ADHD: It Isn’t Always Simple
DIG Coaching is the leading coaching practice for adults and children looking to manage attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and attention deficit disorder (ADD) symptoms. We focus on managing
symptoms of attention deficit disorder, adults with ADD, or adults who have children with ADHD. DIG Coaching, led
by attention coach Jeff Copper, helps adults and children (particularly those diagnosed with or impacted by attention
deficit disorder or its symptoms) in life or business who are stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated. DIG Coaching helps
adults and children get unstuck and moving forward by helping to open their minds and pay attention to what works.
ADHD: It Isn’t Always Simple
By Jeff Copper, Manager & Head Coach, DIG Coaching Practice LLC
Often I hear clients say, “I just
need to pick up the phone, sit
down and write, stick to my
schedule,” etc., but they don’t
follow through. My guess is, if it
was as simple as taking the next
obvious step, they would have
done it by now. At this point I
usually ask them to pause and
reflect on what’s holding them
back. What’s hard about what
they’re trying to accomplish?
Sometimes the way we look at a situation prevents us
from seeing an effective solution because we don’t
understand what the challenge actually is.
To explain what I mean, I thought I’d share an exchange
I had with an individual who was seeking coaching
services. After an exploratory phone call, this person
followed up by sending me an email:
“Still mulling it around... I'm pensive in my decision
making here. Part of me feels I know what to do already
to be more effective in business; part of me feels there
may be value beyond what I think I know needs to
happen in engaging you....”
I replied with:
My sense is you know what you need to do on paper
and think you should be able to do it. Kind of like a
teenage boy who wants to ask a girl on a date for the
first time. He thinks (it’s obvious to him)… all he has to
do is pick up the phone, call the girl, and ask her out.
The issue here is that it isn’t that easy. There is more to
it… hence the teenager is pensive. In a way, he is
pensive like you are.
It is hard to communicate what coaching looks like, but
I’ll give it a shot. Let me begin by sharing an experience.
I once witnessed an art teacher teaching a first-grade
class how to draw. A picture of just the front of a horse
was posted in the front of the classroom.
In other words, you could NOT see the south end of the
northbound horse. The art teacher walked around the
room, repeating to the students, “Look at the picture and
draw only what you can see.” Sounds simple, right?
After some time had passed, the art teacher
approached one of the students. She asked him,
“Are you drawing just what you see?”
“Yes,” the student replied.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
Again the student answered, “Yes.”
The teacher asked, “Can you see the tail of the
horse?”
The student was silent for a moment and then
said, “No.”
The teacher asked, “Then why does your drawing
of the horse have a tail? Remember, I told you to
draw only what you see.”
I questioned the teacher afterwards. She explained
the student was NOT drawing what he saw but
rather what he believed the horse looked like.
Simplistically, the drawing exercise was designed
as a tool for the child to discover a new way of
observing the horse to draw the picture more
accurately.
Deep down, the teenager knows he is capable but
doesn’t know how to approach the situation. He doesn’t
know what the girl is paying attention to. Does she see
him as an acquaintance? A friend? Or something more?
Intuitively, he knows he can use some help but doesn’t
recognize his own uncertainty: How does she feel about
him?
Without the discovery, any drawing would be
consistently inaccurate. Put differently, the child
needed to change his mental model of a horse to
draw it accurately. In this instance, the teacher was
shifting the child’s paradigm.
Like the teenager, my sense is, you know you are
capable but intuitively know you could use some help.
You are pensive because you are not sure what help
looks like.
Think about the art teacher and how she helped the kids
learn how to draw. In the end she was helping the kids
pay attention to how things actually are OVER how they
BELIEVE them to be. The same would hold true if I
coached the teenager. Does the girl like him more than
I then went on to write:
just as an acquaintance or friend… or does he just
believe she does? After all, if he was 100% sure she
liked him, it would be as simple as picking up the phone
and calling her. In fact, he would have already done it
by now. The fact that he is procrastinating is a clear
symptom that he is not clear. He isn’t sure what to pay
attention to.
My point here is this. If something is supposed to be
easy (i.e., pick up the phone and call) and you are
procrastinating, chances are the obvious approach isn’t
so easy. Many times, the hard part is the challenge
around figuring out what to pay attention to, like reading
the interactions of the opposite sex or drawing an
accurate picture of a horse.
© 2011 DIG Coaching Practice LLC. All rights reserved.
All references to clients are used with permission.
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