Latest / The Daily Reset Podcast / Stop drifting. Start living on Purpose - the audiobook. Chapter 4

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Stop drifting. Start living on Purpose - the audiobook. Chapter 4 · The Daily Reset Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: chapter four misdiagnosing the problem sustainably was richard branson's startup of
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: the year i want to start there because that's the version of the story people know
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: the award the recognition more than a million pounds raised a fintech my daughter
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: and i founded together with a mission i believed in completely and i mean completely
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: the way you believe in something you would defend in any room
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: to anyone i spent years raising investment for it
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: if you've never done that it's hard to describe what it asks of you you pitch
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: and you're rejected and you refine and you pitch again you carry the vision on days
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: when nobody else can see it you keep the whole thing alive with belief
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: and sheer effort and sometimes the belief paid off in ways
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: that still make me smile we started with a virgin startup loan we won backing
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: from brent hoberman
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: the founder of lastminute.com through Founders Factory and from WeWork which meant
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: at one point pitching on a stage in front of 8,000 people with Ashton Kutcher as one
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: of the judges.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Richard Branson named us his startup of the year and flew me to Los Angeles for mentoring.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: A girl who'd learned her moves roller skating around the Castle car park
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: in Edinburgh on a stage like that it was working.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Then COVID arrived.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Our biggest partners went into crisis mode almost overnight.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Furloughs, frozen budgets, survival planning,
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: the campaigns we had wanted to build with them the campaigns that were going
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: to become our revenue simply didn't happen not cancelled dramatically just gone
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: quietly removed from calendars by organisations that were fighting their own fires
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: the revenue we expected never materialised and the runway started to shrink
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: if you've run a company you know exactly what that feels like if you haven't here is
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: the honest version every month becomes a question can we make payroll not in
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: the abstract in the specific
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: these people their mortgages their families they trusted you enough
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: to build their lives around your vision and now you are lying awake doing arithmetic
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: that never comes out right i carried that for a long time
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: and i wasn't carrying it alone my daughter was in it
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: with me co-founder not spectator we went through every month of
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: that stress together side by side and then we ran out of road and we had
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: to close it i can tell you now from a distance that closing a company is
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: a business event
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: companies close every day markets shift pandemics happen timing fails
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: that is not what it felt like what it felt like was a verdict here is what the voice
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: in my head said in the weeks
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: after we closed you've let everyone down you've wasted years of your life you're
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: a fraud you'll never build another company everyone will think you've failed notice
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: something about those sentences not one of them is about
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: the company every single one of them is about me that's the difference between guilt
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: and shame
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: and it took me years
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: to learn it guilt says i did something bad shame says i am bad guilt looks at
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: an event shame looks in the mirror guilt can be examined learned
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: from resolved shame just spreads out of the event and into your identity until
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: a company closing stops being something that happened to you
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: and becomes something you are and shame's version of the story deleted something
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: that was true the whole way through it was a privilege to build that company
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: with my daughter to go through it together
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: to watch her strength and her capability blossom not despite the pressure but
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: under it that happened too shame never mentions it shame takes the ending
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: and calls it the whole story the company failed i didn't neither did she
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: but i couldn't tell the difference and for years i didn't understand why
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: the feeling had been so much bigger than the facts the answer arrived
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: from somewhere i never expected
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: years later in my early 50s i was diagnosed with adhd and in learning
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: about how my brain actually works i came
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: across something called rejection sensitive dysphoria it's common in adhd brains
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: an intensity of response to rejection criticism and perceived failure that is out
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: of all proportion to the event not over sensitivity as a character flaw
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: a different wiring the same rejection that stings one brain arrives in another
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: as something closer to physical pain
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: suddenly the weeks after sustainably closed made sense my brain hadn't processed
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: the company failed as information it had amplified it into you are
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: a failure instantly automatically and
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: with total conviction i wasn't being dramatic i wasn't weak i was running
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: an operating system that couldn't separate what happened from what i was and
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: because i didn't know that i did what i had always done with pain i got back to work
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: which brings me to the part of this story i understood last even
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: though it was happening at the same time after sustainably i went back
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: into senior leadership and something strange started to happen the strategies
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: that had carried me for 30 years work harder push
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: through stay one step ahead out prepare everyone in
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: the room stopped working i couldn't understand it my performance wasn't
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: where i expected it to be where i needed it to be
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: because remember what my operating system believed achievement was how i earned my
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: worth
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: i was being asked to take on work out with the role i'd been hired for and instead
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: of saying no i said yes of course i said yes yes was what i did i wanted
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: to help i wanted to deliver i had spent a lifetime being the person
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: who could absorb more so my attention split into pieces and the core
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: of my own role started to suffer and i was working harder than i had ever worked
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: while somehow falling further behind
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: from the outside it looked like my performance had declined from
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: the inside it felt like my brain was saying stop doing this i want to be precise
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: about that sentence because if you're a woman around my age there's
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: a reasonable chance you know exactly what i mean not tired not unmotivated it felt
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: like the machinery itself the interest the passion the sharpness the joy i had built
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: a whole career on was failing and i had no explanation the explanation
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: when it finally came had two parts
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: the first was hormonal estrogen supports dopamine the neurotransmitter
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: that ADHD brains are already short on through perimenopause and menopause
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: as estrogen falls focus or enthusiasm gets harder focus can get worse particularly
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: when you are doing things you don't love
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Emotional regulation gets thinner.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: For a woman who has spent decades unknowingly compensating for ADHD,
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: menopause doesn't create the condition.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: All the scaffolding,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: the over-preparing,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: the masking,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: the outworking,
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: everyone,
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: that scaffolding was being held up by neurochemistry that was now changing.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't aging.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: it was chemistry
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: and nobody had told me what i know now is this i had always had adhd i had simply
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: built an operating system that compensated for it and for decades
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: that system worked brilliantly i was interested in my work i thrived
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: on novelty i built businesses solved problems stayed ahead the hyper focus that came
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: with my brain was for years a superpower as long as the conditions were right
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: then in the space of a few years every condition changed
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: at once my hormones changed my stress went through the roof the role wasn't playing
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: to my strengths and therefore my interests and my coping mechanisms
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: which had been running at capacity for longer
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: than I knew finally reached their limit the operating system
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: that had held everything together for 30 years started breaking down what worked
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: at 35 failed at 53
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: not because i was broken because the system needed updating
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: and i didn't know i was running one when the diagnosis came it was a relief and
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: a wake-up call at the same time a relief because it explained decades not just
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: that difficult role but the burnout cycles the intensity the drive
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: that never switched off the shame that arrived out of all proportion a wake-up call
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: because i finally understood that i didn't need better coping strategies i needed
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: a different way to live
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: but here's the part of this chapter that matters most and it isn't about adhd
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: and it isn't about menopause and it isn't about losing a company it's
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: about misdiagnosis look at the pattern when sustainably closed i diagnosed
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: the problem as me i'm a failure wrong when my performance dipped i diagnosed
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: the problem as me i'm not working hard enough wrong
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: when my estrogen dropped i diagnosed the problem as me i'm losing it wrong again
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: every time something in my life collapsed i read it as a verdict
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: on my worth it never was it was information information about a system under strain
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: a business model meeting a pandemic a set of coping strategies meeting menopause
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: an unconscious operating system meeting the limits
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: of what willpower can hold together and i would bet that you do the same thing
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: when you're exhausted you diagnose it as laziness when you drop
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: a ball you diagnose it as incompetence when you can't focus the way you used
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: to you diagnose it as decline
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: when something you built doesn't work out you diagnose it as proof proof of
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: the thing you've secretly suspected about yourself all along you are misdiagnosing
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: the problem the same way i did for 50 years the exhaustion the drop balls the fog
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: the failure these are not verdicts they are signals signals that something in
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: the system needs attention the pace the role the hormones the beliefs the load
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: the lack of joy or purpose a life like any system drifts out of alignment quietly
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: the signals are how it asks you to look shame reads the signal and blames
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: the self awareness reads the signal and examines the system that single shift
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: from what's wrong with me to what is this telling me is the difference
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: between spiraling and recalibrating it's the shift this whole book is built on
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: but here's the thing about examining a system you can't do it from inside the fog
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: you need a way to actually see your life clearly honestly all four pillars of it
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: before you can tell which signal is coming from where that's where we're going next