ADD ADHD Help -- Dana Rayburn ADD ADHD Coach

8 Tips for Living Successfully with Attention Deficit Disorder
By Dana Rayburn

What does living successfully with ADD mean to you? Perhaps you think of success as being able to focus more easily and follow-through on projects and commitments. Perhaps you'd consider yourself successful if you improved your organizing skills or found a job more suited to your ADD personality. For ADD adults that success often seems like a far away dream. Fortunately, as an ADD Coach, I see first hand from my clients that with some hard work and guidance success is possible. You CAN live an ADD-friendly, satisfying and successful life.

Following are eight tips to help you live successfully with ADD. These are excellent things to work on with your ADD coach.

1. Improve Your Self-Talk
Have you listened to how you talk to yourself lately? Do you call yourself names like stupid, worthless, lazy and hopeless? Negative 'self-talk' undermines your self-esteem and limits your success. As the saying goes, 'What I Say To Myself is My Reality'. Are you ready to take the first step to success? Next time you find yourself doing something not quite the way you'd like to, instead of calling yourself a name, say "That's not like me, I'm a person who ... (gets to meetings on time, remembers to pay my bills, etc.)". The battle with ADD starts from within.

2. Increase Your Personal Awareness
Awareness is hard for ADDers but it is essential to managing your ADD. People with ADD have the tendency to bounce through life like a pinball, impulsively doing whatever catches their attention. I have noticed that the most high-functioning ADDers have worked to gain awareness of their thoughts and actions. This doesn't mean that you won't find yourself 'pinballing' occasionally - that's bound to happen. But by learning to frequently check in with what you're doing, you will increase your awareness of your actions so you can catch yourself and refocus your attention.

3. Create Systems and Structure to Make Your Life Run More Easily
Many ADDers think systems and structure sound boring as though it will limit their flexibility and creativity. However it's the structure and systems that will help make your world more ADD friendly. Routines in your personal and business life will allow you to stay on an even course so you can accomplish the everyday tasks of life while at the same time be free to express your individuality and creativity. A qualified ADD Coach is trained and experienced in creating the systems and structure to make your life run more easily.

4. Exercise Regularly
Medical research shows that regular aerobic exercise helps to regulate the chemicals in the brain that are believed to cause ADD, allowing for better focus and less impulsivity. For ADD adults with hyperactivity, exercise will also help burn off some of that extra energy. What kind of exercise can you do on a regular basis? What will motivate you to walk, jog, bike, swim or dance for 30 to 45 minutes three to five times a week? What is getting in your way that keeps you from exercising and what can you do to change that? Centering exercise such as yoga and tai chi are also excellent for ADD.

5. Eat a Healthy Diet
I like to compare an ADD body to a high-performance engine on a race car. Like that race car, people with ADD need excellent, regular fuel in order to function optimally. An ADD brain responds better to well-balanced meals with lots of protein, hearty grains, fruits and vegetables. Easier said than done, as many ADDers often forget to eat or buy groceries. What do you need to learn about nutrition to be able to give your body the fuel (food) it needs? How can you change your habits and create structure so you will eat a healthy diet? Your brain needs you to drink lots of water, too.

6. Learn How Much You Can Handle
Every ADDer has an optimal number of activities he or she can juggle at any one time. Stimulation helps us focus and having multiple things to choose from provides that stimulation. However, having too many things to do shuts us down with overwhelm. Chances are you have too much on your plate right now - that's the normal pattern. Are there non-priority activities or tasks that you can put on hold to reduce the overwhelm? You're looking for the balance between being bored with not enough to do and being stressed out and overwhelmed with too much to do. If you find you need more activity to be at your best, add things back slowly into your life until you reach a good balance.

7. Get Enough Sleep
Exhaustion makes the ADD brain-fog and inability to concentrate even worse. Do you even know how much sleep you need each night to function at your best? What's keeping you from getting enough sleep and what can you do about it? The stimulant medications most often prescribed for ADD can make it hard for some people to fall asleep. Fortunately, this is easily corrected with a slight adjustment in your medication schedule so talk to your doctor.

8. Get the Best Treatment for Your ADD
Sadly, many ADDers think that once they start taking medication their life will be simple and ADD-free, only to find this isn't so. Studies show that a multi-modal approach including medication, counseling, and life skills coaching by a ADD coach provides the most effective management and treatment of ADD. The medication will help balance the brain chemicals to control attention, impulsivity and activity-levels. The counseling will help work through the self-esteem damage and other issues that come from a life of living with untreated ADD. ADD coaching helps the person reach their goals and create the systems and structure that makes life more successful and ADD-friendly. Working with ADD is a highly specialized niche in the medical, counseling and coaching professions. Don't sell yourself short. Before selecting a professional to work with on your ADD be sure that he or she is trained in ADD and an expert in the intricacies and latest treatments of ADD.

*** The Fine Print ***

Published by Dana Rayburn, Copyright 2005, all rights reserved.

Permission is granted to forward or post this content in full for use in a not-for-profit format, as long as this copyright notice and full information about the author, Dana Rayburn, is attached intact. If any other use is desired, permission in writing is required. Questions? Contact Dana

*** About Coach Dana ***
Dana Rayburn, A. C. T., is a life success coach with an international practice who helps people reach their goals and create the incredible life they have always wanted. Most of her clients are business owners or professionals who want to live more easily with AD/HD, get organized so they can stay organized and/or embark on a rewarding path of personal development.

Dana's coaching career began in 1998, evolving from nearly eight years as a professional organizer, popular for innovative and practical ways of conquering clutter and creating easy to use organizing systems. Prior to that she spent eight years as a corporate systems analyst and strategic planner. She is a graduate of Coach U and the Optimal Functioning Institute's training for ADD coaches and is affiliated with ADDA, CHADD, the ADD Professionals chat group, Coachville and the International Coach
Federation.

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