ADD Coaching is:
- humanistic in nature. Clients are accepted unconditionally in their presenting situation.
- a collaboration and partnership. I honor your experience and perspective.
- is discovery. Are the present beliefs working for you?
- is about movement – guiding you to be in the flow of your life and toward the development and achievement of your goals.
- affirming of your right and capacity for self-direction.
- facilitating your goals.
- supporting of self-initiation.
- is preparatory – what will you do when x happens?
- is intentional.
- is reflective.
- is affirmative.
Coaching is based on a Five Stage Model for Change
1. precontemplation
2. contemplation
3. Preparation
4. Action
5. maintenance
Coaching is carried out in a safe environment for change to occur by:
- Promoting insight
- Promoting self-evaluation
- Making a commitment to act
- Identifying and avoiding situations that produce non-productive behaviors (i.e., being late)
- Using rewards for goal attainment
- Role playing
- Exploration of the problem/challenge from a different perspective
- Encouraging self-advocacy
- Encouraging supportive relationships both professional and personal
This definition of ADD Coaching describes the backbone of a coaching relationship. It is derived from a presentation at CHADD National 2009 in Cleveland, OH developed by Sandy Maynard.
Create a New Relationship with Attention
Our Energy/Attention Flows Naturally When We Live as Beings of Light
Learn to Nurture Your Attention
In this introductory workshop series we’ll use the ‘Living as Light’ workbook by Brent Baum for the 12 Principles of Manifestation. You’ll learn:
- the relationship between body/mind memories
- the value of DayDreams
- how to develop and explore your relatioship with attention and release your blocks to attention
- how to apply this knowledge to business and relationships
Meeting each week for an hour and a half using group conversations and guided imagery/meditation techniques, we create an energetic relationship with attention. There will be reflections for in between sessions.
Where: Decatur, Georgia (location given on registration)
When: Wednesdays July 22, 29, August 5, 12, 19, 26
Time: 7 – 8:30 pm
Fees: Registration payment deposit of $40 (using PayPal, $44)
Complete payment of $240 ($244 by PayPal) if after July 17, or by July 17 early bird payment of $180 ($184 by payPal)
For more information about this groundbreaking workshop, the first of its kind in Georgia contact Maureen Nolan at 404-713-0488 or email maureen@yourattentioncoach.com.
Where did the time go? Since my last post I’ve been distracted by the NC mountains, a town called Sylva and an area that easily distracts me from my first breath of fresh air in the morning ’til the weather shifts at night to cool me off for sleep. My attention to this country is new for me with friends and activities. It is a convergence of coincidences that my intuition tells me to take time and be with these people in this place.
What does your intuition tell you to pay attention to?
Itching to be Distracted
Itch to Calm Your Bug Bites
There’s a web of skin between my little finger and ring finger with a bug bite, a little red, raised itchy angry spot shouting for my attention. And there’s another one on my left ankle. And another on my middle right toes, not counting the river of bumps under my right forearm. Something is is under my right shoulder blade and suddenly my left front thigh is shouting out for an equal opportunity scratch.
By now, you’re itching, aren’t you. Don’t stop. Share the agony with me. This itch is something that I want to share with everyone. I’m bitten up from my toes to my neck, from shoulder to shoulder, from stomach to lower back. I feel like the little girl I once was who woke up one morning to discover bites all over my stomach and back because of a hole in the window screen.
This time however, I was way more active seeking out the bugs from the meadow to the lake to the waterfall and back again. I worked at acquiring each and every bite walking up the steep slope and down the dirt path. That night my friends and I laughed at stories about bed bugs while anesthetizing ourselves with fine wine. I had a ball but next time, I’m bringing bug spray.
What do you do about bug bites? Epsom salts? Crosses made with fingernails. Share your favorite remedy…and hurry!
This is a practical attention issue, there’s nothing esoteric about it. However, for the most recent research on scratching, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/health/07itch.html.
Nap to Improve Business Relationships
Napping for Business Attention
Remember when George Costanza in ‘Seinfeld’ had a bed built under his desk at work? It seems he wasn’t off the mark at all! Reported by Behavioral Health Care Journal this week, napping is now encouraged at the office for an increase in sociability. Finally, I can nap and quote a study that shows it’s not only good for people in the South American countries, but for everyone. Today on Oprah, Dr. Oz supported the need for 7-9 hours of sleep per night – it’s even supposed to help reduce weight! Now that’s something to pay attention to.
At the SLEEP 2009 conference in Seattle last week, researchers from the University of California – Berkeley revealed results of a study that ’showed naps with rapid eye movement sleep refresh the brain’s perception of positive emotions.’ It seems study participants taking a 60 to 90 minute nap mid-day with REM sleep were much more receptive to happy facial expressions than those who didn’t. In fact, participants without a nap had an increased reaction to negative emotions. Have you ever been called cranky because you reacted to the way someone looked at you after 3 p.m.?
Once again we learn that we knew all we needed to know in kindergarten – a nap a day keeps you alert to pay attention.
BHC Journal interviewed two of the principal investigators of the study who were at the conference: Dr. Matt Walker, Professor of Psychology and Director of the University of California – Berkeley Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory, and senior research scientist Ninad Gujar.
http://www.bhcjournal.com/default.aspx?articleId=29692&tabid=252
The following is a direct quote from a newsletter by Jodi Sleeper-Triplett of JST Coaching. She is one of my teachers.
Professional coaches provide an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. A professional coach helps people improve their performance and enhance the quality of their lives.
Coaches are trained to listen, to observe, and to customize their approach to each individual client’s needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client. They believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach’s job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has.
AD/HD coaching embraces the ideals and core competencies of both life coaching (www.coachfederation.org) and AD/HD coaching (www.adhdcoachinstitute.org). This approach provides the structure and strategies needed to create success for clients with AD/HD, while honoring the clients as creative and resourceful individuals. In AD/HD coaching, we hold our clients more accountable and usually have a tighter plan with more frequent contact than in general life coaching. Meeting with AD/HD clients occurs at least once a week, which is more often than in many life coaching or executive coaching programs.
DayDream for Business Inspiration
Let's Become a Daydream Nation
A small to mid-size business owner walks in the door for another day’s work bombarded by the office crisis du jour as well as customers calling and meetings beginning to run late. How do you stay focused and what do you pay attention to first? and last? What has prepared your attention attitude for this daily management while maintaining the vision that grows the business? And is it any different for the stay-at-home mom or independent business owner? Try daydreaming, says Kalina Christoff of the University of British Columbia in Canada, http://www.livescience.com/health/090513-daydream-brain.html. Her study ”shows our brains are very active when we daydream – much more active than when we focus on routine tasks,” Christoff said.
According to one CEO, Greg Thompson of Atlanta’s Thomco, Inc., it’s the time you take away from the office that prepares you for the office, something he learned from his father, Roy Sr.. For instance, Mr. Thompson is a member of a CEO group that meets one day a month, every month. There he and the other members spend time brainstorming ideas, co-creating solutions and supporting their visions together. They invigorate each other, sharing the passion for excellence in business. But it’s also the time you allow yourself to drift and stare out the window.
What? Daydreaming in the office? It seems I was working very hard after all in school. But visionary CEO’s and small business owners make daydreaming work for them. Going back to my blog on Daniel Pink’s book, “A Whole New Mind” this is the cultural creativity that he says is able to ‘activate this right hemisphere capacity…as we transition out of the Information Age.’ The Rev. John Strickland from Unity Atlanta referred to the value of taking the biblical sabbath Sunday, June 7, 2009. He expanded the one-day concept to complete breaks from the work environment, using the sabbatical that some companies and universities give to their employees to refresh and reinvigorate their commitment to work.
What if you can’t get away? Take a mini-sabbatical and Business Daydream with me in your office! Business Daydreaming is just a call away. Let me guide you on a short daydream in your office, to refresh and lighten your day. This is a simple exercise of focused daydreaming on the topic of your choice, perhaps the problem that won’t resolve no matter how hard you think about it. Don’t think. Daydream. Put a one-hour weekly daydream on your calendar today.
What if you could take your business to the next level and Business Daydream at the same time with Maureen? Hmmm…
Are Your Emotions High Drama or Nothing at All?
High Drama at Home?
Do your family and friends pay an enormous amount of attention to your emotions or little at all? Does either reaction stimulate more or less emotion from you? What is the value of paying attention to emotions in your world? Do you have a choice?
Growing up, my family weighed heavily in the direction of emotional overload at all times, but I come from an addictive family environment. High drama was the rule of the day. My addicted parent appeared to be in control at all times, and we created the myth that it was true. The other parent was sick a lot. We walked on eggshells in the house (read Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul T. Mason & Randi Kreger). We had fun too, but it was played out against the backdrop of this emotional dynamic. Oh, and we all live with ADHD.
Well, darned if I didn’t go and look for the same dynamic in some of my relationships outside the family. I was high drama depending on the situation – it’s like it was a cloak I took off and on. And like that cloak, now I can take on a full experience with my emotions or I can choose to spend less time with them. What I mean is that if I’m happy I can really get in to it or I can use the energy to move forward. The same is true with sadness or anger. I can stay stuck in the sorrow or I can use the information in a healing fashion and again move quickly forward.
This knowledge comes from my life long search for what’s normal with an attention challenge, but you don’t have to wait so long. When that right person, a friend or a partner pays healthy attention to you and your emotions are on green, don’t get stuck waiting. Cross over and start a new life of healthy attention habits. You can choose to leave the high drama behind. Cultivate your healthy emotions that serve a purpose by choosing to spend more time in the situations in which they will occur. What you pay attention to will grow.
How do you cultivate healthy emotional friends, partners and situations?
Link to the following article for an excellent review of emotional sobriety http://www.bhcjournal.com/default.aspx?articleId=28362&tabid=255
Miscommunication – My Attention or Yours…and does it matter?
The Deadline
Last week I was invited to speak at a local business networking group meeting. I had a couple of days to create my material as it was a last minute invitation. But that was fine and I met my Friday deadline sending off my material to be used in a promo.
Mid-day Monday I received a phone call indicating the material was not received. I resent it and continued to prepare the presentation. At 11 pm I was notified that my resent material was received too late and I would be invited to speak at the next meeting.
In a flurry of worry, I wanted the credit that the material was sent on time and I had kept my commitment. But it didn’t matter. Material is either received or not received. This is like classroom assignments. The smartest students can stay up all night (some of whom do) working but if they don’t turn in the work, there is no credit. It’s in or it’s not in. Things are done or not done. It’s the worry, the perceived stress around receiving acknowledgement in the form of good grades or the perceived punishment from parents who ‘just don’t understand’ how something so important could not be completed that wastes our time and energy.
In your business, what is getting in your way of completion? There are no excuses; in the final analysis things are done or not done. The next time your student says there is no relationship between school and real life, you and I will know the truth…your student may need to wait until there’s a real life job situation to understand.
In the meantime, I’ve created a kickin’ workshop on…Attention Manifestation! Ah, the irony of it all.
What’s your attention story today?
Did I intend to get fired?
It wasn’t my intention not to pay attention on the job…or was it?
The ghastly job seemed to have all my attention. I worried about it; thought about it; dreamed about it; talked about it; stayed late; arrived early and in the end I was fired from it. But what was my intention during that time?
This job was a dead end when I said yes. The first day of work the ‘boss’, the woman who asked me to apply for and then to take the job; who was the mother of my son’s friend, told me we wouldn’t become friends. That we would be working at the same place every day and then some, but we wouldn’t become friends. That was her intention.
My intention in taking the work was to provide income for my family while my husband began a professional transition. My intention was to support his desire to change his life. I had no intention to change my life or the world. My intention was not related to friendship, but it would have been an OK perk on the job to be friendly at least.
So, serendipity found me fired and quickly hired to work at a school for students with ADHD and LD where my intention again was to support my family. This time, however, I found a calling and a life’s work. In the end, I was completely changed and passionate about working in the world of ADHD. My strengths were used to create my job and my weaknesses were otherwise managed. I grew in confidence and stature knowing that in that environment I made a difference.
I’m a born coach, maybe even born again. I was the student and young adult who asked the questions no-one else thought about. That’s what I love – asking the questions whose answers will change your life.
What do you want in a job?
What are your intentions in taking the work?
How will you make a difference in this field?
Is there a future for you with this company?
My story is the story of many job seekers and office workers. If you can’t pay attention it may be because it’s not worth your health and the health of your attention to remain.
What is your attention-to-intention-on-the-job story?
Forgive me, Donald.
(http://www.abovethelaw.com/images/entries/Donald%20Trump%20You%27re%20Fired%20Above%20the%20Law%20blog.gif)
