[00:05] Jenna: Hello, happy people, and welcome to Office ADHD. Welcome to office, ADHD. Today I get to introduce you to one of my most favorite people ever, doug Richens. Doug is a professional master coach of all kinds. He's like a life coach, ADHD coach. Basically, if you need a coach, he's there. Well, maybe not a sports coach. I don't know about that.
[00:38] Doug: I fall short in that category.
[00:42] Jenna: But all things that you need in your life. He's actually the very first person to really coach me on how to use my ADHD skills. Back when I was in college and I first got diagnosed and I didn't know what was going on, he was there and helped me get stepped in the right direction. So thank you so much, Doug, for coming on the show today.
[01:01] Doug: You're welcome. It's fun to connect.
[01:03] Jenna: Yeah, it is. Doug is also part of our adult ADHD tribe. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey kind of getting diagnosed? And I know you helped out a lot of other students even when you were in college.
[01:17] Doug: Yeah.
[01:20] Doug: We'Ll go back in time here. When TV was black and white. Growing up, ADHD was just emerging. And in the circles of my family, we didn't have this language. We didn't have the understanding. So the little kid growing up, years back when I was Dougie, it was a lot of confusion. I had a race car brain, I had a temper, and they had the overlay of parenting skills.
[01:56] Doug: But there wasn't this understanding about Add.
[02:00] Doug: It wasn't talked about. So that was really hard. The big breakthrough for me, I think, was college. I had married my sweetheart. We were at Brigham Young University Hawai campus, and it was gorgeous and beautiful, and it's a small university, it's a wonderful university, but the class sizes were small. And I was just there were all.
[02:24] Doug: These things I was like, happy, and I was finding I was more successful.
[02:30] Doug: And I was trying to figure out what is going on here. And I stumbled into the book by.
[02:38] Doug: Ed Hallowell, Harvard, MD.
[02:41] Doug: Called Delivered from Distraction.
[02:44] Doug: And, oh, my gosh, I thought as.
[02:49] Doug: I read the book, I thought this guy had been following me around my whole life, hiding behind bushes and documenting my story.
[02:59] Doug: It was scary and exciting that there was this whole category of science, of.
[03:07] Doug: Understanding, of terminology, of skills, of solutions, ideas, and it just was an explosion. So I'm in the middle of my undergraduate degree. I'm newly married just at this season of change, and I discovered this resource.
[03:23] Doug: And from there I just embedded myself.
[03:28] Doug: In the literature, in everything I could get my hands on, and was just.
[03:35] Doug: Finding answers, finding ways to navigate life.
[03:40] Doug: So that was probably the big breakthrough for sure.
[03:48] Doug: As I moved into my career, it.
[03:50] Doug: Helped me make career decisions. I knew I couldn't sit behind a desk and type all day. I couldn't have been a computer programmer. Like, all these things I thought I'd be interested in. I was understanding my brain and these realities, and it was like, Why fight that? So I made selections and moved in a way that was really helpful.
[04:18] Jenna: I love that you talked about why fight it when you can just flow with it.
[04:25] Doug: Yeah. Over the years, having worked with hundreds of people, making this, experiencing this great awareness, this great awakening to this, for some people, it's shares my experience. It was exciting. It was like, finally, here are some words, some help. For other people, it's quite an emotional experience. They feel regret. There's this sense of, like, I had learned this earlier, so there's some emotional things to work through, often in this space, and then it's kind of down to business. How do we create an environment? How to design our world to align with these realities? I got to tell you, that the other big breakthrough, Jenna, I think our paths had separated when this hit me, because when you and I first connected back in your early college days.
[05:35] Doug: I.
[05:35] Doug: Had this one layer of understanding. I was just happy to help, and.
[05:39] Doug: I was filled with energy and not all the information.
[05:46] Doug: In 2015, I went to San Francisco with my wife for a few days, and we visited the Amen clinic dr. Aemon yes. And had the Brain Spec imaging scan. And there's three days of just intensive psychological brain understanding, experience. And Spec imaging creates a 3D model of your brain.
[06:15] Doug: Wow.
[06:15] Doug: Totally different than an MRI or any of those things. And at the end, you get this colorful little model of your brain, digital model that you can spin around.
[06:26] Doug: And we gathered at the end of.
[06:30] Doug: The three days with this panel of doctors, and they explained all these things that they learned and what my brain type was, because they were actually looking at the brain. See it?
[06:42] Jenna: Yeah. This is your actual brain, not like a supposed brain based on you answering questions or anything like that.
[06:50] Doug: This is you totally different.
[06:55] Doug: As I looked at that.
[06:56] Doug: And then there's this part of this image that shows kind of my brain upside down, as if you were looking at it from underneath. And in the prefrontal cortex, there are these shapes. They look like little holes. It looked like you could slide a pencil through them. And they said, that is textbook add. And these guys have scanned tens of thousands of brains and held up lived experience with the images, and they just know their stuff. And everything changed because it was no.
[07:29] Doug: Longer a character flaw.
[07:34] Doug: Everything frustrating about it was no longer a moral deficit.
[07:40] Doug: It was the shape of the brain. And it was so empowering. And it was a big shift for.
[07:54] Doug: Me mentally, emotionally, to release some of the common frustrations we all share. But I was like, oh, my gosh, it's a shape and if I had.
[08:07] Doug: A withered hand, well, I'd have to.
[08:10] Doug: Deal with life with a withered hand. It'd be the shape of the hand. It wouldn't be a character flaw. Oh, my gosh. The other big thing that happened there is this panel of doctors are in front of us and Janine and I, my wife, were sitting there and they're giving us the big report of this three days of intensive scrutiny. And they said told me this diagnosis. And they showed me the brain images and they said, but we have a problem.
[08:41] Doug: We have a question.
[08:42] Doug: I guess they said, when we see.
[08:46] Doug: Your brain type, we usually see someone.
[08:51] Doug: Who has had three marriages, 15 jobs, and their life has been riddled with addiction. That's the common lived experience with the shape of the brain they were looking at. And then they said to me that.
[09:06] Doug: You have been married to the same.
[09:08] Doug: Woman for at that point, I think we were 1516 years.
[09:14] Doug: Maybe we were.
[09:15] Doug: Coming to about 20 years by then.
[09:16] Doug: And then you've worked for the same company. The only addiction I had was dark chocolate.
[09:24] Jenna: Well, and you can't blame someone for that.
[09:26] Doug: I know. I mean, that's socially acceptable.
[09:31] Doug: And these doctors are looking at me.
[09:33] Doug: Like, what are you doing? I'm just trying to be a good guy. I study, I love my job. I work, and I I do these things the best that I can.
[09:44] Doug: And that was another big boost for.
[09:49] Doug: Me that, yes, the shape of the brain lifted this out of the character.
[09:54] Doug: Flaw, but there was also a validation.
[09:59] Doug: That the patterns in my life, the routines.
[10:04] Doug: Were helping, and I was beating.
[10:09] Doug: The odds, I guess you'd say.
[10:10] Doug: So a couple of big breakthroughs like that, and then a lot of study.
[10:16] Doug: And a lot of figuring it out.
[10:19] Doug: And here we are, functioning and happy in life.
[10:22] Jenna: That's awesome. Well, because like you said, that's amazing, because a big thing with the Add is that the shame, the feeling, like we're never doing enough and that we're not enough to just say, oh, well, I guess I am. Okay.
[10:43] Doug: It wasn't like this.
[10:47] Doug: Throw my arms in the air, and I won the grand championship. It was a calm, like, all right, I can improve.
[10:57] Doug: There's more to do, but we're doing good things.
[11:01] Doug: This is working. I are coming up on 26 years.
[11:06] Doug: And.
[11:09] Doug: Still engaged in a beautiful work, and the stability across my family and the Add traits are well identified, what I'm good at and what I'm not. Like, I was joking with you earlier. If there's a task to do that's not in my strengths, I either assign it to staff or ignore it.
[11:36] Jenna: All right, you know what? I adore your wife, by the way, and I think that that's one of the things that it's like, that's one of the things that's beautiful about being able to accept yourself is that then it helps you be a partner with somebody else to be able to say, you know what? These are things that are about myself, I'm really great at these things. I'm really just not great at these other things. If we can support each other, that would be great.
[12:06] Doug: There's language around, like, skills and ways.
[12:11] Doug: To navigate and build routines, and all.
[12:15] Doug: Of that is important.
[12:16] Doug: But above that is the reality that you have to be a co creator.
[12:23] Doug: Of the design of your life. And if you're in a relationship, you have to co create your environment so it works for both people. You have to engineer parenting. You have to engineer and co create your personal life, your intimacy, everything you do in a shared way. Our home, my wife, was a minimalist before minimalism was a thing. And we have a beautiful home, and it's decorated just with those few things that we love, and there is no clutter. And that makes her happy and helps me survive.
[13:07] Jenna: Yes.
[13:07] Doug: And so there's a woman good friend of mine named Kat Holmes, and she has worked for the biggest companies of the world, microsoft and Google, and expert on inclusion and integrated design. And as I have become friends with her and learn from her, it's been fun to think in terms of, okay, we need to co create a designed life that fits of our bodies and brains the needs of our children as a real shift. We don't want to fight about stuff. We're just like, okay, this design isn't working.
[13:49] Doug: We put it outside of our we.
[13:53] Doug: Remove it from us as a character flaw, and we just think about it.
[13:56] Doug: As a functional workaround.
[14:01] Doug: Right. And so it's helped a lot.
[14:04] Jenna: That's great. I love that now because I know Doug so well, and I know that you are so incredibly knowledgeable in the ADHD world. I asked you before the interview if you could help us unpack something that's very difficult, in a way for us to even talk about just because it's one of the biggest weaknesses that we feel in Add is that rejection sensitivity or rejection sensitivity. Dysphoria could you help us kind of understand how do you see that in the ADHD world and deal with it?
[14:44] Doug: Yes, there's value in the term. I think there's value in the concept more than the term. It's not an officially recognized diagnosis or even an official recognized trait, but it's a shared reality that the impact of rejection inside of the typical Add brain seems to be much more emotional, highly sensitive, and it's, you know, it's it's like feeling the different temperature. You know, let's say I have a high sensitivity to heat, and we walk outside and it's a beautiful 75 degree day, and you're just thrilled. You're so happy. It's 75 degrees. It's like, perfect. We're out of winter. We're like, oh, this is so nice. And I have this high sensitivity to heat. I don't but this is just imagine and I feel like it's 90 degrees and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm dying, I'm going inside. This is ridiculous, right? And you're looking at me.
[15:44] Doug: What?
[15:46] Doug: And there's a sensitivity to this. And so the reality of losing a.
[15:54] Doug: Job or making a mistake or some.
[15:59] Doug: Other element of frustration.
[16:03] Doug: Someone else may.
[16:04] Doug: Like, water off my back, whatever. Moving on.
[16:08] Doug: The realities of being feeling a sense.
[16:12] Doug: Of rejection, betrayal, and having it have such a high impact is real here's.
[16:18] Doug: The problem is that it can imitate.
[16:24] Doug: A mood disorder medical diagnosis world. And someone is not looking at this through the lens of Add and they don't have the sensitivity to these realities of the Add brain and they're just looking at the behavior. It's really easy for a doctor.
[16:43] Doug: Psychologist.
[16:44] Doug: Whomever, to kind of swing this into the mood disorder category.
[16:49] Jenna: Oh, that's.
[16:53] Doug: If the prescriptions are going to provide or recommend and all this stuff and all of a sudden you're pouring in all this stuff in your.
[17:00] Doug: Brain, which is just not at all needed. Does that make sense?
[17:08] Jenna: That totally makes sense because I know that Add gets misdiagnosed as all sorts of things, but I wondered how it got misdiagnosed as a mood disorder. And now that totally makes sense.
[17:22] Doug: Because they're coming in, they're sad, they're depressed, they're angry about some thing that transpired in their life. And it's not like anyone's trying to misdiagnose, but it's an easy thing because it really does imitate the mood disorder. And then you go downstream and you go to a therapist and they're going to start to talk about emotional regulation.
[17:44] Doug: And emotional regulation is a very important.
[17:46] Doug: Part of coaching and training an adult with Add. However, it's so different. And so if you happen to land with a therapist that's unaware of these differences and they're going to be talking to you about emotional regulation in a way that you could never accomplish, they're putting a bar at the wrong height and you're not going to get over it. But then you work with someone who gets it, who's in it, and the development of emotional regulation skills inside of the Add brain and model so effective.
[18:33] Jenna: That totally makes sense. Well, and especially, even going back to talking about, like you said when you did your brain scan, there's just a different shape and it's like, yes, I want to regulate my emotions, but I have to do it in a way that makes sense for my brain type.
[18:47] Doug: Yeah. And we understand that the comorbidity of a shared issues with Add is really common. Right. There's a high propensity towards addiction. So then a close look at what you're bringing in, in form of chemicals or behavioral issues, right. And that has to be addressed in the Add brain way. Being a highly sensitive person, which is a beautiful thing moving forward in that, again, in context of the other reality of the add brain. So if they rejection, sensitivity is a real thing. And as you seek support, you just got to make sure.
[19:41] Doug: You'Re working with.
[19:42] Doug: Someone that's going to take this into account, as it really should be. It's highly specialized, for sure. And I think a lot of mistakes get made there and people spend lots of money, lots of time. Then they break the code that they're running down the wrong track, and then they're just more hurt and burnt out and tired of. They turn to self soothing, they turn to chemicals, they turn to addiction, they ruin relationships. And it can be a pretty vicious cycle.
[20:14] Jenna: Yeah, well, and we're just so prone to addiction anyway. Like how if we start down a path that is addicting, we are more prone to develop an addiction anyway.
[20:28] Doug: It is. And we overreact.
[20:34] Doug: We overthink.
[20:35] Doug: Over everything.
[20:36] Doug: Yes.
[20:40] Doug: Awesome. Let's overthink in terms of fitness, nutrition. Let's overthink in terms of education. Let's overthink. There's a way to channel it into our relationships, into our career in a way that's just like unstoppable and it's just amazing.
[21:00] Jenna: That's so cool. And you said that. I had not thought about that. That was probably part of the reason that sometimes I'm just always like, OOH, that would be a fun online degree. That would be a fun online degree.
[21:11] Doug: Are you a degree shopper?
[21:14] Jenna: Maybe. I may have an unhealthy education addiction.
[21:23] Doug: I love it.
[21:26] Jenna: But talking about some of this, with some of this rejection things, we're all going to receive negative feedback and a lot of times we actually need it. What are some of your just kind of some of your early tips that you give some of your clients for accepting feedback or being able to look at that?
[21:45] Doug: So I think the first two or.
[21:46] Doug: Three that I'll throw out here maybe are a little bit more common. The last one is quite unique. So where we usually start off is feedback. Right? I mean, that's just the breakfast of champions.
[22:02] Doug: It's free education.
[22:04] Doug: We have to frame this up for what it really is.
[22:10] Doug: And.
[22:12] Doug: That'S nice on the surface, but.
[22:14] Doug: To do that in a session in.
[22:17] Doug: A way that really there's a real breakthrough with it is a beautiful and intense thing. I love taking them to the reality of hidden rules.
[22:31] Doug: They get negative feedback.
[22:32] Doug: They get feedback from a director or boss at work or something and they're confused and they're hurt and they're, you.
[22:39] Doug: Know, it's like, hang on, there are.
[22:41] Doug: A lot of hidden rules to function in society. Which one are you not seeing? And we can externalize it. Right. What's the hidden rule there? If you're 23 years old and you want to be a bank teller and.
[22:54] Doug: You go in for an interview right?
[22:57] Doug: There are rules, unwritten and hidden of what they're kind of looking for. And if you show up outside of.
[23:06] Doug: That, behaviorally.
[23:11] Doug: Yeah, you're not going to get the job and that's that way across tons and tons of our life. Some of it's terrible. Some of it needs to change. Most of it is shameful and ridiculous, but they're there. And so we can look at the issue in terms of what was the hidden rule that you missed.
[23:34] Jenna: I love that. And so the feedback is just telling you, okay, so it's telling you about a hidden rule that you just couldn't see because it wasn't posted anywhere.
[23:43] Doug: And sometimes the rule is about that person society. It's not the work culture. It's not like this big overarching.
[23:54] Doug: Way the world works.
[23:55] Doug: Sometimes it's reading that one person and figuring out what's the rules that are important to them. And if you want to, then you know the rule, right? Then you can make a choice to tell them to jump in a lake and move on and not play that game.
[24:12] Doug: Or you can choose to adapt and.
[24:16] Doug: Recognize that there's value in that and it's the right thing, and I get it now. And on we go, and we're fine. And then the last one is where it maybe swings a little bit more into my expertise. I went back to Stanford, and I spent a lot of time studying the neuroscience of compassion. And the compassion focused work that I do takes someone going through this kind of an experience, and we activate compassion within ourselves for the realities that we're getting feedback on. And it turns down the heat, it turns off the anxiety. It really hits the brakes on the overthinking and the rumination that can happen. And this isn't like just, oh, go and meditate and think you feel great about yourself. This is really an understanding of what's happening chemically inside your brain and body that's creating these emotions. And then we can manipulate, change, challenge those emotions through the neuroscience of compassion. It's beautiful. It's incredibly effective and.
[25:36] Doug: A lot of.
[25:37] Doug: Fun to watch people go. I mean, the jaw just hits the table. It's just like, oh my gosh, wow. This whole other reality of how things are working inside of them, and it's a powerful tool to help them navigate not just the issue at hand, but to navigate all these other kind of things that they're going through.
[26:00] Jenna: Okay, that is going to be something that I look up definitely, after this. The neuroscience of compassion, that's something I've never even thought about looking at before.
[26:08] Doug: So Stanford University. James Dowdy is the Director Chief Neurosurgeon at Stanford University. And they have a center. It's called C. Care center for the Compassion and Altruistic Research and Education.
[26:25] Jenna: That is amazing that they have a whole center for that.
[26:28] Doug: That's awesome.
[26:29] Doug: And it's collaborative across universities and medical work all around the world. It's exciting, and it's a pathway, I think, to reframe the anxieties and the depression as clients come in and they're experiencing these kinds of things, whether it's Add or not. They've worked in cognitive behavior therapists. They've tried this, they've tried that. And as we do the compassion work, the compassion focused coaching and work, huge progress, it's just awesome. Works really well.
[27:13] Jenna: That's awesome. And just turn the conversation a little bit. What got you into coaching? What excited you about the idea of coaching and being a coach?
[27:28] Doug: Well, it's been integrated in what I've done from the beginning, whether it was in the classroom, the one on one with students for all those years, the university years, where you and I, our paths crossed. In my work, I ended up as the global administrator over disabilities for this huge global education system. There were 45,000 teachers around the world, and I had the opportunity to go and teach and train them about the realities of what was coming into the classroom, whether it was a disability or it was an emotional issue or a loss in grief or all those difficulties in our lives. And as that comes into the classroom, how do we accommodate and adapt and have a great learning experience? Then I went up from there to the whole institution and worked across abuse and suicide prevention and mental illness and disabilities incarceration, and on and on. Took me all over the world, and it was a lot of fun. And everywhere I went, every coaching conversation started out on topic. We're here to talk about this issue. We get going and about, I don't know, at some point the conversation, it would swing and the person I was talking to would be like, hey, you know what, my wife's struggling with this, or my spouse, my son, whatever, or me. And it was like, there we are, we're coaching. So I've been doing it all the way along. And then I got quite sick several years ago. I overdid it and had to take some time off from work to just breathe and rest and regroup. And that's when I decided that I would leave the corporate space of this work and engineer co design with my wife and my team, a way to do this beautiful frontline work independently. And so then the preparation started then and eventually made the formal change, and it's just out of control. We love it.
[29:48] Jenna: That's amazing. And I love how much you bring in the fact that it's a great thing, it's a beautiful thing to have that help to be able to say, you know what, we're going to like you said, co design this, you don't have to do it alone.
[30:05] Doug: Yeah. And it is an engineering and it's a discovery. I think my years in the corporate environment, one of the things that went really well was the cross department collaboration, right? Making sure all the teams were in alignment with what we were proposing and moving forward. And it was slow, it was hard. Now that is a very slim, trim network, right? It's just a few of us, me, but the spirit of, like, putting an idea on the table, comparing it, all that collaborative work still comes into play and just a little easier to pull the trigger now that it's just us.
[30:55] Jenna: I believe it. And I know that you work with all sorts of clients, but what's something that you love about your Add clients?
[31:05] Doug: Oh, my gosh, they're my people. Right? I get it. The pain, the frustration, the awakenings, the bright spots. I've experienced it. It's beautiful in that regard. I think it's helpful for adults with Ad to come in and to see my reality, my life, and then also to be able to see some possibility what they're doing that we can design and live a very healthy, happy life. The other big thing is what's toxic for us. That's a fun place to go. Yeah, netflix is great, right? We all want to, every once in a while just binge watch something. But how does it affect the Add brain? When does it cross the line as turning the day off and becoming something that's toxic? Right? And so often we get into *********** issues, we get into compulsive behaviors, we get into food issues, we get into anger issues, and we just can look at it through the degree of toxicity that that's bringing into you versus with someone else. It separates this from it being a moral issue or a character flaw, and they begin to make better choices. And that is so fun to watch. That's amazing, right? And they're choosing to steer away from this or to integrate something new into.
[33:14] Doug: Their life that's not toxic.
[33:17] Doug: That's helpful. And then relationships get better. Big hugs from their partner saying, oh my gosh, thank you. That's those are sweet experiences. And we laugh our way through it, sometimes in tears, but usually we just smile our way through the sessions and I love it. It's all good.
[33:42] Jenna: That's great. That's amazing. And like you said, just being able to look at it and say, you know what, this is something that's happened. This is the way. Let's see if we can get out of the toxicity instead of seeing it as a shame.
[33:56] Doug: Right?
[33:56] Doug: And it's so easy to like the Ade brain can just slip into addiction. It's just like dental blanket, right? It's just this place of self soothing. Our sensory stuff is on overload there's. A lot of pain during the days, a lot of frustration. The peaks and the valleys hit hard and that drive to go escape is just there. And so great.
[34:27] Doug: Let's engineer that.
[34:28] Doug: I'm going to take a nap every day at two. I know exactly what I'm going to wear. I'm not every day, but engineer your day so you can get that shutdown. That reset. Caffeine pretty toxic for me. Not all Add brains, but really hits hard. But an amino acid, kind of natural caffeine, pre workout kind of drink. Just is smooth and doesn't give me the heavy hit. So I found a solution there. So in the afternoon I can I don't drink a caffeine drink. I'll drink this energy not energy drink, but kind of this pre workout natural supplement drink. And it's wonderful.
[35:12] Jenna: Yeah. Well that's amazing. Well, yeah, because that's amazing because like you said, use something, say yes, I need something here, what can I fill in? And instead of because besides the caffeine not necessarily being good for you, like you're getting it through soda or something like that, you're getting all this other things. Why don't we replace it with something that is going to still give you the benefit you're after but not give you all these drawbacks.
[35:40] Doug: Yeah. And here's another huge thing on this. In my work, I had oversight regarding work done in prisons, faith Ministry work done in prisons. And I had the opportunity to travel. I've been in well over 100 prisons.
[36:03] Doug: Around the world, from where I live.
[36:07] Doug: Here in Utah through the United States, to youth detentional facilities in Brooklyn, federal max facilities in Georgia, prisons International, Rwanda, all over the world.
[36:21] Doug: Wow.
[36:23] Doug: Everyone who's incarcerated has had trauma, has addictions. It's just like the way it's just the path. And as I've been able to give talks and speak, this is a soft place to begin to say, when have you felt confused about the way the world works? I'm not diagnosing a whole room full of adults in custody, but the skills, the realities of describing the Add brain are also a very common experience for people, add or not. And it's just been a huge source to draw on, to communicate some ways to improve your life for these individuals, men and women who are incarcerated in their post incarceration journey, it's just really common. And so the trauma that an individual may have experienced in a childhood years or adolescent years, when that trauma hits the Add brain, that's a whole different ballgame. And there are some outstanding phenomenal trauma specialists out there. I do trauma work, but I'm by no means level ten full trauma expert. But when the expert has this sensitivity and are aware of the way that the add brain stores, processes, connects or how those gestalts are formed, it unlocks a lot of solutions for trauma recovery, for addiction recovery changes the way that we would approach the individual and their realities. That is fun to watch. And so someone will come in and the trauma realities are beyond me and I know exactly where to send them. And they reach a place of stability and kind of the right point. They can swing back through my work and continue to progress. That's another part of working with this group that's just exciting to participate in.
[39:05] Jenna: That's amazing. Well, and that is a really comforting thing to know too, when you're looking for a coach or entering the coaching world, to know that you guys know each other and that if there's something else specific somebody needs. You're like, you know what? I'm in the coaching world. I've got somebody that you can go work with them. If you get to a point where it's better to come back to me, that's great, but otherwise, let me give you the person that specialized where you need it.
[39:31] Doug: Yeah. And that's what we worked really hard to put together with clinical psychologists, trauma specialists, fitness, nutrition, marketing strategy, all these different expertise inside of our team. It's just ridiculous to think you can do it all and be the one stop shop. And anyone that's selling themselves that way is misrepresenting on some level, I think. But want to do what's right for individuals and if they can pass through and get on the right track into the right lane with the right people, man, progress is just awesome. Just phenomenal.
[40:11] Jenna: That is always fun. That is the funnest thing is to see somebody go from one place to another and you're like, oh yes. So one thing I like to offer all my guests is a chance to send a message out there. Because especially a lot of people listening, they may be new to ADHD, they may still be kind of struggling. What are some words of encouragement you'd like to send out to them?
[40:39] Doug: It's all good and be good. Just be sensitive in all things, be sensitive. The need to be kind, sensitive to yourself, sensitive to your partner, sensitive to those who have to kind of pick up the pieces around your life sometimes. Be appreciative, be grateful. Setting expectations in the ad world is an interesting thing. We can kind of get a little manic sometimes and we can think, we can take on the world. I like to shift from setting expectations to setting appreciations and reach a place where we're striving to be fully appreciative of this reality in my life. And in the context of that, I'm going to make some there's goals and I'm going to make improvements, I'm going to succeed, I'm going to be more successful than anything I'm doing. But the goal isn't to an expectation, it's to a state of appreciation about some piece of your life and it's a beautiful shift. So I would just encourage people to be sensitive, be kind to themselves and make those hire the right people, surround yourself with the right design and get yourself in a state where you can thrive. That's what it's all about. Is that helpful?
[42:28] Jenna: That is super helpful. Love that. I love that idea of making a state of appreciation your project because like you said, we all love projects and we definitely do get into manic modes of yeah, I can do that, and yeah, I can do that. And so being able to change it into appreciating the things that are in our life and the people that are in our life and appreciating it as a project and being sensitive to what we're doing.
[43:01] Doug: And if you put the add brain. You look at form equals function, and you remove it as a character flaw. And then you open up with your inner circle, and you say, here are four or five corners of my life. I have a part of me that's about relationships. There's a part of me about intimacy. There's a part of me about work. There's a part of me about whatever. And you allow people to just kind of surrender, co, create, build that structure around your life. Throw a lot of junk out, clean out your life. If you get stuck work with people who help you get unstuck, that understand add. And then you just kind of get into the group. I was with a client a few months ago, and we had done a three hour, kind of extensive breakthrough session with her, and it was awesome. It was so powerful. There were just a lot of things she needed to release. She said the sweetest thing to me. She was leaving, and I think she just wanted to say thank you, but it came out like this. And she said, what is it like to have your work be so perfectly aligned with who you are? And I'm telling you, I teared up. You get in the thick of work, and you're like, yeah, I like what I do. I'm built for this. It's all good. And to have that acknowledged, I was like, wow. I reached a state of appreciation.
[44:59] Doug: That.
[44:59] Doug: I was seeking for, not validation. But really, it's just like, thank you. Wow. And it's just that's what that's what you're after, right? That's in your relationships, in your professional life, whatever. To get to a point where someone would say to you, you are, like, perfectly built for what you're doing, and the alignment is there. That's possible. That's the work we do.
[45:36] Jenna: That's amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. This has been amazing.
[45:43] Doug: You're welcome.
[45:45] Jenna: And everyone out there listening, you have a great day! Thanks so much for listening. To learn more about anything we talked about today, head over to officeadhd.com. Remember to, like, subscribe and share and have a great day. We'll see you next time.