One of the refrains on this podcast is the idea that we can do hard things. This is a saying, I picked up from Eric Tivers of ADHD reWired, and I think it's important to remind ourselves of that frequently. We can do hard things. Just because something is hard doesn't mean it's no longer in our wheelhouse.
In the last episode, I talked about how I can have trouble accepting that something is hard, but conversely, in this same sphere of thought, I can also have issues with believing that I can do hard things. Certainly some of this comes from imposter syndrome, but it also comes from a deeper place.
It's not just that. I think I'll be discovered as an imposter. It's that I truly think I can't do certain things, especially things that are difficult. And to be sure there certainly are things that would be too difficult for me to do.
I can't bench press a thousand pounds, for example. That is literally too difficult for me to do. And I couldn't write a complete novel in a single day. Again, that's beyond my skill and probably beyond the realm of what would even be possible.
But for most of these hard things that I believe I can't do it isn't that they're too difficult. It just feels that if I try, I'm simply going to fail. There's a lived experience of me failing at so many things in my life. And then I'm just applying that to everything else. I feel like I know what the outcome already is, so it seems like it's better for me to deem it to be too hard for me to do than to even try.
And I just love the interplay between the idea that I somehow try and believe that I can't do hard things and also that those easy things that I'm doing aren't actually hard things. it's a funny dichotomy, but also if we just back up for a second, it's kind of the same thing, because what I'm doing is reinforcing the idea that I can't do hard things by labeling the things that I do as not hard.
Because of course I could do that because by doing it, I proved it wasn't hard. If it had actually been difficult, then I wouldn't have been able to do it. We all see how ridiculous that logic is, right?
The circular nature of it and how it undercuts my own agency. I'm sure many of you have dealt with similar thought patterns. They're quite insidious because it feels like real logic. It feels like it makes sense, but it breaks down in the light of well reality.
This podcast is nearing its 100th episode. That is frankly shocking to me. I don't quite know how to process the idea that I've been able to sit down and write nearly a hundred episodes. That for the past two years, I've been able to consistently create the content for the show. All of it without a boss. And to be sure I absolutely have the support of my podcast network and I have systems in place to help me do my work, but I could have easily stopped at any point. I could have easily just never gotten started.
And yet, does my brain allow me to acknowledge that this is in fact a hard thing that I've done? I'm having trouble writing this section, , I know what I'm supposed to say here, that I know that this was a hard thing that I did and overcame, but those aren't the words I feel.
I'm in 95 episodes and it feels like it was just inevitable. That it just went through the motions and it happened on its own. That I could have done so much better. I mean, I've been podcasting for more than two years. I should already have hit a hundred episodes, right. 52 plus 52.
That's a little bit hun hundred and four. So yeah, I'm a little bit behind there, so between taking time off and just missing episodes, I'm well behind where I should be. And look, I'm not trying to go for false modesty here or have people write in to tell me that actually I've been doing a great job.
I know my voice inside telling me these things... it's not doing me any favor. What I'm trying to communicate here is that we all have these clear concrete examples of having accomplished hard things. And yet we can find that little voice trying to convince us that well, that wasn't such a great thing after all, that anyone could have done that.
And also that even we can know the truth of the matter, but reality still might not match up with how we feel. The importance of this is that I can acknowledge it doesn't matter how hard of a thing I do, I will still try and find ways of discrediting my own work. It's not about logic.
And so trying to use logic to escape the trap, isn't going to work, or at least using the same kind of logic.
Because I can also acknowledge that someone publishing a hundred episodes of a podcast is a hard thing. I can acknowledge that a lot of hard things people do are hard - except when I do them. So where does that leave us? Well, it at least gives me a glimpse into how faulty my own logic is.
How can I say doing something as hard, yet changed that stance once I find out who did it? Does the identity of the person matter so much? And to some extent, absolutely. As an upper middle class white male, there is no denying the amount of privilege I have. There is no question that parts of my journey were easier for me than they would have been for others, but I'm not talking about what someone else did.
I'm talking about what I did. And there is no question that truthfully, it was difficult. What's holding you back from saying that it was a hard thing that I did is that I'm viewing it all in its component parts. I'm seeing every day that I didn't do as much as I could have. I see where I could have been had I lived my life through the rose colored glasses I wear while looking back. It's easy for me to brush off the hard parts to forget the stumbling blocks that knocked me down. Last year, I had kids doing school from home and I had to evacuate because of a fire near my house.
Oh. And that was while I had COVID. These are all things that absolutely made doing my work harder, but also things that are easy for me to forget and brush away. And this is where we really get into it. Why I find it so difficult to acknowledge hard things?
It's because I'm only thinking about the parts where I didn't do the work, but not the why behind it. Because as I often do with my ADHD, I'm focused on the wrong details. It's easy for me to say, I should have done more when I don't have the context, but when I slow down and think about why last year may have been a hard year to keep up with everything, well, it seems a lot more reasonable.
And so that's what we're starting with this idea of giving ourselves credit for doing those hard things, even when it feels like we could have done it better.
One of the pieces of last week's episode was that when something feels like it should be easy, but we fail to do it over and over again, it's actually hard. And it's so difficult to work with that idea. Last week I was under the weather and we got quite a pile of dishes that needed to be cleaned. In my head it's easy to argue that the dishes aren't a hard task, nonetheless, they weren't getting done.
And here's the one thing that we don't always want to admit. ADHD makes some of these things harder for us to do. ADHD is absolutely a disability. And we tend to want to pretend that even with this disability, we can do just as much as everyone else - that our excuses don't count. That it doesn't matter, that something's harder for us. And sometimes we can keep up. Sometimes it's not as difficult.
But more often than not, I'm struggling to keep up with the dishes and keeping my car clean and getting my laundry put away and keeping my desk clear and all those little things that I believe should be easy. But nonetheless, don't come easily to me.
These are hard things. ADHD made them hard. It doesn't mean that I can't do them, but it does mean I can't write them off either. It means that if I want to get them done, I have to put in more effort and that sometimes, maybe even a lot of times I'm going to fail at doing them.
No one has everything together all the time. Not neurotypicals. Not those perfectly put together influencers online. And not me, especially not me. I know I talk about my issues a lot, but I still kind of put off a vibe that I've got my stuff together, but that's a curated image. Not completely on purpose, but nonetheless, it is an incomplete picture of my whole life. The things I talk about on the podcast, I've mostly worked through and the things I don't talk about, well, I don't talk about them because I'm not ready to. But trust me, I have problems that extend beyond the examples I use here.
One of the keys that they can see coming out of these issues is that it's also this failure at doing those simple things we deem easy that makes us question our ability to do other hard things. How could I run a podcast if I can't keep up with my text messages? How could I write a novel if I can't stay on top of my dishes? How can I do anything great, when the most menial things keep me down.
This again, feels logical. We're just trying to apply the transitive property, but unfortunately we're doing it with unlike things, because just imagine this scenario, I'm interviewing for a podcast position. They like my resume. They see, I've got plenty of experience, but then comes this question.
So how good are you at keeping up with the dishes?
What?
Your dishes, are you keeping them clean?
Well, I guess I've got some of the sink right now, but what does that have to do is podcasting?
Ah, that's too bad because we're a zero stinked studio here and clearly you're not the right fit for us.
But there isn't even a sink in the studio.
Ah yes, but it's the principle of the thing.
What principle?
You know, clean dishes.
Again, what does that have to do with podcasting?
Except we don't have this ridiculous conversation in our head. Instead, we just let ourselves assume that we're being logical. Because of course, if you can't keep up with the dishes, you must be a mess in every other aspect of your life.
But this clearly isn't the case either. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, but for a lot of us, we take our strengths for granted. Our strengths often don't come hard to us so we assume they're not actually strengths, but just our default state.
And the ADHD reWired coaching and accountability groups, one of the exercises I went through early on, was listing down a hundred successes from various phases of my life. I did not like this exercise. It was incredibly uncomfortable for me. I was raised to believe that bragging about my accomplishments was something to be looked down upon and this had spread to even acknowledging my accomplishments. If I did anything skillfully and was complimented on it, my first instinct was to downplay what I had done. Oh, anyone could have done that, I really didn't do all that much.
And this again, plays into that narrative that I can't do hard things because if I did them, they must not have actually been hard. If we repeat a lie often enough, even to ourselves, we eventually start believing it.
And here's where I know a lot of us are going to have some problems because we hear this and go, "but I actually haven't done anything. I'm not lying to myself. I've literally never done a single hard thing in my life."
Really? Really?
And what if I told you the same statement?
What if your best friend did?
Would you believe me? Would you believe them? That they've never done anything hard? Don't let yourself settle for the answer that you've never done anything hard. Question it. Examine it.
We need to acknowledge where we've been so that we can more accurately chart where we're going.
So this week's homework is to start looking at our successes and the hard things that we've done. We don't need to do that whole list of a hundred successes, but maybe start with 5-10 from the last couple of years. I know it won't feel like much at first, but we can use this as a springboard.
Once we can acknowledge that, Hey, actually I have done some hard things. It makes it so much easier to tackle those new, hard things in our lives because it becomes so much easier to say, yeah, we can do hard things.
And here I'll give you a gimme to start off your list of hard things that you've done: living with ADHD.
