How I Manage My ADHD (Without Medication)

Hey, what's up and welcome to the video. My name is Jim, I'm the founder and CEO of a 6-figure software agency called Seamless. I have over a decade of experience running multiple businesses as someone with ADHD. And in this video, I want to zoom in on why I decided to quit my ADHD medication and also how I did it. So first of all, I want to explain this is not medical advice. This is just my personal story. The tips I will be giving you is what worked for me. First of all, why did I decide to quit my ADHD medication? I took Ritalin for around 1.5 years. At first, it was great, but eventually, I just got addicted to it. I felt horrible when I didn't take it. It impacted my sleep, it impacted my way of eating. So basically, I was just going down a rabbit hole in a negative way. It was impacting my health, and eventually, It also led to me not even having the focus that the medication should give because I was basically giving up on my health and well-being. That is why I decided that I want to fix this naturally. But when I started researching online and looking for advice, I couldn't find a lot of helpful information to actually quit the medication. So that's also why I'm making this video to explain what works for me. So let's dive into the 7 pillars that have helped me to quit the medication. Starting off with pillar number 1, which is sleep. Sleep is really the foundation when it comes to health and well-being. So having the right amount of sleep will instantly impact on how your ADHD symptoms are coming to the surface. So getting the right amount of sleep is so important, and I highly recommend you to get at least 7, but preferably even 8 or up to 9 hours of sleep. And I will be sharing some tips on how I achieved an average sleep time of 8 hours. The first tip for sleep is taking no caffeine after 1 PM. And the reason why is this is impacting your sleep a lot. Caffeine works for more than 12 hours. While you might still be able to fall asleep almost instantly even if you take caffeine, I can promise you your restorative sleep, so your REM and deep sleep that is really, yeah, giving you the rest that your body needs, will be impacted if you take caffeine later in the day. So skip it. Okay, and the next one is room and body temperature. I personally use an Eight Sleep. This is a mattress that is basically allowing my body to stay at the optimal temperature every night, but this is a very expensive device. So I can also just recommend you to open your windows, get an airco, at least manage that your body don't get too hot or too cold at night. It's also really impacting how well you sleep. The next one is light, and we can split this up into sunlight and blue light. Blue light. So first of all, getting some sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning is helping your circadian rhythm. It's basically signaling your body that it's time to wake up, and this will also help you to fall asleep better at night. And the next one is blue light. Well, I highly recommend you to skip every kind of screen for the last 1 up to 2 hours before going to bed. So instead of looking Netflix or scrolling social media, try to read a book or at least do something that is not getting the blue light into your eyes because this will also impact your sleep. Okay, and the next one is meal timing. Eating close before going to bed is also drastically impacting your sleep, and specifically if you eat more carbs or sugary foods, then your resting heart rate, so your heart rate during the night, will be higher, which will also be impacting your sleep. The next one is consistency. So going to bed the same time every night is such a game changer. When I meet with friends in the weekends, I always try to do most of the things during the day. Also, if we go for some drinks, then we just do this during the day so that I don't have like a really messed up night of going to bed at like 3 or 4 a.m. in the morning because this will impact your whole week. And then the last one within sleep is Whoop. This is basically a wearable device that will give you insights into your sleep. And the reason why I'm actually able to give all these tips is because I wear the Whoop. Whoop will allow you to track your sleep and also save the habits from a specific day so you can see how specific behavior impacts your sleep. So for example, you can log your caffeine and it also tracks how much exercise you did. So you basically get a report with all this information and see how well you slept and also how specific things are impacting this. So I highly recommend you to start tracking your sleep. Okay, moving on to pillar number 2, which is exercising. I highly recommend you to get in some movement every single day. Even if it's just for a walk outside. Get that heart rate a bit up, get the blood flowing. This is just already helping so much with releasing the right chemicals in your brain and managing your ADHD symptoms. I recommend you to find something in sports that will basically turn the idea of having to work out into wanting to work out. So what I am personally doing now is joining HIROX events. HIROX is an elite sports event and it's basically a combination of cardio and strength, and it's also a race. So it's an event where you come together with people and you basically have a goal for a specific period training for that race. And this is keeping me so motivated to work out almost every single day. Okay, moving on to pillar number 3, which is nutrition. Getting the right things in your body is basically such a game changer because what you put in your body is also directly related to your output, so also to how you manage your ADHD symptoms. And I want to start off with a tip that's more related to drinking. It is drinking water first thing in the morning, and even better with some electrolytes. So As soon as you wake up, most people are completely dried out. They don't even realize it. But yeah, they have brain fog because they basically just don't have the right amount of water. And waking up instantly drinking around 1 liter with electrolytes is such a game changer. I notice a lot less mental fog. I gain more clarity and it is helping me a lot. So I recommend you to do basically 1 liter of water before taking your coffee. So you can also extend the caffeine intake up until like 1 hour after waking up, which is also helping with your circadian rhythm. And the next one is try to avoid processed foods as much as possible. And this is really hard because the whole society, like every supermarket, basically only sells processed things. But eating healthy, unprocessed foods will make such a difference. And then when it comes to macros, I highly recommend you to focus on not taking too much carbs, especially early in the day. So try to focus on getting some healthy fats, healthy proteins, and then also from unprocessed foods. This will basically also make sure that your blood sugar is regulated well. And if your blood sugar is regulated well during the day, this is also directly related with how your brain is performing. Moving on to pillar number 4, which is mindfulness. Starting off with journaling. I basically journal almost every single morning, and I start off with writing down what I'm grateful for, then how I'm feeling, and then I end it off with basically writing down the top 3 things that I want to achieve that day. And then also at the end of the day, my head always is completely full with information, with ideas So I'll always try to basically write them down so that before leaving the office, I get it out of my head, store it in my journal, and then I can go home with a clear mind. And the next one is meditation. So this is a tough one for most ADHDers, and it was also for me, but it completely changed everything. So why meditation is so important? Being able to sit still with your thoughts will basically train your mind to get focused and start feeling well. And I recommend you to just start really small, maybe 1 minute every day. So I started doing it for just 3 minutes. I used the app Headspace, and now I can honestly meditate for like half an hour easily, and I always, always, always feel better afterwards. So highly recommend meditations. Another interesting one is walking meditations. This is what I also do a lot. I just search on YouTube walking meditation. Go outside for a walk and get in some movement while also meditating. And the next one is breathwork. And breathwork can be so, so nice to reset your nervous system. And that's why it's also working so well for my ADHD, because it resets the nervous system. And it's basically breathing in a specific way and then doing a breath hold. If you search on YouTube for a breathwork video. You can find a lot of them. I personally follow Breathe with Sandy. I highly recommend him, so check him out. And the next one is non-sleep deep rest, also known as yoga nidra. And the benefits of this practice are basically the same as sleeping, but you can do this during the day for just like 20 minutes, and it's basically recharging you. So whenever I don't really feel well, I lie down and I do a yoga nidra or non-sleep deep rest to basically recharge, and I always feel better afterwards. Okay, moving on to pillar number 5, which is sound and sensory. And this is really important as well, because if you're someone with ADHD, then you get distracted easily, also by specific sounds, even if you maybe don't recognize it always. So that is why I recommend to you get noise cancellation headphones. I personally use AirPods Pro and also a nice Bose headset with noise cancellation because this allows me to not get distracted. And what I recommend to you if you want to achieve deep focus, try to listen to specific noises. And the ones that I personally do is white noise and brown noise. There's been a lot of research done on what those noises are doing to your brain. It's basically specific waves that will allow you to get into a really focused state. So if you just look Spotify or YouTube, Search for brown noise or white noise, try it out and see if it works for you. And the next one is designing your environment. So I will make another video of my working station, but I basically have these covers next to my desk so I don't really see things around me. And this way I cannot get distracted by things that are happening around me. I just have my screen. And the next tip is disabling all of your notifications during moments of work. So specifically those social media things like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram. Whenever you get a notification, you get distracted, you open your phone, you start scrolling, and boom, another hour wasted. So I highly recommend you to turn down all of the notifications for the things that are distracting you. I'm personally using Opal because this allows me to basically set a schedule of specific moments during the day where I want to block all of my notifications. You can select from which apps you don't want to receive any notifications at which moments. So I've scheduled built up during working hours, nobody can contact me, only if they call me for example, and I don't get any WhatsApp, Snapchat, Insta, they're all basically blocked during this focus moments. Highly recommend you check out Opal, link is in the description. Moving on to pillar number 6, which is social support, starting off with accountability. So if you're someone with ADHD, you probably recognize not being able to get anything done, procrastinating up until the point where there's a deadline, or up until the point when someone else also relies on you having to complete that thing. Then you can instantly laser focus, lock on, and just get it done. And this is something that you can cheat. So what I do with my team here internally at the agency, I just set deadlines with them. So they are my accountability partners so that I'm just not having to do things all for myself. No, they are there to account me. And that is what's keeping me on actually not procrastinating. And the next one is delegation, outsourcing your work. So for me personally, administration was something that I always find horrible and also really specific technical work within our company. I'm now able to have a team and I don't have to do those things myself anymore. And this also helps me to not get into that negative thing of where I don't want to do something and then procrastinate it and yeah, basically feel bad about it. But you don't already need a full team to start experimenting with delegation. You can really start small by just outsourcing some of your householding or maybe some administrative tasks or anything that you don't want to do yourself. Okay. And then we move on to the final pillar, which has been the most important one for me, which is shadow work. And I won't be going into detail about what shadow work is, but it's a concept related to healing yourself, personal development, and basically your past and how that influences who you are today. Starting off with the inner child and what inner child is, it's basically a concept that everyone still has a little kid inside themselves. With specific feelings, with emotions that is still influencing who they are today. And after doing some deeper meditations, I really discovered that my inner child really felt broken. And the reason for this is that during my lower school, I really wasn't able to focus. I always procrastinated. I basically couldn't write well, I couldn't read well. Even though I never really struggled to finish school, I was very lazy and I didn't enjoy it. And I basically couldn't sit still and just read a single page. And because of this, the teachers called me lazy. And this really impacted and put in some scars that basically influenced my, uh, self-image. And this also impacts the ADHD symptoms. And after discovering this, I basically discovered that I had a lot of limiting beliefs inside of my head that were limiting me from reaching my full potential, like being lazy, procrastinating. And all of this turned into a lot of self-doubt and a negative self-image. But after this discovery, I basically started to rewrite those stories and, yeah, explain to myself and to that little kid that the reason why I wasn't able to commit and focus was I just wasn't interested in that theories. I didn't want to learn what school had to teach me. I wanted to do my own things. And that is also what I'm doing now. I'm working on my own company. And when I actually can work on the stuff that I get excited about, I can laser focus, I can commit, and I have no struggles at all with actually focusing. So that's how important shadow work is. Okay, and that was it for today's video. If you're a business owner with ADHD, I highly recommend you to check out the link in the description to our program called ADHD Harmony. If you like this video, it would be really nice if you can subscribe to the channel, maybe leave a like, and hopefully I will see you in the next one. For now, have a wonderful day and goodbye.