If you're a Smart person with ADHD, how do you motivate yourself?

Do you use any (or all) of these Six Bad Tools to motivate yourself?

Dr. Tamara Rosier, author of the insightful book "Your Brain's Not Broken," highlights these bad tools and the impact they have on our lives. If you're using any of these tools to push yourself forward, it's time to pause and reflect.

While these tools can seem helpful on the surface, they often come with serious side effects that can hinder our well-being and productivity.

Hello, I'm Ian Anderson Gray, and this is the smart ADHD podcast.

Now if you're a smart, creative entrepreneur or business owner

navigating your life with ADHD, This is the podcast for you.

Now, I'm no ADHD expert, but I'm eager to share my story on what I've learned

by talking with experts, as well as digging into the personal ADHD stories of

successful creatives and entrepreneurs.

I was diagnosed at age 46, and it answered so many questions in my life.

But of course, that was in many ways, only the start of my journey.

So let's learn together.

Smart stories, smart strategies, smart ADHD.

So if you are a smart ADHD er, you've likely developed strategies

to help you get tasks done, to be more organized, to get motivated.

Now, some of these strategies are genius and really helpful and

positive, but some of the strategies and tools that we've developed over

the years are definitely not good.

Now, these bad tools have definitely definitely helps you become more

productive, but there are some really serious side effects and

some quite serious ramifications.

Dr.

Tamara Razia, author of Your Brain's Not Broken, an amazing

book, highly recommended.

She calls these the six bad tools.

And if you are a smart ADHD er, it's likely that you are using some

or even all of these bad tools.

We tend to use these to help motivate ourselves.

And I wonder if any of these resonate with you.

With you.

Here's what Tamara says about them.

So if you're using these six tools.

every day to motivate yourself, eventually you're going to wear out.

It's going to look like a depression.

It's because you can't keep motivating yourself with these six bad tools.

And so if you are feeling worn out, it could be to do with one of these tools.

Let's look at the first one.

So the first bad tool is anxiety.

You're trying to set your limbic system on fire to do something.

And so if you're having to motivate yourself using anxiety, that's usually

a pretty good indication you should get.

A doctor and probably medication at that point.

Now I've spoken to quite a few smart ADHDers who use

anxiety to motivate themselves.

In fact, anxiety is often present in people who have ADHD and is

one of the tools I've used to motivate me a lot over the years.

Second one is avoidance.

Believe it or not, avoidance is a genius trick we use.

I, I worked with a student.

A U of M, very smart young woman.

And she's, I have this huge test to study for.

So I cleaned my sock drawer and she's very proud that she got her sock

drawer cleaned and she's hair right.

It's beautiful.

And she took pictures of it, sent it to me.

And so she was avoiding what she really had to do and did something else instead.

It's so tempting to focus on the tasks you enjoy first before you

do the tasks you don't want to do.

And that's not always bad, but you can't avoid those tasks forever.

For some tasks I don't enjoy, I'll just avoid and avoid and avoid focusing

on the cool and exciting stuff.

Okay, let's do the third one.

Actually, I really can't be bothered.

I just really want to just watch some TV and do something else.

Procrastination.

I'm sure all of your listeners know this one.

I always say to my clients, I'm not going to take it away from you, I promise.

But we'll just use it a little bit more carefully.

Procrastination is a masterful trick that we use to lighter braids

on choir to get something done.

Now it's not just procrastination, because like everyone

procrastinates to some degree.

And in fact, I've had some people question ADHD completely with

saying, surely everyone has ADHD since everyone procrastinates.

But that misses the point.

We're talking about chronic procrastination here, when you just can't

do the thing you know you need to do.

We avoid the task until the deadline approaches.

We have no other choice but to do the thing.

Our brain is in high stimulation mode, but not in a good way, like being on a

rollercoaster or doing something fun.

And I've been there, leaving things to the last minute for exams and

dissertations and all that kind of stuff.

Let's move on to four, which is anger.

Anger?

I worked with a man who I was so mad about his wife asking him to clean the garage.

He cleaned the garage on a split because his anger motivated him to do it.

It backfired because the ground was clean and his wife was happy, but he had to

work up all his anger just to get it done.

Which all of these are exhausting, right?

Now, I didn't think I used this tool, but on closer inspection, I hate to

admit I have used it from time to time, and it's definitely not a healthy tool.

Now, the thing is, as we get older, and especially if we've not been diagnosed,

a lot of us have found that the tools we used before to help motivate us

don't work so effectively anymore.

And that's when we get on to some of the more dangerous ones.

Now we've already spoken about anger, but the next two tools are really, really bad.

Then we have shame and self loathing.

And that's when we sink down, we start to shame ourselves.

Most of you listening, if you're in your fifties, undiagnosed with ADHD, I

can almost guarantee you that you use some kind of shade to motivate yourself.

And I'd like to tell you, that's not a great way to live.

And you can, that's the benefit of getting diagnosed and treated, is that you can

actually live better without that shame.

And self loathing, some of us think, and I'm just going to tell you the

truth, if, I don't know if I would have a PhD without self loathing.

Now, had I been properly medicated at the time, I wouldn't have to use

my self loathing to hate myself.

while writing the whole dissertation.

Yeah, I agree.

That is not a good way to live.

And I've used a lot of shame and self loathing over the years.

When I was in my final year of my master's degree, I used both of these

to get me through my 20, 000 word dissertation and an hour long vocal

recital, which I had to memorize.

In fact, I've used it many times since then and I'm pretty sure it has led

to a couple of times of burnout And some health problems So if you have

resonated with any of these six bad tools know that you are not alone And

there is hope there are ways that that can help you break out of this cycle And

that's what this channel is all about.

That's what smart ADHD Is all about so i'll be back with strategies and

i'll be inviting guests Onto this channel to bust myths and come up

with great tools to counteract these bad tools and strategies to help you

be the person you were made to be.

I'm Ian Anderson Gray, and this has been Smart ADHD.

I'll see you on the next one.