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My “watch later” playlist on YouTube is out of control. I have
Will I ever watch them all? Probably not. That doesn’t equate to laziness or lack of follow-through. (For me, or for you btw) All of us neurodivergent folks have tried things that didn’t catch our interest, or that we intended to come back to… but then some new sparkly thing captured our attention. It’s not our fault, though, because information and integration aren't the same thing. For example, you can read three articles on ADHD struggles with prioritizing, and still find yourself working on unimportant tasks while deadlines sneak up on you. You might agree you "should" rest… and still feel guilty every time you sit down. Don’t get me wrong, knowledge matters. I’ve read 115 books so far this year (in part because I’ve massively decreased my phone use). But the biggest changes in my life have been relational. As I’ve felt more safe with others (and myself), I’ve been able to relate gently when my brain says that I’m failing and everything is terrible. I don’t feel like I’m in conflict all the time. The actual application/integration of these changes during stress have required me to be present and vulnerable when an old pattern like that starts to take over. Like when I have the urge to downplay a mistake out of fear that someone will be mad at me. My body is not a machine, and I never know how stress will land on my body on a given day. Some days I can handle an emergency and be okay, and some days I get dysregulated from seeing a news headline. That's one of the reasons I don't think of Love Your Brain as a traditional productivity course that assumes you will have predictable energy and executive function. Because it doesn’t prescribe a perfect set of steps for getting things done…you’ve probably tried that already. Rather, I think of it as a framework that helps you build your own flexible systems. A way of understanding your own brain well enough that you can begin making decisions that actually fit you. When you work with the brain you actually have (exactly as you are right now!), you can make progress on that manuscript, that business idea, or that decluttering project. And any momentum tends to ripple out into feeling more satisfied. Even if your only takeaway from the program is how to plan for an average day, that can be enough. Btw, the whole course will also be in “audiobook” format! So you don’t have to sit at a screen for hours in order to get all the insights and practices that you need to finish things you care about. More on this in the leadup to the Sep-Oct live round of the course! (And a live round is the perfect time to actually integrate and do the thing) Some people move through the Love Your Brain curriculum quickly and linearly. Some revisit sections a year later because something lands differently once they've had more lived experience. Some will listen to the whole course in its new audiobook format (because not all of us have hours to sit at our screens). I don't care if you absorb every word or not. Because, ultimately...your goal isn't “finish a course.” The goal is trusting and knowing yourself a whole lot more than you did before (or ya know, at least a bit 😉). So if you join us in the live round of Love Your Brain, and then you skip around & only engage with the parts that are relevant to you right now, that's a perfectly reasonable way to learn. One of the things I love most about neurodivergent people is that we're often wonderfully nonlinear. Why would our learning be any different? Take good care, Mattia p.s. Think about the last course you bought, but didn’t finish…did it expect you to learn in a way that didn’t fit your brain or values? You can hit reply to tell me about it p.p.s. Don’t want to hear about Love Your Brain ever? Click here |
I believe AuDHD/PDA/gifted/ND folks deserve to live well NOW, not when we've figured everything out. Public posts here (sign up available to receive the rest)
After any big project or creative output, of course the body needs some recovery time. Right now I'm weaving that in strategically, because I'm also about to head into a busy October with three (3!) different trips. In fact, when I was looking ahead trying to make some social plans, I realized that I didn't have any free weekend days until the end of October. This is not normal for me. The more busy I am, the easier it is to switch into old habits of hunker down and just keep working until...
A few years ago, I made one of the biggest purchases I'd ever made for myself. I'd been researching and considering for months, trying to decide. By the time I finally clicked "buy," I expected to feel terrified. Instead...I felt relieved. Not because I knew everything would work out perfectly. Uncertainty was still present. I still wondered whether I'd follow through fully. Making a choice ended the internal debate and freed up mental energy. I was viewing it as a choice between certainty...
When I was 21 and imagining a lifetime as a composer, I thought completing projects would naturally create the life I wanted: time to make art for fun energy to dance and move a lot feeling satisfied with myself But instead, the harder I tried to meet an external metric, the more I struggled… cut to me putting off writing the opening of this email because I was feeling perfectionistic about it. :P Here’s the thing… I don’t want rest, play, and self-acceptance to be rewards I earn by being...