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- [00:02]
A
Hi, I'm Ash. And I'm Dusty and this is Translating ADHD listeners. Before we get started, just to let you know, I do have openings for new clients, so if you've been thinking about ADHD coaching or coaching with me in particular, please do reach out by filling out the form@coachasher.com I do also offer sliding scale, so if cost is a challenge for you, don't let that stop you from reaching out. So, Dusty, you want to tell our listeners what we're going to talk about today?
- [00:35]
B
Today we're going to talk about journey thinking.
- [00:38]
A
Yeah. So this is revisiting a topic that Cam and I have talked about a couple of times previously on this podcast. I recently re listened to season two, episode two, where Cam and I really go into journey thinking and how that relates to coaching process. I would certainly encourage listeners who want to know more about journey thinking and more about ADHD coaching to revisit that episode. It's a great one, but today we're going to bring a bit of a different perspective. So the reason I wanted to bring this topic today is there was a conversation that happened in our Discord server after the season opening episode where I talked about where I am on my own journey, which has not been without its difficulties. And something I said in the Discord server was journey thinking was actually a huge to me during that time to sort of stay in the present, to orient to what I'm able to do now, to stay, to stay on the journey, to not lose hope, to not sort of crumble under the immense amount of overwhelm that I was coping with at the time.
- [01:46]
B
Yeah, I remember that. And listeners, just a gentle reminder that we do have a Patreon and a Discord and you can join the Patreon, you be part of the Discord. And it's very fun and great. And that's where the discussion happened around the episode. Right. That gave you the idea for this.
- [02:03]
A
Exactly, Dusty. And listeners, if you visit translatingadhd.com and click on the Patreon link, that is how you can find our Patreon. And for five bucks a month you can be a part of the Discord server. And pretty soon we're going to be bringing some new monthly events to our patrons. So stay tuned for that. We will have more information for you next next week on that one. So I want to start with the same metaphor that I've shared every time we've talked about journey thinking on this podcast before, which is the idea that you are standing on a stepping Stone in the middle of a foggy pond. And the fog is so dense that even though there are stepping stones all around you, you cannot see them. So you cannot see where the next stepping stone is. Destination thinking is hopping in the water, getting all wet and kind of flailing for sure. Flailing for that one outcome that you're looking for. Journey thinking is about being where you are, standing on the stepping stone, getting curious and trying to lift the fog enough to see what the next stepping stone might look like. And the real power of journey thinking is when we orient to detaching from outcome, detaching from a particular destination. Oftentimes we see possibilities that were not visible to us before. This happens to me a lot in my coaching relationships. I've coached people through job changes, career changes, significant relationship changes, significant life changes of all sorts of. And it all starts with the idea of let's detach from what I think should be and start to get curious about what is in the here and now.
- [03:56]
B
Yeah, very well said. I think it's. I think that's the part that our brain always wants to skip over, right? Is like what's actually happening. It's so hard to like bring our attention away from all the like mental churning and all the like should do and to do's and be like, okay, what are you doing? So like what's happening and why Exactly, Dusty.
- [04:19]
A
And this is particularly true at the moment that our clients are coming to ADHD coaching because they're coming to coaching because something's not working, because there are pain points, because they are in overwhelm, because life doesn't fit in moments like that, it can be really, really tough to access curiosity because. Because our clients just want a solve for their pain points. They want to be out of discomfort. So journey thinking is about let's get present in the here and now, let's get out of this reactive mode and let's start with just being where you are. Even if where you are right now is not a comfortable place. Just because it's uncomfortable doesn't mean that there's nothing opportunity to learn, to discover something new, to lift the fog a little bit. So often with adhd we think let's solve the discomfort first. There's that magical thinking of if I can just get caught up, if I can just get somewhere different than where I am now, then I will be able to see where I'm headed. Journey thinking is about leaning into the uncomfortable place, being exactly where you are and, and holding the fact that two things can be true. You can be uncomfortable in this place, but that doesn't mean there's not opportunity for curiosity, new awareness and growth.
- [05:43]
B
Yeah. I'm really grateful to Tu and Cam for having taught me this. This language and this perspective, because even though I went through ADHD coach training, I don't know that this is something that I learned in a really nuanced way. And I think it makes me a better coach because, like, I get that so much with clients coming to coaching and they just. They're trying something and then they go, it didn't work. I'm not doing it. It didn't work. I'm not doing it. And they keep coming to coaching with the same story, just, like, looking for the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, right? They don't see the pattern that they're in of, like, it's really not the thing. It's like, what happens when you're trying to do the thing. Like, it's. The call is coming from inside the house, right? Like, we are not just gonna outrun this if we just. And it's really. It could be really disempowering, right? Like, you can be working with an ADHD coach and still have a really disempowering experience if all you coaching is okay. I tried that, and it didn't work. I'm. I'm still not doing it. I'm still not doing it. I'm still not doing it. I'm like, cool, you're still not doing it. That's actually what I was hoping to hear. That's what I thought I would hear. That's what I figured I would hear. What is, like, what does that actually entail? Like, tell me about still not doing it. How did you still not do it? Right. That's what I want to know. And I. And I. It's. It can be really hard to slow people down and to get them to actually talk about it. But, like, you know, the definition of insanity is, like, doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So if we just keep coming back to coaching with, like, well, that didn't work. Let me try something else. Well, that didn't work. Let me try something else. Right? We have to get out of that.
- [07:08]
A
Exactly. Dusty. And alongside that magical thinking that there's some. There's some different place that we can get to that will make everything easier, that will bring all of the clarity that will show us exactly where we're going. Another thing that journey thinking helps us get out of as folks with ADHD is all or nothing. Thinking. Because all or nothing thinking is entirely rooted in attaching to some outcome in the way things should be, the way things should look. This is something I've really struggled with in the last couple of years because my life right now today looks very different than what I would have anticipated four years ago. Four years ago I was thinking, okay, I finally quote, unquote arrived. I'm here, things are going to be more settled. Life is going to get easier from here. And then I had the exact opposite experience. And it was really easy to get drugged down into why am I still here? Sort of a victim mentality, imposter syndrome, Just all of the things piling on. But coming back to journey thinking was a huge aid to me. There again, journey thinking helps us orient to the present to be where we are, even if that's uncomfortable. And listeners, you know, I love a good mantra. There are two that served me well in this time and are still serving me well, and they kind of go hand in hand. The first is, well, I'm here now. I'm here now. Whether I like it or not, I'm here now. That's, that's just true. That's just real. And saying that to myself kind of helped me let go of the, the desire to be somewhere else. The magical thinking, the, the frustration or anger that my life isn't looking the way that I thought it should look at this stage. And then following with, what can I do? Because so often I would get stuck in all of the things I can't do or all of the things that I'm not able to address at this time. And so taking a breath and being like, well, okay, I'm here now. What can I do? Kind of help shift my perspective away from the shoulds, the grief, the frustration, and into, okay, this is where you are. What can you do to move forward in some way, even if that way is really small? And in the last few years, sometimes progress has felt very, very, very painfully slow. But it hasn't been none. It hasn't been none. And over time, that progress has added up. And that is something we can be really bad at. Seeing as folks with ADHD is how small wins. Small successes build over time. We can be really bad at understanding that success and struggle, I say this all the time, success and struggle can and do go hand in hand. They are not mutually exclusive concepts. And we so often tend to, to think that it's one or the other. That's that magical, or all or nothing. Thinking that if I'm being successful, there won't be struggle. Well, that is not true. We are always going to struggle. Life is always going to throw us curveballs and we are always going to have adhd. Even if we are managing it well, it is still going to impede us and get in our way in certain ways. And so learning how to hold both of those things to be true and learning how to contextualize success in the moment. Success in my last couple of years did not look like success in the years preceding because my life was different. It was harder, it was more overwhelming. I was struggling in ways that I wasn't struggling before. And so I had to give myself some grace and learn how to measure success differently.
- [11:10]
B
I'm right there with you. And I think what you said there was really profound. Like, that success and struggle can go hand in hand because I do think, like, along with that magical thinking of, like, oh, your princess is in another castle. Like, oh, it's just going to be the next planner. Or like you said, once I get somewhere else, then I can, like, I can't count the number of times that I've said to myself and to others around me. And then I've heard clients say, like, once I X, then I'll Y. And like, you really do have to just shift into, like, okay, X is never coming. Like, there's no end to the to do list. There's no, like, magical future where you nail all your routines and you, like, get it going and then, you know what I mean? And I mean with nuance. I think it also doesn't behoove one to be like, okay, well, nothing's ever going to change, so I might as well do everything now. There's. There's like a. There's like a nuanced space in between, like, like later and now. There's. I like to tell clients, like, think about now and then next. You know, that kind of helps me give myself a bit of space. Now I'm going on a bit of a tangent. But anyway, I think what you said there about, you know, success and struggle going together is really important because we have to be able to recognize that in a lot of ways we are already succeeding, right? And that we can give ourselves credit for the effort that we're doing now. Right. Like I often say to clients when I'm doing, when I'm doing consultations, I often say, you know, d splits apart effort and outcome. It splits apart, like, intention and effort. Right? So you can intend to do something and then not do it, but you can also do a thing and not it doesn't go the way that you thought it would go, or you don't get the outcome. Right? So, like, for example, I could go to the gym every day for a month. I could go to the gym 30 days, and if my goal was, like, lose 10 pounds, if I am having a hard time going to the gym and I'm not working out enough, or I'm like, maybe not sleeping or eating right, I could go to the gym 30 days in a row and not lose 10 pounds. I could work on my taxes every day for a month and not get my taxes done. I could clean my house every day and still not feel like I got it to the level of cleanliness that I anticipated. And if I'm putting in all that effort over and over and over and over and not seeing the outcome, I'm liable to, like, not count it at all. And that's really demoralizing, Right? Like, that doesn't do a lot for our. The motivational wiring in our brain. And so one of the things I think is really helpful about journey thinking is bringing clients bringing their awareness to, like, how successful they already are based on what they're already doing and how much they're already trying to. Right? Because if you're not getting the outcome you're looking for, it's not always because you're not trying hard enough. Like, that's not always the reason, Right? Like, sometimes you're trying hard enough, but you're trying in the wrong way or you're using the wrong tool or whatever. But if we always just go, well, I'm not getting where I'm trying to go. I must not be trying hard enough. Let me try harder. Like, it's just an exercise in futility. And I find it's really helpful for people to actually to acknowledge how much effort they're putting in and to be able to give themselves credit for how hard they're working. And that's like a huge shift that is, like, really, really healing for a lot of clients.
- [14:09]
A
Absolutely dusty. Nothing, nothing halts effort for me faster than getting stuck in that mentality that I should be doing more, that I should be efforting harder, that I should be working harder, that I should be whatever. And nothing helps more than orienting to where I am being successful. Another way that I see what you just talked about show up with clients is thinking about their journey to this point. So many clients will come to me with this story that I. My life has happened to me more than I've happened to it. I have Been a failure up until this point in my life. So learning how to measure against something other than outcome is. Is helpful here, too. I'm working with a new client who has a lot of one down when it comes to career. She's highly educated, she's done some interesting work in a number of different fields. But she absolutely dreads the question, what do you do for a living? Because she feels like she doesn't have the quote, unquote right answer. She should have a better answer. She should have more to show for the effort that she's put in to this point in her life. And the last time we met, it was really interesting because she was talking. This is kind of a sidebar, but she was talking about all of this incredible volunteer and advocacy work that she was doing and had done in the past for underserved populations and how fulfilling that is for her. And I called out, is that not being successful? Does success have to look like a certain career path or a certain career title? Is there not success in what you've done here? Because this all sounds incredible to me. And that led to a really interesting conversation where even in those roles, she tended to diminish herself. She talked about a local paper wanting to take a photograph with her and some other people involved in a particular event. And she told the newspaper, oh, you don't want me. I'm nobody. So you see how she's completely discounting where she's being successful, where others are trying to recognize her, because it's not fitting the destination she has in mind of being able to answer the career question with confidence. So listeners learning how to measure against something other than outcome. I tend to not attach outcomes to certain goals. As you all know. I kickbox. It has been a rocky journey. I have never been as consistent as I would like, but I don't attach hard goals to it. My goal is to just be more functionally fit to keep my body in good enough shape. And if I go often enough, I am achieving that goal. And someday maybe I will attach another goal to that. Maybe I will be in a place where I can attach to some positive motivation. But there's an important distinction. Are you attaching from a place of desire and want? Is there a positive outcome that you're working towards? Or are you attaching from a place of should? Because detaching from outcome doesn't necessarily mean never ever having any goals. What it does mean is orienting those goals to who you are and what matters in your life, not what you think you should be doing. Not where you think you should be in this moment in time. Something else that I think Journey Thinking really does for my clients is it does this twofold thing of helping us put ourselves in the picture and build some resilience. I have a client who is currently working in a corporate environment. So she is a former expat that moved back to her country of origin and she wasn't sure if she was going to like that lifestyle or not because she really enjoyed the expat lifestyle. But she had some career goals that made taking this particular job something of interest to her. She wanted to see how well she would do in a corporate environment and she wanted to capitalize on some learning opportunities that would come from this change of pace. For her as somebody who had typically worked only in startups when the move first happened, it was really tough for her. There was a lot of one down. Corporate environments are really tough for people with ADHD in general. So there was a lot of struggle there. And for a time she really lost sight of her why? But we had this powerful shift in our coaching where she reconnected to what she loves about what she does. She started attending events outside of work and reminding herself why she was doing this particular job and how it was going to serve her in getting where she wanted to go. And even though the job itself hasn't changed, the struggles of corporate haven't changed, the ADHD of it all is still in the mix. There is now this positive motivation that she is attached to because she's remembering to put herself in the picture. And her goal is not to climb the corporate ladder. Her goal is to get a specific set of learning from this job that will enable her to seek the kinds of opportunities that she wants to seek in the future and to do well enough, enough to be able to stay and to be able to stay in this position and do that. And so just that shift in perspective has been really, really helpful because now she's seeing herself in the picture and so now she has some resilience. When the one down comes in. When the corporate bureaucratic mess of it all that's so hard for those of us with ADHD becomes overwhelming and frustrating, she's able to reconnect to that bigger why, why I'm here, why I'm doing this. And that's the positive motivation. Not, not necessarily being successful in the corporate job, but being successful because I have my own motivations and my own ends that I'm working towards in part by spending a couple of years in this role.
- [20:50]
B
Yeah, I Love that. And it's, it's so funny how that happens, right? Like your, your dream sort of becomes your nightmare. And sometimes it's not about making some big sweeping, like, structural change. It's just about like getting, like, almost like getting back to basics. Right. And I think that's what coaching is so powerful for. I had a client who, who was also really struggling with feeling competent at work. And she had all these kind of stories. And you know, again, they're, they're true stories. You know, stories about health issues that she was going through and life issues that were making it hard for her to focus and, and limitations. Right. Like, her story had a lot of, like, I'm limited because of X, Y, Z. And I was like, well, let's just get a little bit curious about what's going on with your work processes. And what we actually discovered was that like, Slack was a huge source of distraction. And the way that like, her day was set up just like, with meetings and like her work just like, was not serving her at all and just making her feel super overwhelmed. And all it took was like, just a couple really simple switches that like, I didn't make suggestions or nothing. Like, she came up with these ideas. All I did was go like, hey, what's going on over here? Let's just look at it. Like, let's just look. Let's see what's happening. Let's go. Like, why isn't this working? Like, what happens when you start your day? What happens by 10:00am? What happens by 2:00pm like, where are you at? What's going on? And how did you get here? And she was like, you know what? I'm going to like, add a little bit more structure to when and how I check emails. I'm going to add a little bit more structure to when and how I check my Slack notifications. I'm going to leave some Slack channels that I don't need to be in. I'm going to, you know, change my meetings around, you know, and, and just with like these simple few changes, honestly, like, she felt so much more efficient and effective. Like, all of a sudden she had clarity. She knew what she was working on, she knew what was going on in her job. She knew what she was supposed to do, she knew what the deadlines were. And from there it became really easy to start spotting all the little, like, potholes that got her stuck. Like within a few weeks of making these changes, he's like, you know what? I'm totally over promising things to people and I don't have those promises written down anywhere. Like, I don't actually even know. I don't have a list of all the things that I've promised to people and when they're due by. So how do I know if I can say yes to something? And I'm like, yeah, no, I don't know. And so, like, all it took was her, like, making, like, a little database or spreadsheet of, like, all the things that she had committed to that she could reference before committing to something else. And lo and behold, like, you know, she had the answers all along, and all it took was a few small shifts. And the way that she felt about herself at work was totally different. It wasn't, you know, she still had those. Those physical and health limitations. But it wasn't the health limitations. It wasn't the. It wasn't incompetence. It wasn't, you know, I'm not good at my job, and I need more training. It wasn't like, I'm in the wrong role and I need to get a new job. It's just. It was like, the way I've set up my day doesn't work. But we had to slow it down and, like, really slow it down. And sometimes I feel like what we're doing when we're doing journey thinking, is we're, like, taking a slice or a section of your life and, like, putting it in a microscope, like, between two slides. And it can be really hard to convince clients to do that sometime because especially when it feels like everything's on fire. It's like, well, what good is it to. To just talk about why my laundry is not getting done on Mondays and, like, where I'm putting my laundry and why I'm not following through my intention to do laundry on Mondays. Like, I think sometimes that can feel so minute to a client and so small. They're like, how's this gonna help everything? But, like, it's like science, right? When we get under the microscope and we look right something, you know, many years ago, we didn't know why we had illness, and we attributed it to mystical factors. And it wasn't until we put something under a microscope and we're like, oh, there's this invisible bacteria here that we can't see that's actually what's causing this. Now we can have a proper intervention, right? But it's the ADHD bacteria of our lives put under the microscope. I wasn't 100% sure that metaphor was going to swing all the way back around. I'm very pleased with myself that it did, but. But yeah, it's so funny how that worked.
- [24:43]
A
I love that you stuck with the metaphor all the way through because I had, I had no idea that you were unsure until you said it at the end. I was just sitting here going, ooh, this is. That this is really good. So the last thing I want to say, Dusty, about journey thinking, something really powerful, I've noticed with my clients who are really embodying journey thinking, and this is true for me as well. And like anything else, this takes practice, right? So if you're not here, that's okay. Learning how to embody journey thinking has been a, has been a practice for me since the idea was first introduced to me and became a part of my coaching almost a decade ago. And so, so give yourself some grace here. If it's a new concept for you, start small. Start with my dual mantras of I'm here now, what can I do? But for my clients who are a little farther along, I think something really powerful in particular for people with adhd. I've come to think of ADHD folks as being emotion led. You know, we often, we often think of our emotions only in terms of the dysregulation, right? The something happens, we have our negative feelings about it. We tell ourselves all these stories about ourselves, right? We catastrophize. We can go from I've missed a deadline to I'm the worst person in the world. So that is certainly the downside of being an emotional being with adhd. But I think the upside is learning to listen to our gut. I had a session with a client the other day where she was deciding between staying in this startup that she's a part of, where things are uncertain, but some new exciting work is happening, or taking a new job, which she needed to have an answer the week after our session. So we're trying to, we're trying to get some clarity in this session about whether or not she's going to take this job that would lead to a potential PhD program. And for three quarters of our session, we're kind of weighing pros and cons and we're not really getting anywhere. And so I paused at one point and just asked her, if you had to decide right now, what would you do? What does your gut say? And interestingly enough, and this is right back to sometimes the solution is something we can't see until we can. She found this middle ground solution. I'm going to say no to the job, but I'm not going to say no to the PhD program yet. I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead and apply, but I'm also going to give myself until January in this startup to see where things are. And in the meantime, because one of her concerns was moving from a large metropolitan area to a small college town and whether or not she would like that lifestyle shift.
- [27:39]
B
So.
- [27:40]
A
And in the meantime, there is an opportunity to go work with these people, to go work with this lab, to get a feel for what the work looks like and also get a feel for what it's like to be in this program by talking to other grad students, by spending a couple of weeks in this location to start to get a feel for what it might actually look like to live here. And so ultimately what she needed was more information and information that she doesn't have yet in this moment in her journey. But when she tuned into her gut, when we, when we just asked, what does your gut say? All of a sudden, here's this creative solution that allows a little time for more information. It doesn't have to be a decision right now, this second. I can wait and I can gather information in the meantime that will better inform and give me a better sense of what is right for me.
- [28:39]
B
I like the client stories that you're, that you're telling me because I think that, you know, you're a really strong coach when it comes to journey thinking. I know that's sort of your whole jam. I hope that this is something that most or all coaches are doing with their clients because I do think that especially with adc, maybe more than with other neurotypes like, this is so necessary and so helpful and it tends to be the thing that makes the biggest difference.
- [29:03]
A
Difference.
- [29:04]
B
And it's made the biggest difference for me for sure.
- [29:06]
A
Dusty. I couldn't agree more. My coaching practice took a powerful shift when I started centering journey thinking as, as a core practice in every coaching relationship. Even for those clients who come in a place where they're right where they want to be and they really just need help with the ADHD of it all, journey thinking is a helpful concept. Because with adhd, the stuff behind the stuff is. The stuff behind the stuff is not always obvious. So even in a case where we're not making big, sweeping changes to a client's life, we're just trying to make small tweaks so that they aren't drowning and becoming victims of their own success. Being able to approach it with curiosity. Letting go of the shoulds, letting go of what I ought to be doing or comparing to other people can be so powerful in finding creative solutions. And for most of my clients, it. I often say, I often say that with adhd, simple and easy are not the same thing. So often when we do get to a solution for something like laundry or answering emails, the solve is pretty, quote, unquote simple. It's not anything complicated, it's not anything too onerous. But finding what we needed to find to get that simple solution wasn't easy because ADHD can make it really challenging to see what we need, what support looks like for us. And because we have this learned behavior of looking to others to. To see what we're, quote, unquote supposed to do, we tend to just throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks and get frustrated rather than getting curious about what it is we need. So even for those whose journeys may not involve sweeping change, as mine has and some of my clients have, journey thinking is just such a powerful concept for ADHD in general. I think it really aligns with how our brains work. It allows us to tap into creativity and novelty and to let go of shoulds. And one down. Dusty, I think that's a good place for us to wrap for today.
- [31:20]
B
I agree.
- [31:22]
A
So, listeners, until next week. I'm Ashley.
- [31:24]
B
And I'm Dusty.
- [31:25]
A
And this was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.