My Computer has ADD

Stranger than fiction
But maybe more amusing?

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
from the Whimsy Series

Madelyn’s Believe it or Not

Found HERE

What is it about Executive Functioning struggles that has things go wrong JUST at the moment you need everything to go right to stand a prayer of showing up like you have a brain at all?

Or is it just me?

I know that sometimes my Calamity Jane moments are my own darn fault because I procrastinated, or failed to write something down, or use my systems or whatever.  I’m not talking about those times.

I’m not talking about those times when I ADD-out and forget to give somebody an important message — like maybe, they changed the time for his only daughter’s wedding. (not my oops, actually – one from a client)

I’m not even thinking about those times when I say yes to one more request when I am already juggling more than any six humans could accomplish in a single lifetime if they worked together and never slept.

It’s those OTHER times . . .

You know, like when you practically break your arm putting a gun in your own back to keep yourself on task so that you won’t seem flaky, and THEN the universe laughs in your face and you end up looking flaky anyway — for a bizarre reason that nobody would believe really happened, even if you had it on film.

Come to think of it, it seems that even when I am channeling somebody else’s reliable functioning, it doesn’t always work quite the same way for me.  I’m starting to believe that somebody up there doesn’t really WANT me to plan ahead.

Found HERE

Like that time the water gets turned off – through NO fault of my own, btw – before I have a chance to rinse off the dark brown hair dye I was wise enough to apply to my snowy roots two entire days before an important media event, for example.

I end up having to explain why I’m knocking on a strange neighbor’s door in snow boots, head wrapped in plastic and bod in terrycloth.

I need to use his phone, of course.

It’s urgent that I find out when my friend Janet will be coming home.  I need her to unlock the door to my apartment, simply because I spaced one tiny little detail in my haste to run next door to use her bathroom before my hair turned green: KEYS!

OK, I could have called to see if she was home before my mad dash, but I didn’t want to chance getting dark hair dye on my white phone — and Janet has no social life anyway – she’s ALWAYS home! (If anybody figures out who I’m really talking about, PLEASE don’t tell her I said that!)

Oh, and would this kind stranger and new best friend mind if I used his shower to wash out the hair dye so I won’t get it all over his nice living room furniture while I wait with him for Janet to arrive?

Surely he wouldn’t leave me out in the cold with wet hair, even if his wife IS away on a business trip?

And, by the way, I’m going to need towels.

Stuff like that.  Like I said, flaky!  

So I’m sure that you are not going to believe that what’s going on with my computer is really not my fault! But at least it’s not as outrageous as the experience of my friend Steven’s then fiance’s brother-in-law Jeff. THAT story is the stuff of legend!

Almost here: Group Coaching

A Process Designed to Support Clients
with all kinds of minds!

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC

©Phillip Martin, artist/educator

Does anything below sound like YOU?

• Have you ever felt that you are essentially alone in your struggles with time and time-management, focus and follow-through as the result of PTSD, TBI/ABI, ADD/EFD — or brain-based struggles as the result of chemo-therapy or medication side-effects or chronic pain — or even something considered “normal,” such as age-related cognitive decline?
• Do the people you love fail to really understand your challenges, so their suggestions & nudges don’t really help (and sometimes make things more difficult)?
• Is there a pet project languishing on a back burner for FAR too long, but you can’t seem to “make” yourself get to it – or can’t find the time to do it amid the distractions of life’s many competing to-dos?
• Have you accepted the dumb idea that your real problem is chronic procrastination because you have heard it so often it simply must be true – as you continue to struggle on in some attempt to just-DO-it?
• Do you LIVE with someone who constantly lets you down, despite their assertions that they never intend to do so? Would you LOVE to understand how to “motivate” them and keep them on task to completion – BEFORE you give in to your impulse to strangle them?
• Is your home or office so cluttered you rarely have the motivation to clean and organize, as day slips into clutter-mounting day?

Do you need help
you don’t think you can afford?

Would you love to hire a Sherpa: a highly-experienced, systems-development professional at the TOP of the field, but can’t fit the fees for one-on-one private coaching into your budget?

IN OTHER WORDS:

Do you need a little brain-based coaching to get to the point where you can afford brain-based coaching?

Have I got a Group for YOU!

Relationship Repair when Apologies are Due

HOW to Apologize
beginning with how NOT to

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
from the Intentionality Series

Find it on ADDCoach Wisdom on Pinterest – linked to thedailyquotes.com

Just because we didn’t do something intentionally (“on purpose”), doesn’t mean the injured party is not entitled to a sincere apology for the reality that we were involved and that something was damaged – or somebody was hurt – as a result.

Apologizing doesn’t mean that you have been purposely wrong and that the other person is absolutely right. It means that you value your relationship more than your ego.

ADD/EFD oopses

Far more often than many of the neurotypical members of society, those of us with what I refer to as Alphabet Disorders (AD[h]D, EFD, TBI, OCD and more) tend to say and do things that get us into hot water with our friends and loved ones.

• Unfortunately, according to a great many of my clients through the years, instead of cleaning it up and asking for forgiveness, we tend to allow hurt and resentment to fester as a result of our reluctance to apologize.

• Even more often, we make things even worse by our bungling attempts at taking responsibility for our actions when we do attempt to say we’re sorry – making it even more difficult for us to decide to apologize in the future.

While we might argue that the above points are two sides of the same coin, shame (certainly a factor), I have observed that only a few of us truly understand HOW to apologize – so we tend not to offer them as often as they are deserved.

That’s unfortunate, because apologizing costs us nothing, means a great deal to those we have disappointed or offended, and is a relatively easy thing to learn to do in an effective manner.

8 Reasons we don’t apologize more readily & more often

There are probably as many explanations as there are people who “refuse” to apologize, but they tend to cluster in areas similar to one or more of those below.

1. We have collapsed blame, fault, and intentionality with apology.  They are NOT the same, and the presence of the former is completely unrelated to the need for an apology.
   
2. Our egos are attached to appearing “perfect” or loving or emotionally sensitive in some black and white manner, fearing that apologizing makes us seem weak, ineffective or damaged in some fashion beyond that which we already fear that we might be.  The opposite is actually true.
3. We aren’t fully appreciating the feelings of the individual at the effect of our actions, words or behavior, frequently because we ourselves would not respond in a similar manner.  We let ourselves off the hook with the lame excuse that they are “over-reacting”  — contexting our actions their fault.
4. We feel as if we’re “always apologizing” – most often because we’ve been told that so many times throughout our lives we’ve concluded that yet another won’t really make much of a difference anyway. How can we expect to rebuild trust if we won’t take responsibility for our actions when they are hurtful?
5. We don’t know how to “fix it,” and we are hoping that saying nothing will allow it to become no more important than a bit of dirt under a carpet.  By the time our attention is drawn to the huge dirty pile in the corner, it seems as if it really could be too late to repair the damage.
6. They are younger than we are, or less senior, so we allow ourselves the excuse that an apology from us would be “inappropriate.”  Even very young children and junior office assistants are entitled to an apology whenever our actions would merit an apology to someone older or more senior – especially if we didn’t intend harm.
   
7. It takes us a while to realize that an apology is probably due – or to work up the courage to offer one – and we don’t know how to begin at a later date.  It’s never to late to attempt to set things right.
8. We lack the skill. When we believe we are apologizing, the person on the receiving end hears something entirely different: an attempt to shift the blame.

Whatever underlies our reticence or lack of effectiveness, we can learn to apologize effectively, and our happiness with our relationships will improve significantly once we do.

Coaching the Easter Bunny – when help hurts

A Client’s Story
(With Permission)

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC

I usually use pseudonyms in my client examples to protect client confidentiality.  When I DO use a real name, it is always with client permission — the Bunny himself has vetted this post.

How it happened

The Easter Bunny was one of my first clients, way back when coaching itself was a budding profession. (Oh, you’re a coach.  What sport?) 

This was before I founded The Optimal Functioning Institute™ — even before I began taking registrations for the first group to go through the A.C.T. program, the ADD-specific coaching curriculum I designed that launched the the entire ADD Coaching field.

At that time I was one of the very few coaches on the planet at all, and one of the fewer still who understood how to work with ADD.  So that’s the reason the Easter Bunny found his way to me. Now you might assume from that explanation that EB, as he is known to his friends, hired me to help with his own struggles with ADD

Seriously, a bunny delivering baskets of colored, hard-boiled eggs? YEARLY!? To every kid in America? One would suspect AD“H”D.

But one would be wrong.

He came for Mentor Coaching, hoping to learn how to help someone else — his business partner and very best friend in the whole wide world (who has ADD, possibly with anxiety comorbid).

BECAUSE his very best friend was no longer speaking to him — due to an incident that could have been avoided if EB had only come to me sooner.

He agreed to full disclosure of his story so that none of you would make the same mistake with someone you love (because that’s just the kind of hare he is).

A Strange Duo

It’s essential that you understand from the start that EB’s best friend is a real chicken.  No, really – a chicken (like the kind that lay eggs, right?)

In fact, the whole colored egg thing was his best friend’s idea to begin with.  He needed EB’s help since most of the chickens he knew were armless types, and the whole idea just took off from there.

Eventually it became a Big Magilla production — with an entire fleet of bunnies collecting eggs, hard-boiling eggs, coloring eggs, putting eggs and grass in baskets, and helping with deliveries.  (I mean, they’re EGGS, right?  They go bad — it’s not like they could stockpile.)

Another interesting fact you may not know is that Big Magilla was the very first company on the planet that was completely integrated. They have actively recruited both chickens and bunnies since inception, male and female, young and old — regardless of breeding, color or markings.

Where gender equality is concerned the bunny brigade has a pristine record but, for obvious reasons, the chicken cadre is primarily female — not really discriminatory since the ability to lay is what they call an essential job skill.

They employ the elderly, handicapped and mentally impaired mostly in the basket department – which has turned out to be a wonderful idea.  Some of the most talented and industrious basket weavers in America work for Magilla.

The kids are interns – grass cultivation and packaging mostly.

All things considered, it is a very forward-thinking business model.  But when one of the founding partners isn’t speaking to the other, that’s a crisis that needs a turn-around coach.

That’s when EB found an early Trainer-Team listing on the CoachU website and decided to hire me.

About the “Stuff”

More Good Stuff!

The pages found in this category will consist of short descriptions with links to content housed “offsite” – TeleClasses, Downloads, eBooks, Podcasts, and Class Materials — ALL will be listed on posts in this category.

As I launch this particular site, it sure looks a lot like overkill, doesn’t it?

As the ADDCoach.com family of sites grows, this section will populate. Knowing what’s coming,  I have attempted to separate potential areas of interest so that you won’t have to wade through a long list of stuff to locate a download or a sign-up link to the particular stuff you’re interested in, and you won’t have to remember what lives where!

If you are seeing the excerpt version (grey box only, no list below), as you roll over “Read more of this post” at the end of the box, it will turn dark red (yep, a link to the rest of the page!). Click on it  to view a list of categories, each of which will have a corresponding page.

Descriptions and links will be found on the individual pages listed (as they become available online!)

[If you already see the list below, you will NOT see the link since you can already see the page.]