Mind The Risk: ADHD & Self-Acceptance with Jon Cunningham

Mike: 00:00:00

You've landed at Spark Launch, the guide star for embracing what it means to be neurodiverse. I'm Mike Cornell, joined by CEO of Spark Launch, Chaya Mallavaram.

Here we navigate mental health triumphs and tribulations from all across the spectrum, charting a course through the shared experiences that unite us and discovering how to embody the unique strengths within neurodivergent and neurotypical alike. Igniting your spark and launching it into a better tomorrow. Hello there, I'm Mike.

Chaya: 00:00:33

I'm Chaya.

Mike: 00:00:34

And today we're joined by Jon Cunningham, a UK based entrepreneur and founder of Flowflows and the Futureneers.

He specializes in business development, automation and growth strategy, working with founders and CEO's to streamline operations through The Futureneers, Jon also supports young people struggling with traditional education by offering mentoring programs to help them build confidence and fulfill their potential. Welcome, Jon.

Jon: 00:01:02

Yeah, thank you and thanks for that introduction. I should clarify a few things and by the way, it's absolutely not you, it's all me.

Because I think I gave you these kind of facts and materials just for avoidance of doubt and the communication of clarity and honesty. The future is, is kind of temporarily on hold, but that's another story.

Chaya: 00:01:21

So how did you become an entrepreneur? What's your journey?

Jon: 00:01:25

Oh, that's a good one. Do I consider myself an entrepreneur? That's another question, but let's just assume I do for a second. I started a very young buying and selling.

My dad was an accountant but he took Wednesdays off mostly to go and buy and sell stuff.

So he'd go up to London and buy silver on a Friday morning or silver plate, a high quality silver plate, a kind of silver plate called old Sheffield plate, which was particularly old and high quality, rolled them to copper and he'd go and buy that on a Friday morning wherever he could find it. And then on Wednesdays he would go and sell it into a different market for like a higher price.

So he'd take it from a rotty, dirty, grimy east London or southeast London market and go and sell it to shiny shops on posh roads in London.

And I used to follow him around on school holidays and the Wednesdays and the Friday mornings and I kind of started to pick up whilst he was standing there chatting to people. Id kind of look at things and be like, oh right okay thats worth that much. Okay thats worth that much.

And ive got the kind of mind that will just catalog absolute nonsense that no one cares about.

And over time I kind of got a really strong sense of what things were worth and id started to see things in one place and then say to my dad, oh, we can sell that over here for this much, or lets buy that, we can sell this over here for that much. And I got to a point, I think, where I had a kind of. And ive still got it a little bit.

Ive got a bit of an intrinsic sense of things that might have a value. So, yeah, that was it. And then I started cleaning cars and I did a paper round for like a day and I was like, this is a joke.

I'm not getting paid a pound to deliver like 40 papers or whatever. It was one and a half dollars or whatever. So I started cleaning cars and sweeping drives and stuff.

Chaya: 00:03:11

So that tells me you are an entrepreneur.

Jon: 00:03:14

Yeah, I guess so.

I guess part of my entrepreneurship journey, I suppose, if you like, has always been a little bit tied by risk aversity, not least probably exacerbated by having family and kids and all that stuff where you kind of feel a sense of responsibility, but yeah, probably in my heart I probably am.

Chaya: 00:03:36

So you're saying that you're not living in that gift, ADHD gift of risk taking that much because of your commitments?

Jon: 00:03:47

Yeah, I mean, gift. Is it a gift? Is risk taking an ADHD gift?

Chaya: 00:03:52

It depends on what you're taking risk with, because if we don't take risk, we are never going to invent and create. So it comes down to what are you taking that risk with?

Because evolution is not going to happen if we are doing the same thing, if we are always trying to fit in and not take chances. For instance, just this whole podcast was a huge risk because Mike and I decided five minutes after meeting that we going to do this. Here we are.

We pushed out, I think, ten episodes now, and we like, nonstop every single week, thanks to Mike. But that's, that was a good risk, right? But it was scary. So that is a good risk, right? It was towards a good cause.

So this is where I want to actually encourage ADHD, is to take answers and not overthink. Just do it. Just, just wing it. Just do it. If you have a good intention, first of all, if your intention is pure and that's where the heart comes in.

So if you just drop into the heart and just, just do it, it's not going to make any logical sense because logic comes after first comes intuition, because if you're trying to prove everything, it's never going to happen. So if you feel right and your intentions are good, just do it, I.

Jon: 00:05:18

Think, I think, yeah, and I think that's great advice.

I think, you know, perhaps one of the things that tempers the risk taking or the, yeah, what underpins perhaps the lack of risk taking or the lack of putting yourself out there sometimes is a fear, and I'm just talking for myself here, but it's a fear of, I think the ADHD journey for me and for certainly many others that I've spoken to is one of not following through, not finishing things, not necessarily doing what you started or completing what you started. And I think I, unless you see it for what it is and you know, youve got ADHD. I was only diagnosed a couple of years ago.

Then it can just create a message from others or even from yourself that, oh, im not somebody who completes on things. Im not somebody who does things. Im not somebody who follows through.

I think once we know that weve got an interest based nervous system, whatever the like phrase is, I think thats right. We know that actually if we are excited by something, we will follow through on it and deliver.

But I think a lot of the things that we feel we ought to do and then we kind of start and don't finish, don't get finished, and then that starts to undermine and chip away the confidence we have in our ability to take a risk and actually deliver on that risk.

Chaya: 00:06:35

Great point. First of all, I want to address fear. Where is that fear coming from?

And if I look back at my own fear, my own anxiety from my childhood, it was fed to me. Right. And so that fear can happen with parents or people around you, in your energy space.

Their fear can seep into you because we're all energy bodies. And so that fear is not even ours. It could be somebody else's.

Jon: 00:07:10

I think that voice that is not our own around fear also comes into play in lots of other ways. So in the, you're not going to succeed, you're going to be a failure.

At school I was told you're going to end up in prison, you're going to fail, you're not going to amount to anything. You have so much capability and you're just letting it slide.

I think there's some stat, and I don't know what the stat is, I'm going to horribly misquote and mangle it, but there's something like by the age of twelve, let's just pull some random numbers out of the air and correct them later on. The average ad child has heard something like 20,000 more negative messages than like a normal child.

And you know, that that goes in and, you know, I'll sometimes do something and I'll, and I'll call myself a name. And I'm thinking, well, you know, most of the time I'm oblivious to it, but sometimes I pick up on it.

I'm like, why are you, why are you calling yourself that?

Chaya: 00:08:02

I mean, we talk about positive affirmations, right? And they really work. If you repeat a positive phrase a certain number of times every single day, it's you, you're going to believe it.

So just imagine as a child who has no sense of boundaries or any of that, and a child hears that phrase that they're not good enough 20,000 times, they're going to believe it. So it's definitely not ours.

And that's the whole thing of, I'm always calling for authenticity because that authenticity is as that garbage, but it's so hard to get there. It is challenging. It's. We're all masking, right? I was masking till I actually started sparkling.

And every time now I keep saying I'm going to speak authentically, not overthink, and it's working. So we have to stop that noise and believe in ourselves going off of.

Mike: 00:08:59

Automatic negative thoughts because I have a lot to say on this particular subject.

This is where, for me, exposure therapy to positive thoughts comes in handy for a neurodivergent, because we really excel at not to use like, the acronym that, I hate acronyms, but anTs, as they call them, which is so stupid, those automatic negative thoughts, that kind of voice that is always telling us to be afraid of something, to feel we're going to fail at something, to feel we're not fitting into something, blah, blah, blah.

For me, one of the helpful ways to combat that has been to allow myself to not, not just not listen to that voice, but specifically go, I'm going to give myself the opposite. I'm going to give myself a compliment that is in the affirming, just little ones. There's little ones at first.

Like, even if the main negative thought is that I'm not able to do this particular task, I can very easily add onto that. I cannot do this particular task right now because I am having a hard time in this particular way. But I am also capable of this, this, this.

I am good at this.

Tacking on little positive affirmations and kind of like building up a little bit of that resilience and exposure to allowing yourself to live in that. I hate the term positivity, but that little bit of more helpful thoughts, I.

Jon: 00:10:30

Think, I don't know if this is the same thing or if this is something different. And, you know, I sort of resent to talk about it because it might sound like I've got kind of something weird going on or something unusual going on.

Let's not say weird, something different going on. But I quite often have these conversations with myself where I'll say, you know, oh, I can't do that.

And then I'll sort of say to myself, but think of other things that you thought you couldn't do in the past that you have, you know, so do you remember that time you thought you couldn't, I don't know, ride a bike and then you did.

You remember that time you thought you couldn't, you know, climb that mountain and you did, or, you know, so I try and have these, you know, reasoned conversations with myself, which sounds absolutely, you know, ridiculous, but, yeah, I try and have these conversations with myself where I, because, you know, like, I've heard it said that that kind of negative voice is there to protect us. It's there trying to say, hey, watch out for this. This is dangerous. This is fear. You know, this could make you look silly. This could make you.

And it's kind of like trying to protect us.

And I think if we, I've heard this kind of theory that if we kind of sort of almost thank that voice, but say, you know, it's cool, you know, because that's like a younger part of ourselves, maybe it's cool. I've got this. You know, I really appreciate your concern over this. It is scary.

But, you know, I've had scary situations before, and I've kind of confronted them and dealt with them. So, yeah, I don't know if that sounds ridiculous, but.

Mike: 00:11:49

No, I literally was saying this, actually in a support group last night. The way I separate those thoughts, I separate, especially when it comes to feelings of am I doing a normal thing?

Am I processing emotions, quote unquote correctly, that a voice in my second mic, I'm taking what you're saying into account. Thank you. I know you're trying to help me. You're trying to do a. Do a thing here. You maybe are making some good points.

I'm going to go another direction.

I don't think your advice is particularly helpful right now, in no offense to how you're going about it, because usually how it's going about in my head is screaming and saying very horrible things. I'm sure I've used this analogy on this podcast before. I use this analogy constantly, which is the smoke detector. What does a smoke detector do?

It doesn't go off exclusively when there's a fire. And sometimes smoke detectors are broken and they go off whenever you light a.

Jon: 00:12:47

Candle or more likely put the toast on as an ADHD and the bread on something else and you come back and it's burnt.

Mike: 00:12:56

Yes. Yes. I almost did that this morning. It's fun.

Jon: 00:12:58

You did well. If you've ever not done that, you've done well. You've done better than me.

Mike: 00:13:02

I have to do. That's why I use the toaster in little like 32nd increments. That's how I do it.

Yeah, but you know, that smoke detector, its only purpose is to just try to be helpful. So getting angry at that negative self talk is just perpetuating a self abuse cycle at that point. So I try to take it into account.

I try to listen to it and understand, like, I know where you're coming from. It's not necessary. In this particular instance, I think I've.

Jon: 00:13:33

Got another analogy for you that you can use if you want to kind of mix it up on your podcast. And it's a bit like a dog. When the kind of somebody walks past the house they don't like, necessarily realize that that person's not a threat.

Sometimes they will be coming to break in and yeah, goodness knows what. Most times they're probably just walking past the house delivering the mail.

Chaya: 00:13:53

Also, perfectionism, I want to talk about that because a lot of the negative talk is happening, I feel is because we want to try to be perfect and not every negative thought, but for instance, you said you would start several projects and not finish it and feel bad about that, right? Because we were told we can start a lot of things, right?

But if you actually honor that as an ADHD brain, which it's fine, I allow myself to start multiple things. And then, because that's how you experiment, if you really look at it, we need to feel it out.

We need to actually taste it a little bit before we realize we actually need to continue on that path. So I allow myself to do that.

Even with my paintings, I can start several artwork, and then I allow myself for the artwork to call me to which one I'm working on. Just such a more healthier relationship to myself, actually, it's to myself. And I always wonder, where were we thought to be perfect?

Was it through somebody else's standards, which was not ours for me? Like the school that I went to, I went to a catholic school, which taught me all about being perfect.

Everything you sit perfectly, you speak perfectly, behave perfectly, and that's where the fear set in. My mother would always say, the school made you very afraid. And.

And then I spent my entire life getting rid of that fear and trying not to be perfect. So it was actually my artwork, which taught me, it's actually beautiful when you're not perfect.

And I saw that, I actually had to see to believe it, because when you show that those dents and those do overs, they actually look like layers. Right. And layers are way more interesting than a flat paint.

Jon: 00:15:56

That's true. I grew up in a sort of, like, semi catholic, like half catholic. One of my parents was catholic, so, like, I know all about the think.

I didn't know that was a catholic thing, but I know all about the kind of, you know, very, very high standards for things. But, yeah, no, I think you're right. I was just kind of. When you started talking about paintings, I cast my mind to.

I spent sort of 20 years in business development, primarily calling people, senior people in big companies, when that was still a thing. And I always felt that one of my strengths was that I sounded very natural, so I didn't sound scripted, I didn't sound perfect.

Hi, it's Joncalling for. It was none of that. It was very like, oh, you know, hi. It was very conversational and I almost felt. And sometimes I think I actually made mistakes.

Maybe I'm just justifying to myself, but I made mistakes purpose on purpose, you know, sort of headed down, you know, verbal cul de sacs and then turned around and said something else because I felt like it made me more human. Now maybe I'm just justifying to myself whilst why I was quite so haphazard and didn't do any prep when I rang people. But who knows?

Chaya: 00:17:11

Yeah, but it's fine to make mistakes. We're not supposed to get things right the first time. That's a machine.

So we shouldn't be hard on ourselves for making mistakes and just go take those healthy risks. Risk taking is fabulous. That's how humanity evolved. So we have to learn to trust and just do it. What's going to happen?

Jon: 00:17:37

I think I'd probably go one step beyond and say, actually, and I can't remember who said this to me, and I might have mentioned it to you last time, I certainly mentioned it to somebody recently. But when we. When we don't take risks, when we're scared. And I lived like this for a long time, so I'm very qualified to comment on it.

When I was too scared to take risks. When I was too scared of failure, where I needed to be perfect, I stayed in a state of non growth.

And I've heard it said that, I remember who buy that when you don't grow, you basically die. So you've got two choices in life. You've got death and you've got growth. It was a bit grim, really, but I think, I think it's fair.

I think I remember doing a talk at school because, you know, with this futureniere's thing that I had, I was doing a class. There was a load of kids, there were a load of kids who couldn't do work experience. They couldn't go into workplaces for various reasons.

Maybe like, you know, a lot of it was, you know, maybe their parents didn't speak English, they didn't have those connections with people or, you know, there was, there were different reasons. But I did this, this, this session on self employment with this group and I, it was going okay, but it was a bit flat.

And I said to the group, right, come on, let's get this going a little bit more. Let's get a bit more dynamism in the room.

I am about to choose self employment or employment, and I want this half of the room to convince me of one and this half to convince me of the other. And they started shouting out. And then this girl said, oh, I think she wanted me to become employed.

She said, the thing is, with self employment, what if you fail? And I had this like weird pins and needles feeling coming through me. And I said, failure is inevitable.

And I said, you can choose at this point, be like me and spend your whole life being scared of failure and not making choices because you're worried about the judgment of others, even when you're not bothered about those people, people in this classroom who you're probably not going to see, some of which you're not going to see in like three, four, five years time. And you're living your life now because of what they think of you. And you're, you know, I didn't say she was.

I said, you could be, you could be living your life now because of fear of failure, fear of judgment, or fear of whatever.

And I said, ultimately, if you do that, youre living as a shadow version of yourself and youre killing so much opportunity that if you just like, accept who you are. And yeah, I mean, I was quite a lot more eloquent because I had some weird spiritual energy coursing through my veins.

Maybe it wasnt that eloquent, but it felt it hopefully I made my point then. I dont know if I did.

Chaya: 00:20:01

Yeah, yeah, you were channeling. I was channeling something, definitely something, right? But yeah, the fear of judgment, we have to get rid of that because nobody cares really.

Like as you were saying, the people in the room, nobody. We are not that important. Let's. I'm going to tell that to our ego selves, right? We are not even this podcast.

I mean, there's so many things that people get pulled into, they might listen to what we're saying, it might somewhere go into their system, but we're not that important, right? So once we say we are not really that important and we're all going to die, we're all going to die, who is going to remember and make fun of us?

Because everybody, even that person's going to die. So it really doesn't matter. So you might as well do what you want to do and it's just to protect yourself. That's why I always say intention.

You want to put out good energy to the planet. So if you're doing good things to make somebody else's life better or just for the joy of it, you don't. Everything doesn't have to have a purpose.

If you're just doing because you're just enjoying, it's making you feel good, just do it, just do it. And nobody cares. Really, you're not that important.

That's why I started making those videos, because I had a message to say and I was like, oh my God, what about the people that know me? But it doesn't matter, it's fine, it's fine.

Jon: 00:21:30

Judgment by other people is such an interesting thing because it's like, yeah, you can judge me, definitely. You can definitely judge me and I can judge you. We can all judge each other.

But what, like, if someone's judging us, I mean, I've heard it said when I was younger, oh, well, you know, this is more about them than you. And it really does.

It really does say, and I include myself in this, I could be judgmental too, and make snap decisions and judgments on people, but really, that says a lot about me. And why do I feel that I need to do that to somebody else? Is it because it makes me feel better?

And then if I'm doing that, then what is my insecurity that needs me to judge somebody else to make myself feel better about myself? Actually, the issue there is not the other person. The issue is really coming from me and how I see myself in the world.

Mike: 00:22:16

Why you would want to expend the energy to judge somebody else unless they're actually asking you for feedback or something like, okay, that's energy. That is an exchange of energy that has been requested. Otherwise, why are you using your energy for that?

You could be using your energy for any number of things, not just being productive, but just enjoying something of yourself, enjoying a piece of your life or finding some sort of joy.

Jon: 00:22:39

But I mean, yeah, I hear you and I, and I agree on a intellectual level, but yet we all judge, right? I think everyone judges.

I don't want to get into politics, but, like, you know, wherever you sit on the political fence, whether you're a big fan of Biden or a big fan of Trump or a big fan of neither or, you know, other politicians are available, I'm sure there's a lot of judgment there of, you know, I think it's a, I don't know if I've met anyone who, I'm sure I have met people who aren't judge. Penzil.

Chaya: 00:23:09

Yeah. For me, I had to just work with myself on not judging. It was a very conscious action because I was also judging, but now I don't.

But then I was judging because that's what the world was doing when I was actually masking that comparison that we do with other people. As you said, to make yourself feel better, that we have to stop so you can start with yourself. Just one thing, right?

And actually, when you stop judging other people, you start seeing, everybody has souls. So now I only see people as souls. It doesn't matter. The job titles don't matter. Their race, gender, none of that matters.

So I see that authentic soul, we can start with us, and then, and then once we stop judging, we will stop caring for other people who are judging us.

Jon: 00:24:09

So I suppose I'm coming from the position, arguably incorrectly, that judgment is inevitable. And I think youre telling me it isnt.

And I guess im sort of curious now how the judgmental person, which I would argue that I am to some degree moves into non judgment. Is it about noticing when youre judgmental and challenging it, which I do do, by the way. Is that the first step, or is there a different step?

I dont know.

Mike: 00:24:36

I would say that. I mean, to me, that is the number one step. Judgments, as you said, is something everybody partakes in. It is a reaction.

There's a difference between reaction and action.

I definitely find myself judging or having, you know, just split second reactions, but going forward and having that thought continue is the action is going, okay. I am now living in some sort of judgment towards this other thing. I'm not seeing what I am to this other person.

I'm just another person that's on the planet Earth. And if you're a stranger to that person, they don't even know you. You're literally just an ant crawling around somewhere.

Even if it's someone you love and you know each other intimately, you're still another person who at one point didn't exist to them. And to that point they have an entire different level of experience and ways of viewing the world and ways of going about their own personal lives.

That something like Chaya recording videos and putting yourself out there, someone else can see that and think like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But to Chaya, this is her putting herself out there and speaking to the heart. Same thing with like this podcast, same thing with your businesses.

All of that stuff for us is something strong, is something that has a deeper meaning that goes beyond what the surface level of this random person is saying. And we can turn that around to ourselves, which is I'm having this judgment, just something somebody put out there that I didn't care for.

And I think like why are they doing that for a split second? And I can stop and go, they have their reasons for doing that. Like I can continue to have this thought, but that's not going to get me anywhere.

And I'm not a bad person for having the thought. And that's very important to remember.

You can be kind of, I guess, a bad person if you then go on a comment section on the Internet or something and then start hammering stuff out towards this rando that you have no business talking trash to. Sure theres that, but just having the thought, I dont think thats just a reaction, thats just a natural reaction to something.

Jon: 00:26:46

I think the other thing thats interesting where you have those thoughts is to question why you think youre right to believe something else. Because I think thats really exposing in terms of it brings up a lot of prejudice and assumption.

Kind of going back to the earlier point of those tapes that play in our head of oh, you did this, you know, like someone else's voice. And I think very often those, those, those prejudices slash assumptions slash judgments are not our own. They're from the catholic school.

You know, this is a point that's already been made, or if I'm just making the same point, but just the sort of connection I made as you were talking really exactly.

Chaya: 00:27:27

When you're babies, right, if you look at babies, they're so pure, they're not judging and somewhere, as they're growing up, they start this comparison. It starts at home. And the grades, of course, the grades, they just put that right there, right? Compare.

Oh, that person's smarter and that one's taller. I mean, it's just that whole societal structures that actually celebrate a certain type, which automatically puts the other on the lower end.

And so we start judging right there in our school and childhood. And, of course, we grow into adults comparing. And this is better. It's the ego, right?

It's our ego, because somehow we want to prove that we are better than the other person because that was taught to us. And so if you look at every child, every human being, they were all children. They were all printed, and somewhere they picked up all this clutter.

So we have to get rid of that clutter because it doesn't serve us. We actually are not serving ourselves. Because if we connect from our heart and. And our instincts, because also fear.

I mean, like, I I've learned to trust my gut. When I met Mike, I I just felt it was right. So it's that gut feeling. Our instincts, which we have. It's our 6th sense.

We have to trust that more and not use our mind, which we know can have a lot of junk in it, to make non judgmental decisions, connections.

Jon: 00:29:08

And how do we listen to, when does intuition become judgment? Or when does judgment become intuition? Do you know what I mean? So I might meet somebody and think, oh, yeah, they're a really great person.

I feel like, oh, yeah, they're on my level. We kind of connect and. And, you know, da da da da da.

But how much of that is about judgment, of the way they talk, the way they portray themselves, things that they talk about? Yeah.

Chaya: 00:29:35

Do you like them? I would ask, do you like them?

Jon: 00:29:38

Yeah.

Chaya: 00:29:38

Yeah, yeah. So that's it. You like, you know, that's your heart. What's gonna happen? Like, are you. Why aren't people putting their heart out?

Jon: 00:29:48

But, you know, liking, liking somebody can be defined very often by our judgment of them. So people who are racist or people who are, you know, xenophobic or homophobic or whatever, they might not like somebody because of a characteristic.

People who are very anti neurodivergence, you know, don't believe it's a thing. ADHD doesn't exist. It's just an excuse for naughty children or whatever people. Nonsense. They say they might not like me because, oh, I'm ADHD.

So, like, is that the ultimate test? I don't know.

Because every judgment of whether we like someone or not almost automatically goes through a process of, through a kind of filter of like, well, potentially goes through a filter of judgment.

Mike: 00:30:31

But I think that's the really interesting thing about this is that's when you're getting like, I love this philosophical question that's going on right now, and I love it. And it's where we get into trying to make a, like, black and white feeling out of thoughts and emotions and gut feelings. Because you are right.

People who are, let's say, homophobic will dislike this person for this reason and will probably like a person who is also homophobic.

And that's like an interesting thing because it is personal preference meets judgment, where their judgments are now influencing how they are interacting with the world, which also, in turn, means they're missing out on quite a lot of things because they are acting upon their judgment. They are allowing it to influence how they go about the world.

And I think that is really interesting because that is separating it actually from a lot of gut instincts where if they didnt have this stuff built in, would they still then, like the person who is also homophobic versus the person who is gay if they had a conversation with them? Because now theyre letting it define whether or not they like a person and dislike another.

Jon: 00:31:41

I mean, you see it with people who are, I mean, I've come across people who are racist, for example, and then they have a friend who is a different color to them, and then they're like, oh, they're all right.

Because, and then it's like, that must really mess with your mind when you have a fixed view about a certain type of person or like a, you know, with a neurodivergent or whether they're gay or, you know, whatever it might be, and then suddenly you actually get to talking to this person, then you didn't realize that thing about them, and then suddenly you find out that thing about it. Like, that must really, you know, really mess with your mind. I don't mean flippant about it. I know it's issues, but I think.

Chaya: 00:32:20

The universe is trying to say, open up, open your mind. Open. Right, because. Exactly. And I see that it happens to people, right?

If they say, oh, I'm going to maybe date only a certain type of person, they're going to fall in love with somebody who they thought they would never date, right? Life puts that so that I think we just to open all those B's rules, it's just, it's meaningless.

So when I looked at, when I did a lot of introspection, because that's how I realized, oh, my God, all this is a hoax is I started questioning every single thing that I was judging or I. I had strong opinions on, and they were all not mine. They came from somewhere. Some experience, either tv. So I stopped watching tv. I don't.

I consciously made those actions so that the noise goes away. But as Mike said, action is everything, you know? So you can just stop that thought from growing.

Mike: 00:33:21

It's like blowing a bubble. You can either continue to blow the bubble until it bursts or you can spit out the gum isn't that's the way I kind of look at it.

So you mentioned earlier you were diagnosed just a few years.

Jon: 00:33:32

Yeah, I think two and a half.

Mike: 00:33:33

Oh, wow. How did you find, like, diagnosis? What is it? What did it end up like?

Jon: 00:33:37

Meaning I kind of got to a point where. So I've always felt, like, different throughout my whole life, and not necessarily a bad way always, but, you know, often. Often, you know, different.

Just didn't really see things work same way as people, other people. I didn't really kind of fit into group. I had lots of friends, but my friends tended to span different groups.

I didn't kind of belong to a group per se, I wouldn't have said.

And as life kind of went on, obviously you go through childhood and school and things are very regimented and people kind of tell you the rules and you struggle to adhere to them.

If you've got adhd and that causes a lot of fallout and you're labeled, and then you get to a point where you've kind of got freedom to some degree within the confines of the law, and you might, you know, just do whatever you want, really within reason. And then you. You might settle down and have kids and stuff.

And that kind of takes you back to a bit like childhood again, in that there's certain rules, you know, not necessarily rules that are imposed. Yeah. Like, there's expectations, responsibilities that you don't have necessarily before that and that.

I got to a point where, you know, I had kids and I was just really struggling to kind of navigate the world. And I'd kind of come to the conclusion that, you know, I'd suffered a bit with anxiety. I had plenty of depression in my time.

My mood was kind of up and then down and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'd kind of come to the conclusion, you know, I'd self diagnosed about 500 different conditions for myself.

And then I was doing more and more work with, with kids who kind of didn't fit the mold. And, you know, maybe had ADHD or I autism spectrum conditions, I think is the correct phrase these days.

And I just got to thinking, hmm, maybe this, maybe I've got ADHD. So I kind of started reading and I read a couple of things that just described me to a t.

I asked for a diagnosis, got diagnosed, and it was like the biggest relief. And since I've kind of got diagnosed, I've met people who are like part of the club and people who are really, really different from me.

But a lot of the experiences are shared, a lot of the feelings are shared, a lot of the habits and the behaviors and the choices are shared. So that was a real answer to quite a short question. I guess it made me feel sort of vindicated to some degree.

It made me feel like, and I felt for the first time ever, I think ive always been searching for some sort of sense of belonging and I think its kind of helped me feel a sense of belonging, which might sound weird, but I feel that theres a group of people who get me now which ive never really felt apart from my dad. My dad. I think my dad got me probably better than most, but other than that, I dont really think people have really, truly got me.

People have liked me, people have enjoyed my company, people have found me funny, people have found me reckless at times or helpful to their business and made them lots of money or whatever. But I dont really think anyone has got me the same way that some of my new ADHD LinkedIn friends that have become friends really do.

Mike: 00:36:40

I think a diagnosis is a bit like, you realize you've been really tense holding on while riding a roller coaster. You didn't realize you were riding a roller coaster, and that's why you've been so tense.

And diagnosis is you can kind of untense, you are validated, you are vindicated, and it's hard for other people to know you when you don't really entirely know yourself and you don't know where the places you can go are. I did not expect to change as dramatically as I did. I just kind of thought like, well, that explains everything, and I'd move on.

But it has been definitely finding the right kind of people has been a change that I didn't expect. I just. I guess I always assumed that I would continue to not fit in with, with people and I would just know why.

It turns out there are people that, no, we do fit in. We are not actually a problem.

Jon: 00:37:35

And that's the thing, isn't it? So much of ADHD is a problem so much of the symptoms of ADHD is a problem to the world. Being on time good, being late, bad, being tidy good.

Being messy bad. Finishing jobs that you start good. Not finishing jobs that you start bad.

There's so many things that are about ADHD that are bad and I'm nothing to the outside world. I'm ignoring all the really great traits that we have around creativity, being able to speak to people.

I can't think of any others off the top of my head, but there are many. I think for me, my experience is different. I think I definitely don't feel like I'm off the roller coaster.

I definitely feel like I'm still on the hamster wheel and the roller coaster. I don't feel like I've got off it. I feel like I'm on it now with a bit more understanding. It's difficult.

I feel like I have to make a certain amount of money each month because I've got young kids and family and staff and that leads me to having to do or feeling like I have to do certain things.

I think, you know, if I was on my own, I didn't have kids and I was just like a, you know, I'd probably live on a boat or, you know, a hot air balloon. I don't think you can live on hot air balloons.

And I'd probably just, you know, walk around the streets meeting people that were struggling and just talk to them and try and help them. And I think I'd, maybe I wouldn't, maybe that's just a complete and utter, you know, myth. Maybe I'd live exactly the same life.

But I do feel that the life that I created prior to diagnosis, which I don't regret at all, by the way, just for the record, leads me or has put certain constraints around me that mean I have certain expectations and certain things I have to deliver on, certain responsibilities, I suppose. And like I say, I wouldn't change any of them. I don't know if I made any sense.

Mike: 00:39:16

No, it's stressful. It's really stressful. And the world is not built for us at all.

And thats where youre getting into because of those life expectations, because of those money expectations.

Thats where the giant gap in accommodation and making us on the same level as an allistic is who may have a much easier time, who might still struggle in these things, but not in the same way. Its not the same type of struggle.

And for that, I think there is a feeling that, well, everyone struggles to, you know, especially in a modern world and post capitalist society that everyone kind of is going to struggle with work and blah blah blah. But it's different with us. We are going to struggle with holding on to sometimes the bare minimum.

Jon: 00:40:01

Yeah. And I feel like, I quite often feel like I'm caught in conflicts or sort of non squareable circles, if that makes any sense.

So I can't get a job because what job could I possibly do where I would fit, but also like working for myself, even though I'm in my 20th year of doing that, is really, really tough.

I can attend a client needs just provided all the conditions of your eggs, or I can do kind of business development, or I can do this or I can do that. But this is an awe scenario.

I feel like having ADHD and I've used this analogy before and it really isn't the best one and I feel it needs some improving is a bit like being in a boat with 15 holes in it and you can stuff ten fingers in it and even your nose, but there's always holes behind you that you forget about that are leaking and then at some point you realise they're leaking and they've got worse and then you kind of take a finger out of this one. Oh I better deal with that now. But like that hole is not. I mean it's a bad analogy because that hole is not on your radar at all.

It's almost like maybe a better analogy is like you've got 15 kittens and you're trying to keep them all safe, like away from the wolf in a sort of farmyard somewhere. And like you're watching these ones and that's oh brilliant. I've got it all covered.

But you don't realize there's two over there that have wandered off towards the wolf den. And I cant think of a good analogy but I feel like as fast as I pedal I can only ever do six out of ten, seven out of ten, eight out of ten things.

And there will always be a whole load of things that are completely outside of my awareness William.

Mike: 00:41:30

And thats definitely why Im never a big fan of the word disorder. But also that I cannot discount and no one should. The fact that living with this type of brain can be and often is disabling. It is very disabling.

It is hard to keep up and you can only concentrate sometimes on a few things at once. But we're not afforded the opportunity to only have five things in front of us at all time.

We are always going to be running out of spoons to use that theory.

We're always going to be a little bit behind and I think it's important to talk about that stuff because we can lower up living with autism and adhd, and that's great. There are amazing things that I am able to do and I'm able to see the world in a very specific way that others can't.

Also, I have a lot of arrested development because of it. My life still isn't quite together and I'm 35 and I cannot say it's through fault of my own.

And it's taken me a long time to get to the point where I can actively say it's not through my own fault, it's through these issues that I have. It is through some disabling issues that I have. Yeah, it's good to be honest about that because we have to.

We're not allowed to be honest about the fact that, yeah, this thing that you think we can just go do, because we can, if you just put your mind to it, blah, blah, blah. No, we. The boat's always going to keep sinking no matter how hard we try.

Chaya: 00:42:54

Yeah, I agree. But if we practice gratitude, I think even for those little things that we have, it's going to make that moment so much better and that day better.

And that's why it's so important to thank for that meal that we have, the roof we might have, and also to learn to go with the flow. That means to let go of something that's behind us and just keep going. Trust and go. It will happen. Right.

Because first of all, we have to accept that we are different, right? So we're not going to. We should stop comparing to the typical standards of nine to five and having a fixed income, all of that.

But if we just look at the positives, and that's why I have to keep. I keep saying look at the positives, it is going to eventually add up because life is a journey. It's full of challenges. You have to just trust it.

Trust and go with the flow.

Jon: 00:43:55

I think that's true and I think that's fair. And I think part of ADHD diagnosis is self acceptance and moving on, that kind of self acceptance journey.

But there is also a factor of being accepted more widely by others, especially people who know you prior to diagnosis.

And because there's such inconsistency, there are times when some of the things you just can't do today, you've done them and you've done them brilliantly and all the stars aligned and everything was just perfect and meant that you could do them. But it doesn't mean that you can do it today.

But the problem with that is that, and I'm sorry, I'm not trying to focus on the negatives at all, but I feel like I am now a little bit. But someone will always point to that time, oh, you know you can do it.

Because I remember that time that you did this, or I remember that you did that, or, how can you not do this when you've done that? You know, there's always that kind of. Because we can achieve amazing things, and we do sometimes achieve amazing things.

When we don't, people are like, oh, but you did that. But you did that. Why can't you do that?

You know, like, even, like really simple things, like going to the shop and remembering to buy the thing you actually went to the shop for, which sounds ridiculous. Like, how can you go to a shop to buy something and not come back with it? It makes no sense to most people. They can't get their head around that.

So I think self acceptance is one thing, but as you said before, we live in this world where it's not designed for us.

Chaya: 00:45:20

Yeah. And knowing awareness, for instance, that whole shop scenario, that happens to me all the time.

But because I know I have that weakness, I'm going to do things like make a list and text my husband or something. Put it in an email draft. I put reminders in my email drafts. Don't ask me why, but that works. I don't know.

There are so many apps, better apps for that. But then that works for me. So I have to do that.

That's why self awareness is very important because I know I have that weakness and I am going to do that. Like, for my reminders, for instance, I have my alarm set so many times because I know I'm not going to remember and I'm going to be.

Because, you know, like the store, for instance, if I go to a store, I'll see all these awesome things and I forget to buy cheese. Right? I went there to buy cheese, but then, oh, my God, those flowers are so beautiful. I'm going to go get them.

And then the bread, the loaf of bread, it smells so good because we are like that. We are so in tune with the environment. So the environment will just get us and we'll just forget the whole purpose. So it is a battle.

It's definitely a battle, but we have to help ourselves. This is where the executive functioning is so important, to learn that skill of prioritization.

And it's okay to not finish every task that's why I'm saying give yourself permission, it's okay. And pick the ones that are more important. And also use your negotiation skills to swap jobs. I've done that in my house. I do that all the time.

So use your other skills to help, to help with the weaknesses.

Jon: 00:47:13

Yeah, yeah, we're good at finding solutions. And I think, you know, obviously.

Well, not obviously, you don't know how old I am, but I spent 40 years, like, pre diagnosis finding ways to actually deal with stuff. So I use systems, technology, set alarms for things. Why is the alarm going off? Snooze that. No, you need to do something. It's going off for a reason.

But yeah, so we are quite resourceful, I think. I don't want to tar us all with the same brush, but yeah, I feel like many of us are quite resourceful.

Mike: 00:47:42

We're good at creating systems and sometimes we're good at creating systems for ourselves. A lot of the times maybe we put that work into other places.

I took apart a refrigerator a couple of months ago and it was amazing that I had never worked on a fridge before, but I managed to take it apart and fix it based on just looking at it. But also I struggled to reply to an email so that I need to have.

I have alarms in my phone for about every 15 minutes in case I need to turn one on for any particular reason, because I don't really apply that know how of figuring things out. Figuring out how can I set up things so I can live a little bit better. I don't apply them to myself very often.

Jon: 00:48:24

Yeah, that made me think of something which I immediately forgot, of course.

Mike: 00:48:28

I love how ADHD this entire conversation has been. I kind of love that. So where can everybody find your projects and connect with you?

Jon: 00:48:35

Yeah, well, it's a triumph of sort of interesting transition for me as I try and move towards working with people who are only doing good stuff that actually matters. You know, I got to an age where I'm like not sure how many years I've got left on the planet. I'm probably halfway minimum.

So I'm trying to do stuff that makes a difference, work with people that are making a difference, to sort of vulnerable, disadvantaged people that just struggle in life. ADHD is neurodivergence, whatever. Where probably best to find me on LinkedIn. That's where I tend to knock about most of the time.

You can hit the website flowflows.com and book a call with me if you want to talk about systems or process or, you know, whatever. Else. Yeah, but mostly on LinkedIn.

Mike: 00:49:14

Perfect. And ill be sure to include all the links in the show notes or when to find Jon.

We of course are always at sparklaunchpodcast.com and sparklaunch.org, I'm @followshisghost on Instagram, where you can also find links to my various support groups, including my neurodivergent group chai can be found @the_sparklaunch on Instagram. And of course we're both on LinkedIn as well, which you can find also in the show notes.

Jon: 00:49:43

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Interesting conversation. We could have carried on for another 2 hours, I think maybe three easily.

My wife would have come in, she'd be glaring at me. Guinness not sorted, you know, like. Yeah.

Chaya: 00:49:54

So thank you, Jon. It was fun. We talked about the good things, the not so good things and as you said, we could have talked forever, I guess. It's so fun. Thank you.

Jon: 00:50:06

Cheers. Thank you.