DOPEamine

ADHD has been a challenge for me all of my life whether or not I recognized that it was there. Now that I know of its existence in my life I can back track and understand the tips and tricks I've given myself to subvert the challenges I've been facing this whole time. Often I translated it as "tricking myself" but in essence I was figuring out and applying well-known tricks for managing these aspe...

We're opening up some uncomfortable wounds on today's episode. I've spent much of my life having some challenging relationships with women, namely because of my perception of myself, what I wanted and how I felt I could get what I wanted. That resulted in a lot of manipulation of behavior, creating undo influence, and seeking out other relationships while in current relationships in order to satis...

Molly and I have been obsessed with the show Catfish lately, and it's likely because there is a ton of social neurosis to unpack. Guilt being one of those common feeling that comes up in a variety of forms. Sometimes it's guilt for getting caught, sometimes it's not realizing the effect you had, sometimes it's not pursuing what you want for fear of the reality being different than expectations. So...

Lately, I've been learning about some of the challenges in my life related to ADHD. Cyclothymia has been a beast that I've been taming and feeling confident with. My mood disorder is an every 3-month thing but now that I'm learning about ADHD, I'm realizing how much this affects my day-to-day life, my commitments, relationships, and work. I'm having to revisit quite a few moments in my past and le...

What I love about doing this show is that I come across all sorts of new philosophies and topics that we may experience day to day but we not realize how common it is. Intellectualizing our emotions is very much one of those concepts. That means pushing away our feelings, shoving them down, or downplaying them for the sake of social niceties. But there are harmful side effects to suppressing how w...

We're in one of the most interconnected times in history while also facing some interesting psychological side-effects of loneliness and physical disconnection. There are greater opportunities than ever to fulfill our life's missions and work without having to interface with others so much, which brings with it the challenge of now having to seek out connection for it's own sake instead of having...

I've personally had quite the challenge of facing the fear that comes from staring at a blank canvas. What do we want from this blank page? Why is it so intimidating? Is there a problem with me? Where am I going to get the motivation to create? This episode focuses on that topic of motivation and how or why we should simply start creating and giving back to reality.  --- Send in a voice message: h...

Every day new creators are born from the ashes of their difficult pasts. Some of the best songs written are expressions of triumph or expressions of love for the teachers in their lives. Creativity, to me, is the desire to give back to reality. What we're giving back is a remix of all of the lessons we've learned, the entertainment we've enjoyed, and the challenges we've had to face in our lives....

Desperation is a difficult to shake feeling. You need something to change and you need it to change now. But what strategy is the best for managing desperation? On this episode I talk about desperation in 3 different contexts: personal finance, relationships, and selling. Each one comes with its own challenges but by the end we land on a few common behaviors that we can watch out for when we're in...

These days, it's a challenge to be proud of being a man. If you're caught in the whirlwind of political and religious social media drama it can be easy to feel like being a man is an inferior trait. It could even feel like being a man today means to be less of a man to make room for others. I would beg the opposite of you. The world needs more grown-ass men than ever. Strength, protection, perseve...

I've just come out of one of the most difficult mental health spikes I've experienced in recent memory. The depression side of things wasn't so bad, as I've learned to manage my mental energy with gratitude practices, mediation, and overall giving myself fewer expectations during those difficult times. Mania, however, is a completely different story. Hypomania, which comes along with my Cyclothymi...

It's been a challenge to become comfortable with my brand of thinking, my brand of identity and how I can bring that to the world. Recently, on an episode of Personality Hacker titled "How To Become an Influencer" I was inspired to think about how connective energy is what leads to someone becoming entertaining. Whether you're an educator or motivator, if you've got that spark of identity, with pu...

The mind is a tricky thing, so much so that it is very easy for us to convince ourselves that bad things are good for us or that good things can have consequences. Secondary Payoffs is a concept tied to this mental trickery. A secondary payoff is the continued feeling of getting rewards from bad behavior. Sugar tasting good, cigarettes calming stress, or alcohol taking away our worry. Conversely,...

From reality TV to that loud neighbor yelling at her cats, why do we find toxic people to be interesting? Could it be that we're hoping to feel better about ourselves by surrounding ourselves with difficult people? Do we not feel worth of love from healthy people? Do we not think of ourselves and healthy and feel we deserve to be surrounded by toxic people? There's a myriad of reasons why toxicity...

Stress is a feeling we are all very familiar with. We often put it on ourselves more than we need to and much of it comes from some sense of magical thinking. Magical in the sense that we're trying to predict the future or make the future come sooner. There are other kinds of stress that are healthy, mechanisms that warn us of actual danger, but if we're dealing with such intense stress in our dai...

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in Psychological Review. This theory is used by many psychologists and personality typology coaching in their trainings and research to help diagnose a person's stage of needs and development. The hierarchy focuses on 5 key areas: Physiological Needs, Safety and Securit...

"No" is one of the first words we learn when we're child yet it becomes the word that is the most difficult to use when we need to as we get older. "No" is used in service of setting boundaries and calibrating ourselves to what we want. "No" is an opportunity to be authentic and connect based on our daily realities.  But somehow we struggle with "no." Perhaps its our family training after we've no...

Storytelling is a powerful tool that allows us to connect with others, play with our imagination and tell cautionary tales. And while I'm no expert, even remotely, when it comes to storytelling, I know how powerful it is.  How often do we put ourselves in other people's shoes? The beauty of story is the opportunity to experience something we have never or may never be able to experience in our liv...

I've been dealing with some challenges with my to-do list lately, largely around the concept of it getting way too out of control for me to handle while simultaneously feeling like my value is measured on the emptiness of that to-do list. It's as if the emptiness of the to-do list means I can sit back and be done forever, when, as a freelancer that's never going and isn't supposed to happen.  So w...

In the entrepreneurial and freelance world there is endless discussion about morning routines and how to get your day started off on the right foot. What are the shortcuts? What's the magic pill? What's the best bang for your buck? And frankly, I think we're approaching it all wrong. I just finished reading Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and in that book he talks about private...

Selling art is always a tricky situation. Over and over again I see very similar logic associated with trying to sell art: "The art should sell itself" or "I don't want to be sleazy" or "I don't think my work is worth the cost." These challenges hold every artist back who is already inherently a salesperson if you are already trying to sell your work. Unless you have a salesperson, you ARE the sal...

Since I was a kid I've known that I don't want to work for the rest of my life, while at same time, working on projects is very natural to me. So where is that balance? I think it comes in form of mini-retirements. And we can look at mini-retirements a couple of different ways. One is by taking time to be human and managing external pressure, two is by taming our relationship with our phones, and...

We're tackling a couple of different concepts on this episode, one of those is the idea of feeling unsafe socially then tying it into Graves 4 safety then connecting that to the notion of community then the idea of competition. Recently I've been picking up video games again and game have always been a competition and creative outlet for me. I enjoy the feeling of improving myself and in the proce...

The moment we're able to assess our place in the world or attempt to understand our place in society, we have moments where we feel stupid for doing, saying or thinking what we want. Feeling stupid can keep us from fully embodying who we are and what we want to be. Feeling stupid is akin to feeling shame and shame is a powerful blocker our lives that keeps us from expressing what we need to expres...

The 51/49 rule is a very simple concept shaped around the idea of kindness and simply giving a little more than you get. It's not about expectations, it's about giving a little more than what you happen to receive. The concept applies to business, personal relationships and to yourself. If everyone were to follow 51/49 in all of their relationships we'd be a much happier species.   --- Send in a v...