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How To *Not* Screw Up Your Life

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I’ve seen many people screw up their life over the years.

Most of it has been the result of poor decisions and a lack of discipline. I’m no angel myself – I too have screwed up parts of my life as well.

Your life is something you should reflect upon regularly. Learn to become your own critic and commit to fixing the things you know deep down inside are screwed up. Sometimes it takes a rock bottom period in your life to work out that you’ve screwed up.

The frustrating part is that you shouldn’t have to go to hell and back to figure out that you have screwed up your life. Personal improvement and reflection can get you to a place of understanding much faster. It takes time to get there though.

You might need to spend ten minutes a day assessing your life and seeing your decisions for what they are. I know what you’re thinking though: “Tim, I don’t have ten minutes a day, I’m flat out trying to survive and stay above water!”

If that’s your answer, then my response is this: If you don’t have ten minutes a day to reflect on your life and make sure you’re not screwing it up, then you already have a massive problem. Lack of time is the beginning of all of your problems.

Here’s how you will screw up your life:

Falling for addictions you think you don’t have

We all have one of the following addictions:

– Food
– Drugs
– TV shows / Online Games
– Sex
– Escapism
– Depression / anxiety
– Money

These addictions are at the root of what goes wrong and force us to screw our lives up. No matter who you are, you’re probably suffering from one of these even if you won’t admit it. I know I’m guilty of many of these. The first step is to admit your addiction.

Pretending you’re fine and not obsessed with one of these will force you to become ignorant. Ignorant people then go on to believe the lie that they can be perfect and that the problem is with everyone else. Before you worry about someone else’s backyard, think about your own first.

“If your own backyard is full of weeds, it’s because of your addictions”

Significant other

Romantic relationships are a big part of why we screw up our lives. While it’s impossible to avoid making mistaking in this area of your life completely, you can certainly minimise the damage. Ask yourself the following questions:

Why am I in a relationship?
How do I treat the other person?
What’s one negative similarity I have experienced in each romantic relationship?

The key phrase to remember with this part of your life is that you take “you” with you to each relationship.

Until you answer the above three questions, you’ll keep experiencing the phenomenon that is déjà vu in your romantic life.

Not saying this word enough

Your life get’s screwed up because of complexity. When your time is not focused in the right areas of your life and you have too much going on, everything goes bad.

Saying no is how you take back control. If you listen to interviews of billionaires, you’ll find that they are all superb at doing one thing: saying no unashamedly.

Part of what causes us to say yes to so many meaningless offers is that we don’t want to upset people. Living in this pretend world where everybody loves us causes us to become lost. Not everyone is going to like you and that’s okay. The key I’ve found is to learn to say no with respect.

By saying no respectfully, you become much better at it. That’s because the reactions you’ll get will be far more positive.

Never taking risks

Making the decisions that are always comfortable is the fastest way to screw up your life. We must grow as human beings otherwise we fall for addictions because we become bored. Life starts to lose it’s meaning when we don’t choose uncertainty.

Having the answer to every problem is not the way to go; not having the answer to every problem but taking the risky option anyway is where you want to get to. Everything I’ve achieved in my life has come from taking a chance and not knowing what could happen.

“The times I’ve personally fallen for addictions have been when I’ve become bored or stopped growing”

In this state, I’ve wanted to choose addictions to help experience some uncertainty or a high that quickly wears off and brings me crashing back to rock bottom.

Taking risks is harder than it seems. It takes practice and discipline. The beauty is that we all get options to take risks every single day. There’s no lack of risky decisions in this world. You’ve got a playground to practice in.

“Sometimes it’s fun to swing on the monkey bars of life and fall down a few times”

Taking these seemingly crazy risks opens up your perspective. From these new heights, you can see the world for what it is: a beautiful place, full of wonderful people all trying to live their purpose and find meaning.

Risk taking will eventually lead you to your individual purpose if you stay on the right path and don’t fall for comfortable results or addictions.

Allowing limiting beliefs to win

The beliefs you have will determine whether you’ll make decisions that will screw up your life. We all have limits that are caused by our beliefs. For a long time, I thought that I couldn’t be world class because I wasn’t smart enough and didn’t have the resources.

When you analyze your beliefs (and I recommend you do), you realize that they can limit you in so many ways. The reason you don’t make certain decisions is because of the underlying belief of what you believe the outcome might be.

When you remove the speed limiter that’s controlling your life, you can go in any direction you want, at whatever pace you want. You can achieve what ever you want, whenever you want. All of a sudden, anything is possible. The challenge is that your limiting beliefs are invisible to your brain.

They’re not easy to see and it takes practice to find out what they are and then throw them in the bin. It’s worth doing though because your beliefs can mess everything up. They can cause you to be broke, selfish, unlovable and very unhappy.

Not believing in yourself

“The biggest idea, the best person, the greatest tool you have, is you!”

Your life will be screwed up when you don’t believe that you can achieve your dreams. No one else can believe in you unless you do so first. You must know that you have everything inside of you to produce any outcome you desire.

Think about all the good things you have done and focus your time on that. Be grateful for how far you’ve come and then you’ll appreciate what it takes to get to the end game. Most of all, treat yourself nicely. Talk nicely to yourself and be patient.

Thinking change is a problem

Change is not a problem; it’s an opportunity. Nothing stays the same forever and to think it will is how you’ll screw up your life. When you accept that constant change is going to occur no matter what, the surprises, shocks and bumps in the road become something you look forward to.

You’ll begin to understand that every little change is the start of a new season in your life. Change becomes a challenge to keep on growing in new and wonderful directions. The strategy you’ve been searching for is hidden in the change that is right in front of you.

Change is not the problem because change is the start of the solution. Change is the first step.

Change equals uncertainty and we’ve already said that this risky place is the destination you need to aim for. It’s where the yacht is waiting for you to take you to that place you’ve always dreamt of.

Stop screwing up your life.

If you want to increase your productivity and learn some more valuable life hacks, then join my private mailing list on timdenning.net

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Entrepreneurs

The Brutal Truth About Entrepreneurship with ADHD (And Why Most Advice Is Making It Worse)

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Image Credit: Joel Brown - Addicted2success

You’re not lazy. You’re not undisciplined… and you’re definitely not broken.

You’re an entrepreneur with ADHD, and right now you’re probably sitting on 19 unfinished projects, 47 open tabs, and a brain that feels like it’s running on 12 different radio stations at once.

You’ve read the books. You’ve tried the planners, the Pomodoro timers, the accountability groups. You’ve even hired coaches who promised to “fix” your focus. Yet here you are — brilliant ideas, massive potential, and a business that still feels like it’s one step away from collapsing under the weight of your own mind.

Here’s what almost nobody in the entrepreneurial space will admit:

The real struggle isn’t your ADHD. It’s that you’ve been trying to run a neurodivergent brain inside a neurotypical business model — and then beating yourself up when it doesn’t work.

Most advice for entrepreneurs was written by people whose brains work differently. They preach consistency, routines, long-term planning, and steady execution like those things are universal truths. For the ADHD entrepreneur, those “truths” feel like trying to swim upstream in cement. You can force it for a while (and you have), but eventually your brain rebels, the burnout hits, and you’re left feeling like a failure who just needs to “try harder.”

That cycle is quietly destroying more talented founders than cash flow problems or bad hires ever could.

The deeper layer most people never reach is this: your ADHD isn’t a bug in the system. It’s a different operating system entirely. And when you stop trying to install Windows on a Mac and start building everything around macOS, the game changes completely.

The Hidden Addiction That Keeps ADHD Entrepreneurs Stuck

You already know the surface symptoms — time blindness, rejection sensitivity, starting strong and fading fast, shiny object syndrome.

But the real trap is more insidious.

It’s the addiction to chaos and novelty.

Your brain is wired for dopamine. New ideas, big visions, last-minute sprints, high-stakes pressure — these things light you up like nothing else. The boring, repetitive, systems-building work that actually scales a business? It feels like torture.

So unconsciously, you keep your business in a state of controlled chaos. You say yes to too many things. You chase the next exciting opportunity. You avoid building the boring infrastructure because “I work better under pressure anyway.”

And every time the pressure gets too high, you crash, swear you’ll get organized next quarter, and repeat the cycle.

Meanwhile, the neurotypical advice keeps telling you to “just build better habits.” As if your brain is a poorly trained dog that needs more discipline instead of a high-performance race car that needs the right fuel and track.

This isn’t a character flaw. It’s neurology.

And until you stop treating your wiring as something to overcome and start treating it as your greatest strategic advantage, you’ll stay stuck in the same exhausting loop.

The Identity Shift That Changes Everything

The entrepreneurs with ADHD who finally break through don’t “fix” their brains.

They redesign their entire business to work with their brains.

They stop trying to become the consistent, routine-loving founder the gurus talk about. Instead, they become the architect of a system that leverages their natural strengths — hyperfocus, pattern recognition, creative problem-solving, relentless drive under pressure — while outsourcing or automating everything that drains them.

This is the layer most ADHD entrepreneurs never reach because it requires something terrifying: accepting that you are never going to be “normal” at entrepreneurship… and that’s exactly why you can win bigger than most.

Your ability to see connections others miss. Your tolerance for uncertainty. Your capacity to go all-in when something lights you up. These aren’t liabilities. They’re unfair advantages in a world that rewards speed, creativity, and bold moves.

The shift is simple but brutal:

Stop trying to manage your ADHD. Start designing your business around it.

How to Actually Build a Business That Works With Your Brain

  1. Stop fighting your energy cycles — weaponize them. Most ADHD entrepreneurs try to force 8-hour focused days. That’s insane. Instead, track when your brain actually works best (for many it’s 10pm-2am or random 4-hour hyperfocus bursts). Build your schedule around those windows. Protect them like gold. Do the deep, high-leverage work then. Use the low-energy periods for admin, calls, or recovery.
  2. Build “chaos containers,” not rigid systems. Traditional project management tools feel like cages. Create loose but effective structures that give your brain freedom. Use tools like Notion with massive flexibility, or body-doubling (working alongside someone virtually), or even hiring a “chaos wrangler” — an assistant who thrives on turning your scattered ideas into executable plans.
  3. Turn your rejection sensitivity into rocket fuel. That intense fear of letting people down or looking stupid? Channel it into creating ridiculously high standards for your customer experience or product quality. Use it as fuel instead of letting it paralyze you.
  4. Outsource the parts that make you want to die. The execution, follow-through, and maintenance phases are where most ADHD entrepreneurs lose. Hire or partner with people who love the details. Your job is vision, strategy, and big swings. Let someone else own the spreadsheets.
  5. Create external pressure on your own terms. Deadlines and public commitments work wonders for the ADHD brain. Use them strategically — announce launches, create beta groups, or work with coaches who understand neurodivergence instead of fighting it.

The entrepreneurs with ADHD who are quietly crushing it right now aren’t the ones who finally became “disciplined.” They’re the ones who stopped apologizing for how their brain works and started building empires that are specifically engineered for it.

They have teams that handle the boring stuff. They have systems that flex with their energy instead of fighting it. They’ve turned their “flaws” into the exact reasons their businesses stand out.

Your ADHD brain is not the enemy. The enemy was trying to play the game by rules that were never designed for you.

The moment you accept that and start designing everything… your calendar, your team, your offers, your processes — around how you actually operate, the struggle doesn’t disappear… but it becomes manageable, even exhilarating.

You were never meant to fit the mold. You were meant to break it and build something better.

The world doesn’t need another cookie-cutter entrepreneur. It needs the chaotic, brilliant, all-in, slightly unhinged visionaries who can only operate at full power when the game is built for them.

That’s you.

Stop trying to fix yourself. Start building the business that was always meant to be run by a mind like yours.

Your next breakthrough isn’t going to come from working harder or being more consistent. It’s going to come from finally giving yourself permission to work differently.

And when you do that? Watch what happens.

The same brain that once felt like a curse becomes the exact reason your business becomes unstoppable.

You’ve got this. Not despite the ADHD. Because of it.

If you want to learn more from me or send me a personal message I’ll respond to you on Instagram at https://instagram.com/iamjoelbrown speak soon!

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Health & Fitness

The Health Planning Habits That Support Long-Term Success

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Image Credit: Joel Brown - Addicted2success

Most people think about health planning only when something forces them to.

A medical bill arrives unexpectedly. An insurance issue appears during treatment. A diagnosis changes how future care needs are viewed. Suddenly health planning becomes urgent instead of preventative.

The problem is that long-term health stability is usually shaped by smaller habits built quietly over time, not just by major decisions during emergencies.

That includes physical health habits, of course, but it also includes how people approach insurance coverage, preventative care, financial preparation, and long-term healthcare planning before problems become immediate.

The families who navigate healthcare stress most effectively are often not the ones avoiding every issue entirely. More often, they’re the ones who built systems early enough to make difficult situations feel more manageable later.

Consistency Matters More Than Perfection

A lot of health advice still revolves around extreme change.

Perfect diets. Aggressive routines. Complete lifestyle overhauls.

In reality, most long-term health success comes from consistency people can realistically maintain for years instead of months. Small preventative habits tend to matter more than dramatic short-term efforts that collapse under pressure.

That principle applies financially too.

People often spend more time researching investment strategies than understanding their healthcare coverage or preparing for future medical costs. But healthcare instability can disrupt long-term financial plans surprisingly quickly when households are unprepared for how expensive even routine care can become over time.

The practical side of health planning is becoming harder to separate from overall financial planning now than it used to be.

Preventative Planning Reduces More Stress Than People Realize

One overlooked benefit of health planning is emotional stability.

People who understand their coverage, maintain preventative care routines, and think ahead about healthcare decisions often describe feeling less overwhelmed when unexpected situations happen. The goal is not eliminating uncertainty entirely. That’s unrealistic.

The goal is reducing how chaotic healthcare decisions feel under pressure.

That’s one reason broader conversations tied to healthcare and health insurance have expanded significantly over the last several years. Rising costs, changing coverage structures, and increasing healthcare complexity have made long-term planning more important for average households than many people expected.

Healthcare is no longer something most families can comfortably approach reactively forever.

People Underestimate How Quickly Healthcare Costs Compound

One reason health planning habits matter so much is that healthcare costs rarely arrive in one dramatic moment alone.

More often, they build gradually:

  • recurring prescriptions
  • specialist visits
  • ongoing treatment plans
  • insurance deductible increases
  • long-term care considerations
  • unexpected procedures layered on top of existing expenses

Families often absorb these costs incrementally until they realize how much financial pressure accumulated over time.

That gradual buildup is part of what makes proactive planning valuable. People who think ahead about coverage structures, emergency savings, provider networks, and preventative care tend to adapt more smoothly when healthcare needs eventually increase later in life.

The difficult part is that many households delay these conversations because they feel healthy right now.

Healthcare Decisions Have Become More Complicated

Another challenge is that healthcare systems themselves continue evolving quickly.

Insurance structures change. Telehealth expands. Employer-sponsored benefits shift. Prescription pricing fluctuates. Patients now carry more responsibility for understanding deductibles, provider networks, and out-of-pocket exposure than previous generations often did.

That complexity creates decision fatigue.

Even relatively organized households sometimes feel uncertain about whether they’re making good healthcare choices because the systems themselves are difficult to navigate confidently. A lot of current health insurance trends discussions reflect this larger issue, healthcare planning is becoming less about isolated medical events and more about long-term sustainability across entire households.

People want predictability, but healthcare systems increasingly feel harder to predict.

The Most Effective Health Habits Usually Feel Boring

One thing people rarely admit is that good long-term planning habits are often not particularly exciting.

Scheduling preventative appointments. Reviewing insurance annually. Building emergency savings slowly. Staying physically active consistently. Maintaining realistic routines instead of dramatic cycles of burnout and reset.

None of those habits feel dramatic at the moment.

But over long periods, they create stability that becomes incredibly valuable once life gets complicated. The people who navigate healthcare stress most effectively are often the ones who built ordinary systems early instead of waiting for perfect motivation later.

That applies financially and physically at the same time.

Why Long-Term Success Depends on Adaptability

Health planning is ultimately difficult because people’s lives keep changing.

Careers shift. Families grow. Aging parents require support. Medical needs evolve. Financial priorities change over decades in ways nobody predicts perfectly in advance.

That’s why the strongest long-term health planning habits are usually flexible rather than rigid.

The goal is not building a flawless plan that never changes. It’s creating enough structure, awareness, and preparation that future adjustments become manageable instead of overwhelming.

Most people cannot control every future health outcome. They can, however, build habits that make uncertainty easier to navigate when it eventually arrives.

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Life

Why Moving to a New City Can Change Your Mindset

Discover how moving to a new city boosts neuroplasticity, builds resilience, and reshapes your mindset

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How relocation changes your mindset

Relocation is always a challenge. Rebuilding and restarting your life requires you to step outside of your comfort zone. (more…)

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Change Your Mindset

The Hidden Reason You Can’t Stay Consistent

If motivation keeps failing you, the real issue isn’t discipline. It’s the identity shaping your habits and long-term success.

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Identity-based habits

Success often looks like a time-management problem. You buy a planner, set reminders, and hope that next week will be different. For a few days, it works. Then stress hits, motivation drops, and old patterns return. (more…)

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