It takes an organized mind to grow a business

TLDR: If you struggle to stick with a business idea- maybe you're NOT lazy. Maybe you just have a disorganized brain. The good news, it's fixable.

I was thinking lately about why it's taken me so long to figure out entrepreneurship.

You may have heard of attachment theory: anxious, avoidant, or secure. There's a fourth category too, the worst type, disorganized attachment, which is caused by extreme childhood abuse and neglect. In 'The Body Keeps the Score' the author mentions that these children's brains are completely disoriented and they can't even form thoughts coherently.

I wonder- if abuse causes disorganized thinking, then the opposite, mental health, probably creates a more organized brain.

A disorganized brain has major troubles with planning, commitment, and follow-through... all things one needs to start and run a successful business.

I've always been disorganized. My brain is a thousand disparate strings connecting dots that go out all over the universe. It's not linear. I had the messiest dorm room at college, and I struggled to finish any creative endeavor I started. When working on projects, my mind was a summer thunderstorm- brilliant flashes and deafening crashes and pouring rain so thick you could barely see what was happening within.

This mind desperately wanted to become an entrepreneur, and it kept failing, over and over again.

I told myself that I couldn't successfully start a business because I was just lazy. But I work fucking hard at everything I do, and in 2018, I launched 5 products in 5 months!

But the products weren't well thought-out. And I didn't have the mental capacity to stick with them. I was constantly anxious, occasionally depressed, and my life was a rollercoaster; either I was on a dizzying high or a terrible crash. No wonder I failed.

Then I found an amazing therapist. I sought out a 12 step group. And I worked incredibly hard on sorting my mind for 18 straight months.

With each passing week, the storm lessened. I was able to see through the rain. The disparate strings of my mind started lining up. One morning, I woke up and made my bed. And the next morning, I did it again.

Today, my dishes are almost always done. My house is clean and neat. I will never be as structured as someone who has a gift for it, but I can function now. I can hold a job for a long amount of time. I can stay in one place without feeling like running from it. I will probably always have thunderstorms in my mind, but now I dance in the rain and relish the creativity that my still wild thoughts bring me.

I've planted the seeds of an organized mind.

And soon, I'll try again.