Welcome or welcome back to the Joy Loving Home podcast. This is episode 210 and every 10th episode I have been doing a special break this rule series if you have ADHD. So sometimes it's break an organizing role. Sometimes it's break a decluttering role. Sometimes it's break a planning or productivity role. But I give a twist on a better option for our ADHD brains in this series of every 10th episode.
So if you've never picked up on that or never noticed that in my podcast, and you feel like just jumping around, if you go to the 10th, the 20th, the 30th, you get how to count by 10. You can get these series of break the rule episodes and enjoy those. So today in particular, though, we are going to talk about the role of staying consistent, being a game changer. And I completely agree. Consistency is incredibly helpful, especially if you're a monkey brain.
And it can be helpful for we fish brains until it becomes our own little stumbling block that we throw out there for ourselves. And that's what I want to talk about today. And if you are new and you're tuning in about this, please listen to this little musical intro because it explains what I mean by a monkey brain or a fish brain. Okay, just before I get started, as you're listening to this, you may or may not know that I unexpectedly disappeared since June 19th.
And if you listen to this when I drop it, it's July 15th. It's nearly a month. I have fairly consistently made sure I have put out an episode every single week or two or sometimes three. And whenever there is a gap like this, There's always a reason. And it's my own tripping over a stumbling block that I put into my own head space that has kept me from hitting record. And in this particular time, it has everything to do with consistency, which sounds completely convoluted
as I was not consistent. You'll understand why in just a second. But I thought if this was something that I tripped up this badly about that perhaps you, being very similar to the way I think, might be tripping over your own stumbling blocks as well. And let's see if there's anything we can do to jog ourselves and out of this stuck rut that we can get into because we're tripping on some parameters we set up and can take for ourselves.
So where I'm going with this is I am a very spontaneous podcaster. I am not one of these machines where I have the calendar all laid out and I have different topics and I always make sure I preload all these podcasts ahead of time that are on these different...
The way they teach you, if you've ever wanted to learn about podcasting, to do all of these, you know, plan it out, have it be very meaningful and thoughtful and consistent and to cover all the areas you're supposed to cover and bank a few in ahead of time in case you get sick or life happens. All of those are wise, wise advice. Unfortunately for me, I am one of those people who the idea flashes into my head. I jot down a very few quick notes just so I don't get lost in the middle of
the podcast. And then I hit record. And that has been the story of 230 episodes worth of episodes from day one. It's how my brain operates. Every time I get with anybody trying to to tell me how to do it better, things freeze up. So it is what it is. Sorry, not sorry, because I know this is how my brain works and I'm going to roll with it. And I know you all appreciate that because we have very similar brains. But what has happened when I realized why I got stuck is this was going to be
one of those every 10th episodes. This is episode 210. And so it needed to be one of these break the rule episodes. And I was stuck on having inspiration about a rule I wanted you all to break. And so I cannot tell you the endless number of podcasts that have popped into my head. I would normally hit record, but I didn't because it was like, oh, wait, that's not a breakthrough roll. I'm on a breakthrough roll.
Okay, let me, nope, that's not a breakthrough roll. I don't want to, I can't because I don't, and I should have like pre-recorded 11, 2-11 and pre-recorded 2-12. I may be at 2-19 by now, all pre-recorded had I hit record on any of those other ideas that are now lost to the wind. I have no idea where they are now. they'll come back to me eventually, hopefully.
But I needed one for this 210. And I was like, suddenly it dawned on me, like, you have to get back out there, you have to climb back on that horse, you have to start swimming again, whatever analogy I want to use. Because I love doing this, I love sharing back and forth with you all. I love trying to say, you know, hopefully you could learn from some of my mistakes or identify your own mistakes and my mistakes, and we can both move move forward. That's like the whole goal of this podcast.
And so I was like, all right, I'm just going to come on and I'm going to say why this isn't going to be a break, this role episode, because I need to move on. I just need to move on. And then it hit me. What I'm struggling with is I was trying to be consistent about my every 10th episode. And this This effort to be consistent has literally stalled all productivity completely. And so I want you all to stop and think about like, am I doing the same thing?
Are there things that I am walking past and freezing up on and not doing because I put a rule, a stumbling block in my own way that I can't get myself to get over? And in this case, I'm calling it consistency, but what it's probably more about. In tune with is perfectionism. Like I needed every 10th episode to match, I'm using air quotes, the theme. And because I couldn't get it perfectly right, I just stopped.
So look around wherever you are in your home right now, or think about it if you're walking or you're in your car, where in your house have you completely stalled out? Because you won't do it at all unless you you can do it perfectly. Where is the logic in that? But I know we're all stuck on it. And a lot of it feeds into like our all or nothing type of setup.
Like I don't want to get the laundry room cleaned up because I want to make sure all the clothes are clean once, but I can't get all the clothes clean once because I don't have a place to put them. And I can't put them somewhere temporarily because then I'm going to be doing it twice and I don't want to do it twice. And so I'm not going to do it at all. And there you sit with all the dirty clothes. Or I've got all this stuff I brought back from my in-laws when they were downsizing.
And it has been sitting on my dining room table for weeks now. And I see it every time I walk in or out of the house. And it's driving me crazy. But I won't move it. Because I'm like, Like, well, but I need to sort it all at one time and make a decision about all of it at once. And we're still picking up a few more things and I need. No, I don't. I am holding that whole thing up because I needed it to be done perfectly the first time.
Oh my goodness, that whole perfection is the enemy of progress is so true.
Or I hear so much from those of you that are joining my podcast group, because I always ask this question as you enter like what is your biggest struggle with your home or your schedule and it is all this but I don't have a system and I don't have a routine and I don't have a plan and I can't stick to it I can't stick to it I can't stick to it and so how many times have you thought I can't stick to it because you were like gonna make your bed every morning,
and then one morning your husband was sick or stayed home because he had a day off and you didn't make it right when you got up because he had a chance to sleep in. And then you didn't get it made that bed, that bed made that day. And now it's like, well, that's over. I didn't stick to the routine. That's over. Instead of just picking it up the next day, or you were going to always have your kitchen clean every night before you went to bed.
And then your dog had to go to the emergency vet and you were out that night and you were so exhausted when you got home. and then it was like, well, here I am horrible at this again because I didn't do it last night. So now this whole routine that I tried to set for myself, now I can't keep it. The self-sabotaging stumbling blocks that we are tripping over, telling ourselves we're horrible at it because we won't step up and go, tomorrow's a new day.
I can pick right back up where I left off. And it's not the same as starting over because you know more than you did the last time. You're in a different place in knowing what you're capable of than you were when you started the first time and you weren't sure you could do it at all. Now you know you've done it for three days or you've done it for 12 days or holy cow, I did that for a month, but now the calendar's turning and yeah, I guess I should just do something new.
And you can, you always can. I mean, that's been one of my talks about our brains and this enemy of consistency as we get bored with the routine, even if we can keep it up. So I'm always trying to throw out new ways to switch it up. That doesn't mean you failed at the last thing. It just meant it ran its course until your brain was done with it. And now it needs a shot of new energy and new dopamine and new ways to tackle something, even something that could have been working.
Working your brain is going to fizzle out on and want a new way so I guess in this sort of I did jot down notes that I have not looked down once while I've been talking.
But my point being if you find that you have stopped and you are stuck and maybe you're sliding backwards and you're not doing something that maybe even you enjoy like this podcast I I love doing, but I stopped and I was stuck because I was holding myself to some weird imaginary standard of consistency that y'all could have cared less about. I don't even know if any of you even realized every 10th episode was this break the rule thing.
So just pause a minute for me, evaluate what am I avoiding because I can't quote unquote do it right. What am I avoiding starting back up again because I stopped? What am I avoiding approaching because I don't think I have all the things to just do it once because that feels, do I really want to do it twice? You might. You really might want to just do something once and then realize exactly that you didn't even need that thing you were waiting for.
That happens all the time, particularly with organizing products. If you're like, I can't organize the drawer until I get the drawer organizers, you might just organize the drawer and discover you got rid of enough stuff that you don't even need the drawer organizer anymore. So don't let those very common stumbling blocks stop you from moving. Look around, say, what can I do to jump over this stumbling block? I'm the one who put it there in the first place. And let me just see.
Just see what happens if I explore the idea of moving forward anyway. Hope that helps. Until next time, continue to choose joy.