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Adult ADHD ADD Tips and Support
Adult ADHD Tips – Life Visioning Exercises Part 2
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Adult ADHD ADD Tips and Support Podcast - A Podcast for Neurodivergent Creatives. Life Visioning Exercises: Part 2. This podcast is an audio companion to the book "The Drummer and the Great Mountain - A Guidebook to Transforming Adult ADD / ADHD."
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Hello everyone. This podcast episode was recorded prior to the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles. If you would like to support the recovery efforts, we've put together a list of vetted organizations and fundraisers on our website. You can find that@drummerinthegreatmountain.com lafirerelief or check the link in the description.
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Welcome to the Drummer and the Great Mountain, a podcast where we share effective tips and practices for working with adults Add ADHD in a natural, effective way without the use of medications. Each episode join me, your host Batman Saram, along with the author of the Drummer and the Great Mountain, Michael Joseph Ferguson. Join Michael and myself in an interactive discussion of sharing our stories as we journey together in transforming what can be the gift of being what we call hunter types. This podcast is intended to be your audio companion to the book written by Michael, who joins me each episode where we both will strive to foster dialogue, give you our personal insights, and share both of our experiences on this similar path that we are all on. Our intention and hope is that along with the book, this podcast gives you an additional perspective as you listen to us delve deeper into each chapter of the book to give you even more tools to go along with what it is that you are reading. Visit us at drummerandthegreatmountain.com to purchase the book and look for more tools, tips and updates. And as well as giving us feedback on this podcast, join our growing global community of creative types, entrepreneurs and out of the box thinkers on our shared journey. Welcome to the Drummer and the Great Mountain podcast.
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Welcome everyone. Thanks for tuning in. I'm your host Michael Joseph Ferguson. How is everyone doing? We're into 2025 and in this episode we will be doing part two of our life visioning exercises. We're going to be going through the book Drummer in the Great Mountain, specifically chapter six and we will be specifically focusing on step two of the life visioning process. So if you don't have the book the Drummer in the Great Mountain no, you can go to drummerinthegreatmountain.com episode113 to get a free PDF of that chapter so you can go through this work together with us. And I'd also recommend getting the tracking sheet, the super optimized tracking sheet that we put out in episode 111 so you can get that by going to drummerinthegreatmountain.com episode 111 and I'll leave a link to both of those in the description of this podcast episode. Just one quick announcement before we get started. Our annual Life Visioning workshop is happening on January 25th and 28th. This is a live online workshop and we've been doing this since 2017. And this is an opportunity once a year for us all to get together as a community and do our life Visioning work. And it's also an opportunity to learn some new skills on how to work with goals and goal setting for how we're wired. We intentionally schedule this a few weeks into the year because that's often when we start to lose energy on the intentions we set at New Year's. In this workshop, we'll take you through a series of exercises that help you get clear about what your goals are in specific areas of your life. Then we take those goals and move them into short term goals and milestones so you know, really what's the next step I need to take? And then we will then break those down further into what are the specific actions that you need to take next. That's the most important piece to get to go through all of that work and get to. Here's what my next steps are. We will also support you in building a support system so you know how you can achieve these goals and not just on your own willpower, but you have some support around you to make those goals happen. So what we've seen in the past is new friendships get formed from this workshop. Really good things happen. Projects come into being, people make some big strides. They start to connect and support, support each other as they go through the year. It's fun. I hope you can join us. If you'd like to learn more, go to drummerinthegreatmountain.comworkshop or just check the link in the description. Both sessions will be recorded and you will have access to those recordings. If you can't make one or both of the sessions. And I hope you can join us. So if you haven't already, I want to encourage you to go back and listen to part one of this series. That will be episode 113 so you can kind of get up to speed on what the steps are and how to approach them. And again, we'll be going through step two here. In this episode, I want to take a little step back and talk a little bit about what's been going on with me and with our work and talk a little bit about what I've been reading. And I think it kind of dovetails nicely into talking about what we're going to be discussing in terms of life visioning today. So first off, working on a new book and it's been many years since I've worked on a new book. So about halfway through, I think you guys are going to really enjoy it and encouragement is always welcome. So if you want to give me a little bit of a you can do it email, I'd appreciate that because there's a lot more going on now in my life than when I wrote Drummer in the Great Mountain. I had a lot more space then, so any kind of encouragement is welcome. We will probably be releasing this. I'm hoping towards June, we'll see how it goes. But I'm very excited it's coming out really well. It's a very different kind of book and I think you guys are going to really enjoy it. So I'm still getting better after going through some that crazy flu that's been going around and I don't get sick that often. But last year I got Covid and this was a really rough flu. So as many of you know, when you get sick and you are already wired this way and have challenges with brain fuzz and motivation, oh my gosh, it just all comes back. So I'm trying to pace myself but keep myself going. And specifically I'm trying to look at what is my next step. And I just keep coming back to that when my brain's a little fuzzy. I just have to keep just what is my next thing? What's the next specific thing I need to do today and not even think about anything else? And I'm going to double back to that thought here in a second. Over the holidays, Cuesta's parents gave me a great book. It's called Let My People Go Surfing by Yvonne Chouinard, who is the founder of Patagonia. So the, the clothing brand, the sports clothing brand. If you haven't read this book, it is very Hunter type friendly. It's like, how do you run an organization full of Hunter types? Especially I think when they're going through the 70s as they were going through their growth spurt. It's an outstanding book. If you are an entrepreneur, if you're, especially if you're running a company, you got to read this book. This book is outstanding. So the first part of the book is just about the story and the history. And then part two is all about corporate structure, the protocol, and how they focus their work towards supporting the environment as its primary goal. And then making money and all that becomes a very lower secondary priority. But as a result of it, they've been a very profitable company. So it's really worth checking out and he's a fascinating individual, Yvon Chouinard. So definitely check that book out. I will leave a link to it in the description of this episode. So as I was reading the book I started to get very interested in rock climbing and just studying it a bit because I don't know much about it. There's ropes and clips and stuff and I'm like, how does this all work? How do these people not die and how safe is it? Because Yvon Chouinard pioneered a lot of that gear when he first got started and that was sort of the basis for Patagonia, which turned into a clothing brand. But before that he was developing this rock climbing and mountain, mountain climbing gear. So I wanted to like, how does this work? How did all these ropes and clamps work? Ended up watching a lot of videos, I was more fascinated by the mindset of some of these very high level climbers and for many of you probably already know, are familiar with this world, I'm guessing just given the people that tune into our, our podcast. But I wasn't too familiar with. I have friends that do rock climbing, but I never got into it. But there's definitely some people in the field specific, specifically. The one that I think is most noted in the last 10 to 20 years is Alex Honnold, who scales El Capitan in Yosemite with no ropes. So I want you to take that in for a second. He scaled a massive rock face. When you look at him climbing up it, he's a dot. And he scaled the entire thing with no roofs, virtually going straight up. So at first I was thinking, okay, this guy's just a nut. He's an adrenaline junkie and this guy is going to be dead soon for just doing these extreme sports attempts. But as I started to hear him talk to other climbers about his process, I realized, no, no, he's actually done a lot of work. This guy is very focused, very methodical, probably not a hunter type. Uh, but there was some key insights that I think go well with talking about life visioning and some of the challenges that we face on a day to day basis. So he was talking to another climber and he was, they were going to do a free climb much smaller than El Capitan. And he was saying basically as you go up these move, each move is a simple move. You just, okay, I need to do this move here and then I need to do this move here. And he was talking to the other climbers, like, you are totally capable of doing this. Just think about what your next move is don't look down. Stay focused on what is right in front of you. And if you just keep doing that, you'll make it up. Now, granted, the fear of falling and all of that is the biggest challenge. So it's not the movements, it's the fear that actually would throw someone off because technically, the person he was speaking to had the ability to do it, and he was able to ascend this particular rock face. But what I found is, for us is we often get caught in thinking way, way too far ahead. Our brains tend to really have a lot of capacity to think about a lot of different things, and that's a gift, but that's also a curse, especially when we need to accomplish specific tasks that are right in front of us. So the advice of what is my next step? And if you've taken workshops from me before, you know that I'll say, what are your next three action items? As you're doing this life visioning work and you're thinking big picture, eventually that work needs to be distilled down to, what is my next step towards this particular goal that I've set for myself? Because it's that next step. It's the thing that's most right in front of you that is simple for you to go, okay, I can do that. That is the way forward. So the example I often give is, you have to get your taxes done. If you write just do taxes on your action item list, that is completely overwhelming, and you will procrastinate it because your brain knows that's not the task. The task is the first thing I need to do is get out the paperclips that I need to get out my receipts, and then I need to sort my receipts by category. It's that methodical. Okay, what is my next actual step? Not 12 steps ahead, but what is my next step? If we keep coming back to that, we make progress. And that's a discipline. And it does take work, but we can train ourselves to do it. So as we go through today's life visioning exercise, I want to encourage you as you're doing this work, you want to eventually get it down to, okay, here's the thing that I most want to do. I want to make sure that I lose five pounds by March 1st. Great. What is the actual next step you need to take towards making that happen? And that may be something like calling a friend and saying, will you be my exercise buddy for the next two months? That might be the next step. So it's literally a text or A phone call. That's the kind of work we'll also do in the Life Visioning workshop, where I'm going to encourage you to go through and do the big picture work. But then how do we distill it down into our specific next steps? And. And that's where the power is. It's doing that. And often we need the support of a neurotypical person, a farmer type, to help us on that. So we are communal animals. It is a challenge to live with this kind of wiring that we have. So we need to get good at asking for support, honoring ourselves without thinking. I'm broken, so I need to get support. That's not the mindset. The mindset is I have things to contribute to the world. And because of that, I need to pull in support for the things that I'm challenged by, because I have all these other strengths, as we talked about in the last session, that can really help people. So if we build that support system around us, then it becomes even easier to attain our goals. Okay, so let's go through step two of the Life Visioning process. In our last episode, we did step one. So if you can grab the drummer in the Great Mountain, if you have the book, you can open to chapter six, page 97, or you can get the PDF, if you haven't already, go to drummerinthegreatmountain.com episode 113. And also grab your notebook, grab your sheet of paper, or open the word document that you used in our last episode so you can continue on with the exercises. So the second step of Life Visioning is mining your daydreaming for clues. So I want to encourage you to take a moment, close your eyes, and recall what you've been daydreaming about the past few months. As outlandish and seemingly unattainable as some of your dreams may be, write them out in as much detail as possible. So hit pause and when you're done, come back and we'll continue on. Okay, now look at what you've written down. Can you detect a pattern? Is there a theme to what the fantasies are giving you in terms of your daydreaming? Are they pointing you in a specific direction? So a lot of what I look at when I'm doing this work with people is what are the unmet needs? Okay, so if you're daydreaming about traveling, or you're daydreaming about having a vacation, or you're daydreaming about finishing a book, or you're daydreaming about having a lot of support around you, whatever the daydream is. Underneath that are needs for connection, support, accomplishment. And to me, those are really important because that gives you like, okay, here's the needs that aren't getting met, and there's gonna be some specific actions to take to meet those needs. This deeper part of our psyche is communicating us through our daydream. So having this exercise can be really helpful before we go into the hard goal setting in steps three, four, and five. Okay, so the next step. And this is not in the book. I'm pulling this from the previous exerc, but I think it goes a little better for step two. Take a moment. Again, I want to encourage you to close your eyes for a second and ask yourself, if you could do anything in the world and had an infinite amount of time and money and had no obligations, what would you do? That's an extremely powerful question to ask your subconscious. So I want you to take a moment, I'm going to read it again, breathe into it, and then write your answer. If I could do anything in the world and had an infinite amount of time and money and had no obligations, what would I do? So hit pause, write that out, and then we'll come back. Okay, so I'm going to read straight from the book because I feel like it really captures this exercise and what to do next with it. This exercise is immensely effective at delving into your subconscious, so you may want to revisit it a number of times over the next few days. Each time you do, you'll gain further inspiration and clarity. Perhaps, as is often the case and critical, inner voice may show up and say something like, this is silly and pointless, or you're going to just get your hopes up and spend your time doing this for nothing. Acknowledge these voices for the moment and set them aside and keep going. The point of this exercise is to catalyze your creativity, getting you to the core of what you love and what inspires you. By doing this, you're tapping into that inner fuel source necessary to make meaningful changes in your life. Okay, so you've now accomplished step two of the life visioning process. So what I want to encourage you to do is, if you're not joining us in the workshop, I want to encourage you to continue to go through the life visioning chapter and go through steps three, four, and five. What my hope has been in these last two episodes is to give you a bit of an on ramp to doing this life visioning work to make it a little bit easier for you to get started so that once you're started you can continue on and complete the exercises. As I mentioned earlier, I would highly recommend also downloading the tracking sheet that I mentioned in episode 111. Listen to that episode you and start working with your tracking sheet as you're going through the year. Because the tracking sheet is about you establishing some habits based on this life visioning work and having a way to track daily. Here's what I did, here's what was accomplished and here was my mood and here was my energy level, especially as it relates to health. But also you can add to that tracking sheet items related to the goals that you are going to be developing as you continue on through this life visioning work. And if it would be helpful for you to do this work with the community, I would love to encourage you to come join us for our Life Visioning workshop happening on January 25th and 28th. If you want to know more information, you can go to drummerandthegreatmountain.comworkshop and I want to wish you all a fantastic 2025 antenna ghost. Really, really well for you. Thank you for being part of this community. If you would like me to cover something on the podcast that you haven't heard before, please reach out. You can email me@inforummarinthegreatmountain.com and until next time, be well.
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Thanks for joining us. If you'd like to learn more about the book the Drummer and the Great Mountain, visit Drummer and the Great Mountain to join us on social media, click the links at the top of the homepage. Help us spread the word. We're a small press and reviews really help. If you've been enjoying the podcast or the book, consider writing a review on itunes, Amazon, Goodreads, or your podcast app. If you're new to the podcast and want to quickly get up to speed on the concepts we discuss, check out our free five day mini course. Visit drummerandthegreatmountain.com Minicourse if there's a topic you'd like us to cover on future episodes, we'd love to hear from you. Please send us an email@infooummarandthegreatmountain.com.
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