How ADHD entrepreneurs can supercharge self compassion!

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. 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, 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 how you as the ADHD entrepreneur need to have more compassion for yourself. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Hi, I'm Katie McManus and this is business strategy for Weenie ADHD for Nurse Squirrel. So today we're going to talk about something that is so difficult for people with ADHD to do. And what I'm talking about here is having self compassion. It is the absolute hardest thing for people with ADHD to access for themselves. Now the reason being is that we have been told either verbally or non verbally throughout our whole lives that we are a fuck up. We're doing it wrong. We're not paying attention well enough. We're paying attention to the wrong thing. This isn't good enough. Oh, like you spent too much time on this. Move on now. And what happens to us throughout a whole childhood and young adult life of hearing this is that we start talking to ourselves that way. We start talking to ourselves like our second grade teacher who had a problem with the fact that we weren't paying attention at story time. We start talking to ourselves like our first boss who didn't understand why we got totally obsessed with that one assignment that they gave us and didn't move on to the next task that we had on our plate. How I internalized this for myself. I was really bad with deadlines that I didn't care about growing up. I think I've shared previously the amount of times that I missed the deadline for a paper either because I just plain forgot that the paper was due or the topic of the paper that was assigned to me didn't interest me at all. And I literally couldn't bring myself to just start work on it now. How that has translated for me is I punish myself to no end around self imposed arbitrary deadlines. You can talk to any of my team who works with me on these deadlines. I will Set them, I will miss them, I will punish myself for it, and then I will avoid even working on it because it's already associated with failure. And if you're curious about how you can help your team, help you better in regards to deadlines and getting things done, you're going to want to go and listen to episode four. But here's the complete mind that makes self compassion so impossible for ADHD people. We have never ending compassion for other people who miss deadlines because we understand what that's like. We have never ending compassion for other people who screw something up on the first try, or who don't get it right, or who struggle to put all the pieces of the instructions together because we've been there. And yet we hold ourselves to a higher standard. We hold ourselves to the standard of, well, other people are allowed to screw up here, but I'm not. I have to be better. And I'm convinced that this comes from us having to overcompensate in so many ways to be able to function within systems that do not work for us. I'm talking about traditional schooling. I'm talking about traditional jobs. So I live across the street from a school, it's a public school in Philadelphia. And I was walking past their playground the other day. I was walking my dog and the kids are all lined up in the playground. It was recess for them. And there is one teacher who is absolutely losing her at them. She's screaming at the top of her lungs, oh my God, will you behave? Telling them that. And apparently, and I don't know how they set up their recess, but apparently they set up the recess so that there are different zones. Like the basketball zone is the only place where basketballs are allowed. The hula hoop zone is the only place where hula hoops are allowed. The football zone is the only place where footballs are allowed. And this is just what I have extrapolated from this one screaming session she had at the children. Right? So she's screaming at this group of fourth graders because they kept crossing zones. She's screaming at them for how they were playing a little aggressively. And I understand you want everyone to be safe, but as I walked past this scene, my heart broke for each and every one of them a little bit. Because you had a group of kids who obviously so desperately needed recess because they had so much energy that they had to get out that they weren't able to follow the rules exactly. And here they were not only being chastised, but being screamed at by an adult who is Completely emotionally unregulated at that moment. And I can also empathize with this teacher. She's probably told them over and over and over again what the rules are and wanted them to play by the rules for their own safety. And here we are, it's February, school started in September, been a long time. I get her. I understand that she feels like these kids should know the rules now. But my ADHD self, my inner child, watched this and watched her threatening to take away recess for the rest of the week and thought, oh my God, these kids aren't going to make it. These kids are having their spirit squashed. They're being told so early that if they don't follow specific rules about how they just play rights are going to be taken away from them, then things that they need for their own mental health breaks are going to be taken away from them. And I know you, if you have ADHD and you're listening to this, you're probably flashing back to every single time a teacher or an adult did this to you when you were a child. Being called out in front of your entire client class for not paying attention, being yelled at, for not finishing an assignment on time, being made to be a spectacle because you did it wrong, because you misunderstood the instructions or couldn't pay attention to the instructions because the person giving the instructions was really boring about it. Let's be real. That happens. And so what happens as we grow up and as we become adults and as we break away from systems like this, from work environments like this, to start our own businesses? When we don't have people berating us like that, we start doing it to ourselves. How this can show up is an extreme level of perfectionism. It can show up also as overworking yourself because you're expecting yourself to accomplish so much in a single day. And it can lead to an incredible amount of burnout. And you're probably listening to this and thinking, well, Katie, I function really well when I have a deadline. I want things to be a certain level of quality. I want them to be perfect. I have a lot of things that I have to do. You're telling me I shouldn't be doing it. And that's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is that how you work is going to be better. You're going to be more effective, more impactful, and more productive when you're actually being nice to yourself and not being an about it. Because let's talk about those kids on the playground again. Let's talk about how they probably went back to class not feeling happy, not feeling refreshed, not feeling like they'd had a proper break, but in a state of fear. In a state of fear that they might get in trouble. Of what are they gonna tell their parents if they got written up by this teacher of, oh my gosh, like, we're not gonna have recession for the next few days. What a disappointment. There's going to be a lot of shame circling in their little systems. They're not going to learn for the rest of the day. Have you ever tried to learn something new when you've had a shitty day, it just doesn't work. Your emotions just don't let those new pieces of information in. And in contrast, when you're laughing and you're having fun and you're enjoying yourself and you feel safe and support. Supported by your environment, how much more do you learn in those environments? I've talked about her before, and I will mention her again. Ms. Blanchard, my French teacher in high school, she had this beautiful way of making the class fun, teaching really stupid things like verb conjugations. You know, I'll never forget her teaching our class the imperfect tense because she made it fun. She found a way of making the imperfect tense of the French language fun. That is a skill, my friends. And also, I will never forget it. Right? I absorbed that information so much more deeply because she made it fun than I really learned anything else. Yes, I know you're driven by deadlines, and it doesn't mean you not being an asshole to yourself doesn't mean you're not going to still have deadlines. It just means you're not going to be an asshole to yourself. And also, let's look at the root of the problem there. If you're constantly setting deadlines for yourself and missing them, that tells me that you're actually holding yourself to an unrealistic standard of work. You're probably just really bad at guesstimating how long things are going to take. This is ultimately what I have to face in my life. You're basically my therapist right now. So let me just talk through it. Okay? So what I end up doing, I think that I can accomplish way more in a single day than I actually can. Right. I will very often be on a call with my coo ree and explain all the things that I have to do and all the things that are on my calendar for the day and say, oh, yeah, I can get all this done. And she'll look at me through the zoom camera and be like, really? Are you sure? I was like, yes, absolutely. Yeah, you can expect this by tomorrow. And then a week later she's like, so no rush, no rush. This isn't a hard deadline. But that thing that we talked about last week that you said you'd get done by last Tuesday, how's that going? And I'll have to reckon with, oh, my God. Yeah, like, I was over ambitious. I tried to get too much into my day and it's not done yet. Me punishing myself for it not being done is just going to make me more avoidant of that task. Whereas me looking at that, just seeing it as data. Wow, okay, cool. If I have four client calls and two sales calls in a day and I also have to do a ton of creative work, the creative work is just not going to happen. I'm going to be tapped. At the end of the day, it becomes more of a question of how do I better schedule my time rather than I suck. We're going to have a suck fest. We're going to talk about all the ways in which I suck and I'm terrible at my job. And then we're going to doom scroll on social media while in the back of my mind thinking about how I'm going to crash and burn my life. Right? Like me just looking at my schedule and thinking, okay, how can I rework this to work better for me is such a better place to be than the downward spiral, Katie. So here's what I want you to do. Instead of punish yourself for missing deadlines, I want you to see this as an iterative process for you, learning how you work best and how you schedule your time best. Join the weeniecast Hyper Focus community and unlock a whole world of support. Get direct access to me in exclusive calls. Turbocharge your network with unlimited referrals, and boost your productivity with Sprint calls and accountability sessions. But that's not all. We're talking expert talks, masterclasses and more. Register now to get in front of the line for this at the introductory price of just $77 per month. It's time to elevate your entrepreneurial game. Let's do this together. Go to weeniecast.com hyperfocus all one word. That's weeniecast.com hyperFocus. I want to talk about cars for a second. I know nothing about cars, but I do know one thing. The very first car that was created was not perfect. The second car that was created was not perfect. Today you can't go out and find a perfect car each and every car has ways that it could be better. It could be, but. And it depends on who it's for also, right? There's never going to be a perfect car because there will always be ways that you can improve it. You managing your time is the same way. You're never going to do it perfectly. And also, it's never going to stay the same for you. Because as a person with adhd, we thrive in structures, but we also suck at creating them for ourselves. And sometimes we'll go through a structure of how we manage our time and it'll work for a while, and then we just get bored of it, and then we have to innovate. We have to find a new way that works for us that we'll actually be able to stick to. What you need to stop getting hung up on is, oh, my God, I used to do it perfectly. I used to manage my time in this way. And I have to go back to that because if you have adhd, I'm sorry, honey, you're never going to be able to go back. Okay? It's like the people from the Titanic. They can't get back on the boat. I'm sorry. It sunk. It's gone. You try to get back on the boat, it's not going to work out well. So this is an iterative process. It's going to change over time. And you have to look at it as an iterative process that will change over time. There's no other way that will serve you. Next, I want to talk about perfectionism. So I'm going to use an example from my own coaching business. And I've changed details of this. You won't actually know who this is. I'm not outing my clients in this way without anonymizing it. Okay. I have this client who started working with me about two and a half years ago, and she came to me and one of the first things on her agenda was that she needed to start a website for her business. And this website, she really wanted to be polished and professional, and she wanted to have, you know, a proper copywriter do all the copy for it. And she wanted someone to build the website for her. So I introduced her to a trusted friend and colleague who I know is really good at building websites. They contracted together, they started working together. This website was more or less ready to go within six months. It was a little bit of a process because, you know, she was busy and she had to get more details to the website developer. We're two and a half years later and she still hasn't hit publish on that website. That website exists in secret because she constantly wants to go and tweak this and tweak that because she wants it to be perfect. And I know this client is probably going to hear this. So, hi, this is your sign to go hit publish. But this is what perfectionism can do to us. It can hold us back from being known out there in the world. It can hold us back from confidently being able to say, hey, I have this badass website. Go check it out if you want to learn more about my services. If you're being a perfectionist about your social media posts, guess what? You're never going to post anything. It's just not going to happen. If you're being a perfectionist about a webinar you want to host, guess what? You're never going to host the webinar, right? Because we only get good at stuff after we've done it a gazillion times. You're not going to get good at posting on social media and getting clients that way until you've done it a bunch of times. Until you've written something, put it out there in the world, seen if anyone resonated with it, and then learned and iterated for your next post. I had this mentor a long time ago. I forget who it was. They told me that marketing always works, right? So you can post something and it will always work for marketing. It will either get you clients, get you attention, get you engagement, or it'll fall flat. So the marketing always works in that you learn. Cool. I need to do more of this and I need to never do that again. So as you are putting yourself out there, as you are realizing that you're getting super crunchy about wanting things to be perfect, I want you to remember that things will only get incrementally better the more you do them. I recently just went through and audited my last two and a half years of LinkedIn posts and let me tell you, this is one of the most humbling, painful experiences I've ever done in my business. Because I had to go back and reread what Katie 2 1/2 years ago thought was interesting. I had to go back and reread how I structured my writing back then. I didn't realize how much my writing has improved over two and a half years until I went back and read my writing from two and a half years ago. I never would have gotten to the level of quality that I'm at now. I'm not calling myself perfect. I'M not calling myself on par with a copywriter by any means, but I never would have gotten here if I hadn't started there. I never would have learned what worked for me to get clients on social media unless I had started there and just tried something. So wherever you are being a dickhead to yourself and holding yourself to the standard of perfectionism, I want you to stop. I want you to look at it as a learning opportunity. Whatever it is that you want to try, whatever it is that you're worried to hit publish on, know that it's going to work. It's either going to work and get you clients or it's going to work and you're going to know not to do that again. And that's perfect. Throughout my 20s, I had a bunch of different careers. I don't see any of them as a mistake because I had to do it to realize I don't want to do this. And it's no different in your business, and it's no different in your life, and it's a hell of a lot easier when you're nice to yourself about it. Now, finally, I want to get to your to do list and how you're probably overpacking it and you're expecting yourself to do what way more than is realistic for you to do. This bit actually comes from those magical days where we start, like, we just feel inspired, right? We start. We wake up early and we start working at 7, and all of a sudden it's lunchtime, we haven't eaten, then we have lunch and then we have another idea, and then we start working, like at 12:15, right after we finished our sandwich, and all of a sudden it's 9pm We've worked all day and we've gotten so much done and we've come up with creative ideas, we've started a whole program. We maybe got three clients, like whatever it is that we had on our to do list for that day, like, it was just a magical experience. Now because we experience these days, we think, oh, cool, if I can do that one day, I should be able to do that. Every day we forget that the day after that day, we're usually completely exhausted. We have a work hangover from those days that we literally have to recover from. We blow our load of dopamine on those days, and the next day we have to rebuild it. And sometimes the day after that, we still have to rebuild it. So when we're looking at our to do list and thinking, yeah, I can do 75% of this, no Problem Today we're holding ourselves to that magical day standard when really it's just a normal day. So here's what I actually do with my one on one clients and actually everyone who's in any of my programs has access to this. So every single Monday I do a get organized sprint. And in this sprint I basically have everyone arrive and I have them go on mute. I set a timer for 10 minutes. And in those 10 minutes they have to do a brain dump of every single thing that's floating around in their brains that they have to get done for the week or in just in general, they then in the final few minutes of these 10 minutes, they have to pick the three things that they have to do that day. These are the most important, critical things that they have to get done that day, that Monday. Then they have to pick the three non negotiables for the whole week. After this 10 minutes is up, they come off of mute and then they share what it is that they're wanting to accomplish that day and for the week. And if they want to come to my Brave Biz labs call on Friday and have some accountability, then they get to do that as well. But one of the things that I do with this call is we always start with forgiveness. We always start for forgiveness over the things that we said we were going to do last week but didn't get to. Because when those things are hanging over us as stuff that we missed or we didn't get to, or it's already late, we actually don't get any dopamine from doing them. But when we forgive ourselves and we just add it to the list fresh and it becomes a new task for us, we actually do give ourselves that dopamine when we get it accomplished. Now this list that they've made on Mondays, the instructions are if it's helpful to them to go back to it every single day and pull three new things every single day that they can do. If you have ADHD and you tend to be over ambitious in what you can accomplish in a day, I highly recommend this method because three things is way easier to do than 17. And let me tell you what I often find when I do this for myself is that once I finish like at least two of those things, I have enough dopamine to get that third thing done. And then I'm looking at the list and thinking, okay, cool, I have enough dopamine to do more stuff now. What else can I accomplish? And I usually get more than three things done, but I only get more than three things done on the days where I only give myself those three things. I know being a person with ADHD is really weird. And at the end of the day, if you find yourself getting into this negative spiral and talking to yourself like you're the biggest loser and you can't do anything, I want you to literally sit down and write a letter to your best friend using all the words that you're using against yourself. Now, chances are if you actually were to send this letter to your best friend, they would no longer even be your friend, much less your best friend. They would probably end that relationship. They would burn any gift that you've ever given them, and they would start badmouthing you all around town because you're a massive dickwad. And of course, like, changing how you think about yourself doesn't happen overnight, but once you start realizing how much meaner you are to yourself than you are to other people, it really is a wake up call for you to be kinder. And just like you managing your time and you getting better at things rather than holding yourself to that standard of being perfect, this is an iterative process, okay? You learning what kinds of things you can accomplish in a day is going to be a lifelong journey. It's not something you're going to work out in one week. I coach on this and every week I learn something more about myself, about what I can accomplish in a day. I also learn how I need to be held accountable to different things to support me being kind to myself rather than punish myself over things. And of course, as with all the advice that I ever give on this podcast, this is not prescriptive. This is just an idea. Go with it. Make it your own, change it, evolve it. And if you evolve it into a way that works really well from you, I would love for you to go to weeniecast.com and leave me a voice note explaining how you do this. One of the things that those of us with ADHD struggle with is sometimes we hear advice from other people and we think, okay, cool, that's the advice. These are the instructions. I have to go in and do it exactly that way to be able to do it correctly. And then we go and we try it exactly that way and it doesn't work for us. And then we're like, okay, well, this doesn't work. And we just throw it out when really, when we give ourselves the permission to be like, cool, this is how they told me to do it. I like this element of it. Not crazy about that bit. I don't think that's going to work for me? I'll try it once. Cool. Yep. I was right. That one element just didn't work for me. I'm going to change it to this thing and see if that works and if that works great. And if it doesn't. Okay, cool. That didn't work either. I'm going to change it to this thing now. This is an element of being kinder to ourselves. We're giving ourselves leeway to have some say in the instructions that we're following. I want to talk about those kids on the playground again. Maybe if that teacher had redesigned with them what the zones should be or what the rules could be, maybe would have worked better for everyone rather than her holding so rigidly to the rules and how they were breaking the rules. Cool. Are the rules just not helpful? Are the rules making it harder for them to have a good time and actually blow off some steam so they can be better students when they go back into the building? Maybe the rules actually need to change and not the kids behaviors. It's the same when you are trying to figure out how you work best. So full permission to say the rules. I'm going to make up my own rules and they're going to work really well for me because there is no right answer in anything that we do. There's only right for you. And if you want to hear more about this, then go ahead and listen to episode two where I talk all about time management and your team. The duck has lost all of its stuffing. The squeaker is like in there, but just barely. Like she's about to like get it out and I'm about to like have to like pull it out from down her throat. Throat. Throat, throat, throat. Are you an entrepreneur? Are you struggling to stay focused and 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 should 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 just1.99amonth, weeniecast 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 weeniecast 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. So if you're ready to start seeing real Results, subscribe to Winniecast for winners tips today@weenicast.com Winners for just 199amonth, you'll gain access to the valuable insights and strategies that can take your business to the next level. Weeniecast for Winners is a show that's worth every penny for entrepreneurs who want to succeed. Subscribe now and start enjoying the benefits for yourself. Join the weenacast Hyper Focus community and unlock a whole world of support. Get direct access to me in exclusive calls, turbocharge your network with unlimited referrals, and boost your productivity with Sprint calls and accountability sessions. But that's not all. We're talking expert talks, masterclasses, and more. Register now to get in front of the line for this at the introductory price of just $77 per month, it's time to elevate your entrepreneurial game. Let's do this together. Go to weeniecast. Com hyperfocus all one word. That's weeniecast. Com hyperFocus.