Working Towards Our Purpose

Hello and welcome to episode 81 of Working towards

our purpose. In today's episode, we're going to talk about how to

focus with adhd and one thing you can do

to try to help regain mental clarity. But before we get into

that, we want to take a moment and check in with ourselves and

see how we're feeling today and where we're at.

All right? So for me, feeling a little

lot going on in my head, but trying to

stay focused and present on this right now, lots of ideas,

so lots of good things. Feeling pretty good, but,

yeah. So, you know, speaking of which, speaking of lots of thoughts and lots

of ideas, I want to talk about how you

can focus or one thing that's helped me focus when you

have a lot of thoughts going on in your mind. And so what gave me

the idea for this episode was I had two days

this week that were pretty similar. Um, let's

call them Monday and Tuesday. I don't really remember what day they were. Um, but

one day I was both working from home. One day was, like,

not focused at all. I. I didn't feel like I was productive.

I didn't really get what I wanted to done, and that made

me not feel good about myself. And then I just, yeah, ended up, like, not

really having that great of a day. And then Tuesday,

similar setup, except I was able to

focus on a task and get that task done, which then led me to

feel better about myself and feel like I had a good day. Um, so I

was just really thinking about, like, what was the difference between the two days? Um,

and there was a thing that I did. And we'll get into that in a

little bit. But before we get into that, I do want to talk about

adhd, and it's something that I've been

thinking a lot about recently. I was doing some research

for this episode, looking up some stuff about adhd.

For me, when I was growing up, I grew up in the 90s,

so 90s, 2000s. So

the language around ADHD and what I was

hearing from adults growing up about ADHD was

mostly that it was like this fake thing that

it was basically bad parenting. Parents didn't know how to control their

kids, so that way, you know, they used as an excuse for

adhd. And I was a kid, so I

don't. I don't know if there's any truth to that, but

to me, it kind of sounds like a scapegoat of,

like, maybe something's different with your kid and you don't want to

admit it. So anyways, there's just this, like, language around ADHD as

being fake. So for me, I never really thought of it as something that

I had because it was sort of this inherent negative thing

and especially, like, kind of like talked down upon, looked down upon.

So I never really identified with it. And it hasn't been until

recently in therapy where I really started thinking about, like,

oh, I probably do have some degree of adhd.

I mean, my therapist has told me that I do.

So it's just interesting. It's like, if you know this thing about yourself

that can then help you

get more things done, help you get more focused, because you know that you have

this thing that you're working against, then, like, why wouldn't you want that

clarity? So, but I think, you know, it just comes with, like, learning about

these different types of ways that our brains work, and

we still don't really know that much about it. It's

interesting, like listening to videos on YouTube of doctors talking about

ADHD. And when they get to some areas, they're like, yeah, we still don't really

know much about this and that. So it makes sense

as to why, I guess some people might think it'd be fake.

So, yeah, there are just to hit on some basic ADHD

identifiers. For me, what it feels like is just a

lot of thoughts in my head. I always have constant thoughts and

ideas, and it's not all the time, but,

yeah, just lots of, like, thoughts and ideas bouncing from one thing to the

next. Hard to, like, focus on one topic. There's a lot of,

like, mental chatter. And

yeah, it just feels like there's always, like a lot going on, I guess.

And so, yeah, I guess that's

kind of how it feels to me. Probably not doing a great job of

explaining that, but I was watching this video and Trevor

Noah was talking about adhd and he did a good job of

explaining something. And he was basically saying if he's in a

conversation with a friend and a friend brings. I'll use his specific

example. It'll sound weird, but

I'm going somewhere. He was saying he's talking to a friend and his

friend brings up the shower head, his shower head

that gets green or something, and then keeps going on his conversation. But

Trevor Noah, in his head, stops at the shower head and he's

thinking about, oh, why is it green? Oh, that must mean that there's

minerals in your water, because green oxidized

copper. Oxidized turns to green like the Statue of Liberty. And he kind of just

goes on this Tangent of problem solving. Why is his

shower head green before coming back to the conversation with his friend a

couple minutes later and being completely lost. And I

definitely identify with that. I look at it as like,

there's just this. I always want to know why. So I

hyper fixate on why things are happening, even if it's not really important

at all. So, yeah, that's kind of how I

feel. It's affected me.

And I do want to talk about some basic. There are three different types of

adhd. One of them is

inattentive, which is having a hard time focusing. The other

one is hyperactive, which is

the classic when you think of kids, like being restless and not being able to

sit still. And then the third type is a combination of the both.

And then in my research,

I came upon this guy, Dr. Barkley, who did

a really good job of explaining adult ADHD

versus having ADHD as a kid. And

basically what I learned from that video was

that when you're a kid, when you're really young, you only have

your outside world, the things that you see. And you

don't really have this internal narrative that we have as

adults. You don't think thoughts in your head and then say things

and have actions. You just say what you're thinking and you

just have this one external world. But. But then at some point during

kid phase, I'm not really sure when you start to develop

your internal monologue and you have thoughts and you can

think things before you say them. And it's not just like everything doesn't just

come out. So with ADHD

hyperactivity, before you have that internal narrative

and being able to have thoughts inside your head,

you see hyperactivity as just a kid being restless and, you know,

blurting out and interrupting. And it's very easy to see hyperactivity.

But once you become an adult and you have thoughts

in your inner world, you can have that

hyperactivity inside your head. And it's a lot

harder to diagnose that because a doctor can't

really look. Well, from my understandings, a doctor can't really look at you and be

like, oh, you have a lot of thoughts going on right now. But if you're

like, fidgety and moving around, you can see that as a

visual of hyperactivity. So ADHD in adults

looks like lots of thoughts and hyperactivity of the mind.

And he also used this term

internal restlessness, which I really resonated with, like

just restlessness of your thoughts. So,

yeah, it's doing all that research and thinking about

adhd, it got me thinking

just the thought that our thinking guides

our actions. So what we think guides our actions.

And if that's to be true, then

having this internal restlessness of our minds, of our thoughts

will guide our restless actions and will guide us to

be all over the place and not be productive and not be able to focus

on a task and not be able to finish things. That, that's been another big

one for me, for adhd, I think, is not being able to finish things like

not having the follow through to finish a project and

something I've been getting better at, but especially as a kid.

So, yeah, if we have hyperactivity of the mind, if we have

some sort of ADHD or if we just resonate with hyperactivity of the

mind, that basically is going

to hinder us on what we can accomplish, what we're accomplishing.

So. So that brings me to the point of this episode is what's the one

thing that we can do to try to ease that

internal restlessness so that we can have

clearer minds and clearer actions? And

that brings me to the one thing, and it's boring and

it's not like a silver bullet, but it's journaling. And

I noticed this because the difference between back what I was

talking about earlier, me being not focused on Monday and being

focused on Tuesday, was I journaled first. I journaled

before I started my day and I wrote out

basically everything that I was thinking. All of the hyperactivity that was in my head,

I was able to put on paper and then sort of

detach it from my thinking. So instead

of it being sort of trapped in my head and going on a loop and

just spinning and spinning and spinning, I'm able to put it on paper

and look at it and be like, okay, these thoughts,

maybe they're not that important right now. Maybe I could put them aside and

maybe these are the ones that I actually want to focus on. And

it was just really helpful for me to be able to calm

that hyperactivity of my mind and the restlessness of my mind.

And I know it's like such a simple solution

and it's not really a fun one. I

know myself, I don't love journaling.

I don't think to do it when my mind is going at

1,000 miles an hour. My first thought isn't like, oh, let me take 10 minutes

to journal because it seems like a waste of time

and it seems like that's not going to be helpful. But for me,

even just this week, it's been really helpful to

just do that, to write down and to flush out my thoughts and to see

them on paper. And it doesn't have to be long. It could be like 10

minutes. And it may not be like,

completely. You're not going to be like Buddha in your head and have no

thoughts, but it definitely helps to get a big percentage

of them processed because I think when you

write your thoughts down, you able to sort of process them

and to let them go, so then you're not storing them all in your head

anymore. So, yeah, I

think that's kind of like

one thing that I've really been trying to work with and

to try to think about ADHD more

seriously. And another thing that. That Trevor Noah

video that I watched was talking about was

like, knowing that you have ADHD can help you manage

it better. And I think even just identifying

as having ADHD can be helpful because it's like, oh,

okay, maybe this is sort of atypical that I have all these thoughts in my

head. And it's nice to know that there's other

people that also struggle with that and there's some language to it. Like,

that takes a bit of the weight off of it. But for me, I've

also found it hard to identify with certain

labelers like ADHD and depression.

So I guess approach it as

you see fit. But yeah, I guess what I'm trying to say is

I'm trying to more identify with the language of

ADHD and not seeing it as this

negative thing that is poor parenting,

the story that I grew up with, and seeing it more as, like, okay, this

is the way that my brain works. And if my brain works this way, maybe

there's things I can do to make it work a little more efficiently

or work with ADHD instead of working against it.

And this strategy, journaling can be, for

me, has been helpful in trying to work with all these

thoughts instead of against them and keeping them all to

myself in my head. So. So, yeah,

that's. That's kind of all I want to say one more thing about ADHD

and just, you know, mental health in general, I think

it can be looked at as like a bad thing. Like, like, you could

be. And this is my perspective. But maybe it's helpful, maybe

it's not. If it's not, leave it. But, you

know, a diagnosis can sometimes be like a negative

thing. Like, you think of, oh, I have ADHD now.

Now my life is going to be hard because I

have this diagnosis and this thing's wrong with me. And

I would encourage you to try to not look at

it that way and to look at it as just being

different. And it's not necessarily a negative thing.

It's just it works different, differently than other people's

minds. And that could be a bad thing, but it

could also be a good thing. And I think for me, I heard someone

recently say that they had ADHD and it was

a good thing for their business, and I really appreciated that

perspective. And I think that it helps to destigmatize it. It helps to not look

at it as this inherently bad thing. But for me, a positive

thing of adhd, I think, is I always come up with ideas. I always

have these ideas. I have just so many ideas all the time.

And that's a great thing. It helps me

be creative. It helps me have these unique

solutions to things. So, yeah, that's

not a bad part of it, but I think if I can work a

little bit better to try to focus

in on those ideas, then that could be a little bit more

helpful. I can learn to work with ADHD and use the good

parts and, yeah, learn to work with the bad parts.

So, yeah, I just want to say that it's not inherently negative

and I think I'll leave in on that. And one last thing.

If journaling seems overwhelming and if you've never done it before

and it's like, yeah, that sounds great, but I'm not going to go journal tomorrow

because I don't know how to do that. Totally fair.

And I would encourage maybe you to download my

PDF guide that's about softening your inner critic and

being kinder to yourself. I think that might be a good place to start for

journaling because I have a lot of specific journaling prompts

that tell you exactly what to do. So if you're feeling a little

intimidated by journaling on your own, you can download this free guide links

in the show notes of every episode, and maybe you could start there.

So hopefully this has been helpful and I will see you

on another podcast real soon. Take care.