Tag Archives | Attention

Attracted to Brains – Feeling Like a Zombie?

By Maureen on February 4, 2013

I’m attracted to anything with brains in it.

A passing commented turned into ‘I’m attracted to anything with brains in it.’ Flashback to my tenth grade science class: sitting next to my lab partner newly from Cuba, I learned that people eat animal brains. It seems like she had a brain for snack food almost every day. I never asked for a taste.

Fast forward: the zombie culture resurrecting beings hungry for your brain. From wikipedia, zombie is ‘figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli.’ Now that may sound like you or someone you know.

Maureen Nolan, Your Attention Coach is currently accepting new clients with a brain. For coaching effectiveness, brains need to fit into the skull. However, large personalities are also accepted. This is not a hoax, just something to get your attention.

Contact Maureen Nolan, 404-713-0488 or maureen@yourattentioncoach.com today for an intact brain assessment for coachability.

I am interested in brains, your brain’s health in particular.

Attention Coaching as I practice it, has your brain at the center of the conversation. Can you do what you want to do? Can you do it in the time you want to achieve it in? Will you turn it in to the teacher, the boss, the partner, the spouse? If not, why not?

That’s where coaching comes in.

Leave coaching sessions with renewed intentions and revitalized integrity.
Arrive home or at work and complete a task.
Sleep well at night knowing the lights are off, the pets are in bed, the kids are clean, the dishes are done, the clothes are out for tomorrow, and your brain can rest, safe from zombies.

Maureen Nolan, Your Attention Coach, 404-713-0488, maureen@yourattentioncoach.com

Does the Dalai Lama Live with ADHD?

By Maureen on January 9, 2013

Eastern Attention Develops in the West

The Dalai Lama as a child

Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia is becoming known as Tibet West. Together with professors at Emory, the Dalai Lama has cultivated an academic exchange relationship spanning over twenty years. A goal of this academic and scientific collaboration of Emory professors and Tibetan monks is to develop a new scientific vocabulary in the Tibetan language in order for the monks and nuns to be able to learn cell biology, an academic topic never before offered to them. The Dalai Lama initiated this pairing to better understand the universe and the value of Buddhism as it applies to creation and to enlightenment (this is my interpretation of their mission in the west).

Biology and Buddhism

It seems that his holiness, the Dalai Lama, was given free reign over much of his time as a child living in the palace. There he roamed the palace rooms full of treasures, gifts from leaders across the world, and in one room he found a telescope. The Dalai Lama was curious and his tutors allowed his intelligence to lead his interests so that he developed an awareness and knowledge of the stars and science, previously not offered in Buddhist education. From that spark, he found his way to microscopes and became curious about cells and molecules and his curiosity led to a deeper desire to understand the world and science and hence, a deeper experience of Buddhism.

Intelligence and Attention

The child Dalai Lama was monitored by loving monks whose job was to develop in him an aesthetic sense of his place in the world, and to develop skills he would need to lead his people in both the spiritual and political life of Tibet. Nonetheless, he was allowed to drift and come upon what interested him. The same is true today. A story is told of him visiting Emory Hospital for a meeting. In order to get to the meeting, he had to walk down a long hall lined with people waiting for medical services. The Dalai Lama stopped to say something to every person in the hallway. That kindness is his natural inclination no matter who is waiting for him. The Emory escort finally had to insist the Dalai Lama conclude his visiting in the hallway in order to attend the meeting. It is my suggestion that his narrow attention to one thing appears to be a distraction to observers. His impulsive nurturing would be viewed as disruptive to some while others would see it as a kind behavior.

While the Tibetans are in exile, their leader pays attention to a compassionate relationship with Chinese oppressors. In so doing, he exports the Buddhist values of attention in its many forms, meditation as a type of healing attention, and exemplifies how to use attention in a difficult world.

It is a rare privilege today for our children to pay attention to what they are really interested in. Can you remove from your homes or their sports activities one of their daily distractions and observe how they then choose to use their attention? There may be a few ruffled feathers at first but with patience and nurturing your child may develop a new interest that cultivates their developing mind. In what room in your home will they discover their strengths and personal interests?

Your Attention Coach

Maureen Nolan

maureen@yourattentioncoach.com

School and Calendars Are ADHD BFF

By Maureen on July 30, 2012

What The Research Says About Calendars

Did you know that…

Carry a Calendar with You

Having and using a daily calendar has a major impact on whether students will meet their daily responsibilities like getting to appointments and completing homework and chores!

Researchers taught a group of high school student to have and to use a calendar. Prior to the study students were getting very few of their responsibilities done (0% to 37%).

First, the students were allowed to pick out the calendar they liked and then asked to carry it every day.

If they had their calendar with them when the researchers asked, they got a point. The students had to be able to carry their calendars 5 days in row before they were ready for the next phase of the study.

When they learned the habit of carrying their calendar, they were then taught to write down their daily schedule including school assignments, chores, and appointments. The researchers then did daily spot checks to see if students had their calendars and had written everything down.

They were expected to do both of these tasks 5 days in a row and were given two points for accomplishing these tasks.

In the third phase of the study the researchers counted how many of the responsibilities written in the calendar the students actually completed each day. In this phase of the study, all the students improved dramatically in meeting their responsibilities: they completed 80% to 100% of their responsibilities.

So, just owning, carrying, and writing in a daily calendar can dramatically improve your ability to do what you need to do and get to appointments.

You can conduct a similar study on yourself.

Pick out a time management tool that matches your needs and your style. There are so many choices beyond paper planners: PDAs, on line calendars, software calendars, etc.

Look at the week before you started carrying and using a calendar and count how many of your responsibilities you met.

Then follow the phases used in the study:

Phase 1: just remember to have your calendar with you each day. Give yourself a point if you did. Once you have kept your calendar with you for 5 days in a row you are ready for phase 2.

Phase 2: now practice keeping your calendar. Include your assignments, studying, social engagements, chores etc. Give yourself 2 points a day if you both, had your calendar and wrote everything in it. When you have done this 5 days in a row you are ready for phase 3

Phase 3: at the end of each day count up how many of your responsibilities you met. Calculate the percentage of things you accomplished by dividing the total number of responsibilities into the actual number of those you met. How much have you improved from before you began using a calendar?

What do you need to do to keep in the habit of having and using your calendar?

Consider making an agreement with a friend to check on one another or work with a staff member from the Learning Center.

Flores, D. M., & Schloss, P. J. (1995). The use of a daily calendar to increase responsibilities fulfilled by secondary students with… Remedial & Special Education, 16(1), 38.

Submitted to me by a client with calendar challenges. Reprinted in entirety.

Maureen Nolan, Your Attention Coach

maureen@yourattentioncoach.com

Head Injury and ADHD

By Maureen on July 25, 2012

Early Head Injury Plagues Life

In the early ’60’s my family moved to Atlanta from Ohio. A year later we were traveling back north to visit family, driving on a two-lane highway just outside of Nashville, TN. A blinding southern rainstorm hit just before we were to drive over a ravine. Skidding on the unfamiliar road, the car hit head-on into another car just as we approached the bridge.

All five of us were injured: my sister in the front passenger seat hit the windshield but her seat belt saved her life. My mother slammed into the steering wheel, losing her spleen. Lying flat in the station wagon back, my father and younger sister broke their backs sliding in to the back of the front seat. I snapped my head into the metal ridge back of the front seat, breaking my nose.

Head injury wasn’t really understood the way it is in this decade. I now know I suffered a head trauma as probably did my father and both sisters. Since I was already a classic hyperactive ADHD child (undiagnosed) it may have been hard for anyone to notice a difference. Or, in a morbid way maybe all of us were similarly injured so who could tell the difference?

What Is the Treatment for Head Injury?

How Do You Turn It Back On?

This is where I am in my journey. How can I treat an old head injury? Clients ask for alternative resources for ADHD treatments in the Atlanta area. Where can they go? What kind of treatment is available that doesn’t include pharmaceuticals? Other than coaching and western medicine what can I, as a coach practitioner recommend? This is a challenge as there are no guarantees in service. So, I do not make recommendations to some of the new brain therapies springing up around the city. Personal research-based recommendations are the only ones I’ll suggest.

This week I was drawn to visit Dr. Gedaliah Genin, a Marma practitioner in Atlanta, Ga. Quite separate from the reason I sought her services, at the end of the session she asked if I had had a head injury. Stunned by her question, I recalled for her the family trip story and my injury. She shared that I had disconnects in energy in my pre-frontal cortex and scattered activity in the back of my skull both of which she repaired for me energetically.

Since learning about living with ADHD, to it I may now add head injury. And while seeking treatment for one I may find some healing for both. I’m hopeful and happy that if I have to have a head injury, I live in a time when alternative brain-based, energy-based treatments are better understood and available.

Maureen Nolan

Your Attention Coach

Follow Threads of Attention: Find the Creative Beginning

By Maureen on July 2, 2012

Threads Are Like Thoughts, There’s A Beginning and an End

Threads Come in Different Sizes

In my Your Attention Coach blog on Energy Transitions, the thread of thought in the article was that for people living with ADHD, even moving from room to room in a home, office, or school is a transition. And transitions are thought disruptive. You don’t have to go from house to car to forget your intention for as a client said, ‘it’s a transition for me just to turn around in a room.’

ADHD Coaching is like following threads and sometimes I hold on for dear life to a client’s thread of thought. They can be thin threads or thick cords: each has its cognitive and conversational challenges. I like to refer to these client sessions as creative.

Conversations in ADHD coaching are like fabric as some have great texture and turn in to an extraordinary garment. Some are threadbare and a client wants to learn how to fill in the spaces. Oh, and then there are the fragmented ones, the ones torn, cut, or in some way damaged. I handle those with care and delicacy.

Do Friends or Co-Workers Have Trouble Following Your Thoughts?

‘How do you think?’ I was once asked by a co-worker. Flattered for the question and the seeming attention I went on to respond at great length, somewhat distracted and certainly not providing the answer she was looking for. Finally, I asked her why she wanted to know how I thought. ‘Well, I just can’t figure out how to connect with you so you can get things done,’ she replied.

Whoa! Flattened, that meant I was difficult to work with and I felt my core fray and frazzle while I stuttered and looked away.

Does this sound like you?

That is my life before my ADHD diagnosis.

Since then, I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD, become an ADHD coach, and received coaching. I can create a coherent conversational idea now and check in with my partner to see if I’m being followed or if I need to restate my thought without beating myself up.

Does this sound like you? Can you find the beginning and end of your thought threads?

Contact Maureen Nolan, ADHD Coach and together we’ll unravel your thoughts for peace of mind and clarity in communication.

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