ADHD Coaching Blog

Monday, January 31, 2011

Opposing the system that does not support you

“We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose.”
Bishop Desmond Tutu

We live in a world that is making it ever increasingly difficult to be your authentic self. Educational institutions, corporations, organizations want you to conform to their limiting standards. Their rules
usually do not support your unique ways of thinking and acting.

Your uniqueness is where your creativity is located. It is your way of thinking out of the box and is in harmony with both your strengths and values. Your creativity will usually provide innovative solutions
to problems you are confronting. Don’t let your inner source of creativity remain stagnant because a system dictates what you must do. To be your best, means you must oppose what does not naturally
work for you. If it is not right for you, then you need to oppose the system’s standards. The system’s way is not the only way. The only way is your unique way; the one that supports your strengths aligned
with your passionate purpose. If you let an unsupportive system dictate uniformity and conformity, it will prevent you from accessing your unique, diverse and creative insight. What do you want?
How can you inform an unsupportive system what they need to do to support your unique way of doing things?

The Courage to Be Yourself*

“To be nobody but myself- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else-means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never
stop fighting…”
          E.E. Cummings

I love this quote, and although I don’t want to think of it as a fight, there have been many days where I personally felt I was involved in an overwhelming battle of my own mind. It was a
huge conflict with what I wanted to be vs. who I was told I had to be.
I think in today’s world it really takes courage to be different and unique. I think it takes courage to say what you mean and act naturally, using your unique talents and intuition to take
a different path than everyone else.

Our society, and its major institutions, often dictates what you have to do and how you have to do it. They also tell you the level of performance they expect from you even though they
have not taken the time to determine the best ways for you to do it. They have not encouraged you to go out and explore creative, diverse ways of thinking and doing the mandated tasks
and assignments you are being told to complete.

Our institutions have not taken the time to collaborate and enlist your cooperation by inviting and encouraging you to look at doing mundane assignments in creative and innovative ways.
They tell you to: “Just get it done in the allotted time or else?” They haven’t considered what new, improved, interesting and more effective alternatives you could provide if they would only
let you think out of the box, with different creative approaches to the same boring problems.
The pressure to perform in standard, uniform ways that demands you adhere to the status quo is diminishing the creative power of each human being. The current modus operandi of business
and education are impeding people’s ability to bring their special talents and unique ways of thinking to every task and project that needs to be reinvented.

When you mandate a process of how to do things, you isolate people not only from others but from themselves. You make them feel like robots being programmed to solve standard, unchallenging
problems rather than inviting them to be divine people with an inner brilliance that can illuminate the world with their own source of creative thinking.
You are a human being that wants to imagine possibilities not only a human doing working under pressure to perform routinely. Innovation and creativity do not come from a pressure to perform.
They are created in an environment that encourages acceptance, depth, diversity, uniqueness and freedom of ideas. Our country was founded on these principles and we seem to be moving in the
opposite direction. It is evident all around us; just look and you’ll see it. What are you doing today, to be your creative self in a world that demands you be somebody else?

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Paper Clips *

I recently watched a life changing film, “Paper Clips.” It is an extraordinary documentary that focuses on an experiment in Holocaust education. It takes place in a rural town of 1600 people in Whitehill, Tennessee. The students in the town’s middle school are learning about the Holocaust. They are struggling to grasp how six million Jews were killed just for their religious beliefs.

The students decide to start a campaign to collect six million paper clips so they can better understand the enormity of this human calamity. The film details how the students met Holocaust survivors from around the world and how the experience transformed them and their entire community. This is not just a film about the 6 million Jews that were killed in the Holocaust. It is a powerful example of what happens when you accept each human being for WHO they are. There are so many moving scenes in this film. My tears were flowing profusely throughout the movie. As the story unfolds, you see how the program catches on all over world. There is so much more to learn from this documentary. This film is focused on teaching the world about intolerance and prejudice towards all human beings. It is about learning to accept people for their beliefs and their place in the world. This movie reminds me how important it is to not judge people for their differences. Four percent of the world’s population has adult ADHD. Every day they are judged by a world ignorant of their unique brain wiring. Until the world learns what Whitehill, Tennessee learned, individuals with ADHD will continue to suffer. We need more people to watch “Paper Clips.” They need to see how beautiful the world can be when we are tolerant, accepting and embracing the uniqueness in every human being. When four letters, A D H D, conjure up negative images of stupidity, laziness and craziness then we will continue to witness prejudice, ignorance and intolerance. People, with ADHD, are beautiful, creative, intelligent, divine human beings who need to be accepted and understood not judged and ostracized. Whitehill, Tennessee represents one of the few places on earth where an entire town made it their mission to show the world how human beings need to be treated. I can assure you if you watch this movie you will never look at a paper clip in the same way.

The Best Trained ADHD Coaches in the World

The ADD Coach Academy is very proud of its recent ACTP Accreditation by the ICF
and its distinction as the only comprehensive ADHD Coach Training Program with
this respected designation. However, what really sets us apart from everyone..

are the great coaches that graduate from our program and the significant, positive
impact they are making in the lives of countless individuals with ADHD. This video
has been created to let the world know what great coaches you are and that the
training you have received has been created to empower every client with ADHD
that chooses to coach with you.

 

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Just Write, Right Now. Learn to Let Go of Your Internal Editor *

Until I began to understand my own ADHD, I was always worried about writing the perfect sentence. I was seeking the perfect punctuation and prose in perfect sequence while also insuring that everything was spelled perfectly.

Eventually, I became aware that my inability to always find the right words was impeding my ability to gain any writing momentum. I was so busy worrying about writing the right thing; I never got to write anything. If you want to write, then just write. Right now. Get rid of your internal editor. The one that has to find the perfect words before you can write anything. Give yourself permission to proceed by writing what consciously shows up in your mind. You can always edit later. You can’t always capture an idea that is only present for a blink of an eye. No one has measured the speed of thought. I can assure when you don’t write down a spontaneous creative thought when it happens, trying to remember it later usually means you have lost it, maybe forever. You just have to let go of your internal editor. If you do, you will write some of the most creative pieces you could ever imagine. As the very old Alka Seltzer commercials used to say: "Try it, you'll like it." Isn’t it better to capture the main thrust of your ideas so that you can develop what could eventually become a new innovation, service, product, book, article, system etc.? Rather than worrying about the sentence sounding right, just write. Right now.

*Words Create Worlds

Your words create worlds. They have the ability to immobilize or catalyze you in any
given moment.

Your words have the ability to create pain and diminish some one’s self-esteem. They
also have the power to create joy, fulfillment and enhance an individual’s self-image.

Whenever you choose to communicate with words learn to pause and pay attention
to the words in your message, each word you deliver has the energy to deflate and
destroy or expand and empower. You always have the choice to create a better world
with the words you choose to use.

 

Thursday, January 27, 2011

How High you Climb is your Choice (V)

Why do some people climb to a certain point, turn around and descend to the bottom?
Reaching the summit of an important goal is a choice every human being has the opportunity to take. It’s all a matter of how you look at it.

When you are climbing, do you reach a point where you look down to see how high you have gone yet it prevents you from climbing higher?
Or do you reach a point where you look up and see how much further you have to go to reach the top?
It really is a matter of choice. You are the one who makes the choice of how high you are willing to climb. The altitude you choose to climb will be a function of the attitude you choose to use.

 

Learn to Identify Your Emotions (V)

Emotional Intelligence is your ability to identify your emotions as they occur and not let
them sabotage your ability to make good choices that will serve you well. Research
shows that most people don’t have this ability.

The inability to identify emotions, as they happen, is especially prevalent with people who
have ADHD. This is a critical skill that has a huge impact on your quality of life. When you
don’t recognize your emotions they have the power to control you. You do have the ability
to improve your Emotional Intelligence, (EI) and learn to identify your emotions as they are
happening. It is a skill that can be learned. First you need to learn how your ADHD impacts
your Emotional Intelligence so you can identify the situations where you are challenged.
To learn more, please go to: http://addca.com/ADHD-education.html

 

Thursday, January 20, 2011

ADD Coach Academy Training Program Receives Coveted Accreditation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: David Giwerc (800) 915-7702,  .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

ALBANY, N.Y.— The ADD Coach Academy is pleased to announce that its training program has been awarded the Accredited Coaching Training Program (ACTP) designation from the International Coach Federation.

With this coveted designation, the ADD Coach Academy becomes the first and only comprehensive ADHD coach training program to be fully accredited by the International Coach Federation (ICF). The ICF developed rigorous training and testing criteria to establish credibility and confidence in the consistent quality of its certified coaches.

“It was five years of demanding work that utilized all our resources and required a number of significant curriculum and administrative changes in order to demonstrate the ADD Coach Academy could satisfy ICF’s standards,” said ADD Coach Academy Founder and President David Giwerc.

About 4 percent of the world’s 6.5 billion people have ADHD. What’s more, research shows that 85 percent of people with ADHD are undiagnosed. People with ADHD face a range of debilitating symptoms including an inability to focus, chronic hyperactivity, forgetfulness and impulsiveness that can negatively affect life at home, at work and in the community. One of the goals of ADHD coaching is to empower individuals to manage the unique challenges of their ADHD and maximize their strengths.

Giwerc added: “Clients in search of a quality ADHD coach now have the assurance that a coach trained by the ADD Coach Academy is grounded in the competencies, ethics and standards of professional coaching as set forth by the International Coach Federation.”

Founded in 1998 by David Giwerc, Master Certified Coach, the ADD Coach Academy has trained hundreds of ADHD coaches from more than 15 countries and is considered the gold standard in ADHD coach training.

For more information and an interview, please contact David Giwerc at (800) 915-7702 or visit their website at http://www.addca.com

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Survey Tidbits

Thanks to all of you who have already responded to our survey, “Your ADHD issues.”
We are discovering important information we want to share with you and will
continue to do so during the year. In question # 5 of the survey, we asked respondents
to rate their level of agreement with a list of statements—-53.6 % of the survey respondents
strongly agreed with the following statement:
“I know I can do better for myself but I just don’t know where to begin.”

When you DON"T know how the invisible challenges of ADHD are getting in your way, they
will continue to prevent any kind of progress. You have to seek the right kind of education that
will help you understand how your own brand of ADHD is a barrier to your own growth.
Once you learn the situations where your inattention, impulsivity or hyper activity impairs
your ability to effectively function, you can learn to successfully manage your own ADHD.

Education and Coaching are key components of a comprehensive program that can
dramatically improve the quality of your life. We hope that those of you who have not
responded to this important survey will do so in the near future:
It provides all of us a wealth of information only you can provide. To take this important 7
question survey, please click here

Sunday, January 09, 2011

ADDCA training begins this week

Our next Coach Training Program begins January 10, 2011.
ADDCA is the only ADHD Coach training program with the
coveted ACTP, Accredited Coach Training Program designation,
approved by the International Coach Federation. Year after year,
the Academy graduates the largest, most respected group of
ADHD Coaches. Become part of an elite group & make your
purpose come alive. Visit us today at:
http://www.addca.com/become-an-adhd-coach.html

Sunday, January 02, 2011

Your ADHD Issues Survey

Can you spare a few moments to take this important survey?
Please take the survey titled “Your ADHD Issues” at the link below. 
Your feedback is very important to us!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/53XX5VZ