be quiet. So there is no such thing for me, and I shan't be talking for you. For me, moderation does not work for these particular things. So I need to rip the band-aid off and suffer. So here's uh our 30-day challenge. I'm choosing my suffering for the next 30 days. I'm going to pick what my suffering is. Brian is choosing his suffering as well. It's literally just a unique way to look at this. And it juiced both of us up when we're talking about it. So we're acting on the novelty of it, we're acting on the interest, and that is the way. My suffering is that I will drink no alcohol. Let's say it like a newscase. My suffering is that I will drink no alcohol and no chips for the next 30 days. And the suffering, this is suffering to me because I really, I really want to order an old-fashioned, especially when I go out to eat with my girlfriend. I just want to have an IPA. That's the suffering that I pick. And my hunch is that this alone will help me lose six pounds by the end of the year. Probably. This kind of stuff is fun for me because I'm leveraging everything I can in order to achieve the things that I want to achieve. And you may be thinking, well, Russ, diet alone. Can't solve this. What about the exercise? Yeah, I got you. Okay. So um I'm pretty much guaranteed already to do 20 minutes of exercise every day. This is me leveraging community, guys. In the community, we've gamified this. Shout out to Stephanie right now in the online community. This was her brainchild. We collabed on it and uh we created a shoots and ladders types board game. If you don't know shoots and ladders, it's a children's board game, 100 squares. You're rolling the dice to get to 100. Sometimes you land on a ladder space that jumps you up, so you're closer to the victory. Sometimes you land on a chute, or we have snakes too, sometimes uh snakes and ladders. Uh, and if you land on one of them, you slide downward, and so now you're farther away. We've renamed it surges and setbacks. And you can roll the dice each day if you get your 20 minutes in. And then there's things that are uh to do on every square, you know, like oh, 25 extra sit-ups, or side planks, or find a new exercise, or drink water. It's just something to keep it exciting, and so this has to be completed before you're allowed to roll. And we roll one time a day. We gamified it and it's working. The only reason why I uh did 20 minutes of walking while I was in Arizona visiting my family was because I didn't want to miss a date of rolling. Otherwise, I would have easily just been like, I'm on vacation, I'm not doing this. I'll create an email thing. If you guys are interested in this, it's really simple. It's uh I'll uh I'll create an email thing. You can uh download it if you want. Super simple, but it only works when you play with other people. And this is the thing I just wish that people with ADHD really grabbed on to. Of all the things, of all the things going on, this is the biggest. We probably have six or seven community members playing right now. And I don't want to brag, but I think I'm gonna win. I'm just saying, depends on what Stephanie rolls tomorrow. But I really do want you guys, some some of you might have it in your head to be like, I wonder what this is all about. I don't understand how community coaching works. I don't understand how this is different than like a Facebook group or some Discord or Slack survey. You guys want to come on town to my Slack survey? We're gonna do some ADHD. Come here. Um, I'm creating a thing in December where you get 10 days of the community for 10 bucks. It will not automatically sign you up for the full payment. You just get to be a full member of the community for 10 days, and then I'll, of course, I'll have an email or two that's that are gonna remind you and say, you know, hey, do you want to join? But I just I can't. I know ADHD people, I know myself, and I hate when things auto sign me up. So I I I can't I can't do it. I can't do it to you. Um, so you don't have to worry about that. It's just 10 bucks, 10 days, and I'm gonna be hosting numerous live events in December that are aimed at showing you how that you can use the community uh beyond the basic onboarding and show you like we'll take your particular ADHD struggle and I'll share with you how you could use the community to uh to work through that struggle. ADHD people are a great collective, you guys, and we can leverage each other's strengths and our own and support each other as well as ourselves. It's truly the most affordable way to get your shit together, and I love it. I love it in here. Uh, it would be really nice if you'd come support my no alcohol month. I need every one of you to sign up and that would be awesome. That's gonna be some suffering right there. I already know. I already know tonight I'm gonna be like, fuck. And I'll support your suffering right back. Community suffering. That's a great sales tactic, isn't it? Hey, you want to pay money to join a community and and do some group suffering? That's I dare you to do it. Uh oh, and I almost forgot. I gotta give a huge shout out to Mark Z. He's one of the OG community members. He's been a member since the get-go. And he made another batch of those wooden uh Skull Spaghetti counters. Okay, so just to explain what those are, for members that successfully do 100 days in a row in the Skull Spaghetti Daily Accountability Space. I mail you a Skull Spaghetti counter if we have them. And you guys, uh, I have eight more of them. They just came in the mail. So who's gonna be the next eight? I think who's who's the most recent? I think it was Lisa and Dave. I think those were the our last two. Um I think. But, anyways, I know we have some people that are coming up. Rachel. Rachel's getting there. I've got a school spaghetti counter if you make it. Um, anyways, uh huge shout out to Mark. I fucking love this place. I can't thank you enough. You're amazingly generous, and I it's always fun to see what kind of projects Mark's got going on. So that is that. That is all of that. So again, the link to shut uh to sign up for the 10 days uh will be in the show notes, as per the usually. And with that, I hope you guys have a fantastic week, and I shall talk to you later.