The Correlation Between Your Adult Capabilities and Your Success– 103
May 30, 2022Let’s jump straight to what’s important here. You definitely need certain capabilities to succeed in life. These capabilities help you to get and keep a job, provide appropriate care for children, manage a household and contribute meaningfully to your community. They also enable you having a satisfying personal life with whatever is most important to you. And based on what you are sharing with me when you complete the Information List form, you are in desperate need of the EF skills to be able to perform the basics of adult life. I’m not talking about anything fancy here; just the basics.
So many of you are stressed, overwhelmed, and emotionally maxed out. The smallest thing can set you off and send you down a dysregulated path that lasts for days. That is not what is supposed to happen if you get triggered. Your nervous system is supposed to reset itself and bring you back to a calm and well-regulated state pretty quickly.
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 a newfound freedom in your life!
My mission is to put an end to the worldwide needless suffering of adults with ADHD and those with underdeveloped Executive Function Skills - whether from ADHD, chronic depression or anxiety, traumas big and small, 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, so don't wait.
Full Episode Transcript
The Correlation Between Your Adult Capabilities and Your Success– 103
Let’s jump straight to what’s important here: The correlation between your adult capabilities and your success. You definitely need certain capabilities to succeed in life. These capabilities help you to get and keep a job, provide appropriate care for children, manage a household and contribute meaningfully to your community. They also enable you having a satisfying personal life with whatever is most important to you. And based on what you are sharing with me when you complete the Information List form, you are in desperate need of the EF skills to be able to perform the basics of adult life. I’m not talking about anything fancy here; just the basics.
So many of you are stressed, overwhelmed, and emotionally maxed out. The smallest thing can set you off and send you down a dysregulated path that lasts for days. That is not what is supposed to happen if you get triggered. Your nervous system is supposed to reset itself and bring you back to a calm and well-regulated state pretty quickly.
Whether the cause of your limiting beliefs, outdated identities, missing pre-skills and underdeveloped executive function skills is ADHD, traumatic experiences, depression, anxiety, addictions, chronic illnesses or something else, the lack of these capabilities puts you in a bad situation. You can spend your time pursuing a diagnosis and perhaps medication and this process can take months and sometimes years, depending on where you live. Or, you can go straight to the solution, so you can successfully perform the basics of your adult life and more. You can always pursue a diagnosis or medication while you are actively engaged in the solution, but waiting is wasting precious time. Are you seriously committed to transforming your life? There are only 2 answers: Yes or No. If your answer is yes, and now is your time, I can help you, so listen up. If your answer is no, I can’t help you because I can’t do the transformational work for you, which would rob you of all the amazing experiences you’d be missing.
For those of you who answered yes, have you gotten your free PDF, “13 Signs Weak Executive Functioning Is Holding You Back” and actually read the PDF and scored yourself? If no, you’re not seriously committed and you need to get this today. If yes, that’s great. How did you do? Were you 13 out of 13 or 11 out of 13? Or perhaps you are a little more developed and scored 8 out of 13. I know how bad things are for you if you scored 13 out of 13. And even if you scored 8 out of 13, if you are a Gifted Underachiever, those 8 are holding you back from even greater successes.
You also want to get registered for the FREE 3 live trainings on June 3, 6 and 8. This will jump start your journey if you answered yes to being seriously committed to your transformation. I’ll be covering releasing your limiting beliefs and outdated identities, the importance of building your pre-skills and the development of your 13 core executive function skills.
Let’s talk about what you can do to develop your executive function skills today because it seems to be the best kept secret in the mental health field. Your mind is a powerful asset, even if you currently don’t feel that way about yours; it can learn and develop the skills you need to succeed. Executive Function skills are getting more press lately, and that’s a good thing. There are books to read and podcasts to listen to and all of that is great! It’s about time that Executive Function skills came front and center. However, there’s more to developing these skills than gaining more information. You need to apply the information you get and often there are obstacles preventing you from doing so. Missing pre-skills, limiting beliefs, outdated identities, codependency, and even cumulative traumatic experiences can all slow you down and keep you from developing the EF skills you need.
There's so much more to the development of executive function skills, if you want to do a thorough job and don't want to have to start over, again and again, because what you're doing isn't working. So, let's look at the options. You can read a book and you can discuss it with a friend or a therapist or a coach. Or, you can learn about a skill and practice developing it yourself without feedback or support. Or, you can go and get everything you need for the development of a solid foundation as well as your pre-skills and EF skills and learn to maintain it all for a lifetime. I can tell you that most of the books I've come across, at least years ago, give you workarounds for missing skills, rather than the development of them, and I personally am not looking for workarounds for myself or anyone else. I'm looking for resolution and transformation.
The literature says that if we don’t have well-developed EF skills by age 25 or 30, then we have what we have and we will need workarounds for the rest of our life. I don’t accept that’s all that can ever happen for us. Neuroplasticity dictates that as long as we're here and alive, we can continue to develop the skills we need. It doesn't cap out at 25 or 30 and that’s it. And I know from personal experience that age 30 isn’t the end of our opportunities because I developed my own EF skills after age 30 and so have my students.
So, what do we have here? If we don't want to have band-aids and we don't want to have workarounds, and we don't accept this limiting belief that 25 or 30 is the cap age and from there, it's going to be a workaround or a band-aid, then I suggest that you get busy, like I did, developing your own EF skills.
I can tell you ways to develop the skills, but it doesn't mean that's going to be the right way for you. Because what I've learned after 30+ years of working individually with clients and working with my student groups for over 5 years now, is that people learn and develop their executive function skills differently. You can't get out of a book what you can get live by having someone ask you powerful questions, and coach and guide you, to find out what's going to work for you or what you need to do. Resistance can come up. All different things can come up as the reason that you're not able to develop a skill or haven't been up to now or the reason you're struggling with developing it now could be completely different than another person.
And if you're reading a book to develop your skills, it's pretty cookie cutter with a book; definitely not individual. It's not someone listening to where you're stuck and giving you a strategy to get unstuck, and move forward and develop the skills. That's why I love the program. And, that's why I'm so actively involved in the program, because if I were to sit on the sidelines and watch you all do the work and not have the live coaching and not have the private forums – you would only be able to do the best you could without active and live support. As a kid, you would have developed your skills with feedback and support and guidance, and it’s no different now that you are an adult. In fact, it’s even more important for us as adults because we have developed so many limiting beliefs and non-productive ways of surviving our lives that we have things to un-do, as well as new things to develop and integrate. And considering we are releasing a lifetime of limiting stuff and then inputting the new, empowering stuff, it’s a well-designed journey that builds on itself, and it takes time. However, the results don’t take time to notice as they are there during the first month which is awesome.
We all create our own reality and we create our reality based on our perception of the information and stimulus that comes into our mind and the meanings that we make out of it; nothing comes with any meaning. We are the meaning makers in our life and we have the power to change the meanings we have given experiences once we have the skills and strategies to do so.
Simple phrases to keep “top of mind” are: You are where your attention is. What you focus on grows. Be mindful of who you are becoming on the way to where it is you are going least you not like yourself when you arrive. Stand guard at the doorway to your mind and don’t let in things that don’t serve you.
I’ve heard it said many times in years past that we are having two experiences in this lifetime: that of a human being having a spiritual experience, and that of a spiritual being having a human experience. Either way, you are a precious child of 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 “being”; not what you are doing, which means that you can wake up every day with your value 100% and that’s pretty awesome. It’s a great win.
Speaking of wins, what’s it going to be for you today? You are committed to smiling more during the day; that’s wonderful. You are only giving your word on things you know you will keep your word on and nothing else; that’s awesome. You decided to inventory your positive qualities and focus on them instead of what you feel you are lacking; that’s fantastic! Each one of these WINS deserves your full-hearted celebrating! YES!!! WOW!!! AWESOME!!! I know you all have wins – big and small – and I am hopeful that you are celebrating them all every day.
How much time do we have? Not much. So, let’s get to it.
My hope is that eventually more and more healthcare providers will see the benefits of specialized Executive Function Skills Training for adults, no matter what diagnosis we are given, since the development of these skills gets derailed for many conditions other than ADHD. And yes, it would be wonderful if we had been given this opportunity when we were kids, but that didn’t happen for most. We are being given this opportunity now, as adults, and it is our choice to close the gap now or not. Our quality of life depends on what we decide.
Before I talk about the EF skills, there are 6 important concepts I want to introduce you to that have radically transformed my life. They are:
Stand for something every day
Clarify goals
Daily consistency
Be willing to go to any lengths to achieve goal
Keep word to self
Personal time for reflection
1. Every day you get out of bed and stand. Years ago, I thought to pair this action with an intentional action of standing for something specific for my day. It could be compassion or truth or random acts of kindness; anything meaningful to me for that day. The intention is to look for opportunities to stand for what I chose that day. And, in the evening when I reflect on my day, I need to have examples of evidence that I stood for what I chose that day. If I did, I am satisfied and sleep well. If there is no evidence that I stood for that, I ask myself what happened that kept me from standing for that and figure it out so I can stand for it the next day. And then I am satisfied and sleep well.
2. Goals that lack clarity will not be achieved. I make sure that my goals have steps and criteria and are sequenced so that I can move from step to step in the process of achieving my goals.
3. I love daily consistency because 15 minutes a day, every single day, allows me to fly under the radar of resistance and achieve 1½ hours of dedicated time to whatever I have chosen to give 15 minutes a day to. It could be decluttering or organizing my stuff or even physical activity. 15 minutes a day adds up and everyone has 15 minutes a day to give to something important.
4. In order to achieve anything, I need to be willing to go the distance; whatever that distance is and whatever it will take to go the distance. If I am committed to the achievement of a goal and stop short of the finish line, the goal will not be achieved. Many of you start but stop short and end up with lots of unfinished tasks that you feel bad about and start to build up. Being willing to go to any lengths puts an ends to that problem.
5. My think of my word is a vow or pledge given. It isn’t only the act of breaking my word to myself or others that is a problem, it is what I am training my mind to believe, which is that I don’t keep my word. So, when I give my word, it is as if my mind is saying “yeh sure. It’s not going to happen.” And my mind is right if I break my word a lot, because that is what I have taught myself to believe by my lack of actions. Instead, if my word is sacred, which it is to me, then giving something sacred means that I will keep to what I said. And the seriousness of this makes me stop and think about what it means to give my word on something and what will be involved so I know specifically what I am committing myself to.
6. We all need personal time to reflect on our values, thoughts, feelings and life. Without it, we are just moving through life like a robot on auto-pilot and not valuing ourselves nor loving ourselves nor taking care of our needs. We all need downtime to digest what life offers us so we can continue to grow and transform our lives into whatever we want for ourselves.
So, how many of my sacred concepts do you currently live by? Any of them? All of them? I hope at least some of them. If you do decide to live by all of them, they will change your life in amazing ways.
And speaking of changing your life in amazing ways, that is also what developing your EF skills will do for you. I tried many approaches to the development of my own EF skills along the way and I have only found one thing to be truly effective: a specialized training and coaching program, where you not only get the “what,” but you get the “how” as well. And the “how” is often unique to each person. How we each go about anything is unique to us.
I liken it to athletic training. I trained to be a physical fitness trainer, and I think about that training program. It included hands-on experiential training and not just book learning, because there is no way to be an effective fitness trainer from a book. And the same is true of those who I trained for fitness. If we only talked about it and we never did any actual hands-on training where they got to “feel” what the proper form feels like based on feedback and guidance from me, they would do it the way they thought was correct, when it wasn’t. They couldn’t see themselves clearly and didn’t yet have the “knowing” of correct form.
It’s the same process with Executive Function Skill training. You don’t know what you don’t know. If you want to really leap ahead to the next level of performance, you need to work with someone who has the knowledge, training, experience and “knowing” to provide the full package for your transformation.
And that’s the message that I would love for each person getting a new ADHD diagnosis to hear: You need to develop your Executive Function skills, and the fastest, most effective way is to join a reputable training program with an expert coach and trainer.
A woman can dream, right?
Well, if you’re dreaming of EF skills (and who doesn’t wish they were more organized and capable in their daily life?), perhaps now is the time to go beyond dreaming. If you want to develop better executive functioning in a proven training program that will elevate your skills quicker than any other, I encourage you to check out the ADDventures In Achievement Foundational Skills Program.
It’s 7-months of incredibly effective, in-depth training and coaching that will empower you to turn your untapped gifts into your most valuable assets. You’ll finally have the opportunity to realize your potential because your limiting beliefs, outdated identities, missing pre-skills, and underdeveloped EF skills won’t be undermining your best efforts any more. You’ll be the one who can manage your time and responsibilities (at work and at home) with greater ease and a lot less chaos. And in case you are a show me kind of person, meaning you want proof, I’ve been gathering the proof for 5 years now. As a previous international researcher, a part of me is data-driven and wants the proof to show that what we are doing is yielding the results I say are happening and that it’s not just an opinion. The data is solid and real transformation is happening. When you engage with the program, it changes you from the inside out.
So, here’s something I can give you today to start working on building a foundation for your EF skill development, if your healthcare professional has missed telling you about your ability to develop your skills in conjunction with any other treatment plan you have undertaken for yourself. Let’s do a little experiment.
1. Make a list of just 6 “little traumatic experiences” that have occurred from your childhood. Examples could be that
a. A friend broke a play date with you
b. Someone told you that you were fat when you weren’t
c. You were held back a grade or half grade in school
d. Someone yelled at you for being late to an appointment
e. You were promised a sleepover with your friend and your parents changed their minds
f. You were a good student yet got criticized for not be an excellent student or making honor roll
2. Next, remember how you felt with each of them and the beliefs you developed as a result of those 6 “little traumatic experiences.” Write them down.
3. Next, imagine you are standing on the rooftop of a building so you have a great view. Imagine that you are reviewing what happened in each of those 6 examples. Is what you are “seeing” for each of those “little traumatic experiences” the same as what you remembered about each previously or are you seeing it differently because of greater perspective?
4. Next, how are you feeling from this little experiment? Were you able to do each of these steps I gave you? Did you get stuck on any of the steps? What did you do when you got stuck, if you did? And if you were able to do all the steps, I gave you for all 6 “little traumatic experiences” you used for this experiment, how did you feel afterwards? Were you able to give each of your 6 experiences a new meaning and feeling?
The purpose of this little experiment was to demonstrate with you the importance of a few EF skills. Metacognition is about perspective and is essential to see your life and its experiences with clarity so you can make appropriate meanings about them. Emotional Control is about the meanings you give experiences since nothing comes with a meaning; we are the meaning makers for all of our experiences. Shifting is essential if you are going to be able to move from one thought or task to another. Some people are rapid shifters and will jump away from one task and move on to the next one if they feel stuck. Did that happen to you? And Initiating is about starting once you have prepped for whatever you are to start doing. There are many more EF skills I could pull out of this little experiment but these are enough to show you that without these critically important life skills, there are many times you could get stuck and quit or derail from a task and not successfully achieve your outcome. If we translate this concept to your work life or family life or marriage, if you can’t successfully navigate your EF skills, you could end up at a dead-end and frustrated. Maybe you are even there now. If so, shake it off and let’s move on. I won’t leave you hanging.
You can do something about developing those skills, so you can function more productively at work and create more balance in your personal life. The choice is yours. Are you seriously committed to putting an end to your needless suffering and developing your missing skills so that the quality of life you want to live is yours? The years will pass no matter what you do. It’s really the choice of what you will put into those years rather than them just be passing years filled with frustration and regrets.
If you’re not sure what you want to do about your situation, I get it. That’s why I am hosting a 3-day live training on June 3, 6 and 8. Be sure to get yourself registered for all 3 days right away so you don’t miss a precious moment of those trainings. And if the time doesn’t work for your time zone and attending live, you will have access to the replays, so long as you are registered for the 3-day training. No registration, no access to replays if you can’t make it live. And, my special thanks to you for registering for this FREE 3-day live training is a coupon code for $150 off your tuition investment in AIA-FS, if you decide you want to continue working with me after our 3-days together to take a deep dive into your personal transformation. You will also receive access to a bonus coaching call on June 13th with your enrollment in AIA-FS. So, let’s spend some time together with no obligation; just learning and experiencing together. And if you decide you want more, there’s more waiting for you.
Please 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 and live as Empowered Achievers.
A Favorite Quote: Gandhi said, “If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
I love this quote because it speaks to the idea that I don’t need to know how in the moment, I just need to believe that I can do something and that the how will reveal itself in time. I have found this to be true time and time again.
More Dr B!
Loving the podcast? Here’s how to get even more support:
· Free 3-live trainings on June 3, 6 and 8 - “Meeting You Where You Are & Moving Forward from There” – get registered right away and join us:
https://www.drbarbaracohen.com/3-day-live-training-registration
· Executive Function Information List & AIA-FS Program Information: https://www.drbarbaracohen.com/AIA
· Free PDF - 13 Signs Weak Executive Functioning Is Holding You Back: https://www.drbarbaracohen.com/Executive-Function
· Living Beyond ADHD Facebook Support Group for podcast listeners: https://www.facebook.com/groups/livingbeyondadhd
Want even more support? My Signature Transformational Training and Coaching Program is designed to get you unstuck by teaching you how to release your limiting beliefs and outdated identities, build a strong foundation of your pre-skills and develop your core EF life skills. You’ll be tapping into your subconscious mind so you can reach a new level of success in your life and free yourself from what’s been holding you back. This is an exclusive experience for those serious about transforming their life, and it’s opening up again in June. Get on the information list here to be the first notified when the doors open. Or get registered for the free 3-day live trainings June 3, 6 and 8, if you want to spend some time learning together; replays only available if you are registered for the live trainings.
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Thank you!
If you are seriously ready to stop your needless suffering and free yourself from your personal prison, I look forward to seeing you in the free training or inside the program and on the bonus coaching call. Be sure to check out the show notes for the links and opportunities available to you. There are real solutions to the challenges you are experiencing, and they are available now. Time is our most precious asset, and none of us have time to waste on solutions that don’t work. 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…
Episode Resources:
- First - register and join me for 3 FREE live days of transformation - June 3, 6 and 8 "Meeting You Where You're At and Moving Forward From There":
https://www.drbarbaracohen.com/3-day-live-training-registration - Second - get your copy of 13 Signs Weak Executive Functioning is Holding You Back:
https://www.drbarbaracohen.com/Executive-Function - Third - find out what you can do to change your situation and how AIA-FS can help you:
https://www.drbarbaracohen.com/AIA There is no obligation to being informed about an amazing opportunity that changes lives! - Join the Living Beyond ADHD Facebook Group & hang out with your peeps
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Let's put an end to the worldwide needless suffering together! We can do this!
