ADHD 2.0: Essential Strategies to Thrive In The Midst of Distraction Feat. Dr. Edward Hallowell

One of the most important ones, and I stress it in my new book, is finding your right difficult. It has to be the combination of difficult. See, if it's not challenging, we'll get bored. We love difficult, but it's got to be the right difficult. By the way, it's growth that turns us on, not money. We like money, sure, who doesn't? But it's really that feeling of growing something that is so exciting for us. You have to have some deal cooking or project cooking or something you're working toward in order for you to feel right. So it's really important to find your right difficult. If you don't, you won't be at your peak.

Please your attention because what's next is going to be a game changer for you. If you like over half of your fellow Genius Network members. If you're not in the special half of a group, then you live with or know others who are. No, really pay attention to what I'm saying. Oh, you can't. Okay, I understand. It's because you have adhd. And paying attention, staying focused and being overly active are just a few of the issues that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder causes for so many people. There are lots of experts out there offering advice, medications and cures. And yet one of the most sought after of all these experts is your next speaker, Dr. Ned Hallowell. Dr. Ned is a longtime friend of Joe Polish's and no stranger to Genius Network. At an annual event many years ago he spoke and the results were so outstanding we wanted to bring him back to you again. Dr. Ned is a board certified child and adult psychiatrist in the world authority on adhd. He's a graduate of Harvard College and Tulane Medical School and was a Harvard Medical School faculty member for 21 years. He's the founder of Holloway ADHD centers in many cities across America. For over 40 years he's helped thousands of adults and children live in happy live happy and productive lives through his strength based approach and the fact that he himself has ADHD and dyslexia. He's a New York Times best selling author, has written over 20 books on this subject. He's the host of his new podcast called Dr. Hallowell's Wonderful World of Different. In this podcast he celebrates the world of different and its many and varied forms. His main mission is to break down the barriers of stigma and misunderstanding and show how all of us can benefit from the differences between us. So Ned is going to enlighten our minds. You look very handsome today by the way. Ned you're looking very good.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

You're welcome. So he's going to present and then we're going to have some Q and A, and then we'll be able to break out in sessions again to talk about what Ned's sharing. So, Ned, please help me. Everybody welcome Ned Hallowell.

Thank you all. Thank you all. It's always a treat to join Joe's group. You know Joe, Joe Polish is really one of the most remarkable men I've ever met. And he has the unusual combination of being a creative entrepreneurial genius, but also being a really good person. He has really tremendous generosity. A lot of people who are creative entrepreneurial geniuses are pretty darn narcissistic and pretty darn selfish. And that's not Joe. Joe will give you the shirt off his back. So he cares about helping people, which in that combination is. I just admire that so much. The combination of being unbelievably creative genius level entrepreneur, but also unbelievably generous and unbelievably caring about the suffering of others and not just trying to feather his own nest, but help other people as well. And so I'm always honored to join anything that Joe wants me to join and certainly to come be with you all is a treat for me and a genuine, genuine privilege and honor. I love his team and all of you, all of you who come to him, you couldn't do anything better than to gather together in one of Joe's groups. Let me bring you into the world of ADHD, a world that I live in. Obviously, I'm 71 years old. I've been living in it for 71 years, and I've been treating by now thousands of people who have it. I know this condition inside and out. I'm here to tell you the term is completely misleading. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a terrible term. Throw it away. Throw it away. We don't have a deficit of attention at all. If we did, it would be a form of dementia, which it's not. We have an abundance of attention. Our challenge is to control it. Our mind is going a mile a minute. You know, it's. It's. We've got a race car for a brain, a Ferrari for a brain. We have. We have just so much attention. We're brimming with attention. But the Ferrari engine that drives us, it has bicycle brakes. Our challenge is to control all this attention, to control this tremendous mental activity. Not to suppress it, but to direct it. I make the analogy with Niagara Falls. It's just a lot of noise and mist until you build a hydroelectric plant and then you can light up the state of New York. I'm pretty much in the hydroelectric plant business. I take people with these incredibly powerful Niagara Fall brains and help them build their hydroelectric plant. And entrepreneurial activity is a really good example of a hydroelectric plant. Most entrepreneurs have this condition. So what is it? Well, the condition is a collection of ways of being in the world again. I don't see it as a disorder, I see it as a trait. And if you manage it right, it becomes a superpower. But if you don't, you see it's high stakes. If you don't, you live a life of underachievement, of frustration. Worst case scenario, addiction, incarceration. The prisons are way overrepresented of people with undiagnosed adhd. So are the halls of the addicted, the unemployed, the people who can't stay in relationships, the people who are getting in their own way time and again, self sabotage and whatnot. It's undealt with unrecognized. It can be holy hell living with this condition. But if you recognize it and learn how to develop braking power and learn how to channel the tremendous power that you've got, then super success. And I could name you so many people who have it. In addition to your host, Joe Polish, the man who founded JetBlue Airlines, David Neeleman, big time add. And he went from JetBlue to found another airline, then another airline, now he's finding yet a fourth airline. And he invented the electronic ticket, by the way. And I think it's ironic that it's someone with this condition with ADHD who thinks of a way for us to go to the airport and not have to remember to bring our ticket. He also came up with the idea of putting television sets in the back of the seat in front of you because the ADHD boredom is kryptonite. And so he didn't want to be bored on flights, so he said, why not put a TV in? So suddenly, and that's David Neilman. You've all heard of the PCR test for Covid. The PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction. Well, the man who invent invented that, Kary Mullis, he's now in heaven. But he won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. It was one of the biggest advances right up there with double helix in terms of advances in chemistry. And he had flaming adhd. Gary Mullis was one of his favorite things to do was walk on the beach in Malibu With a penguin. He was a genuine eccentric fellow, as people with ADHD tend to be. So if you manage this right, the sky is the limit. I'm mentioning sky. Richard Branson has it too. You know, you're in really good company, but watch out because the downside, as I pointed out, is also very real. Probably the biggest pothole in the road of ADHD is addiction. And addiction is 10 times more common amongst us. And we're basically self medicating. And it's not just chemicals, it's behavioral addictions as well. But if you get your ADHD diagnosed, then it's a lot easier to control the addiction. See, our greatest asset and what sets us apart from Joe and Jill Normal is our imagination. We have an extraordinary imagination and that can serve us or it can impede us. Let me explain a little bit more of what goes on in our busy, busy brains. The condition is defined in the diagnostic manual in terms of three core symptoms. Distractibility, impulsivity and hyperactivity. We are remarkably distractible. We are remarkably impulsive and we're hyperactive or very restless. Got to be moving. When you take each one of those supposed negative symptoms and turn it on its head and you get a tremendous asset that you can't buy or teach. The flip side of distractibility is curiosity. We are unbelievably curious. We are driven by curiosity. The ADD brain is like a toddler on a picnic. It goes wherever curiosity leads it with no regard for danger or authority. Off into the lake, into the woods, stick your hand in a snake's nest. We are, we are driven by curiosity. We will not sit still until we find out what's in there. What's over there? Well, that's what makes us distracted. We're distracted. But what's that? What's that? What's that? We want to know. We're the opposite of lazy. We're the opposite of taking things as they come. We are forever investigating. And that's why we're such great scientists and such great entrepreneurs and such great creators. You know, we noticed the petri dish change since we left it and next thing you know we've discovered penicillin. So you know, we are, we are. Curiosity is our driving force. And you know, and as I mentioned before, boredom is our kryptonite. The minute we feel absence of stimulation, curiosity drives us off to find something else. You know, that will, that will engage us. You see, we have to be engaged. We have to be stimulated. We can't deal with lack of stimulation. That's called Boredom, and that's kryptonite, we repel from it. We reflexively. We just can't stay. We can't stand that state. Like nature abhors a vacuum, ADHD abhors absence of stimulation, or called boredom. So that's distractibility. Okay, and again, you have these paired opposites. Distractibility, curiosity. Each negative has a paired positive.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Impulsivity may be my favorite one. Impulsivity is what gets us all into trouble. Impulsive decision making, reckless deal making, impulsive romances, impulsive actions, dangers, seeking behavior, all that impulsive. Well, let me ask you, what is creativity but impulsivity gone, right? You don't plan to have a new idea. You don't say, it's 10 o', clock, time for my creative idea and lay it like an egg? No, Creative ideas pop. They come spontaneously, unbidden, unplanned, in the midst of something else, completely not related. They come impulsively. If you tamp down all your impulses, you will not be creative. And those people who have what I call attention surplus disorder, they never have new ideas because they censor them. Before they reach consciousness, their mind rejects them as being too new, too alien, you know, so, so it's the ultimate conformist who's just, you know. But we are the ultimate non conformist. We welcome the new idea. Now, 9 out of 10 of them are useless, but 1 out of 10 wins you the Nobel Prize, you know, so, so our creativity and our impulsivity go hand in hand. And that's why you don't want to get rid of, you don't want to turn, your repress, your impulsivity so much as you want to have breaking power. You want to be able to direct it and know when to shut up and when to speak up. You know, and that's hard for us because we tend to just, you know, we blurt things out. We, you know, I used to, when I was dating, I can't tell you how many women I asked to marry me on the first date. I'd say, well, we're having fun, let's just make it last forever. And now I've been married to my wife sue for 33 years. So I'm not in danger any longer of proposing marriage in the spur of the moment. But you know, there is in that also a tremendous positivity. We fall in love, if you will, pretty quickly with a deal, with a project, with an activity, with a cause. We are prone to fall in love and in a good way. And that's part of our impulsivity, if you will. We are ready for action, we're ready to give it our all. We're ready to go for broke. And we're kind of innocent in that way. And people say, well, we should be more cautious. Well, the best way to do that is to partner up with someone who's more cautious because it's awfully hard for us to exercise that on our own. I've been trying for years to learn how to be more cautious and I've not succeeded. But I have good friends and advisors who are naturally more cautious. And then the third element of that triad, hyperactivity. You get to be my age. I'm 71. It's called energy. I'm really glad I've got this little turbo pack on my back. You know, I was born with a genetic, you know, extra charge of energy and it served me very well throughout my life, you know, but once again, you know, you can be out of control. And so you need to learn to put the brakes on. You know, you have this runaway brain that's forever wanting to jump out of the corral. And so you have to learn how to saddle it up and ride it so it doesn't ride you, so it doesn't run away with you. And that's the challenge. Well, but it's a very doable thing. So I'll mention one other quality that I want to get into management a little bit. But our sense of time, we, we don't have the same executive function skills that other people do. We're not detail oriented by nature. We have trouble sweating the details, planning, organizing, prioritizing. It's particularly noticeable around time. Our sense of time is fundamentally different. In our world, there are basically only two times. There's now and there's not now. So you say the proposal is due on my desk next Thursday. Not now. And it's just gone until not now is almost now. And so we are forever getting things done in a panic at the very last minute. And what we're doing, what happens in a panic is your body puts out a lot of adrenaline. So you're essentially self medicating with adrenaline. And adrenaline is chemically Very similar to the medications we use to treat adhd. And that's why you find a lot of people with ADHD drawn to very high STEM professions. Entrepreneur, trader on the commodities exchange, trial attorney, Navy seals. I've worked with them and they're not allowed to take medication, but they say that doesn't matter because danger is their medication. And that's exactly right. They get the adrenaline hit. Okay, so what do you do in terms of, as I like to put it, unwrapping the gift or strengthening the brakes? And there are a number of steps. The most commonly talked about one is medication. And medication used properly is great. It operates like eyeglasses. It's effective about 80% of the time. In my case, it doesn't work. My medication is coffee. But 80% of people will respond very favorably to stimulant medication. Now 20% won't. So, you know, it's not anywhere near 100%. But if you, if it does work, it works like eyeglasses. It allows you to focus, doesn't take away your creativity any more than eyeglasses do. In fact, it allows you to use your creativity with, with greater care and direction and, and it, and it allows you to focus even when you're not super stimulated. So, so when the meds work, they, they can be really life changing and take you from here to here in a short amount of time. But remember, they don't, they don't always work. Now what else goes into unwrapping the gift or learning how to direct the power of this brain? One of the most important ones, and I stress it in my new book, is finding your right difficult. Yeah. Now what do I mean by that? Well, I mean it has to be the combination of difficult. See, if it's not challenging, we'll get bored. We love difficult, but it's got to be the right difficult. So it's also got to be in your wheelhouse. It's got to be something that resonates with you. We're very mission driven, so appeals to the mission. Well, you know, for an entrepreneur, the mission is to grow something, to grow the business. And that's a big turn on. And it's, you know, by the way, it's growth that turns us on, not money. We like money. Sure. Who doesn't? But it's really that feeling of growing something that is so exciting for us. So the right difficult and challenging. But in my case, I discovered my right difficult in 12th grade. It was writing. And writing is a very stern taskmaster. It's never as good as you want it to be. But I've written 21 books and the reason is if I don't have a book going, I get depressed. So you know, I finished ADHD 2.0, now I'm on, I'm writing a novel, my next one. And you know, I have to have something going. And for you guys and ladies, I'm virtually certain you have to have some deal cooking or project cooking or something you're working toward in order for you to feel right. So it's really important to find your right difficult. If you don't, you won't be at your peak. Another real important step is to learn how to manage your dark side. Learn how to manage. Most people with a tremendous imagination, which is really the hallmark of adhd, have a dark side. Have a side they maybe don't talk about, but they have a dark side where they brood and ruminate and get down on themselves and think they're a fraud and imposter. And by the way, that's when they're most likely to turn to drugs, is to self medicate the dark side. So you want to learn how to manage that dark side, obviously without illicit drugs or behavioral addictions like spending, shopping, sex, gambling, whatnot. And the best way to do that, let me explain it to you because this is fresh out of new neuroscience. Turns out when you're doing something constructive, positive, four different regions in your brain light up in aggregate. They're called the Task Positive Network. We can see this on fmri, on functional magnetic resonance imaging, we can see the imagination in action on fmri, the tpn, the Task Positive Network. Now, when the task is completed, when the deal is done, when the cake is baked, whatever it might happen to be, the TPN shuts down. What lights up instead is called the Default Mode network, the dmn, which I call the DNA for the following reason in those of us with adhd, the demon which is the seed of your imagination. Instead of building castles in Spain, you know it attacks you, it sends out this terrible onslaught of negative messages. You suck. You're stupid, you're ugly, you're boring. You're never going to achieve your goal. You're never going to become the person you wish you could. All the other people are doing better than you. You're way behind in the race, you're never going to get there. Furthermore, you're ugly and boring and just, you just lay it on yourself. You just attack yourself viciously and horribly. One reason you keep in that state is contentment, is Too bland. You never say someone was riveted in contentment, but you do say they were riveted in self hatred, in fear, in anxiety, in images of gloom and doom. So it's riveting and gripping. Remember, we're always looking for stimulation. And so we'll sit there in this dark, dark place for extended periods, unable to snap out of it. What's the treatment? And this is a terribly important insight because it's so common in highly creative people. The treatment is not medication. Medication really doesn't touch it. The treatment is so simple, but so difficult to enact. Sometimes it's to shut off its oxygen supply. The DMN depends upon your feeding it with your attention. So you have to redirect your attention. And that's hard to do because like I told you, it's very gripping. Painful, but gripping. So you have to rip it away. Redirect your attention to something else. Go for a run, have a conversation with a friend, blast loud music, go out and chop down a tree. I mean, do something that will engage your imagination and shut off your attention. Being directed to the default mode network to the demon. That's a tremendous life skill. If you can learn to do that. You basically will exorcise that demon. You will exorcise the power that the dark side has over you. No medication, just redirecting your attention. And the motto is don't feed the demon. And what we tend to feed it with is our attention. Don't feed the demon. Redirect your attention so you do not have to be living in fear and the grip of the dark side, which most highly creative people, most entrepreneurs have, that they tend not to talk about it because we tend to want to be positive and upbeat. But it does haunt an awful lot of us. If you'll just do what I just recommended, you'll be able to master that, to tame that. There's a whole chapter about it in ADHD 2.0 that I recommend to you. I want to add one more element in terms of unwrapping the gift, and then I will stop and entertain your questions. That is the force of connection. We live in highly disconnected times. Covid certainly threw a tremendous curveball into all of our lives. And people are separated physically and the warring with each other over politics and positions and all that. And that's not good for us. That is not good for us. We really desperately need connection. So you guys coming together, for example, so good for you. You are extending your life by having this meeting, just being with each other, sharing each Other's energy. I call it the other vitamin C vitamin Connect. And it's way underappreciated in terms of how powerful it is. Loneliness, social isolation. And most people don't know this is as dangerous a risk factor for early death as cigarette smoking. Social isolation is as dangerous as cigarette smoking. And the beauty is social isolation you can cure if you make a priority of doing it as you all have done by coming to the Genius Network meeting. But keep up with friends, talk to people in the supermarket. Don't walk around with your head down, glaring and glowering and feeding the dmn. Instead, try to look up, look outside. And I prescribe dogs. Dogs are the world's greatest provider of connection. Get a dog. You know, it's no accident that God spelled backwards as dog. And you know, so prioritize friendship, prioritize dogs, prioritize participating in causes, going to meetings. It's not enough to believe in something. Go to the meeting, connect, you know, really. And connection is really the source of pretty much the best of life. And disconnection is the source of pretty much the worst of life. So whenever you're feeling a little bit out of sorts, connect. One of my favorite mottos is never worry alone. It's fine to worry. It's good to worry. You solve problems, but when you worry alone, you tend to catastrophize and make things worse. When you worry with someone, you start into problem solving. Well, those are three of the of the main methods of helping you unwrap the gift. Basically. I hope you've identified with what I'm saying. I hope you can see it as a real positive in your life as long as you manage it properly. And it does separate you from the pack because you've got a special power. And it's just a matter of learning how to manage that special power and develop it and hook up to your hydroelectric plant. Find your right difficult and then the world is just an incredibly exciting venture for as long as we get to be here. Okay, again, thank you, Joe and thank you, all of you. I hope what I've said has made some impact. If you want to read more, my book is called ADHD 2.0. My website is just doctorhallowelldrhallowell.com and my podcast that I want to interview Joe on very soon is called Dr. Hallowell's Wonderful World of Different. Thank you guys.

So, Dr. Hallowell, thank you. Thank you, Ned. We're going to, we're going to go to Q and A for a while, so thank you for staying with us. First of all, all of you should have received his book. We sent you the book. So, Ned, ADHD 2.0, all the Genius Network, all the Genius X100K members have it, or if they don't, you got a gift card. They ran out. It's so popular. They ran out. Or if you're newer to Genius Network, we will send you the book. Okay, so everybody has it, Ned. Or will have it. Thank goodness. I've got a really quick question. Then we're going to go to Babs, and then we're going to go to Wes. Those of us who. Who are asd, which is attention surplus disorder, we're kind of feeling bad that we don't have add. It's like, darn, I wish I had. How do you respond to that?

Well, we need you, so hook up with one of us. It's a marvelous combination. You know that most people with ADHD need someone with ASD attention surplus in order to run the business. You know, the surplus guy make sure the trains run on time. And, you know, and I think Babs and Dan are a good example, you know, that, you know, you need the person who can make the trains run on time, and then you need the other person to be the disruptor, the idea, you know, the person who interjects God knows what every single day. And it's a good combination. The combination of someone with ADD with someone with attention surplus.

Thank you. So, Babs, Wesley, and then Dan online. We're going to go in that order. Go ahead, Babs.

Hi, Ned. It's so great to see you. Haven't seen you in person since the last time you were here at Genius Network. Or maybe it was at the Hunter K Group, but we had dinner together and you were talking about this book and the whole demon thing. And the one question that I have, and we got the book, and it's awesome to get it because I've been thinking, when's the book coming out?

Right.

We haven't had a chance to read it yet, though, because of all the other stuff that's going on. Right. So this answer may be in the book, but remind me again what you do at night when the demon comes and, you know, you're trying to get some sleep, so you don't want to get up and move around and do stuff. How do you change the channel?

Yeah, and that's a great question because, by the way, it's really great to see you, Babs. You're as striking as ever and really magnetic and Captivating. But yeah, nighttime is the demon's favorite time, you know, because you're a captive audience. You're. You're lying there, ready to be, you know, just captured by this monster. What you want to try to do is short of, you know, you could get up and go down and do a crossword puzzle or something. But if you, assuming you, you want to stay in bed, try to redirect your attention, have some favorite fantasy, you know, go to the beach in Aruba, or imagine your last big successful deal, or imagine an upcoming meeting you can't wait to get to, or imagine your. Your favorite friend and what you want, or imagine the meal you want to cook, or just imagine some creative undertaking that, that can take your, your attention away from the demon. Because once you redirect, then you'll. Then you'll start falling asleep, you know. You know, so have in your mind's Rolodex, to use an antiquated term, you know, certain fantasies, images that you can reliably go to that will, that will disconnect your attention from the demon. Because otherwise you can stay up, you know, hours and just miserable and tormented. It's a common cause of insomnia. Yes, I can, I can attest to that.

Oh, yeah, Jackson. Yeah, he's there.

That's interesting, because what he was just saying is I've got that same thing. My mind races at night. And if I'm going with that, one of the tricks that I've found was started playing my favorite golf courses in my mind. I'll start off on the first circle and I'll imagine. I'll visualize playing off the first tee because I played all these golf courses that are great, and I'll start going down and I've. I can't for the life of me ever recall making it past the first nine holes. It's like the visual, you know, a 3D version of counting sheep in a way, a visually immersive counting sheep. So that's interesting to hear you say that. That's just something I've done.

And that's brilliant. That's brilliant. And the flaw of counting sheep is it's boring. And we can't do boring. We just can't do boring. Whereas playing your favorite golf, you can't get bored playing St. Andrews again. Exactly, exactly. You're in constant dangerous.

So one other thing, Ned. So in Strategic Coach, there are a wide variety of entrepreneurs, and some of them really do have kind of maybe attention surplus and are very detail oriented and all, you know, there's a range. Right. It's commonly common misconception that I'm the detailed one and Dan is the ADD one. We both have add. I think there's a matter of degree, and I'm marginally more in touch with the ground, maybe. I mean, Dan is very grounded. Right. And he's very. He can respond to deadlines and always be on time and always, you know, have his stuff in. It's a matter of how he organizes himself, which he's brilliant at, but I'm also kind of that way, so. But we have great team around us of people who have lots of attention to detail and amazing. And they've been so. We've been so blessed with that over the years. But, you know, we've been following you since we basically practically started our business. Shannon Waller is a big fan of yours, and she. Her biggest sort of, you know, pastime on her free time up at the cottage is cutting down trees. Oh, wonderful trees. And, you know, she's got a electric chainsaw, and she's. She's like the chains. Badass chainsaw. So that's. That's a great example. She's the add too. So anyways, I'll shut up because.

Thank you, dad.

I've got to control. Put those brakes on. But, you know, there's a lot of really creative people in Strategic Coach, no matter what, where they fall in the spectrum. Because I think it's a spectrum, don't you?

Oh, yes, absolutely.

But thank you so much. And can't wait to dig into the book.

So we got Wesley, Dan Wilkinson, Ben Hardy, Mike Koenigs. Go ahead.

All right, perfect. Thanks for your presentation. And I've struggled with it for years. And finally on. I've been on Adderall for, I don't know, God knows how long, 15 years, but I tried not to be on it. And I even went to the extent of having a separate office without any receptionist, without anybody, just by myself, two blocks from my other office, because I didn't want to be on the medication. But then I'm like, just embrace it. And the medication's been a godsend. Well, now my son has the same. He's 16. He has the same tendencies. And I notice the NAFTA versus not now. And as his life gets more hectic, stuff starts slipping. So I've told my wife I want to get him tested, and she's dead set against it because she says she doesn't want to saddle him with the burden of knowing he has ADD for his life. And I just wanted to Know your feedback or tips or anything to get her closer to getting him tested. Because I wish.

I mean, what you need to have her. Have her. Give her 20 minutes with me. I mean, this, this condition is, is, is a godsend. And it's the burden. Far from the burden. I mean, give him the good news, son. You've got a superpower, son, you're, you know, you're, you're, you know, you're. You have it in you to be, you know, the, the next Nobel Prize winner. You have what you've got going for. You can't be bought and can't be taught. You can't buy or teach a prodigious imagination. You can't buy or teach curiosity. You can't buy or teach the entrepreneurial drive. So she should be celebrating it. I mean, and she just has a misconception of what this condition is. A burden. Oh, my God. No, the opposite. It's an incredible ticket to greatness. And you just have to learn how to manage. Is really like being born with a superpower. But you have to learn how to develop it and manage it and otherwise it can manage you and have bad outcome. But no, gosh, the opposite of a burden. All three of my kids have it and wouldn't trade it for the world. I wouldn't trade mine for the world. But you want to learn how to manage it. So let her know that. Gosh, it's good news, but it's good news that comes with a mandate, namely, learn how to develop your brakes and find out what your right difficult is and then fly high for the rest of your life.

Thank you.

So before the next question, so we're going to Dan Wilkinson, right? A thought on that. This talk is recorded so on geniusnetworkgroup.com all of these talks are going to be up in the next few days. If you want to show it to your wife or whomever, it's like, oh, my gosh, watch this talk that Dr. Ned Hallowell did. She'll see your question. Wes, she may get a little annoyed with you.

That's right.

But anyway, so all of these talks, I mean, they're up there forever. That archive on geniusnetworkgroup.com there's over 900 talks, but you can narrow it down to Ned Hallowell and really share some great stuff. Dan Wilkinson, go ahead. Over there in England. How are you?

I'm good, Timothy. Thank you, Ned. Such a pleasure to kind of meet you. Even if it's from, I don't know, 8,000 miles away. But Your book, driven to Distraction, changed my life on a flight back from San Diego a few years back because I always thought I was a unique person. I didn't ever know that I had ADHD or even suspected it. I go to a marketing conference and I'm told whilst I'm at the marketing conference, you have severe ADHD by another marketer. And I'm like, yeah, right. Well, it got the better of me. So I got the Kindle app and I got the. I got the book on the flight home and. And was my life story inside the book, front to back. And I. I was thinking I was unique up until that point. And it is the first time I shed any tears since my grandma's funeral, reading that book. Yeah, I saw a psychiatrist for two weeks, and she. She said, we don't think we should give you counseling. I think we should put you straight onto the medication. And that was when life started really moving. So, yeah, it was four years ago.

That's so wonderful to hear. I'm so. I'm so glad to hear that. It's such a powerful diagnosis and change and, you know, and, you know, to help you, like I like to say, unwrap your gift and. But by the way, you are unique. No two adds are the same. So, you know, you're still unique. You know, there's just some commonalities that we do share.

It was the amount of relativity in the book from very early ages right the way through to current day. All the habits were kind of tracked in there. Going through late teens and early twenties.

And it was.

It was. It was all in there. But, yeah, yeah. And it's. It's fascinating. So I've been trying to help people when I. When I notice myself, you know, that kind of thing.

I wouldn't say severe. I wouldn't say severe adhd. I'd say bountiful adhd.

That's good.

It's managed now, which is great. And I think I'm a better person. But also, I think the biggest thing is I used to wear a lot of masks wherever I was. People say to me, you've changed a bit since you've had your diagnosis. And I'm like, no, it's not me that's changed. It's the masks I'm not wearing. I don't have to cope with it at all. You know, it's been. It's been quite. It's been quite a big change. The psychiatrist said I could tell how ADHD you were, just watching you walk up the stairs. I was Carrying like, you know.

She.

Must have been able to smell my coffee as I was walking up the stairs. It was just a mug full of espresso and it was bouncing off the walls and. Yeah, but yeah, thank you very much. ADHD is a brilliant book as well. I've got the audible.

Thank you.

Thanks, mate.

Hey Timothy.

Oh yeah, we're going to go to Ben Hardy then we'll come back to you. Kevin. Thank you.

No worries.

Two quick questions for you but before the question. Dr. Halloa, have you ever studied the research on approach versus avoid in psychology? Yeah, I think you'd really like it because I think probably everyone in ADHD is extreme approach.

Yes.

And so I think there's a lot there.

Yes.

So my two questions, one is about myself and then the other is about our three older kids that we adopted from the foster system. All three of them are already diagnosed adhd. I'm still not sure how me and my wife are doing on handling that. My question about myself though is I've never been diagnosed with adhd. When I listen to you talk, I relate to a lot of it but I think I've just learned to really manage myself. So I'm not really sure if I should even go find, go get a diagnosis for myself. I probably self medicate with caffeine, but I don't know what. I'm decently pretty managed as far as myself and my behavior. I can get things done but when I listen to you I'm like, I relate to a lot of what you're saying.

Well, you know, I think it's worth, I think it's worth exploring and just read the book and see if you see yourself in there. You don't have to be failing to benefit from the interventions. I have a self made billionaire in my New York practice and he said to me not too long ago, think what I could have done had I had this diagnosis sooner than. And I said my gosh, you haven't done too badly. And he said no, but since the diagnosis I get even more done with much less effort. So life is smoother and less conflicted for me, less painful for me. So you might find, and the interventions might or might not include medication but just with understanding yourself and also to manage your children to understand it. By the way, 40% of the adopted population has ADHD. So the chances are good that these kids that you're doing God's work, you're taking them on, but you've got a handful there and you're going to need help because it Ain't easy raising these kids and you know, done right, they're gonna, they're gonna become superstars. But, but it's. You and your wife have got your hands full, as I'm sure you know already.

Yeah, I guess one of the challenges is, you know, positively directing them without constantly trying to control them. Right. Because it can be intense. And there's also a lot of opposition, you know, opposition to authority or. So we get caught in battles where we're trying to facilitate, you know, and we've done a really good job. I think with the oldest one, he's getting really into tennis, you know, and so we get him playing tennis for like 10 plus hours a week and he's got a lot of energy there and he's loving it. But there can be a lot of battles where we're, we feel like we're overly trying to control rather than facilitate and stuff like that.

And so I'll give you one tip because, you know, you do have to set limits on them. And when you do that, you don't want to shame them. That's the, that's the kiss of really badness, is shaming them. So that's where the brakes analogy really works well. So when they act up, instead of saying you're a bad boy, say your brakes failed you. There's no shame in that. And once they buy into this model of the race car brain with bicycle brakes, then they'll say, I got to work on my brakes. How do I strengthen my brakes? And then when they punch their brother or kick somebody, you say your brakes failed, you still intervene, but in a non shaming way. And it's a good way of.

Thank you. One last, just quick thought. As it relates to when you catch yourself in the dark side, I think there's a really good quote from Marshall Goldsmith. He said, if we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. I think it's probably better to create systems and habits, for example, in the evenings so you can be on a good track. Yes. Sometimes you'll. So prevention before getting yourself in a bad situation. Obviously, if you're in a, if you already catch yourself, it's good to mentally reframe and stuff. But I think if you have systems and habits and things like that, you can avoid a lot of those disasters right in the evening time.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Ben. So we only have five minutes left, Kevin.

So there are several interesting questions in the chat, but I know that Dave is really eager to get something in here. So Dave raised his Hand formally. Dave, why don't you go ahead real quick.

Hi Dave.

Hello, Edward. Thank you for this amazing, amazing talk. And I want to invite you on my podcast which has large viewership and we'll do that later. What I wanted to suggest for people in the room and get your opinion on is if you're planning to get substantial life insurance to cover the cost of taxes on your business for your heirs, which all of us probably should be doing, you might want to do that before you go down a medical diagnosis of ADD or adhd. So my question for you is a given that it is liberating to know, oh, this is what's going on in my brain my whole life. How important do you think a full on medical diagnosis is versus knowing you have it but you haven't put it in your formal medical records?

Yeah, you don't need to put it in your formal medical records. And you're quite right. I don't know if the insurance companies have caught onto this but, but traffic accidents are eight times more common. On average we die and Russ Barkley has proven this. We die, it costs us 13 years of life. So it's a highly bad thing to have in terms of just actuarial tables. Now if you become aware of it and you treat it, you don't lose the 13 years. But the insurance companies don't care. You're in the actuarial table, you are at major risk. And I don't know if they've caught on to this or not, but your rates would go way up. And for the same reason, if you're looking for a job, I advise people don't tell them because the average employer still is stuck in the dark ages. And they think it means you're a dingbat. They think it means you're unreliable. They're not going to understand that it means you're potentially the best hire they've ever made. They're going to pass you over because they think you'll show up late and be rude and inappropriate. And so in general it's something to keep to yourself and keep out of records and keep out of applications and don't write it down. I mean, it's unfortunate that there's such misunderstanding about this condition, but your caution is very wise and thank you for sharing that.

And guys, you need to know just to be everything you just heard. 100% describes my whole life. So you need to know, but you don't have to have a script to know is all I'm saying.

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Thank you for Your work, it's awesome.

And I'd love to come on your podcast.

It's already being set up.

We have good time for one more Koenigs.

All right, so here's the question. I was actually having this conversation with Dan Sullivan and Babs, and anyone who's worked with them would probably observe this. And it's more of an assertion question I have for you, which is the notion that successful high functioning ADH and ADD people are either thing or idea focused versus people focused. So if you look at Dan and Babs, for example, Dan's a great example of an extremely high functioning idea ADHD where he can just get out into the ethers and manufacture an enormous amount of stuff and he's surrounded by an incredible team that can implement and cohesively put this in order. I would relate to myself as an idea ADHD where Babs has, and I was asking her about this in between and. And think of her as a human tractor beam where she apparently has been diagnosed as well. But you wouldn't necessarily think of her that way. But what she has this ability to do is really cohesively see where people go. And ADHD founders who are great at people are like that. They're tractor beams. So that's been my observation, but I wanted to just see, is there any research suggesting this? Is there a distinction between idea focused versus people focused?

Not within the ADHD classification, but certainly I agree with your observation. There are people who are more drawn to ideas, others more drawn to interpersonal. If anything, I think adhd, we tend to be both. Like, we break down boundaries, we tend to be synthetic rather than the opposite. We tend to be both. And, you know, whenever there's a. There's a choice like that.

Okay, great, thanks.

Thank you.

Timothy. Do we have time for one more question from Jennifer?

We did not.

Alrighty then.

So let's give Ned a hand, shall we?

Okay.

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here.

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