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I'm your host, Ash McDonald, the only therapist who speaks fluent entrepreneur.
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Welcome to Shamelessly Ambitious.
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Hello, sweet friend.
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Welcome back to the Shamelessly Ambitious Podcast.
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I'm making a habit of recording podcast episodes from my bed, apparently.
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And today I'm recording in the mountains of Colorado.
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So I got back from Europe and just popped right into the car the very next day with all of my children and a few bags and went to a cabin, partially because my sister-in-law and my nephew are in town and this is where they were.
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And also because fall in Colorado is otherworldly.
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It is stunning.
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And I just I couldn't imagine not spending a little bit of time cozied up.
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And so it is super early in the morning.
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I think I still have sleeper's voice because my kids are still sleeping.
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Unfortunately, my sweet husband, best friend, is not here.
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And that's because the poor thing took on all three kids for my entire time in Europe.
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And I just felt like maybe he needed a break.
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And the minute I offered for him to stay home and us to go alone, I could just, I could sense the peace.
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So he is at home catching up, working out, doing whatever he needs to do to feel good.
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And I love that for him.
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And I am here and figured I'd pop in really quick and record an episode before spending the day frolicking through the woods.
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And I've got cinnamon rolls to make and many things to do with my kiddos.
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And I'm super excited about it.
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And so as I was thinking about it and what I wanted to talk about today, I honestly felt this urge to not necessarily talk about ADHD, but because I think at the end of the day, our ability to be productive and be focused and, you know, have the thing that we want.
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Yes, 100% it's going to come from the mentality, our ability to really believe in what's possible.
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Yes, I believe that it's going to come from many different areas.
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But I also think that there's a lot of us who probably relate to neurodivergency, who definitely relate to being wildly ambitious.
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And unfortunately, we've learned to mobilize, to move into action, if you will, through a pressure-powered system.
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Okay.
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What I mean when I say that is that we wait till something is urgent, or we take on too much, or we chase that novelty.
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We kind of abandon things when they're in the boring middle.
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We self-criticize in order to create movement.
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I know I can relate to this, where unfortunately there's this like internal dick brain that I have that sometimes wants to be like, be better, do more, get more done.
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Anxiety sometimes becomes evidence rather than facts.
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I especially witness in many of my clients the unconscious, not so great habit of essentially saying things like, I am, I am anxious, I am unproductive, I'm falling behind, I am bad with time, I am, I am, I am.
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And these are identifying characteristics.
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When we say the phrase I am before it, our brain goes, Oh, that's who we are.
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Great.
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I'm gonna look for proof of that.
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And so this is where the mentality side definitely comes into it, of course.
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But ultimately, it doesn't really work for us to be beautifully talented in all the work that we're doing, but also neglecting this like self-directed work.
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And at the end of the day, the majority of the women that I'm so lucky to work with can relate to one, if not all, of things like ADHD, neurodivergency, burnout, perimenopause.
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And a lot of us are in a season, and I know I have been where because of where our hormones are and because of what's shifting for us, our masked, I'm quote, I'm quoting in the air right now, our masked ADHD symptoms are coming out.
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And that makes sense because when we have accumulated burnout and lots of businesses and children and aging parents and mental load and sleep changes and you know the perimenopause, and suddenly these strategies that once worked for us don't work anymore.
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We don't want less.
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We want a hell of a lot more, to be honest, but it doesn't work the way that it used to work.
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And so as I was thinking about it, I was like, well, I can come in here and I can pet talk you and I can remind you who the fuck you are and remind you to get your ass out of the seat, get to work on the things that you want, go all fucking in, because that's the energy, my friends.
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But there might be some things that are ultimately creating more friction than you feel that you have control over.
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And often when somebody asks me to come into their community and speak, I love to give actionable stuff.
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I want to inspire the shit out of you all day, every day, but I also want to make sure that you can walk away and know what you can do to feel different.
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And so that's what I want to talk about today.
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There are a handful of things that create friction in our life that can cause problems for us, that can make it harder for us to take the excited energy, the internal momentum, and turn it into external momentum.
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One of those pieces of friction is clarity.
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And I see this all the time where I'll have a client come to me and they're very excited about something that they want to do, but it's vague.
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It's vague.
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And so one of the best things that you can do, and I did this multiple times in Europe.
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Anytime I had an idea, rather than just conceptually saying, Oh, I want to launch this thing or I want to create this, I want to do this, I would sit down and I would break it into actionable steps.
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Anything vague is paralyzing.
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And it's where the internal dialogue of like you could never and it's too much, and it's, you know, all those things, they can take over.
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Things need to be broken down if you can relate to any of the things I mentioned: neurodivergency, ADHD, which obviously falls in that category, maybe some burnout, maybe having a million different roles, maybe being in perimetopause.
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You need clarity.
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And so often we get ideas.
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I don't care if it's a household project, like I'm gonna redecorate my office or I'm gonna book a trip, no matter what it is, we create these vague, sort of broad, massive things to accomplish.
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And they almost instantly tear us underneath the water.
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They make it feel like we're drowning.
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And so I want to encourage that you create clarity where clarity is necessary and you break things down.
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I personally love to break things down into 15 minutes or less tasks because that fits the lifestyle that I'm in.
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Sometimes I have a full day for work.
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Many times I have 15 minutes.
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And so I want things to match the energy and the capacity that I have, which brings me to friction number two, which is in fact capacity, where the ask or the expectation of yourself exceeds your cognitive, your physical, your emotional, whatever resources.
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I find that again, people think, oh, if I can just have better time management skills, if I can just plan this out better.
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No, no, my friend, if you don't have the capacity, I can promise you no amount of time management is going to fix the problem.
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And so I want to encourage you to remove rather than add.
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Remove rather than add, which essentially means we have a tendency to go, here's all the things I'm working on.
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Ooh, but I also want to drink more water, or I also want to work out every day, or I also want to pitch myself more frequently, or I'm gonna post every day.
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Great, I love this for you.
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But what are you gonna remove from your plate before deciding to add something to a plate that you know is already full?
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If your capacity is already maxed, the solution is never to add more.
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I know we think that, oh, I'm not feeling very good.
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I don't have energy, I'm gonna add walking every single day and drinking this much water and taking all these vitamins.
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Love that for you, but you're adding something to an already full plate.
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What goes first?
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Okay.
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The next friction that I see the most is emotional cost.
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So this essentially translates to starting something requires uncertainty, boredom, imperfection, visible visibility, maybe even the possibility of disappointment.
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And that emotional cost that you're likely not naming is the thing that keeps you from moving, from taking action.
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And so I find it's really important.
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And anything that I decide I want to do, I've broken it down, I've determined what needs to go in order to add it in.
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But then I'm really asking myself, like, what feelings does doing this evoke in me?
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Not because I need to solve it, but just naming it has a lot of power.
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Like, oh, I feel like there's a possibility that I could fail.
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I feel like I could waste time and then I'll feel regret.
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Great, let's just name it.
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Let's just get really honest with the emotions that we're experiencing and why we're experiencing them so that our brain can no longer run off looking for proof of that feeling being true because we've already named it.
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And I think obviously go a step further and witness the fact that it's likely not true if we really ask ourselves like worst case scenario.
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Am I really gonna feel this total emotional upheaval?
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Probably not.
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But our brain is trying to protect us.
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It loves us deeply, and we just need to make sure we're on the same page.
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Okay.
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And finally, I would say activation.
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And so this translates to you know what to do, but nothing is making it immediate or even accessible for you.
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So I know I didn't used to be, but the older I got, the more procrastination became sort of a personality for me that I needed to work through.
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And I found that it was because I needed that activation within my body, that excitement that like there was a real deadline.
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And I really did not do great with like, oh, I'm gonna do this thing that launches in three months.
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I wouldn't do it right away.
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So we need to create that immediacy, not an emergency.
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That's not good for our nervous system, but immediacy.
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So what does that look like?
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It looks like deadlines again, breaking tasks down and then actually putting them week by week.
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So it's like, no, this has to be done this week in order for me to do the thing next week, even though the whole project's not done for three months.
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Accountability is huge.
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I've been capitalizing on that so much this past year of just friends and colleagues that I've connected with and have even myself just said, like, hey, I'm desperate for somebody to hold me to the fire on this.
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And I have different accountability partners for different things.
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And it has made the world of a difference.
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Timers, a little old school, but they are something that can work.
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Timers for I'm gonna spend 10 minutes doing this, I'm gonna be in a boxer for 30 minutes, I'm going to write this email, it's gonna take less than 45 minutes.
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So help me God, whatever the case may be, those timers can be helpful as well.
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We do need that activation when we experience some of the things that I've mentioned.
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Okay.
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And so I just want you to think about, you know, whenever you feel friction, I want you to ask, is it unclear?
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Is it genuinely too heavy for my current capacity?
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What feeling would beginning this project require me to tolerate?
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And is it missing immediacy or structure or external support?
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Ultimately, I think it's so important that we recognize that discomfort is information.
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Okay.
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And that means that we don't need to feel perfectly focused or motivated or regulated or ready before we begin.
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We only need to understand whatever friction is making it impossible for us to move so that we can move.
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Okay.
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So a little different than normal, but I just thought, you know what?
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Some of us maybe are all in, but can't figure out how to get our brain to work with our body, to work with our fingers, to work with all the other parts of us.
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And I fucking get that, which is why I've had to go really hard the past couple of years on supporting myself differently than what I once did in my 20s or early 30s, even.
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And I know that that has a lot to do with the fact that I am changing.
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And that doesn't mean that I have to give up the greatest parts of myself.
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It means that I get to find them and explore them and activate them in very different ways.
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And so this is my reminder, you are in control, even if it feels challenging sometimes.
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And girlfriend, you can go for it.
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You can have the biggest, boldest, wildest dreams, and you can still make them possible.
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So if you have any stupid stories in your head, yes, I'm gonna call them that stupid stories in your head telling you that it's too late, that you can't do it anymore, that you're not who you used to be, that you can't do the things you used to do.
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I call fucking bullshit all day, every day.
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I call bullshit.