September 16, 2025 • 59 mins
In this episode, Renee explores why compassion is key to managing life with ADHD. You’ll learn how self-criticism and thoughts of doubt and discouragement fuels shame and gets your body in stress mode, while positive thinking and compassion create the calm, flowing, resilient mode your ADHD brain needs.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:29):
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with ADHD.
Renee. I'm Renee Allen, the host of my podcast.
I'm excited to be here today. I am laughing because there
are ironies that come with adhd and I'm just recognizing one,
and that is giving yourself, myself, positive feedback,
(00:51):
positive self talk, not criticism, but compassion.
Telling yourself you're doing just fine, all those things.
And laughing because I just started this podcast.
Well, I've made. I always do a few, you know, hello, welcome.
You know, see how I do. See how the sound sounds, See if I
mess up on my words. But I made one.
(01:12):
I saw a few flaws. I started thinking, am I even
saying the right thing? I was giving myself self criticism.
As I started to talk to you about letting go of
self criticism, it comes constantly.
It can come constantly. It is more of a go
(01:34):
to for our brains to feel rejected and to
invite that in or to let that stick than it is
to stay in a place of feeling positive
and supporting yourself. Why is this?
Why is this? Well, let's see. Let's read about it.
I'm going to read about it because I have some notes here, but
(01:56):
I just lost my notes. Where did they go?
Somehow I expanded this. Okay, here I go.
Okay. So when you have an ADHD brain,
it is possible that you are. You have brain
wiring that makes you more prone to being sensitive,
(02:16):
that makes you more prone to feeling like you need
to do things a certain way and feeling bad about yourself,
feeling rejected, having that sensitivity, whether it's actual
RSD rejection, sensitive dysphoria, or you just perceive
failure more often than others. And all of this
(02:40):
can lead to criticism. You are seeing yourself maybe in an
inaccurate light, just like people who have body, body,
body dysmorphia, where they look in the mirror and
see themselves. And you might be thinking, I've done that before,
or I tend to do that. I don't know how common
(03:03):
it is or how rare it is, but it seems like
a lot of people see themselves differently than others do.
You see a picture of yourself and you just think, like, why can't
I take a good picture? That's such a bad angle.
This or that. See yourself in an outfit in the mirror and think,
oh, it doesn't look good on me. And you're seeing
(03:26):
something that maybe isn't what everyone else is seeing.
Part of that is because you might be more critical of yourself
than others are. You might have a standard that's unreasonable,
not accurate. And I'm just talking body right now
because that's an easy Thing to measure of I'm not as
(03:47):
tall as this person. My legs aren't as long as that person's,
or I'm not as this as that person. It's really interesting when
you hear what somebody else thinks about themselves that they
worry about, might be the shape of their eyebrows or
my lips are too thin or whatever it is.
(04:07):
And you think, I never would have thought that about you.
I like your eyebrows. I like your. You know, you.
You realize that the. The. The brain that they live
in is different than what anybody else is seeing.
You know what they worry about. And you might do the same thing.
You might think, I don't like the way
(04:29):
this looks, or I don't like the way that looks.
You might listen to your voice and think, I don't like the way
my voice. Sou. Have you ever thought that it used to be
more common when people used to have tape recorders.
I mean, now everyone has a phone, so you know what your voice
sounds like. But it used to be kind of a surprise when you had
a tape recorder and you. And then you heard your voice, and it's
like, oh, I sound so nasally, or, you know, all those things
that sounded different. And maybe it wasn't a good quality tape
(04:49):
recorder. Who knows? But I remember thinking that.
I remember seeing pictures of myself and years ago in college
and thinking, why didn't anybody tell me my hair looked like
that? Like, I didn't know it was so thin.
I didn't know it was so this. I didn't know.
And nobody else was worried about it but me.
So you might have a perception of yourself that you're
(05:12):
more sensitive to or that's not accurate,
and you need to find a way to fight that
so that you're not criticizing yourself all the time or not feeling
down. You might also feel more expectations.
Societal pressure for women. Women can be.
(05:34):
To be organized. My home is so organized.
I'm such a good cook. I'm on top of everything.
I can do it all. There's the idea of, can you
do it all? Yes, you can do it all. Maybe a few people
can do it all. My belief is that no one can do it all.
That anybody who's doing it all with my quote fingers, there's
(05:56):
something falling apart. There has to be.
No one can do it all. We're just humans.
We all have 24 hours in the day, and we need to sleep some of
that time. We need some downtime. We can't go full force all
the time. So I don't really Believe everyone can do it all.
You know, when you. When you hear about everyone's successes,
you're not seeing the whole picture, right?
And not that we want to see people have problems too, or fail,
(06:20):
or things that fall apart, but when we measure ourselves
or we have an expectation or we feel the need
to be able to have dinner cooked every day, instead
of telling yourself that a smoothie is okay, here's my
smoothie. It has so many fruits in it and vegetables
(06:41):
and powders and proteins and things.
But yeah, maybe a. A warm, hot meal
would be good for dinner, but that's probably going to be my
dinner. We'll see. We'll see. But I'm not having
that expectation. I let go of that expectation a long time ago
to have a dinner. If that was what we did in our family, if
we were doing that, and I got tired of doing it.
(07:02):
Maybe people take turns cooking dinner.
Somebody else likes cooking dinner more, or maybe I love it.
You know, there's times that I do love it, or there used to be
times that I loved it. I'm trying to think of a time now that
I love it. It's not quite there anymore.
But having that idea that you need to be a certain way can
also make you more critical of yourself.
Like, I couldn't even do this. Other people do that.
(07:24):
Why can't I do this? Well, there might be a reason you can't
do that. It might be an actual physical reason.
With your brain, your body, your life, your circumstances, whatever,
let yourself feel supported instead of criticized.
Don't add that weight to yourself. Or if you have other
(07:45):
challenges, like, why do I forget this?
Why do I get overwhelmed? Why do I have a day when
I have a lot of time to do something and I didn't do
anything, I didn't do any of the things that I wanted to do?
You can look at that and just criticize, criticize, criticize.
Or you can look at it, give yourself grace.
(08:07):
You can look at it as, what can I do differently if I
don't want it to be that way again? But feeling awful about
yourself, telling yourself that you're a loser, what's
wrong with me? Any of those things, if you've ever
had that come across your brain, or this isn't good
(08:28):
enough, I can't do this. All of that, that could be your
reality of what the tendencies are in your brain.
And if you think about things that other people have told you
in your life, you've probably had some.
Some compliments, and you might remember some of
those Compliments. Somebody told me this once.
I didn't know that about myself. And it might be something that
(08:49):
a lot of people recognize about you and you don't see it.
So when you hear those compliments, give them to yourself again.
Not that you have to just live off of everyone's compliments
all the time, but try to see yourself in that
light that other people do, because you can't see yourself all
the time. Right? Also, think about when people have criticized
(09:10):
you, if they've been critical or they've insulted you or said
something that was hard to hear, that can
stick with you longer. Because hurt, things that
hurt do hurt. They could take a while, while to heal.
And no, not everyone's gonna love and adore
(09:30):
us, and not everyone's gonna be kind.
But if you think about how impactful that can be
to hear unkind words, critical words from other
people, it also causes damage within yourself.
It causes damage within yourself. So you don't want to keep
giving yourself messages. You need to catch yourself.
(09:53):
Like I did when I was. When I kept second guessing myself when
I was actually had the sound, everything, the setup here ready
to go. And I'm saying that as I check, is
it really going? Is the audio really going?
Because I've got audio and video going on two different computers.
But when you stop yourself and tell yourself,
it gets in the way of being able to do what you need to do.
(10:15):
I used to do that when I first started making yoga videos.
If I am teaching a live class and there's people there, I
go on, I say hello, and I start teaching.
I don't even think about, is this right or good
or not. I mean, I might fumble. Like, today I taught a
hot yoga class with real people in a real room and
stuff. And this is a room, but, you know, it's a.
(10:37):
It's a room for recording. So. But I was teaching this
class, and I messed up on some words.
It wasn't just like the left side and the right side.
I was saying. I was trying to say, bring the back foot
to the front, but I kept saying, bring the front foot
to the back, but our foot was back, so I.
I caught it. But then when I went to say it right,
(10:59):
I said it the same way I said it the first time, even though
my brain knew I said it wrong. And my brain knew
what it needed to say. And if I was making a
recording, I probably would have thought, nope, not perfect.
Why did I mess that up? Yeah, I'm 20 minutes into class, but
I'm going To start over. It's not good enough.
(11:19):
That's not real life. Real life is mistakes happen.
And when we're living our lives and mistakes happen, we need
to recognize other people have their challenges.
These are mine. And here I go. Here I go.
Oh, yeah. And even just. I was thinking about
this today. Even just looking at, yeah, it might
(11:42):
be this bad at this time, but look at, look at when
it gets better. And sometimes it's kind of funny
because if you've ever had things that you dread
doing, you know you need to do but you don't get
working on. And it might be for a week, it might be for
a month, it might be for years. Like I told you with
(12:03):
my podcast, I wanted to do this for at least five years
before I ever made a recording. I'd say more like six or
seven, but I didn't actually count. But if you
have something that you can't get yourself to do, for
whatever reason, you might make efforts, but you can't get yourself
to do. And my best way of describing it is I can't
(12:24):
wrap my head around it. There's probably a scientific way.
There's the brain wiring's a little frayed and it's just not
happening. Or I haven't found a way to calm myself or
ignore the other things going on in my life to do that.
And that was recently with returns. I order things
(12:45):
from Amazon and I return things from Amazon.
I do it with other companies, too, but that seems to be my
big one. And they're good about returns, and they give you
options. They give you a QR code, they give you a label.
You can drop it off with the label on it.
You can bring it into scan at Whole Foods or
UPS store, and you get to choose which one.
(13:06):
And, you know, it changes from time to time, but you get to know
the system. It's not too complicated.
But if you let those returns pile up, especially at
Christmas time, and I have a theory, it's probably not that
advanced, probably not that advanced of a theory, but I have
a theory that at Christmas time, the reason that they give you
(13:27):
two months, three months to do returns instead of 30 days, if
30 days is their policy, I don't know exactly what their policy
is because I, you know, some stores, it's 30, sometimes 60.
I think Target used to be 90. I'm a big return person.
I've gotten used to, you know, different policies and what they
are, because when I'm not honoring it, that's when I'm told,
(13:47):
well, this is past 90 days. And that's when I tend to learn
what the day is, even though it's up on the board behind them.
But
I think at Christmas time they do that partially so that you
can shop early and not worry because they're not going to get
that gift maybe for two months. If you're buying it now, even
longer, right? Or Black Friday or whatever.
(14:08):
And then Christmas comes. You might be traveling, you might not
have time, you need time to return it.
But I also think they hope you just kind of forget about it.
And then the longer you wait, the more you're, you know,
you think I've got all the time in the world and you don't get
it done. But since June, so what are we?
We're September, June, July, September.
Wait, July, August, September. So three months right now
(14:31):
Amazon has a 30 day policy and I have known in
the back of my mind, you need to return this, you need
to return this, you need to return this.
And I'll see. You know something that I need to return, it
might be some shorts that I bought for hot yoga and
they didn't fit right. Bought two sizes, neither fit right.
So I'm going to send it back. A couple other things.
(14:53):
This didn't work out. I'm going to send that back.
I'm going to send that back. Well, time's gone by and today I
thought you need to look, you need to at least look and see
if you've lost access to the QR code.
Because I have learned, and this isn't really a tutorial about
Amazon, but it can be, I've learned that when the QR code
says use this by this date, the QR code will still work
(15:16):
past that date and you can take it in.
And
it might not be available on your app to see
it, but if you print it out, it could still work.
So I've learned that and it's also usually available on the app,
on your phone after. But a lot of times I'll make a screenshot
or something because I don't like to be the fumbling person in
(15:39):
UPS looking through for the QR code.
I'd rather use a little bit of paper, print out the QR
code and just tape it. You know, like I, I actually make
a Google Doc. So this, this is where I'm going with this is I
go from not doing it all for three months to having
a meticulous hyper focus system. So once I saw
(15:59):
today you not only have one item, but four items that
don't show the QR code anymore. And you didn't even go
to the trouble of printing those out and tape them, taping them
on before. Long ago. I just thought, you have time,
you have time, you have time. So. And you think I'd
learn because earlier in the year, I made another order not
(16:21):
with Amazon, went past the time, could not return the items,
and bought more things than I needed.
Some of them fit, but I just bought multiples to try on different
sizes and colors. I'm learning what not to do, because if
I can't be organized about rain returns, I can't be.
I can't make my closet a try on, you know, what do
you call it? A. A dressing room. I can't to send everything back.
(16:42):
But back to. This is. I was laughing today because
1. Here I am in this situation. I wasn't laughing at
first. It was like, oh, no, this is one of those things they
call it the ADHD tax, where you're paying more in life.
You're getting penalized for something that you couldn't stay
on top of. Remember, there were a few of the returns I
(17:05):
didn't even know I hadn't returned. I thought, oh, I forgot about
that. I thought I did return that. So I had those
things. But I've also learned that customer service reps can
be really nice, and if you call them and it's past
the day and they'll tell you, oh, it's past the
return date, I can't do it in my system, which is the same thing
(17:25):
we find out when we try it, right? But then they put you on
hold for a while, and if you're patient, if you have the time,
they. I would say I've never not received a
late return. And
one might think that might be why you let it go
past the date. It isn't. It isn't. It's not because
(17:46):
I know they'll let me later. It's just because I can't
always wrap my head around doing something that's on my mind
because I have other things to do. But I was able to
get return codes. And one thing that was really great was they're
actually giving me full value because I've had it where they
haven't, where they say, yes, we can give you a refund,
(18:07):
but it's 80% or 70% or something. So I thought
there was, you know, it was possible that there would be a penalty.
And I don't know if I've shared this with you, but the farthest
back return that I made on Amazon, and they were still
currently selling it. And I think I did find
the order in there somewhere. It was at least two years old.
(18:29):
It might have been. I might have had it for two years or three
years. And it was a podcast kit that I bought with a microphone,
a little boom arm, maybe a windscreen, you know,
some kind of microphone kit that said it was rated good.
But when I finally actually did make my podcast,
I thought, I don't want to use that microphone.
It was still new in the box. I did get a refund, but it
(18:53):
wasn't full. It wasn't for the full amount, but they were still
selling that model so they could sell it again.
I hadn't used it, I hadn't, I hadn't taken it out of
the box, but I did have it for I think three years.
But I was just kind of laughing today because I thought it'd
be really easy to fall into the trap of criticizing myself and
(19:13):
saying, what is your problem? Because I was kind of
thinking that for a little bit of, you know, here you are again,
this is going to cost you money and
we can use the money for this instead, you know, all that kind
of stuff. Instead I turned it into a positive
one and there was good outcomes. Not always a good outcome, sometimes
(19:34):
you lose many. But into a positive, yeah, this happens.
But look what else happens with ADHD.
Now I'm making these little files. I've learned how to crop the
little pictures of the screenshots of the, you know, I was
so in a little meticulous method. It's not like my method was
perfect, but it was such a system was take the screenshot, write
(19:54):
the item, put the little QR code, make it so I can fit
two or three, you know, three or four QR codes on my
Google Doc. Make it so I'm not wasting too much paper, but
I can print it out, tape it on, da da da, and then I'll put them
on this bag. And I turned it into my little method.
And then I became this productive person, which made me kind
of laugh because you I went from ultra non productive to very
(20:18):
hyper focused. And my son commented on this about a
year ago because he had asked me if I could take
some CDs that he grew up listening to when he went to bed
at night if I could take them and send them
to him digitally. And I thought, I don't know, because things
don't work the same, you know, like you can't just do Apple music
again. And I thought, I think there's a way to read
(20:41):
it with a CD drive and put it in a Google Drive audio,
but I don't know. And so every time I thought about it,
I'd look into it a little bit and not find an
answer or try working on it a little bit and not
find an answer. And then I'd forget about it, or probably I
forgot about it for seven or eight months before I even got as
(21:03):
far as I just talked about. And then he'd ask me again and I'd
say, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, sorry. And then I'd
kind of go through that loop, loop, loop.
I don't know if it was a whole year or what, but finally I said,
okay, I'm gonna write myself a note and I'm gonna try to figure
this out. I figured it out. And once I did, I was writing
to him. Are there any other CDs you want?
(21:23):
Oh, I could actually do this one, too.
I could actually do this. And I didn't even realize what I was
doing. I didn't recognize the pattern or anything.
But he also has ADHD. He's the one that taught me that
I had ADHD. And he said it's been
really funny watching this whole process with you because he
could recognize it, that it was forgetting, delay.
(21:51):
Can't figure it out. Can't even do it unless I can
figure it out. Don't have the patience to sit down or
the time or there's some other things I need to do instead.
You know, see that go on and on and on.
And then when I did do it, I wouldn't stop.
So anything that you can look at as, why does this
happen? If you can look at just the irony
(22:14):
of it, maybe it can make you laugh if you can look at.
But there are some good things. There are.
I do need to give myself credit for when I do do things
well, too. And give yourself that support, even if
you're a klutz. I don't know if you like that word or
not. I know people don't like labels, but if you're clumsy, klutzy,
if you trip all the time, if you fall all the time, and it can
(22:35):
be frustrating and you have bruises that you don't know where
they come from, or you get injured or.
This is one of those things that when I'm talking, I feel like
I'm the only one, because I kind of the only person I know
with ADHD personally. Maybe my daughter's this way a little bit
that does this like I do. But anyway, yeah, give yourself
(22:56):
credit for when you don't fall for all the times, for all the
steps that you take without falling, because you could look
at the other way. Like, I think about it so many times, like
I'm trying to be careful. I'm trying to watch my step.
And maybe you don't, maybe you don't watch your step.
Somebody who falls a lot bumps into things.
(23:16):
Usually it takes a while to realize, maybe I need
to do this differently. You can't always do it differently, especially
if you're impulsive. But you can try to have control
when you are thinking about it. And that does prevent accidents.
So give yourself credit for that. Pat yourself on the back because
there are probably a lot of accidents that could have happened
(23:37):
if you weren't mindful and you were.
So that's really good. But so, yeah.
So our brains. Our brains may be a little extra
critical. Our brains may lead us to not be
able to do things as dependably as what some
(23:57):
people might call responsibly. Is it irresponsible?
That's a question, right? Is it irresponsible if you forget?
Not always. Not always. It might look irresponsible to a lot
of people and they might not have the patience for it.
Or you might have a job where they can't depend on you because
you're forgetting things, or you don't have a great
(24:20):
attention to detail that. That can help you realize, what
should I do maybe as a career or what should I
do to not require myself to be able to
have to pay attention to so many details?
What can I do to help myself out? So each time that you
have something that's not working, that's when you try to find
(24:43):
a way through it. And if not, you have to have
compassion. You have to have grace for yourself.
You have to say, I'm not irresponsible.
My brain can't remember everything. And that's okay.
We know a lot of people can't learn the same.
Not everyone can retain at all or the same.
Some details may stick with you forever.
(25:07):
The things that you're interested in, things that you're paying
attention to. That's one of the things that still kind
of bugs me when I see those posts about you're not attention
deficit if you have adhd, because that's what it literally says,
Attention deficit hyperactive disorder.
(25:27):
And then they say you're paying attention to too many things,
but you're still attention deficit. If you're paying attention
to too many things, you might be able to pay attention to the
one thing. Like when you step off of a curb and you triple.
So there's still an attention deficit.
That's my little. That's my little. My little one little,
you know, like, sliver that's in my foot.
(25:49):
That when people say things, sometimes they stick with me.
And I think I can't keep listening to the rest because I don't
agree with that to do that anyway. So what does
negative self talk do to you?
How do you feel when you're telling yourself negative things?
What does it keep you from doing?
(26:12):
Does it make it possible for you to do what you
want to do? If you don't,
if you don't have that courage? And I.
If you think about the times and the.
When you're around certain people and you have all the
confidence in the world, I hope you have people in your life
that you have all the confidence in the world.
(26:33):
You don't have to think about what you're saying.
You don't have to worry that what you know, you know what
you're saying was the wrong thing or you feel dumb
about it or not feel smart enough or not have
enough money or whatever the things are that I'm not beautiful
enough. All those not enoughs. You don't think about any
of that because it's. It's just comfortable.
(26:56):
Like my old roommate said once, being around you is like putting
on my most comfortable sweatshirt. It just feels cozy.
It just feels good. And when you're in that realm of
just feeling good, you're with a friend, you're walking on the
beach. What could be better? Go. You're just talking about things
in life and you're not feeling any judgment and you're not
giving yourself any judgment because you feel that relaxed.
(27:18):
You might have some environments where you don't feel that relaxed,
where you might worry about judgment from others.
And then you might judge yourself more and you might say
things like, I shouldn't have worn this.
I'm wearing the wrong outfit. I should have.
I should have dressed up more. I feel so stupid here.
I should have worn nicer shoes. I don't know if
(27:39):
you can pair yourself like that when you go somewhere.
If you just think, I'm glad I'm comfortable, I go back and forth.
I love to be comfortable. I choose comfort, plain colors and
comfort over fashion 100%. Not that I have
money for fashion anyway, but
I still have regrets when I go somewhere
(28:02):
and I feel like I'm not dressed in a
way that I could have been.
And so then there's that battle, well, do you want to Come and
be all uncomfortable in your boots or your whatever, you
know. So are you giving yourself this conversation in your head
of, why did I do this? What's wrong with me?
Why didn't I, you know, or what? Maybe you're not even saying
(28:22):
what's wrong with me, but I shouldn't have.
I shouldn't have. And you're. If you think of having an actual
person there that's saying that many negative things to you,
at some point, you wouldn't want to be around them anymore, anymore.
And you don't want to have that voice around you anymore either,
even though it's coming from you. You want to have your voice
be a supportive one. You want to feel as comfortable
(28:46):
and confident and supported by your own voice as
you would with someone that just loves you and.
And doesn't have those expectations that you might have for yourself.
So any kind of doubts that you have in yourself,
when you have criticism, whether it's external or internal, it
(29:08):
reinforces that doubt. It makes you think, I'm not
this. I'm not enough. There's something,
you know, I'm lazy, I'm forgetful, I'm not smart.
You know, whatever it is that you're feeling down about, I
don't fit in. Whatever it is, as you say that to
(29:31):
yourself, the more you reinforce that belief, the more
that belief becomes a truth to you. And you don't.
You don't want that. You want to have a positive experience in
life and not have that negativity come in.
And if you think about how you feel, go back to being
with a friend, walking along the beach.
Maybe you don't live near a beach. Go walking up and down your
(29:55):
road in a park, wherever it is that you like to be.
And when you're in that state of mind and
you're just feeling that pure joy and relaxation, you have
a very
calm response in your body. You just are in this mode
of serotonin is flowing. I just feel good.
(30:18):
I'm just happy. And. And you're not in a
stressful state. If you are worrying, if you're
fearful, if you're
doubting all these things, your body's going into a stress
mode and you might even tighten up. Like, oh, no.
(30:39):
Have you literally ever tightened up before and just thought,
I shouldn't be here, I shouldn't be doing this?
I have. I have. And one of my greatest,
and I don't say greatest moments like the greatest show on earth,
but just like a big one that I remember and
a couple kind of a Couple big ones, but one just because it
was monumental for what I'm doing now.
(31:01):
I'm a yoga teacher. I've been teaching yoga.
I've been. Did my first certification 2014, so over 10 years.
But I taught for at least 10 years before that.
And when I stepped into that first training, I
walked in, everyone was kind of crowded in the entry room where
you sign in on the iPad to go in for class and stuff.
And I looked around and I thought you all the message
(31:24):
that came through my head was, you don't belong here,
you don't fit in, you're older than everyone,
you're probably not as good at yoga, you're probably not like
all those things. And probably wasn't even one of the words coming
into my mind. They were just all these, you can't be here,
you're not good enough. Which isn't my usual mode.
(31:46):
I'm usually a confident person, but I completely went into
a fearful mode right then and my body just tensed
up and.
And I just thought, you know, you already paid, you already paid
that part of your money for this course.
You had to, I think the training we had to pay in for payments
(32:09):
or something you can't just walk out of.
Then I had to have the voice of reason, like, come on, tough
it out. You got to do it. But that self critic
or that doubt or that fear, I think it was a
fear just kind of gripped my body and wanted to
just hold onto it. And I don't know if you've ever
(32:32):
heard
that having fear or worry is. I don't
know if this is actually true. I heard someone say this once,
that word, I think worrying. So that
would be what we're doing. We're like, I'm worried about this.
This won't work. I'm not
(32:53):
that it's in some language and I think it was a Native
American language that it's like the translation was like
a wolf choking someone. Which we don't want to think
about that. Right? But I just told you to think about it.
But just think of constricting and that's what it feels like.
You're. I can't breathe anymore. And that's why slow breathing
is helpful. Right. It's the opposite of that stress and that
(33:14):
worry and that criticism. So we don't want to shut down
the parts of our, our beings, our emotional system
that's healthy. We want to keep that strong.
We don't want to have emotional regulation worse.
We don't want to be so tense when you're More stressed, you might
not react as kindly to other people when they say things.
(33:34):
Do you ever say something and think, oh, my goodness, I wish
I was in a calmer state right then because I was just so tired
because of this. And then when they came and talked to me, it
just wasn't the right time. And I. I wish I would have had a
nicer response or. When we are in a more
stressful state, we aren't regulating our emotions, we aren't
as
(33:55):
controlled with our words and. And so having compassion
for yourself, noticing what's happening in your body,
noticing what's happening with the messages going on in your
brain or in your mind. I don't know
mind and brain, what the difference is.
But your mind has thoughts. You have the automated
(34:16):
thoughts, and you have the controlled thoughts.
So you get to be a witness to the automated thoughts.
And you can even witness the controlled thoughts, too.
But in my yoga classes, when I step back,
so I'm like, not really stepping back, so I might be doing
some yoga pose or a little flow of different poses,
(34:40):
and my brain starts going somewhere.
I'm thinking about this. I'm wishing that I wasn't
standing in this corner and that guy's mat's a little too
close, or is this person looking at me?
Because whatever's going on in my mind, if I notice
it, it's like I've just heard these thoughts.
(35:00):
Like they're almost like they're not mine, but I'm witnessing
what I'm doing. Just like I can witness, like, oh, I just
lifted my arms up. I'm witnessing this thought process going
on. And then I can either just go, yeah, let's join
that conversation and keep thinking about it and evaluate it
for a while and decide if I'm going to leave or stay or da, da,
da. Or I can evaluate that thought process
(35:25):
and decide if it's actually logical, if it's actually something
I need to be thinking about. I can shut it down.
I can just say, that's not what we're doing here.
It doesn't really matter. That person doesn't care about you,
and you don't need to care about him.
Just keep doing your yoga, you know, whatever it is.
And you can do that with whatever thought process is going
(35:45):
on in your mind. Notice it, see if it's helpful.
If it's not,
get it. Get rid of it. Get rid of it.
And sometimes it's hard to stop thinking what you're thinking.
So you can do things to disrupt that.
(36:05):
You can try to think of Something else instead.
If you can't think of something else instead, you can sing a
song. It's hard to think of something else while you're singing
a song. Well, maybe if you're in a yoga class, you can't sing
a song, but you can think a song problem when you have ADHD.
ADHD is sometimes if you think of a song, you.
It might be in your head for like four or five days.
(36:26):
Have you ever had that happen where that just a certain song's
in your mind? And I even had a couple weeks ago, I woke
up to go to the bathroom during the night.
The song was in my head right when I woke up.
Then I went right back to sleep. Woke up in the morning, right
in my head again. It's like, what is going on with my brain?
Why is this song there? Oh, my goodness.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that was the shallow song that
(36:49):
from
A Star is Born from Lady Gaga. But anyway, yeah,
the songs just. And they just come out of nowhere sometimes.
They don't come out of nowhere. I mean, that was one of the songs
I played in my yoga class, but I probably played 100 different
songs that week, so why that one? Right.
But anyway, so you can disrupt. You can disrupt this
(37:13):
cycle, this. This process of thoughts, thoughts that come up
when you want to do something, when you are in a certain
situation, when you're starting, when you're trying to be
productive and you keep telling yourself it's not good enough,
and then you can't finish because you have this perfection thing
and it's your own brain telling you something that's causing
(37:34):
that perfection, that need for perfection, or telling you it's
not good enough. That's what perfection is, right?
It's the best. It's the best, best, best, best way it could be.
And if it's not that, it's not perfect, it's not right.
Someone else is going to see it. It's really funny.
It's really funny. If you start to zone in and notice what you.
How you do that. Maybe you don't do it as much as I do,
(37:55):
but it sure can get in the way of life.
So. Yeah. And just trying to recognize
what you do for what it is. This is part of me.
I'm doing the best I can. Might not look like it to everyone,
but. Oh, well, you know. And
maybe you're not always doing the best I can.
(38:16):
I can't always do my best. That could be another thought.
You have whatever thoughts you have to support yourself.
Think of yourself as A child that you're trying to help.
And what would you say to them? Boost them up?
Think of yourself as a friend. What would you say to them to
boost them up? And when you have that compassion, it will
(38:37):
help minimize those voices. But if your brain's wired
to have those voices come in, you might just need to
get into a habit of that. Oh, yeah. So.
And the whole nervous system, you know, when I was talking about
the stress, the nervous system, the.
Am I in a better state to react to somebody calmly say nicer
(38:58):
words, to honk a horn at somebody in traffic,
or just to take a few breaths and not be
as aggressive? I, at some point decided to
only honk if someone's going to run into me, not to punish
the person that I think is doing something wrong.
(39:19):
And that might sound silly to somebody.
Punish somebody. I mean, but if you've been out in traffic, you
see people do that all the time, right?
Lay their horns on people that they.
They have no idea what's going on in their car and why they turned
left when they did. Maybe they didn't see you.
You know, they're doing their best. But if somebody's about to
run into me and I am trying to notify them, that's when I
honk. Because otherwise I'm responsible for aggravating their
(39:41):
nervous system. And maybe theirs is already wired high.
I don't know. But I don't want to be responsible for that.
So, yeah,
what else do I have? Just the idea is, if
you want to be motivated to do things that you want to
do, if you want to
(40:03):
have those. Those modes in your life of motivation,
get yourself to do things. The dopamine rewards, the yay
and the serotonin of. Now I'm in
a groove, and I'm doing this, and I feel good.
And you're not having, you know, you think of those negative
(40:23):
thoughts as kind of like poking you when you're like, I'm feeling
good and I'm relaxing. So I don't know if anybody pokes you,
but when you have kids, sometimes you're calm, relaxed, reading
a book, and, you know, like, someone bumps into you.
Or I used to lay down at the end of the day when my kids
were little, like, oh, I'm just gonna lay down on the floor.
And they'd think, oh, good. And they'd all run and jump on me.
And I'm like, that is the opposite of relaxing.
(40:44):
So I think of that is when you're giving yourself those negative
messages, it is disrupting that. And you want
to have the best brain chemistry that you can
with dopamine, serotonin, to be able to have a joyful
life, to be able to have a productive life, to be able to
(41:05):
have somewhat of an organized life, to be able to
hopefully go places when you need to.
Not be late that often or at all. That's something
that can be a challenge when you have adhd, for sure.
And it can also help you focus better if you
just tell yourself not to worry about the things, not just,
(41:28):
you know, there's real distractions like noise and what else
you need to do, and there's ways to manage that.
But if it's your own doubts getting in the way, then you
can shift your focus away from that by adding a positive
thought instead. Or, you know, giving yourself a reality check
or breathing or whatever it is to help you out.
(41:49):
I know we're always breathing, but breathing more calmly.
But what are some outcomes from having more
compassion? We know what, it's just kind of the
opposite of the outcomes of not having compassion.
Right? Fewer meltdowns. Like, do you
(42:11):
ever have a meltdown of like, I can't believe this, you know,
or upset about something? I don't know.
Meltdown sounds a little more like a maybe a child, but you
can have one. It could be emotional meltdown.
It could be barely holding it together.
All those things that.
(42:32):
That are part of life, but you can prevent them by
not feeling as critical like it might be.
Holidays are coming up. What is your expectation of yourself?
What is your family's expectation of you for what you do
to make the holidays nice? Is that something that you do
as women? That is something that we do.
(42:52):
And if your turkey doesn't turn out like
you want. All of those things that I've been dealing with
the past few years, I think my legs are falling asleep, I gotta
switch home sitting. But all of those things can
make it so we don't enjoy the whole reason for the
(43:13):
season, whether it's Christmas or Thanksgiving or whatever,
you have to not have the same expectation.
Build your.
Create your reality. I don't know if I'm completely getting off
topic right now, but sometimes not have the expectation
(43:33):
in the first place of what you need to do
and think, I have to do it a certain way.
That could be a pressure that you're getting.
Maybe it's not a negative thing, like, why can't I do it?
But I need to do it this way. I need to measure up.
I need to do that. And if it's not working for you, to
jump that high, then maybe let everyone know, I'm not going to
jump that high this year. We're going to do something different,
(43:56):
not jumping as high anymore. People.
I'm not as young as I used to be. I can't even sit like this
for very long. I wore my shoes while I was.
I sit on the floor. Those of you listening on audio, which is
almost all of you, I sit on the floor.
I'm going to. I'm gonna get on hands and knees while
I finish, which is like what we do in yoga.
But I need to move, so I'm not moving my face.
(44:16):
So hopefully it doesn't mess up the sound as much.
But, yeah,
I'm sure you can think. I'm sure you don't need me to tell
you all the reasons for having
more compassionate, more compassion for yourself,
that if you just notice when you don't have compassion
(44:38):
for yourself, maybe that's happening already today.
And give yourself some compassion right now.
Tell yourself something that you do that's great.
Be your biggest cheerleader and
recognize your greatness. You probably don't know all
of your greatness, and I only say that I don't know
(45:00):
if I'm older than a lot of you. I'm probably older than a lot
of you, but maybe not.
You probably recognize a lot of your greatness, but you don't
talk about it like you know what you do really well, and
you've lived long enough to know when you really feel like
you're in this zone, what they call a zone of genius, or just
(45:22):
a zone of happiness, where I'm just so joyful right
now. I love to do this. And it's something
that you're good at, and it's a skill or just.
It might not be a skill like, you know, something that
can be measured in a job, but it might be a skill that you
have with other people or animals or plants or whatever.
(45:47):
Whatever it is. People are so different.
Everyone has something. Everyone has something that they're really
great at, even if it's not recognized in the world
as such. And you may recognize that and wonder, why
is nobody else recognizing it? And maybe they do, but maybe you
haven't given yourself an opportunity to do it enough to impact
(46:09):
other people. And maybe you stop whatever it is that's
stopping you. Stop whatever's stopping you.
Notice that resistance and resist that resistance and get yourself
to do what you really feel like you can do to
shine. Or maybe you just tell yourself what's wonderful about
yourself. Maybe you have a really fabulous sense of humor and
(46:32):
make yourself laugh all the time. And you have a few friends
who laugh when they're with you all the time, hysterically.
But there are other people around you who don't, who don't laugh
at anything you say. They don't get your sense of humor.
And you might feel like, why am I not as funny as this
person? Maybe you're not trying to be funny, but you're just
trying to have fun and no one's laughing or what you're saying
is falling flat. And I'm just raising my hand when I
(46:54):
say this because sometimes this happens to me.
But I do have a few people that when I'm around them, it's hilarious.
And sometimes I laugh at things that I find
very, very clever. And I can just enjoy that with myself.
Whatever brand of what I think is funny can be funny.
I can appreciate that. I can enjoy it and I can
(47:15):
recognize it and give myself some props for it.
And that might sound like a silly thing, but there might be things
that you do that are really amazing that other people aren't
recognizing. And you could just recognize it.
You could just be the one, the only one that gives you the gold
medal for that and tells you, yeah, maybe there's five other
people on the planet that do this too.
(47:36):
But I can, and it's amazing that I do.
You know, you don't have to be the only person, you don't have
to be the absolute best, but you can be amazing at it.
And I think that's the thing is we just, we compare, compare,
compare in the world and we recognize this, we give medals for
that and awards and academy awards and shows and, and
everyone's the best. And you know, and then, you know, we
(47:56):
start to realize, you know, am I like not doing anything
with my life? No, you're doing something with your life.
And you have amazing gifts and cherish those, appreciate those.
Tell yourself it's amazing that I do that.
Even if it feels weird to talk to other
people about it or no one else is saying anything,
(48:18):
you can still appreciate that and feel good about it.
And there may be things that other people have told you that
you didn't even know that you did or you didn't even
know was a gift. And it can be interesting
to have a. Oh, what's it called?
(48:39):
It's like a meeting. I only. Okay, it's not.
I'm not really a businessy person. I was a stay at home mom and
really just had conversations with friends, you know, college,
high school, Grade school moms. And then I
worked, I worked full time and did I ever have part time
(49:00):
job, I guess in college and high school and stuff.
But it wasn't until I started having more of an
entrepreneurial brain of I want to do this, I
want to do that, I want to do this. And that can be part
of your ADHD brain. So have these ideas and think, if
other people are doing it, why can't I do it?
I could have a podcast, I could do this, I could whatever, seeing
(49:22):
the possibilities and you can have an idea.
So this is where I learned this about feedback
from other people is a lot of times they see things
that weren't necessarily your goals or your aims or
how you saw it as structured, but they saw the
(49:43):
impact, they saw the gift, gift that you have.
And, and so I guess it could go
along with, you know, with, with a business.
You think of defining your niche. And I know some
people say niche, but I'm going to say niche because I like niche
better. So you're defining your niche and you're thinking, what
(50:05):
is my, what is my thing? What do I do when I'm
a yoga teacher? What is my thing? Or if you're a, what
are you doing? What is your job? What is your passion?
I am this or that or that. It doesn't have to
be a money making job. It could be service, it can be volunteer
work, it could be helping out at a school, it could be within
(50:25):
your own home, whatever that is. How do you see
yourself giving and your impact in that situation?
Maybe it's I love to sew and when I sew I
make quilts and then I give quilts to people and blah blah, blah,
blah. And you have an idea of what you do and
what you do well and what you want to do with it.
(50:46):
Or maybe you're still trying to figure it out.
I kind of am still too. But at times when I've
met with a couple different friends about this and getting
this feedback, whatever that kind of meetings is that
I can't even think of. You're getting this back and forth of.
She tells me what she's thinking of doing and I say I
(51:09):
like that and you could give that. You know, we're sharing ideas
and then she tells me what I see as your
gift when you teach is this, this and this.
Or someone would come up to me at the end of my class and
say, I love your class because you're so nurturing.
Like, did I ever think I'm going to become a nurturing Teacher?
(51:32):
No, no. But I was. Or is. I
is. I am a nurturing teacher, I guess, for
some people. I love to play. Really.
I love to play fun music in my classes, too.
So lately I've gotten a little. I wouldn't say a little
feedback. You know how I said a negative comment can sound louder
(51:54):
than. Than the positive comments? I got some feedback last
week on my music choices. And it can be
lively, but sometimes it's peaceful and I need to be
myself when I teach. That's just what I've decided.
But anyway.
But yeah, sometimes other people will teach you what
(52:15):
your gifts are when they share with you what
they see when you do things, and that can be helpful,
too. So having those kind of conversations with friends or
relatives, and you can set that up however you
want in a business situation. That's why it seemed to come more
natural with that kind of situation of this is what I'm
(52:37):
thinking of doing, what I can offer.
Well, what I see you offering and what I think you do great at
is, you know, so that came more naturally.
Whereas if you're just with a friend, what do you think I'm good
at? I mean, you could ask them that if that's what you want
to pursue or what. I don't know. I
don't know how to do that. There's different situations.
I guess you could suggest it at your next birthday party, but
(53:01):
there are those. There's that tradition at birthday parties where.
Where everyone goes around the room and they say something nice
about you. Sometimes you learn things about yourself that you.
Or you hear things from people that you never ever thought they
thought of you. And maybe there's some kind of
(53:22):
gathering you could do with friends where you just give positive,
uplifting support to each other. Like that one game
that I played once. I don't know if I shared it on here, but
we were in a room of people, a room of women, and we
all had a piece of paper, and we wrote our names at
the top of the paper, and then we passed it to
(53:45):
the person on the left. And the next person wrote at the very
bottom a sentence about me, because I just wrote.
So she can still see at the top it's my name, and at the bottom
she writes a sentence about me. And then she folds that up
so the next person doesn't see it. And then that person writes
on that folded part and they fold it up.
And I guess you could technically see what everyone sees.
(54:05):
But to me, that's kind of like when you get a yearbook and
everyone writes in the yearbook, I tended to see what, you
know, see what other people wrote in people's yearbook.
Like, you don't want to copy and say, see you next year.
Have a great year, or whatever. You know, you're a great friend.
You try to. Or even a wedding album or something.
You don't want to write the same thing as everybody else, you
know, so here I am comparing again, but I'm also trying not
(54:27):
to duplicate. But. But it's amazing to hear
what people really think when they share with you, because that
doesn't happen all the time in life.
You might hear negative things. You might sense negative things
by how people respond to you. But when you're in a
situation where they can give you positive feedback or they
(54:48):
do come up and. Like, I teach yoga, so I
do have people come up and tell me what they like about my classes.
But every once in a while, I. I, you know, like the woman with
the music. And I've taught long enough that I've learned
my music might not be for everybody.
And some days you may come and it might be more mellow.
But for every person who wishes my music was
(55:12):
more mellow, there are people who love that it's lively.
So it's not like I'm trying to please everyone, but I'm trying
to find something that I love, that most of the people
love too, you know, that they enjoy that.
So we can all enjoy class together. Anyway.
Anyway. Anyway. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(55:33):
I think that's it. I always write things at the beginning
and I can never find it
later. But, you know, that's life. That's one
of my things. I'm just going to say that's life.
Whatever your little sentence can be to support yourself, that's.
That's life. I'm just doing what I can.
(55:54):
I'm just waking up. Remember Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle?
Have you watched it as many times as I have?
I just wake up and put each foot on the floor
and put my shoes on, and I don't know
if that's exactly what he said. I've seen that movie enough.
I should know what he says. But Tom Hanks.
Okay, I don't want Mikey wait, because then I'll have to look
(56:16):
up the quote and. But, you know, he just, you know, like,
what are you gonna do? Well, I'm just gonna wake up again and,
you know, sit up out of bed and put my feet down.
Take one foot in the. You know, we just.
We just go through life and do the. Do what we can
and see what happens. Because sometimes we're surprised, sometimes
(56:38):
we're frustrated. Yeah. Having a little more
distance from what you do is helpful.
Even when I teach balance poses in a yoga class.
And we don't always stay up in tree pose.
Even if you've done tree pose a million times, if you're new
to it, especially maybe not staying straight up or, you
(56:59):
know, without tipping over or whatever.
And some days totally balanced, other days not.
And getting frustrated with it will not help you be better
balanced. It won't help you do tree pose better.
So just, I. I just look at it as a curious.
From a curiosity standpoint. I wonder how I'm going to do today.
(57:19):
Because it is kind of interesting when you can do something physically.
Like you have the muscle structure, the bone structure, your
body knows what to do. You're strong enough, you haven't been
injured lately, all those things. But one day you step
on your mat, something's going on in your mind, who knows
what, and you don't do it right. You fall over, you know, you
(57:40):
can't hold it for anything. It's good to learn
things like that because then you don't have expectations that
it. That just because you did something before, you're going
to be able to do it again. And especially just because someone
else can do it, that you should be able to do it too.
But anyway, I think that is it. I think this has
actually been a longer one, 58 minutes of recording.
(58:04):
Oh, my goodness. Thank you for listening and being here.
And if you have to do this in two or three parts, thank you
for making it to the end. I'm glad you were here
and.
And I think I'm just gonna let it be there.
I'm not going to tell you anything fancy at the end because I
can't think of anything. So take care and I'll be back.
(58:26):
Bye.
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
(59:02):
Rewind I run out of time to sing
Melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me
(59:23):
Sa.
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with ADHD.
Renee. I'm Renee Allen, the host of my podcast.
I'm excited to be here today. I am laughing because there
are ironies that come with adhd and I'm just recognizing one,
and that is giving yourself, myself, positive feedback,
(00:51):
positive self talk, not criticism, but compassion.
Telling yourself you're doing just fine, all those things.
And laughing because I just started this podcast.
Well, I've made. I always do a few, you know, hello, welcome.
You know, see how I do. See how the sound sounds, See if I
mess up on my words. But I made one.
(01:12):
I saw a few flaws. I started thinking, am I even
saying the right thing? I was giving myself self criticism.
As I started to talk to you about letting go of
self criticism, it comes constantly.
It can come constantly. It is more of a go
(01:34):
to for our brains to feel rejected and to
invite that in or to let that stick than it is
to stay in a place of feeling positive
and supporting yourself. Why is this?
Why is this? Well, let's see. Let's read about it.
I'm going to read about it because I have some notes here, but
(01:56):
I just lost my notes. Where did they go?
Somehow I expanded this. Okay, here I go.
Okay. So when you have an ADHD brain,
it is possible that you are. You have brain
wiring that makes you more prone to being sensitive,
(02:16):
that makes you more prone to feeling like you need
to do things a certain way and feeling bad about yourself,
feeling rejected, having that sensitivity, whether it's actual
RSD rejection, sensitive dysphoria, or you just perceive
failure more often than others. And all of this
(02:40):
can lead to criticism. You are seeing yourself maybe in an
inaccurate light, just like people who have body, body,
body dysmorphia, where they look in the mirror and
see themselves. And you might be thinking, I've done that before,
or I tend to do that. I don't know how common
(03:03):
it is or how rare it is, but it seems like
a lot of people see themselves differently than others do.
You see a picture of yourself and you just think, like, why can't
I take a good picture? That's such a bad angle.
This or that. See yourself in an outfit in the mirror and think,
oh, it doesn't look good on me. And you're seeing
(03:26):
something that maybe isn't what everyone else is seeing.
Part of that is because you might be more critical of yourself
than others are. You might have a standard that's unreasonable,
not accurate. And I'm just talking body right now
because that's an easy Thing to measure of I'm not as
(03:47):
tall as this person. My legs aren't as long as that person's,
or I'm not as this as that person. It's really interesting when
you hear what somebody else thinks about themselves that they
worry about, might be the shape of their eyebrows or
my lips are too thin or whatever it is.
(04:07):
And you think, I never would have thought that about you.
I like your eyebrows. I like your. You know, you.
You realize that the. The. The brain that they live
in is different than what anybody else is seeing.
You know what they worry about. And you might do the same thing.
You might think, I don't like the way
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this looks, or I don't like the way that looks.
You might listen to your voice and think, I don't like the way
my voice. Sou. Have you ever thought that it used to be
more common when people used to have tape recorders.
I mean, now everyone has a phone, so you know what your voice
sounds like. But it used to be kind of a surprise when you had
a tape recorder and you. And then you heard your voice, and it's
like, oh, I sound so nasally, or, you know, all those things
that sounded different. And maybe it wasn't a good quality tape
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recorder. Who knows? But I remember thinking that.
I remember seeing pictures of myself and years ago in college
and thinking, why didn't anybody tell me my hair looked like
that? Like, I didn't know it was so thin.
I didn't know it was so this. I didn't know.
And nobody else was worried about it but me.
So you might have a perception of yourself that you're
(05:12):
more sensitive to or that's not accurate,
and you need to find a way to fight that
so that you're not criticizing yourself all the time or not feeling
down. You might also feel more expectations.
Societal pressure for women. Women can be.
(05:34):
To be organized. My home is so organized.
I'm such a good cook. I'm on top of everything.
I can do it all. There's the idea of, can you
do it all? Yes, you can do it all. Maybe a few people
can do it all. My belief is that no one can do it all.
That anybody who's doing it all with my quote fingers, there's
(05:56):
something falling apart. There has to be.
No one can do it all. We're just humans.
We all have 24 hours in the day, and we need to sleep some of
that time. We need some downtime. We can't go full force all
the time. So I don't really Believe everyone can do it all.
You know, when you. When you hear about everyone's successes,
you're not seeing the whole picture, right?
And not that we want to see people have problems too, or fail,
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or things that fall apart, but when we measure ourselves
or we have an expectation or we feel the need
to be able to have dinner cooked every day, instead
of telling yourself that a smoothie is okay, here's my
smoothie. It has so many fruits in it and vegetables
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and powders and proteins and things.
But yeah, maybe a. A warm, hot meal
would be good for dinner, but that's probably going to be my
dinner. We'll see. We'll see. But I'm not having
that expectation. I let go of that expectation a long time ago
to have a dinner. If that was what we did in our family, if
we were doing that, and I got tired of doing it.
(07:02):
Maybe people take turns cooking dinner.
Somebody else likes cooking dinner more, or maybe I love it.
You know, there's times that I do love it, or there used to be
times that I loved it. I'm trying to think of a time now that
I love it. It's not quite there anymore.
But having that idea that you need to be a certain way can
also make you more critical of yourself.
Like, I couldn't even do this. Other people do that.
(07:24):
Why can't I do this? Well, there might be a reason you can't
do that. It might be an actual physical reason.
With your brain, your body, your life, your circumstances, whatever,
let yourself feel supported instead of criticized.
Don't add that weight to yourself. Or if you have other
(07:45):
challenges, like, why do I forget this?
Why do I get overwhelmed? Why do I have a day when
I have a lot of time to do something and I didn't do
anything, I didn't do any of the things that I wanted to do?
You can look at that and just criticize, criticize, criticize.
Or you can look at it, give yourself grace.
(08:07):
You can look at it as, what can I do differently if I
don't want it to be that way again? But feeling awful about
yourself, telling yourself that you're a loser, what's
wrong with me? Any of those things, if you've ever
had that come across your brain, or this isn't good
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enough, I can't do this. All of that, that could be your
reality of what the tendencies are in your brain.
And if you think about things that other people have told you
in your life, you've probably had some.
Some compliments, and you might remember some of
those Compliments. Somebody told me this once.
I didn't know that about myself. And it might be something that
(08:49):
a lot of people recognize about you and you don't see it.
So when you hear those compliments, give them to yourself again.
Not that you have to just live off of everyone's compliments
all the time, but try to see yourself in that
light that other people do, because you can't see yourself all
the time. Right? Also, think about when people have criticized
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you, if they've been critical or they've insulted you or said
something that was hard to hear, that can
stick with you longer. Because hurt, things that
hurt do hurt. They could take a while, while to heal.
And no, not everyone's gonna love and adore
(09:30):
us, and not everyone's gonna be kind.
But if you think about how impactful that can be
to hear unkind words, critical words from other
people, it also causes damage within yourself.
It causes damage within yourself. So you don't want to keep
giving yourself messages. You need to catch yourself.
(09:53):
Like I did when I was. When I kept second guessing myself when
I was actually had the sound, everything, the setup here ready
to go. And I'm saying that as I check, is
it really going? Is the audio really going?
Because I've got audio and video going on two different computers.
But when you stop yourself and tell yourself,
it gets in the way of being able to do what you need to do.
(10:15):
I used to do that when I first started making yoga videos.
If I am teaching a live class and there's people there, I
go on, I say hello, and I start teaching.
I don't even think about, is this right or good
or not. I mean, I might fumble. Like, today I taught a
hot yoga class with real people in a real room and
stuff. And this is a room, but, you know, it's a.
(10:37):
It's a room for recording. So. But I was teaching this
class, and I messed up on some words.
It wasn't just like the left side and the right side.
I was saying. I was trying to say, bring the back foot
to the front, but I kept saying, bring the front foot
to the back, but our foot was back, so I.
I caught it. But then when I went to say it right,
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I said it the same way I said it the first time, even though
my brain knew I said it wrong. And my brain knew
what it needed to say. And if I was making a
recording, I probably would have thought, nope, not perfect.
Why did I mess that up? Yeah, I'm 20 minutes into class, but
I'm going To start over. It's not good enough.
(11:19):
That's not real life. Real life is mistakes happen.
And when we're living our lives and mistakes happen, we need
to recognize other people have their challenges.
These are mine. And here I go. Here I go.
Oh, yeah. And even just. I was thinking about
this today. Even just looking at, yeah, it might
(11:42):
be this bad at this time, but look at, look at when
it gets better. And sometimes it's kind of funny
because if you've ever had things that you dread
doing, you know you need to do but you don't get
working on. And it might be for a week, it might be for
a month, it might be for years. Like I told you with
(12:03):
my podcast, I wanted to do this for at least five years
before I ever made a recording. I'd say more like six or
seven, but I didn't actually count. But if you
have something that you can't get yourself to do, for
whatever reason, you might make efforts, but you can't get yourself
to do. And my best way of describing it is I can't
(12:24):
wrap my head around it. There's probably a scientific way.
There's the brain wiring's a little frayed and it's just not
happening. Or I haven't found a way to calm myself or
ignore the other things going on in my life to do that.
And that was recently with returns. I order things
(12:45):
from Amazon and I return things from Amazon.
I do it with other companies, too, but that seems to be my
big one. And they're good about returns, and they give you
options. They give you a QR code, they give you a label.
You can drop it off with the label on it.
You can bring it into scan at Whole Foods or
UPS store, and you get to choose which one.
(13:06):
And, you know, it changes from time to time, but you get to know
the system. It's not too complicated.
But if you let those returns pile up, especially at
Christmas time, and I have a theory, it's probably not that
advanced, probably not that advanced of a theory, but I have
a theory that at Christmas time, the reason that they give you
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two months, three months to do returns instead of 30 days, if
30 days is their policy, I don't know exactly what their policy
is because I, you know, some stores, it's 30, sometimes 60.
I think Target used to be 90. I'm a big return person.
I've gotten used to, you know, different policies and what they
are, because when I'm not honoring it, that's when I'm told,
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well, this is past 90 days. And that's when I tend to learn
what the day is, even though it's up on the board behind them.
But
I think at Christmas time they do that partially so that you
can shop early and not worry because they're not going to get
that gift maybe for two months. If you're buying it now, even
longer, right? Or Black Friday or whatever.
(14:08):
And then Christmas comes. You might be traveling, you might not
have time, you need time to return it.
But I also think they hope you just kind of forget about it.
And then the longer you wait, the more you're, you know,
you think I've got all the time in the world and you don't get
it done. But since June, so what are we?
We're September, June, July, September.
Wait, July, August, September. So three months right now
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Amazon has a 30 day policy and I have known in
the back of my mind, you need to return this, you need
to return this, you need to return this.
And I'll see. You know something that I need to return, it
might be some shorts that I bought for hot yoga and
they didn't fit right. Bought two sizes, neither fit right.
So I'm going to send it back. A couple other things.
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This didn't work out. I'm going to send that back.
I'm going to send that back. Well, time's gone by and today I
thought you need to look, you need to at least look and see
if you've lost access to the QR code.
Because I have learned, and this isn't really a tutorial about
Amazon, but it can be, I've learned that when the QR code
says use this by this date, the QR code will still work
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past that date and you can take it in.
And
it might not be available on your app to see
it, but if you print it out, it could still work.
So I've learned that and it's also usually available on the app,
on your phone after. But a lot of times I'll make a screenshot
or something because I don't like to be the fumbling person in
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UPS looking through for the QR code.
I'd rather use a little bit of paper, print out the QR
code and just tape it. You know, like I, I actually make
a Google Doc. So this, this is where I'm going with this is I
go from not doing it all for three months to having
a meticulous hyper focus system. So once I saw
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today you not only have one item, but four items that
don't show the QR code anymore. And you didn't even go
to the trouble of printing those out and tape them, taping them
on before. Long ago. I just thought, you have time,
you have time, you have time. So. And you think I'd
learn because earlier in the year, I made another order not
(16:21):
with Amazon, went past the time, could not return the items,
and bought more things than I needed.
Some of them fit, but I just bought multiples to try on different
sizes and colors. I'm learning what not to do, because if
I can't be organized about rain returns, I can't be.
I can't make my closet a try on, you know, what do
you call it? A. A dressing room. I can't to send everything back.
(16:42):
But back to. This is. I was laughing today because
1. Here I am in this situation. I wasn't laughing at
first. It was like, oh, no, this is one of those things they
call it the ADHD tax, where you're paying more in life.
You're getting penalized for something that you couldn't stay
on top of. Remember, there were a few of the returns I
(17:05):
didn't even know I hadn't returned. I thought, oh, I forgot about
that. I thought I did return that. So I had those
things. But I've also learned that customer service reps can
be really nice, and if you call them and it's past
the day and they'll tell you, oh, it's past the
return date, I can't do it in my system, which is the same thing
(17:25):
we find out when we try it, right? But then they put you on
hold for a while, and if you're patient, if you have the time,
they. I would say I've never not received a
late return. And
one might think that might be why you let it go
past the date. It isn't. It isn't. It's not because
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I know they'll let me later. It's just because I can't
always wrap my head around doing something that's on my mind
because I have other things to do. But I was able to
get return codes. And one thing that was really great was they're
actually giving me full value because I've had it where they
haven't, where they say, yes, we can give you a refund,
(18:07):
but it's 80% or 70% or something. So I thought
there was, you know, it was possible that there would be a penalty.
And I don't know if I've shared this with you, but the farthest
back return that I made on Amazon, and they were still
currently selling it. And I think I did find
the order in there somewhere. It was at least two years old.
(18:29):
It might have been. I might have had it for two years or three
years. And it was a podcast kit that I bought with a microphone,
a little boom arm, maybe a windscreen, you know,
some kind of microphone kit that said it was rated good.
But when I finally actually did make my podcast,
I thought, I don't want to use that microphone.
It was still new in the box. I did get a refund, but it
(18:53):
wasn't full. It wasn't for the full amount, but they were still
selling that model so they could sell it again.
I hadn't used it, I hadn't, I hadn't taken it out of
the box, but I did have it for I think three years.
But I was just kind of laughing today because I thought it'd
be really easy to fall into the trap of criticizing myself and
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saying, what is your problem? Because I was kind of
thinking that for a little bit of, you know, here you are again,
this is going to cost you money and
we can use the money for this instead, you know, all that kind
of stuff. Instead I turned it into a positive
one and there was good outcomes. Not always a good outcome, sometimes
(19:34):
you lose many. But into a positive, yeah, this happens.
But look what else happens with ADHD.
Now I'm making these little files. I've learned how to crop the
little pictures of the screenshots of the, you know, I was
so in a little meticulous method. It's not like my method was
perfect, but it was such a system was take the screenshot, write
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the item, put the little QR code, make it so I can fit
two or three, you know, three or four QR codes on my
Google Doc. Make it so I'm not wasting too much paper, but
I can print it out, tape it on, da da da, and then I'll put them
on this bag. And I turned it into my little method.
And then I became this productive person, which made me kind
of laugh because you I went from ultra non productive to very
(20:18):
hyper focused. And my son commented on this about a
year ago because he had asked me if I could take
some CDs that he grew up listening to when he went to bed
at night if I could take them and send them
to him digitally. And I thought, I don't know, because things
don't work the same, you know, like you can't just do Apple music
again. And I thought, I think there's a way to read
(20:41):
it with a CD drive and put it in a Google Drive audio,
but I don't know. And so every time I thought about it,
I'd look into it a little bit and not find an
answer or try working on it a little bit and not
find an answer. And then I'd forget about it, or probably I
forgot about it for seven or eight months before I even got as
(21:03):
far as I just talked about. And then he'd ask me again and I'd
say, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, sorry. And then I'd
kind of go through that loop, loop, loop.
I don't know if it was a whole year or what, but finally I said,
okay, I'm gonna write myself a note and I'm gonna try to figure
this out. I figured it out. And once I did, I was writing
to him. Are there any other CDs you want?
(21:23):
Oh, I could actually do this one, too.
I could actually do this. And I didn't even realize what I was
doing. I didn't recognize the pattern or anything.
But he also has ADHD. He's the one that taught me that
I had ADHD. And he said it's been
really funny watching this whole process with you because he
could recognize it, that it was forgetting, delay.
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Can't figure it out. Can't even do it unless I can
figure it out. Don't have the patience to sit down or
the time or there's some other things I need to do instead.
You know, see that go on and on and on.
And then when I did do it, I wouldn't stop.
So anything that you can look at as, why does this
happen? If you can look at just the irony
(22:14):
of it, maybe it can make you laugh if you can look at.
But there are some good things. There are.
I do need to give myself credit for when I do do things
well, too. And give yourself that support, even if
you're a klutz. I don't know if you like that word or
not. I know people don't like labels, but if you're clumsy, klutzy,
if you trip all the time, if you fall all the time, and it can
(22:35):
be frustrating and you have bruises that you don't know where
they come from, or you get injured or.
This is one of those things that when I'm talking, I feel like
I'm the only one, because I kind of the only person I know
with ADHD personally. Maybe my daughter's this way a little bit
that does this like I do. But anyway, yeah, give yourself
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credit for when you don't fall for all the times, for all the
steps that you take without falling, because you could look
at the other way. Like, I think about it so many times, like
I'm trying to be careful. I'm trying to watch my step.
And maybe you don't, maybe you don't watch your step.
Somebody who falls a lot bumps into things.
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Usually it takes a while to realize, maybe I need
to do this differently. You can't always do it differently, especially
if you're impulsive. But you can try to have control
when you are thinking about it. And that does prevent accidents.
So give yourself credit for that. Pat yourself on the back because
there are probably a lot of accidents that could have happened
(23:37):
if you weren't mindful and you were.
So that's really good. But so, yeah.
So our brains. Our brains may be a little extra
critical. Our brains may lead us to not be
able to do things as dependably as what some
(23:57):
people might call responsibly. Is it irresponsible?
That's a question, right? Is it irresponsible if you forget?
Not always. Not always. It might look irresponsible to a lot
of people and they might not have the patience for it.
Or you might have a job where they can't depend on you because
you're forgetting things, or you don't have a great
(24:20):
attention to detail that. That can help you realize, what
should I do maybe as a career or what should I
do to not require myself to be able to
have to pay attention to so many details?
What can I do to help myself out? So each time that you
have something that's not working, that's when you try to find
(24:43):
a way through it. And if not, you have to have
compassion. You have to have grace for yourself.
You have to say, I'm not irresponsible.
My brain can't remember everything. And that's okay.
We know a lot of people can't learn the same.
Not everyone can retain at all or the same.
Some details may stick with you forever.
(25:07):
The things that you're interested in, things that you're paying
attention to. That's one of the things that still kind
of bugs me when I see those posts about you're not attention
deficit if you have adhd, because that's what it literally says,
Attention deficit hyperactive disorder.
(25:27):
And then they say you're paying attention to too many things,
but you're still attention deficit. If you're paying attention
to too many things, you might be able to pay attention to the
one thing. Like when you step off of a curb and you triple.
So there's still an attention deficit.
That's my little. That's my little. My little one little,
you know, like, sliver that's in my foot.
(25:49):
That when people say things, sometimes they stick with me.
And I think I can't keep listening to the rest because I don't
agree with that to do that anyway. So what does
negative self talk do to you?
How do you feel when you're telling yourself negative things?
What does it keep you from doing?
(26:12):
Does it make it possible for you to do what you
want to do? If you don't,
if you don't have that courage? And I.
If you think about the times and the.
When you're around certain people and you have all the
confidence in the world, I hope you have people in your life
that you have all the confidence in the world.
(26:33):
You don't have to think about what you're saying.
You don't have to worry that what you know, you know what
you're saying was the wrong thing or you feel dumb
about it or not feel smart enough or not have
enough money or whatever the things are that I'm not beautiful
enough. All those not enoughs. You don't think about any
of that because it's. It's just comfortable.
(26:56):
Like my old roommate said once, being around you is like putting
on my most comfortable sweatshirt. It just feels cozy.
It just feels good. And when you're in that realm of
just feeling good, you're with a friend, you're walking on the
beach. What could be better? Go. You're just talking about things
in life and you're not feeling any judgment and you're not
giving yourself any judgment because you feel that relaxed.
(27:18):
You might have some environments where you don't feel that relaxed,
where you might worry about judgment from others.
And then you might judge yourself more and you might say
things like, I shouldn't have worn this.
I'm wearing the wrong outfit. I should have.
I should have dressed up more. I feel so stupid here.
I should have worn nicer shoes. I don't know if
(27:39):
you can pair yourself like that when you go somewhere.
If you just think, I'm glad I'm comfortable, I go back and forth.
I love to be comfortable. I choose comfort, plain colors and
comfort over fashion 100%. Not that I have
money for fashion anyway, but
I still have regrets when I go somewhere
(28:02):
and I feel like I'm not dressed in a
way that I could have been.
And so then there's that battle, well, do you want to Come and
be all uncomfortable in your boots or your whatever, you
know. So are you giving yourself this conversation in your head
of, why did I do this? What's wrong with me?
Why didn't I, you know, or what? Maybe you're not even saying
(28:22):
what's wrong with me, but I shouldn't have.
I shouldn't have. And you're. If you think of having an actual
person there that's saying that many negative things to you,
at some point, you wouldn't want to be around them anymore, anymore.
And you don't want to have that voice around you anymore either,
even though it's coming from you. You want to have your voice
be a supportive one. You want to feel as comfortable
(28:46):
and confident and supported by your own voice as
you would with someone that just loves you and.
And doesn't have those expectations that you might have for yourself.
So any kind of doubts that you have in yourself,
when you have criticism, whether it's external or internal, it
(29:08):
reinforces that doubt. It makes you think, I'm not
this. I'm not enough. There's something,
you know, I'm lazy, I'm forgetful, I'm not smart.
You know, whatever it is that you're feeling down about, I
don't fit in. Whatever it is, as you say that to
(29:31):
yourself, the more you reinforce that belief, the more
that belief becomes a truth to you. And you don't.
You don't want that. You want to have a positive experience in
life and not have that negativity come in.
And if you think about how you feel, go back to being
with a friend, walking along the beach.
Maybe you don't live near a beach. Go walking up and down your
(29:55):
road in a park, wherever it is that you like to be.
And when you're in that state of mind and
you're just feeling that pure joy and relaxation, you have
a very
calm response in your body. You just are in this mode
of serotonin is flowing. I just feel good.
(30:18):
I'm just happy. And. And you're not in a
stressful state. If you are worrying, if you're
fearful, if you're
doubting all these things, your body's going into a stress
mode and you might even tighten up. Like, oh, no.
(30:39):
Have you literally ever tightened up before and just thought,
I shouldn't be here, I shouldn't be doing this?
I have. I have. And one of my greatest,
and I don't say greatest moments like the greatest show on earth,
but just like a big one that I remember and
a couple kind of a Couple big ones, but one just because it
was monumental for what I'm doing now.
(31:01):
I'm a yoga teacher. I've been teaching yoga.
I've been. Did my first certification 2014, so over 10 years.
But I taught for at least 10 years before that.
And when I stepped into that first training, I
walked in, everyone was kind of crowded in the entry room where
you sign in on the iPad to go in for class and stuff.
And I looked around and I thought you all the message
(31:24):
that came through my head was, you don't belong here,
you don't fit in, you're older than everyone,
you're probably not as good at yoga, you're probably not like
all those things. And probably wasn't even one of the words coming
into my mind. They were just all these, you can't be here,
you're not good enough. Which isn't my usual mode.
(31:46):
I'm usually a confident person, but I completely went into
a fearful mode right then and my body just tensed
up and.
And I just thought, you know, you already paid, you already paid
that part of your money for this course.
You had to, I think the training we had to pay in for payments
(32:09):
or something you can't just walk out of.
Then I had to have the voice of reason, like, come on, tough
it out. You got to do it. But that self critic
or that doubt or that fear, I think it was a
fear just kind of gripped my body and wanted to
just hold onto it. And I don't know if you've ever
(32:32):
heard
that having fear or worry is. I don't
know if this is actually true. I heard someone say this once,
that word, I think worrying. So that
would be what we're doing. We're like, I'm worried about this.
This won't work. I'm not
(32:53):
that it's in some language and I think it was a Native
American language that it's like the translation was like
a wolf choking someone. Which we don't want to think
about that. Right? But I just told you to think about it.
But just think of constricting and that's what it feels like.
You're. I can't breathe anymore. And that's why slow breathing
is helpful. Right. It's the opposite of that stress and that
(33:14):
worry and that criticism. So we don't want to shut down
the parts of our, our beings, our emotional system
that's healthy. We want to keep that strong.
We don't want to have emotional regulation worse.
We don't want to be so tense when you're More stressed, you might
not react as kindly to other people when they say things.
(33:34):
Do you ever say something and think, oh, my goodness, I wish
I was in a calmer state right then because I was just so tired
because of this. And then when they came and talked to me, it
just wasn't the right time. And I. I wish I would have had a
nicer response or. When we are in a more
stressful state, we aren't regulating our emotions, we aren't
as
(33:55):
controlled with our words and. And so having compassion
for yourself, noticing what's happening in your body,
noticing what's happening with the messages going on in your
brain or in your mind. I don't know
mind and brain, what the difference is.
But your mind has thoughts. You have the automated
(34:16):
thoughts, and you have the controlled thoughts.
So you get to be a witness to the automated thoughts.
And you can even witness the controlled thoughts, too.
But in my yoga classes, when I step back,
so I'm like, not really stepping back, so I might be doing
some yoga pose or a little flow of different poses,
(34:40):
and my brain starts going somewhere.
I'm thinking about this. I'm wishing that I wasn't
standing in this corner and that guy's mat's a little too
close, or is this person looking at me?
Because whatever's going on in my mind, if I notice
it, it's like I've just heard these thoughts.
(35:00):
Like they're almost like they're not mine, but I'm witnessing
what I'm doing. Just like I can witness, like, oh, I just
lifted my arms up. I'm witnessing this thought process going
on. And then I can either just go, yeah, let's join
that conversation and keep thinking about it and evaluate it
for a while and decide if I'm going to leave or stay or da, da,
da. Or I can evaluate that thought process
(35:25):
and decide if it's actually logical, if it's actually something
I need to be thinking about. I can shut it down.
I can just say, that's not what we're doing here.
It doesn't really matter. That person doesn't care about you,
and you don't need to care about him.
Just keep doing your yoga, you know, whatever it is.
And you can do that with whatever thought process is going
(35:45):
on in your mind. Notice it, see if it's helpful.
If it's not,
get it. Get rid of it. Get rid of it.
And sometimes it's hard to stop thinking what you're thinking.
So you can do things to disrupt that.
(36:05):
You can try to think of Something else instead.
If you can't think of something else instead, you can sing a
song. It's hard to think of something else while you're singing
a song. Well, maybe if you're in a yoga class, you can't sing
a song, but you can think a song problem when you have ADHD.
ADHD is sometimes if you think of a song, you.
It might be in your head for like four or five days.
(36:26):
Have you ever had that happen where that just a certain song's
in your mind? And I even had a couple weeks ago, I woke
up to go to the bathroom during the night.
The song was in my head right when I woke up.
Then I went right back to sleep. Woke up in the morning, right
in my head again. It's like, what is going on with my brain?
Why is this song there? Oh, my goodness.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that was the shallow song that
(36:49):
from
A Star is Born from Lady Gaga. But anyway, yeah,
the songs just. And they just come out of nowhere sometimes.
They don't come out of nowhere. I mean, that was one of the songs
I played in my yoga class, but I probably played 100 different
songs that week, so why that one? Right.
But anyway, so you can disrupt. You can disrupt this
(37:13):
cycle, this. This process of thoughts, thoughts that come up
when you want to do something, when you are in a certain
situation, when you're starting, when you're trying to be
productive and you keep telling yourself it's not good enough,
and then you can't finish because you have this perfection thing
and it's your own brain telling you something that's causing
(37:34):
that perfection, that need for perfection, or telling you it's
not good enough. That's what perfection is, right?
It's the best. It's the best, best, best, best way it could be.
And if it's not that, it's not perfect, it's not right.
Someone else is going to see it. It's really funny.
It's really funny. If you start to zone in and notice what you.
How you do that. Maybe you don't do it as much as I do,
(37:55):
but it sure can get in the way of life.
So. Yeah. And just trying to recognize
what you do for what it is. This is part of me.
I'm doing the best I can. Might not look like it to everyone,
but. Oh, well, you know. And
maybe you're not always doing the best I can.
(38:16):
I can't always do my best. That could be another thought.
You have whatever thoughts you have to support yourself.
Think of yourself as A child that you're trying to help.
And what would you say to them? Boost them up?
Think of yourself as a friend. What would you say to them to
boost them up? And when you have that compassion, it will
(38:37):
help minimize those voices. But if your brain's wired
to have those voices come in, you might just need to
get into a habit of that. Oh, yeah. So.
And the whole nervous system, you know, when I was talking about
the stress, the nervous system, the.
Am I in a better state to react to somebody calmly say nicer
(38:58):
words, to honk a horn at somebody in traffic,
or just to take a few breaths and not be
as aggressive? I, at some point decided to
only honk if someone's going to run into me, not to punish
the person that I think is doing something wrong.
(39:19):
And that might sound silly to somebody.
Punish somebody. I mean, but if you've been out in traffic, you
see people do that all the time, right?
Lay their horns on people that they.
They have no idea what's going on in their car and why they turned
left when they did. Maybe they didn't see you.
You know, they're doing their best. But if somebody's about to
run into me and I am trying to notify them, that's when I
honk. Because otherwise I'm responsible for aggravating their
(39:41):
nervous system. And maybe theirs is already wired high.
I don't know. But I don't want to be responsible for that.
So, yeah,
what else do I have? Just the idea is, if
you want to be motivated to do things that you want to
do, if you want to
(40:03):
have those. Those modes in your life of motivation,
get yourself to do things. The dopamine rewards, the yay
and the serotonin of. Now I'm in
a groove, and I'm doing this, and I feel good.
And you're not having, you know, you think of those negative
(40:23):
thoughts as kind of like poking you when you're like, I'm feeling
good and I'm relaxing. So I don't know if anybody pokes you,
but when you have kids, sometimes you're calm, relaxed, reading
a book, and, you know, like, someone bumps into you.
Or I used to lay down at the end of the day when my kids
were little, like, oh, I'm just gonna lay down on the floor.
And they'd think, oh, good. And they'd all run and jump on me.
And I'm like, that is the opposite of relaxing.
(40:44):
So I think of that is when you're giving yourself those negative
messages, it is disrupting that. And you want
to have the best brain chemistry that you can
with dopamine, serotonin, to be able to have a joyful
life, to be able to have a productive life, to be able to
(41:05):
have somewhat of an organized life, to be able to
hopefully go places when you need to.
Not be late that often or at all. That's something
that can be a challenge when you have adhd, for sure.
And it can also help you focus better if you
just tell yourself not to worry about the things, not just,
(41:28):
you know, there's real distractions like noise and what else
you need to do, and there's ways to manage that.
But if it's your own doubts getting in the way, then you
can shift your focus away from that by adding a positive
thought instead. Or, you know, giving yourself a reality check
or breathing or whatever it is to help you out.
(41:49):
I know we're always breathing, but breathing more calmly.
But what are some outcomes from having more
compassion? We know what, it's just kind of the
opposite of the outcomes of not having compassion.
Right? Fewer meltdowns. Like, do you
(42:11):
ever have a meltdown of like, I can't believe this, you know,
or upset about something? I don't know.
Meltdown sounds a little more like a maybe a child, but you
can have one. It could be emotional meltdown.
It could be barely holding it together.
All those things that.
(42:32):
That are part of life, but you can prevent them by
not feeling as critical like it might be.
Holidays are coming up. What is your expectation of yourself?
What is your family's expectation of you for what you do
to make the holidays nice? Is that something that you do
as women? That is something that we do.
(42:52):
And if your turkey doesn't turn out like
you want. All of those things that I've been dealing with
the past few years, I think my legs are falling asleep, I gotta
switch home sitting. But all of those things can
make it so we don't enjoy the whole reason for the
(43:13):
season, whether it's Christmas or Thanksgiving or whatever,
you have to not have the same expectation.
Build your.
Create your reality. I don't know if I'm completely getting off
topic right now, but sometimes not have the expectation
(43:33):
in the first place of what you need to do
and think, I have to do it a certain way.
That could be a pressure that you're getting.
Maybe it's not a negative thing, like, why can't I do it?
But I need to do it this way. I need to measure up.
I need to do that. And if it's not working for you, to
jump that high, then maybe let everyone know, I'm not going to
jump that high this year. We're going to do something different,
(43:56):
not jumping as high anymore. People.
I'm not as young as I used to be. I can't even sit like this
for very long. I wore my shoes while I was.
I sit on the floor. Those of you listening on audio, which is
almost all of you, I sit on the floor.
I'm going to. I'm gonna get on hands and knees while
I finish, which is like what we do in yoga.
But I need to move, so I'm not moving my face.
(44:16):
So hopefully it doesn't mess up the sound as much.
But, yeah,
I'm sure you can think. I'm sure you don't need me to tell
you all the reasons for having
more compassionate, more compassion for yourself,
that if you just notice when you don't have compassion
(44:38):
for yourself, maybe that's happening already today.
And give yourself some compassion right now.
Tell yourself something that you do that's great.
Be your biggest cheerleader and
recognize your greatness. You probably don't know all
of your greatness, and I only say that I don't know
(45:00):
if I'm older than a lot of you. I'm probably older than a lot
of you, but maybe not.
You probably recognize a lot of your greatness, but you don't
talk about it like you know what you do really well, and
you've lived long enough to know when you really feel like
you're in this zone, what they call a zone of genius, or just
(45:22):
a zone of happiness, where I'm just so joyful right
now. I love to do this. And it's something
that you're good at, and it's a skill or just.
It might not be a skill like, you know, something that
can be measured in a job, but it might be a skill that you
have with other people or animals or plants or whatever.
(45:47):
Whatever it is. People are so different.
Everyone has something. Everyone has something that they're really
great at, even if it's not recognized in the world
as such. And you may recognize that and wonder, why
is nobody else recognizing it? And maybe they do, but maybe you
haven't given yourself an opportunity to do it enough to impact
(46:09):
other people. And maybe you stop whatever it is that's
stopping you. Stop whatever's stopping you.
Notice that resistance and resist that resistance and get yourself
to do what you really feel like you can do to
shine. Or maybe you just tell yourself what's wonderful about
yourself. Maybe you have a really fabulous sense of humor and
(46:32):
make yourself laugh all the time. And you have a few friends
who laugh when they're with you all the time, hysterically.
But there are other people around you who don't, who don't laugh
at anything you say. They don't get your sense of humor.
And you might feel like, why am I not as funny as this
person? Maybe you're not trying to be funny, but you're just
trying to have fun and no one's laughing or what you're saying
is falling flat. And I'm just raising my hand when I
(46:54):
say this because sometimes this happens to me.
But I do have a few people that when I'm around them, it's hilarious.
And sometimes I laugh at things that I find
very, very clever. And I can just enjoy that with myself.
Whatever brand of what I think is funny can be funny.
I can appreciate that. I can enjoy it and I can
(47:15):
recognize it and give myself some props for it.
And that might sound like a silly thing, but there might be things
that you do that are really amazing that other people aren't
recognizing. And you could just recognize it.
You could just be the one, the only one that gives you the gold
medal for that and tells you, yeah, maybe there's five other
people on the planet that do this too.
(47:36):
But I can, and it's amazing that I do.
You know, you don't have to be the only person, you don't have
to be the absolute best, but you can be amazing at it.
And I think that's the thing is we just, we compare, compare,
compare in the world and we recognize this, we give medals for
that and awards and academy awards and shows and, and
everyone's the best. And you know, and then, you know, we
(47:56):
start to realize, you know, am I like not doing anything
with my life? No, you're doing something with your life.
And you have amazing gifts and cherish those, appreciate those.
Tell yourself it's amazing that I do that.
Even if it feels weird to talk to other
people about it or no one else is saying anything,
(48:18):
you can still appreciate that and feel good about it.
And there may be things that other people have told you that
you didn't even know that you did or you didn't even
know was a gift. And it can be interesting
to have a. Oh, what's it called?
(48:39):
It's like a meeting. I only. Okay, it's not.
I'm not really a businessy person. I was a stay at home mom and
really just had conversations with friends, you know, college,
high school, Grade school moms. And then I
worked, I worked full time and did I ever have part time
(49:00):
job, I guess in college and high school and stuff.
But it wasn't until I started having more of an
entrepreneurial brain of I want to do this, I
want to do that, I want to do this. And that can be part
of your ADHD brain. So have these ideas and think, if
other people are doing it, why can't I do it?
I could have a podcast, I could do this, I could whatever, seeing
(49:22):
the possibilities and you can have an idea.
So this is where I learned this about feedback
from other people is a lot of times they see things
that weren't necessarily your goals or your aims or
how you saw it as structured, but they saw the
(49:43):
impact, they saw the gift, gift that you have.
And, and so I guess it could go
along with, you know, with, with a business.
You think of defining your niche. And I know some
people say niche, but I'm going to say niche because I like niche
better. So you're defining your niche and you're thinking, what
(50:05):
is my, what is my thing? What do I do when I'm
a yoga teacher? What is my thing? Or if you're a, what
are you doing? What is your job? What is your passion?
I am this or that or that. It doesn't have to
be a money making job. It could be service, it can be volunteer
work, it could be helping out at a school, it could be within
(50:25):
your own home, whatever that is. How do you see
yourself giving and your impact in that situation?
Maybe it's I love to sew and when I sew I
make quilts and then I give quilts to people and blah blah, blah,
blah. And you have an idea of what you do and
what you do well and what you want to do with it.
(50:46):
Or maybe you're still trying to figure it out.
I kind of am still too. But at times when I've
met with a couple different friends about this and getting
this feedback, whatever that kind of meetings is that
I can't even think of. You're getting this back and forth of.
She tells me what she's thinking of doing and I say I
(51:09):
like that and you could give that. You know, we're sharing ideas
and then she tells me what I see as your
gift when you teach is this, this and this.
Or someone would come up to me at the end of my class and
say, I love your class because you're so nurturing.
Like, did I ever think I'm going to become a nurturing Teacher?
(51:32):
No, no. But I was. Or is. I
is. I am a nurturing teacher, I guess, for
some people. I love to play. Really.
I love to play fun music in my classes, too.
So lately I've gotten a little. I wouldn't say a little
feedback. You know how I said a negative comment can sound louder
(51:54):
than. Than the positive comments? I got some feedback last
week on my music choices. And it can be
lively, but sometimes it's peaceful and I need to be
myself when I teach. That's just what I've decided.
But anyway.
But yeah, sometimes other people will teach you what
(52:15):
your gifts are when they share with you what
they see when you do things, and that can be helpful,
too. So having those kind of conversations with friends or
relatives, and you can set that up however you
want in a business situation. That's why it seemed to come more
natural with that kind of situation of this is what I'm
(52:37):
thinking of doing, what I can offer.
Well, what I see you offering and what I think you do great at
is, you know, so that came more naturally.
Whereas if you're just with a friend, what do you think I'm good
at? I mean, you could ask them that if that's what you want
to pursue or what. I don't know. I
don't know how to do that. There's different situations.
I guess you could suggest it at your next birthday party, but
(53:01):
there are those. There's that tradition at birthday parties where.
Where everyone goes around the room and they say something nice
about you. Sometimes you learn things about yourself that you.
Or you hear things from people that you never ever thought they
thought of you. And maybe there's some kind of
(53:22):
gathering you could do with friends where you just give positive,
uplifting support to each other. Like that one game
that I played once. I don't know if I shared it on here, but
we were in a room of people, a room of women, and we
all had a piece of paper, and we wrote our names at
the top of the paper, and then we passed it to
(53:45):
the person on the left. And the next person wrote at the very
bottom a sentence about me, because I just wrote.
So she can still see at the top it's my name, and at the bottom
she writes a sentence about me. And then she folds that up
so the next person doesn't see it. And then that person writes
on that folded part and they fold it up.
And I guess you could technically see what everyone sees.
(54:05):
But to me, that's kind of like when you get a yearbook and
everyone writes in the yearbook, I tended to see what, you
know, see what other people wrote in people's yearbook.
Like, you don't want to copy and say, see you next year.
Have a great year, or whatever. You know, you're a great friend.
You try to. Or even a wedding album or something.
You don't want to write the same thing as everybody else, you
know, so here I am comparing again, but I'm also trying not
(54:27):
to duplicate. But. But it's amazing to hear
what people really think when they share with you, because that
doesn't happen all the time in life.
You might hear negative things. You might sense negative things
by how people respond to you. But when you're in a
situation where they can give you positive feedback or they
(54:48):
do come up and. Like, I teach yoga, so I
do have people come up and tell me what they like about my classes.
But every once in a while, I. I, you know, like the woman with
the music. And I've taught long enough that I've learned
my music might not be for everybody.
And some days you may come and it might be more mellow.
But for every person who wishes my music was
(55:12):
more mellow, there are people who love that it's lively.
So it's not like I'm trying to please everyone, but I'm trying
to find something that I love, that most of the people
love too, you know, that they enjoy that.
So we can all enjoy class together. Anyway.
Anyway. Anyway. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(55:33):
I think that's it. I always write things at the beginning
and I can never find it
later. But, you know, that's life. That's one
of my things. I'm just going to say that's life.
Whatever your little sentence can be to support yourself, that's.
That's life. I'm just doing what I can.
(55:54):
I'm just waking up. Remember Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle?
Have you watched it as many times as I have?
I just wake up and put each foot on the floor
and put my shoes on, and I don't know
if that's exactly what he said. I've seen that movie enough.
I should know what he says. But Tom Hanks.
Okay, I don't want Mikey wait, because then I'll have to look
(56:16):
up the quote and. But, you know, he just, you know, like,
what are you gonna do? Well, I'm just gonna wake up again and,
you know, sit up out of bed and put my feet down.
Take one foot in the. You know, we just.
We just go through life and do the. Do what we can
and see what happens. Because sometimes we're surprised, sometimes
(56:38):
we're frustrated. Yeah. Having a little more
distance from what you do is helpful.
Even when I teach balance poses in a yoga class.
And we don't always stay up in tree pose.
Even if you've done tree pose a million times, if you're new
to it, especially maybe not staying straight up or, you
(56:59):
know, without tipping over or whatever.
And some days totally balanced, other days not.
And getting frustrated with it will not help you be better
balanced. It won't help you do tree pose better.
So just, I. I just look at it as a curious.
From a curiosity standpoint. I wonder how I'm going to do today.
(57:19):
Because it is kind of interesting when you can do something physically.
Like you have the muscle structure, the bone structure, your
body knows what to do. You're strong enough, you haven't been
injured lately, all those things. But one day you step
on your mat, something's going on in your mind, who knows
what, and you don't do it right. You fall over, you know, you
(57:40):
can't hold it for anything. It's good to learn
things like that because then you don't have expectations that
it. That just because you did something before, you're going
to be able to do it again. And especially just because someone
else can do it, that you should be able to do it too.
But anyway, I think that is it. I think this has
actually been a longer one, 58 minutes of recording.
(58:04):
Oh, my goodness. Thank you for listening and being here.
And if you have to do this in two or three parts, thank you
for making it to the end. I'm glad you were here
and.
And I think I'm just gonna let it be there.
I'm not going to tell you anything fancy at the end because I
can't think of anything. So take care and I'll be back.
(58:26):
Bye.
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
(59:02):
Rewind I run out of time to sing
Melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me
(59:23):
Sa.
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