I wrote a bunch of notes for this video because I really wanted to make sure that I didn't miss out on anything
That I really wanted to say.
Before I get too into this video and get carried away
I do want to say that right now
I'm in a very good place, so I don't want to scare anyone with this video
I just want to open up about some things that...
I haven't talked about basically
There have been a few times
I've kind of opened up about my mental health in my videos and on live streams and stuff like that
But I'd never really been specific about it
I've always been kind of vague cuz I don't know I guess I was just never comfortable with people being able to classify me or
Have any sort of, like...
Definition of what's going on with me and what my issues are, but I think in order for you guys to really understand
What goes on with my mind and what my issues are and how that affects me as a YouTuber
I think I really need to... just sort of open up and tell you guys what what's up
I've struggled with a few issues for a really long time that I've let get the best of me
And I've let control my life, but I've decided that I'm not going to let that happen anymore
And I know that sounds really simple it's like if you have serious
Issues you can't just decide that they're not gonna be an issue anymore
It's not that simple and I know it's not that simple but in this video
I'm going to tell you guys what my issues are what that means for me as a youtuber and what I'm doing about it
So I'm sure
At some point you've probably wondered why does robert takes so long to post videos?
Why is it that there's like a week and a half between a lot of his videos?
And it's not because i'm lazy and it's not because I don't want to make videos. I want to make videos more than anything in
The world. YouTube is my number one passion in the world and there's nothing I'd rather be doing than making videos.
So why is it such an issue for me?
Well it's a really complicated thing but to start with it.
I have A D D
attention deficit disorder
Okay, I'm...
Holy shit, I
I was expecting to be able to say that without..you know, being weird about it or anything
Um..
I've never said that I've never talked about that
In my videos or on live streams or Twitter or anything like that?
Now I feel like if the average person were to tell you
"I have crippling ADD"
You probably wouldn't really know what to make of it.
ADD is a disorder that a lot of people don't really take seriously
I've heard a lot of times from people I know and people I look up to that
They aren't convinced that ADD is a real thing
And they think that ADD is just someone being lazy or someone just not doing what they want to do
But it's not that simple if you don't know what ADD is, it basically means that your brain
Isn't capable of producing enough dopamine?
Dopamine is the chemical in your brain
That makes you motivated to do things
It's the thing that makes you feel good when you accomplish tasks
And it's the thing that makes you want to keep going and keep pushing forward
There have been studies done on mice involving ADD
Where if they don't have access to dopamine in their brain, They will sit still until they die.
Throughout my entire life it's always been really hard for me to do things whether it's
Something that I have to do or even something that I want to do and this is where it won't make sense to a lot
Of people and I can stand here and tell you the stories about in
University in high school when I would have an assignment due at Sunday at 11:59 p.m.
And I would try to start working on it ahead of time
I'd open it up on Friday or even Saturday
And I would stare at a blank page all day because there was nothing pushing me to do it
I didn't have to do it so even though I wanted to I couldn't but it's not even that simple
Things that I want to do even something like
Completing a video game that I wanted to play that should be something that a lazy person should have no problem doing
but I
Couldn't get the willpower to go and turn that on and do it
Even though it's something that I want to do,
Something I love doing
Okay, I'm gonna try to get-
get a hold of myself here.
ADD is something that you truly cannot understand unless you've
experienced it and
There are so many people who aren't convinced that it's a real thing, and I'm telling you right now
That it's a real thing.
There's nothing I want more in the world than to create videos every single day and be a youtuber
that's always there for you guys, always posting new content... but for some reason...
I am stuck doing nothing a lot of the time is not that I'm out with friends all the time
It's not that I'm going out and socializing. It's me in my room
sitting at my desk doing nothing
For days on end, even though I know I should be working and even though I want to work
I was put on medication for ADD a few years ago
And in certain ways it did help me a lot it helped me stay focused and it helped me
You know stay productive
But there's another side to a medication like that and I was finding that I wasn't the happy outgoing
Person that I usually am to the same extent
you know a lot of people would be able to tell when I was on my medication because I'd be a bit more quiet I
Wouldn't laugh as much and I didn't like that so for the last year
so I've been working on taking less of my ATD medication and
you know trying to do things to make my situation better because it's more than just
Medication there are things you can do to improve your ATD and I'm gonna get to that because right now. I am in that battle
So what is it that I do when I'm not working?
I sit on my phone a lot of the time. I refresh Twitter and Instagram
Not even posting anything not doing anything
Maybe not even seeing anything new I'll just sit there and basically just do nothing and I've done this for years
I used to do it with Facebook back when I was like 16. I used to do it with reddit
There's always been a thing that I stare at on a screen in order to do nothing and what that is is it's my brain
Taking the easy way out
I could go and send this email that I need to send really badly or
Let's just refresh this one more time and just stare at it
and
Maybe I'll get something new that will distract me from doing what I should be doing and even though I know it's a bad thing
I succumb to it
And I just fall victim to these distractions that just they plagued me and everyone has that everyone
procrastinates
Everyone you know distracts themself from doing the things they know they should do
But when you have entire days of doing just that you understand
How ADD can become a depressing illness
One thing in my life, that's really allowed my ADD to really take control over me is the fact that I work from home
I'm a youtuber. I'm self-employed. I don't have anyone telling me what to do as a youtuber
I have to figure out everything myself
And I have to force myself to work because if I don't show up to work one day if I don't
Make a video if I don't work. There's no consequence. I still have a job the next day
I can be lazy
And I can put in half of the effort and half the time and get away with it
And that's not what I'm choosing to do. I'm just saying that that's what happens every day
I wake up with the intention of working all day in so many days
I just don't do it because my brain just wants that quick escape and I get sucked into this hole
But if I have a job where I'm working for someone where I have
You know a nine-to-five shift where I punch in and punch out, and I'm not doing anything else
I don't have issues a lot of you guys may know that when I started doing YouTube seriously in
2015 in that summer I was working
12-hour night shifts and a factory I would start work at 7:00 p.m.
And I would work for 12 hours overnight straight
And then I take the bus home it would take me like an hour to get home
And then I would go straight to sleep
Well I'd shower and then I go straight to sleep, and then I'd wake up at around 4:00 again
And then that little three hours sometimes. I'd have five hours three or five hours
I would spend all of that free time working on YouTube not a
Second went to waste and that is because I had to that is because if I didn't use those five hours
those three hours I
Wouldn't have any time at all and I wouldn't be able to do YouTube YouTube is the thing I want to do more than anything
Else in the world, and it has been since then but when I had that pressure when I had that deadline
I was able to work and
Even though I know this I know all of this stuff in my in my brain and in my heart
For some reason I can't channel that and use that and stay focused the way that I know I would be if I had
Deadlines and that's just another reason people
Can't understand ADD unless they've experienced it so that's why
I go through these phases
Where I'm very productive
and then I go through these phases where I'm posting once a week because unless I have some pressure like I
Get fired if I don't make a video
Or you know, I lose you know 10,000 subscribers if I don't post a video unless I have that pressure
It's like nothing forces me to work and even though I want to work I can't
Okey enough to say that I don't
believe that I suffer from clinical depression or ever have
I've never been someone that when everything is going right in their life when they have every reason to be happy they can't be happy
I'm lucky enough to say that that's never been me
but when these things that I've been talking about with my ADD when they're happening to me I
Can fall into depression
So easily and it can affect me for weeks
It can affect me for months if I don't get a handle on it and since my ADD keeps me inside all day not
Interacting with people not going out and doing things it causes so many other issues with my mental health
Most of the depression I've experienced in my life has come from ADD most of the anxiety
I've experienced in my life comes from ADD because when you have an issue no matter what it is
When you have a major issue that cripples you and you don't know if there's anything you can do about it
all of these issues with depression and anxiety
Happen you start to feel not good enough you start to feel like you'll never reach your full potential and that's one of the scariest
And saddest things that I think a person can can have
Because at that point it doesn't matter how talented you are how skilled you are if you don't get to experience
That you get to spend your whole life wondering
What if and that's been me for the last year knowing that I have what it takes to do great things?
but not knowing if I have the ability to make it happen so
Whenever you see me usually on Twitter or something if I'm saying something rude, or if I'm upset a lot of the time
it's because of the bitterness and the
Unhappiness of me feeling like I can't do what I know I can do
I could honestly go on about this for hours and hours
I could spend days talking about this stuff because
When you have ADD all you do is think all you do is sit inside your head wondering
What the hell is wrong with you and what you can do about it, but instead right now
I'm going to tell you that I
Am going to beat this and I'm going to start now
there are things you can do to improve your brain's ability to make dopamine and
Lessen the symptoms of your ADD and you know live the way that you should I?
Basically cut out all junk foods from my life. All I eat are whole foods now basically and that has helped a little bit
I've been eating pretty healthy for a while now
But you know whatever you can do to make your diet better it can help with that sort of thing
I've also started to wake up early and go to the gym every single day
And I've been working out for a long time on and off, but I haven't really done it recently
I haven't been committed to it. So I think the commitment to waking up early and going for it and working hard
I think that is a big thing and sort of just getting your body used to
having discipline and all that
I'm also cutting myself off from my phone. my phone has basically been the devil of my ADD for four years now
And I found that with a lot of the things that I get addicted to in my life
The only way to get over it is to cut it out completely
Because of my ADD I'm not able to just decide to use something less or do the things that are troubling me less
If I don't cut it
It won't work. I got an app that tells me how much time I spend looking at my phone every day
And I have it set to a limit of an hour and a half
So I can't use my phone for longer than an hour and a half every day now
I need to use my phone for part of the day because obviously I do have social media as part of my job
and I also have friends that I
Can't just not talk to it all so I need to have the ability to use at some point
But I can't allow myself to have infinite time to stare at nothing
I've also been meditating recently and I used to meditate a little bit when I was living with Brandon
I went through a nice phase where I was meditating just about every day
And I did notice that it helped me focus a lot better
And it did help me stay on task better and things like that
But there was a break in my meditation at some point and I stopped meditating for months and every single day
I would say to myself
I need to start meditating again because that made me feel better, but for some reason I couldn't do it and that's
Another thing that people can't understand is
Having this great desire to do something and just not being able to do it no matter
How simple it is but I'm doing it again, and I have done it for the last three days
And I'm going to continue doing it every single day. I'm going to do it as soon as I finish filming this video
I'm going to meditate and with all these things together with enough commitment and enough discipline I
Think I can really get the best handle that I have ever had on my ADD
It's time for me to stop succumbing to my mental illness, and it's time for me to face it head-on with everything
I've got I believe that I have the ability to be great and do great things
But it's time for me to do it.
WE BELIEVE IN YOU ROBERT <3 -your bud in the captions.