The ADHD Perfectionist Cure: Be Sh*tty At Stuff!
If the thought of starting a business makes you break out in hives because you're terrified of sucking at, well, pretty much everything, then this episode of the Weeniecast is exactly what you need.
Hey, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and this is my podcast "The Weeniecast!"
Pssssst! Not sure if you've heard, but I'm inviting new members to the best community for business owners with ADHD - the Hyperfocused Community! You can join here - https://weeniecast.com/hyperfocus
Now, back to this episode...
I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: intentionally failing at stuff is the key to building resilience and telling perfectionism to take a hike.
We'll dive into why those of us with ADHD tend to have such a hard time with failure, and I'll hook you up with three tactics to practice being absolutely terrible at things.
You'll find out how failing on purpose, correcting instead of beating yourself up, and embracing the "half-assed" approach can help you stop spinning your wheels and actually make some progress in your business.
By the time you're done listening, you'll be itching to go out there and epically suck at something new.
You'll be ready to tackle all the crazy skills you'll need to learn as a freshly minted business owner, from sales and marketing to tech stuff that makes you want to pull your hair out.
And you'll have the tools you need to keep putting one foot in front of the other, even when you're not magically amazing at everything right out of the gate.
So come along for the ride as we take a hilarious, no-holds-barred look at how to dropkick perfectionism to the curb and develop the resilience to fail your way to success.
Timestamp Summary:
[00:00:50] - Why starting a biz means doing a crap-ton of stuff you've never done before and will totally bomb at
[00:03:52] - Three tactics to build resilience to failure
[00:07:17] - Tennis misadventures after 20 years away from the court
[00:08:58] - How royally screwing up is the only way to learn a new language
[00:13:07] - Why being awful is the key to prepping for new challenges in your business
[00:14:25] - Correcting yourself without going all self-flagellation
[00:18:32] - Shooting for "half-assed" instead of perfect
Useful links
My discounted link for you to learn a new language to give you practice at failing!:
https://weeniecast.com/lingoda
Your next steps after listening
Realizing it's time to work with me? Book your free initial strategy call with me - weeniecast.com/strategycall
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Transcript
I'm about to prescribe your perfectionist cure.
Speaker:Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And
Speaker:welcome to the Weeniecast! If you want to
Speaker:prepare to start a business before you even have an idea, before you
Speaker:figure out what your niche is, before you make any
Speaker:plans to quit your corporate job, here is the number
Speaker:one most important thing that you can work on right now. And
Speaker:that thing is be bad at. Just be bad.
Speaker:Go and do things that you've never done before and suck royally at
Speaker:it. Get used to being bad at stuff, right? Because
Speaker:when you start a business, let me tell you, it's not just offering
Speaker:the service that you're going to be selling, it is
Speaker:doing a buttload of other stuff that you've never done before,
Speaker:even if you come from sales. Oftentimes, my clients who come from
Speaker:sales, I have to retrain on how to sell their services
Speaker:because the sales process is very different. Selling your own
Speaker:time is incredibly vulnerable. It feels
Speaker:like you're putting yourself up for a whole ton of
Speaker:rejection, which you are. It's. That's the nature of sales. But
Speaker:if you're not used to being bad at, you're going to do it once and
Speaker:then say, I never want to do that again. And then you're going to quit
Speaker:and then you're going to have to stay with your nine to five job and
Speaker:your dream of owning your own business is never going to come true.
Speaker:And it's not just sales that you're going to be bad at. It's marketing.
Speaker:It's writing content for social media, it's creating video content for
Speaker:social media. It's learning how to use an email marketing
Speaker:system. It's understanding how to create a website
Speaker:or how to have someone else create a website. And then knowing how
Speaker:to tell if it's good or not. It's learning how to speak, it's learning how
Speaker:to go on a live stream. It's learning how to be on a podcast.
Speaker:There are so many skills that you're going to have to learn when you start
Speaker:the business that you're just gonna have to suffer
Speaker:through being really shitty at for the first dozen
Speaker:times you do it or more. And if you don't have a resilience to
Speaker:being bad at it, then, my friend, I'm sorry,
Speaker:starting a business just isn't for you. This is what I call the perfectionist
Speaker:cure. Because the reason we're afraid of being bad at stuff is because we
Speaker:expect ourselves to be perfect at it. We don't think anything is worth doing if
Speaker:we can't do it perfectly. And this is so hard for people
Speaker:with ADHD, right? Because we have this experience of
Speaker:learning incredibly fast when we're interested in something. And
Speaker:when we learn that fast, we gain this expectation that we're
Speaker:just good at everything the first time we try. I can't tell you a single
Speaker:crafting hobby that I've ever had that took me a long time to learn because
Speaker:I was so interested in it. So much so that I will brag that my
Speaker:knitting teachers were really impressed with me, that I learned how to do, like, a
Speaker:cable knit with, like, minimal instruction and
Speaker:just like, kind of a glance over my work. I know you're super impressed. We're
Speaker:also incredibly good at avoiding stuff that we're bad at,
Speaker:right. If you're bad at something in your job, you tend to find the
Speaker:workaround for the workaround. For the workaround that will help you avoid doing that thing
Speaker:forever. Or, and this is true for many of us, I
Speaker:know there's always that one task that you're
Speaker:bad at enough that your manager or your coworkers are like,
Speaker:don't worry, we'll do this for you because you cannot be trusted to do this
Speaker:well, okay. There's something about you that you just can't handle this. And that's
Speaker:fine. You're good at other things. We will delegate this out to someone else.
Speaker:We do not have a great resilience to being bad at
Speaker:things. We don't have a great resilience to failing. So there are three
Speaker:tactics that I find really helpful. When you're trying to build your resilience
Speaker:to being bad at and move yourself away from that
Speaker:perfectionist mindset. And this serves you when you're starting a business.
Speaker:This serves you in jobs. This serves you in relationships. This serves you when you're
Speaker:trying to learn a hobby or how to do something like cooking. It
Speaker:serves you in the sports, which I have a little story about. And really,
Speaker:it's something that once you learn how to be bad at stuff, you actually
Speaker:become unstoppable. When you learn how to deal with that feeling of,
Speaker:oh, God, I'm failing. I'm actively failing, oh, no, I just failed again. And I
Speaker:failed again. And I failed again. People are going to know that I'm a massive
Speaker:failure. Once you learn how to be with that, nothing can stop you.
Speaker:No judgment from other people will stop you. You're not going to freak
Speaker:yourself out about this not being good enough. You're going to become a
Speaker:powerhouse, to get whatever you want in this life.
Speaker:Okay, so the number one most effective way
Speaker:to get good at failing is obvious. You have to fail
Speaker:on purpose. And when I say fail on purpose, I said this to a client
Speaker:the other day, and I was like, what's something that you are bad at? He's
Speaker:like, skydiving. And I was like, cool. That's not
Speaker:something you want to be bad at. So don't try to fail with skydiving.
Speaker:Then he's like, skiing. And I was like, cool. It's summer.
Speaker:You can't practice being bad at skiing in the summer unless you really
Speaker:want to hurt yourself falling down a very rocky mountain. It's funny.
Speaker:When I asked him that question, I was expecting him to say something like
Speaker:macrame
Speaker:or speaking a language or something. I don't know. And,
Speaker:yeah, it didn't go the way I thought it would. So when I say this,
Speaker:I want you to think through what are the things that you can practice being
Speaker:bad at that won't end in a nice little memorial service for
Speaker:you or with you in the hospital? And disclaimer, anything that you
Speaker:do that gets you hurt is your responsibility. I take no ownership of that. As
Speaker:the host of the Weenie cast, this is all just for inspiration's
Speaker:sake. What it inspires you to do is hopefully something that keeps you safe.
Speaker:When you think about failing on purpose, I want you to pick something that is
Speaker:disparate from your work. It is not associated with the thing that you want
Speaker:to do for your business. Because what we don't want to start doing is we
Speaker:don't want to start creating a story that you suck at the thing that you
Speaker:want to do. We want to give you something that is in a
Speaker:complete other sphere where you get to practice
Speaker:just being bad at something.
Speaker:If you listen to, like, one or two episodes of the Weenie cast, I bet
Speaker:you know that I know nothing about this. Sports. Half the time I start a
Speaker:metaphor that involves sports, and then I get confused halfway through. And then Neil has
Speaker:to go back and edit it so it sounds smart. It might surprise you to
Speaker:find out that I actually played tennis when I was a kid. And when I
Speaker:was in high school, I was not popular on my
Speaker:own tennis team because I didn't play to win. I didn't really care about
Speaker:the competition of it. I just played to have fun. And my tennis partner,
Speaker:Jackie Blut, got really, really frustrated with me, that
Speaker:I was trying to have fun with the other team and that I was being
Speaker:friendly with them. And I wasn't like out for blood, not my style. So anyway,
Speaker:so I quit the tennis team. I didn't really play. Gave up when I moved
Speaker:cross country to California. My tennis racket was actually stolen out of my car in
Speaker:Tucson, Arizona, which of course, like I could have
Speaker:absolutely replaced it. But you know, I wasn't good at tennis. So
Speaker:why, why? I don't even know why I brought a tennis racket in the first
Speaker:place. It's like, you know when you're traveling and you're like, oh, I'm going by
Speaker:car. Throw it in the car, I might want it. Yeah. So I
Speaker:recently decided that I wanted to get back into tennis and so I signed up
Speaker:for a one on one class. No, I'm not good. No, I don't remember a
Speaker:whole lot. I'm not terrible. But it's been this really incredible experience
Speaker:going and doing something that I would expect myself to be better at
Speaker:because 20 years ago I was somewhat good at it. God,
Speaker:I feel so old when I do math on when I how old I was
Speaker:in high school. That's so depressing. Sidebar.
Speaker:I went to this political event for the Massachusetts governor a few weeks ago
Speaker:and I walk into the event and I see one of the history teachers from
Speaker:my high school, Mister Dixon. And I was never in Mister Dixon's class, okay?
Speaker:So I'm not gonna bash him. I don't know his teaching style. He was never
Speaker:terrible to me. He was always super nice. He actually got me into rowing one
Speaker:summer, which was kind of fun. Great workout, by the way. Anyway,
Speaker:so I go up to him and I'm like, oh my God, mister Dixon, so
Speaker:great to see you. And he was like, oh my God, Katie, so great to
Speaker:see you too. And he's like, how old are you now? And I said, oh,
Speaker:I'm 36. And he's like, wow, you're so old.
Speaker:And I was just like, I'm old.
Speaker:That makes you ancient. So
Speaker:great. Anyway, how did I get there? Oh yeah, so anyway, the math on
Speaker:high school. Yeah. So 20 years ago I was somewhat good at tennis.
Speaker:Not good at anymore. But I'm on this mission to be bad
Speaker:at. I'm on this mission to put myself in
Speaker:situations where I am going to
Speaker:fail in another way. I have signed up to take french lessons
Speaker:again. I was a french major. I lived in France for half a year so
Speaker:that I can learn the language. I really immersed myself. I passed their fluency exams
Speaker:and then I never spoke it again for 15 years, which again makes me feel
Speaker:very old. I recently started taking these classes online through this program
Speaker:called Lingoda, which if you're looking to learn a language, I can't recommend them enough.
Speaker:I wonder if I should sign up for a referral code if I'm sending you
Speaker:all to go there anyway. If you want to go to weeniecast.com
Speaker:lingoda, I'll link it there because it is such a great resource if
Speaker:you're looking to learn a new language or brush up on a language that used
Speaker:to speak a long time ago. One of the things that I really, really
Speaker:liked about how they onboard you is that first lesson that you're signed up
Speaker:for is an orientation. And in the orientation they
Speaker:like, make it the purpose to make
Speaker:errors, to make mistakes, right? Because it's really
Speaker:the only way that you learn a language is by saying something,
Speaker:thinking it's gonna make sense. Hearing someone say, I don't really know what
Speaker:you're talking about, or I think you're saying this, is that right? And
Speaker:then teasing it out with them until you figure out the exact right way to
Speaker:say the thing that you want to say. Could you imagine trying to learn a
Speaker:language and then getting all freaked out every single time that you make a
Speaker:mistake? And I know a lot of people try to learn a language and they
Speaker:get all freaked out about making mistakes. And yeah, you
Speaker:look stupid, like you probably say some stupid,
Speaker:but there's really like, you said stupid shit when you were a baby. Also, you
Speaker:said stupid things when you were a toddler, when you were learning your native tongue,
Speaker:right? And it wasn't that you were stupid or trying to be funny, it was
Speaker:that you genuinely were just misunderstanding how to use your own language.
Speaker:When I lived in France, I was in this immersive school that
Speaker:basically you had 5 hours of french lessons in the morning into the early afternoon,
Speaker:and then they would release you and you could go on all these excursions and
Speaker:you could live with a french family if you wanted or in like a student
Speaker:apartment. And I was in class with this australian woman.
Speaker:She and her husband had just moved to France and she was a nurse. She
Speaker:was like passing all of her licensing, getting all of her licenses so that she
Speaker:could be a nurse in France because they, you know, wanted to live there. And
Speaker:I remember we're in this class and the teacher asked us to explain
Speaker:what our dream for our future was. And we were going
Speaker:around the table and her thing was like, she's like, I want to
Speaker:go and I want to nurse the whole world. But she translated
Speaker:wrong and what she actually said is, I want to go breastfeed
Speaker:the whole world. And the teacher was
Speaker:like, I don't know if that's what you want to. And I was, of
Speaker:course, next. Cause we're sitting next to each other, so we're laughing and we're just
Speaker:dying. And she's like, no, no, no. I don't wanna breastfeed anyone. It's fine.
Speaker:Like, I want to heal people. And then I was like, yeah, I wanna go,
Speaker:and I wanna have a lot of adventures around the world. And I used
Speaker:the word Les Avantur, which I thought meant adventures, just like
Speaker:in English. It doesn't. It doesn't. It means a lot of sexual
Speaker:encounters, which I just announced this to the whole class,
Speaker:and the teacher looked at me, she's like, this is what it means. Like,
Speaker:no judgment. No judgment if that's what you want. But, like, I don't think that's
Speaker:what you meant. I was like, no, that's not what I meant. I meant adventures,
Speaker:like, do cool, go and see exciting
Speaker:things and have interesting stories. And she helped me figure it
Speaker:out. Throwing myself back into learning French again
Speaker:and throwing myself back into tennis again
Speaker:has really been eye opening for me, because I think one of
Speaker:the things that helped me be so successful so quickly in my business early on
Speaker:is that I was fully down to fail. I was used to
Speaker:failing. I was all about it. Fail fast, fail
Speaker:forward all that jazz. And over time, I've
Speaker:moved away from it, because, like, once you start your business and you get
Speaker:good at it, you're just kind of used to being good at everything, you know?
Speaker:And I realize that there are a few things that I'm going to be doing
Speaker:in the next year that I'm probably going to be bad at. You know,
Speaker:there are a few business schools that I have that I've, like, never done before
Speaker:and things that are way outside my comfort zone and, like, has
Speaker:massive opportunity for failure. And I realized that I was
Speaker:never going to be able to go and do those things if I didn't build
Speaker:my resilience to failure back up to where it used to be.
Speaker:So I urge you, if
Speaker:you're thinking about starting a business, or if you're in the process of starting a
Speaker:business, or if you're in the process of scaling a business and
Speaker:there's opportunity for failure and you're afraid of it,
Speaker:which is pretty much everyone in the world except for sociopaths. So if you're afraid
Speaker:of it, congratulations, you're not a sociopath. I invite you
Speaker:to go and be at something. Pick something. Go
Speaker:actively be bad at it. Practice being bad.
Speaker:It's going to be absolutely life changing for you. And over time,
Speaker:when you really commit, you'll actually get good at it. Well, that's what I'm telling
Speaker:myself with tennis. Well, it still remains to be seen, but I'm
Speaker:getting better at French, in case you were wondering. Now, the next thing you want
Speaker:to be very conscious of as you're actively being bad at stuff
Speaker:is, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to
Speaker:find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.
Speaker:Now, the next thing you want to be very conscious of as you're
Speaker:actively being bad at stuff is correction, not punishment.
Speaker:So in french classes, when I say something wrong, the teacher corrects me,
Speaker:and when I say something wrong, I try to correct myself. I look
Speaker:for the correction. I'm not, like, determined to always
Speaker:be perfect, right? Because that's not going to help anyone. If my friend, who
Speaker:was determined to be correct with her phrase saying that she wanted to breastfeed the
Speaker:whole world, could you imagine the conversation she'd have later in her
Speaker:career? Like, she'd probably be fired from the hospital that she got a job
Speaker:at? They'd probably be like, I'm sorry, like, you can't do that with patients. And
Speaker:she'd be like, what do you mean? I can't nurse people? And they'd be like,
Speaker:no, it's so weird. Get out of here. Thinking she was planning
Speaker:on going up to patients and trying to BReastfeed them in tennis. So there
Speaker:was one day where I went, and I was, like, practicing tennis on my own,
Speaker:and. And how do you do this, you might ask? Well, there's machines that I'm
Speaker:sure you've seen in movies that basically have, like, a whole bunch of balls on
Speaker:top, and they shoot a ball out at you and you're supposed to just hit
Speaker:it. And the point is to work on, like, one swing at a time.
Speaker:And so I rented a court, and I rented this machine,
Speaker:and I go to my little tennis club that I'm a member of,
Speaker:and I was the only one on these three courts, right? So
Speaker:I'm the only one. I'm the center of attention. There's a wall where
Speaker:all the treadmills line up, and there's a window. So everyone who's on a treadmill
Speaker:up on the second floor of this gym is looking out, watching me,
Speaker:because I'm the entertainment. It's a tennis club, so people like watching tennis.
Speaker:The first round the first 20 minutes, I was so
Speaker:angry, I was missing, like, the ball was hitting the same spot on the court
Speaker:over and over and over again, and I kept missing it. And every time I'd
Speaker:miss it, I'd be like, oh, my God, you suck. What's wrong with you? That's
Speaker:terrible. Oh, my God. That's awful. What are you doing? You
Speaker:know, I started just getting really tight and frustrated and angry with
Speaker:myself, and eventually the machine ran out of
Speaker:balls. And so I went around with that stupid tube that you go around just,
Speaker:like, popping the balls inside and
Speaker:just being so angry with myself. And I realized, oh, my God.
Speaker:Me being angry with myself for doing this badly isn't
Speaker:helping. There's nothing about this process that's actually
Speaker:helping me get better. It's actually making me worse. I was hitting more balls in
Speaker:the beginning than I was at the end. And so as I'm collecting all the
Speaker:balls and putting them back in the machine, I made a deal with myself. It's
Speaker:like, okay, like, let's correct me rather than punish me.
Speaker:And so I filled up the machine again. I went back to the other
Speaker:side of the court. I hit the little remote control button, and I hit the
Speaker:first ball, and it was too long. And I just said, oh, too long to
Speaker:myself, you know, no one's around. And then I hit the next ball, and it
Speaker:was to the left. It went outside the court, oh, too far to the left,
Speaker:you know? And then I hit the next ball, and it was too far to
Speaker:the right. And then I hit the next ball, and I hit the net, and
Speaker:then I missed the next ball, and it's like, oh, you swung too late. Oh,
Speaker:this is the thing that you did wrong. Like, here's the action that you can
Speaker:make better. And what was miraculous, and actually, it's not
Speaker:miraculous, it makes perfect sense, was by the end of that next
Speaker:20 minutes session of the machine shooting balls at me. I was
Speaker:hitting every single ball by the end, and I was hitting
Speaker:balls most of the time where I wanted it to go, in the other
Speaker:side of the court. Side note, I should have switched hands. I
Speaker:couldn't use my right arm for about two days afterwards because
Speaker:it's not normal in tennis that you just spend, like, 40 minutes straight just hitting
Speaker:with one arm the exact same swing. So next time, I will go
Speaker:back and forth. But I'm so glad I learned this lesson, because it really helped
Speaker:me understand how I learned best and helped
Speaker:me coach my clients on how to be good at failing in
Speaker:a way that they learned from it. And don't just create a story that they
Speaker:suck at everything. So I urge you, like, as you're being bad at
Speaker:stuff, correct yourself. Don't punish yourself.
Speaker:The final thing that I want to offer, as you're working on
Speaker:your perfectionism, as you are leaning into
Speaker:failing, because so many of us have this
Speaker:idea of how perfect looks like, but it's also just not like a
Speaker:firm idea. I'm in the midst of redoing my website right now, and
Speaker:actually, this is one of those moments where I'm like, oh, my God, I need
Speaker:to be taking my own advice because I'm designing it
Speaker:and I'm realizing, like, oh, my God, it's not exactly how I want it, but
Speaker:how I want it is just perfect. There's no specific
Speaker:idea I have of what perfect looks like. The mentality
Speaker:we want to adopt when we're in the middle of a project that's actually going
Speaker:to impact our business is we want to look at what would half ass
Speaker:look like. Because oftentimes half assed is more
Speaker:than enough. Half assed is done,
Speaker:whereas waiting for perfect is never done. Because perfect
Speaker:is a moving target. Perfect will never happen. One of
Speaker:the great questions that artists get asked is, when do you know that your painting
Speaker:is finished and a lot of them can't tell you. A lot of them are
Speaker:like, eh, like, eh. You just kind of like, you know,
Speaker:have to be okay with it. And the cool thing about doing something half
Speaker:assed is that you get to be with it for a while and you get
Speaker:to see, okay, cool. What do I want to correct here? What do I want
Speaker:to correct? Instead of punishing yourself for not being perfect, for instance,
Speaker:with my website, I could say, oh, you know, I don't really like how this
Speaker:drop down menu goes. Maybe I should change it the next time I
Speaker:redo my website. I can do this, this, and this differently, but in the
Speaker:meantime, I still have a website to send to people. I still have a place
Speaker:for people to discover me and to find out more about me and to hopefully
Speaker:scare some people away who aren't my ideal clients.
Speaker:And I would like to just say something to the family members of
Speaker:my listeners, those of you who may have adhd also or who are
Speaker:neurotypical. I just want to apologize in advance for
Speaker:all the hobbies that are about to come into your house that
Speaker:your loved one who listens to this podcast is about to take
Speaker:on, who is about to be really bad at who's going to get
Speaker:frustrated with it. Yeah, my heart goes out to you. I hope you
Speaker:understand this is for the greater good. You're a loved one. Learning to
Speaker:be bad at stuff and maybe developing some more hyper
Speaker:focuses and getting more hobby
Speaker:supplies and things like that will make them better
Speaker:able to start a business in the future, which hopefully makes them super rich. And
Speaker:then you can retire. Right? And you can just, like,
Speaker:be taken care of. Hopefully. If it doesn't work out that way,
Speaker:not my problem. I'm sorry. I invite you. If you're committed to being bad at
Speaker:something, I would love to hear what you're committed to being bad at. If you
Speaker:want to get in touch with me on the socials, you can find me on
Speaker:Instagram at Katie the coach
Speaker:or on TikTok at Katie
Speaker:KDHD. You see what I did
Speaker:there? Or if you're listening to this on Spotify, then you can go
Speaker:ahead and leave a comment for us. And I can't wait to see it.
Speaker:Oui, je enfin frapper la putin bal quin's
Speaker:amouritevere. Ha. Squirrel,
Speaker:squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.
