Are You Letting 2022 Be Another Year of Underachieving? - 093
Jan 17, 2022Achieving your goals is connected to how well-developed your EF skills and strategies are, and if they’re not well-developed, well, you know the rest of the story.
And I get it. Getting the right help for yourself is a Catch-22. It’s challenging because the very skills you need to help yourself are the skills you’re missing. And, there’s plenty of resources in the world that offer you a piece of what you need, but not all of it. How do I know? Because I was offered a piece here and there for years, and I just got fed-up with the absence of a solution – not a band-aid or a quick fix – but an actual solution to what I was missing and wanting to achieve. A real solution after so many failed attempts at improving the quality of my life - and none of those pieces helped me get where I am today.
I am not the exception here. It’s not like “oh, you could do it Dr B because of all your training and education in psychology.” No - It was my curiosity and my absolute determination that drove me to find the answers for myself and then for others.
In this episode Dr B talks about:
- Transforming your life and maintaining your achievements
- Life habits that hold you back and feed underachieving
- You are more than you think
- Act now so you don't miss the AIA opportunity that ends January 20, 2022 - link below
Developing your Executive Function Skills and shifting your limiting beliefs is the fastest and most effective way to overcome ADHD limitations, find focus, gain confidence, and newfound freedom in your life!
My mission is to put an end to the worldwide needless suffering of adults with ADHD and those with under-developed Executive Function Skills - whether from ADHD, chronic depression or anxiety, trauma, addictions, or chronic illnesses. And, you don't need a formal diagnosis to know you need help developing these executive function skills in order to greatly reduce your suffering.
Full Episode Transcript
Are You Letting 2022 Be Another Year of Underachieving? - 093
It’s doesn’t have to be. Seriously! Achieving your goals is connected to how well- developed your EF skills and strategies are, and if they’re not well-developed, well, you know the rest of the story.
And I get it. Getting the right help for yourself is a Catch-22. It’s challenging because the very skills you need to help yourself are the skills you’re missing. And, there’s plenty of resources in the world that offer you a piece of what you need, but not all of it. How do I know? Because I was offered a piece here and there for years, and I just got fed-up with the absence of a solution – not a band- aid or a quick fix – but an actual solution to what I was missing and wanting to achieve. A real solution after so many failed attempts at improving the quality of my life - and none of those pieces helped me get where I am today.
I am not the exception here. It’s not like “oh, you could do it Dr B because of all your training and education in psychology.” No - It was my curiosity and my absolute determination that drove me to find the answers for myself and then for others. My word for years now is “unstoppable” – I just don’t stop – not for me and not for you. We all deserve to enjoy the best that life has to offer us, whatever those things are that are of interest to us, rather than having to pass on them because we aren’t equipped to fully participate in our adult lives. I am asked a lot “can my life REALLY improve in 7-months, Dr B?” “Can I really overcome so many of the challenges that I’ve been living with for over 40-50 years?” The short answer is “yes.” If you don’t want the life you currently have, and you want a better, easier, more enjoyable life for yourself and those you spend your life with, and you are motivated towards a better life, then absolutely!
What does “motivated towards” mean? It means that you aren’t motivated away from the chaos and craziness but towards a more peaceful and enjoyable life – whatever that looks like for you. Consistent motivation comes from within. I learned what I need to do for myself to be motivated and I teach this to my students so they can be consistently motivated as well.
I’m also asked about my statement that you can transform your life in 7 months. Depending on your life circumstances, you can make a significant difference in the quality of your life and how you feel about yourself in 7 months, even if you’ve really disliked yourself for years. You can learn to love and respect yourself. You can develop the foundational EF skills and strategies to make your day-to-day living easier and more rewarding. You can decide who you are going to be moving forward in your life and move into being that person. There’s a lot you can do in just 7 months, if you are motivated towards something like that, and not just away from what you currently have.
It would be like putting in your order at a restaurant and saying “I’m hungry; just bring me something to eat” and the service person just brings you something to eat and it’s not at all what you wanted or even like. You are upset or frustrated but seriously…you didn’t put in your order for what you wanted to receive; you put in your order for something general – “just bring me something to eat” and that’s what you got.
If your life is anything like how my life used to be, it’s all about surviving another day or week or month – it’s not about considering what you want in life and becoming the person who can have that life. When I read what challenges people are having and what you all want, it’s not a lot. A clean house. Better regulated feelings. To feel proud of yourself for something. To keep your word and finish things. To be a good role model for your kids. No one is writing to me and saying that they want the moon; they just want some time for themselves and time to be with their kids or family or friends and not feel like they shouldn’t be spending that time that way because there is so much that needs doing that is more important. Is it more important? At the end of the day, what is more important? Our relationships or our tasks? Who we are or what we’ve done? How can you decide to get the right help for yourself if you have challenges with decision-making? If you’re like me and got a very ineffective decision-making strategy as a kid, you find it very difficult to make a decision and know that it’s a good decision before you actually act on it. That was me; not anymore. Today, I know that the decisions I make are the right decisions for me, given the information I have at the time I make them. No more flipping a coin or guessing and hoping for the best.
And what about opening emails? I can’t tell you the number of people who sign up on the Waitlist to learn about the AIA-FS program, and then never open the emails that we send them, telling them everything they need to know about the program, so they can make an informed decision about improving their life. And, even if they do open their emails, making a decision is so difficult (missing important skills again) that they put it off and put it off until the deadline has passed and they miss out on the opportunity.
Is this sounding like you? I ask because it is definitely how life goes for so many of the adults I work with and help in the AIA-FS program.
Just like many other things you were excited about in the moment, you may have been excited when you submitted your information on the Waitlist for the ADDventures In Achievement program because you were finally going to get solutions to your lifetime of challenges. That’s something to be excited about.
But you don’t have the habit of checking your emails daily, because it’s overwhelming to do so. There are thousands of unopened emails waiting for you every time you check your emails and so you stay away and prevent the overwhelm. And, by not checking your emails regularly, you miss out on important opportunities, bonuses and such that are being offered to you, and will improve the quality of your life and eliminate the very overwhelm that you are running from. And you miss it because you are moving away from the pain. We humans tend to move away from pain and run to pleasure. So, if the pain of opening up your emails is greater than the pleasure you could gain if you did, you avoid the pain and miss out on the pleasures awaiting you.
So much of this is habits, limiting beliefs, under-developed EF skills and all of this can be changed by you; that is, if that’s of interest to you. Or, do you already know how to create consistent habits that benefit you, eliminate your limiting beliefs and develop your essential EF skills?
Often, I will send out text messages to remind people to open their email sent on such and such date because it’s the information they asked for and still they don’ttake action on learning about the very thing they requested information about and definitely need to help them develop their EF skills.
So, what’s the solution here? Do I call all of you personally and hope to reach you and help you to understand what an opportunity this is for you to change your life? It’s not pie in the sky, or a lie – you can transform your life, if you are ready to transform your life, in the 7-months that we will be working together.
The boat stops on January 20th, and we begin our transformational journey on the January 26th. And by choosing to get in on this transformational journey, you won’t miss the ride of a lifetime. Yes, it might be a bit challenging or you might have to give up something of lesser importance to have something that will last a lifetime. Only you can decide what your values and priorities are for you. I decide for me every day to live according to my values and priorities and by doing so, my quality of life keeps getting better and better. I would love for that to be the quality of your life too.
Do you know how to consistently work towards your goals and achieve them? Are you satisfied with how long it takes you to achieve them? A lot of people set goals and then don’t consistently work towards them because they don’t know how. It’s sad. Are you setting yourself up for success not failure before you even get started by preparing for the successful journey to your goals?
If you want 2022 to be a year of growth, transformation and achieving your goals, rather than just dreaming about them, you’ve got to do things you haven’t done before, otherwise you would already have what you want. And, if you want to start achieving your goals, you need to gain clarity on what your goals are, and who you will need to grow to be in order to achieve them. It’s a process and it’s totally doable for you.
For those of you who have been long time listeners, you know I am big on WINS and their importance in your life. There’s another important aspect to focusing on WINS and that is you are training your mind every day to notice what is right with you, right with what you are doing and right in the world – in other words… WINS. And especially during a time in our world history when it would be easy to ignore what’s right or good or amazing – this is exactly what we need to be focusing on to keep the level of positives within us high, so it can offset the high level of negatives that we are bombarded with every day.
If you have a judgmental mindset, you are busy focusing on what’s wrong with everyone and everything in your world. If you have an acceptance mindset, you accept what is and work with it. That means what you have going for you today,how you can leverage it and even grow it into something magnificent. Living from this mind space of acceptance will help you to see the WINS in your everyday life and celebrate them. It will help you to choose new meanings to give things and experiences, rather than defaulting to what you have always thought or done. You are the meaning maker in your life, so choose wisely, with the end in mind. Be sure to stand guard at the doorway to your mind and only allow in what serves you. And monitor who you are becoming on the way to where it is that you are going, least you arrive and not like the person you’ve become.
And so important to remember who you are. You are not your deeds. You are a precious child of God and the universe; and are called a “human being” not a “human doing” for good reason. You don’t have to earn your value; you were born with it. Your value comes from “who” you are; not what you do. And so long as you link your self-worth and self-value to you, the human being, your value will remain constant and 100%. And if you need a place to know that is true, be sure to join the Facebook group, Living Beyond ADHD, so you can be with others who will celebrate yours WINS with you and affirm that you are more than okay as you, the “human being.”
So, what’s it going to be for you today? If you took out the garbage when the containers were still a little empty instead of waiting until they were overflowing, that’s a win. If you wiped up a few spills on the floor instead of leaving them to track throughout your home and detract from the beauty of your floor, that’s a wonderful win. If you did something without being asked or reminded, that’s an awesome win. You get the point; celebrate all of them. And none of this “half- hearted celebrating”; you’ve got to mean it. Exaggerate your emotions. YES!!! WOW!!! AWESOME!!! Be sure to celebrate your WINS – big and small – because celebrating daily builds consistency and makes a faster difference in your Life.
How much time do we have? Not much. So, let’s get to it.
What’s keeping you from acting on what you want for yourself? In my experience, it’s often a fear of something. We are as limited as we make up our minds to be. Whether you say you can or say you can’t, you are right either way. Whatever you believe to be true, is true for you; just not true for the rest of the world. We each create our own reality based on our beliefs, not facts.
One of the first trainings I do with students is about limiting beliefs; those beliefs that keep us stuck. A belief is something we choose to believe is true as if it is a fact when it is not a fact; it’s just a belief. And we argue with others over beliefs as if they are facts, when they are simply beliefs. We have each chosen what we believe today. And, we can choose new beliefs for tomorrow, if we are open to do so. Many of you have taken on your limiting beliefs based on your past experiences or what others have said to you, about you, instead of what you believe about you. Do you know the bigger truth about yourself? Or, do you only know yourself through the eyes of others?
One limiting belief that I hear a lot is “things aren’t going to work out for me; they never do.” Such an interesting belief. It’s all based on what’s happened in the past and is then projected into the future so that the future will be what the past was, and therefore, what is the point of even trying to change things because the outcome is already determined with this way of believing. Do you use your past to predict your future and stop yourself from doing what will change your life forever for the better?
This limiting belief is rooted in self-doubt and uncertainty. You are doubting your ability to make a good decision since so many of the decisions you’ve made in the past haven’t turned out well. Your future is not based on your past unless you choose to make it that way.
The first thing to understand about a belief statement is that it is literally instructions to your mind, telling you what your life is going to be, and then you just follow those instructions and that is what your life is. You have literally programmed your mind to give you that life. And it’s not even the life you really want! Remember, the programming of your mind isn’t personal – if you say it’s true for you, then it’s true for you – even if it’s not true for 100’s of other people.
Busting this belief – Things aren’t going to work out for me; they never do.
As you look back over your life, I bet you could show me so many of the times that things didn’t work out for you and so you used those times to validate this belief that they never will. However, since there are always exceptions to a belief, I suggest you look back over your life and find those exceptions when things did work out for you, because they are there.
The reason I’m talking about limiting beliefs is because you can run your life into the ground if you don’t shift them into beliefs that support you.
I want you all to know that there is real hope for resolving the challenges you are experiencing with limiting beliefs and under-developed Executive Function skills.
The widespread needless suffering of millions of adults around the world has to stop, and I am doing what I can to stop it with this generation; with us. We allneed to address our limiting beliefs and under-developed Executive Function skills if we want to live the life that is possible for us with those changes. We have to be the person who lives the life we say we want; not struggle to live the life we say we want so we can become the person someday who has that life.
We all need empowering beliefs and well-developed Executive Function skills to thrive as adults in today’s world. If we can’t plan, organize, prioritize, get started and keep going until the end, or regulate states of overwhelm and analysis paralysis so we can more easily make good decisions and know they are good decisions, it’s going to cost us dearly.
Slow down and become a student of your own life. Understand what you need to succeed with the multi-faceted brain you have. Take action on what you learn about yourself. This is the lifework that lies ahead for you if this is your time.
You came to this lifetime with an empowering gift, and I would love it if each and every person on this planet were able to express his or her unique, empowering gifts freely, without the threat of being shamed or criticized. Let’s put an end to that stigma once and for all.
A Favorite Quote: George Bernard Shaw said, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
What this quote says to me is that I am 100% responsible 100% of the time for what I want my life to be. And if it is to be, it is up to me to be willing to change my mind for the better. So, I ask myself HOW I can do that in accordance with my values, and then do it.
Whether you’re learning from my podcast episodes or live videos or working with me directly, you are in my world and I’m here to serve your needs. So be sure to reach out and get your needs met. It’s up to you to take action so things can change for the better for you. And they can only change for the better for you if you Change.
If you aren’t yet a member of my Facebook group, Living Beyond ADHD, I highly recommend you get over there and ask to join. When you do, be sure to answer the few questions asked included the question about the group rules. We have rules so that the group is a safe space, free of judgment, and a place where you can show up and interact with like-minded adults – laugh a little, learn a little and most of all be connected to a positive energy community. And even more important, because of the short timeline remaining - get over to the link in the show notes and check out the ADDventures In Achievement program while there is still time to do so. It’s your ticket out of the endless loop of overwhelm, frustration, underachieving and more.
If you enjoyed today’s episode or any of the other episodes, please share this podcast show with others. I would also be grateful if you’d rate the show and write a positive or inspiring review on iTunes so I know I’m meeting your needs. It means a lot to me to know your life is getting a little bit better every time we get together.
Be sure to check out the show notes for the many opportunities available to you – such as use working together to put an end to your needless suffering. You will find real solutions to the challenges you are experiencing, and I would love to help you realize a new freedom, that is…if that’s of interest to you. Thanks for listening… Until the next time… Bye for now…
Resources referred to in this episode:
• AIA Executive Function Foundational Skills Program - enrollment closes on January 20, 2022: https://www.drbarbaracohen.com/AIA
• Living Beyond ADHD Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/livingbeyondadhd
• Free PDF - 13 Signs Weak Executive Functioning Is Holding You Back: https://www.drbarbaracohen.com/Executive-Function
Episode Resources:
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Click the AIA link: https://www.drbarbaracohen.com/AIA so you are informed. There is no obligation to being informed about an amazing opportunity that changes lives!
- 13 EF Skills: https://www.drbarbaracohen.com/Executive-Function
- Join the amazing Living Beyond ADHD Facebook Group & hang out with your peeps
- Follow me on Dr B Facebook Page and enjoy live videos and more
- Follow me on Instagram and enjoy relevant resources.
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Let's put an end to the worldwide needless suffering together! We can do this!
