Overcoming Distractions

There comes a time where everyone regardless of ADHD needs a great mentor or coach. How do you find the right ADHD coach and when is it time to get ADHD coaching? Those are some of the topics discussed in this podcast.

Dave’s guest is Evan Kirstein of Progressive Growth Coaching. Evan coaches entrepreneurs, executives, and adults with ADHD.

Evan talks about the types of things an ADHD coach can help you with. Those include prioritizing tasks, projects, and other commitments you have in your personal and professional life. He says that a major emphasis can be placed on executive functions and how to improve those for better performance.

Evan says a great ADHD coach can help you be honest with yourself and take ownership of responsibilities and can give you a foundation for transformation.

He says working with an ADHD coach can help you with work habits, meeting deadlines, and overall effectiveness in your professional life. And one important thing. An ADHD coach can help you pick yourself back up.

Evan covers other items in the podcast including when the appropriate time to consider working with the coaches. He covers what you should be looking for when partnering with a coach and trying to find the right fit.

He talks about whether you need an ADHD coach or just a professional coach that is a good fit and matches your values.

And he discusses is what you should do if you are resisting the idea of partnering with the coach.

Learn more about working with Evan here: www.ProgressiveGrowthCoaching.com

How do you go from being broke, getting a divorce, and then creating a thriving successful life with adult ADHD? The answer is in this podcast episode. If you want to engineer a successful life and consistent habits, make sure you listen to this conversation.

This week Dave has a conversation with Aron Croft. Aron has turned his past experiences into a successful coaching and consulting practice. While we joke about crashing and burning on this segment, there are some valuable lessons to be had.

Aron discusses his story of been diagnosed with ADD, earning minimum wage, being broke, getting a divorce as well as how he got through Harvard. While he always achieved good grades in school, he went through numerous job changes and other struggles until he realized that he should try to get an official diagnosis.

Aron has implemented many systems in his life to achieve success and he coaches others to do the same. He discusses ways to manage and thrive with adult ADHD, and the ways we can implement motivation in our lives.

He talks about engineering progress as well as engineering consistency to get the things we want in life. He also discusses how the brain processes information when we have ADHD and the strategies to get things done.

And he discusses must-haves to thrive with adult ADHD.

Those include celebrating quick wins, stopping the self-blame, finding meaningful goals that are self-generated as well as self-education on adult ADHD. He thinks it is very important to find the support you need and most importantly, never give yourself problems you do not need.

You can find Aron Croft on his website here. https://hiddenadhd.com/

For many with adult ADHD, the right technology can be a game-changer. Whether that is applications that help us run our business or something as simple as maintaining and sharing a grocery shopping list. We can’t escape technology anymore in our lives and we must embrace what helps us thrive.

Helping us navigate the many apps that are available to us is Brittany Smith, from Devise & Conquer Coaching. Brittany offers exclusive coaching when it comes to helping adults with ADHD find just the right apps and technology for their lives.

Britney discusses whether ADHD responds better to apps and technology or whether we prefer pen and paper. Or does ADHD respond to both methods?

Britney discusses how entrepreneurs and business professionals with ADHD can consider the several types of apps including time management, mindfulness, and other crucial pieces of technology to help us with our professional lives

And she walks us through the process of finding the right apps that work for us as individuals with ADHD. Britney has a number of recommendations for apps to help us organize our lives and she shares a few of her favorites.

Brittany also recommends a series of automation tools to help us write our lives in our business.

And she recommends monitoring what we use for technology and using it to better our lives, not complicate it.

Brittany also recommends when you’re starting the use of a new app to make sure you utilize it for a few weeks to see if it works for you. You must give it time in order to effectively evaluate whether it’s a good fit for your life or business.

Find Brittany Smith here: https://conquer.consulting/

In this podcast, we are going to laugh at, and about our ADHD. And we’re going to learn how to find the humor with our adult ADHD.

On Overcoming Distractions this week is Pasha Marlowe, a therapeutic comedy coach. Pasha is going to walk us through how to find humor in our day-to-day activities in the ADHD world and how to use laughter as a tool to manage and thrive with adult ADHD.

Pasha and Dave talk about not only humorous things that have happened during the pandemic but what they have learned through this era of COVID-19. And Pasha discusses her own challenges.

Pasha discusses why many people find it difficult to laugh about their challenges and struggles including ADHD and she also discusses why it is important for the mind and body to be able to find humor in everyday situations.

Dave and Pasha have a discussion about how we can begin to find more humor and other things to laugh at in our daily lives and why it is so critical for our mental health to be able to lighten up throughout the day.

And Pasha talks about her therapeutic comedy coaching sessions and programs. Make sure you check out her comedy coaching.

Learn more about Pasha Marlowe and her coaching programs on her website. https://pashamarlowe.com/

How can I manage my emotions better when I have ADHD? This is a common question as well as a struggle in individuals with ADHD. Our emotions can get the best of us in both challenging times and times of excitement.

In this episode of Overcoming Distractions, Dave has a conversation with Marcy Caldwell. She is the supervising psychologist at Rittenhouse Psychological Assessments, and she has an upcoming program called Meltdown to Mastery.

Marcy first discusses why those with ADHD have challenges in managing emotions of all kinds. She talked about how the ADHD brain can have a flood of emotions and get overstimulated and in many cases irritable.

Marcy spent some time discussing her green, yellow, orange, and red indicators for recognizing and managing your emotions. It is a great method to identify when your emotions could be getting the best of you.

Dave and Marcy also discussed how to control emotions through breathing and how that can help you process feelings and reduce anxiety. And something as simple as taking a walk to process your emotions can help soothe your anxiety.

Marcy gives us a road map and walks us through the basics of getting a handle on our emotions both good and bad.

And Marcy also walks us through her Meltdown to Mastery program which provides a framework to develop the necessary skills to manage the emotions that come with ADHD.

Connect with Marcy and her practice here: https://rittenhousepsychologicalassessments.com/

The ADHD brain always gets cluttered when we have too much to do and too much information to process. That’s why it is so important for us to take time out whenever needed to do what we call a brain dump.

That’s the focus of this episode. We will talk to Jenna Knight an ADHD coach based in Massachusetts. She has come up with an organized process for conducting this must-have tool in your arsenal.

But first, Jenna and Dave discuss why the ADHD brain often gets cluttered and bogged down. They discuss why oftentimes, adults with ADHD have information, notes, and to-do lists all over the house and even all over our workplace.

Jenna talks about how at first, we just need to get comfortable writing everything down. And she emphasizes not having a filter when doing this. It doesn’t matter whether it’s home, school, work-related or anything else. She encourages us to dig deep and just get everything on paper to start.

Jenna walks us through how to categorize our brain dump after that, including a seven-step process that includes prioritizing what is due, prioritizing appointments we have, and other important tasks.

She recommends creating categories, eliminating, and even delegating tasks, and possibly postpone certain tasks that are not urgent.

She also recommends planning out daily tasks that reoccur.

Jenna recommends doing this anytime you have too many lists and posted notes lying around the house or in your workplace.

Take the time and listen to this podcast and learn Jenna’s seven-step process to get more organized with a brain dump.

Find Jenna Knight here: https://www.neverdefeatedcoaching.net/

If you have ADHD and you feel you are suffering from overwhelm or even burnout, you want to take the time to listen to this new podcast episode. We discuss one of the silent conditions of mental health and that is burnout.

Back on Overcoming Distractions is Dr. Sharon Saline. She has over 30 years of experience working with individuals with ADHD, she is a bestselling author and a leading expert in many areas of ADHD and neurodiversity.

Sharon and Dave talk about burnout and how people with ADHD may experience this more than others. And not only more common but many with ADHD can also get to burnout much quicker.

Sharon points out that many of us with ADHD are also people-pleasers which over time can result and burnout because we do not want to disappoint others. She also points out that burnout can collide with other ADHD characteristics, and we need to be careful not to let it go too far before addressing overwhelm and burnout.

Sharon shares her tips to help manage overwhelmed and burnout such as identifying the stressors in your life, target what to deal with first and prioritize, pause before agreeing to commitments in your life and in your business, and understanding what flow is. Flow is when we truly enjoy what we’re doing for longer periods of time and that is an indicator of what we enjoy doing.

She discusses active self-care, reducing isolation in how you can bring pleasure to your life daily such as walking or other forms of exercise.

She suggests looking at work differently and make sure you are taking frequent breaks with an emphasis on going into nature.

And one important factor in managing overwhelmed or burnout is to pay attention to what is going on in your life and do not let burnout get out of control.

She has many more expert tips from managing overwhelmed and burnout so take the time to listen to her expert advice on this subject.

You can connect with Sharon Saline here; https://drsharonsaline.com/

Overcoming Distractions is back with another episode and this one, once again it’s dedicated to why exercise is so important for people with ADHD.

Our guest this week is Gabriel Villarreal, owner of ADHD Counseling in the Roanoke Valley. Gabriel has a unique concept in helping his clients manage their ADHD that more and more people should get on board with.

Gabriel meets many of his clients in the gym. He will explain why he does this and why it has been so effective in helping individuals with ADHD.

First, Gabriel discusses why it is so important for people with ADHD to embrace some type of exercise in their lives. And he gives us an education as to what exercise actually does to and for the ADHD brain.

He talks about how exercise can help in so many areas of our life including experiencing better sleep and even controlling our appetite in some cases. Gabriel talks about how can help manage our hyperactivity and help us to cope with distractions.

He discusses his program of meeting his clients in the gym and how effective it has been.

And Gabriel gives us his tips for getting started and staying on track with some type of exercise program. Those tips include finding a coach that can help you write an exercise program, stick to regular habits to see results and cautions us about relying on motivation alone. Habits are critical to sticking with an exercise program and getting the results you need as a person with ADHD.

Learn more about Gabriel as well as the programs he offers here. https://roanokeadhd.com/

Now go to the gym!

In this episode, we bring back Nancy Colier, who has been on Overcoming Distractions before. Nancy is a psychotherapist and author of many bestselling books.

We discuss Nancy’s new book “Can’t Stop Thinking. How to Let Go of Anxiety and Free Yourself from Obsessive Rumination.”

Many with ADHD have a racing mind, but you do not have to have ADHD to get a ton of value out of this discussion with Nancy. Her book is for anyone who struggles with obsessive thinking.

Nancy discusses why for many of us, negative thoughts can control us. She talks about how fear, lack of confidence, and other outside influences affect our thoughts, sometimes in a negative way.

She discusses how it’s not so much the situation but the thoughts around the situation that we obsess with. She talks about how we are addicted to our thoughts, but we do not have to pay attention to our thoughts 24 hours a day.

She also mentions that it’s not always the case where more thoughts such as positive thinking can solve your problems. And she makes it a point to tell listeners that you are not your thoughts.

Many obsess with thinking at all hours of the day and even into the night because we have what she calls a rehearsal of situations, where we feel something negative may happen and we go through all the possible outcomes.

We also discussed the topic of burnout and how relentless thinking about our situation can be a major factor in true burnout. When we get to this point, Nancy points out that our mind is never really off duty.

And as we always do on Overcoming Distractions, Nancy goes through some of the tools in her book to help reduce anxiety and rid ourselves of constant negative and obsessive thinking.

Connect with Nancy Colier here and find all her wonderful books; https://nancycolier.com/

Conflict is just part of life and part of the business world. How we choose to enter conflict and resolve differences and disagreements with others can make all the difference in the world.

For those with ADHD, many find resolving conflict challenging to say the least. Because many of us can have difficulty regulating emotions, it gets in the way of resolving conflict properly and amicably.

Back on Overcoming Distractions is Brendan Mahan, from ADHD Essentials.

We discuss whether avoiding conflict is something common in people with ADHD and why. Dave and Brendan discuss how emotions can get the best of us with ADHD when it comes to conflict resolution and how certain emotions limit progress.

We discuss why many people with ADHD might create conflict where it is not necessary.

Brendan discusses how resolving conflict involves us listening through the noise and getting better at active listening. We need to set and understand the rules for conflict and assume that the other person has good intentions.

Productive conflict involves asking the right questions as well as getting ahead of the conflict, so it does not get out of control. Brendan suggests owning your mistakes but owning your strengths as well.

He also suggests that it’s very important to understand how self-reflection plays into conflict.

And Dave and Brendan do discuss that there are times when it is not a good idea to get involved in conflict and to revisit the matter later.

Brendan lays out other steps on how those with ADHD can get better at resolving conflicts before they get out of hand.

Brendan operates ADHD essentials which offers coaching, parenting groups and the very popular podcast by the same name. Find Brendan here. https://www.adhdessentials.com/