Are spontaneity and impulsivity hindering your decision-making?

Over the last fortnight or so, I’ve had a great delight in chatting, both on- and offline, to friends about ‘life and stuff’.

Some of this chatting has been about my lovely but increasingly anxious and senile Lab, Caz. Some has been about neurodiversity in light of my recent small book about it. And some has been about my impetuous nature.

I am the first to admit that ‘living in the moment’™, as I do, can cause as many challenges as it gives joy. Several friends have made very well-meaning, respectful and polite suggestions as to how to manage it (in other words, they were walking on egg shells, not knowing how I was going to react to their ideas).

My friends who are concerned about this aspect of my life gave me some suggestions and ‘ideas to ponder’, which broke down into two main thoughts:

1. If faced with a decision, sit back, take a few days out, and let the idea percolate before making a decision; and
2. Call them to talk it over.

I cannot fault the logic or sentiment of either suggestion, nor the heart-felt intent and love with which the suggestions were made. Let us not forget, these are people I have known for many years, some many decades, some my first friends at high school.

But there’s a problem with their suggestions, and I’ll explain what and why.

Firstly, I have an active brain (for example, I’ve written 20 books in the last two years, I have published five albums of music on iTunes/Apple Music, won an award for one of my photos… And so on. Someone with an active brain, and not a TV brain, does this sort of stuff. And no, I’m not on a bag of Columbian Marching Powder™ each night.

I recently wrote a small book on Neurodiversity, mostly to do some research and unpack that research for myself. A psychologist friend suggested I might be ND, which was a like a red rag to a bull and immediately had me hit the academic databases for more info. I have a strong affinity for the condition known as ‘Dyspraxia’, which has its challenges (like poor balance and shocking fine motor skills—I love my carefully curated fountain pen collection, but alas I can’t write with any pen at all these days). But it also has, for me, BIG positives: strengths in verbal skills, empathy, and creative thinking.

Anyway, back to the suggestion… Asking someone with Bipolar, Dyspraxia, a history of creative high achievement, a night owl (even in utero) to sit down (near impossible anyway) for a time period longer than an hour and think about the decision to be made and to weigh it up logically and with great calculation is the same as… the same as… the same as…

The same as walking up to someone gay and asking them to “stop being gay. At least for a day or two. It’s for your own good. You’ll make better decisions. People will like you more.”

Now, I’m not gay, but the best friend I could ever have hoped for in the world was as straight as a straight thing when I met him at a job interview in Guildford, England. He was married, he lived in a nice house, he had a cracking job, and he had excellent taste in movies (Rocky Horror, The Princess Bride, Beetlejuice, Clue, Spinal Tap, etc.,).

Imagine my surprise, then, when one evening we had dinner at a cosy little restaurant in Oxford and he broke the news to me that he was gay.

Naturally, the next day I went out and bought a set of ‘His’ and ‘His’ towels for him.

This ‘best mate in the world’™ even flew, at his expense because money has always been tight around me, to Adelaide to be my best man at a gorgeous little church in Stirling, and then to drink champagne with everyone while we all watched two animals doing the ‘beast with two backs’ during the wedding reception at Warrawong Sanctuary.  

I have no doubt what Chris would say if at any stage of our lives I asked him to stop being gay for even a second. I’m not gay myself, but I would imagine for him it would be impossible to NOT be gay, and being asked to NOT be gay would rapidly lead to a well-known Billy Connolly swear phrase.

So, on to suggestion 2… I mentioned before that I am a night owl. Science is divided on this—some scientists say there are ways of moving from being a night owl to being a lark, and it’s all very simple if you just follow their patented 12-step plan…

Other scientists say it is exceptionally hard to NOT be a night owl (or, indeed, a lark); you might be able to use the 12-step plan and have a crack at it, but you will likely fail because at best you will shift your wake/sleep cycle two hours; your DNA is the reason you will fail.

Oh boy, have I tried over the decades, especially in the last five years when everybody, studied in sleep science or not, has had their 10c to say about why I should fit in with the rest of society and ‘be normal’.

It’s not as easy as many would suggest it is. You might ‘be normal’ for a day or two, even a week, but your body will eventually revert to type and you will be awake at 4am (as I am now).

So, the idea that when I have a spontaneous thought I can only have them during ‘normal’ hours so I can discuss the whole ‘whatever’ with my friends is a tad unrealistic. My spontaneity and impulsiveness most often occurs when I am awake, and that’s when ‘normal’ people are asleep. I love my closest friends dearly, and I’m sure it’s reciprocated, but I think I know the type of response I’ll get if I ring them at 3am, or bang on their front door, and want to talk through something. 

There is about as much chance of them welcoming me with open arms at their front door as there is in me putting aside my innate creativity and restlessness, and picking up my cob pipe while I relax in my rocking chair watching the sun go down from my front porch.

What about you? Do you struggle with having to be an unnormal in a normal’s world? A world that has only existed since the beginning of the industrial revolution?

Email me if you want to discuss this further, or ask me for a free copy of my neurodiversity mini-book. Like Frasier Crane, “I’m listening”