The favorite self: a solution to executive dysfunction for ADHD business owners

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. I think I found the solution to my executive dysfunction, and I don't want to guarantee that this is going to work for everyone, but I want to share it with you because I'm having so much fun playing with this new concept. I Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and welcome to the Weeniecast. I'm finding it's really changing how I do life and how I enjoy life and how I actually get done from my to do list. And so far it's been pretty magical. So here's what it is. We're nixing the whole best self lingo. Where it's done, we're no longer thinking about our best selves. If you're a personal development junkie like I am, I guarantee you have several books on your bookshelf, if not like dozens, that will refer to your best self or your higher self as the, like, guiding spirits that you should be following. And I don't know about you, but whenever I think of my best self, I don't feel good. Like, my best self doesn't inspire me. It makes me feel so much shame about not being good enough. So let me tell you about my best self. My best self went to Harvard. She got straight A's all through elementary school, middle school, high school, has maybe like a business degree or something. She owns a home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has a super hot husband who's just ripped like Ryan Gosling ripped. They have a perfectly trained dog, which how boring. She works out every single day. She eats salads every lunch. And she's super regimented in how she runs her life. And she never, never procrastinates. My best self is completely unattainable to me. My best self has circumstances in her life that I'm way past. It's not like I'm going back to elementary school, middle school, and high school at this point to get straight A so I can get into Harvard. That's not how it works. And also the way she does life has never been a way that I could do life. I can't eat salads every single day. I really like bread and sandwiches and cheese. And every time I've tried to live a consistent routine for too long I get bored and it loses its judge for me. Or as one particular participant of the Brave Biz Lab call said, the goose loses its juice. And by the way, if you've never been to Brave Biz Labs, it is a free group coaching call that I do every fourth Friday of the month. I open it up to my whole community. It's absolutely free. You can show up and ask any question that's happening in your business. No judgment. There's no such thing as a stupid question on Brave Biz Lab. And it's literally anything that comes up for you that keeps you from doing what you want to do in your business. And if you'd like to join one of these calls, then please go to weeniecast.com forward/brave biz labs. And of course that link is in the show notes. But anyway, back to why we're not playing with the best self anymore when we're referring constantly to our best self, we're thinking of someone who doesn't exist. We're thinking of an idealized version of ourselves who's absolutely perfect in every single way. And we all know that perfect doesn't exist, right? That person does not exist. And so when we try to live our lives to a standard that is based on someone who doesn't exist, guess what happens? We fail. And we fail again. And we fail again. And we fail again. Until it just becomes like this cesspool of shame that we're constantly letting run our lives. And I've been there and I've done that, and I have many T shirts from it. And it's not worth it. Because when you're running your life from your quote unquote best self, the thing that drives you is the shoulds. I should be doing this, I should be doing that. I should be doing this every single morning. I should have this already. And that's not helpful. Especially for those of us with adhd. We've been shooted our whole life by everyone in school. It's you should be able to sit still. Why can't you? You should be able to do your homework. Why can't you sit down and do it? You should be able to focus in our first few jobs, or maybe even right now. It's oh, you should be able to meet deadlines. You know, you should be able to focus in meetings. You should be able to respond to all the emails in a timely manner. To which I say no, Sharon, if you want me to respond to your email, don't give me a scary subject line. At least Put an emoji in it. Come on. Even in keeping up our houses, even in doing our everyday routines, you know, you should be eating healthier, you should be tidying as you go. You know, you should fold your laundry, which. No, no, I refuse. So the best self model, like, well intentioned, actually doesn't do anything for us. It actually sets us back because it makes us feel like we're already behind. And when we feel like we're already behind, guess what? Nothing we do from there matters because we're already behind. We've already failed. Right? And what happens when the thing that you're doing every day doesn't matter? You don't get any dopamine from it. And when you don't get any dopamine from it, you're basically constantly in a dopamine deficit, which means your executive dysfunction is going to be that much worse. So instead of turning to our best self for inspiration, let's turn to something else. Let's turn to something better, something more enjoyable, something that we have far easier access to, and that is our favorite self. Your favorite self is so different from your best self. Your favorite self is the version of you that you are so excited to be in any moment of any day. I want you to think about your favorite self in friendship. You know, it really boils down to who do you want to be? Who do you want to show up as for the people that you love, Your favorite self in romantic relationships, your favorite self at work, your favorite self with your pets, your favorite self with your bedtime routine, Your favorite self gets to show up to every aspect of your life. And there's no prerequisite to becoming your favorite self in any given moment. Hell, I want you to imagine something simple like going to the grocery store. Who's your favorite version of yourself? Who goes to the grocery store? My favorite self who goes to the grocery store, has music on, is listening to music in her airpods, is smiling at people, is really excited to see what produce is fresh, Takes her time to really think about what she wants to make for dinner and lunches for that week. You know, my favorite self picks out a treat for herself because she deserves it. My favorite self loves making conversation with my cashier as they're checking out all my stuff. I love bagging for myself, and there's like a bounce in my step when I'm being my favorite self at the grocery store. My not favorite self is the one that goes in distracted by something or frustrated with the bad drivers that I encountered on my way to the store, which if you've ever been to Cape Cod in the summer, you understand it's miserable. My not favorite self gets frustrated when they're out of something that I really wanted instead of getting creative about how I can substitute for it. And when I'm not being my favorite self, like with out fail, I forget something. It's like I subconsciously know that I want a redo of how I was at the grocery store. And I'm not saying that favorite self doesn't forget stuff, but favorite self like figures out ways to work around it. I've been playing with this concept recently and let me just give you an idea. 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. I've been playing with this concept recently and let me just give you an idea of, like, how insane my life is right now. So I'm currently volunteering on two and a half different political campaigns local to me, a state senator and a state rep, as well as our national senator. I'm running my business. I'm running the podcast. I'm starting a second business. I've just started a nonprofit, which I'm super excited to announce in a few weeks once everything's official. I am actively looking for a boring business to buy. I'm working on not one, not two, but three different books. I'm about to launch myself on a serious PR campaign for the nonprofit and for my work in adhd. And of course, I'm trying to be a modern woman who has it all together. So I'm trying to meditate and I'm trying to work out and I'm trying to take my dog for a walk and train her and have fun with her and make sure that she feels loved because she's basically my child. Trying to spend time with loved ones. I'm trying to stay in touch with friends, all the things. Oh, and I'm trying to get eight to nine hours of sleep every night. That is how insane my life is right now. And of course, like, under each one of those categories, there's a whole laundry list of that I have to do. And let me tell you, I have been in executive dysfunction on so much stuff for the last few months, and it Wasn't until I started shifting into my favorite self that I actually started getting things done. When we look at our to do list and we think of prioritizing it from a should place, again it is shame based. We should be doing this and if we don't do it, we're a failure. You know, that either OR is given to us a lot growing up as ADHD folks and it's no wonder we talk to ourselves in that way. It's no wonder we should the crap out of ourselves. But when you look at your to do list from a point of what would I enjoy doing in this moment? It completely changes. You know, I started introducing this concept to my clients and it was interesting. A few different clients have come up with this, but one in particular answered, okay, what? My favorite self only wants me to do jiu jitsu and like eat this snack that I love to which I asked, okay cool, like could you do jiu jitsu for seven hours a day? And he said absolutely not. I would die. You know, because that's a pretty intense workout and could you eat that snack all day long without stopping? He said no, no, no. Like my stomach would explode. It would not be good. But I loved that he brought this up. I loved that his first instinct was no, the favorite self can't be trusted because the favorite self wants me to do stuff that is not productive, quote unquote productive. But I actually think that the favorite self is the most trustworthy version of ourselves that we have. Our favorite self. And I'll use this client as an example. His favorite self wants him to get exercise before before he starts work. His favorite self wants him to be well fed before he starts something, right? Once he goes to a jiu jitsu class and goes and has one of these snacks, what will his favorite self want to do next? This individual that I'm thinking of, you know, his favorite self got him to sign up for byob, my build you'd own business group program. His favorite self knows the work that he wants to do, knows that he doesn't want to stay in his job, knows that he can have a major impact on his clients lives if he just stops being a weenie and goes for it. Which is this person is really, really brave and they're doing an incredible job. They've already signed, I think two high paying clients in their second month of byob. You know, we have this innate distrust of our favorite self thinking that our favorite self only wants us to go and like the quote unquote fun things. But like, yeah, of course our favorite self wants us to go and do the fun things. You know, the fun things are things that give us dopamine. There are things that make life that much more enjoyable. You know, I don't know about you, but when I do something really enjoyable and fun in the morning, like maybe go and have breakfast with girlfriends or take a really fun exercise class, or, like, have a really, really sweet, like, play session with my puppy, I bounce into my day. I have, like, this really, really buoyant energy that carries me through every task I have to do that day, versus me being my best self, where I feel like I've shouldered myself all morning and still not met the standard. I start my day feeling behind. I start my day feeling less than. We don't trust our favorite self because growing up, our world told us that this isn't all fun and games, that life has to be serious, that we have to get stuff done, that we have to sit down and focus, that we have to be quiet. Especially if you were disruptive in the classroom. Like, I was. I was a big talker. It's one of the reasons why the more work I do on ADHD and the more clients I work with and the more stories I hear from clients about their childhoods, the more I believe there has to be a different educational structure for ADHD people growing up that's more supportive of how our brains work, how our chemistry works, because how the educational system is set up right now gets us completely out of touch with our favorite self. It sows distrust between us and our favorite self. It teaches us that our favorite self is this irresponsible, flippant, awful, kind of, like, lazy person who shouldn't be allowed to drive the bus. But actually, when we let our favorite self drive our bus, our favorite self knows exactly how we need to do what we need to do. You know, in prepping for this episode, I was talking with my producer, Neil, and we were talking about. Can I out you? Of course. And we were talking about our favorite cells and, like, the things that they want us to investigate. And he was talking about how he just went down this rabbit hole on ghost hunting and how, like, he had. He just spent hours researching different methodologies and different haunted dwellings and all this stuff. He was so interested. And as we were talking through the favorite self paradigm, he was saying, you know, if I had been given this lens to study history, I would have aced every single history test. And how true is that? Think about it, like, how, like, what is the thing that interests you most and how could it have been applied to help you learn something better? Like, I'm convinced that if they had related math to either money or knitting, I would have picked up math way quicker, I would have had less struggles, I would have found ways to learn that not only gave me a deeper understanding of the concepts, but also useful for the hobbies that I was really curious about. You know, making money and knitting. The cool thing about shifting into your favorite self is it can happen at any moment. There was a moment this week where I was looking at my miles long to do list with all these massive project that I'm currently working on. And as you can imagine, I got super overwhelmed and I couldn't prioritize. And I felt myself kind of shrinking back and thinking about all the shoulds. We are the shoulds. Like, I should be working on this and I should be working on this. And they're all competing. They all seem important and urgent. And I stopped myself and I was like, okay, cool, like, let's touch base with my favorite self. What does my favorite self think we need to spend some time on? And my favorite self, like, stopped me in my tracks and was like, and not just your desk. Like that has made the room cluttered and go and spend 10 minutes just like putting stuff in a garbage bag. Just get it out of here. You don't have to clean, but just get the clutter out. And so I did that and it took about five minutes. And then I noticed, oh, there's a lot of mugs up here. There's a lot of mugs and cups up here in my office because they tend to just collect. You know, I don't know if you have this experience, like you're a flavor of adhd. It's like once you're done with something, it ceases to exist to you. So, like, once I finish drinking coffee out of this mug, the mug will just not exist. Like, it doesn't need to be taken back to the kitchen to be put in the dishwasher because it no longer is there in my mind. It's usefulness to me in this moment is done. So why would I? It's one of the reasons, I think also we are really bad at like closing drawers and cupboards because we've gotten the plate out of the cupboard. We like, what do we need to do with the cupboard then? You know, we got the socks out of the drawer. That was it. Like, there's no next step. You just needed socks. Like the drawer being open and needing to close Not a thing. My favorite self, you know, had me gather up all the mugs and all the cups and take them down to the kitchen and I realized, oh, the dishwasher is full of clean stuff. Put those things away. I loaded up the dishwasher with some things, gave the dogs a treat, and then came back. My favorite self knew exactly what I wanted to work on first. And it was the thing that was most urgent, that had the highest priority, that had the most importance. And I was able to start without that shame looming over me, without that should. Without that expectation of how it should have gone. And since I've shifted into this favorite self way of doing life, I have not struggled with executive dysfunction. The only reason I have not gotten things done since shifting into favorite self is because I just kind of run out of time. You know, I'm realizing just how unrealistic I am in assigning work to myself. And as I spend more time with my favorite self, I realize how much of her I already am. And as I realize how much of my favorite self I already am, my confidence levels grow. I stop questioning myself at every front about, oh, well, should I do this and should I do that? I know, I know what I need to do and I know what I want to do. I know who I want to be in every moment. And it's not based on who I need to mirror to pass as normal, to pass as neurotypical. You know, something that those of us with adhd, especially those of you who are diagnosed late, I was lucky enough, I was very lucky to be diagnosed early on in my life. Something that we are raised to do for our own well being, for our own safety. But when we're mirroring everyone else, the three person we're not being is ourselves. And when we spend that much time not being ourselves, it's really hard to be confident in who we are. It's really hard to be confident in what it is that we want to do. And I think that's one of the reasons why it takes people so long sometimes to realize that they want to start a business because they spend so little time actually being themselves and thinking about what they want that it can take years, if not decades for that deep want of starting a business, running a business, having real impact on the world and having the freedom and flexibility that comes with it. It takes so long for that message to come through and for it to come through strong enough for them to actually get started. So I'd love to hear from you, my listeners, who is your favorite self? And my favorite self right now reminds me that I'd be remiss if I didn't. Thank you. If you're enjoying this episode, would you do me a small favor? Will you please leave me a review? Don't worry, it's super easy to do and it only takes a few minutes. You can leave your comments in Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Spotify, and Podchaser. Just go to weeniecast.com reviews and scroll till you find the chosen app. That's weeniecast.com reviews. This is our 100th episode of the Weeniecast. This is the 100th time, if you've been with us from the very beginning, that we've talked through how you can run life better with your ADHD while still pursuing your dreams. And I am honored every time I talk with my producer and hear how many people are listening to the podcast. Every time I get a message from one of you about a tip that you got that helped you be better in your work or something that you learned about yourself, or just the fact that listening to this podcast made you feel understood and seen. Thank you for listening. 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. It teaches us that our favorite self is this irresponsible, flippant, awful, kind of like lazy person who shouldn't be allowed to drive the boat or who shouldn't be allowed to drive the bus? I feel like buses are more utilitarian when it comes to life. Like, who spends life going around by boat unless you live in a place like Venice? Personally, if I had to run my life by boat, I would get really, really tired of it really fast. Because like, okay, so think about it. You get into your car or you get into a bus and you drop your keys. They land on the ground, you can pick them up. You get into a boat and you drop your keys. You're going for a swim and maybe you're not even getting them back. Maybe it's too deep. It's very inconvenient. I don't know why I brought boats up. Squirrel, squirrel, Squirrel, Squirrel. Are you an entrepreneur? 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