5 signs you're under attack from the ADHD voices in your head & what Brené Brown can teach us about our internal shame!

Hey, new listener. Thanks so much for checking us out. And there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on. Don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you, Squirrel. Squirrel. In this episode, we're going to talk about the five signs you're under attack from the ADHD voices in your head and tell you how to shut them up. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and welcome to the weeniecast. I promise I have a point, but we have to start with a little random story that I promise will make sense when we get to it. I am currently working on learning French. I speak French, but I'm not that good. So I'm taking classes every single day, and I'm doing it through this new program that has been really incredible, but it's also new, so there aren't that many people in class. So there's this one woman who I've been in class with five times over six days. You know, she's super nice. She's actually this opera singer in Toronto, and she's learning French because she obviously has to sing in French, and she wants to be able to understand what she's saying, which I imagine. I imagine is important because you want to put the right emphasis on the right syllable. We were in this class yesterday, and we were talking about our jobs, like, that was the vocabulary lesson, is all the vocabulary that has to do with applying to jobs and having a contract and. And submitting for resignation and, like, showcasing what your talents are. And the teacher was really fun. She had, you know, because there were only two of us, and she wanted to get us speaking and practicing. She had us asking each other questions about our jobs. And Daniela, who's, by the way, an opera singer and absolutely incredible, asked me how I had the courage to start my business and to run it. And, like, this was astounding to hear from her, because she's a fucking opera singer. She's getting up in front of hundreds of people every single night, singing, having to perform, knowing that all these people are paying a ton of money to watch her. And here she is wondering how I'm being courageous in starting a business after I explained the whole stop being a weenie thing in French, which I don't think they understood. I think. I think they're. They think I'm just obsessed with sausages. It really got me thinking. About all the doubts that we have to deal with, all the fear that we have to deal with when we're starting a business. And of course, I'm six and a half years in. The fears I have about my business are like, next level from where I started, but they're still there. One of the most correct indicators of your potential success in your business is how you deal with those voices of doubt. How do you deal with the fear in coaching? You know, there are a few ways that we talk about that fear, those voices of doubt. In my style of coaching, coactive, we refer to them as saboteurs. They're the voices in your mind that want to sabotage whatever you're doing that's outside your comfort zone because they want you to stay safe. And for the saboteur, in your mind, staying safe means being fine with the status quo. Like, it might not matter that you hate your house and roof leaks. At least you have a roof over your head. Doesn't matter that your friends are assholes to you. At least you have friends who cares that you hate your job. At least you have a paycheck. You should be grateful. Like, the saboteur is kind of an asshole. But they're there. It's funny because it's so much easier for us to, like, think of what that saboteur voice would say to us than it is to tap into what our higher self would say to us, what our inner leader would have to say. I love how Brene Brown actually talks about this. If you're not familiar with Brene Brown, she does all this work on shame and vulnerability and wholeheartedness. She started her career and she would kind of announce, like, yeah, I'm a shame researcher. And she jokes how, like, if you're sitting next to someone on a plane and they ask you what you do, the best way to shut down a conversation and say that you research shame, because no one really wants to talk about that, right? But I mean, shame if we think about it, it's like we feel shame when we're hearing these voices of doubt and we're believing them, right? Because these voices of doubt are telling us that we can't do things, that we're not good enough, that we might actually be terrible at what we want to do. And they attack in every way possible, right? If you're a parent, this voice of doubt, these saboteurs, are constantly going to tell you that you're doing terribly and you're screwing up your kids and that you're not being a good parent. You know and look at all these other parents who are doing way better. If you're a woman and you have grown up with a lot of the messaging that we've gotten in magazines and TV and movies, I bet you have a few saboteurs or fear gremlins about your image, about how you dress, about maybe your weight or your appearance. This starts for girls. Around age 8, they start having body image issues, which absolutely blows my mind, but also is not surprising because that's when I started having body image issues. And if you're a business owner, especially if you're just starting out, these saboteurs are going to attack based on everything that they're seeing your competitors do, people who are years and years ahead of you, they're going to compare you to everyone. Any metric that you're not succeeding in, if you're not bringing in enough money, that is going to be proof that you're not good at this. I don't have any research to point to for this, but from talking to my clients and my own experiences, having ADHD makes this worse. Because you know how when you talk about that inner monologue and everyone's like, oh, yeah, the voice in your head, the narrator, you know, who kind of talks about everything that's going on in your life and kind of, you know, speaks through all the sequence of events in the future and kind of refers back to former things. Yeah, ADHD people don't just have one voice. We have numerous voices, and they're always talking all at the same time. You're not good enough. Which is especially painful when a bunch of them are your voices of doubt, fear gremlins, saboteurs. Because we're not just getting one of them telling us that we suck. We're getting 17. Is this true for you, Neil? Oh, my God, yes. Can that please be in the episode? And I want to own that, yes, there are absolutely going to be things in your business that you're bad at doing. Most people are bad at selling when they first start their business, because guess what? They never got trained in selling. Lots of people are bad at social media when they first start out, because guess what? They've never done social media before and they're figuring it out. There was a period of time in your life where you sucked at using a fork, but what happened? You practiced and you got better. Hopefully, if you didn't, then, you know, I'm sorry for your. Your dry cleaner who has to deal with all those stains. And I just want to normalize that. These voices of doubt we all have them, really. I mean, the only people who don't have them are sociopaths. So congratulations, you're not a sociopath. I hope you get yourself a cupcake to celebrate. So I want to go over some signs that you're actually letting your saboteur voice of doubt drive the bus in your business. And then I want to go through, like, the steps that you need to take to overcome them. And I want to set the expectation here, there's no getting rid of them, that you're never going to completely eradicate these voices of doubt. There's no way you could be that confident in yourself that they're never going to show up. You're going to deal with a fear in one way and then it's going to, like, just pop up in a different way. Because your voices of doubt are you. They're just as smart as you are. You're basically playing a game of chess against yourself. But the key to success in your business is learning how to always be a move ahead and recover when you're at a disadvantage. So here are five signs that you're listening to your voice of doubt and it's probably slowing your business success. Number one. Ooh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out, but first, Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Hey, quick question. Did you follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app yet? It takes just a few seconds. I personally love Apple podcasts, but you can find us anywhere, even on YouTube. So, as the kids say, smash that button and make sure you never miss an episode. So here are five signs that you're listening to your voice of doubt and it's probably slowing your business success. Number one, you're spending a lot of time on back end work. I can't tell you how many times I've spoken to someone who was thinking about hiring a coach, but they really wanted to finish the digital course that they had built out for their business before they hired a coach. And if you want to hear my advice on how to launch a digital course in your business, then go check out episode 88. I lay it all out for you. But in that episode, I really go into how it's the worst idea in the world to start with the digital course because you have not market tested your idea. Sure, you may sell this digital course, you may get clients for it, but more likely than not, you won't because you haven't sold it as one on one teaching yet or coaching. You haven't sold it as a group yet your voice of doubt is really, really clever. Your voice of doubt is going to tell you that the only way for you to be taken seriously is to have all of your expertise planted somewhere where people can learn from it. So that you can kind of shove it in people's face and be like, see, I'm an expert, here's proof. And while sure, that can be a boost for your ego temporarily, it is like a house of cards, right? Because you build it and you build it and you build it and all of a sudden it's this beautiful thing that you spend a ton of time on, ton of energy, probably a ton of money, but it all comes crashing down when no one buys because it wasn't what your market wanted. Your voice of doubt knows it's not going to work. Your voice of doubt is always going to have you waste time on stuff that is going to keep you in your comfort zone, right? Because what is missing in the whole act of designing a online course? Marketing, putting yourself out there telling people you're starting a business, actually being brave and going and doing the thing. Building an online course for a coach or consultant or online trainer is kind of similar to an artist only ever painting in private and never showing someone their work, never getting feedback on it, never getting direction, how to do a technique better or learn a new technique that will help them get the results they want. And sure, you could be a prolific artist and be bad. We all can. Remember the paintings we did in school where the top left corner of the page has the sun and it's just kind of like this round circle with the shiny bits pointing out. And then there's a weird blob that's supposed to be a cloud. And then there's the stick figure standing in the middle. Like, could you imagine being an artist and sitting in your room all alone and just churning out like dozens of those, hundreds of those, and then going out in the world and be like, see, I'm an artist. And everyone being like, wow, that's good. You worked really hard on that, didn't you? That ends up being the exact same thing. When you focus on the back end work of your business without going in market, testing it as you go, your saboteur sets you up for this all the time. And I'll be real. I get sucked into this a lot, but I also have some of the tools that brings me back from it, which I will be getting to in a little bit. Another sign that you're trusting your voice of doubt and not actually going with your inner leader or your higher self is you are constantly throwing money at the problem. This happens a lot. And I've, I've totally been guilty of this. Especially earlier on in my business. Anytime I felt insecure about something, I'd be like, okay, cool, there's a course for this. I don't know how to do Instagram. Cool, I'm going to buy a course for this. Oh, I didn't do that course. It didn't really fit me. I'm going to go buy another course. And another one, and another one. Did I do any of them? No, of course not. The problem with this is when we're throwing money at something, we're not doing it strategically. Right. When we throw money from because our voice of doubt is undercutting our belief in ourselves, we do it from a place of fear. We're doing it from a place of I'm not enough and I'm not smart enough to figure this out on my own. And of course, like, it is super valuable to invest in the right help, but when you're in a fear place, are you able to discern what the right help is or not? I want to also give a shout out to all the fear based marketing in my program. One of the things that I train on is empathetic marketing. And of course, empathetic, like you're empathizing with where your clients are, you're empathizing with how they're feeling in their business. That's not always a positive feeling. There's this belief around ethical marketing that, you know, you should only focus on the positive. Not a believer in that. I think we have to be realistic. We have to normalize the struggle for a lot of people. But there's a line that you cross when you start pushing things that people need to be afraid of. And there are a lot of people marketing their services or their courses in this way. And unfortunately it works because it speaks directly to that voice of doubt that you have that you're not good enough. They never have the secret. There's no secret. Anyone who tells you that they have the one unique secret that's gonna help you solve everything, they're full of shit. They're teaching pretty much what everyone else is teaching. They're just trying to make it sound really mysterious. But feeling that way, reading that and thinking, oh my God, that's what I'm missing, you know, that speaks directly to your voice of doubt, your saboteur, who fully believes that there's a big part of this that you don't Have. So one of the signs that you really want to pay attention for is when are you inclined to throw money at the problem? And I have nothing against you investing in the smart thing for you to move your business forward, but are you making this decision from a place of fear and insecurity, or you making this decision from a place of this is the right thing for my business? The third sign that you're being driven by your saboteur in your business is what I like to call mindset mania. We get so wrapped up in doing mindset work to help us be in a success mindset so that we can go and be successful in our businesses that we jump over the fact that we don't know how to do a lot of shit. Right? Doesn't matter what your mindset is. If you don't know how to sell something, you're not going to sell it. It doesn't matter what your mindset is. If you don't understand how to use social media to market your services, like, you're not going to be effective going on social media, marketing your services. Working on your mindset only in your business is kind of like those people who are like, quote unquote manifesting their dreams, but all they're doing is sitting in their room journaling about all the things that they want but not actually taking action to make them happen. Yes, mindset is absolutely important, but it's not the only thing that's important. It's very sexy to think, oh cool, well, if I just get my mindset in the right place, then I can go and do everything I want. It is a piece of the puzzle, it's not the whole puzzle. But again, your saboteur is a crafty mofo who knows that you love doing this mindset work and wants you to spend all of your time working on mindset work so that you don't actually go and risk public embarrassment by announcing that you've started a business and potentially failing in front of a bunch of people. You know, it's way safer for that saboteur to get you journaling and spending time really working on your mindset, meditating, doing a lot of stuff internally, rather than risk the bullies from high school seeing what you're doing and having a good little giggle over it. That's terrifying to your saboteur. Your saboteur wants to prevent any risk of that. And by the way, your mindset for your business, there's no way you're going to be able to be fully in the mindset of Success unless you also learn how to run the business. If you don't know how to ride a bike and I hand you a bike and say cool bike to the store, it's two miles away and get some milk, you're going to look at me like I'm nuts. You know, you're not going to feel confident getting on that bike. You've never ridden a bike before. You're going to look at it like it's death trap because for you it is. However, once you learn how to ride the bike, once you understand how to get on, how to start pedaling, how to turn, how to stop, once you understand how to do that stuff, you're going to feel so confident riding to the store, it's not even going to be a question for you. Your mindset is going to be in the right place for you to go and acquire the milk and bring it back. A fourth sign that you are following your voice of doubt and not your higher self in your business is that you are hiding in plain sight and I'm talking to you. You know who you are. You've designed a website and you put it out there and you're waiting and then you don't get any clients from it. So you go and you edit the website and maybe you change your niche, so then you go and edit it again and then you get new pictures taken, so then you go and upload the new pictures on the website and then it doesn't look quite right, so then you re edit the whole site. Unless you are pouring thousands upon thousands of dollars into SEO and ads to drive people to your website, which most of us, when we're starting businesses cannot afford to do. People are going to find your website through you being visible on social media, through you being proactive and putting yourself out there. You know people are going to go to your website to verify that you are who you say you are. No one's going to like stumble upon your website just magically on the interwebs and think, oh my God, this is like so serendipitous. I was just talking about needing a coach for this kind of problem. It's not going to happen. You're hiding in plain sight. If you, it feels like you're being brave, it feels like you're putting yourself out there, but that's bullshit. You're not doing anything like that. You're basically putting up a sign that your business is open and then hanging it in your garage with the door closed. No one can see it. How are people supposed to Know that you have a business if the sign is not visible to everyone. The fifth and final sign that I want to talk about today, that you're fine following your voice of doubt in your business, and I used to be super, super guilty of this, is you're investing a whole bunch of time in groups where the blind are leading the blind. And I'm talking to you, member of an accountability group with other people who don't know what the they're doing now. There's nothing wrong with having support. There's nothing wrong with having a community of people who are really pushing themselves to do the brave thing. They're holding each other accountable, and they're figuring it out together. The key here is that someone needs to be showing everyone what they need to do. Now. It could be that each and every individual in this group has their own respective coach or consultant who's helping them build their business. It could be that one person in the group is just being a very generous friend and kind of guiding everyone along. Here's what I did. They're kind of mentoring everyone, but without that key piece, without someone showing you what the next step is, you're literally all just there, like hamsters in a hamster wheel, spinning, like, just spinning around, around, around, around and not going anywhere. I was so guilty of this when I first started my business and I was the ringleader. I organized these groups and they went nowhere so fast because none of us knew what we were doing. And the bravest thing you can do in that scenario is call bullshit on what you're doing and push everyone outside their comfort zone. Dealing with the saboteur is one of the hardest things that you're going to do in your business. And this is going to be harder than you going out and getting clients. It's going to be harder than you marketing yourself. It's going to be harder than that first time. You're going to have to fire an employee, and there's no alarm system that'll alert you to when they've taken over. So you'll be going about your day and this voice will start and start telling you all the things you suck at and how this isn't going to work out and how here's evidence that you know that opportunity is no longer available to you. And you know how you're not good at this and you're not good at that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's just the voice in your head or the voice is in your head. In the case of having adhd, there is no mayday. We've been taken over by bad people. We need to dial it back, do some meditation, reset, drink some water. There's no alert system. Like, you literally have to start becoming good at noticing when these voices take over, and that is really hard. Okay? So one of the things that I want you to start working on if you've never done this kind of work before, is I want you to identify what are the things that that voice of doubt says to you? Where are all the ways that it believes that you're not good enough? What are all the reasons why this voice of doubt thinks you should hide? And for the first month or so, as you're really making an inventory of all these awful things, you're going to look back and be like, oh, my God, the saboteur ran that whole week. It's all going to be past tense. You're just going to be looking at the past and seeing how the saboteur has run your life. And you're going to start feeling really frustrated because you're going to be like, oh, my God, well, I know about it now. Why didn't I catch it? And you can't catch it right off the bat. Right? You have to start building awareness around how it showed up previously. You know, the more you do that, the more you're going to be able to catch yourself when it's happening right now, oh, cool. I'm starting to talk really negatively to myself. I should stop that. We're never going to get rid of these voices completely, but you can do things to set yourself up for success. So for one, the saboteur has, like, an open invitation into our heads when we don't have enough sleep. And for folks with adhd, we tend to need more sleep than the average person. We tend to need about an hour more than the average person because our brains are working so hard every day. So when you don't get that and you start feeling really down on yourself, that is why if you're not eating enough, if you get hangry, that's another time that saboteur likes to come in. If you're like me, I get hangry all the time. So make sure that you're fueling your body enough. Also drinking enough water anytime you're sick or burnt out or injured and just not feeling your best, that is when this voice is going to just start taking over. So self care is one of the most important things in developing a business. Because if you're not taking care of yourself, a, you're gonna get Sick. And the business isn't gonna be sustainable for completely other reasons. If you're constantly in that state of burnout and too tired and not eating enough and you're getting sick, well, you're constantly running your business from a place of fear, and that's not a strategic place to start and run a business from. Another preventative thing that you can do to really keep these voices at bay is to not compare yourself to anyone else. Don't constantly be going out and looking at what other people are, are doing in your space. Those voices of doubt are just gonna hop in and be like, wow, their pictures are better than yours. You are not good enough. Your website's better. Their offer is better. This is better. This is better. Like, you suck. You're not good enough. What are you doing? You should just quit now. You are not good enough. One thing that every single client of mine, doesn't matter what they're doing, at some point they come to me and they say, katie, like, my whole industry is saturated. There's so many people doing what I'm doing. I'm like, I can't compete. And I have to tell them, like, actually, your industry is not saturated, because most of the time it's not. It's just that you talk about what you do a lot online and the Google machine is paying attention. People are buying ads to show to people who have interest in these things. So if you're, for instance, like Neil, if you're a podcast producer and you're talking about podcasts all the time, guess what? You're going to be shown a fuck ton of podcast ads. Here's how you do this and here's how you do that, and I can help you get start a podcast. You know, thankfully for Neil, he's one of the best people in the game, so he's not going to be made insecure by all these charlatans out here who are selling awful services and awful programs. But if you're just starting out and you don't know that the other people aren't as good as you, or maybe they're. They're really, really good, you're going to really start believing that this market is saturated because it's all you're seeing online. Trust me, your clients aren't only seeing them. So don't compare yourself to anyone else. Stay in your lane, help your people and invest in help if you need help figuring out all the pieces. Like I keep saying, you're never going to eradicate these voices. They're gonna happen. Even if you don't compare yourself. Even if you take really good care of yourself, even if you become a pro at catching that voice as soon as it happens, right? Your mind just its job is to think thoughts and it's really good at it. And sometimes those thoughts are really shitty. The key to your success is how quickly do you recover from those thoughts? How quickly do you recorrect? It takes time and I have to tell you, I'm not perfect at it. There are days where I totally get taken down by my saboteurs. But the more work I do on myself, the more I delve into my shadow work and really understand the things that I have shame around and unpack those things and stop letting them have power over me, the faster I recover when they start taking over. And here's where it is actually really beneficial to have a coach. If you're ready to stop being a weenie and actually run a business that makes money, then go ahead and book a generate Income strategy call with me by going to weeniecast.com forward/strategy call. On this call we will talk about your goals, your dreams, and your frustrations in getting there. And if it's a fit for both of us, then we can talk about different ways to work together. You're not good enough. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Are you an entrepreneur? Are you struggling to stay focused and organized while juggling a million tasks? Are you looking for ways to improve your productivity but finding it hard to stay motivated? Then you need to get access to my weeniecast for Winners show That's exclusively on Apple Podcasts. I know you might be thinking I've tried everything to stay on task and nothing works. But I'm enjoying the advice I'm getting here on the weeniecast and let me tell you, I'm delighted to be able to help you and thousands of listeners just like you, my friend. But the Weeniecast for Winners podcast is next level and I'd hate for you to miss out on it. For just $1.99 a month, Winniecast for Winners delivers in depth and actionable advice that's specifically designed for entrepreneurs, including those with adhd, whether diagnosed or suspected. I'll talk you through how to increase your sales conversions, keep your mindfulness on point, and even offer practical tips that can help you be more productive and successful in your business, all while catering to your unique needs of being an entrepreneur who might be struggling with adhd. With winicast for Winners, you'll get practical tips and strategies that you can use to drive your business forward without the frustrations and setbacks that often come with adhd. 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