498 | Will I Ever be Content? with Dana Crews, MA, MBSR, ADHD-CSP

In today’s show, Shell Mendelson joins Eric on the podcast!  Since January 2021, Shell’s Your Next Career Move MasterclassSM  has empowered ADHD adults to create confident career options and was trained by Richard Bolles, the author of “What Color is Your Parachute?”   With a Masters in Career Counseling, Shell offers more than 35 years of client experience while bringing her counseling, coaching, teaching, training, and nurturing gifts to help others clarify and focus on a well-defined direction and abundant livelihood.  Following her own diagnosis of ADHD later in life, Shell profoundly understands how ADHD can impact one’s work and to reliably choose the best career direction: one that takes our “interest-based ADHD brain wiring” into consideration. Get in touch and find out more about Shell’s Next Career Move MasterclassSM on her website at CareerCoachingWithShell.com Questions/Topics:  [00:01:23] Introducing Shell [00:02:35] Training with Richard Bolles and how it changed Shell’s life  [00:07:13] What are some examples of some of the questions Shell might ask when someone is trying to figure out a career direction?  [00:09:32] Looking beyond money and Safekeeping Self  [00:10:32] Addressing potential deficits in self-awareness and answering self-assessment questions   [00:25:44] So what is the “best” career for someone with ADHD?  [00:26:55] If you were to ask 100 people if they knew exactly what they wanted to do for work, what is the percentage of people who could actually answer this question?   [00:30:11] The role of stepping-stone jobs and the difference between someone who doesn’t know what they want and someone who does know what they want  [00:31:44] Addressing the person who holds a marketable skill set in a lucrative profession but hates the work [00:32:19] Stories that Shell hears from people who reach out to her  [00:34:40] Looking at other career options: “How do we figure this stuff out?”  [00:36:36] Once you discover your “what,” the “how” appears, and a discussion next steps and different types of research  [00:47:40] What is Shell’s 8-Week Masterclass and who is her class for?  [00:52:21] How to get in touch with Shell, closing thoughts, and words of wisdom  Resources & Honorable Mentions: Book: What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Bolles 🌟 Want to hear the bonus questions and answer at the end of this episode? Go to adhdrewired.com/Patreon where you can get an uninterrupted listening experience of this show and bonus content when you become a Patron at $5 a month or more! You can even join Eric every 4th Tuesday of the month for a Patron-only monthly coaching call at $25 a month!  🌟 Have you heard about our Adult Study Hall Community? Go to adultstudyhall.com to join our ADHD-friendly body-doubling community! 🌟 Interested in group coaching and want to take your ADHD management to the next level? Go to coachingrewired.com to get all the up-to-date information on the upcoming season of ADHD reWired’s award-winning Coaching & Accountability groups!

This week, Faigie Kobre joins Eric on the podcast for a discussion on reigniting creativity.  Faigie is a creative coach for people who don’t feel artistic but love art!  She works with people who have creativity scars and think they “aren’t creative” because they can’t draw.  She has a passion for reconnecting people with their inner creativity to bring calm, color, and joy into their lives.   In this conversation, you’ll hear about Eric’s journey with music, why people stop tapping into their creativity, why Faigie is trying to bring art back to everybody who wants to come back to it, and her start as an early childhood educator.  Then, you’ll hear about creativity scars, comparison, perfectionism, the healing and sensory benefits of creativity, and how anyone at any age can tap into their creativity. Get in touch with Faigie, reignite your creativity & take her micro-course at CreativityReignited.com!    Questions/Topics:  [00:01:45] “Everybody is born creative.” – Faigie [00:04:52] “There’s so many ways to do art where you don’t have to know how to draw.” [00:05:19] What was it that drew Faigie to not just creativity and art, but also using creativity and art to connect with others and help other people?  [00:07:26] Faigie gets hooked on mixed-media art and getting people back to their childhoods  [00:08:45] A discussion on play in the realm of creativity and allowing it to flourish  [00:11:33] An intersection between being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult and interest in artwork [00:12:59] What is T.A.B.? (Teaching for Artistic Behavior) [00:13:42] “In schools […] it’s more about how the art makes the teacher look” and being punished for the expression of an idea [00:18:13] What are creativity scars?  [00:20:28] “Comparison is the thief of joy,” learning to create, and enjoying the process [00:21:51] Eric shares his journey with painting and a discussion on cleaning up after an art session  [00:24:08] Using an art journal and how general creativity can help someone combat perfectionism [00:26:01] Faigie shares five mediums of art that have tremendous opportunities for creativity  [00:27:47] Eric asks why art is such an impactful medium for people with ADHD: “How is this helping us?”  [00:34:23] A discussion on getting started when we don’t know where to start [00:38:48] Eric asks, “As an artist with ADHD, how do you know when a piece of work is done?”  [00:40:09] Color schemes and color wheels [00:45:17] Closing thoughts Resources: Book – The Creativity Cure by Carrie Barron and Alton Barron Book – Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All by Tom Kelly and David Kelly Book – Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families by Charles L. Whitfield Book – Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child by John Bradshaw Book – The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron Video – Do Schools Kill Creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson Website – Sir Ken Robinson at SirKenRobinson.com   Website – Danny Gregory at DannyGregory.com   Website – Sketchbook School by Danny Gregory at SketchbookSkool.com   Website – CreativeConfidence.com   Article – Johari Window on CommunicationTheory.org Honorable Mentions: “…so many adults feel non-creative because of how they were squashed when they were kids.” “Comparison is the thief of joy.”  “The idea of play is that you’re doing it for no purpose other than the enjoyment of it.”  🌟 Check out the Other Podcasts on the ADHD reWired Podcast Network: ADHD Essentials with Brendan Mahan Hacking Your ADHD with Will Curb ADHD Diversified with MJ Siemens 🌟 Have you heard about our Adult Study Hall Community? Go to adultstudyhall.com to join our ADHD-friendly body-doubling community! 🌟 Interested in group coaching and want to take your ADHD management to the next level? Go to coachingrewired.com to get all the up-to-date information on the upcoming season of ADHD reWired’s award-winning Coaching & Accountability groups!

In this episode, Eric is joined by Alumni member Laura Kane. Laura is a transplant from Boston living with her rescue dog in Delray Beach, Florida. Just prior to the pandemic, Laura discovered a love of nature photography and is incredibly grateful for this gift. Most days, she can be found taking pictures of birds, alligators, and other assorted wildlife. Her top bucket-list item is to go on a safari. Creating structure and sticking with it is a constant struggle for her, but she refuses to give up!  Listen in as Eric and Laura work together to build her daily structure, the why behind the desire to create the structure, and how uncomfortable it can be to accept praise when sharing our joy. You’ll also hear about the significance and impact of accountability, how Laura’s passion gives her purpose, the anxiety of implementation and commitment, and understanding how the all-or-nothing mindset can actually get in the way.  Laura’s Instagram: Where does the narrative of comparing oneself to others, not feeling good enough, stems from? How can you cue the “why” behind the routine?  How easy is it to create back-up plans ahead of time versus in-the-moment? How is exercise helpful? What about online exercise classes? What barriers can get in the way of building habits/derailing our habits? How do you strengthen accountability?  What’s the story behind “having” to ask for help?  What’s the story behind believing we have to do things by ourselves?  How do we get our goals met? How do we structure our day when we’re the only ones depending on the structure?  How has the pandemic affected building habits and routines? Resources & Honorable Mentions:

In this episode, I talk about the 4 stages that we go through once we realize we have ADHD.  These 4 stages are there for a reason to help us ease into our next phase of transformation.  Be it moving past a diagnosis, changing jobs, end a relationship, or starting a new business.  
Stage one – Being a victim to the change
Stage two – Healing the wounds 
Stage three – Making a game plan 
Stage four – Playing the game

Book a complimentary session with me at readysetchoose.com to explore how to move past these stages, mention this episode in your application. 

My guest David Giwerc, Master Certified ADHD Coach, Entrepreneur, Founder/President of the ADD Coach Academy, shared a very powerful statement during this episode, “when you identify your strengths, you’re identifying a natural, innate talent and a way of creating excellence consistently in your life. But that’s not enough because, without the sustaining mechanism, Or the source that activates that strength, those strengths will die. And this is especially true in ADHD because ADHD is a deficit of interest. It’s, it’s the challenge of boredom, but interest isn’t even enough.”

You are in for a treat, consider this episode as a training session, during this episode, David shared extremely helpful insights on:

• Identifying the importance of focusing on strengths, especially character strengths
• Why we look at the different categories of strengths
• What does executive function in the brain have to do with strengths?

During the last 20 minutes of the episode he goes deeper into the following:

• An effective way to start your day to get the most out of it
• Understanding the importance of how you process information and how it impacts learning
• Definition of Executive Function and it works with ADHD
• How to manage big emotions

I was trained and coached by David himself for a big portion of my ADD Coach training program at ADDCA, so it was my absolute honor to have my mentor/coach be on my show. I am forever grateful for the impact that he has made in my life and the lives of many who have taken his courses and teachings at the ADD Coach Academy.

If you are curious about finding out your character strengths go to: VIA Character Strengths

Access my complimentary online mini-lesson, to learn a new perspective of what impact your focus and immediate actions you can take to move through your tasks with ease

About David:

David Giwerc is a Master Certified ADHD Coach, MCAC, with the Professional Association of ADHD Coaches (PAAC) and a Master Certified Coach, MCC, with the International Coach Federation (ICF). He is also the Founder and President of the ADD Coach Academy (ADDCA), the first and largest comprehensive ADHD coach training program fully accredited by the ICF and PAAC, the governing bodies of the Life Coaching and ADHD Coaching Professions.

David has served on many boards over the years. As past president of the ADDA (Attention Deficit Disorder Association), he was instrumental in the formation of U.S. Senate resolution 390 that declared September 7, 2004, to be National ADHD Awareness Day; this event has been instituted every year since its inception. As a veteran ADDA board member, he was involved in the development of their “Guiding Principles for Coaching Individuals with ADHD.”

In this episode, I introduce the 3rd discipline of Self-Mastery “Conscious Choice” another key concept that we really need to pay attention to in order to get out of autopilot and into the driver’s seat.

I hope you are able to put some of the insights into practice and see a shift in your approach when it comes to decision-making.