Mark: and Miah Johnson…

Miah: Hello Mark, so of course, every show I start with saying I’m so excited about the show. So I’m like, what else do I say when I’m really excited about the show?

Mark: I just thought about what we’re talking about before, this is a little inside baseball not every one know, but before, all right we’re gonna do a long one today and a short or we’re gonna do the next so I was like, we’re gonna push… What we’re gonna do, what we normally do, we’ll do some prep, we read an article, have a topic and we’ll discuss it. We do some prep, but then once we hit record, we never know where it’s gonna go.

Miah: Just so everyone knows, 90% of our podcast, we want to be short…

Mark: And they end up long…

Miah: And end up long, but in reality, we have to help ourselves to stop. So there are shorts from one perspective, and other perspectives there are longs.

Topic of the Show

Mark: Okay, so I have and idea for another episode that we’ll have to write down, since you’ve made up that comment “my precious” we’re gonna have to do an episode called my precious. Because I have a funny idea of silliness of human nature and that seems… Okay so, a great question from a non listener and someone who hasn’t read the book Addicts and Millionaires just someone on my personal Facebook, one that I had spoken in a conference on ADHD that has mentioned the curse and the gifts of ADHD and she just replied in the comments. I see and I understand all the curses of ADHD and the challenges, what are the gifts? That’s a great question…

Miah: Great question!

Mark: I wanted to reply and say, buy my book Addicts and Millionaires. And you for only 9.95, it can all be answered! Just go now!

Miah: It will change your life So, I was having a party at my house about that book if you wanna come to that party then you can sign up for the book then if you have 5 friends that you signed up, they can sign up under you for the book and they sign up 5 friends…

Great Question

Mark: But the only challenge with your business model there Miah is that all of those people will no longer be your friend.

Miah: Well I do use that term pretty loosely so…

Mark: I apologize for anybody that’s in multi level that we’ve offended with our sarcastic…

Miah: We do reserve the right to offend…

Mark: Everybody, I have to admit, I tried multi level once a long time ago. We’re all guilty of trying it once…

Miah: Oh! One thing you didn’t know about your host… Mark Patey!

Mark: I’ll bet Miah talked in one of those meetings in a younger day or a different time…

Miah: I went to a meeting…

Business Challenges

Mark: Here’s the problem, if we ever decided to do a multi level, we will rule the world. Now the problem is we can’t make fun of them.

Miah: Oh man, and now all of our listeners who do MLM, we love you. Really we just.

Mark: We do.

Miah: Can I just… this is a funny story. A distraction, little quick.

Mark: Take the distraction, go.

Miah: So my wife and I are dating…

Mark: That usually happens before the marriage,

A Distraction

Miah: Before the marriage, so during that, it’s kinda weird, she dated me. But during the process. We’re talking about… I just came from a very different background and my wife, you know, she’s a real good girl, a church going girl and I was not that guy…

Mark: You were a rock star, you were the guy in the band.

Miah: I was the guy in the band and the whole life was like that. When we’re dating and getting surge about marriage, and she’s like, you know, I’d really like to understand your past. I’m like, oh great.

Mark: Oh no. You lie.

Miah: The moment, right? I decided to let it all out.

Mark: Oh you have to.

The Marriage

Mark: When you’re exposing, oh I am the rock so band stuff…

Miah: And I’ve just opened myself up. Everything in my life and so she’s like thank you so much that means so much to me and it was a great touching moment and it’s quiet then I’m like what about you? And she gets this look on her face, she just shuts down and oh no she’s done something worst than me? After everything I told her I’m like what if she’s just, I cannot. I can’t tell you everything. I was like oh my gosh. After everything I just told you, you can’t tell me? She just said, I’m so ashamed.

Mark: I know Debbie, I don’t know where you’re going.

Miah: Do you know the story?

Mark: No. I know Debbie and I’m like, for Debbie to even date you she was and is still as pure as the white driven snow. I mean this is the small-town, church-going, committed to her faith and family just pure and you’ve exposed, you know…everything. And okay… so?

The Great Moment

Miah: I was reformed, and I was you know…

Mark: Yeah, yeah. You changed your life absolutely.

Miah: Yeah, so…and after…as this moment of honorability for me, and the I couldn’t get it out of her and then I became upset, after everything I just told you, you can’t trust me with that? And the she finally goes, well okay, I was involved in a pyramid scheme one time… And I sat there, and I’m like mockery? Are you mocking me?

Mark: And by pyramid scheme, she was talking about a multi level market thing it wasn’t like a real pyramid scheme.

Miah: Oh no, it was multi-level marketing.

Mark: Which is a legitimate way to do business! Oh Debbie, we love you. You are so precious. It’s awesome.

Miah: We’re just distracted from the question of what are the gifts and curses of ADHD?

Pyramid Scheme

Mark: No, the question was, I understand the challenges of ADHD and everybody does, but what are the gifts? And so I said, let’s take that and the first thing and the most important thing to understand about what the gifts of ADHD are, is they are the exact same things that are the curse. And I’m gonna say that again, the gift in ADHD can be seen as the curse of ADHD. So let’s take the first one, let’s say someone’s ADHD, what are they? Well they’re easily distracted by the world around them, by shiny objects, squirrel, all the jokes and we say, okay, we’re easily distracted. That’s true. We also or at the same time, the exact same thing is looked at differently. We have very high awareness. We can’t help but be aware of the shiny object in the room, of the squirrel the person who shifted in their chair and trying to figure out wait, why did they shift to this chair, aren’t they comfortable? Did what I say, trigger something or we are hyper aware and so you could say, the curse of ADHD has always been distracted and I could say, and the gift of ADHD is always being distracted and being hyper-aware or having high awareness of the world around us. It’s the same thing.

Miah: It’s eternal curiosity, which is a gift.

Challenges of Adhd

Mark: It is absolutely a gift. So think about that and every trait in ADHD really has it’s… I wanna say it’s opposite but I cannot. It has it’s opposite view of that same trait which is positive so one of the gifts is that we have very high awareness. Can it be a curse? Yes. But when I trade my hyper awareness of everything going on around me, or a brain that isn’t easily distracted, not for a single second and trade that gift or curse. I take the good with the bad in a brain that’s hyper aware and I love it. So the next one… Miah, the next one, you’ve got one.

Miah: Impulsive. We, people with ADHD, are impulsive.

Mark: We’re told all the time and we kind of are, right? We leap before we look.

Miah: And some of those translate to other people saying you could be selfish or self centered, only thinking about you know…

Mark: Yeah, you get an idea pop in your head…

The Gift

Miah: Nothing else matters. Right, you up and go. And which is true but the flipside of that is spontaneity and being spontaneous.

Mark: Right. Being spontaneous is a good thing. When someone says, what’s he like? I’ve never met him. Well he’s actually really a spontaneous guy or girl and you think of that as a good thing. People don’t say, oh he’s spontaneous, oh no, I don’t want to know him. But some say he’s spontaneous, you go oh sweet! He’s the guy I’m going parachuting with, bungee jumping with, we’re gonna be walking down the street in a Vegas conference and come up with an idea, hey! Guys, let’s go do this. But not that, this! Coz it’s Vegas. And that’s a fun personality. And spontaneity is the spice of life, it really is. But if you look at it as being impulsive in a negative way, it’s a curse. Or is it spontaneous? Which is a gift. And reality it’s both. It’s how you look at it. So I believe it was Kristen who asked that question so Kristen there’s two. Next one, people who are ADHD are easily distracted or scattered brain. And they’re all over the place mentally. And I love that one because it’s one of the biggest curses of ADHD is that our brain does seem to scatter we get an idea that pops in our head when somebody says something and our mind leaps in 3 to 10 different directions at the same time and it literally scatters as it looks for all the things that are connected to that is some strange, weird, random way. And you say, well you scatter-brain, and you know, the same thing as being scatter-brained is creativity.

Being Spontaneous

Miah: Yeah, absolutely.

Mark: A hundred percent. If someone’s truly creative, they have a mind that doesn’t look at everything the way everybody else does. They get an idea and that mind leaps out in all directions looking for connections, and the way things work together, and it runs. I would argue that to be creative, and I’m thinking funny… I go to conferences and conventions and somebody always does a seminar on how to be creative. There are books on how to be creative. There’s businesses that are trying to help employees be creative and think outside the box and we’ve said this before in our podcast. But think outside the box, if you’re ADHD, you’re so freaking far outside the box. You can’t even find the box to get in it.

Miah: Is there a box around here somewhere? Hello?

Mark: And be creative by definition requires a lack of boundaries. You have to be able to let the mind go.

Miah: But in a social scenario, you have to play within those boundaries. Lack of boundaries. Are you a hippie or what?

Lack of Boundaries

Mark: A little bit. There are boundaries in life and I would say there’s protective barriers. You have to put up boundaries that are barriers that protect you. But the problem is when the protective barriers get so narrow in scope that they limit the scatter-brain creativity, then we destroy the very thing that we’re spending millions of dollars a year learning which is we have to have a brain that can go in any direction and look at something completely differently and be truly creative.

Miah: And then you get to the next level and there’s a lot of futurists, people who think in very large terms in astrophysics, and… I can’t think of… Silva, I think his name is John Silver, he’s a futurist. And he just has this little 5-minute vignette as you go on his website and they’re brilliant because they’re all about not accepting the norms and paradigms around you.

Mark: Of the world we live in.

Miah: Of the world we live in. But frankly in your mind, to think outside of those paradigms and those norms and sometimes they actually tend to go that way.

Protective Barriers

Mark: Yeah, and if you listen to him or people like him, you can’t help but go, wait, that’s a little bit crazy. However, it’s not. Because all the inventions, and gadgets and things we have today, if you talked about it just 50 years ago, you’re nuts. We would not have a phone in our pocket that is a computer, and a movie player device and a GPS and all this. That’s nuts! That’s insane! How could you even think that out there and what I’m saying, Kristen and to those who say what are the gifts of ADHD, we all know the curse, again, it’s the same thing. We are scatter brain.

Miah: And Jason Silva is his name.

Mark: Jason Silva. So we’re scatter brained, but being creative is the same thing. To be creative, you have to let your mind scatter. You can let it run in all directions without boundaries. Okay. Next one Miah.

Miah: Emotional. Mark: I hate that about me growing up. I was like a bear nerve. My feelings hurt so easy and when you have a brain that can go really fast in a lot of directions, we tend to awfulize. I don’t know if you did that but I was emotional. I would get super excited about something… I was super out of control…

Scatter Brain

Miah: And then super devastated.

Mark: It’s super devastating when it didn’t go the way I wanted it.

Miah: But the other side of that is emotional? Or is it really enthusiasm? Is it really expressive enthusiasm? And I…

Mark: And it’s the same thing.

Miah: It’s the exact same thing. It depends on how you are looking at it. It’s the exact same thing. Some of the most wonderful things in this world are created by people who are absolutely enthusiastic.

Mark: And passionate.

Enthusiastic

Miah: Yeah, that’s another word for it, passionate. And to be absolutely enthusiastic about something by nature, if something can lead you to complete enthusiasm, you have the ability to lead to complete devastation… You have the potential.

Mark: To get enthusiastic about it and it’s taken away and you don’t get to do it and your mind was set on it, and then you’re robbed of that, we can fall apart. Now again, what we talked about, we talk about anything in this show, about things on ADHD, we’re not saying that everybody with ADHD has these traits, some people that don’t have ADHD don’t have this gifts.

Miah: You may have one, you may have three, you may have all plus ten more.

Mark: You might be someone who’s going, you know I’ve never been diagnosed as ADHD but right now you’re talking about me. So people who are “normal” have ADHD traits and people who are out there, completely ADHD can behave normally.

Miah: Except for you.

Having Adhd Traits

Mark: Yes, except for me. But it’s all the different shade of gray between the ADHD brain which truly does function…

Miah: Did you say shade of gray?

Mark: Yes, there’s a thousand shades of gray. It doesn’t mean the same thing as it used to before the book came out.

Miah: Wait, what? Is there a book?

Mark: Yup. Don’t look it up kids. So there’s a million shades of gray in all of it…

Miah: You said it again.

Adhd Brain Function

Mark: Yeah, there’s million colors of the rainbow. So are we emotional, are we enthusiastic? Yes. But once looked at negative, are you gonna say he’s really emotional or he’s really enthusiastic? Okay another super stereotypical personality trait of ADHD, it’s actually fixed into the label.

Miah: Hyperactive. Which leads to the majority of misdiagnosis in my opinion. For young boys especially. It’s the hyperactive or emotional.

Mark: It might now be a misdiagnosis of ADHD, but the problem is when they diagnose someone with ADHD, they diagnose them with ADHD as if that’s a negative thing…

Miah: That’s right because heaven forbid, critics in our environment which we constrain and confine our boys to teach them to not be young boys, to teach them sit down, sit still, be still and when they act out of those boundaries and they’re hyper, then oh, we’ve got to conform them back down.

Mark: The label for that, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. And here’s your pill.

Misdiagnosis of Adhd

Miah: And here’s your pill. And now the opposite side of that is…

Mark: It’s not opposite. It’s the same side of that or the other side of the same coin.

Miah: I’m sorry. The different perspective of that…the other side of the same coin is energetic. It’s something I love about my 9-year old. I love his energy. We have so much fun together.

Mark: And I’ve loved having that ADHD energy because when I’m enthusiastic and passionate about something that I am currently getting creative on and then spontaneously jumped into because my distracted brain thoughts how I tied all those together. Right? And now I’m going after with all the energy in the world and I may end up staying up all night long to finish a project. And someone might say you have school…

Miah: Or to play mine craft.

Adhd Energy

Mark: And so the gifts of ADHD are the very things that the world tells us is a curse. Are we distracted or do we have very high awareness? Yes, we do. It’s the same thing. Are we impulsive or are we spontaneous? Spontaneous bad or spontaneous good?

Miah: And the message with what I’ve learned from Mark and what we try to propagate out there is don’t accept the negative label.

Mark: And I have found a lot of people around me – almost everybody around me – overtime, eventually starts going yeah, I’ve got a son, he’s ADHD isn’t that great? I’m like yeah, that’s awesome! It’s gonna be a nightmare and awesome! You know, it’s a gift and a curse. The things you’re gonna love about him are the things you’re gonna hate about him.

Miah: It won’t be boring.

Mark: No, absolutely not. So that’s our quick simple answer now. There are, I think I have it in my files somewhere, I started collecting a list when I started writing Addicts and Millionaires, the gifts of ADHD…

Gift and Curse

Miah: Available now on iBooks.

Mark: Yeah, it is available now in iBooks and the audio book coming soon, maybe you know if you listen to this…if you’re listening to this in the future, this may be recorded a long time ago…available now.

Miah: The hologram of Mark in your living room is now available. We should change this episode and just talk to future Mark and future Miah or future…

Mark: Future Mark or future Miah. Mark in the future, don’t have the sushi from the gas station. No that’s Mark in the past. Just don’t do it.

Miah: It could be a very good topic though, to say what would you tell your ADHD you back then out.

The Audio Book

Mark: You know what, let’s talk about that for just a second because that’s a really good point. What would I tell me if I could go back in time as me and say Mark… you know what, there are several things… Mark, you are not broken, damaged, or need fixing. You have a brilliant mind and you can figure out how to use it. You can figure out how to put it to work and you’re gonna do wonderful things with it and you will be misunderstood. You will be told you’re a little crazy, and out there you will find business ideas and don’t listen. Because it’s the narrow minded people that are shutting you down. That would probably… I mean the simplest ways I would say, Mark you are not broken, damaged and you do not need fixing. Don’t buy it. Because if I had figured that out earlier, it would have been so much easier…so much easier. Miah, what about you? If you could go back in time and say Miah, let me tell you something.

Miah: Yeah, and I’m reflecting. The great thing about my parents being rather hippy-ish, very hippy-ish, everything was all good all the time. Whatever you feel like. But when you get out to the real world, and some of the experiences I had, I really started encountering oppositions when you go out to working in the business world, for me it would have been trust my inner voice more instead of the boundaries that people put around or the hole they try to place me in. But learn at a younger life to trust myself more.

Trusting your Inner Voice

Mark: Have you found that your more instinctive than people around you? I don’t know if it’s and ADD or ADHD thing but what you said sparked a thought in me. As I’ve gotten older, some people say, as you get older you start to drift from religion, you start to get more analytical or scientific and I think that’s BS. As I got older I gotten more trusting my instincts and intuitive responses, you know. My gut check means so much more to me than the spreadsheet and what the person in front of me is telling me and what logic would say. I tend to listen to what my heart says. The best way to say it is, I have my heart talk and my head talk. And so I trust my instincts and intuitive responses, and then I let my ADHD brain, brain blast with that to figure out the ways to make it work that would resolve the problem. And so it’s a collaborative effort that I’ve learned as I gotten older. That worked really well for me.

Miah: For me, I think the word that I’m looking for is inhibition. When you’re younger actually I think you’re less inhibitive and more of the nature to just speak without thinking first.

Mark: Until you get shut down enough then you’re afraid to even say something coz it might be wrong.

Miah: Which is what we do a lot of times to kids.

Add or Adhd thing

Miah: We build those inhibitions around them and so I wish I was a little more uninhibited with ideas that I had when I was growing up.

Mark: You know Dave Nelson who’s my equal opposite in business, and he’s just a perfect EO and…we’ve got to have Dave here some time and take the EO perspective.

Miah: Just sit back and play real cool and like yeah.

Mark: Yup, okay and then he’ll make notes this are the steps. This is what we’re gonna need to do. He mentioned that you know…all of these years working with me, now that he’s got a son with ADHD, he treats him so much different than when he was growing up. And you know, Dave’s not ADHD. He is the perfect EO. The super detailed logistics, you know thinks in a straight line all over and you know pick up the crazy ideas between the two of us and make it work. But he’s got a son who’s ADHD and he says, Mark… he comes to me all excited and ramped up and wants to build a go kart or wants to turn his bike into something else, wants to do something crazy

Inhibititions

Mark: And my first instinct, because of how he was brought up, was no no no, let’s be realistic, let’s keep this in perspective maybe why don’t you do this, it’s easier, and he says he catches himself in a regular basis thinking, oh no that’s too hard you are too young. And he says and then I’m like no, if this were Mark, at this age, he would build a go kart too young and so he says okay, Robbie, go for it. Let’s do it. Let’s get down and figure it out. He picks out on the opposite role, lets his ADHD child get down with the enthusiasm and I swear, this little scenario where he says, this is why Robbie came, my first instinct was to say no no no, blah blah blah, and this story plays out with some new thing with Robbie every month. Because you won’t believe what Robbie came up with. You won’t believe what Robbie said, and it always comes back to him saying and I wanted to shut him down and make him realistic and then I said no, I’m gonna let him dream and be a dreamer. And then the end of the story, is they always built or did something amazing. And parents, if your role is the equal opposite, even if you’re ADHD because you’ve grown up and learned to manage your ADHD, you can still take as an ADHDier a role as an equal opposite for the young ADHD mind who’s completely.

Miah: It’s a mentor kind of guide at that point. It is equal opposite, right? But it really is a mentor. We have a kid in our neighborhood who I love to pieces. My wife and I has loved this boy and he’s one of my son’s friends, and he is ADHD to the nth degree.

My First Instinct

Miah: That’s right. Awesome and sad and his parents, they struggle, but he’s brilliant. You know what he wanted for Christmas? A suturing kit.

Mark: That’s awesome! Dude I’ve worn out another suturing iron. As soon as I finished the podcast I ran to the hardware store and get a new suturing gun.

Miah: So his time with derby at the last night had on the top of it a motor…an electric motor that he got out of somewhere that was hot glued to the top. There was a spinning fan on top of it and a little battery pack and wires he had sutured it all together on the top of his pilot derby.

Mark: And he broke all the rules, and who cares?

Miah: And you know what, you look at all the derby parts out there that the dads had made, and you knew which one was his. He made it himself, he did it all himself, and it ran. It ran fine. I mean he didn’t get first place but he sutured together an electric motor with batteries and put on the top of his pilot derby car.

Awesome Sad

Mark: I love it. You know scouts are one of those things that I think started out so well and I like the scouting program. But scouting is all about teaching kids to think and work with their hand and build and live in the woods and all these wonderful stuff. But there are certain things about scouting that I’m like wait, they’re playing with derby. It has to only be this way to have…and they make all these rules as be creative with your pilot derby car. You do anything you want with it except make it heavier than this, don’t do this, don’t change the wheel, don’t, don’t, don’t… Like you can be as creative as you want as long as you don’t go outside of the lines. It’s like stop. How is it even possible to teach creativity with boundaries?

Miah: Well then you have a pilot derby with an unlimited class.

Mark: I love it. That’s the thing. Unlimited class. And rockets and seal two cars…

Miah: At the end of the day, it’s dads, do whatever you want to do.

Mark: Dads, here’s your chance to be a child again.

Scouting Program

Mark: So they can tell everybody their son worked derby…

Miah: That’s fun… good times.

Mark: Oh man, okay. Well I think we have time… we do have time. It’s too late for this to be a short episode, so to be our standard regular 30 to 45 minutes episode, we have a uneducated segment. That’s probably the number one thing… We should have a music. Something to introduce the uneducated segment.

Miah: If anyone there wants to produce that, we just need about a 3 to 5 seconds little something that says uneducated segment with Mark and Miah or whatever and send it to us. I promise you we’ll use atleastonce.

Mark: If we get three hundred entries, we reserve the right to change our mind. I’m sure we won’t get three hundred entries. Okay so to uneducated segment of the day is… best things in life are free. The best things in life are free. You put it in your wall, you put it in a plaque, to someone who’s listening to the show it’s on the refrigerator, somebody else has it on their wall.

Uneducated Segment

Miah: Or their Facebook site.

Mark: The best things in life are free.

Miah: With a sunrise over a mountain.

Mark: And it’s such a myth. And it’s such a disservice. I mean, I’m not saying take the sign off your wall. Let’s uneducate you for a second. Coz the idea is good. The principle is sound because it’s promoting being with your family, being with your friends, taking times with people around you, it doesn’t need to cost a bunch of money, and I get it.

Miah: You can’t buy happiness.

Best Things in Life are Free

Mark: It’s that kind of thing although we can make an uneducated segment out of that. Though money doesn’t buy happiness, it sure doesn’t make you unhappy. Your decisions you make whether you have money or if money make you happy or unhappy, but I can say it is nice if you don’t have to worry about a house payment. It’s really nice. Okay, that’s distraction. Back to the best things in life are free. The point really is, look, you take your kids to Disneyland, that would be a very expensive trip. Just buying lodge for all my kids at Disneyland, breakfast, lunch and dinner and walks around the park can break a bank.

Miah: We make sandwiches… Peanut bitter and jelly for three days.

Mark: The point is, it’s not the going to Disneyland, you find it at Disneyland, also there was that moment you’re sitting on the bench having a conversation with your kid about some random subject. The lady bug landed on your knee.

Miah: Or when Daniel says, Daddy is the magic of Disneyland when parents feel like kids again. He really said that.

Money Doesn't buy Happiness

Mark: Wow. 6 years old. Okay so it’s not the spending money. So no one hates this when the idea of the comment, the best things in life are free is good coz we’re saying looking, just spend time with people. And that’s true, that’s part of it. But the disservice we do in buying in to this idea that best things in life are free, it’s just simply not true. Because the best things in life actually take time.

Miah: Are earned.

Mark: And they’re earned. The best things in life are relationships of trust and love that come with time and investment and giving up your own selfish nature. It’s the farthest thing for free. I would argue that the financial part we’re referring to best things in life are free, is the easy part. The cash is easy. It’s easy to spend money to make someone smile.

Miah: Xbox for Christmas.

Mark: And a donation to somebody that wasn’t expecting it. That financial part can be easier than the best things.

The Best Things

Miah: Dude, you’re a capitalist, you don’t give donations to people. Who are you trying to fool? Anyway, sorry. Disregard that comment.

Mark: So here’s the thing, the best things in life are called sacrifice. They have a cost that often is more difficult than the cash we’re talking about. They aren’t free. It will cost you your time, it will cost you a commitment to love someone unconditionally, regardless of who they are, what they believe or what they’ve done. It will cost you a willingness to be honest and caring and, and, and, and… it’s an investment, the best things in life…

The best things in life, come from a serious commitment and investment in who you are, how you’re gonnatreat people and how you’re gonna perceive the people around you regardless of their behavior. That doesn’t fit on the fridge. But it’s not free. That takes work. It takes commitment, it takes time. Trust is earned. It is not given, it’s not free. And I’d say trust is one of the best things in life you can have between people. It takes time. You don’t just get to have it. It’s earned. Love is earned and given. And it’s earned with time and everything else. That’s not free. The best things in life, if you want a great life, are gonnatake a significant investment on your part. They’re the farthest thing from being free.

Earned not Given

Miah: And may I just add to that, even a beautiful sunrise which in here, in where we are, we got a lot of great sunsets and sunrise, we have mountains all around us, lakes, scenes are amazing. Even the ability to experience a beautiful sunrise, and to be in a psychological state of mind where you can accept that beauty and enjoy it, that came out of price. You had to earn to be there. You know what I mean? The best things in life are the best things in life because there is a value placed on the best things in life. Otherwise, it would not be a best thing.

Mark: Right. Even simple things like the sunrise, and how often have you seen a beautiful sunrise, sunsets kind of happen often and you gotta thank God for the paint brush that He’s created in the evenings. He can give you that best thing in life that is free so that is the exception. That is free that in the stressful moment you look at your window and you go, oh my gosh. Look at what God’s paintbrush has done for us today and it ends so there are some best things in life that are free. But like the sunrise it’s just one of the most beautiful things in the world. And to get that, you have to get up early, you have to drive across town, you have to park, you have to hike up to that spot that gives you the best view, and you earn the right to see the most gorgeous of sunrise…

Beautiful Things in the World

Miah: Can I play devil’s advocate? Are there people in this world that just does not acknowledge the beautiful sunset?

Mark: I’m sure there are but how sad.

Miah: Right. But those who do acknowledge it, appreciate it, have earned whatever psychological state of mind they’re in, they’ve earned that right to do that. So it wasn’t free. They’re perception of being able to do that as beauty and enjoy it, they have to earn and to be in that state of mind or that whatever they did in their life, they had to put themselves in that state of mind to be able to enjoy that.

Mark: I had an experience just last week in the middle of negotiating a business of mine. And it’s a big, stressful, serious deal.

Miah: You missed all your hair because of it.

Enjoying Life

Mark: I was sitting in a meeting and I was just brain baked and imagine an ADHDier trying to plow thru spreadsheets, you know. Oh my gosh.

Miah: You mean this stuff, it didn’t happen?

Mark: Yeah, I actually wanted so I was like guys give me the 30 thousand feet view. I mean I’ll come up with a strategy. But I mentioned, and it was stressful and I said you know guys, what’s so stressful about this is that one missed step on one comment or one phrase one little air in how this is all done, it’s a million dollars. 2 million dollars. I mean the slightest little thing, because it’s kind of a big deal, could be a million dollars. And I was like, you know it’s stressful thing just missing off negotiations just a little bit could be a lot. And Dave, my equal opposite has greatest perspective. He goes, Mark, isn’t that awesome? That we are the place in life that we get to have this experience and he said we should just sit back, take a breath and accept the fact however the deal goes or doesn’t go, however it ends up, whatever value, who cares? Right now, take a deep breath and be grateful you get to have a meeting where we’re discussing the reality of one little missed step could be a bunch of millions.

Stressful Thing

Miah: Classic equal opposite. Dave had this very similar comment to me, the previous sell we went through. You know in the other company, Dave had very similar comment. His perspective is fresh. What a great equal opposite. That’s awesome!

Mark: And that’s earned. That’s one of those moments that I actually sat down and I turn my chair around, I look at the window and I just looked up the sky, and I just went, you know what, this is awesome. It’s a great life and what a great time, and if this all falls apart, and it just goes worst case scenario and my mind went even everything in my life, it all fall apart tomorrow and I went flat broke and I’ve made money and got flat broke again before, making bad decisions. I’ve been there. If it all fell apart again, how awesome that I’ve got to live it. That I’ve got to be there. And there’s no reason others can’t and let’s put this in perspective for everybody, everybody has these moments, right? That you get to soak in the moment you’re in. This was a gift and curse moment. It’s like the start of the program, what’s the gifts or curse of having a business that you’re selling, right? The curse is it’s super stressful and scary and the gift is you get to experience that. We get to put that weight down our shoulder and what a blessing to actually be here and be able to solve the problem. Stepping all the way off that, that was a serious distraction.

Classic Equal Opposite

Miah: The best things in life are not free. They’re earned.

Mark: That’s the way it needs to be. That’s what you put on the fridge. The best things in life are not free, they’re earned. I love that. Someone sent me and he says, this one’s funny and I thought was particularly applicable to you, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, it’s the challenges of first world countries. I’m not done surfing the internet and my batteries almost dead, but my charger is way over there. Another one was I’m thirsty and the faucet is in the other room. I’m hungry and I’m just not in the mood for McDonald’s.

Miah: I’ve got the new Galaxy Note 3.

Mark: I’ve got an iPhone 5S.

Miah: This is from a comedian. So it has this new feature where I could just wave my phone, wave my hand over the phone and move the screens around. You know why that’s so important? Because that extra half inch to actually touch my screen, that is a first world country problem. I don’t have to move my hand an extra half inch to actually touch my screen.

Challenges of First World Countries

Mark: How did you survive? How did you even get by when you actually physically touched your phone to navigate it?

Miah: I’m glad they solved that, though.

Mark: You know, you’ll get thru this like Jeremiah. All right listeners, we’re glad you tuned in. Thank you so much for listening to our program. We really do love all our listeners. The gifts and curse of ADHD they’re not different things, they’re almost all the same thing. Our greatest gifts would be ADHD brain, are the greatest curse.

Miah: And that is the greatest gift, to learn that.

Mark: And that is the greatest gift, to learn that. The negative things in ADHD, you would find positive in the same thing just flip your perspective. Flip the coin over and take a look at the other side.

Miah: There’s nothing that needs to be fixed.

Not Different Things

Mark: And that’s the end of our program. Please share us with your friends, I mean on a regular basis, if you done it only once. You know, do it 20 times a day. You know what, if you really like the program, any one of the programs about anything even the tiny nugget that changed your perspective, the we only ask you to share it 50 times a day. Miah, I wan to you stop doing that. Thanks everyone, we really do love our listeners. And difference is not a disorder.

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