Hey Boss and welcome to another insightful episode of ADHD-ish! I'm your host, Diann Wingert,  and I’m joined by my new biz bestie, Bri Seeley, who opens up about her late realization of ADHD traits just six months ago. 

Bri's relationship with her fiancé and the challenges of sharing a work-from-home lifestyle with a neurotypical fiance, after 17 years of entrepreneurship prompted her to question her brain’s functioning.

This led her to "Scattered Minds" by Gabor Maté, which illuminated her experiences and led to a deeper understanding of her unique cognitive processes. 

🧠 Bri Seeley shares her experience of coming to terms with her ADHD traits over the past six months in her early 40s and how it's reshaped her approach to work and life. Whether you're officially diagnosed, self-diagnosed, or just curious, this episode offers valuable perspectives and practical insights.

🎧 Here are 3 key takeaways from the episode:

• Self-Discovery and Adaptation: Bri shares the importance of understanding how her brain works and developing systems and processes that align with her natural tendencies.
• Leveraging Strengths: The episode highlights the benefits of engaging in work that fuels your passion and curiosity, demonstrating how ADHD traits can be a strength rather than a limitation in the right environment.
• Navigating Multiple Ventures: With several business ventures underway, Bri’s approach showcases the balance between ambition and practicality, emphasizing the need to choose and focus on the most viable ideas.

Why You Should Tune In: 

This episode is packed with wisdom for anyone navigating the complexities of ADHD—as a diagnosed individual, a partner, or simply someone curious about their ADHD-ish tendencies. 

Bri's story is a testament to the fact that it’s never too late to understand yourself better and leverage your unique traits to create the life you desire.

Where to find Bri Seeley:

• Website
• Podcast 
• Instagram 

One of Bri’s most important realizations is that due to her creative impulses and high levels of distractibility,  she needs to choose her most viable options to focus on.  

This is one of my favorite ways to help multi-talented and neurodivergent people: honing in on their most brilliant ideas that merge passion, purpose & profit.  Click here to book a free consultation to see how I can help you. 

And don’t forget to Rate and Review ADHD-ish and subscribe/follow on your favorite podcast player! 

H: We are here to unpack your ADHD ish story, and I think it's a fascinating one, and I think it's one that so many people are really going to resonate with. It's also really accelerated the development of our friendship over these last few months. So why don't we roll back the clock just a little bit and start with how you first started to think of yourself as possibly ADHD just six months ago and what's happened since then?

G: Yeah, so it's, I guess, backing up. So three years ago, literally tomorrow, I met my now fiance and he and I knew when we met like that, this was different. So within four months, we bought a house together. We bought this lovely house, three bedroom, two bathroom house right. Well, part of it is an Airbnb, so one of the bedrooms and one of the bathrooms is not in our house, attached to our house. So we move in together and immediately start sharing an office. And that brings up a lot of, like, as someone who's worked as a solopreneur for 17 18 years, you know, I'm used to being with myself, right? But all of a sudden I'm thrust into the situation where I'm witnessing how another person is operating on a day to day basis.

I even sit on a yoga ball usually, because those things keep that busy part of my brain busy. Well, I couldn't do that when in the office with Jordan because that would distract him and he apparently is not always distracted. Well, that's interesting if he's not always distracted, but I'm always distracted. Like, what, what is going on? And I don't know how I was led to it or even who recommended it or where it would have popped up, but I read this book called Scattered Minds by Gabor Mate, and I read it and it was kind of the first time where I was like, oh, my gosh, this makes so much sense and that makes so much sense. And he talks about all the things that kind of, like, lead to ADHD in a lot of people, and it's like coming from a broken home, check.

Having an alcoholic parent, check. Having a parent with mental disabilities or health situations, check. I start going through all these things, and I'm just like, oh, well, maybe the way that my brain works is just different. And I've tried my whole life to conform myself into these other ways of being, and that's actually just not what works for me. So, what if I started actually working with how I operate and finding solutions to operate better in the world rather than trying to force myself to be a certain way or work a certain way or fit myself into a certain box? I know we'll get into this. I have not been tested. I'm not getting diagnosed. I'm not taking medication. None of those things. My whole thing is, how can I know myself better now that I have this information? How can I know myself better to develop systems and processes and bumpers to help me stay in my lane and be successful in it?

H: I think you are one of the people I know, Bri, who's a quintessential poster child for how to do ADHD without even knowing that's what you're doing. Because, I mean, some of the things I know about you, like, you were an only child for ten years. Your dad was distracted by alcohol, and your mother was distracted by having multiple different jobs. So you had a lot of time to figure yourself out. You had a lot of time to learn how to manage yourself, to learn how to entertain yourself, to learn how to feed yourself, even to learn how to motivate yourself, occupy yourself. And I think for somebody who is born with a very smart mind, a very fast moving mind, and a boatload of curiosity, that's a real opportunity. Now, you could have gotten yourself into all manner of trouble, and we'd be having a very different conversation. Actually, you'd probably be having a conversation with your probation officer instead of me.

G: I think I tried to go down that pathway, and I love my mom so much. She very much let me know that that was not a pathway that was available to me and that, like, I better get my ish together and figure it out. I love my mom so much. I say all the time, like I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her and not from a, like, she gave birth to me way I was going to think. She kept me on the straight and narrow and was like, this is the pathway you're venturing down. You are my daughter. We are not going any other which way? I even said to her at one point, I don't think I want to go to college. And she laughed, and she goes, oh, as if that's an option. And I was like, oh, cool good to know. Which so grateful, literally, if I didn't have her, I would have ended up in the foster care system, a 100 percent.

H: I think it's so important to know what to be grateful for, because your circumstances early in life. My circumstances early in life, we could choose to indulge in a lot of self pity and a lot of, you know, poor me and who might I have been if my situation was different? But actually, your growing up experiences with a bright, curious girl who also had a very strong parental figure, you were able to indulge your curiosity. And while it's taken you more than 40 years to realize, I think I have ADHD, it didn't take you all that long to realize that you needed to do things your way. You did not want to conform to the norm. You did not want to take orders from other people. You did not want to build other people's empire, because you've been an entrepreneur for a lot longer than it's been cool and trendy. So you knew things about yourself because you spent time with yourself and because you had a parent that accepted you exactly as you are.

It's one of the things I've learned, Bri, that makes a huge amount of difference in how we think about ourselves with these traits. Because, let's face it, we are living in a world that is made by and for neurotypicals. All of our systems, public education, you know, organizations of all kinds, corporations, they are built by and for neurotypicals. There's a right way to do things, and you're damn well going to do it the right way, or you're out of here. So people who do things differently usually don't feel very welcome and are oftentimes showed the door. You showed yourself the door, and you got into a field early on where there's a lot of people with ADHD-ish tendencies, and that is fashion.

G: Yeah. And I will say, too, like, even backing up, I actually left high school a year early because I knew that, like, I didn't want to be there. So much of what you said is, like, exactly spot on. And I was very lucky in that because I was so smart, I could pick up concepts and things very easily. I was always the first person in high school and college to turn in all of my tests. In fact, I got two boyfriends off of being that person, one in college and one in high school, because…

H: They wanted to copy from you?

G: No, one of them, we would study together, but they were just fascinating. Fascinated by, like, how I could do that and how I every time, every test in chemistry, I hated chemistry. I would be the first person to turn in every single test, and I would get an A on every single test, and I hated the subject. And so I was very lucky in that, like, I was able to kind of move through life at that clip, but it was more of, like, I just did it because I had to do it, not because I wanted to or I cared to. And It was just like checking off a box, being like, whatever, I did the thing, I got the grade, now I can move on.

And is what then, you know, again, thankfully, my mom was super supportive. I was able to then leave high school a year early and go to college a year early and start studying fashion there and even had great. Some great art school teachers in high school that let me turn a lot of my art assignments into fashion related things. So, yeah, it was a great place for me to start my entrepreneurial journey as well, in that I could be in my creativity and all of that good, juicy stuff. I'm curious to know, like, why you think that that's such a good career path for ADHD-ish.

H: Well, I didn't exactly say it's a good career path. What I said was there's a lot of listen, what I've learned is that there are certain career paths, there are certain fields that have a lot of people with ADHD traits, whether they are diagnosed or not. For example, fashion and beauty. Anything that requires creativity and creating a tangible product that other people can see, because we tend to be very visual. You also see a ton of people with ADHD in other forms of creative art, musicians, writers, investigative journalists and reporters, because of the curiosity and because it's deadline driven and because it's fast paced and we can follow our curiosity. So tons of people don't even know they have ADHD or would qualify for a diagnosis, but they follow their interests. They follow their curiosity. They follow the things that light their brain up like a Christmas tree and deliver all the juicy dopamine that we live for.

They don't think there's anything diagnosable about them, they're just doing what they love. And I think that's one of the reasons why I have changed the focus of this podcast and why I was so eager to have you as one of the first guests after that change. Because I think the most important thing, if you have these traits, is not whether you embrace a specific label, but whether you are able to embrace what you love most, doing what you love most, finding a way to make a living and create a life around the things you love most. Because you tell me when you're doing the stuff that lights you up, you're not as symptomatic, are you?

G: Well, and I was going to say, I actually think that I was able to go as long as I was without seeing it within myself because of the pathways that I've chosen. So, yes, fashion because with fashion, I was all over the place with a million things going on in one moment, right? I was patterning something, cutting fabric, managing my website, responding to social media inquiries, like all of these things all the time. Well, then I moved into business, entrepreneurship, entrepreneur coaching, things like that. And so much of what you just said, while entrepreneurship isn't necessarily like a physical, tangible product, the way that it works in my brain is very much like doing a puzzle. I'm able to see in my head all of the puzzle pieces that go into having a cohesive business. And my brain does work through the elements very quickly.

And everything you just said, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's why I love being an entrepreneur coach and helping people with their businesses, because all of that is true. And so I think that because I let myself be in specifically these two areas, and I know we've talked about on my podcast, me being a vocational rehabilitation counselor. I was on the billable hour, and so I was able to also kind of steer my own ship there that I've chosen pathways that have supported more of this brain functioning without even necessarily specifically building it that way. And now that I know, now I'm like, oh, what other elements can I put in place to make sure that I'm not just distracted all the time and serving all these dopamine hits all the time so that I'm staying in my most effective mode of operation without trying to change myself but trying to work with myself instead?

H: You are speaking to one of my core concepts in my coaching business, which is, well, it's two, actually, what I call quick hits versus big wins. Like it's all about the dopamine, baby, and we're going to get that dope wherever we can. I'll take a squirt. I'll take a cup. I'll take a splash. But truly, if we are dividing our effort, our energy, our focus, our attention across so many different things, we're not going to create as much value, we're not going to make the contributions, and we're not going to have the things that we can point to with pride that will make us money. As if we hold out a little bit for the big wins. Like, I mean, I literally have wasted so many brilliant ideas.

G: I do worry about that within myself because I know we'll talk about, like, I have a for profit, I have a nonprofit. I'm getting ready to start a third business and potentially partnering up with someone on a fourth business right? And, like, so there is part of me that does wonder about that coupled with a very high ambition coupled with entrepreneurship, of being like, well, I want to be a seven figure entrepreneur where all my revenue streams coming in so that that can be my reality right? Like, and it is hard to know where...

H: It's hard to say now. I think this is one of the, I think this is one of the most important things, is that you and I have more brilliant ideas just without trying then most people can even imagine. That's not a flex, I'm not a narcissist. This is not an arrogant statement. It's just ADHD type brains are constantly firing off good ideas. When we're taking a shower, we don't even try. It's about noticing things that other people don't notice, being curious about. I wonder what would happen if I do this.

Being willing to take risks and not being overly concerned with whether they're going to fail or succeed. But, like, I wonder what'll happen if I do this. I wonder what will happen if I try this or launch this or create this. It's very, very satisfying to indulge those impulses. However, they don't all have equal viability. They don't all have the same potential to bring us the rewards that make it worth our while to do them as opposed to other things. So I think one of the things that I work on a lot with my clients is getting better at picking the winners because most of us really can't have a horse in every race and get as far.

So you're bringing up a really good point, and this is something that I see with my clients, whether they know they have ADHD or not, or they just consider themselves kind of ADHD-ish. Many of them will start telling me I have this business and I have this business and I have this business, and I get it. One of the reasons why I became a business coach, and I believe you did too, is because I don't have the time to launch 50 different businesses. But over a course of a year, I can help 50 different entrepreneurs with their businesses. And I get a lot of satisfaction from that because I can see the road ahead. I can see it, like you said, all the pieces and how they fit together. I can see what's gonna work well for them and won't. So it's exciting and satisfying to me because I can visualize their business success even though I'm not in their business.

And I think you do it for a lot of the same reasons. But you currently have, 2 businesses, your primary business, your entrepreneurial coaching business, and you do things like retreats, and you also have a podcast. You have your nonprofit like, what itch and I know you didn't know I was gonna ask you this, so forgive me. What itch do you need to scratch to add 2 more businesses when your current businesses have room for growth and you have plans to grow them? Why do you need to have 2 more horses in 2 more races?

G: Yeah. So the one that's coming, to me is, photo booth business. And part of why I wanna move forward with it is I have two events coming up in the next 60 days that I need a photo booth for. And I looked at the prices, and for me to rent it for my 3 hour reception, plus my 3 hour welcoming party, plus day 1 of the conference, plus day 2 of the conference, I'm like, that's literally the cost of a photo booth. That is the cost of a photo booth and then my brain I sit down with a piece of paper in front of me, which this is how my brain works. I immediately am like, oh, no one's bought the URL for the SEO for this thing. Oh, there's 300 organic searches a month, and even if I could get 5% of those, that's a 5 figure a month business immediately.

Oh, I can SEO for this there's 20 different kinds of events that could happen, and I can have my assistant do that. I don't even have to do that myself right? And she can do outreach for all the event planners in town and all of the like and so I literally mapped it all out, and I was like, I can offload 90% of it and be bringing in 5 figures a month, plus it's gonna save me money in the long run for not having to rent one from someone else. So I think that that's for me, part of the itch of that, honestly, is, like, it makes sense. It's saving me money, and at the end of the day, it's like, why wouldn't I then also make money off of it? And so I don't know if it's necessarily, like, an itch I need scratched or just, like, why wouldn't I do that?

This is where I will 100% admit, and I think I admitted this to you last week, is, like, I very much, like, follow instincts and signs and doors opening, and I'm very spiritual and universal and all of these things. And, you know, I don't believe that there are any mistakes, and I do my best to not live with regrets. And all of that being said, I have wondered recently if starting the nonprofit last year was not a good idea.

H: Let's talk about that, Bri, because this is the second time you brought it up in conversation with me, and I think it's not just important for you. I think this is a universal phenomenon with most of the people I work with when they say, how do I know if it's my intuition or if it was an impulse? How do I know if I'm really tapping into my inner knowing, my spiritual wisdom? And how do I know when it's just maybe I gave in to time pressure or a quick hit? It's such a good question because it's our trust in ourself is everything.

G: Yeah. And the way that I work, like, shutting my fashion business down came to me through meditation. Writing my book came to me through meditation. The women's conference, which is what then was the impetus that spurred the non profit, came to me in meditation. Me giving a TED talk came to me in meditation. And so the way that the universe and I kind of work together is I don't generally, like, try to act on these things just like of my own volition because I know that if I'm trying to push a boulder up a hill, it's exhausting. So I'm like when things come to me, I always question like, okay, yes or no, am I going to move forward with this or not, and then is now the time.

H: Me too.

G: While my while my entrepreneur coaching business is established, I've also been shown over the last 18 months some up leveling that needs to happen with it, some rebranding that needs to happen with it, that I just wonder if that business wasn't a little more solidified. And I will say I've had this business for 10 years and I have done well all 10 years of having this business that I just wonder if capacity wise, like and to be quite honest, finance wise, because you're a new nonprofit, it is hard to get fund like, there are just a lot of things that go into it that and I don't know if I would have known 2 years ago the answers to these things. And so, you know, I think it was one of those things where I, like, had to try it out to know whether or not it was time. And I have just made some decisions. I'm at a very different point in my life than I've made decisions like this in the past. When I was single, I didn't care. I could do it at, like, I could do whatever.

H: Bri, you have said so many things in what you just said that I wanna unpack some of it so that the lessons are evident to you and everyone listening.

G: Let's do it.

H: One of the things that I think is most impressive about you and why I often refer to you as a natural born entrepreneur, and I mentioned it earlier, is that you trust yourself. You trust your instincts. You trust your intuition. You trust your curiosity. You're willing to take action without having all the steps figured out. You're willing to fail, and you don't make it mean anything about you when it happens. You learn from mistakes, and you're like, okay, maybe that wasn't what I thought it was. But like you just said, if I didn't do it, how would I know?

G: I will tell you the reason that I'm able to not let failure affect me is because when I shut down my fashion business, I had 9 months of pointing fingers at myself and calling myself a failure and, you know, really shaming myself and putting a lot of like, I had 9 months of unpacking a lot of old shit that, like, had I not done that work and gotten to the point where I was like, oh, I didn't fail. I literally was no longer aligned with it and just needed to move forward right? Like had I not done that 10 years ago I would not be here right now being willing to be like I don't care what the answer is. I just can't feel like this every day for the next year. So for anyone listening, this was not like a flip of a switch. This was 9 months of very hard internal labor to get to the point where I don't care about failure any longer.

H: You did the work. You did the work to reach that point of equanimity. Something because we both meditate, and we've had a number of conversations about the value of that. Like, you understand that you are not your thoughts. You understand that you don't need to be attached to any particular outcome because attachment is the source of suffering. So but you also don't wanna create, expectations in other people that you're unable to fulfill because you actually give a shit about the people who pay attention to you, who follow you, who learn from you, who are mentored by you. So you don't wanna announce something and then go, oh, change my mind. One of the things that I think can come from having this type of brain wiring is because we can be impulsive.

We can just say, well, I just feel like it. It just sounds like a good idea to me. I really didn't think it through, but it sounded fun. And then when it didn't work out, we feel shame. So we either blame it on someone else, we make up a story about why it happened, or we just try to move on and, you know, escape the evidence and hope no one finds out. You often talk about, like, the things that you have learned from your failures, and you also have talked we have talked a lot about unlearning and unpacking. In fact, one of our best conversations was about the difference between giving up, letting go, and being complete with something.

Like I was complete with my former career, you were complete with your former business. And I think this can be really challenging for somebody who's ADHD-ish because so many times we try things, and we're not successful because we didn't think it through. We entered into it impulsively. We made a bad decision under time pressure, and then we feel like, oh, I have to make this work. And it just shows, you know, how all over the place I am, how inconsistent I am, how unprepared I am. So I have to make it work, which means we stay in things that aren't working, don't work. We're never gonna work when what we really need to do is say, okay, well, now that I know, now what? And the non attachment for me, such a game changer because I used to feel like if I just jumped into something and started doing it, even if it was the worst decision I ever made, I had to stick with it and make it work because admitting that I started it impulsively was too shameful.

G: Yeah. And I think too for a lot of it for me because when I decided to shut down my fashion business, a lot of people outside of me had a lot of feelings about it as well.

H: That's for sure.

G: I definitely had to, like, create a lot of, like, separation and boundaries to be like, okay, what's mine and what's theirs? Because most people would be uncomfortable with the decisions I've made in my life in general, not to mention then failing, quote, unquote, at those decisions right? Like, it makes a lot of people very uncomfortable to think about those things. And so I've also had to do the disentanglement work of, okay, that's yours, and I understand that you have feelings about that. And I can honor those feelings, but I'm not willing to carry or embrace those feelings because they're not mine. And so I had and a lot of people have a lot of feelings and a lot of opinions about me walking away from my fashion label, and I just had to be like, I respect that you have those feelings.

And, you know, I know what it feels like in my body to be complete with something and, like, need to walk away from it because I know that if I stay in it much longer, it's gonna be oh, well, it already was. I had actually far surpassed the point. I was having daily panic attacks. I was depressed. Lots of signs of lack of alignment and so I know that I'm like, it's my life at the end of the day, and I get that you may have feelings about this, but I can't feel like I've been feeling every day any longer and that means that something, therefore, needs to change.

H: Do you think you're better now at releasing things before you get to the daily panic attacks? Because, sadly, for so many of us, we have to get that level of what I call biofeedback before we say, obviously, this is too painful to continue. Do you think you're able to recognize the signs quicker or you're able to work through the feelings like, what do you think?

G: I think so. I mean, so last year when I at the first iteration of the conference was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Like, this time last year, my body stopped processing food. I was I'd lost I lost 15 pounds in 3 weeks, which, by the way, that's, like, more than a tenth of my body weight.

H: You're very slender, that would have been scary.

G: Yeah. I was probably the skinniest I've been maybe ever last year at the conference. And, like, but I also felt like I didn't have a choice right? I had a 175 people who were relying on me, plus also my bank account. And my finances with my partner now too. Like, so many things were wrapped up in it that I knew I was having those feelings, and I was doing what I could to combat them. I was going to the chiropractor constantly. I was, you know, getting reiki and massages and, like, doing what I needed to do on a physical level to help support myself. But I had to shut down for, like, 6 weeks afterwards. I do not recall the 6 weeks after the conference. I've had to apologize to people that were at the conference last year that I spoke to that I have no recollection of because I think I blacked out for a good majority of it. Like so you know, yes and no.

What I then relearned from that experience, right, was doing it this year has gotta be different. And so that's where, like, you know, I'm bringing on brought on a partner, and I have a board, and I have, like, I'm less afraid to make asks and have conversations and things like that where I'm like, what needs to happen feasibly for this to actually go off? And we're ahead of the curve this year, we also gave ourselves a little more time. It's in November this year, not September, which is a hard month to plan events for because people are just getting back into the groove of school and blah blah blah. So, I mean, I definitely learned last year, I think, was an extreme that maybe could have been avoided, but also would I be here having this conversation with you if I had avoided it? I don't know.

And because we both have that trait, it's like, okay well, we're not gonna be that way with each other, we're gonna keep talking. Like, you've said, I'm not gonna get diagnosed. I'm not gonna take medication. I'm figuring out a few things obviously, you're figuring out how to live with another person who's neurotypical and needs to do things differently. Has it changed your self-concept at all? Has it changed your expectations of yourself, what you think of your potential? Like, what has actually changed if anything?

G: I think that I'm a little more self accepting, and you and I talked about this on Big Goal Energy, is that idea of, like, radical self acceptance. And so I think, and I shared with you, I have this story from kindergarten where I when I when I write, still to this day, 35 years later, right, I turn my paper a little bit on the table and, like, that's how I write. And my kindergarten teacher would turn it back, and I would turn it again. I would tilt it again, and she would turn it back to be square, and I would tilt it again. So she finally taped it down to be square on the thing and I, you know, I think that for most of my life, whether it was conscious or not, there's been this understanding that I am different. I am different than a lot of the people around me, and I've always felt like a black sheep. Like, there's a lot of things that go into that, but I think what's happened this year is that I am a lot more self accepting.

I'm a lot less likely to shame myself or blame myself or make myself wrong over how my brain works. And the other thing I think that has changed is I'm able to also, like, put my finger on it now and being like, oh, I'm doing that thing again where I'm distracted. And is that what I want, no, I don't wanna be distracted. Okay so what do I need in this moment to help support myself in, you know, what I want to do? And so yesterday, I was getting this slide deck and this talk avail ready for this keynote that I'm giving in 2 weeks, and it just was not happening at my desk. I was sitting on my yoga ball, laptop, keyboard, blah blah blah blah blah. That is not my best way of working. And so I was sitting there being distracted over and over again, and I was like, stop what do I need? And I was like, you need your pen and your piece of paper and you need to sit on your meditation cushion and literally write it all out.

Also that visual thing, I need to see shit. So I need to write out the entire talk. I need to have the outline. I need to have all the things, and then I can go make the slides and so that's what I did yesterday. I stopped my pattern. Pattern interrupted. Put myself in a different physical space within my shed, got my pencil out and, like, sat on my meditation cushion and wrote the whole thing. And it is probably one of the most brilliant talks I think I've ever written. And then I because I need a change of scenery, this is just how I work. I picked my laptop up, I moved into the dining room. And I sat at the dining room and I built my slide deck while baking a peach cheesecake, for Jordan and myself and, his parents last night as we watched the Chiefs opening game.

H: This is what radical self acceptance sounds like, looks like, feels like. When you stop asking yourself, what's wrong with me, and why can't I just? And you instead say, what do I need right now? That right there can change so much of what's so painful about living with the knowledge that you're different. The fact that we're different, it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't mean wrong. It doesn't mean bad. It doesn't mean inadequate, deficient, less than, disordered, diagnosable. It's just different. So asking yourself the question, okay this isn't working, what do I need right now? And then whatever comes up, give it a try. Change your location. Change from digital to analog or the other way around. Stop, take a break, come back to it later. Not double down, push through, force yourself, or channel your inner teacher's voice. Well, if you could just pay attention

G: And I think here's what the difference between those two things has given me. When I did do those things and be like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I just get this done? Why am I procrastinating? Blah blah blah blah blah, I would shut down. Like, I would have to then, like, be on the couch watching Netflix for a day or 2 days or 3 days. Now because I'm not fighting against myself so much, I'm not exerting all that energy just in conflict with myself.