Finding the Baseline

As we sat around our firepit on Jan 1, my highly observant 13-year-old son, Andre, asked us why we celebrate New Year’s Day when “it is just another day” to the non-humans on the planet. We explained that celebrations like this are frameworks; they are symbolic. And although they are completely made up, the rituals associated with them can be useful. To support this idea, we each wrote out four things we want to leave behind and four things we want to happen in 2023 and then burned them. (And proof that God has a sense of humor: all four of the leave-behinds I burned punched me right in the balls this week!)

All of that helped shape my mindset going into the new year. How can I use this illusory change of a year to reframe my intentions, my thinking, my actions, and my outcomes? This year, instead of focusing on habits or resolutions, I focused on establishing a baseline of both intentions and actions.

To establish a baseline, you have to first understand the factors you are working with. For me, these include:

• Neurobiology
  This is divided into two areas: 1) General brain chemistry and 2) ADHD. As Steven Kotler writes about in “The Art of Impossibile”, brain chemistry plays an enormous role in how we show up in the world. Our neocortex tends to make us psychologically or spiritually bypass things with explanations, justifications, and stories - when most of the time it is simply just chemistry.
  
  For us ADHDers, the failure rate of forming habits is 100%. And it’s not a lack of character - it’s chemistry. The brain is divided between knowledge and execution. Dopamine is the mixing juice. ADHD is a dopamine deficiency that manifests as poor executive function. This means we can have a shit ton of information but it doesn’t convert to habits. What is reliable for us is finding the rhythm and flow of things. So instead of forming habits, I am focusing on practices - specifically practices that rely on rhythm and ritual (not routine).