Welcome to the Distracted Podcast

In a world where distractions were long thought the enemy, one man befriends that foe and finds freedom in a shiny object on her rock. Since then, he has embraced the distractions and searches to help others in the epic battle against the norm.

Mark: If you can’t blame it on the ADD, blame it on your wife or your dog.And now…Distracted with Mark Patey.

Mark: It’s the distracted program.

Miah: In that context you don’t wanna blame it on your wife and you do wanna blame it on your dog.

Mark: You can only blame it on your dog. Just make sure you haven’t let the dog out under the backyard.

Miah: True story: I was at a friend’s house, and we’re talking and there’s that awful smell coming from all over and you blame it on the cat. He’s like get out of here cat!

Mark: Shameful but true, you just blame it all on the cat. Alright, welcome to the show

Holiday Love

Miah: Hey Mark!

Mark: How you doin’ Miah?

Miah: I’m doin’ actually really well.

Mark: I feel bad. We missed a week last week.

Miah: Well, vacation, thanksgiving…

Mark: Holidays…yeah, it’s been busy. It’s good. But we still love our audience and we’re still sorry we missed you. We really tried.

Miah: We don’t really even know you, but we love you. That’s how easy we give away our love.

Mark: Yeah, I’ve got all the love in the world. I can share.

Short Episodes

Mark: Okay, we’re gonna try to do shorter episodes and more of them at the request of many including me.

Miah: Well it’s the first part of this shorter episode and last but we’re doing many.

Mark: Can you guys talk less and not do so many episodes please.

Miah: Yeah, yeah. Good times.

Mark: The topic of the show today. It actually comes from a caller. Serious caller. Which is odd for us to ever take on anything too serious.

Miah: So it’s what we have to call like one of our friends say call and leave a message. It’s actually a real caller.

Mark: We’ve never had a friend call and leave their message…

Miah: And the name was Sergio…

Rules of the Show

Miah: Rules of the show.

Mark: We reserve the right to be wrong, we reserve the right to…

Miah: Change our mind.

Mark: And we reserve the right to offend all people equally, because free speech is practiced here. That’s our rules.

Miah: Those are our rules. And we recommend everyone to live by those rules.

Mark: Yes. You know I have an interesting perspective this week – experience – I got a call…

Miah: Oh is this what I saw on FaceBook about your … the sunset picture?

Picture on Facebook

Mark: It was the sunset picture. We haven’t talked about it yet so I want you to hear it. So the picture I posted on facebook was just a picture of the jet on the ramp in California and the sunset was setting down behind it and I was just doing a walk around the plane for pre flight to come home and I saw that sunset and it just hit me because of why I was in California and I had to take a picture of the sunset and you know the airport there and I took a picture of the back of a jet and it looks like it’s going away the sunset even if it ‘s on the ground. And because it struck me, I had to stop I couldn’t finish my pre flight I just stopped and looked at the sunset and that image there in front of me of like the plane heading into the sunset because the reason I was there is I was gonna approach by a good friend of mine, he says hey I’ve got a friend whose gotten really ill recently and we need to rush in California today like in thirty minutes can we be airborne, can we take your plane and get to a cancer center in California I said, yeah oh my gosh absolutely. Let’s go. And so I meet this guy – a good friend of his and he’s there with his wife and kid, we blast off to California and dropped off at a very well respected cancer center then we leave and I took my friend and this guys with his wife and his kid went into the hospital or the center and we went to lunch and thinking about how serious and how quickly someone can get ill and how quickly life changes we had a nice lunch and thought about life and work and putting things in perspective and we went back to pick him up. Well perspective hit you like a ton of bricks to find out he’s got less than three months to live.

Drugs and Medications

Miah: Did he just find out then? Or did he know?

Mark: His doctors back here in Utah I think have prepped him but this was the last hope he’s with the experts. These are the hardcore. These guys do the experimenting they have the permission to take people who were terminally ill and try the drugs and medications that aren’t permitted or legalized yet by the FTC

Miah: FDA.

Mark: or FDA whatever it is.

Miah: CFFD whatever alphabets.

Mark: Dude it even took me so long to figure out what LOL was I’d say something funny on a text and reply me back on a text with LOL like lol. Why do they say lol? I thought that was pretty being funny

Miah: ROFL. Rolling on the floor… so back to the subject…

Sunset on Life

Mark: No this is so serious and you know the hope was gone for the family and you could see it. They were quiet on the flight they were talkative and appreciative of the trip and how good it is in the air and how beautiful that flight was, that’s their first flight in like almost a year. There wasn’t a bump in the air and the take off came out the descent, it was perfectly smooth, perfectly gorgeous, perfect flight. And then they get this news that you know there’s no hope. And to see someone lose that and I know they were being strong, but even when we got home, we landed back here and you know its only a few hours, out there meeting, get back here and they quietly got in their car and left,. So that picture I took when we got in the airport when we’re leaving California, that sunset, and I titled it on my Facebook, a sunset on life. And I couldn’t help but think what would I do if I had 3 months left? Where would I be mentally, emotionally, would I be out riding motorcycles with my kids, would I be just taking care of the legal aspects, would I be in a depression for three months straight. And I don’t know you’ll never know how to handle that, you know with a lot of death because of my volunteer time for search and rescue and it’s always the immediate and unexpected.

Doing more fro Others

Mark: I’ve seen that a lot and you know we’ve talked on this show about loved ones that have lost in aviation. And it’s just all of a sudden. This is the first time I’ve seen someone who has to handle it and suddenly, they have three months. And I don’t know man. Just a part of me thought, I got to do better at doing more for others. Because, what else do we get? You don’t take anything with you and hopefully this show is part of that, I feel like for me this is part of what I can do. And it brings up another thing Miah, you and I have talked about this, the distracted program can be so much more than just ADHD. I mean that’s important, and it’s important to so many of us but you know, you and I have learned we’ve got some great friends and a lot of people in our circles have learned that a lot of things about finding success in life, finding happiness in life, for me, a big part of that is embracing the distractions. I found my greatest successes by embracing the distractions and embracing this distracted me. And I think we should be teaching people more than just okay let’s accept the gift and manage the curse of ADHD. We should go farther, I think there’s a lot more we could provide in how we do it. But I’m just thinking out loud, because of this sunset on life experience, we could do more. We could do a lot of coaching and consulting businesses, why don’t we do it on the radio show, why do we have to charge people at the conferences and conventions, why do we have to make it so expensive or only obtainable for the kind of people that pay and stop at their office. A lot of listeners, reality is, they’re not gonna afford your time, they’re not gonna be able to afford my time, and that’s not to say it in an arrogant way, it’s just the reality, I don’t have a lot of time. But I’ve committed time to this, and maybe we can do more.

Trends and Truths

Miah: Yes and I think at the same time, a lot of…mostly we talk about are trends and truths…

Mark: Truth is truth. You learned it in school, or your faith, religious group, or you learn just in experience in life or you find this truth is universally applicable

Miah: In which we apply that truth in our situation of ADHD or ADD and doing things differently, and taking things and twisting, putting them on their head and why can’t we apply that during the program to other aspects of life.

Mark: I agree and we should. And let’s figure out a new even more fun, more engaging way to do more than just ADHD, still it should be called the distracted program coz we’re not gonna change the reality that we’re gonna get distracted, but let’s bring more to it. Even more if it’s you know, how to start a business, how to evaluate what ideas are good and what not, how to keep yourself in shack when it comes to you know, making business decisions and be fun. So listeners,

Miah: And maybe even not about business..

Distracted in Productive ways

Mark: Yeah and maybe even not about business it could be other things it could be anything. Here’s your invitation, help us…

Miah: get this distracted.

Mark: morph this show into something…yeah, get distracted.

Miah: Help us get distracted.

Mark: Help us morph this show into what will help you the most. And do that by calling in, do that by facebook, it’s gonna be the easiest way to help us do that. Help us get distracted in productive ways.

Miah: And also, continue to ask questions about ADD/ADHD, the gift and curses because we will continue to talk about it.

Mark: It won’t be the sole focus, it will be the underline kind of current but it won’t be the you know,

Knowing your Hosts

Miah: it won’t be stabbing in the eye every second of the day.

Mark: Right.

Miah: Except for today.

Mark: Except for today, okay so let’s… we’ve got another caller that called in and it was one of those like oh this isn’t a super fun and exciting call but it’s reality. But I think people find it very helpful and educational. So, let’s take a caller right now, or do you wanna do first Miah, do you wanna do what you didn’t know about your host?

Miah: We probably should, since it’s written down before.

Mark: It’s all over the place. Don’t pay attention to Miah.

Miah: He pays attention to my doodles and my drawings.

Feminine Side

Mark: what you didn’t know about Miah, Miah’s in touch with his feminine side, he can sew. He took an all mac class, and sewed his own hoodies.

Miah: It was an actually sewing class. Not home economics, it’s sewing class.

Mark: How was it with girls?

Miah: I don’t know how I took 3 friends of mine and I took it probably coz it was the easy A.

Mark: Well I did that with cooking. But my wife did not know I could cook until we’ve been married like 15 years. And a friend of mine that I’d… that would have been a room mate, when I was a… long long time ago, he says, oh you gotta be lucky to be married to Mark. He’s a great cook and I just looked at him with these big eyes it’s like my eyeballs are poppin’ out of my head like when someone really opens her eyes big it’s like they’re trying a new pair of eyeballs and blink blink. And my wife goes, you know how to cook? I did long longtime ago

Knitting Sweaters

Miah: In keeping with this staying in touch with our feminine side, what you didn’t know about your host Mark Patey, it was that he…now this is way more feminine that sewing, Mark knows how to knit sweaters, in fact, last year, you and your wife won an ugly sweater holiday with you matching sweaters. They were so good that they won an ugly sweater. You can’t win an ugly sweater with you b games, c game and expect to win. You guys should put up with you a game with sweaters you made and you won.

Mark: I got those sweaters like 19 years ago, I saw this old lady that was knitting a sweater and I thought, I could do that, and so I talked to her about it and just being as ADD as I am and needing to try everything of the distractions are so dang appealing, I ran to the store and I bought the needles and I bought a book and I sat, knitted and I kept going back to this old lady to help me with the patterns coz the patterns are really tough and help me with the next and help me attach the sleeves, but in the end, the 95% of the work was me just sitting there – I got pretty quick. Yup, but there we go…

Miah: we’re not gonna go pick out curtains after this…

Mark: Okay, let’s take this call and discuss it.

On medication

Allison: Good morning, my name is Allison and I am 38, I have been recently diagnosed with combined child witty anxiety and I thought they said my son was diagnosed in 3rd grade and I agree I do often feel that we don’t fit in to the culture, and we are those medicated but that was our first step but the point that I wannabring up is how can it not be the first step for someone like me who didn’t even know I have it and when a point in my life where everything was just hitting bottom and I wanna know with my son I look at my life and say I think want a life if I had been medicated and we’re thinking if we have to do that with him and if I’m not confident as he’s surrounded with teachers who are going to accept him for who he is, or in that case find what is great about him, and you know we miss the marker so know I am at the point where, what do we do now? Alright, thank you.

Mark: first thing that comes to mind is… well several things, first, Allison I believe it was, don’t feel guilty I sense a little bit of fear, frustration or concern, that you’re on a medication.

Miah: I think she’s just trying to justify the reason for medication.

Mark: And it’s completely understandable.

Last Resort

Mark: And there’s a couple of good points, one – how could anyone not, in today’s society, when we haven’t and we aren’t showing people our other objectives or other options coz the reality is you go in to see the doctor, and you do all the paper, you spend more time sitting in that waiting room and doing paper work than you do actually meeting with the doctor, you finally sit in a secondary waiting room and when they close the door and when you’re sitting there by yourself, and finally the doctor comes in and spends all of 10 or 15 minutes with you, because he’s got 3 to 4 patents in an hour he has to see and the doctor’s goal is to listen as long as they have to, to try to make an assessment, to prescribe a med and get in to the next room and so it’s a double whammy, one we don’t know what else to do, so we have to turn to a doctor who due to a high patient work load is trying to do their quickest thing possible and the easiest thing and the easiest thing is a medication and you can’t feel guilty if you find yourself on it. That’s the way society is. Now do I think that being the first step is the right thing? No. is it understandable? Allison, absolutely and you shouldn’t feel guilty even for one second that’s the only option society has give us today.

Miah: And as far as medication, the first option, I don’t know. I don’t know but can we come up with a check list…

Mark: Of things to try before that? Absolutely.

The First Option

Miah: Yes we can in fact, let’s do that. We may venture down that road. And we both wanna be clear we always caviat this from listening to us don t go running to your doctor and say look, im getting off meds and don’t put your kid off meds it’s very…

Mark: we’re not doctors. We’re not therapists, we’re not counselors.

Miah: we don’t even play one on youtube.

Mark: We don’t even play one on a sitcom or TV show or anything else.

Miah: Or wait, my sock puppets. All we’re saying is you can go back and listen to Doctor Pal on the previous episode.

The Challenge

Mark: That was episode 12, that’s a good one. If you didn’t listen to that you obviously listen to our program you understand our stand point our challenge is never been… I could speak for me, challenge has never been with the medication, the challenge is that it becomes the first try instead of the last resort. So we’re going to give you…all of you, our listeners some other things to try before you go to the hardcore narcotics. And so, number one, exercise is huge it’s so big, so one of the common things you see with people with ADHD is depression, and you even allude it to the fact the before you go on medication for yourself you’re at the low time of your life. Having ADHD, having this brain that does things differently and tends to go on a lot of directions at once can be a real challenge, and when things start to go bad in your life, it’s compounded, because one thing that goes bad for what I say is a normal, one thing goes bad, they think about that one thing in a lineal, linear way. This is what went bad and it results in the following and the following, and they kinda go down in a straight line. When you have the ADHD gift, and here’s where it’s and ADHD gift and curse, one thing goes bad, it’s a trigger. And it triggers in the five directions as how that one thing bad now impacts five or ten other parts of our life.

Triggers and Cascades

Miah: You over think.

Mark: You over think it. And then your mind, once it triggers on the five or then other things, each those triggers and cascades down again. It’s like throwing a fire cracker into a basket of fire crackers and they just start to go. And so when you’re trying to solve a problem, and you’re in a healthy place in your life, that creative spark and that creative leap is a gift. And the ability for your mind to spark out and ignite or trigger other creative genius leaps, this creative leap we’ve talked about, is such a gift when you’re in a healthy place.

Miah: And we’re not talking about don’t go on line and order and sanity or any… when you say work out, you know, get some exercise, let’s get 15 minutes, 3 times a week, four times a week.

Struggling with Medication

Mark: Yeah in fact, there’s a… my wife, and she’s okay if I bring this up, we’ve talked about it when I’ve done seminars or conferences before. But the first five years my wife and I were married were real struggle and she struggled with depression in a very real way and was on some anti depressants, and her therapist did the best thing for my wife and our marriage that ever could’ve been done. She says look, your anti depressants are temporary, and to get off them you need to get your serotonin level up, you need to get your brain fed right you need to get it working healthy and one way, in fact the best way to get you serotonin levels up is exercise. Will medication work? Yes but it becomes a crutch coz if you lean on it too long, you never heal, you never walk normally again. So what she told her was at least 20 minutes a day, of cardiovascular exercise where your heart actually gets up and you need to do that a minimum of 3 times a week it’s better if it’s 5 times a week and if you could do 20 to 30 minutes, 3 to 5 times a week, you will produce more serotonin, you will come out of this unhealthy place this kind of depression place, and give your mind what it needs to truly function and when you have that ADHD mind, it needs to be in a healthy place. It needs to be healthy or it uses that creative leap that ability to look at everything from all different aspects, it’ll use it in an unhealthy way. And you will see far more problems than anyone else will when they look into your life because they don’t have that gift of creativity. We will create our own nightmare of problems. I mean our mind will trigger and leap and jump and ignite the whole mountain on fire. So get a healthy mind and place, exercise I think is one of the most important things but not the most important. Secondly Miah, sleep. Sleep, oh my gosh.

ADHD and sleep sound counter intuitive

Miah: And so, here’s the thing, ADHD and sleep sound counter intuitive.

Mark: No because we stare at the ceiling all night long okay tips for putting you soft asleep if you have ADHD, sometimes we need our minds to be entertained, because if they’re not entertained, they will entertain themselves. And when you’re over tired and really needing the sleep your ADD/ADHD creative mind will run loops, unhealthy loops. Imaginary conversations that you’re gonna hva ewith somebody tomorrow that you’re mad at. You might have an angry conversation in your mind 50 times before going to sleep because your mind is so good at creating every possible scenario of what could be said or should’ve been said or how you’re gonnasay it and you have to entertain that ADHD brain so despite what a lot of people say about eliminate all distractions, distract your mind with something you’re used to.

Miah: We had this in the previous episode, we talked about.

Mark: We did. Familiar. So you can’t turn on the radio if you hear a song you haven’t heard before, your mind will trigger and start listening to it but if you heard familiar songs that you’ve heard a thousand times over, they’re familiar and could just lure you to sleep.

Engineer at Work

Miah: Now there’s an engineer at work at the software company market we’ve been involved in and his ADD and next to his bed on his tablet, he puts how it works on the discovery channel, coz of that monotone voice.

Mark: That guy’s voice is the best thing in the world for putting me to sleep.

Miah: Yeah. It was a free commercial, free plug.

Mark: By the way, another good one, another free plug for getting to sleep, is that show like a detective show it has the same guy’s voice like mystery files or I forgot what the show is. Peter Thomas is his name by the way. Peter Thomas is the voice over talent for all those shows, so any show with Peter Thomas as the voice over, he does mystery detectives, and medical detectives and murder detectives and forensic files, that’s Peter Thomas, he will put you to sleep because it’s entertaining enough to entertain your brain out of it’s entertaining itself, but it’s not engaging enough to keep you awake.

Miah: I have Netflix on my night stand every night. Ask my wife I have Netflix going really low volume every night on my night stand. And you actually taught me that because you travel for business, you drive me nuts because you would always leave the TV on and you could fall asleep. There’s that one time we had to share

Adhd Episode

Mark: You remember the location. Okay so here’s an important thing. If you’re gonna use that technique to help you get some sleep, which is very important for us ADHDiers you gotta have that super strong muscle brain of yours rested, set a timer. If it’s gonna be the TV on or the radio on, it must turn off in about an hour and a half because it will lure you into sleep, but then you need to let your mind go into the deep deep sleep. Miah: That’s why Netflix work for me coz if the episode’s over…

Mark: The episode’s over. If you don’t have it turn off automatically if you don’t set the sleep timer turn off the tv or your radio you won’t be able to get into that deep sleep and something will trigger your mind back into our conscious state.

Miah: And parents out there, make sure your kids are getting sleep.

Mark: They have to get sleep.

Miah: So first one’s exercise, second is sleep.

Three Directions

Mark: Now I think that the third one and the last one we’ll talk about today and other things but these are the top three. And this is number one, saving the best for last, diet. And you know what, this is the hardest one Miah, this is the hardest one. Here’s the thing. You’ve got a hyperactive mind, it really can… on its low days go three directions at once, on its really good hyperactive days, its going 10 directions at once and if it’s not fed right, it’s like a high performance car with bad gasoline. It’s gonna tear itself apart, it’s not gonna run right, I don’t know if there’s a better analogy than that. Car guys will get that – high performance cars or turbo charged or super charged, or iif they have a high compression piston, or have a high octane fuel, you’ll get pre ignition or actually destroy the engine. Our brains are that way and here’s the problem, when I say good diet, I don’t mean get thin and get fit and healthy although that’s very important. But I’m talking about vitamins, nutrients, minerals, the things, the building blocks that let your brain function. And I gotta tell you, getting up in the morning, and having a bowl of cereal isn’t gonna do it. If you have a brain, it triggers on something, and it triggers in three directions, what a gift. But if you don’t have the brain fuel, to actually track it in three directions at the same time, it’s just a nightmare, it’s absolutely a curse.

Creative Subconcious

You have to feed it enough that it can follow trigger and I refer to that creative subconscious for me I always call them trigger because it’s that twelve-year-old genius child that lives in my head that triggers all over the place. If you can’t track trigger, you’re going to find yourself in an unhealthy place. And to track trigger, you’ve got to feed it well and here’s the other thing Miah, for me, good eggs, bacon orange juice, and apple still isn’t enough. I need real hardcore vitamins, supplements, the extra stuff. It’s just so hard especially because even if I get a great breakfast, at lunch, it might be crap. You know, it’s a drive thru, it’s not getting what I need, dinner is the same way.

Miah: You mean, dinner’s awesome and full of nutrients and grains.

Mark: No, it’s on the way home because my wife’s already cleaned up.

Miah: You have to have supplements.

Mark: You’ve gotta supplement.

Supplement Needs

Mark: and you can do it everyday, and do it for your kid..

Miah: awesome.

Mark: Good job. That’s right.

Miah: But if you’re not doing that, then you need supplements.

Mark: So those are the first things to try and I’d say before you get on a medication, you should not be, not try one or two of three but all three because the medication is a band aid.

Miah: Well it’s appropriate for 15%

Mark: I’ve gotta look it up what episode did we go over that study?

Miah: Medication is appropriate for 15% of those diagnosed. 15%

Sleep and Nutrition

Mark: Oh here we go, we were both wrong I found it. Go look up episode 9, Surge in ADHD, and it was 14% with ADHD should use Ritalin or something like it yet 87% are prescribed.

Miah: So yeah, exercise, sleep and nutrition, if you go check, check, check, and you’re consistent.

Mark: And you’re consistent, everyday, over extended period of time,

Miah: Let’s put it this way, if that’s your life style, that’s the key thing, and then… I’m not suggesting, we don’t suggest that if you’re on medication right now, stop and do that, I think though, we could easily suggest take those three things to your physician, and ask them about it.

Mark: Right. Miah, before we start this we were doing one of our due diligence before our show, you read me a segment of an article Miah feverishly looking. Let’s hit that.

Sleep and Nutrition

Miah: Dude, you’re still crapping your pants at 4 years old.

Mark: Your mind hasn’t even grown up yet. Your brain’s not fully… You know what, I am over 40 and I’m still figuring out on how to work this brain…

Miah: I thought you were gonna say you’re still crapping your pants.

Mark: I wouldn’t admit to that on radio.

Miah: This is what the clinician said and I love it, he said, consider 4 year old Max, whose parents brought him to my behavioral pediatrics practice to quote “see if he has ADHD” unquote his pre-school teacher had recommended the visit suggesting he might benefit from medication.

Mark: Oh my gosh a pre-schooler that was wiggling in class.

Symptoms of Adhd

Miah: I asked his parents, if we might, acknowledging that Max did have symptoms of inattetintion, hyperactivity, impulsivity, if we might take the time we had an hour to ask why he had these symptoms, to make sense of his behavior. Wow. Wait a minute guys, I’ve got this idea, let’s find out why he’s behaving this way,

Mark: Could it be that he’s bored? Could it be other things? Could it be his sleep, could it be stressful at home, could it be a divorce, could it be anything?

Miah: They said, wow they have been hopeful that they would leave the visit with a prescription.

Mark: Now that’s what bothers me.

Miah: Because they’re reflecting on Max’s teacher’s concern that they might fall behind without that treatment, they were still overjoyed to consider another approach, so if you read the article it goes on, they find out, this clinician actually found out a few things, one of them was the child was sleep deprived. Sleep deprived.

Our Pediatrician

Miah: and our pediatrician when we talked with Jonah originally our pediatrician was very good, he talks about how many hours sleep Jonah gets in, is he active, does he get his wiggles out, right? Is he active3 and what is he eating, what’s his nutrition?

Mark: Now here’s the thing with these tips, sleep, diet, nutrition, supplements, they are not going to make you not ADHD, you’re still going to have that ADHD brain. What they do allow you to do is lemborge that ADHD into gifts as opposed to just the challenges, that’s the difference. And I think our next program should probably be talking about in some depth of the gifts of ADHD, let’s just hit them, let’s just go down the list and have fun with what are the gifts of ADHD.

Miah: And those we talked about the gifts and the three things, exercise, sleep and nutrition, you’re gonna get a different high. A natural high. And you know what it’s not the high that Ritalin gives you because Ritalin gives you a really awesome high.

Mark: and it’s immediate.

Our Pediatrician

Mark: You know I always heard of the runners high, but I started running with my oldest son Paxton, then I started to recognize you know the point when you finally get thru that pain you got thru the techniques and you finally got, I got into the regular routine running where I got that high and running became for me a healthy addiction. That’s a weird way to say how can addiction be healthy but it caught me a little slack here because it really became a healthy addiction where there’s even a topic in Addicts and Millionaires that talks about healthy addictions for people with ADHD and I loved that runner’s high. I found that once I got my brain, got that everything going, the adrenaline, the serotonin, everything’s just pumpin’ the oxygen’s getting there up real good, the blood veins are full and carrying all vitamins and nutrients to every part of my body and I get that runner’s high, and those runs for me were just so therapeutic, and at the start of the day it was the time where I solved all the problems for the day at hand. Suddenly I’m not running anymore, I got sprain coz I ran too much, it was an addiction.Miah: I was never a big runner but I can really relate because we do the podcast at the second floor and there’s like 19 steps to come up here, and just do after step 5 and just feeling it, Mark: I’ve seen you on the step seven railing on the handle.Miah: and just oh, that high, that thrill…

Being Healthy

Mark: It’s right before you pass out. You know that pass out game kids do when they choke themselves at the hallway of the school they get so oxygen deprived they get that high from oxygen deprivation, that’s you on step 10 coming up the stairs, it’s not the same as runner’s high, Miah. It’s not the same.

Miah: It’s just like it.

Mark: Sweat rolling down the nose, holding down the railing about to puke on step 14. You gotta do something about that.

Miah: But dude I finish all the time.

Mark: You get on the top of the stairs.

Miah: I have an anticipation trophy everytime.

Mark: Something you didn’t know about Miah, he’s actually very fit, healthy, lean, fit machine, basketball player type. Okay, the uneducated segment.

Uneducated Segment

Mark: No, I need you here. There’s a lot of radio programs, they’re like three hours every day.

Miah: Dude, 40 minutes, really.

Mark: I know. But the goal is to do shorter ones so that we could do a 2 or 3 week.

Miah: Next time, a shorter one, we will!

Mark: People are using our program to exercise too. If our program’s too short, they only get 15 minutes of exercise. They need atleast 20 to 30 to get that serotonin level up atleast be in their heads long enough for them to get a good work out.

Miah: You keep lying to yourself Mark.

Mark: Yes there’s atleast 3 listeners out there that listens to us to work out… Uneducated segment!

Miah: Uneducated segment, short radio programs are really 40 minutes…

Living the Dream

Mark: Okay I’ve tried this because we’ve all heard this right? You have to excuse me I’m a little bit sick with my voice just off today but I hear myself squealing I hear it in my head it’s driving me nuts I hope I’m not bothering you guys too much but…turning your passion into a career so here’s the problem, okay stop. My mind got three problems already. Here’s problem number one, if you turn your passion into a career, you might just end up with a career that was once your passion that you now hate. So I had a passion for off roading, and they say if you find something you’re passionate about go do that, and so I had a passion for off roading I built the school’s six-wheel drive jeep with six-wheel steering and I have to go these off roading events, I thought what an awesome thing, I’ll invest in it and I became a majority owner of this company and we had an espn show and all of these off road events all over the country and it was like the coolest way to go broke and hate off roading.

Miah: You were living the dream buddy.

Mark: So here’s what’s happened, when your passion becomes your career, you no longer make good career, or good business decisions around it. Now I’m gonna stop there are exceptions. There are exceptions to every rule so don’t say I have a friend who loves baking and has a bakery shop and they’re successful but it’s great.

Exceptions

Mark: Let’s take the uneducated segment for what it is, it’s not the universal truth of all but let’s uneducate so that people will not get themselves hurt. Here’s what happened, I loved off roading, so I invested in it, I decided to make a business out of it. I became a majority shareholder of this company, and when business, and money and finances, and everything to do it what we were doing, would say bad investment. I kept spending money.

Miah: You doubled down.

Mark: I doubled down, and then we thought woah if we just got an ESPN show so we bought time on ESPN which is not cheap. And then we hired people to produce the show which is not cheap.

Miah: Hey, we gave you guys a cut down.

Mark: Miah Johnson was part of the…

Miah: The last season, it was the best season.

Rules of the Show

Mark: Okay don’t. It’s rule number one. Rule number two, don’t even think about it. Rule number three, if you can’t help yourself, do not let your emotions get involved in the business decision. You have to be able to step aside and if you can’t, hire people smart enough to tell you, look, your heart has gotten in the way, and you’re going to end up broke and that’s not it. You can go broke doing something you’re passionate about, there’s tons of charities all over the world that do that and I commend them and it’s wonderful. However, you may end up hating it. When we finally got out of that business and I stepped out and one of the partners continued running it for a while but I stepped out, it’s been what four or five years Miah, and I have not taken my off road vehicle out once in seven years, I have not hit the trails, I have not been out camping with my friends, and jeeping and taking pictures and my time with my kids it’s gone because everything about that was just so painful.

Miah: You know if you try to mix your career with passion, it’s like loaning money to best friends and you end up with neither.

Mark: Right.

Miah: You end up with neither passion nor career.

What Money can Make

Mark: Or any money left in your wallet. So here’s the thing to do, pick something that can make you money, or provide you time to do what you’re passionate about or both. Find a way to make a living for your family and get the things that need to be done, try to find something that you can do that you can enjoy, or atleasttolerate. But if you take something you’re passionate about, there’s a chance you’ll go broke, because you’re not gonna be rational, and there’s a good chance that you could learn to hate what was passionate about you. My wife, Suzie, is brilliant. I love aviation, and all you listeners I’m kind of a junky and that’s my thing now. It used to be off roading and jeeps, four wheel drives or six wheel drives. She told me when I really got into aviation, started racing, and flying and building a lot, she says don’t you ever ever start an aviation company because I don’t want you to hate it. You don’t have very many passions left in life and if you make a career out of your flying, you will not have that retreat. And that’s brilliant advice.

Miah: Now the opposite can happen, your career can be your passion. It can.

Mark: You’re right there are a lot of people who are very passionate about their career. But that’s not uneducated that’s just…So the uneducated is turning your passion into a career, is a great way to ruin your passion and destroy your career. And have a not fruitful career. The better thing to do is find something you can do that makes sense, learn to love that, and the thing that is your passion, let it be your passion.

Passionate

Miah: Let it be your passion and just love it.

Mark: That doesn’t make you a dime and you still love it, that’s the best way. That’s what you’re relalypassionate about there’s music or in this case there’s a program on ADHD and eventually what you’re passionate about works into something that makes money naturally great but try to pick your passion and force it down the financial road, it’s gonna be a failure. That’s our uneducated segment.

Miah: Well this has been one of the shortest podcasts we’ve done, we promised a short one too.

Mark: We’ll do a short one. Let’s do a short one on the gifts of ADHD.

Miah: You’ve got a knife in your hand.

Mark: Let’s just spit in our hands, and shake hands, we don’t need that.

Miah: We’re gonna take a blood oath now…

A Condom

Mark: The fact that you have a knife in your hand right now I’m thinking you must have been a scout.

Miah: Because I wasn’t carrying my…carry some of…self defense thing.

Mark: a condom. One time we have this show on kids and family… thanks everybody for joining our program, please call us for your questions and comments, concerns, sarcastic comments, whatever it is, heavy breathing.

Miah: Do we have a phone? What’s our phone number?

Mark: 855-ADDGIFT. If you can’t spell that it’s 855-ADDGIFT.

Miah: G-I-F-T on your phone. And also come check our facebook and twitters.

Contact Us

Mark: and tweet us, go get yourself some google and find us on facebook/addgift and you can follow me @pateymark I don’t ever tweet but maybe by the time you listen to this program and it’s down the road maybe I’ll be tweeting,

Miah: I do and I tweet a lot about politics.

Mark: alright thanks again everybody for joining us on our show it’ll be shorter next time I swear.

Miah: There’s blood dripping down the table now.

Mark: Dude, you really cut your hand. No he didn’t.

Miah: I’m outta here! Bye!