March 26, 2025 • 47 mins
I would love to hear from you!
Olivia Rose, success and productivity coach for women with ADHD, shares her journey of discovering how connecting mind, body, and heart wisdom can transform lives and help break free from "Wonder Woman Syndrome."
• Creativity is a superpower for those with ADHD, allowing innovative problem-solving and thinking outside conventional boundaries
• Understanding ADHD beyond stereotypes – symptoms manifest differently across genders and individuals
• The body holds wisdom our minds often ignore – learning to listen can prevent burnout and illness
• "Wonder Woman Syndrome" in modern motherhood creates impossible standards of perfection
• Small acts of self-care, like brief mindfulness practices, can dramatically improve relationships and daily experiences
• Starting mindfulness practice doesn't require perfection – even one minute daily can begin training your brain
• ADHD brains often reject routine – varying practices while maintaining consistency is key
• Breaking free from negative thought loops starts with becoming aware of the messages playing in your head
• Physical sensations provide important information about decisions – notice when you feel "calm activation"
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
Thank you for watching.
Hi everyone, I'm Nate Shearerand this is Mindforce a podcast
for love, life and learning,because your mind matters.
Today we have Olivia Rose andtoday we'll be talking about the
(00:43):
power of connecting with thewisdom in your body, heart and
mind in unison, living morefully with ADHD and breaking
free from the performance ofperfection in the modern working
motherhood, or what she likesto call the Wonder Woman
Syndrome.
So we'll start with thebackground the who, what, why
and where.
Olivia, who are you, what doyou do, why are you here and
(01:05):
where in the world are you?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
It's really good to be here.
Thanks, nate, absolutely, yeah.
So I am a woman, cisgenderedfemale, living in Denver, metro,
colorado, and I am a successand productivity coach and I
work largely not exclusively,but largely with women who
identify with ADHD.
Some are diagnosed, some areundiagnosed and some just feel
(01:27):
like the chaos of modern lifescrambles their brains a little
bit.
So, however folks identify isfine with me, because success,
productivity strategies and thatmind-body-heart connection
really can help everybody live alittle more fully.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
That's perfect.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I'm trying to see if I answered all your questions
here, just I guess I'll add atad more.
There is the most women thatcome to my practice are Gen Xers
or millennials, but I alsoserve men, business owners and
non-business owners alike.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
That's perfect.
Okay, we'll move into somewarm-up questions.
First question is what's onething about ADHD that you feel
like is a superpower Creativity.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah, we're a really creative bunch.
But you know, I didn't know.
I didn't know this about myself.
I was like I just, you know,you live in your own brain, your
own body, your own experience,so you don't know how you're
different than others.
And I was a senior leader in agovernment agency and I was a
mentor and a coach in amentoring program for younger
(02:38):
professionals and all of myprotégés would say my gosh,
you're just so creative.
Like how do you think of thingsso creatively?
And I was like I do.
You know, it's just how mybrain works.
And I started to realize andreally think about it and notice
that you know, the proverbialboulder in the road is like not
as much a problem for me butlike an opportunity to get
(02:58):
creative and do problem solving.
And so when that boulder showsup in the road, like everyone
else, at first I'm like I'mtrying to get somewhere at a
certain time or I have a certainthing to do.
It's not cool, universe.
But I'm quickly like do we geta new pathway and go around it?
Do we scale over it?
Do we get a forklift and moveit?
Do we build a pulley system?
(03:19):
And then you work in a team,you figure these things out or
you work in yourself.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
However, that goes in different conditions and things
like that and you know, eitherbeing pass or fail, and
(03:49):
something I think is really oddand kind of confusing to me,
because it feels like morerecently, everyone kind of uses
the different terms and usesthem so loosely, where it seems
like you know, if someone makesa video where they have their
hangers up in their closet andthey line them up, they say, oh,
I'm so OCD.
Or you know, if they forgetsomething, oh I'm so, I'm so ADD
.
So can you briefly talk about,like you know, how different
(04:12):
people can have differentsymptoms and things like that,
and not just because you forgetsomething.
I feel like it's being used alittle too loosely and maybe
it's good that it's not, youknow, being seen as negative as
much, and maybe that's good, butmaybe it's gone too far, I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, I think that's a really great question, and the
one thing I do want to notehere is, while I have a master's
degree in educationalpsychology, I will be really
clear here that I am not atherapist and I am not a mental
health counselor and I am nothere to diagnose you or anyone
else, and there areprofessionals that can do that.
So that is an importantdisclaimer and in my practice,
(04:48):
in my work, I really try tofocus on this idea of regardless
of how your brain works,because there are great things
about every brain, there arechallenges about every brain and
there's evolution in everybrain, regardless of what it is.
How do we use the opportunitiesof life to grow into the next
invitation of ourselves?
So to your question yeah, thereis a little bit of that, maybe
(05:13):
a lot of that in the currentnomenclature.
I hear it too, and I actuallycringe quite a bit at the OCD
one myself.
I'm a bit OCD, or excuse my OCDI just need everything to be in
order.
All human brains want to seeorder in the visual field.
When we see disorder, when wesee disorganization, even if we
don't know it, our cortisollevels go up.
(05:33):
We get a little bit anxious,all of us.
Some people have maybe morethresholds for chaos than others
.
That is certainly true.
But all human brains, all humanbrains and bodies will have an
elevation in cortisol when theenvironment is not visually
organized, regardless of whatyour tolerance is.
So it's.
I try to see it and not get asfrustrated, although I sometimes
(05:55):
do.
I'm human, but I try to see itas that person is recognizing in
themselves that they're havinga trigger moment where they need
certain things in the visualfield or auditory field, where
they hear they need things to bea certain way in order to bring
that down and feel a sense ofpeace and calm.
And so, as someone who hasworked through some anxiety and
(06:16):
depression, which are reallycommon symptoms of ADHD and we
can talk about that in a littlebit about symptom awareness but
working with my own generalizedanxiety and intermittent
depression, I will notice that Idon't get as triggered or I
don't notice that I get astriggered as the visual field,
but the auditory, what I hear,makes a real difference and
(06:39):
there are times where smallnoises that I normally wouldn't
notice make me crazy and feellike chaos and feel really
distracting and that idea ofmisophonia, certain noises
disrupting brain and creatinglike almost an itching feeling
in your body is again symptomaware, another common trait of
(06:59):
ADHD.
But my partner will actuallysay to me, are you feeling a
little stressed or a littletired?
Because I am all of a suddenannoyed by you know, the
commercial on YouTube that's alittle louder than the TV show,
or the clicking of a pen,current nomenclature and sort of
(07:22):
.
Using these frequently, I foundfor myself, when I could move
past people going, oh, I'm alittle ADD myself or I'm a
little ADHD.
I started using that as aninvitation to say to folks like
almost like a bonding moment,like OK, you're, you're, there's
something we might have incommon here a little bit, even
if not to the same extent, andthere's something going on for
(07:44):
you.
What might that be?
What needs to be put at ease inyour mind, your body, your
heart, in order for you to notfeel that your attention is
being pulled?
And there is environmentallyinduced ADHD.
The acronym is VAST and it isessentially.
You are operating as if youhave ADHD, even if your brain is
not mapped that way because ofthe influence of your life, the
(08:07):
environment, technology, the waywe live, etc.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
That's awesome.
Yeah, in a second we'll go overthe symptoms things.
I got a specific question forthat, but I'm going to put a pin
on that so we can keep rolling.
So the next question to rollinto our next theme if your body
, heart and mind could give youa piece of advice, what would
they give?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah.
So my mind, we'll start there,because I'm very mind dominant.
All people tend to have aparticular dominant center.
We sometimes refer to these inthe coaching world as centers of
wisdom or centers of knowledge.
It's pretty common in Westernculture to be mind dominant, but
there are lots of people whoare heart dominant and body
(08:47):
dominant.
So our athletes it's kind of ano brainer there they tend to be
body dominant, right?
Our caretakers, our caregiverstend to be heart dominant.
Listen to your body.
It knows some things,especially if I am perseverating
(09:09):
, if I am stuck on something andI just can't, you know, just
like I'm going in circles.
I have worked so hard ontraining my brain to say your
body might have some answershere.
Stop ruminating and startconnecting with your body.
So my heart advice that itgives me is be open.
Keep your heart open, becauseevery fracture, while painful,
is an opportunity to heal andget stronger.
(09:30):
And my past way of being is ooh,pain hurts.
We all say that pain hurts.
Emotional pain hurts.
I wasn't really good atsoothing emotional pain or
discomfort, so it was closing,closing, closing harder exterior
.
But I've learned over the yearsthat if I open up more, yeah,
I'm going to have pain, I'm alsogoing to have greater joy.
And you know, every bone thatbreaks gets stronger when it
(09:53):
mends itself.
The same thing happens with theheart.
So my heart just reminds mepain is temporary.
You get to get strong.
And then the third one, and mybody goes yeah, yeah, listen to
me, I know stuff.
You hadn't listened to me for areally long time, but I know
stuff.
Start listening.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
That's perfect.
Yeah, there's that potterything in Japan which I wish I
remember what it was called,where it breaks and they put the
gold into it.
Yeah, that's super cool.
Brings even more beauty andwhatnot to a broken pot.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You know, nate, I just have to note here I think
it's really fascinating that youbrought up Katsugi, because in
the form of coaching I do wework a lot in metaphors.
And one of my clients this isso funny, I swear audience, we
did not plan this One of myclients, one of my first clients
, with ADHD, who actually helpedme realize that that was
something I was working withinside myself.
(10:41):
One of the metaphors I gave herto grow into as aspirational
was a Kitsugi piece of how canwe start to take these fractured
pieces of your life and makethem more beautiful by inlaying
them in proverbial gold and, Ihave to say, over six months
transformation.
The work she did was incredibleand her transformation was
phenomenal.
And my favorite thing, I just Ithink of it often when I'm
(11:04):
having a hard time.
I think of this often.
On our last coaching session wewere talking about how she was
moving through her life and howshe would maintain this great
progress.
She said I'm no longer akitsugi piece, as beautiful as I
was through this process andgrowing into this.
And now all the pieces are bythemselves and they're
reflective and shiny, like, likealmost like a broken mirror,
(11:24):
but not sharp.
And these pieces I can now giveto others when they need them.
I can receive them from others.
They can move through the worldand continue to make the world
a better place.
And oh the goosebumps.
It just was amazing.
So thanks for bringing that upas an opening to talk about that
.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, that's, yeah, that's perfect.
I think a lot of times, like,we see the negative and you know
we hone in on it.
But I know I've been through,you know, the death of my father
and my, you know mygrandparents and divorce, and
you know joint custody andco-parenting and all these
things, and I try to share thatwith the sections I lead and
it's, you know, not to benegative but hopefully to bridge
(12:02):
that gap and I think that's whywe go through these difficult
situations right, so that we cangive those pieces away.
And so I know, like my brotheris still struggling through some
of the things that you knowkind of stunted because my dad
passed away when he wastransitioning, graduating high
school and going to college wasto go out and do fun stuff and
make that transition.
And you know you have such apivotal, you know, life moment
(12:22):
there.
It kind of has, you know, heldhim back and you know kind of
stunted some things there andhe's working through and
processing and everyoneprocesses differently.
I want, you know him and my momyou know we always talk about
hopefully at some point he'll beable to use you know, the
difficulties and pain that he'sbeen through to help others and,
you know, bring other peoplealong, and I think giving that
away is super important, youdon't?
(12:43):
You know, if you just gothrough it and it's painful and
it's just painful, then thatdoesn't do any good.
Be painful and then use it tohelp others, so that's really
good stuff.
I'm glad she's, you know, gotthat reflective, sharpless or
non-sharp mirrored glass thatshe's hanging out giving out to
others.
That's great.
And then the final theme wehave is what's a moment in
motherhood where you took on therole of Wonder Woman but later
(13:05):
realized you didn't have to?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Probably most of the moments up till a few years ago.
One of the things about thisperformative culture that we're
in and for a moment to link itto what you were talking about
one of the big challenges rightnow is that we can refine our
images so much Social media,plastic surgery, how we perform
who we are.
(13:28):
There are a lot of ways whereyou know we're not living in
communities where you're bumpinginto people on their best of
days and worst of days, kind ofnaturally Much more refined way
of performing life in some ways,especially when I think about
social media.
And I have to say we need morefolks like you in the world the
good, bad, the ugly andeverything in between, because
that's truly living, not justlooking like everything's
(13:50):
sunshine and bubblegum all thetime.
And so with that and I'm surethat men identify with this too
I haven't lived that experienceso I can't speak for it.
So I'll speak from my voice ofa mid-40s white middle
classclass, a culturalizedfemale in America, and so many
of the women I talk to feel thesame of like we don't even know
(14:10):
that we're in this Wonder Womanculture, this we have to do it
all all of the time, and Ididn't know I was making choices
, I was just living the lifethat I thought I was supposed to
live.
You know, I went to college andI worked for a few years and I
found my calling.
I went to grad school and I gotmy graduate degree.
And I did that while doing a 20hour a week internship and
(14:33):
while working 20 hours a week asa nanny, you know, went into
working my butt off, eventuallytook this job in a government
entity as a leader, and thatcame with a lot of
responsibility and a lot of timethat I had to dedicate to it.
And a year later my child camealong.
Or a year and a half laterchild came along and you just,
you just keep adding, but youdon't necessarily subtract
(14:55):
anything.
And the first wake up call thatI thought I heard, but didn't
really hear it completely, wasactually my cancer diagnosis in
my mid 30s and I'm veryfortunate.
I had very curable lymphoma andnot many cancers are considered
curable, but this one is, andI'm almost eight years cancer
free.
(15:15):
So I'm in that category of safeand cured.
And I remember a colleague saidto me disease is just dis-ease
and the longer you are not atease, the longer you are not
aligned with yourself, thelonger you're living in a way
that doesn't fully work for you,the more likely you are to
develop disease.
(15:36):
And I was like, yeah, yeah,yeah, I hear you, sure, and I'll
do some things different afterthe cancer treatment.
And I did for a little bit, butnot for very long.
And then before I knew it, Iwas.
Then I was doing this job.
I also before my cancerdiagnosis.
Just before that, I hadseparated from my husband and
started through the divorceprocess and so I had my first
(15:57):
apartment with my child, who wedid did share.
So I had my child 50 percent ofthe time in a new apartment in
a new place, navigating thatwith a four yearyear-old and
what that's like Workingfull-time in this job.
And I had just gotten promotedto the senior position in my
division and I was workingalmost full-time for the
community college.
So I just started doing it allover again and just before I
(16:18):
knew it I was back into doing itall over again.
And it wasn't until coming outof near the end of the COVID-19
pandemic, really struggling withmy own mental health stuff and
struggling to how long can Istay in bed before I have to
show up online for a meetingwhere hopefully I can be off
camera or, you know, just reallystruggling to move through my
days.
That really was when I was solucky that my current partner
(16:42):
said to me I love you too muchto watch you fall apart in this
way.
We've been through too much.
It's time for somethingdifferent.
And that's where the light bulbreally came on and I decided it
was time for me to do somethingreally different, which
included a whole long story butgot me to coaching and really
saved my life getting coaching,going into coaching, training
(17:03):
and becoming a coach andchanging the way I live my life
in almost every aspect.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, it's so wild to me today Just today actually, I
was talking with a co-workerand active duty military, and so
some of the things we do arejust really bizarre to me.
And so the thing that we weretalking about today not
perfectly aligned, but justreally makes me think of it, and
related was some people willstay at work for 8, 10, 12 hours
and it just sometimes feelslike they don't do that much.
(17:28):
But then if you leave at 8,right on the dot, you know
you're seen as almost lazy andwhy are you leaving on time, and
so it's rewarded or almostcongratulated that you stayed
for 10 or whatever the numbermay be.
But it feels like sometimes, ormaybe more of the time, it
feels like the 10 and 12 hourpeople are the ones walking
(17:50):
around with the coffee cup kindof hanging out poor time
management.
And so it's really weird theway as a culture, we have
rewarded certain things.
You think we would reward thetime management you got in, you
looked at your, your checklist,you got the things you needed to
and you got out in six insteadof eight.
That's awesome right but it'slike, no, it's like, oh, you
need to stay for 12 and stay,just to stay, and it's like, and
(18:10):
like some of the things youtouched on, like affecting
relationships and other things,you should be getting home and
you know putting the kids to bedand you know getting them
washed and you know fed and allthings.
Some of the things are justreally bizarre where some people
are so focused on the clock orthis, like almost like a brand
of accomplishment that youstayed longer.
Cool.
(18:31):
Like I don't quite understand,like do the time that you need
to and get out.
Like, if you have motivations,like some people, their
motivation is to get out to grabtheir kid at daycare and get
home and feel recharged and comein the next day, and so if you
have a motivation, you come in,you use your time wisely, you
move through your task so youcan get to the thing that you
love.
That seems like the perfectmotivation.
(18:52):
Get out there on the dot, youknow in this like negative
context, like no no, get out onthe dot, that's fine, and get
that kid and get home.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, it's truly a law of diminishing returns.
Right, more time is notnecessarily more stuff done or
more productivity, and that'sone of the things I love about
the own work I've done on myselfand in understanding ADHD and
working with others is actuallythe more, the more intentional
breaks you take in a certain way, the more productive you can be
when you're on task.
But it's when we're forcingourselves to stay on task for
too long our productivitytotally tanks.
(19:28):
We're not doing nearly as muchas we think we are, but our
brains are fooled by time ontask and it feels like we're
getting more done because we'respending more time on task.
You could say I worked on itfor two hours, therefore it was
useful.
Well gosh, what if you could doit an hour and 15?
Wouldn't that be more useful?
But it's just not the naturalway our brains work.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
And I think a lot of times we need to think back to
how we were built.
Like we're caveman or whatever.
We weren't supposed to sit anddo something for like eight
hours straight.
Like that's insane.
You're supposed to go hunt andgather and do something for
short periods of time and thenmove on to the next thing.
So it is a little bizarre Like,oh, sit behind your computer
for eight hours, that's probablynot going to work.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Probably not.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Boy, that's crazy.
So I want to make sure it'sconversational.
So I got a moment here for youto ask me a question before we
move into the three main themes.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah, I am dying to know for you, Nate how do?
Yeah, I am dying to know foryou, Nate how do you know the
wisdom of your body?
So, when you need to make adecision, how do you hear your
body communicate with you aboutwhat's right, what's wrong, what
you should do, what youshouldn't do?
What is that like for you?
Speaker 1 (20:32):
I'm probably in the heart category.
I'm driven by a lot of emotionand things like that.
I try to do a better job andyou know, as you grow, obviously
you try to round things out andthings like that.
So I think I do a better jobnow of, you know, building in
more logic and things like that.
But I definitely am an impulsebuyer and shopper and things
(20:52):
like that.
So I've really tried to takethat into consideration and
being in leadership roles whereI'm frustrated, I'm mad, I'm
whatever, when the initial thinghappens, and so I've really
taken to heart some advice thatI got If it's not an emergency
or an emergency room, then youprobably need to sleep on it.
So if it's not, you know lifesafety, you're going to hurt
somebody.
Then you know, go home, youknow process it, talk with the
(21:15):
wife or whatever that processingthing is, sleep on it and then
go through that.
But I think that's how I kindof process things, where in jest
try to take in things indifferent forms or fashion, but
I think ultimately it kind ofcomes through with my heart,
because that's kind of the way Ifeel, which is funny, because
I'm like upbeat and happy, golucky, and so sometimes a lot of
people think that things don'tbother me and things like that.
(21:37):
But that's just the way I'vealways been, and then when my
dad passed away at 50 and youknow you saw how much life that
he still should have had andthings like that it really just
doubled down and reinforced thatlike there's not going to be
too much that's going to derailmy day.
I'm just going to keep going,and so that's one thing I think
I've struggled with a little bit, because from the outside, oh,
(21:57):
you look like lazy, fair, likeyou're not concerned or you
don't care, like I care.
Um, I just process that way andyou know there's.
I just don't want it to takefrom the rest of my day or the
rest of my joy.
So yeah, I think, probablyprocessing in a slower fashion,
trying not to rely strictly onemotions, but it does kind of
resort that way but taking inthe logic and try to get all the
(22:18):
sides of the story and get allthe information that you can,
which I feel like most of thetime you got to make decisions
with 40% of the information butget as much as you can, sleep on
it and then process for thenext day.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
When you process that , do you feel any particular
sensation in your body when youknow you've landed on the right
answer?
Sometimes people will say Ifeel energized, or I feel calm,
or I feel it in my heart, or Ifeel it in my heart or I feel it
in my gut.
Or do you notice any of thatfor yourself?
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's probably in that peace
realm, where that calm and peaceand you know that it's right
and it clicks, because I'm in mythird job in the Air Force and
the first two I was fine.
I went to work and you know Ididn't love them but they were
OK.
And I remember when I found mythird job, like I have to tell
(23:06):
these stories of people andevery time I just feel like this
walking cliche.
But I remember I shadowed thatday and I was like this is the
thing I have to do, like.
And so it was crazy, becauseusually you get two chances to
apply for this specific position, but the time that I had in
service I can only apply once.
So I had one and only shot, andso I'm like I need this, this
is what I have to do.
Like, I shadowed, I saw how coolit is and how it aligns with
(23:30):
how I feel bored and stagnant.
I have to try new things.
So my particular job ishospital administration, so I
work the backside of thehospital.
So I have one job but like fivedifferent jobs within one.
So it could be insurance,readiness, training, logistics,
so ordering, buying, you knowyou have insurance claims, like
basically anything that is notpatient care, that touches a
(23:52):
patient, because I pass out ofblood and needles, so I don't
work the front side of the housebut anything in the back can be
me.
And so that thought of likecontinuously learning, always
trying something new I can'treally get bored because there's
too much to learn and I onlyget put in one section every
couple of years and so when Iwent over and shadowed and saw
this like continuous learningfor basically forever, it's like
(24:15):
I have to do this and so, yeah,I was blessed enough that it
worked out.
It is kind of funny when theydid the announcement, the guy
that did mine, colonel Dieter,thought it'd be funny to say you
didn't get it, we'll try nextyear.
And I couldn't talk because Ididn't have another year, but I
couldn't muster like a thoughtto bring it together and luckily
, you know, the other commandercame by to congratulate me but
(24:37):
he was running late so they hadto tap dance for 10 minutes in
this.
You didn't get it and it wasthe longest 10 or 15 minutes of
my life.
But yeah, I think that's thatsame feeling I felt like when I
went over there.
It's just this piece where,like this is the thing I have to
do and you're like a hundredpercent sure, cause I think a
lot of things you take ininformation and you're kind of
unsure or you're not sure,because the second and third
(24:58):
order effects are impactingother people, but there's
certain things where it justclicks and you absolutely know.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
It almost sounds like as you're describing it.
It was like a calm and anactivation at the same time.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yeah, yeah, I could say activation, absolutely how
you like, perked up.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Even just talking about your voice, got this
energetic tone, your posture,and it was like you were at
peace, you were calm but youwere activated, you lit up
around.
This is a calling, this is anopportunity.
Might not be the rest of mylife, but this is my opportunity
, right here and now.
And it's so interesting to seehow you sensed into that very
feeling, into your whole being,just by going back to that
(25:35):
memory and talking about thiswork that you get to do now.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yeah, seven years.
In the first ones I got up, Iwent through the motions and
like it's again cliche, but likeI love getting up out of bed
and going and, you know, takingcare of people because I love
helping people.
I can't do the blood or needlesbecause I'll be on the floor,
but now I get that chance to bethat second.
You know line directly behindthat, putting the supplies in
(25:59):
providers' hands and things likethat.
So it's amazing.
It's a perfect thing for me.
I love it.
There's fires every day andthere's literally never a dull
moment in the hospital.
There is always something goingon.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
That's true, and I hope for a moment to you know,
break that third ball and invitethe listeners, if they didn't
catch that tonal change, or theviewers, if you didn't catch
that change in Nate's tone, ifyou didn't notice his body
change, the way, his whole beingchanged, even that voice tone,
if you didn't notice it, goahead and jump back and listen
before, and then listen when hestarted talking about how
(26:32):
connected this job was for himand how it was the right thing
at the right time and the rightopportunity.
And that one chance only, asyou sense into that, it's an
opportunity to stop and saywhere are those things in my
life and what does that tell meabout who I am now, who I'm
becoming, where I belong, whereI'm going, and just notice what,
that calm activation, what isthat for you?
(26:54):
Or maybe it's a differentsensation you have, but I think
that's just a nice opportunityto note that that transformation
happened right in the middle ofthis episode.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
It happened right here I'm going to have to go
back and watch it myself.
So we'll move into the maintheme.
The first one the power ofconnecting with the wisdom and
the body, heart and mind.
I love stories, so I'm going toask for a couple different
stories.
So can you share a story abouta time when listening to your
body, heart or mind helped guideyou to a better decision?
Speaker 2 (27:24):
I have one from just last week.
It's a small one, but I thinkit's the smallest things that
tell us the most about life.
I mean, we can think aboutthese big, epic things like the
job change that's huge andthere's a lot in there or major
life changes, marriages, divorce, death, birth, all of those
things.
Our brains notice those becausethey're substantial.
What we often don't notice arethe small little everyday things
(27:46):
that are the real keys toliving with more peaceability,
living with more feeling ofsuccess, stability, productivity
.
Just last week my parents werehere visiting.
They live about 3,000 milesaway so we only see each other
once or twice a year and I lovemy family.
They are amazing humans but wedon't live near each other so we
don't have a natural rhythm allthe time.
(28:06):
And they're at my house sothey're off their game, right.
They're not always feeling verycomfortable.
It's not their bed, it's not.
You know they don't have theirfavorite tea or soda or pillow
or you know all those creaturecomforts.
And it's easy when you're outof your context to get maybe
more irritable, tired, bored,frustrated and annoyed.
You know just feelings that youmay not always feel so much.
(28:29):
And likewise, when you invitepeople into your home.
It changes the rhythm of yourhome and I used to be of the
sort of mindset that my parentsdon't see them all that often.
They live 3000 miles away andso when they're here, we have to
spend as much time together aspossible and always be together.
And more is more is, more ismore, and that's how I had
(28:50):
always operated.
And I would start to elevate myanxiety a little.
I would start to like, but Iwouldn't always notice it, and
then it'd be like just hang on,just get through, even though we
want to enjoy the time.
You know, it accumulates and itescalates and inevitably a
snarky remark, a flip comment,some sarcasm or even a flat out
like leave me alone, you know.
(29:10):
And then you go into a cycle.
I feel bad, I don't see thesepeople I love very often I need
to make up for it, and the cyclejust repeats over and over.
This time when they visited, Ihave really incorporated a lot
of what we call somatic practiceinto my life.
It's basically just things youdo to intentionally be connected
with your body.
It's not any like you know.
It's not as complicated as itsounds when you say somatic.
(29:33):
It might be something as simpleas 10 minutes of yoga or five
minutes of a mindfulnessactivity, and so I had a couple
of things on the calendar that Ihad signed up to do over Zoom
that were somatic related, andone of them was the first full
day that my parents were here,and I did that first thing in
the morning, and by the end ofthe day I realized I never had,
(29:53):
I never had that irritability,never once.
And it didn't even occur to methat by maintaining one hour for
myself in the morning, doingsomething for me, physically in
my body and my somatic practiceevened me out.
That one hour for me meant Idon't know how long we were
awake after that.
The next 12, 13 hours were muchricher by taking that one hour
(30:14):
for what I needed than well, Ishouldn't do this thing because
my parents are here and thenforcing my way through.
So that's my very real life,very recent story about
listening to the wisdom of mybody and doing what I need first
so I can be more quality withthe people I'm with and doing
what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah, that's a perfect example of we talk about
you know, taking care ofyourself first.
We use the example of theoxygen mask on the airplane or
pouring from a cup.
You can't pour from an emptycup.
So I think that's a good reallife example and I think we
learn the most and remember themost from real life examples.
You can read books, you can dowhatever, but when it happens in
(30:52):
front of you, it always justsolidifies more and you remember
that.
So that's awesome.
The next question is how cansomeone begin to tap into the
wisdom of their whole self whilestill feeling, while life feels
chaotic or overwhelming, whichI feel like life is pretty
overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Well, no one's going to like the answer.
It's the effort, temptation,fullness, and we all say it's
inevitable.
All of my clients go yeah, yeah, I know I should, but and the
reality is that this is how Iput it quite frequently, if you
feel like your mind is too fullto be mindful, it's because
(31:30):
you're not being mindful.
It's a practice, right?
So you know you want to developmuscle tone.
You don't develop muscle toneby doing one going to the gym
one day and then you're notswole after one day.
Right, you have to practice.
You have to build those musclesover time to build those up.
Your brain is an organ that actslike a muscle.
(31:52):
It has to be trained and anuntrained brain will wander.
Whether you have ADHD or not,it will feel like it.
It will wander.
You know the squirrel, theshiny object.
Your brain will go there.
Untrained Mindfulness is theeasiest way to train your brain
and it's not hard.
Except it feels like it's hardbecause we have a little bit of
(32:12):
a myth around mindfulness.
We tend to think oh well, realmeditation is when you can just
turn your brain off and sitthere and not have any thoughts,
in quietness for two hours.
Anybody that follows DanHarris's work will note that he
has a two and a half hour a daymeditation practice.
That's great.
Maybe someday I'll get thereMany days for me.
(32:32):
Five minutes, I just shoot forfive minutes, and you know what?
My brain is not still and quietfor five minutes, and actually
Harris talks a lot about that inhis work as well.
So many things will flow throughyour brain.
The whole point is to swipeleft.
So when something comes in yourbrain, just swipe it left.
Something else comes in yourbrain, swipe it left or right, I
don't care.
Swipe it back, swipe it up, Idon't care where you swipe it,
(32:54):
just swipe it.
And as you practice, thoughtscome in, thoughts go out,
thoughts come in, thoughts goout.
And then sometimes thoughtscome in.
They hang out here for a whileI forgot.
Now I gotta swipe it out.
The more you do that, the moreyour brain will start to slow
down and be stiller.
It might never be completely,still it might.
Different strokes, differentfolks Practicing that actually
(33:18):
calms your brain down for a full24 hours.
It gives you more clarity, itgives you more peaceability and
your brain will slow down all ofthe things it's interpreting.
So you make something like35,000 decisions in a day,
whether you know it or not, andyour brain is going well.
I got all these decisionssnapping my fingers here, got to
(33:38):
move them fast, got to makedecisions fast.
But actually if you slow yourbrain down, the automated
decisions that need to beautomated.
Great, do those fast.
I often say you make a decisionto put your underwear on before
your pants every day and it'sgood to automate that, because
if you have to think every daywhich direction do my underwear
go, then you're either asupermodel or a wrestler.
(34:01):
Most of us are not.
We know the underwear is goingon than the pants.
So yes, automate that.
But when you can slow yourbrain down, it gives you better
decision making quality for thethings you have to think about
I'm hungry, do I eat the potatochips or the mixed nuts?
And you can make thosedecisions at a better quality
when your brain slows down anddoesn't just go for the quick
response.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
So people are out there, they're listening, they
say, oh, that sounds great, I'dlove to start that.
And then they begin tooverthink, because I feel like
this is what I would do.
How do I sit?
What do I sit on?
What do I do?
How do I so someone on theirvery first day?
How do you just start?
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, I don't care where you start.
Yeah, I don't care where youstart.
I don't care how you start,just start, because you'll find
it for yourself.
That being said, we likeinstructions, so I'm just going
to tell you have a seatsomewhere reasonably comfortable
.
For some people that's on apillow, cross-legged on the
floor, for other people it'ssitting in a chair.
You can lay down and domindfulness.
I actually don't recommend itbecause it's more likely to lead
(34:59):
to sleep and kind of.
The point most of the time isto actually work on training the
brain, not just go to sleepalthough doing it at bedtime is
helpful.
But just have a seat, stackyour spine as best you can,
don't worry about perfection.
Close your eyes or lower youreyes, set a timer, maybe even
for one minute, maybe for fiveminutes, I don't know.
Start small and just just do itOne minute.
(35:22):
Look, I did it.
I didn't die.
Maybe I could do it againtomorrow.
And for some people, here'sanother great tip Do it in your
car for two minutes before yougo into work.
Just sit in the seat of yourcar, turn everything off it's a
cold day, keep your heat on, butyou know the radio off and just
sit and try to do it, and ifyou really can't get your brain
around it, there are many otherthings, such as guided
meditation, that can also be areally nice entry in.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Like Nike said, just do it, Just get out there, start
swiping, come to peace.
We'll move into the secondtheme of the day living more
fully with ADHD.
How has ADHD shaped the way youexperience the world and what
have you learned from it?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Well, it's the only way I see the world.
So there's that, because we getone brain.
But I think that the biggestthing is that coming to
understand how my own brainworks and working with others on
understanding how their ownbrain works.
For all of us it's just anexploratory process and an
evolutionary process of tappinginto what does and doesn't work
(36:20):
for you.
And, like I said before, mybody is the biggest source of
wisdom.
So in the past I wasn't tunedinto my body well at all.
Even when I played club sportsI would train my body but I
didn't really connect with it, Ididn't really listen.
And actually when you playsports you often try to learn to
tune out parts of your bodybecause you don't want to feel
the pain right.
But I started to learn that Icould.
(36:42):
I didn't know I was irritateduntil I was really irritated and
then I might be really grumpyor whatever comes with that.
And as I started to tap into mybody, I started to know little
signs and symptoms or signs andsignals.
I was a little bit, a littlebit irritated, not a lot
irritated, and once I couldsense into that, I could start
(37:02):
to make choices to release it orto dig in and follow it and
find out.
Am I carrying something with me?
Are things accumulating for me,or is there something I just
have to let go of?
Or does it require me to payattention to it so I can do
something different?
So the point of life right isnot to eradicate all pain we
(37:23):
can't but it's to use thediscomforts of life to figure
out what that's telling us inourselves, in the same way that
we do it really.
Naturally, when we enjoysomething, we enjoy something,
we do more of it.
We enjoy caffeine.
Most of us don't drink trycoffee until we're a teenager
and actually we don't evenreally like the taste of it.
But from what we know we're allcoffee drinkers because we like
(37:43):
what caffeine does.
So it's easy to do more of whatwe like.
We tend to ignore the signalsof things we don't like.
But if we can stop and check inwith those.
But to use it in the sense ofmining it for information on how
(38:13):
I can live more in rhythm andaligned with what works for me.
So, like a lot of folks withADHD, routine is not my friend.
I don't like it.
I loathe it.
At first it's a littlecomfortable and then contempt.
I don't like it.
So this may resonate with otherpeople who think they have ADHD
or know they have ADHD.
(38:33):
So I change.
We were talking aboutmindfulness.
I change my mindfulnesspractices because sitting in the
same spot, still every day inthe same way, I will just come
to reject it and hate it.
But if I change it up and I doa walking meditation or a guided
meditation or whatever else,then I can stay with things more
(38:53):
.
So it's staying consistent.
I'm meditating but I'm givingmyself the opportunity for some
variety within that to keepmyself engaged.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, that makes sense.
My wife actually just gotdiagnosed and something I
thought was interesting.
So this is what I wanted to askearlier it's weird to me that
when they try to diagnose which,like you said, not clinical, so
no diagnosis, but it'sinteresting to me they sent home
these questionnaires anddifferent things to answer and
all of them seem to have anegative connotation, like it's
(39:23):
like you get distracted, you dothis, but it's it's odd to me
and so I'd like to ask, like canyou highlight some of the
things?
Is there's like hyper focus andthat can be used to, you know,
get things done?
And so it's odd to me.
Where it's like on the clinicalaspect, when they're talking to
her, asking her questions, it'slike all the negative, like
shouldn't there be like anothersheet that says I also do these
things, like I hyper focus, sobad I could get, like you know,
(39:47):
read a whole book in one sittingor something.
But can you touch on some ofthe positive aspects instead of
just making it seem like they'reall negative?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Yeah.
So I'll second that hyper focusand it can go either way.
I've known people that havebeen like well, I spent six
hours doing something that likedidn't really bring a lot of
productivity.
They can also be veryproductive.
Like I went into a hyper focusphase and like did a big
overhaul and tidy in my officeand now I am more calm and less
(40:15):
agitated because my office lookbeyond my computer and the
visual field has like booksstacked crooked and notebook
paper here and there.
You know just that kind ofthing, and I really got to lean
(40:36):
in and hyper-focus in that andnow I feel calmer in my
workspace.
So that's one of them.
Like I said before, we tend tobe extremely creative.
We are the creative solutionpeople.
We're not the people going.
Well, when you have problem A,you use solution B when the
problem goes.
People that say you got problemA, we got 800 solutions, let's
go get creative.
(40:56):
There's some folks out therethat think that we were actually
the brain design folks thatwere the foragers and the
finders in previous ways ofliving, because we scan the
environment a little differentlyand we can look for things a
little bit differently and seethings a little differently.
So there is a lot of greatstuff there.
(41:17):
We also there's a piece aroundADHD.
Folks tend to be hypersensitiveto feedback and can take
positive feedback and interpretit not as positive but as a
negative.
You know, a teacher or aninstructor might hand a paper
back and say this is the bestpaper you've ever written and
we're like that means my otherpapers were bad.
(41:39):
And even just knowing that,what that means is that we're
the folks programmed to noticethe danger in the world and keep
ourselves and others safe.
That's a positive.
We have to work on the mindmessages that happen Right.
But another positive is andthis is a difference typically
and again, no people are exactlythe Gen Xers were in the
(42:01):
diagnoses of ADHD because it wasnormed on white middle class
boys when it was and it was, youknow, not really understood
until I believe, the late 70s.
And then you know there wasthis prototypical we can all
think of that, that boy in theclass that we know that like
(42:24):
couldn't wait for recess and waslike, played every sport and
was bouncing around the room.
It was, it was normed on thattype, so it's easy to identify.
It was more known as ADD at thetime for women because of this
like feedback thing, we actuallycan produce what people are
looking for a little bit fasterand a little more acutely.
So that means let's take aschool example you get feedback
(42:47):
from a teacher that your paperwasn't as great.
Maybe it was a B, not an A.
Well, our sensitivity to a B isnot as good of anA can turn on
that focus and that drive to getbetter at the material and
start producing better results.
And then we get those A's andthose commendations.
(43:08):
We may not always hear it assuch, but it happens.
So for many women that includes, but those are a few of the
ways that I know for myself, Iknow in my research and reading
(43:32):
and I know in working with otherwomen.
These are some commonalities ofsome of the really helpful
traits of living with this waythat the brain can work.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
That's perfect.
We'll touch on the last themebreaking free.
Okay.
So what's one myth about havingit all together?
As a working mother, you'd lovethe challenge.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
You're not perfect, sorry, and you won't be, that's.
OK signals, whether you haveADHD or not.
(44:12):
If you are a working mom in ourculture right now, in this
Westernized culture, you thinkyou have to be better tomorrow
than you are today, and orbetter the next minute than you
are this minute.
And yes, it is true, you shouldalways be striving for
bettering yourself.
But it's not the performance,it's not the being perfect, it's
working on what's going on, themessages that are repeating
inside of you that you might noteven be hearing, that you need
(44:32):
to listen to and work onreframing, dispelling,
eradicating, reshaping all ofthat, because those messages
that are playing in your headprobably came from your
childhood, probably weren't onesyou chose but were given to you
, and now they repeat on a loopand you may not even notice it
sometimes.
That same client that I talkedabout with the katsugi piece one
(44:54):
day she was like I have thesilliest story to tell you and I
don't know why, but I just haveto tell you, and it was about
watering her plant and spillingwater on the floor and telling
herself that she was carelessthat's just water on the
hardwood floor, you just cleanit up with a towel and you move
on Right.
But it turned on thisrecognition that she was telling
herself she was careless.
You know feeling fractured andbroken to yeah, I can be
(45:31):
carefree, which means sometimesthey spill water on the floor
and I can clean it up and itdoesn't have to be a big deal.
Right, let's put a little lesspressure on ourselves, and part
of that is working on thosestories, those messages on loop
that are in our head that we maynot even know are there.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
It's the smallest things, it seems like.
I feel like there's a coupledifferent episodes.
I mentioned stories of peoplewith guests that I know from you
, know previous lives andwhatnot, and I remember stories
that you know seem insignificant, but I don't, like you said, I
don't get to choose what'splanted in there.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Okay, so let's try to .
You do get to choose to get ridof it, though.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Get rid of it.
Yeah, there of it.
Yeah, there's the swiping right?
Yeah, so we'll try to piece itall together.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
So we went through three really good themes today,
if listeners could take away oneinsider action from this
conversation.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
What would it be?
Speaker 2 (46:19):
I think they can probably guess Meditate, work on
a mindfulness practice orpractices that can work for you.
Slow down that brain becauseit'll be easier to hear what we
just talked about, thosenegative messages that might be
playing on a loop that you canchoose to start letting go of
and reshape and reform.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
That's perfect.
Well, thank you, Olivia, forcoming out.
Please provide feedback.
The feedback makes this podcasteven better.
Drop your thoughts on questionsor questions on Instagram,
Facebook, TikTok, YouTube orBuzzsprout and thank you for
being part of the Mindforcejourney.
I love you all.
See ya, Thank you you.
Thank you for watching.
Hi everyone, I'm Nate Shearerand this is Mindforce a podcast
for love, life and learning,because your mind matters.
Today we have Olivia Rose andtoday we'll be talking about the
(00:43):
power of connecting with thewisdom in your body, heart and
mind in unison, living morefully with ADHD and breaking
free from the performance ofperfection in the modern working
motherhood, or what she likesto call the Wonder Woman
Syndrome.
So we'll start with thebackground the who, what, why
and where.
Olivia, who are you, what doyou do, why are you here and
(01:05):
where in the world are you?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
It's really good to be here.
Thanks, nate, absolutely, yeah.
So I am a woman, cisgenderedfemale, living in Denver, metro,
colorado, and I am a successand productivity coach and I
work largely not exclusively,but largely with women who
identify with ADHD.
Some are diagnosed, some areundiagnosed and some just feel
(01:27):
like the chaos of modern lifescrambles their brains a little
bit.
So, however folks identify isfine with me, because success,
productivity strategies and thatmind-body-heart connection
really can help everybody live alittle more fully.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
That's perfect.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
I'm trying to see if I answered all your questions
here, just I guess I'll add atad more.
There is the most women thatcome to my practice are Gen Xers
or millennials, but I alsoserve men, business owners and
non-business owners alike.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
That's perfect.
Okay, we'll move into somewarm-up questions.
First question is what's onething about ADHD that you feel
like is a superpower Creativity.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah, we're a really creative bunch.
But you know, I didn't know.
I didn't know this about myself.
I was like I just, you know,you live in your own brain, your
own body, your own experience,so you don't know how you're
different than others.
And I was a senior leader in agovernment agency and I was a
mentor and a coach in amentoring program for younger
(02:38):
professionals and all of myprotégés would say my gosh,
you're just so creative.
Like how do you think of thingsso creatively?
And I was like I do.
You know, it's just how mybrain works.
And I started to realize andreally think about it and notice
that you know, the proverbialboulder in the road is like not
as much a problem for me butlike an opportunity to get
(02:58):
creative and do problem solving.
And so when that boulder showsup in the road, like everyone
else, at first I'm like I'mtrying to get somewhere at a
certain time or I have a certainthing to do.
It's not cool, universe.
But I'm quickly like do we geta new pathway and go around it?
Do we scale over it?
Do we get a forklift and moveit?
Do we build a pulley system?
(03:19):
And then you work in a team,you figure these things out or
you work in yourself.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
However, that goes in different conditions and things
like that and you know, eitherbeing pass or fail, and
(03:49):
something I think is really oddand kind of confusing to me,
because it feels like morerecently, everyone kind of uses
the different terms and usesthem so loosely, where it seems
like you know, if someone makesa video where they have their
hangers up in their closet andthey line them up, they say, oh,
I'm so OCD.
Or you know, if they forgetsomething, oh I'm so, I'm so ADD
.
So can you briefly talk about,like you know, how different
(04:12):
people can have differentsymptoms and things like that,
and not just because you forgetsomething.
I feel like it's being used alittle too loosely and maybe
it's good that it's not, youknow, being seen as negative as
much, and maybe that's good, butmaybe it's gone too far, I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, I think that's a really great question, and the
one thing I do want to notehere is, while I have a master's
degree in educationalpsychology, I will be really
clear here that I am not atherapist and I am not a mental
health counselor and I am nothere to diagnose you or anyone
else, and there areprofessionals that can do that.
So that is an importantdisclaimer and in my practice,
(04:48):
in my work, I really try tofocus on this idea of regardless
of how your brain works,because there are great things
about every brain, there arechallenges about every brain and
there's evolution in everybrain, regardless of what it is.
How do we use the opportunitiesof life to grow into the next
invitation of ourselves?
So to your question yeah, thereis a little bit of that, maybe
(05:13):
a lot of that in the currentnomenclature.
I hear it too, and I actuallycringe quite a bit at the OCD
one myself.
I'm a bit OCD, or excuse my OCDI just need everything to be in
order.
All human brains want to seeorder in the visual field.
When we see disorder, when wesee disorganization, even if we
don't know it, our cortisollevels go up.
(05:33):
We get a little bit anxious,all of us.
Some people have maybe morethresholds for chaos than others
.
That is certainly true.
But all human brains, all humanbrains and bodies will have an
elevation in cortisol when theenvironment is not visually
organized, regardless of whatyour tolerance is.
So it's.
I try to see it and not get asfrustrated, although I sometimes
(05:55):
do.
I'm human, but I try to see itas that person is recognizing in
themselves that they're havinga trigger moment where they need
certain things in the visualfield or auditory field, where
they hear they need things to bea certain way in order to bring
that down and feel a sense ofpeace and calm.
And so, as someone who hasworked through some anxiety and
(06:16):
depression, which are reallycommon symptoms of ADHD and we
can talk about that in a littlebit about symptom awareness but
working with my own generalizedanxiety and intermittent
depression, I will notice that Idon't get as triggered or I
don't notice that I get astriggered as the visual field,
but the auditory, what I hear,makes a real difference and
(06:39):
there are times where smallnoises that I normally wouldn't
notice make me crazy and feellike chaos and feel really
distracting and that idea ofmisophonia, certain noises
disrupting brain and creatinglike almost an itching feeling
in your body is again symptomaware, another common trait of
(06:59):
ADHD.
But my partner will actuallysay to me, are you feeling a
little stressed or a littletired?
Because I am all of a suddenannoyed by you know, the
commercial on YouTube that's alittle louder than the TV show,
or the clicking of a pen,current nomenclature and sort of
(07:22):
.
Using these frequently, I foundfor myself, when I could move
past people going, oh, I'm alittle ADD myself or I'm a
little ADHD.
I started using that as aninvitation to say to folks like
almost like a bonding moment,like OK, you're, you're, there's
something we might have incommon here a little bit, even
if not to the same extent, andthere's something going on for
(07:44):
you.
What might that be?
What needs to be put at ease inyour mind, your body, your
heart, in order for you to notfeel that your attention is
being pulled?
And there is environmentallyinduced ADHD.
The acronym is VAST and it isessentially.
You are operating as if youhave ADHD, even if your brain is
not mapped that way because ofthe influence of your life, the
(08:07):
environment, technology, the waywe live, etc.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
That's awesome.
Yeah, in a second we'll go overthe symptoms things.
I got a specific question forthat, but I'm going to put a pin
on that so we can keep rolling.
So the next question to rollinto our next theme if your body
, heart and mind could give youa piece of advice, what would
they give?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah.
So my mind, we'll start there,because I'm very mind dominant.
All people tend to have aparticular dominant center.
We sometimes refer to these inthe coaching world as centers of
wisdom or centers of knowledge.
It's pretty common in Westernculture to be mind dominant, but
there are lots of people whoare heart dominant and body
(08:47):
dominant.
So our athletes it's kind of ano brainer there they tend to be
body dominant, right?
Our caretakers, our caregiverstend to be heart dominant.
Listen to your body.
It knows some things,especially if I am perseverating
(09:09):
, if I am stuck on something andI just can't, you know, just
like I'm going in circles.
I have worked so hard ontraining my brain to say your
body might have some answershere.
Stop ruminating and startconnecting with your body.
So my heart advice that itgives me is be open.
Keep your heart open, becauseevery fracture, while painful,
is an opportunity to heal andget stronger.
(09:30):
And my past way of being is ooh,pain hurts.
We all say that pain hurts.
Emotional pain hurts.
I wasn't really good atsoothing emotional pain or
discomfort, so it was closing,closing, closing harder exterior
.
But I've learned over the yearsthat if I open up more, yeah,
I'm going to have pain, I'm alsogoing to have greater joy.
And you know, every bone thatbreaks gets stronger when it
(09:53):
mends itself.
The same thing happens with theheart.
So my heart just reminds mepain is temporary.
You get to get strong.
And then the third one, and mybody goes yeah, yeah, listen to
me, I know stuff.
You hadn't listened to me for areally long time, but I know
stuff.
Start listening.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
That's perfect.
Yeah, there's that potterything in Japan which I wish I
remember what it was called,where it breaks and they put the
gold into it.
Yeah, that's super cool.
Brings even more beauty andwhatnot to a broken pot.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You know, nate, I just have to note here I think
it's really fascinating that youbrought up Katsugi, because in
the form of coaching I do wework a lot in metaphors.
And one of my clients this isso funny, I swear audience, we
did not plan this One of myclients, one of my first clients
, with ADHD, who actually helpedme realize that that was
something I was working withinside myself.
(10:41):
One of the metaphors I gave herto grow into as aspirational
was a Kitsugi piece of how canwe start to take these fractured
pieces of your life and makethem more beautiful by inlaying
them in proverbial gold and, Ihave to say, over six months
transformation.
The work she did was incredibleand her transformation was
phenomenal.
And my favorite thing, I just Ithink of it often when I'm
(11:04):
having a hard time.
I think of this often.
On our last coaching session wewere talking about how she was
moving through her life and howshe would maintain this great
progress.
She said I'm no longer akitsugi piece, as beautiful as I
was through this process andgrowing into this.
And now all the pieces are bythemselves and they're
reflective and shiny, like, likealmost like a broken mirror,
(11:24):
but not sharp.
And these pieces I can now giveto others when they need them.
I can receive them from others.
They can move through the worldand continue to make the world
a better place.
And oh the goosebumps.
It just was amazing.
So thanks for bringing that upas an opening to talk about that
.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Yeah, that's, yeah, that's perfect.
I think a lot of times, like,we see the negative and you know
we hone in on it.
But I know I've been through,you know, the death of my father
and my, you know mygrandparents and divorce, and
you know joint custody andco-parenting and all these
things, and I try to share thatwith the sections I lead and
it's, you know, not to benegative but hopefully to bridge
(12:02):
that gap and I think that's whywe go through these difficult
situations right, so that we cangive those pieces away.
And so I know, like my brotheris still struggling through some
of the things that you knowkind of stunted because my dad
passed away when he wastransitioning, graduating high
school and going to college wasto go out and do fun stuff and
make that transition.
And you know you have such apivotal, you know, life moment
(12:22):
there.
It kind of has, you know, heldhim back and you know kind of
stunted some things there andhe's working through and
processing and everyoneprocesses differently.
I want, you know him and my momyou know we always talk about
hopefully at some point he'll beable to use you know, the
difficulties and pain that he'sbeen through to help others and,
you know, bring other peoplealong, and I think giving that
away is super important, youdon't?
(12:43):
You know, if you just gothrough it and it's painful and
it's just painful, then thatdoesn't do any good.
Be painful and then use it tohelp others, so that's really
good stuff.
I'm glad she's, you know, gotthat reflective, sharpless or
non-sharp mirrored glass thatshe's hanging out giving out to
others.
That's great.
And then the final theme wehave is what's a moment in
motherhood where you took on therole of Wonder Woman but later
(13:05):
realized you didn't have to?
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Probably most of the moments up till a few years ago.
One of the things about thisperformative culture that we're
in and for a moment to link itto what you were talking about
one of the big challenges rightnow is that we can refine our
images so much Social media,plastic surgery, how we perform
who we are.
(13:28):
There are a lot of ways whereyou know we're not living in
communities where you're bumpinginto people on their best of
days and worst of days, kind ofnaturally Much more refined way
of performing life in some ways,especially when I think about
social media.
And I have to say we need morefolks like you in the world the
good, bad, the ugly andeverything in between, because
that's truly living, not justlooking like everything's
(13:50):
sunshine and bubblegum all thetime.
And so with that and I'm surethat men identify with this too
I haven't lived that experienceso I can't speak for it.
So I'll speak from my voice ofa mid-40s white middle
classclass, a culturalizedfemale in America, and so many
of the women I talk to feel thesame of like we don't even know
(14:10):
that we're in this Wonder Womanculture, this we have to do it
all all of the time, and Ididn't know I was making choices
, I was just living the lifethat I thought I was supposed to
live.
You know, I went to college andI worked for a few years and I
found my calling.
I went to grad school and I gotmy graduate degree.
And I did that while doing a 20hour a week internship and
(14:33):
while working 20 hours a week asa nanny, you know, went into
working my butt off, eventuallytook this job in a government
entity as a leader, and thatcame with a lot of
responsibility and a lot of timethat I had to dedicate to it.
And a year later my child camealong.
Or a year and a half laterchild came along and you just,
you just keep adding, but youdon't necessarily subtract
(14:55):
anything.
And the first wake up call thatI thought I heard, but didn't
really hear it completely, wasactually my cancer diagnosis in
my mid 30s and I'm veryfortunate.
I had very curable lymphoma andnot many cancers are considered
curable, but this one is, andI'm almost eight years cancer
free.
(15:15):
So I'm in that category of safeand cured.
And I remember a colleague saidto me disease is just dis-ease
and the longer you are not atease, the longer you are not
aligned with yourself, thelonger you're living in a way
that doesn't fully work for you,the more likely you are to
develop disease.
(15:36):
And I was like, yeah, yeah,yeah, I hear you, sure, and I'll
do some things different afterthe cancer treatment.
And I did for a little bit, butnot for very long.
And then before I knew it, Iwas.
Then I was doing this job.
I also before my cancerdiagnosis.
Just before that, I hadseparated from my husband and
started through the divorceprocess and so I had my first
(15:57):
apartment with my child, who wedid did share.
So I had my child 50 percent ofthe time in a new apartment in
a new place, navigating thatwith a four yearyear-old and
what that's like Workingfull-time in this job.
And I had just gotten promotedto the senior position in my
division and I was workingalmost full-time for the
community college.
So I just started doing it allover again and just before I
(16:18):
knew it I was back into doing itall over again.
And it wasn't until coming outof near the end of the COVID-19
pandemic, really struggling withmy own mental health stuff and
struggling to how long can Istay in bed before I have to
show up online for a meetingwhere hopefully I can be off
camera or, you know, just reallystruggling to move through my
days.
That really was when I was solucky that my current partner
(16:42):
said to me I love you too muchto watch you fall apart in this
way.
We've been through too much.
It's time for somethingdifferent.
And that's where the light bulbreally came on and I decided it
was time for me to do somethingreally different, which
included a whole long story butgot me to coaching and really
saved my life getting coaching,going into coaching, training
(17:03):
and becoming a coach andchanging the way I live my life
in almost every aspect.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, it's so wild to me today Just today actually, I
was talking with a co-workerand active duty military, and so
some of the things we do arejust really bizarre to me.
And so the thing that we weretalking about today not
perfectly aligned, but justreally makes me think of it, and
related was some people willstay at work for 8, 10, 12 hours
and it just sometimes feelslike they don't do that much.
(17:28):
But then if you leave at 8,right on the dot, you know
you're seen as almost lazy andwhy are you leaving on time, and
so it's rewarded or almostcongratulated that you stayed
for 10 or whatever the numbermay be.
But it feels like sometimes, ormaybe more of the time, it
feels like the 10 and 12 hourpeople are the ones walking
(17:50):
around with the coffee cup kindof hanging out poor time
management.
And so it's really weird theway as a culture, we have
rewarded certain things.
You think we would reward thetime management you got in, you
looked at your, your checklist,you got the things you needed to
and you got out in six insteadof eight.
That's awesome right but it'slike, no, it's like, oh, you
need to stay for 12 and stay,just to stay, and it's like, and
(18:10):
like some of the things youtouched on, like affecting
relationships and other things,you should be getting home and
you know putting the kids to bedand you know getting them
washed and you know fed and allthings.
Some of the things are justreally bizarre where some people
are so focused on the clock orthis, like almost like a brand
of accomplishment that youstayed longer.
Cool.
(18:31):
Like I don't quite understand,like do the time that you need
to and get out.
Like, if you have motivations,like some people, their
motivation is to get out to grabtheir kid at daycare and get
home and feel recharged and comein the next day, and so if you
have a motivation, you come in,you use your time wisely, you
move through your task so youcan get to the thing that you
love.
That seems like the perfectmotivation.
(18:52):
Get out there on the dot, youknow in this like negative
context, like no no, get out onthe dot, that's fine, and get
that kid and get home.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, it's truly a law of diminishing returns.
Right, more time is notnecessarily more stuff done or
more productivity, and that'sone of the things I love about
the own work I've done on myselfand in understanding ADHD and
working with others is actuallythe more, the more intentional
breaks you take in a certain way, the more productive you can be
when you're on task.
But it's when we're forcingourselves to stay on task for
too long our productivitytotally tanks.
(19:28):
We're not doing nearly as muchas we think we are, but our
brains are fooled by time ontask and it feels like we're
getting more done because we'respending more time on task.
You could say I worked on itfor two hours, therefore it was
useful.
Well gosh, what if you could doit an hour and 15?
Wouldn't that be more useful?
But it's just not the naturalway our brains work.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
And I think a lot of times we need to think back to
how we were built.
Like we're caveman or whatever.
We weren't supposed to sit anddo something for like eight
hours straight.
Like that's insane.
You're supposed to go hunt andgather and do something for
short periods of time and thenmove on to the next thing.
So it is a little bizarre Like,oh, sit behind your computer
for eight hours, that's probablynot going to work.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Probably not.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Boy, that's crazy.
So I want to make sure it'sconversational.
So I got a moment here for youto ask me a question before we
move into the three main themes.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Yeah, I am dying to know for you, Nate how do?
Yeah, I am dying to know foryou, Nate how do you know the
wisdom of your body?
So, when you need to make adecision, how do you hear your
body communicate with you aboutwhat's right, what's wrong, what
you should do, what youshouldn't do?
What is that like for you?
Speaker 1 (20:32):
I'm probably in the heart category.
I'm driven by a lot of emotionand things like that.
I try to do a better job andyou know, as you grow, obviously
you try to round things out andthings like that.
So I think I do a better jobnow of, you know, building in
more logic and things like that.
But I definitely am an impulsebuyer and shopper and things
(20:52):
like that.
So I've really tried to takethat into consideration and
being in leadership roles whereI'm frustrated, I'm mad, I'm
whatever, when the initial thinghappens, and so I've really
taken to heart some advice thatI got If it's not an emergency
or an emergency room, then youprobably need to sleep on it.
So if it's not, you know lifesafety, you're going to hurt
somebody.
Then you know, go home, youknow process it, talk with the
(21:15):
wife or whatever that processingthing is, sleep on it and then
go through that.
But I think that's how I kindof process things, where in jest
try to take in things indifferent forms or fashion, but
I think ultimately it kind ofcomes through with my heart,
because that's kind of the way Ifeel, which is funny, because
I'm like upbeat and happy, golucky, and so sometimes a lot of
people think that things don'tbother me and things like that.
(21:37):
But that's just the way I'vealways been, and then when my
dad passed away at 50 and youknow you saw how much life that
he still should have had andthings like that it really just
doubled down and reinforced thatlike there's not going to be
too much that's going to derailmy day.
I'm just going to keep going,and so that's one thing I think
I've struggled with a little bit, because from the outside, oh,
(21:57):
you look like lazy, fair, likeyou're not concerned or you
don't care, like I care.
Um, I just process that way andyou know there's.
I just don't want it to takefrom the rest of my day or the
rest of my joy.
So yeah, I think, probablyprocessing in a slower fashion,
trying not to rely strictly onemotions, but it does kind of
resort that way but taking inthe logic and try to get all the
(22:18):
sides of the story and get allthe information that you can,
which I feel like most of thetime you got to make decisions
with 40% of the information butget as much as you can, sleep on
it and then process for thenext day.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
When you process that , do you feel any particular
sensation in your body when youknow you've landed on the right
answer?
Sometimes people will say Ifeel energized, or I feel calm,
or I feel it in my heart, or Ifeel it in my heart or I feel it
in my gut.
Or do you notice any of thatfor yourself?
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's probably in that peace
realm, where that calm and peaceand you know that it's right
and it clicks, because I'm in mythird job in the Air Force and
the first two I was fine.
I went to work and you know Ididn't love them but they were
OK.
And I remember when I found mythird job, like I have to tell
(23:06):
these stories of people andevery time I just feel like this
walking cliche.
But I remember I shadowed thatday and I was like this is the
thing I have to do, like.
And so it was crazy, becauseusually you get two chances to
apply for this specific position, but the time that I had in
service I can only apply once.
So I had one and only shot, andso I'm like I need this, this
is what I have to do.
Like, I shadowed, I saw how coolit is and how it aligns with
(23:30):
how I feel bored and stagnant.
I have to try new things.
So my particular job ishospital administration, so I
work the backside of thehospital.
So I have one job but like fivedifferent jobs within one.
So it could be insurance,readiness, training, logistics,
so ordering, buying, you knowyou have insurance claims, like
basically anything that is notpatient care, that touches a
(23:52):
patient, because I pass out ofblood and needles, so I don't
work the front side of the housebut anything in the back can be
me.
And so that thought of likecontinuously learning, always
trying something new I can'treally get bored because there's
too much to learn and I onlyget put in one section every
couple of years and so when Iwent over and shadowed and saw
this like continuous learningfor basically forever, it's like
(24:15):
I have to do this and so, yeah,I was blessed enough that it
worked out.
It is kind of funny when theydid the announcement, the guy
that did mine, colonel Dieter,thought it'd be funny to say you
didn't get it, we'll try nextyear.
And I couldn't talk because Ididn't have another year, but I
couldn't muster like a thoughtto bring it together and luckily
, you know, the other commandercame by to congratulate me but
(24:37):
he was running late so they hadto tap dance for 10 minutes in
this.
You didn't get it and it wasthe longest 10 or 15 minutes of
my life.
But yeah, I think that's thatsame feeling I felt like when I
went over there.
It's just this piece where,like this is the thing I have to
do and you're like a hundredpercent sure, cause I think a
lot of things you take ininformation and you're kind of
unsure or you're not sure,because the second and third
(24:58):
order effects are impactingother people, but there's
certain things where it justclicks and you absolutely know.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
It almost sounds like as you're describing it.
It was like a calm and anactivation at the same time.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yeah, yeah, I could say activation, absolutely how
you like, perked up.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Even just talking about your voice, got this
energetic tone, your posture,and it was like you were at
peace, you were calm but youwere activated, you lit up
around.
This is a calling, this is anopportunity.
Might not be the rest of mylife, but this is my opportunity
, right here and now.
And it's so interesting to seehow you sensed into that very
feeling, into your whole being,just by going back to that
(25:35):
memory and talking about thiswork that you get to do now.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yeah, seven years.
In the first ones I got up, Iwent through the motions and
like it's again cliche, but likeI love getting up out of bed
and going and, you know, takingcare of people because I love
helping people.
I can't do the blood or needlesbecause I'll be on the floor,
but now I get that chance to bethat second.
You know line directly behindthat, putting the supplies in
(25:59):
providers' hands and things likethat.
So it's amazing.
It's a perfect thing for me.
I love it.
There's fires every day andthere's literally never a dull
moment in the hospital.
There is always something goingon.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
That's true, and I hope for a moment to you know,
break that third ball and invitethe listeners, if they didn't
catch that tonal change, or theviewers, if you didn't catch
that change in Nate's tone, ifyou didn't notice his body
change, the way, his whole beingchanged, even that voice tone,
if you didn't notice it, goahead and jump back and listen
before, and then listen when hestarted talking about how
(26:32):
connected this job was for himand how it was the right thing
at the right time and the rightopportunity.
And that one chance only, asyou sense into that, it's an
opportunity to stop and saywhere are those things in my
life and what does that tell meabout who I am now, who I'm
becoming, where I belong, whereI'm going, and just notice what,
that calm activation, what isthat for you?
(26:54):
Or maybe it's a differentsensation you have, but I think
that's just a nice opportunityto note that that transformation
happened right in the middle ofthis episode.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
It happened right here I'm going to have to go
back and watch it myself.
So we'll move into the maintheme.
The first one the power ofconnecting with the wisdom and
the body, heart and mind.
I love stories, so I'm going toask for a couple different
stories.
So can you share a story abouta time when listening to your
body, heart or mind helped guideyou to a better decision?
Speaker 2 (27:24):
I have one from just last week.
It's a small one, but I thinkit's the smallest things that
tell us the most about life.
I mean, we can think aboutthese big, epic things like the
job change that's huge andthere's a lot in there or major
life changes, marriages, divorce, death, birth, all of those
things.
Our brains notice those becausethey're substantial.
What we often don't notice arethe small little everyday things
(27:46):
that are the real keys toliving with more peaceability,
living with more feeling ofsuccess, stability, productivity
.
Just last week my parents werehere visiting.
They live about 3,000 milesaway so we only see each other
once or twice a year and I lovemy family.
They are amazing humans but wedon't live near each other so we
don't have a natural rhythm allthe time.
(28:06):
And they're at my house sothey're off their game, right.
They're not always feeling verycomfortable.
It's not their bed, it's not.
You know they don't have theirfavorite tea or soda or pillow
or you know all those creaturecomforts.
And it's easy when you're outof your context to get maybe
more irritable, tired, bored,frustrated and annoyed.
You know just feelings that youmay not always feel so much.
(28:29):
And likewise, when you invitepeople into your home.
It changes the rhythm of yourhome and I used to be of the
sort of mindset that my parentsdon't see them all that often.
They live 3000 miles away andso when they're here, we have to
spend as much time together aspossible and always be together.
And more is more is, more ismore, and that's how I had
(28:50):
always operated.
And I would start to elevate myanxiety a little.
I would start to like, but Iwouldn't always notice it, and
then it'd be like just hang on,just get through, even though we
want to enjoy the time.
You know, it accumulates and itescalates and inevitably a
snarky remark, a flip comment,some sarcasm or even a flat out
like leave me alone, you know.
(29:10):
And then you go into a cycle.
I feel bad, I don't see thesepeople I love very often I need
to make up for it, and the cyclejust repeats over and over.
This time when they visited, Ihave really incorporated a lot
of what we call somatic practiceinto my life.
It's basically just things youdo to intentionally be connected
with your body.
It's not any like you know.
It's not as complicated as itsounds when you say somatic.
(29:33):
It might be something as simpleas 10 minutes of yoga or five
minutes of a mindfulnessactivity, and so I had a couple
of things on the calendar that Ihad signed up to do over Zoom
that were somatic related, andone of them was the first full
day that my parents were here,and I did that first thing in
the morning, and by the end ofthe day I realized I never had,
(29:53):
I never had that irritability,never once.
And it didn't even occur to methat by maintaining one hour for
myself in the morning, doingsomething for me, physically in
my body and my somatic practiceevened me out.
That one hour for me meant Idon't know how long we were
awake after that.
The next 12, 13 hours were muchricher by taking that one hour
(30:14):
for what I needed than well, Ishouldn't do this thing because
my parents are here and thenforcing my way through.
So that's my very real life,very recent story about
listening to the wisdom of mybody and doing what I need first
so I can be more quality withthe people I'm with and doing
what I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah, that's a perfect example of we talk about
you know, taking care ofyourself first.
We use the example of theoxygen mask on the airplane or
pouring from a cup.
You can't pour from an emptycup.
So I think that's a good reallife example and I think we
learn the most and remember themost from real life examples.
You can read books, you can dowhatever, but when it happens in
(30:52):
front of you, it always justsolidifies more and you remember
that.
So that's awesome.
The next question is how cansomeone begin to tap into the
wisdom of their whole self whilestill feeling, while life feels
chaotic or overwhelming, whichI feel like life is pretty
overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Well, no one's going to like the answer.
It's the effort, temptation,fullness, and we all say it's
inevitable.
All of my clients go yeah, yeah, I know I should, but and the
reality is that this is how Iput it quite frequently, if you
feel like your mind is too fullto be mindful, it's because
(31:30):
you're not being mindful.
It's a practice, right?
So you know you want to developmuscle tone.
You don't develop muscle toneby doing one going to the gym
one day and then you're notswole after one day.
Right, you have to practice.
You have to build those musclesover time to build those up.
Your brain is an organ that actslike a muscle.
(31:52):
It has to be trained and anuntrained brain will wander.
Whether you have ADHD or not,it will feel like it.
It will wander.
You know the squirrel, theshiny object.
Your brain will go there.
Untrained Mindfulness is theeasiest way to train your brain
and it's not hard.
Except it feels like it's hardbecause we have a little bit of
(32:12):
a myth around mindfulness.
We tend to think oh well, realmeditation is when you can just
turn your brain off and sitthere and not have any thoughts,
in quietness for two hours.
Anybody that follows DanHarris's work will note that he
has a two and a half hour a daymeditation practice.
That's great.
Maybe someday I'll get thereMany days for me.
(32:32):
Five minutes, I just shoot forfive minutes, and you know what?
My brain is not still and quietfor five minutes, and actually
Harris talks a lot about that inhis work as well.
So many things will flow throughyour brain.
The whole point is to swipeleft.
So when something comes in yourbrain, just swipe it left.
Something else comes in yourbrain, swipe it left or right, I
don't care.
Swipe it back, swipe it up, Idon't care where you swipe it,
(32:54):
just swipe it.
And as you practice, thoughtscome in, thoughts go out,
thoughts come in, thoughts goout.
And then sometimes thoughtscome in.
They hang out here for a whileI forgot.
Now I gotta swipe it out.
The more you do that, the moreyour brain will start to slow
down and be stiller.
It might never be completely,still it might.
Different strokes, differentfolks Practicing that actually
(33:18):
calms your brain down for a full24 hours.
It gives you more clarity, itgives you more peaceability and
your brain will slow down all ofthe things it's interpreting.
So you make something like35,000 decisions in a day,
whether you know it or not, andyour brain is going well.
I got all these decisionssnapping my fingers here, got to
(33:38):
move them fast, got to makedecisions fast.
But actually if you slow yourbrain down, the automated
decisions that need to beautomated.
Great, do those fast.
I often say you make a decisionto put your underwear on before
your pants every day and it'sgood to automate that, because
if you have to think every daywhich direction do my underwear
go, then you're either asupermodel or a wrestler.
(34:01):
Most of us are not.
We know the underwear is goingon than the pants.
So yes, automate that.
But when you can slow yourbrain down, it gives you better
decision making quality for thethings you have to think about
I'm hungry, do I eat the potatochips or the mixed nuts?
And you can make thosedecisions at a better quality
when your brain slows down anddoesn't just go for the quick
response.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
So people are out there, they're listening, they
say, oh, that sounds great, I'dlove to start that.
And then they begin tooverthink, because I feel like
this is what I would do.
How do I sit?
What do I sit on?
What do I do?
How do I so someone on theirvery first day?
How do you just start?
Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, I don't care where you start.
Yeah, I don't care where youstart.
I don't care how you start,just start, because you'll find
it for yourself.
That being said, we likeinstructions, so I'm just going
to tell you have a seatsomewhere reasonably comfortable
.
For some people that's on apillow, cross-legged on the
floor, for other people it'ssitting in a chair.
You can lay down and domindfulness.
I actually don't recommend itbecause it's more likely to lead
(34:59):
to sleep and kind of.
The point most of the time isto actually work on training the
brain, not just go to sleepalthough doing it at bedtime is
helpful.
But just have a seat, stackyour spine as best you can,
don't worry about perfection.
Close your eyes or lower youreyes, set a timer, maybe even
for one minute, maybe for fiveminutes, I don't know.
Start small and just just do itOne minute.
(35:22):
Look, I did it.
I didn't die.
Maybe I could do it againtomorrow.
And for some people, here'sanother great tip Do it in your
car for two minutes before yougo into work.
Just sit in the seat of yourcar, turn everything off it's a
cold day, keep your heat on, butyou know the radio off and just
sit and try to do it, and ifyou really can't get your brain
around it, there are many otherthings, such as guided
meditation, that can also be areally nice entry in.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Like Nike said, just do it, Just get out there, start
swiping, come to peace.
We'll move into the secondtheme of the day living more
fully with ADHD.
How has ADHD shaped the way youexperience the world and what
have you learned from it?
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Well, it's the only way I see the world.
So there's that, because we getone brain.
But I think that the biggestthing is that coming to
understand how my own brainworks and working with others on
understanding how their ownbrain works.
For all of us it's just anexploratory process and an
evolutionary process of tappinginto what does and doesn't work
(36:20):
for you.
And, like I said before, mybody is the biggest source of
wisdom.
So in the past I wasn't tunedinto my body well at all.
Even when I played club sportsI would train my body but I
didn't really connect with it, Ididn't really listen.
And actually when you playsports you often try to learn to
tune out parts of your bodybecause you don't want to feel
the pain right.
But I started to learn that Icould.
(36:42):
I didn't know I was irritateduntil I was really irritated and
then I might be really grumpyor whatever comes with that.
And as I started to tap into mybody, I started to know little
signs and symptoms or signs andsignals.
I was a little bit, a littlebit irritated, not a lot
irritated, and once I couldsense into that, I could start
(37:02):
to make choices to release it orto dig in and follow it and
find out.
Am I carrying something with me?
Are things accumulating for me,or is there something I just
have to let go of?
Or does it require me to payattention to it so I can do
something different?
So the point of life right isnot to eradicate all pain we
(37:23):
can't but it's to use thediscomforts of life to figure
out what that's telling us inourselves, in the same way that
we do it really.
Naturally, when we enjoysomething, we enjoy something,
we do more of it.
We enjoy caffeine.
Most of us don't drink trycoffee until we're a teenager
and actually we don't evenreally like the taste of it.
But from what we know we're allcoffee drinkers because we like
(37:43):
what caffeine does.
So it's easy to do more of whatwe like.
We tend to ignore the signalsof things we don't like.
But if we can stop and check inwith those.
But to use it in the sense ofmining it for information on how
(38:13):
I can live more in rhythm andaligned with what works for me.
So, like a lot of folks withADHD, routine is not my friend.
I don't like it.
I loathe it.
At first it's a littlecomfortable and then contempt.
I don't like it.
So this may resonate with otherpeople who think they have ADHD
or know they have ADHD.
(38:33):
So I change.
We were talking aboutmindfulness.
I change my mindfulnesspractices because sitting in the
same spot, still every day inthe same way, I will just come
to reject it and hate it.
But if I change it up and I doa walking meditation or a guided
meditation or whatever else,then I can stay with things more
(38:53):
.
So it's staying consistent.
I'm meditating but I'm givingmyself the opportunity for some
variety within that to keepmyself engaged.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Yeah, that makes sense.
My wife actually just gotdiagnosed and something I
thought was interesting.
So this is what I wanted to askearlier it's weird to me that
when they try to diagnose which,like you said, not clinical, so
no diagnosis, but it'sinteresting to me they sent home
these questionnaires anddifferent things to answer and
all of them seem to have anegative connotation, like it's
(39:23):
like you get distracted, you dothis, but it's it's odd to me
and so I'd like to ask, like canyou highlight some of the
things?
Is there's like hyper focus andthat can be used to, you know,
get things done?
And so it's odd to me.
Where it's like on the clinicalaspect, when they're talking to
her, asking her questions, it'slike all the negative, like
shouldn't there be like anothersheet that says I also do these
things, like I hyper focus, sobad I could get, like you know,
(39:47):
read a whole book in one sittingor something.
But can you touch on some ofthe positive aspects instead of
just making it seem like they'reall negative?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Yeah.
So I'll second that hyper focusand it can go either way.
I've known people that havebeen like well, I spent six
hours doing something that likedidn't really bring a lot of
productivity.
They can also be veryproductive.
Like I went into a hyper focusphase and like did a big
overhaul and tidy in my officeand now I am more calm and less
(40:15):
agitated because my office lookbeyond my computer and the
visual field has like booksstacked crooked and notebook
paper here and there.
You know just that kind ofthing, and I really got to lean
(40:36):
in and hyper-focus in that andnow I feel calmer in my
workspace.
So that's one of them.
Like I said before, we tend tobe extremely creative.
We are the creative solutionpeople.
We're not the people going.
Well, when you have problem A,you use solution B when the
problem goes.
People that say you got problemA, we got 800 solutions, let's
go get creative.
(40:56):
There's some folks out therethat think that we were actually
the brain design folks thatwere the foragers and the
finders in previous ways ofliving, because we scan the
environment a little differentlyand we can look for things a
little bit differently and seethings a little differently.
So there is a lot of greatstuff there.
(41:17):
We also there's a piece aroundADHD.
Folks tend to be hypersensitiveto feedback and can take
positive feedback and interpretit not as positive but as a
negative.
You know, a teacher or aninstructor might hand a paper
back and say this is the bestpaper you've ever written and
we're like that means my otherpapers were bad.
(41:39):
And even just knowing that,what that means is that we're
the folks programmed to noticethe danger in the world and keep
ourselves and others safe.
That's a positive.
We have to work on the mindmessages that happen Right.
But another positive is andthis is a difference typically
and again, no people are exactlythe Gen Xers were in the
(42:01):
diagnoses of ADHD because it wasnormed on white middle class
boys when it was and it was, youknow, not really understood
until I believe, the late 70s.
And then you know there wasthis prototypical we can all
think of that, that boy in theclass that we know that like
(42:24):
couldn't wait for recess and waslike, played every sport and
was bouncing around the room.
It was, it was normed on thattype, so it's easy to identify.
It was more known as ADD at thetime for women because of this
like feedback thing, we actuallycan produce what people are
looking for a little bit fasterand a little more acutely.
So that means let's take aschool example you get feedback
(42:47):
from a teacher that your paperwasn't as great.
Maybe it was a B, not an A.
Well, our sensitivity to a B isnot as good of anA can turn on
that focus and that drive to getbetter at the material and
start producing better results.
And then we get those A's andthose commendations.
(43:08):
We may not always hear it assuch, but it happens.
So for many women that includes, but those are a few of the
ways that I know for myself, Iknow in my research and reading
(43:32):
and I know in working with otherwomen.
These are some commonalities ofsome of the really helpful
traits of living with this waythat the brain can work.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
That's perfect.
We'll touch on the last themebreaking free.
Okay.
So what's one myth about havingit all together?
As a working mother, you'd lovethe challenge.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
You're not perfect, sorry, and you won't be, that's.
OK signals, whether you haveADHD or not.
(44:12):
If you are a working mom in ourculture right now, in this
Westernized culture, you thinkyou have to be better tomorrow
than you are today, and orbetter the next minute than you
are this minute.
And yes, it is true, you shouldalways be striving for
bettering yourself.
But it's not the performance,it's not the being perfect, it's
working on what's going on, themessages that are repeating
inside of you that you might noteven be hearing, that you need
(44:32):
to listen to and work onreframing, dispelling,
eradicating, reshaping all ofthat, because those messages
that are playing in your headprobably came from your
childhood, probably weren't onesyou chose but were given to you
, and now they repeat on a loopand you may not even notice it
sometimes.
That same client that I talkedabout with the katsugi piece one
(44:54):
day she was like I have thesilliest story to tell you and I
don't know why, but I just haveto tell you, and it was about
watering her plant and spillingwater on the floor and telling
herself that she was carelessthat's just water on the
hardwood floor, you just cleanit up with a towel and you move
on Right.
But it turned on thisrecognition that she was telling
herself she was careless.
You know feeling fractured andbroken to yeah, I can be
(45:31):
carefree, which means sometimesthey spill water on the floor
and I can clean it up and itdoesn't have to be a big deal.
Right, let's put a little lesspressure on ourselves, and part
of that is working on thosestories, those messages on loop
that are in our head that we maynot even know are there.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
It's the smallest things, it seems like.
I feel like there's a coupledifferent episodes.
I mentioned stories of peoplewith guests that I know from you
, know previous lives andwhatnot, and I remember stories
that you know seem insignificant, but I don't, like you said, I
don't get to choose what'splanted in there.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Okay, so let's try to .
You do get to choose to get ridof it, though.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Get rid of it.
Yeah, there of it.
Yeah, there's the swiping right?
Yeah, so we'll try to piece itall together.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
So we went through three really good themes today,
if listeners could take away oneinsider action from this
conversation.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
What would it be?
Speaker 2 (46:19):
I think they can probably guess Meditate, work on
a mindfulness practice orpractices that can work for you.
Slow down that brain becauseit'll be easier to hear what we
just talked about, thosenegative messages that might be
playing on a loop that you canchoose to start letting go of
and reshape and reform.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
That's perfect.
Well, thank you, Olivia, forcoming out.
Please provide feedback.
The feedback makes this podcasteven better.
Drop your thoughts on questionsor questions on Instagram,
Facebook, TikTok, YouTube orBuzzsprout and thank you for
being part of the Mindforcejourney.
I love you all.
See ya, Thank you you.
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