What does overcoming ADHD have to do with losing weight? The answer is shockingly simple: follow through on expert advice. The problem is, though… who are the experts?

In The Culture Code, Clotaire Rapaille shares the following story:

“Years ago, Tufts University invited me to lecture during a symposium on obesity…

Lecturer after lecturer offered solutions for America’s obesity problem, all of which revolved around education. Americans would be thinner if only they knew about good nutrition and the benefits of exercise, they told us. Slimming down the entire country was possible through an aggressive public awareness campaign…

When it was my turn to speak, I couldn’t help beginning with an observation. “I think it is fascinating that the other speakers today have suggested that education is the answer to our country’s obesity problem,” I said. I slowly gestured around the room. “If education is the answer, then why hasn’t it helped more of you?”

There were audible gasps in the auditorium when I said this, quite a few snickers, and five times as many sneers. Unsurprisingly, Tufts never invited me to lecture again.”

The key takeaway of Rapaille’s story is an uncommon one: unless you’ve implemented and gotten results, you don’t have the answer. It’s controversial to suggest that you shouldn’t be taking weight-loss advice from a doctor, but if those preaching the ‘how-to’ haven’t done it themselves, even though they should, then there’s something else stopping them. And as such, they are no longer an expert.

After all, an expert isn’t someone who has the ‘how-to’ – they’re the person with a ‘why’ that will help you follow through on their advice.

Learn From The Real Experts, Not Just The Theorists

Now let’s say that your goal was to lose 15kg and build a visible six pack. Who would you prefer to get advice from; a knowledgable author who had all the latest tricks and tactics, or someone who had actually done it and could explain how?

Naturally you’d choose to go straight to the source and learn from the guy who’d achieve the goal you’re shooting for. Overcoming ADHD is no different.

In the course of my journey with ADHD, I didn’t always have the option to turn to someone who’d achieved exactly what I was aiming for. Instead, I segmented my life into individual goals and began to learn, either face to face or through research, directly from these people.

From the body language lessons of Allen & Barbara Pease to the dietary understanding I gained from Robb Wolf, I built a habit of learning from those who didn’t just know what I wanted to do, but had done it. The subtle nuances that brought along success, like the tricks for getting the results and the unwritten laws of adherence that were otherwise overlooked in other books, were what made the difference between a floundering effort and a powerful execution.

When it came to learning what I needed to get ahead, learning from the best implementers didn’t just teach me the theory – it taught me how to get results. It taught me not to understand how an expert thinks, but to think like an expert.

Screening For Expert Ability: It’s The Results That Matter

In The S.E.E.D. Approach To Drug Free ADHD, I make a blunt point about assessing where you’re getting your information from. In the realm of overcoming ADHD, it’s far more valuable to get the advice and help you need from someone who’s done it themselves than from someone who has a handful of good ideas.

Again, this is because implementation matters.

If you’re looking for advice on how to maintain a relationship when one of you has ADHD, talk to someone who has been successful in that situation. When you want to find out how to have a better professional life with ADHD, look for a high achiever in your field who has overcome ADHD and model them. No matter waht ADHD challenge you’re facing, if you want to overcome it then the approach is simple:

1. Know what you want to do.
2. Find someone who has made it happen already.
3. Copy them.

Don’t waste time reading books that are 400 pages of theory or finding coaches who “know” everything – that’s just advanced mental masturbation. Instead, find those books, no matter how short or how long, and those people who have achieved your goals, to tell you the specific information you need to take action.

And then take that action, and overcome your ADHD.

ADHD Symptoms are often examined as how they can be treated, as opposed to how they can be reduced. Instead of looking to treat the symptoms of ADHD directly, it can often be better to reduce them completely so that treatment isn’t needed. I’ll explain.

For a moment, let’s imagine that you don’t have ADHD, and you don’t have your ADHD symptoms. Instead you now suffer from Celiac disease.

For those of you who are unaware, Celiac disease is a condition which damages the lining of the small intestine when foods containing gluten are eating. The damage results in an inability to absorb the parts of the food that are important for staying healthy, and can result in diarrhoea and flu like symptoms. Not a great way to spend three days.

With your newly found condition of Celiac disease, you have two options. You can either eliminate your intake of Gluten based foods and products to reduce your experience of symptoms and their severity, or continue to have Gluten based foods and products and treat the intensified symptoms that this action creates.

Naturally, you’d choose to take the path of action that reduces your experience and severity of the symptoms. Treating symptoms that you can avoid or reduce in the first place doesn’t make sense. As they say, the best cure is prevention.

ADHD and it’s symptoms are no different. I’ll explain.

Why You Should Reduce, Not Just Treat, Your ADHD Symptoms

As you know, ADHD is caused by a neurological imbalance. In the same way that Celiacs are sensitive to gluten intake, this can not be changed. But it can be made worse by particular activties.

The intensity and severity of ADHD symptoms can be reduced by a handful of easy to control factors. The benefit of reducing the impact of your ADHD symptoms means that you spend more time being in control of your life with ADHD, and less time struggling against it and trying to keep yourself afloat. Here are a few simple, yet highly impacting, things you can do to improve your ADHD symptoms by reducing them:

• Improve your Vitamin D intake through exposure to sunlight for approximately 20 minutes per day, or supplementation to improve concentration and impulse control.
• Improve your ADHD Diet by eliminating preservatives and unnatural additives and eating clean, unprocessed foods to reduce biological reactions and irritations and improve mood, impulse control and concentration.
• Maintain a regular exercise regime to release the chemicals of dopamine and serotonin, which increase focus and improve mood.
• Improve sleep habits by getting more sleep, of a higher quality and higher quantity by reducing interruptions from noise and light to increase serotonin levels which help you focus.
• Structure your days, giving each task an outcome, start time and finish time to ensure that you always know what you’re doing, and when you’re doing it by.

These five action steps will help you to reduce the severity of your ADHD symptoms, and don’t take much effort.

Treat Your Reaction To ADHD Symptoms By Weaking Their Causes

When you have Celiac disease, you don’t try and improve your situation by treating the diarrhorea and flu like symptoms you experience when you eat gluten products. Instead, you avoid the gluten products in the first place!

The same is true for ADHD. Don’t try and improve your situation by treating the poor concentration, unhappiness and poor impulse control you suffer from. Instead, reduce your ADHD symptoms by eliminating and avoiding what intensifies them in the first place!

Treat the cause of ADHD afflictions, not the symptoms!

You may have noticed the appearance of small ads for The S.E.E.D. Approach To Drug Free ADHD at the bottom of my posts, beneath the subscriber box. An 80 page ebook, jam packed with actionable advice and step by step instructions to reducing the symptoms and overcoming ADHD, The S.E.E.D. Approach To Drug Free ADHD details the approach that I use to reduce the impact that ADHD has on my life while improving my health and happiness.

» Click here to learn more about my approach and The S.E.E.D. Approach To Drug Free ADHD «

You see, recently I got an email from one of the Resistance, telling me about the challenges they faced with ADHD as they worked to overcome it. This member of the Resistance had systems in place, but found they struggled with procrastination and getting the big things done. It sucks to know that you’ve got all the right things in place on paper, but there’s some invisible thing that you’re missing to make it all come together. Here’s some of the thoughts I shared with her.

Coping with ADHD can be exactly that – just coping. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

And what’s missing is an outcome based perspective.

One of the fundamental elements of living with ADHD that gets overlooked all too often is the perspective required to make the systems work. I don’t care if you’ve got a ‘Rockstar Productivity System’ or a ‘Ninja’s Approach To Getting Things Done’ – if you don’t have a reason to do them, all you have is an endless list and not a lot of meaning.

So let’s change that. Let’s talk about the ideas that make a difference, and stop you from just Coping with ADHD and help you to start Overcoming ADHD.

The Steps You Take To Get Sh*t Done Are Not Sexy

Cooking a healthy meal, investing the money you earn, building a business or training until you want to pass out - none of the steps you take as you do any of these things are sexy, regardless of what you’re told. You will not feel elated as you eat chicken and salad for the 30th time, put 50% of what you earn into a savings account, work an extra hour instead of going out or tear your muscles in an effort to build them up. The steps, in and of themselves, are not sexy.

But the more you do follow the steps, the sexier the results that you get are.

So what’s stopping you from following the steps? The art of avoidance as we search for something to do that excites us, short circuiting our hunt for meaning and replacing it with a short burst of excitement. This hunt is known as Procrastination.

A New View Of Procrastination

Repeat with me - Procrastination Isn’t A State, It’s An Outcome. And We Can Get A Different Outcome By Tweaking The Input.

Procrastination is what stops Coping with ADHD becoming Living with ADHD. It can come on for a whole range of reasons – maybe you think you’ll fail, maybe you don’t know why you’re doing something, or maybe you just think that it’s all pointless – and stop you from achieving those big goals you want to hit. All the concerns listed are valid, but until you can act on them they’re just ideas in the ether. And there’s no point letting a ghost of your imagination stop you.

Here’s the thing. If you fail, you learn. It won’t be comfortable, but in the future it’ll give you sexier results.

And if you don’t know what you’re doing, start by asking yourself ‘What excites me?’ or ’What do I want to achieve with this?’ Being able to answer these question will give you the Moral you need to push through.

My favourite parable on this is here, and my favourite quote on purpose as motivation is by Napoleon:

“Even in war Moral Power is to Physical as three parts out of four”

The Point Of Purpose

If you don’t have purpose, you’ll struggle to have motivation. And without motivation, you are now coping with ADHD instead of overcoming it. A purpose doesn’t have to be “changing the world” level either – it can be as simple as getting something done because you want to see what results you get, or getting more done than you did yesterday.

And finally, if you think that it’s all pointless… you could well be right. But hey, we’re only here for 80 odd years so why not make the most of them? Why spend a minute wondering “Why bother?” when you could spend a minute doing something that excites
you?

Side note - The reason I train in Muay Thai and Krav Maga is because I was interested in them. The reason I do my Wednesday hell sessions is because I want to see if I can do it, and because I want to challenge myself. That’s my purpose.

Reality Is Negotiable

And Finally, Reality Is Negotiable And You Can Set The Rules

It’s something that I had to hear a thousand times before I could really accept it. I heard it from Tim Ferriss, Steve Jobs, Randy Komisar, Oren Klaff, and Derek Sivers amongst others, but I’ve only really learned to understand this by challenging myself, as I’ve written above.

I can’t begin to tell you what an influence this one perspective alone has had on my life. Without it I wouldn’t have looked at Entrepreneurial ventures, I wouldn’t be married and I wouldn’t have gone off medication.

When you change the game, you set the rules.

When it comes to an ADHD Diet, one of the biggest complaints I hear from people is that the food is ‘boring’. There’s a feeling that when you change your eating habits to control your ADHD with diet, you end up missing out on a lot.

Luckily, that isn’t the reality of the situation.

Although when I first made the move to an ADHD Diet I was eating the exact same meals every day, it wasn’t long before I was looking to explore some other options. I knew the rules, but my lack of experimentation in my eating habits meant that I didn’t really have a recipe book just yet.

Over the last few months I’ve been spending a lot of time trying new approaches to foods that I love, but that aren’t normally OK by the ADHD Diet guidelines that I outlined in The S.E.E.D. Approach To Drug Free ADHD. And one of the foods I was keen to nail was home made Pizza.

Cavemen To The Rescue: Primal Pizza

After browsing through more than a handful of recipes, I came across Son of Grok’s Primal Pizza Recipe. It was the perfect foundation for an ADHD Diet friendly pizza – no gluten, high protein, easy to make an delicious to eat. I’ve made a few tweaks to it:

INGREDIENTS

CRUST

2 Cups Almond Meal/Flour

2 Eggs

2 Tsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1 Tsp salt

Sprinkling of Basil

SAUCE

1 Can of Tomato Paste

1 -2 Cups of Water (I used one, it worked perfectly)

1 Tsp Dried Oregano

TOPPING

1 Chicken breast, slice stir fry style

1 Fresh Tomato

Aged Cheddar

INSTRUCTIONS

CRUST

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F/175 deg C.

2. Mix all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. This should give you a ball of dough. Make sure the dough isn’t too mushy (a result of too much liquid) by adding Almond Meal as required.

3. We used a pizza stone, but in lieu of this you can make a pizza tray using a non-stick tray or pizza sheet.

4. Put the dough onto the pizza stone/tray, flatten it out consistently using a rolling pin (or similar). It should be slightly thicker in the middle (around 1.5 cm) than the outside (around 1cm)

5. Put the pizza base into the oven for 15 minutes. When it’s cooked, it should be golden brown and somewhat solid all the way through.

SAUCE

1. Combine all the ingredients into a saucepan and add water to desired thickness. You’re aiming for the consistency pasta sauce.

2. Simmer on stove for approximately 15 minutes.

TOPPINGS

Be sure to pre-cook the meat before you put it on (even if you’re not using chicken!) to avoid any stomach upsets. You want your ADHD Diet experiences to be enjoyable, not painful! Grate the cheese into a bowl in advance so that you can sprinkle it on the pizza base once it has been sauced.

PUT IT ALL TOGETHER

1. When the base has come out of the oven, spread the sauce over it evenly. Leave around 1cm around the edges

2. Add the toppings first, then the cheese over the top.

3. Leave in the oven (same temperature) for approximately 15 minutes. Check as necessary.

4. After about 15 minutes the Pizza will be ready to go. Pull it out and slice as desired.

Pizza, done.

Now here’s the best part. Not only is this a more filling pizza than the gluten-filled processed pizzas you get from most chains, but it’s also pretty fun to make. The taste will be better than store bought pizzas, and you’ll get to enjoy the fruits of your labour.

The ADHD Diet – it doesn’t have to be hard, and it can be tasty.

Related and Recommended Posts

As announced to my email subscribers (you’re one of the club, right? If not, use the form in the sidebar), I’m now contributing to ADHDManagement.com. Read all posts by Rob Hanly on ADHDManagement.com

Managing The Rollercoaster. My favourite post on ‘Managing the Rollercoaster‘, from Cameron Herold on Tim Ferriss’ blog. Cameron is an insightful guy, a great writer and refers to ADHD as “The CEO’s Disease”, so don’t miss this post.

Just a casual Wednesday with the Krav Maga Defence Institute‘s conditioning crew.

Every week I put my body under extreme duress for a short period of time. I push myself to my limits to the point where I want to crumble into a heap on the floor, and then I push a little further.

And in that moment, what I thought I was capable of is overtaken by what I’m actually capable of.

What Are You Really Capable Of?

When someone tells you that you’re about to do 150 lunges, 300 situps, 60 pushups and 300 skips as fast as you can, you start assessing the situation. Can you do this? How fast can you do this? Will you have to give up at some stage? What’ll it take for you to pull this off?

After a few seconds of deliberation you’ll come to a conclusion. You’ll have a belief about how long it will take you, what you’ll need to do to pull it off and how you’re going to feel afterwards.

And if you’ve been “realistic” with yourself, you’re probably wrong about the answers you’ve given yourself. You’re capable of so much more.

I’ll explain.

The Dunning Kruger Effect is built on two simple concepts. First, it states that incompetent people tend to overestimate their own skill (as well as fail to recognise genuine skill in others and how extereme their inadequacy is). Inversely, it has also found that people with true abilitiy tend to underestimate their relative competence.

With a symptom of ADHD being a low level of self-confidence, even when tied to a high performance or skill level, this creates a case for your situation. You might be at the mercy of the inverse of the Dunning Kruger Effect.

And as a result, you’re understimating you’re own capability.

What Twenty Minutes Of Pain Can Teach You About Your Life

I’ve mentioned before that learning in the real world is one of the most effective methods. It strips away the theory, creates an immediate feedback loop and gives you the insight that can only come from real experience.

A twenty minute work out, like the one I’ve posted above, teaches you a lot about your mindset. It’ll show you how easily you give up, how hard you can push yourself and how realistic you’re being about your capabilities. You can then take this new understanding of yourself into everything else you do.

Are you able to complete projects faster at work? Can you do them to a higher quality? Can you improve your estimation skills? Can you eliminate things you don’t need so that you’re better organised?

All of these lessons, if applied, help you to overcome your ADHD and start living with it instead of struggling against it.

And for an added bonus, you can learn these lessons for all of $10 – the cost of a skipping rope – and in 20 minutes.

It’s no secret that I’m an advocate for Diet as being one of the pillars for building a better lifestyle with ADHD. With extensive research having been done on everything on the food that we eat to the effect diet has on ADHD, we now know that the truth is out there.

We just need to follow it.

Over the past few years, what I eat has improved dramatically – and so has my life with ADHD. Unless my diet craters and I eat something unhealthy (like at a Wedding, watch out chocolate cake), the sensations of a cloudy brain or a being dumb have disappeared. And it isn’t hard to do.

With all the information on diets, must-do’s and how-to’s available, it can be difficult to know where to begin – and when you don’t know where to begin, you aren’t going to get started. So let’s cut through the noise and make it easy.

Below are four simple rules to follow. If you follow the simple rules for eating below for just 30 days, I guarantee that you will find your ADHD to be remarkably less present and less invasive in your day to day life.

That’s all it takes. Four rules and 30 days.

A SIMPLER APPROACH TO EATING

When in doubt, I say it’s time to simplify. Remove the unnecessary and unhelpful, enhancing the important as you go. And this is how we will be approaching your diet.

I won’t be involving myself with Diet Snobbery (my diet is better than yours, and so on), but rather with helping you identify the foods you should – and shouldn’t – be eating to turn you into an ADHDer: Level Awesome.

THE EAT RIGHT RULES

Rule One: Eat Natural, Normal and Unprocessed

It’s stunning that I have to outline this – not because of you, but because of how much unnatural, abnormal and processed food we have in society.

Your body is the product of thousands upon thousands of years of evolution. Most of the chemicals found in today’s foods are not.

Thus, think of it as a puzzle you need to put together – will this food fit in best with my naturally developed body, or do I need to find something a littler closer to nature? In most cases the food you hold in your hands and the food your body needs will not be two pieces of the same puzzle.

The added benefit of natural, normal and unprocessed foods is that you don’t lose the good stuff(1) before it gets on your plate. Avoid processed grains, genetically modified vegetables and “junk food” like the plague. It will not help.

Rule Two: Buy In The Supermarket But Choose Like It Didn’t Exist

If you want to obey rule one, the easiest way is to live by the maxim of ‘if you could spear it, you can eat it’. And the easiest way to do this is to pretend like your supermarket didn’t exist.

Let’s explore how:

• Eat fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables by only eating what is in season.(2)
• Get meat that’s fresh from the farm (ask your butcher) and uncaged, grain-fed animal products. Eating like a caveman doesn’t mean acting like one.
• Go for preservative free and avoid anything with ingredients you can’t easily decode.
• And finally, kill the candy. Although there are some rare exceptions to this (70%+ dark chocolate), 99% of what’s on offer is now off limits.

Need some motivation? Watch Robert Lustig’s Sugar: The Bitter Truth.

Rule Three: Water, And Lots Of It

Easy to overlook, but important to understand. On a statistical average, your body is approximately 57% water and this volume needs to be kept. Water is the elixir of life and you need to be drinking it, daily, by the glassful.

Before you go all Humphrey Bogart and insist that you’ll stick to Whisky and be fine, don’t. You aren’t Bogart, this isn’t The African Queen and your water won’t give you Dysentery. Drink the water and feel good.

Rule Four: If In Doubt, Don’t

Yes, you want to eat a wide variety of vegetables, fruits and meats. Yes, you want to enjoy the food you eat.

But if you’re not sure about that piece of bread you’re holding on your hand, avoid it like the plague. Don’t let it touch your lips until you know exactly what you’re putting into your body.

You wouldn’t use an unmarked fuel valve for your filling up your Porsche, would you? Of course not. You’d be sure what you were fueling up with before pouring it into a powerful machine. The same goes for the food you eat – make sure you know what’s in it.

When you follow these rules you’ll find yourself getting plenty of the good stuff (the aforementioned vitamins and nutrients) and less of the bad stuff (additives and chemicals).

1. The nutrients, minerals, vitamins, proteins etc that keep your body ticking the right way
2. Due to the size and scope of the world, it would be impractical for me to include a guide on this. Google [your country] seasonal [fruit/nut/ vegetables] for the answers.

Where Did This All Come From?

Have you ever wished that you could cut the reliance on drugs (some of which have no clear long term effects) for taking care of your ADHD? Do you want your ADHD to essentially go away?

The extract above is from The S.E.E.D. Approach To Drug Free ADHD, my upcoming book. To be kept in the loop when it gets released, and to get more information to help you go Drug Free with ADHD, subscribe to the blog by putting your details up the top right of this page.

“Just remember mate, go slow. You already know this stuff – they don’t. Give them a few moments to breathe and soak it all in before you hit them with the next big point. They need to know this stuff”

- Gerry, my mentor, before I took the stage at the NDCO Accessing The Future Conference

At the start of December this year, I delivered a keynote to an audience of a few hundred people entitled “720 Days Later”. In it I told the stories of two big achievements I’d had since last speaking at the conference, and the three principles that had underpinned them both. You can see the slides here.

With ADHD, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed or like you’re not really making progress. And the fact is, some times you really are overwhelmed and you aren’t actually making any progress. Tough but true.

If you really want to kick the ADHD habits that are holding you back next year, and start achieving that awesome potential that you know you have, you need to lay a framework and understand these principles in advance. It won’t necessarily be easy, and that’s why we’re preparing now.

As the old saying goes – if you want peace, prepare for war.

Focus On The Foundations

“One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always run to simplicity”

- Bruce Lee

Over 2009 – 2010, I travelled through Europe in the dead of winter. To make things more interesting, where most of my friends had done similar with two suitcases and a backpack, I did it with just 6.9kg of carry on luggage.

The result? The best trip I’ve ever had, and a new appreciation for the basics.

So how do you downsize from a 21kg portable wardrobe to under one third the weight? By focusing on the foundations that matter. The same rules apply in life too – if you’re feeling stressed or overloaded, you need to simplify.

You see, when you allow yourself to be torn in every direction by your various desires, abilities and wants, whether in packing your backpack for Europe or heading out to party, you face an inevitability. If you try to do it all, you will crash. The best way to overcome this is to simplify your life, remove the exotic and focus on the foundations with everything you’re doing.

So how do you do this? By starting with a surprisingly simple economic rule of thumb called the Pareto Principle.

Created by Vilfredo Pareto in the early 1900s, the Pareto Principle tells a simple truth of life – that the 80% of your results come from 20% of the results. Sure, there are permutations of this (95/5, 99/1, etc), but for the most part 80/20 is a valid rule of thumb to follow. The key is to identify the 20% that matters, and work to emphasise it whilst removing the 80% that delivers little to no value.

Focusing on the simple bits that matter isn’t an uncommon approach by any means. The Billionaire Charlie Munger, author of Poor Charlie’s Almanack and business partner to Warren Buffet, has a checklist of investing principles that includes this gem: “Keep things simple and remember what you set out to do.”

Remember, Focus On The Foundations.

Definition And Detail Matter

I once threw a whiteboard marker at my Managing Director’s head. Two days later I was offered a promotion into a new position. Why? Because I was paying attention to the details and definitions of a project that had gone AWOL and using them to get back on track.

The thing about life is that while it’s a shared experience, every piece of meaning we apply to it is personal. And meaning starts with definition. Why does late mean 10 minutes after the time to you, and a second after the time to someone else? What makes your honesty rude to someone else? What makes one piece of work higher or lower quality?

The definitions being applied!

When you find yourself in situations where you clash heads with someone on seemingly common terms, when you’re struggling to figure out what you need to do or even just get it done, it’s time to redefine.

As you define the world around you, not only will you feel more in control, but you’ll also gain a better understanding of the challenges you face.

Action Is The Best Teacher

No matter how much you think you know, you know nothing until you’ve tried it.

All the books in the world, all the conversations on the planet… none of these can ever teach you something the same way that taking action will.

As we grew from a team of two creatives to a team of nine people in mixed roles, a range of project and team management tools were researched and tested. And most of them failed. By taking each of the apparently awesome tools and stress testing them in the real world we were able to learn what really worked.

Likewise, when I was in my late teens/early 20s I was terrible with girls. I was a self friend-zoner and had no idea how to pursue a stranger without a strong dose of luck, and had mainly fallen into my previous relationships thanks to the efforts of the girls. After turning to the internet and books to learn more about social dynamics, human behaviour, body language and more, one thing rapidly became clear.

Reading a book won’t pick up a girl. Trying what you read might. Taking action will show you what will.

A Final Word

When you’re struggling with your ADHD, it can be difficult to understand what’s holding you back.

You feel overwhelmed, like you aren’t living up to your potential and like you aren’t normal. You know that you can be better – but you just don’t know how to get there! The truth is, these feelings and thoughts running through your brain are triggers that you aren’t living in line with these simple concepts. As you notice yourself start to feel this way, take a step back and review the three principles.

Focus On The Foundations

Definition and Detail Matter

Action Is The Best Teacher

(Apologies for the loud voice – this is my first recorded call and I had no idea I was this loud)

When it comes to ADHD, I’m a strong beleiver in overcoming the symptoms by taking care of the basics first. This means addressing Diet, Exercise, Mindset and Self-Awareness before moving towards other solutions.

I believe in this because there’s no point in supplementing with something that you don’t know the long term effects of (medication) when there’s a natural, proven short term solution. The thing is, though, that some of the steps you need to take towards overcoming ADHD symptoms and building an ADHD lifestyle that works for you can feel difficult. Impossible even.

Enter Steve Kamb.

Recently I had a chat with Steve Kamb of Nerd Fitness about why the impossible is possible, and how you can easily start making exercise a part of your ADHD lifestyle. The guy is switched on and knows what he’s talking about..

Steve runs a successful business called Nerd Fitness. In the past three years, he’s grown his supportive community (affectionately known as The Rebellion) to over 10,000 email subscribers and a forum with around 100,000 posts at the time of writing.

People listen to Steve – and for good reason.

Steve has a way of making even the most daunting tasks seem possible (like gambling a night away in Monte Carlo on a tight budget, or travelling the world for just $400 on plane fare).

His blog posts and products have helped people around the world to lose weight, build muscle, get fit and genuinely improve their lives. But more than anything else he’s a down to earth and easy to hang out with guy. I know this first hand from the first time we met . Steve was on his Epic Quest, where I twisted his arm to come out and party with strangers.

Steve’s provided a veritable goldmine of advice in this interview, so make sure you take notes.

Resources From The Video

In the video, Steve and I spoke about a few things. Here’s the ones that matter most – click on the links for more information.

Steve’s Rebel Fitness Guide
Nerd Fitness
Drive by Daniel Pink
Glenn Allsop on ViperChill
Tyler Tervooren at Advanced Riskology

##

One Last Thing

I’ll be speaking at the NDCO Accessing The Future Conference this week. I’m giving a more practical presentation on Bulletproof Learning, and a keynote called 720 Days Later: Taking ADHD Into The World and The Workplace.

You’re welcome to come and say hi if you’re there and you spot me.

Sleep and ADHD have a delicate relationship. 

When you’re trying to get some extra shut eye, there are a whole range of factors at play. There’s the levels of melatonin in your body, the chemicals you’ve recently imbibed (like caffeine, ginseng, kava and other stimulants/depressants), your environment, mind state and stress and anxiety levels. Getting all of these factors to play nicely together can make it difficult to sleep when you have ADHD.

At the time of being diagnosed with ADHD my sleep patterns were all over the place. I was lucky to get in four solid hours per night (sometimes it was self inflicted), rarely slept right through and woke up feeling like I was running on fumes.

Over the last few years, I’ve learned a lot of things. A lot of this was from when I proudly survived on minimal sleep (although in many ways, I hated it), and as I’ve improved my sleeping habits they’ve served me well.

Understanding The Basics Of Sleep

Let’s make sleep simple by breaking it down into something we can manage. For all intensive purposes, we will approach Sleep as being made up of four basic factors:

1. The quality of your sleep (how good it is)
2. The quantity of your sleep (how many hours you sleep)
3. How quickly you fall asleep
4. How quickly you wake up

Each of these factors has a compounding effect on the others, either improving or weaking them. This means that if you’re getting great sleep, but not getting it very often, you’re likely to be affecting how quickly you fall asleep and wake up.

By addressing each of these factors individually you can tweak and optimise your sleep related habits. In turn, you get better quality sleep – and more of it.

Before we go any further, one more thing on sleep foundations. Your sleep will always be affected by your day to day life. If you eat a bad ADHD Diet, and exercise isn’t high on your priorities, you’ll find it tougher to get positive results. Make sure you take care of the ADHD basics, and the rest can take care of itself.

How To Improve Your Sleep – Tonight

Before you can start worrying about the quality or quantity of sleep that you’re getting, you need to ensure that you’re actually falling asleep. Trying to sleep with ADHD can feel like a bit like being trapped in a prison – you’re lying there, trying to sleep… but you just can’t.

This sucks. Luckily, you don’t have to do this anymore.

I now have two steps that I take every night before falling asleep that ensure I’ll pass out not long after my head hits the pillow. Neither involves exhausting myself (it used to) or any kind of wierd drug, and both can be done anywhere.

Step One: The Unplug

Unplugging is important for ADHDers. It gives us the opportunity to wind down and have our brain relax before we hop into bed – an imperative for getting decent sleep.

Unplugging in this sense means getting off the computer, turning off the TV and stopping playing with devices that are backlight. These stimulate your brain, making it difficult for it relax. So what do we do instead?

First, we ensure that we will unplug. I work backwards, counting ultradian rythyms, from the time that I’m going to be getting up to calculate the time I need to be in bed (more on that in another post). Then, I allocate an extra 30 minutes of “wind down” time. This is time when the screens are off and the relaxation begins.

In this 30 minute window, I’ll do one (or more!) of of the following activities. I find that by pre-planning what I’ll do to fill in this time, I reduce the chances of getting distracted and “just checking” facebook or any other screen related activities – and thus ruining my unplug. Just like in a zombie invasion, preparation is key.

• Read (fiction only). Fiction lets you unwind and imagine the story, much like a dream. Non-Fiction will keep you awake and thinking. I’ll use a Kindle for this.
• Stretch. Part of my ADHD and Exercise routine is Krav Maga and Muay Thai, and as a result I’ve always got a muscle worth stretching. I find by taking 10 – 15 minutes and stretching out my body, I’m more relaxed when I get into bed.
• Stream Of Conscious Writing. This is a simple activity, but really helps unwind your brain. Put a pen on a piece of A4 Paper, and dump your thoughts. If halfway through a sentence you find you’ve changed thoughts, change your sentence – there are no rules of grammar here! Keep going until you reach empty.
• Gratitude Journal. There’s nothing worse than being stressed, so at the end of the day I’ll take a few minutes and write down the things I’m grateful for. It keeps my life in perspective, even when the chips are down.
• Daily Review. I’m a big advocate of the daily review. It helps me see what I’ve accomplished, wins I’ve had, lessons I’ve learned and how I can improve. Doing this every day helps keep to keep focus on goals and self awareness.

Once you’ve had your wind down window, it’s time to get under the covers.

Step Two: Getting Under The Covers

I won’t make this long, nor will I make it difficult. Getting to sleep is probably the biggest challenge for individuals with ADHD, but by having unplugged for at least 30 minutes before hand we give ourselves a solid foundation to start with.

I often found it hard to establish a thought pattern before falling asleep, and tried all manner of things. Counting sheep, focusing on breathing – you name it I did it. But I’ve now settled into a powerful way of falling asleep each night.

This technique is called the List Technique, and I learned about it from Daniel Marks, author of one of the most comprehensive guides to sleep that I’ve ever seen, Sleep Hack Dojo. It’s a deceptively simple technique that he expands on (amongst other things) in Sleep Hack Dojo, and everyone I’ve shared it with gets the same results.

It works as follows.

1. Select a topic that you’ll be listing from. It could be animals, bands, movies or so on.
2. Go through the Alphabet and name one thing from that topic for each letter. For example if you were using animals, your mind would think “A…. Aardvark, B is for Bat, C… is for Cat, D for.. um… Dolphin” and so on. You get the idea.
3. Doze off before you get to the letter M. If, by some chance, you do get all the way through the cycle, pick a new topic and start again.

Why is this technique so valuable, and why does it work? Let me explain.

First of all, this is a form of repetative and focused meditation. You’re repeating a simple activity that requires little brain power, and at the same time slowing down your brain.

Secondly, although the first 5 – 10 letters will be quite easy, your brain starts to unwind pretty fast and you’ll find yourself falling asleep in no time.

Building Your Own On Ramp

These are the techniques that have worked from me, and I’ve pulled them from a variety of resources. Admittedly, I haven’t touched on other techniques such as ice baths or melatonin supplements, nor have I discussed the importance of lightblocking and exercise for sleep. These are “more advanced” sleep hacks, which I’ll write about later.

Now the question is, what works for you? What is your current on ramp for your ADHD Sleep, and how can you improve it?

See you in dream land.

- Note: If any of you ever get past the letter M with the list technique, let me know. I’ll be truly impressed. Rob.

“In my mind, she cheated because I wasn’t good enough. I remember making the decision that I will never not be good enough again”

- Will Smith, self-diagnosed ADHD, to Time Magazine

When asked about coping with ADHD, a common challenge most adults with ADHD will mention is dealing with low confidence.

When you have ADHD, low confidence becomes an insidious mental mind-game that we play on ourselves, and it can seep into all the various parts of your life. Your job can be threatened, your relationships can crumble and your total sense of well being is at risk.

How do I know this? Let me put on my ‘Been There, Done That’ hat and explain.

Why Having Low Confidence Becomes A Choice

Over my life, I’ve taken a few tangible hits to my confidence.

From my first love cheating on me after two years to slipping (quite literally) from first to last in different classes, I’ve worn their effects. Throw into the mix the niggling sense of a lack of self-worth, difficulties on tests and the day to day self-doubts and you’ve got a story that just about all ADHDers can relate to - one where the vaccuum of confidence plays far too great a role.

Personally, I decided I didn’t like this.

I didn’t want to be someone categorised by a lack of confidence in all the areas of my life, and I went on a rampage to do all that I could to overcome this. Over time, I developed a technique which I’ve used time and time again to get me on track and building my confidence. And it works every single time.

It’s helped me improve my abilities in martial arts, dealing with the opposite sex, business, public speaking and driving. In fact, it has been behind some of the biggest accomplishments in my life to date.

Here is where you make the choice.

Will you continue struggling along with low self confidence, and just accept it? Or will you do what it takes to improve your self confidence and your sense of well being? I hope you’re going for the latter.

Assuming you’re still here, you’ve decided to improve your confidence. Awesome! However, before we get into the how, you need to first understand why you lack confidence.

Why You Lack Confidence: Understanding The Basics

Before you know why you lack confidence, you need to know what it is.

Let’s start by defining confidence anew as “the feeling or belief that you can rely on yourself to get things done” and work backwards to build your confidence. With this definition in place, we can start to look at what builds confidence – and then we can then work towards making it a reality through a few simple exercises.

With confidence being the feeling or belief that you can rely on yourself to get things done, my experience has taught me that there are three elements at play that you need to address. They are:

- Feelings And Belief.
- Yourself.
- Get Things Done.

Accepting this as our frame work, let’s examine further.

Your Feelings And Beliefs

This is the way that you see yourself in your minds eye, based on the stories you tell to yourself about things that you’ve done in the past.

Feelings and beliefs are your frame of reference for the world, and in all cases they are based on either personal past experiences you’ve had or the things that you have been told. They exist in religion, day to day work and even when picking up a book – in each situation you believe something about what you’re about to do, and what the outcomes will be.

Understanding this is imperative.

By recognising that our feelings and beliefs are based on personal experiences and the things we’ve learned, we recognise that a new option exists. Instead of being tied to the past, you can work to create a new frame of reference for your beliefs instead of trying to overcome the old ones, and as a result you can create a more confident way of being in the world.

You At The Centre Of The Universe

Surprise! You are the centre of this situation.

What I mean by this, however, is not the collection of flesh, bones and arteries that make up your physical existance. No, I am referring to you as a vehicle for improving your feelings and beliefs and getting things done.

To build better confidence, and to improve your feelings and beliefs about yourself while getting things done, you need to put yourself in the right place and give yourself the right fuel to encourage this to happen.

To help yourself build confidence, there’s one major thing you want to do. Assess who you are surrounding yourself with. A rule of thumb I’ve lived by since I was introduced to it is that I am the average of the 5 people with whom I spend the most time.

If I spend most of my time with driven people, I end up being more driven than ever Driven-Rob. If I spend most of my time with negative nancy pants, I become Nega-Rob. I spend most of my time with people who are fitness freaks… well, you get the picture.

Your environment is vital to your success – more so than the will power you try to exert over yourself. What does this mean?

It’s easier to lose weight by taking the junk food out of the house instead of just ‘not eating it’.

Take a look at yourself and your environment now, in particular the people you spend the most time with, and ensure that you’re giving yourself the best chance possible to build your confidence.

Getting Things Done: The Art Of Getting Results

With ADHD, we “suffer” from procrastination.

After seeing other human beings do things, I look at this as being one of two things:

• An excuse to avoid the big challenges in life, which are best addressed by action. This is a habit that is formed through conscious practice – if you are expending energy on one activity, it can be better expended on something that needs to be done.
• The result of not practicing the take action technique enough to engrain it as a habit. This habit takes self coaching, practice and time to develop, as well as to build the Myellin in your brain necessary to make it a habit – but it pays off.

Procrastination in any form won’t get you results you can work with (that’s right – failure is still a result worth getting!), and will stop you from doing anything. As such, it’s better to take action and fail than it is to sit on the couch and do nothing.

By failing or succeeding, you establish direction and options.

But more importantly, you give yourself a new way to build frames of reference.

Introducing The Three Exercises You Need To Do To Build Your Confidence

I use these exercises on a regular basis to stop myself from doing two things; building false confidence in myself, and keeping things in perspective.

Each of the three elements of confidence outlined above are addressed by the exercises below. If you follow through on them you’ll help yourself to create new frames of reference, improve your chances of success and get things done.

Without further adieu, let’s begin.

PRE-GAME: PICK ONE AND PREPARE

Before you start going through these exercises and taking actions, you need to pick one situation where you’d like more confidence. This could be anything from dealing with the opposite sex to a sport – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you pick just one.

Once you’ve picked one, analyse your position in the world to it – this alone might be what is making you have negative beliefs. Remember, take care of the environment first.

Now as you work through this, I’ll giving you an example by running with an area where I was an absolute confidence black hole for some time – dealing with women.

EXERCISE ONE: EXAMINE YOUR BELIEFS

Take five minutes to think through as many memories as possible. As you do this, notice all of the individual thoughts you’re having about each memory. This could include things like “I said the wrong thing” or “I suck at this game” – whatever thoughts and beliefs that you have pop up, write them down.

For me, this included things like “I can’t just approach a stranger”, “I’m not good looking enough” and “I’ve never had any success doing this”.

Once you’ve written down your beliefs, go through and put a star beside each of the negative ones – the ones telling you that you can’t do something.

And now comes the fun part.

You are now going to go through your starred list, and pull it apart by challenging it with nothing but logic. Leave your emotions at the door and follow these steps.

1. Note whether the belief you’ve written down refers to ability, history or an unproven assumption. Follow your gut and organise them.
2. Go through these beliefs anad deal with them as follows. For those dealing with ability, write down three ways you can improve. For those dealing with history, write down three situations you’ve been in that demonstrate the opposite. For those that are an unproven assumption, write down three ways to test if it is correct.
3. Go through everything you’ve written down. For any belief that now seems ridiculous, unrealistic or impermanent as a result of step two, cross it off your list.

You’ll need what’s left for Exercise Two.

EXERCISE TWO: ENTER THE REAL WORLD

So far you’ve selected an area of life you’d like more confidence in and checked out the negative beliefs you hold on it. Then, you went through and narrowed it down to two kinds of beliefs:

• Those that need to be tested
• Those that need you to take action to improve

Now, if my belief was “I can’t approach complete strangers”, I would need to test it. I would do this by definining what an “approach” and “complete stranger” was, before going out and talking to ten different women to give it a crash course in real world data.

With these ten approaches done, I would be able to identify whether I could a) actually approach women and b) approach women succesfully. With this information gathered, I could go on to identify what it is from making me successful – or whether my beliefs weren’t justifiable!

When analysing the information you gather from testing your assumptions and beliefs, it’s important that you keep it as realistic as possible. As per my example, if I’m finding that I can’t approach, defined as begin a conversation with, a complete stranger, defined as an attractive woman I’ve never met before, the next step is to address the problem head on by seeking further help.

In this situation, my action steps would be:

1. Come up with 5-10 conversation topics to start – and continue – a conversation with.
2. Create a reason to talk to an attractive woman. All I need is for her to engage with me, anything else is gravy.

For any anxiety I would (understandably) have about this, I’d remind myself of a phrase that’s been successful for me in the past.

“What happens if I do this?”

Reality is a fantastic litmus test for beliefs, and a great coach for improving confidence.

EXERCISE THREE: REBUILD THE BELIEFS

Congratulations my friend, you’re almost a certified belief breaker!

You’ve successfully achieved a lot already as you’ve worked through this. Just look at what you’ve done and what element of confidence it applies to:

• You’ve chosen an area you want to improve your confidence. (Yourself)
• You’ve analysed whether environment is what is holding you back. (Yourself)
• Your beliefs have been identified, analysed and tested (Feelings and Beliefs, Yourself, Getting Things Done)
• You have used action to get things done and see further steps that you can take (Feelings and Beliefs, Yourself, Getting Things Done).

The final step I take in this process is rebuilding my beliefs. Through this process you’ve taken the necessary steps to create data and emotions tied to real life experiences. This data and emotions have become the truthful foundation of the beliefs that you will hold in the future.

To complete this process, you need to do just two things:

1. Read through the information and data you’ve gathered from the first two steps.
2. Use this information to create a dynamic belief. For me this could be “I can get better at talking to women by practicing and preparing in advance”.

That’s it. This isn’t rocket science.

By putting your beliefs to the test – whether it be about your ADHD or any other area of your life – you ground them in reality. But even more importantly, you see that they can be challenged and changed.

Alright, enough from me. What beliefs are you going to challenge today?