153 | Neurodiversity Recognition at Work | Scott McInnes & Alan Stracey

The key thing that I would love everyone to know is that when people ask a reasonable adjustment, they're asking for something that will allow them to do their job better, to be more effective. There's obviously the stigma, there's sort of difficulties, but you know, majority of these changes that people request, they don't cost anything and they're very easy to enact.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients build work cultures that bring out the best in their people. We created this podcast to share real stories and insights from those who are shaping better workplaces every day. So grab a cuppa and pop in your earbuds wherever you are. You're very welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast. We're excited to have you with us. Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Lovely to have you along. Welcome if it's your first time. Welcome back if it's not. As I always say at the beginning of all these episodes, before we get into our brilliant guest for today, please, please, please take literally 30 seconds, 20 seconds, 10 seconds, even if it's only a rating. Give us a rating on whatever platform you're listening on and maybe type in a few nice words. It really, really does help to get the podcast out there. And if you want to have a little thing I learned from Stephen Bartlett on Diary of a CEO, um, he's in my sights as a guest as well. Please hit follow on whatever platform you use. And that means that as these podcasts come out, they drop straight into your inbox. Today's guests, I met my guest today at a really odd conference. We might talk about this, Alan, in a second. At a really odd conference on a ship where basically they take business people with suppliers on a ship. They put you on a ship in Southampton and then they sail you out around the Isle of Wight or basically somewhere offshore. So you pretty much can't escape from Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I met Alan before he became and before he set up Where Focus Goes, which is what we want to talk about today. We met there and we've kept in touch over the years and Alan got back in touch with me a few months ago and I said, oh, you should come on the pod. I think it'd be a brilliant thing to talk about. Alan is an ICF certified ADHD coach and he's the founder of Where Focus Goes, a consultancy that offers one-to-one coaching in the areas of ADHD, mental health and neurodiversity. It's got a really strong focus on the creative sector, and that's something that will come out later as I ask Alan to maybe tell us a little bit about his story. I love the way that he describes what he does as a mix of challenge, structure, and something he calls ruthless kindness. And I think we'll probably get into that a little bit later on. But I think it's also, I think, you know, as, you know, coming from a certified coach, as I am as well, about hopefully giving clients language, tools, and permission to harness the power of their big Brains. And for me, the reason I wanted to have Allen on was that I think my sense is that there's a real growth in awareness of people who are neurodiverse, and maybe even because of that, those people now feeling a little bit more comfortable calling it out themselves. So Allen, really looking forward to the chat. It's lovely to have you on. It's not the love boat, but look, it is what it is.

Maybe one day again we'll get back on a boat and sail off into the sunset, but not today. Not today.

They were fun times. They were fun times. Listen, the last time we met, you were working for a creative agency. Since then, you've moved on. Tell me a little bit, give us a couple of minutes on your story, where you've come from and where you are now. Sure.

Well, thanks ever so much. Really appreciate the invite and lovely to be here. So yeah, as you suggested, I, I, I'd spent about 20 years or so working in, in the creative industries, and I started as a jobbing musician and then worked through roles in publishing and marketing and advertising. And the last full-time role, and where we met, I was the managing director of a video production agency. And then it was about 5 years ago I started on my journey of diagnosis after suspecting that that I'd had ADHD. Um, I was fortunate enough to be able to afford a private diagnosis, and, you know, the, the impact of getting that bit of paper, uh, you know, the impact on my life was, was absolutely enormous. And then about a year later, I, I sort of was struggling with a series of kind of quite massive quite difficult events that all seemed to kind of come into my life at the same time. And as a result, my mental health suffered, you know, fairly catastrophically, to the point where I, you know, very nearly decided not, not to stick around, if I can use that terminology. Um, spoiler alert, I didn't. I didn't go through with that. And then as I was in the, the process of recovering from that period, and I, I was doing you know, naturally a lot of introspection and wondering what I would do with the rest of my life. It had become apparent to me that leaning into my sort of full self, my sort of ADHD and all, was one of the things that had really helped me through, you know, especially in those very sort of dark moments. And that ADHD, the thing that had been, you know, unbeknownst to me, been in the background of my life sort of laying undiagnosed and sometimes causing me to think quite unkind thoughts about myself and, you know, being a bit of a tricky bugger, had suddenly given me a bit of a lifeline. And so because I now had the language to understand myself, I had the language to understand myself a little better, I could work with myself instead of against it. And, you know, it didn't sort of change who I was overnight, but it gave me a much better way of working and understanding my, my strengths and my, my challenges. And then I was basically able to use that awareness to kind of, you know, just put one foot in front of the other and sort of get slowly better. That then led me on to deciding to retrain as a, as a coach. I wanted to to work with people, you know, ADHDers, you know, people, senior people in my sort of mold that were looking to get that better understanding of themself and help them in a way that, you know, I couldn't really see anyone offering the kind of help that I needed when I needed it. And so I decided to become it. And ADHDers, we can be very, very hard on ourselves a lot of the time. And so if we don't understand how we're wired, yeah, we can get stuck in some really difficult sort of thinking. And that's why I talk about this kind of ruthless kindness, especially these high-performing ADHDers. If we take the kind of the ability to be utterly ruthless and utterly brilliant and turn that into being ruthlessly kind to ourselves, you know, we can really get some good stuff done. And so I found a training center that, um, offered, you know, sort of fully accredited ICF-aligned coaching methodologies with an ADHD lens. And so yeah, a few years later I have the business called Where Focus Goes and offering neurodiversity mental health training for businesses alongside ADHD and ADHD coaching for leaders, as you said, with a primary focus on the creative sector.

Brilliant. Brilliant. And I think it's really interesting that you said to me earlier on that you didn't get that diagnosis until the day before your 40th birthday.

And yeah, correct.

People who I know who've gone through or been on the same journey almost describe it. It sounds like from what you were saying there, the undertone was a sense of almost like relief or like an aha. Moment of, oh, so this is why that's like this and this is like that. And I think like this and I give myself a hard right. Okay. Right. Well, now that we know, we can get on and do something about it with our eyes really, really wide open. Is that, is that reasonable?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I, the, the, the sort of the refrain that comes from every late diagnosed ADHDer is, you know, you start to First you start to mourn the life you could have lived if you'd known earlier, you know, but then you realize that, you know, you've been just handed the user manual for your life, you know, at the age of, for me, 40, or however, you know, whatever age it is. You've suddenly got the language to understand yourself, the reasons why you behave in certain ways, you know, the reasons why you are, you know, you might struggle in certain situations. Having that new awareness is— oh, for me it was, you know, kind of state-changing.

Amazing, amazing. So let's kick off at the beginning. Maybe start by defining, for, for me and for listeners, define neurodiversity and the ways that those diagnoses show up, or the ways that perhaps what people might see in others who have neurodiverse conditions. Even that word of conditions, I think we had a conversation about that. So even— and I want to go into language later because it's tied into something else I want to talk to you about, which is people not just talking about this maybe as openly as they could. So let's, let's start, but let's start with that, um, that range of diagnoses and what neurodiversity actually is.

Yeah, of course. So I mean, you know, the most common or visible sort of forms of neurodiversity that most people will be aware of are, you know, ADHD, which itself has a few subtypes, um, autism, which has an entire spectrum at its disposal. Uh, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia— all sort of differences, effectively, but, but all, you know, unique. They all have their sort of slightly unique points. But as you mentioned, the way that we talk about neurodiversity is, is quite interesting. And, you know, a lot of folks would, would rather we, we talk about neurodiversity through a, uh, sort of social or societal model in which neurodiversity is described as being the natural variation in human brain function. Okay, you know, sounds great, sounds very sensible and, you know, completely inoffensive. But then we often sort of fall into using the sort of the medical model. So, you know, you'll recognize the language of a deficit, of disorder, a disability, which can obviously reinforce stigma, uh, generally make you feel not particularly great about being described in, in such terms. But, you know, the key thing to sort of remember, or the key thing to, to consider, is that the person is not the problem, you know, with neurodiversity. Problems only start to arise when a neurodivergent person interacts with a world that was not built for them in mind. So neurodiversity, you know, whatever the, the condition, whatever the, the diagnosis, it's, it's highly situational. It's very personal, very situational. And, you know, often you don't just have a singular diagnosis, you know, they sort of travel together, if you like. Um, and so, you know, how that, that condition, how that that shows up for each individual, you know, depends on their entire backstory, obviously their genetic makeup, but their entire backstory, their intersectional identity, everything that they are comes into play. But they're not, you know, just defined by a diagnosis.

No two people have exactly the same diagnosis, which I guess— I mean, you know, you mentioned earlier on about a spectrum when it comes to autism, but I presume there's a spectrum of spectrum when it comes to dyslexia and dyscalculia and ADHD and ADD and all of those things because we're not, there's no two people who are absolutely identical in terms of, you know, what they can do.

No, exactly. I mean, you know, think about it in very sort of simple terms. Take two identical twins, raise them in exactly the same house, in exactly the same street, you know, they're gonna be, they're going to be different people. Regardless of their neurotype. They're not, you know, they're going to have their own interests, they're going to have their own experiences, all of which will shape them as, as a person. And so likewise with, with any form of neurodiversity, the person you are, the experiences that you have, the childhood that you have, all impacts your experience and, you know, of, of your condition, and vice versa. Like you said, if you've met one person with ADHD, you've met just that one person with ADHD. Yes, there are similarities, there are some sort of commonalities that are, you know, that you would expect to see in most people with, with ADHD, for example. But, you know, my, you know, difficulty with working memory, for example, won't be the same as the next person with ADHD. Or the next person. So how much it's sort of dialed up and down is, you know, is completely, completely individual.

And I think that's, that's a really, really interesting point, that individuality, that no two people being the same, and also that idea of language. All of those things for me kind of come together when I think about— and I've got an anecdotal sense that, that perhaps people still feel uncomfortable talking about this, maybe in the workplace. And it's not necessarily about neurodiversity. I'd even go bigger than that. It's about what's perceived as difference, whether that be color, creed, gender, neurodiverse diagnosis. If there's difference, people feel uncomfortable talking about it. My gut feel comes back to my question of a second ago and the use of that word condition. Is it about language? Is it about people feeling that they don't have the right words? They don't want to offend, they don't want to trip themselves up, they don't want to get themselves into hot water. What is it? What's getting in the way of people having those conversations?

I do think things are improving. I do think things are generally getting better. But, you know, I genuinely think there is still some reluctance, and I was certainly reluctant to disclose when I was first diagnosed. But things are changing. I think the level of discourse and the quality of the conversation generally in the sort of media landscape or just generally between groups of people is improving all the time. And obviously, you know, having platforms like this to come on and talk about my own experience will, I hope, add some much-needed sort of nuance into the conversation. You know, visibility really matters, and seeing and hearing other neurodivergent people speak about their own lived experiences, you know, is key. You know, when I went to my GP and first said, you know, I think I might have ADHD, she said, no, you can't have ADHD because you're a managing director. You know, obviously it is—

two things don't sit together.

Yeah, you can, you can have ADHD, I mean, you know, there's many, many, many examples of brilliant, brilliant people who also have neurodiverse conditions. But, you know, going back to the sort of the job, you know, the workplace issue, yeah, it can still be sort of fraught with difficulty or danger. But, you know, whether you disclose your diagnosis to your employer is very much a personal choice. And one thing that everyone should know is that once you do disclose there are some legal protections there, you know, you're sort of covered by some legislation. And there's, you know, there's also some really helpful schemes like Access to Work and, you know, other similar schemes which are designed to kind of help you stay in your job. So, yeah, you know, people use it for, you know, getting help, paying for some reasonable adjustments, I coach using Access to Work to fund the coaching, for example.

So that's a funding program in the UK, right?

Yeah, so that's a funding program unique to the UK. You know, wherever you are in the world, there may be something similar. But, um, but yeah, I, my advice for anyone maybe having a recent diagnosis about wondering whether to, uh, disclose or not is you know, talk to people, talk to people who have disclosed, find out, you know, good experiences, bad experiences. Depending on the size and type of your organization, there may be a neurodiversity steering group, there may be some literature available to you, but it is a personal choice and, you know, it is something you should think quite a lot about.

If so— and I'm just thinking about this just from a practical perspective because I really love guests just offering maybe some practical thoughts or advice on the podcast, that if there's somebody on my team, I'm a manager or I'm just a colleague on the team who I'm working with, somebody who presents as far as I understand it, as if perhaps they are neurodiverse, perhaps some of those tells that we've been told about, they won't look you in the eye being one that always pops up when they're talking to you, Do we just ignore that until the person says, I've got a neurodiverse diagnosis? Do we just carry on as if it's normal and as if we're just getting on with it? How do you handle that?

It's an interesting question. And like everything, there's nuance, you know. There's, um, you wouldn't want to be singled out. You wouldn't want your manager to sort of bowl over to you in the middle of a office and say, "I notice you don't look me in the eye. Have you ever considered getting checked for autism?" Yeah. But, you know, if you do suspect or, you know, if you think that someone might need support, then, you know, sort of private off-the-record conversations can help. Again, it depends what relationship you have with your employees, but, you know, supporting ND folks in the workplace shouldn't assume a diagnosis, it shouldn't seem that we're all strug— that we're struggling, you know. Most, most of us are doing pretty well, thanks very much. So, you know, sometimes you can say like, is there anything you might need to do your work better? Is there anything you might need that'll make a difference? You know, these reasonable adjustments, they, they can make a difference to all staff, you know, not, not just neurodivergents, not, not just, you know, people who, who might be struggling, there's some really good resources out there. One, there's a website called the Manual of Me. If you just Google Manual of Me, you can give that to everyone on your team, and it asks them to think about the ways that they work best. What, what conditions do you like to work well under? So that's brilliant because it doesn't rely on a diagnosis, and also no one feels singled out because of a of a diagnosis or of a condition. You give it to everyone, you're going to get some interesting things back. Obviously, you're not under any sort of, uh, you know, cosh to enact all of those changes, but it'll give you a really interesting insight into how your staff are sort of showing up, what they might think they need to, to do better. The key thing that I would love everyone to know is that when people ask you know, neurodivergence, anyone asks for a reasonable adjustment, they're asking for something that will allow them to do their job better, to be more effective, to effectively just, you know, show up and do better work. So there's obviously the stigma, there's sort of difficulties, but, you know, a majority of these changes that people request they don't cost anything and they're very easy to enact.

This episode is brought to you by Inspiring Change. We work with senior teams to help them be clear and intentional about the culture they need to be successful, to communicate change in a more human way, and to give their leaders the skills, tools, and confidence to be amazing catalysts for change. To learn more about our work and who we do it for, just pop along to inspiringchange.ie. There's a couple of things that strike me on that Manual of Me concept is that, A, it creates a level playing field because everybody in the team does it. So, you know, we've all got things that we prefer our colleagues and our boss to do differently. We've all got particular things that we might want or need to do our jobs better. Whether we've got, as you described it, you know, ND or not, we've all got those things. We might be shy, we might be introverted, we might be an extrovert in among a load of introverts. So not all of those issues, not all of those things are ND-related, they're just people-related. And that's an absolutely brilliant way to have that conversation.

Yeah. I mean, another one that I love, I love getting people to think about is considering their input and output preferences. So How do you like to be given a task? How do you like to be given a brief, for example? I ran a video production agency and someone might come up to me and say, "Right, Alan, I've got this brief. This client wants to do this, this, and this, and they need this, this, and this, and by this date." And I'll be honest, I would have forgotten everything that person said after the second or third line because my working memory is very small. Holding lots of information all at once, especially verbally, is not my strong suit. But again, getting to know myself and kind of thinking about my own input/output preferences, realizing that if you gave me that same brief on an email written down, you know, visually, then I'm much better able to consider, to ideate, to kind of look at the creative process and think about what it might need. So asking people to consider just, you know, those minor points. How do you like to be given instructions? How do you like to be given feedback? You know, how do you like to be, you know, how do you like to give us your output? You know, for a long time, I just, I couldn't stand the thought of making long reports. You know, I'll happily sit down, I'll talk you through everything that I know, but sitting down and writing very detailed reports was never sort of a strong suit of mine. So it's just about finding the, again, those kind of inputs and outputs that work for you.

Yeah. And as you said, and I think that for me the key thing, Alan, out of all of that is all of these little things that we're doing, the differences that we're making, whether somebody is neurodiverse or not, yeah, is to make them or allow them do their job better, which is great for them, great for the team, and great for the organization.

Yes, exactly. And the idea of one size fits all is thankfully coming to an end. And as I said, a lot of these reasonable adjustments that people might request are free or cheap, very easy to enact, and benefit everyone. Because, you know, it shouldn't rely on a diagnosis or a condition to make things easier for people to do the work that they want to do.

What we'll do is we'll put a link to that manual of me in the show notes. And Alan, any other tools that you have, pop over to us and we'll stick them on there as well, because I think it'd be a really helpful, really helpful maybe bibliography of things that people can go and have a look at. Let's have a chat about your work and specifically the work that you do with leaders who perhaps have an ADHD diagnosis. I coach many of the people that listen to this podcast, I suspect coach, but I wonder what is it that you're doing differently in your coaching when you're coaching somebody with an ADHD diagnosis versus me who might be doing what you might call, I don't know, regular coaching, not ADHD coaching. Yeah. What is it you're doing differently or what are you looking for? What are you doing?

No, it's an interesting point because I think there is, there is a fair amount of misconception around ADHD coaching, sometimes coaching in, in general. You know, as, as we know, uh, coaching is not giving people all the answers. You know, there's, there's, there's a line, there's a, you know, a difference between coaching and mentoring, for example, um, coaching and therapy. And so, you know, from a first sort of principle, coaching is about sort of taking you from where you are to a position that you were— you want to be. And so yeah, on the surface, ADHD coaching is, is very similar to, to normal— normal— to regular, regular coaching.

And as you said, normal— I didn't say normal.

Yeah, okay, sorry, language matters, folks. Sorry. Um, But you know, look, you know what, but it's a wonderful point.

That word just slipped out through nothing more than just saying a word, and that's what stops people maybe having the conversations.

But it's an interesting one because I think everyone has a preconception of what coaching is when you come to coaching, the kind of people who get coached. And literally this morning at the gym, I was having a conversation with someone about coaching, and he said, I just, you know, I don't know because I'm not struggling. And, you know, I said, look, you don't come to coaching when you're struggling. You come to coaching when, ideally, when you're doing really well and you just want to get better. You know, you think about all the times that, you know, a sports athlete, someone like, you know, Andy Murray or Novak or, you know, Tadej Pogačar on the cycling, when they change coaches and all of a sudden that magic happens that enables them to just perform so much better. You know, that's what I want people to take away from it. But as I said, you know, when I started looking at coaching with a, with an ADHD lens on it, I, I chose a learning provider that, you know, they had specifically aligned with the, you know, highly respected and kind of, you know, renowned ICF methodology. So, you know, on the surface, ADHD coaching could look quite similar— sharing of knowledge, you know, the shared understanding of the ADHD lived experience that, that kind of permeates the whole, uh, sort of process. So I start my coaching engagements with some education about how ADHD shows up for kind of all of us, and then I ask the client to nuance that for them. How does it show up for you? What, what is the impact for you? So that once they understand that it was never a, you know, a failure to try harder or, you know, something that they just couldn't do, and it, you know, it was because they were just a bad person— something that we all kind of carry a little bit of— but it was actually just a difference in the way that they're wired, we can start letting go of the sort of the shame, you know, the sort of bad feelings that a lot of us carry, and then we can move into, you know, creating new ways of thinking and doing that are unique to them, you know. From that point, it becomes quite similar to executive coaching or, you know, life goal coaching. You're aiming to then get the client from where they are to a position that they want to be in, but in a way that honors the sort of unique neurological makeup of that particular client. Because especially with leaders, especially with, you know, what I like to call these sort of high-performance minds they're often very brilliant, and everything that they've done is, again, it's going to be sort of shot through with their neurological makeup, with the, with the conditions that they've been able to sort of thrive with. And so you've got to be cognizant of that, that, that diagnosis, that part of their brain which sometimes allows them to be absolutely incredible, but sometimes just keeps them stuck with, you know, things that other folks might find really simple. So it's, again, it's honoring that difference and then allowing them to, you know, break free and kind of get to a goal.

Yeah, and I love that point you made about the guy in the gym saying, you know, I don't need coaching 'cause I'm doing okay at the moment. I think that's probably one side of it that we think we're doing fine, we don't need it. But I think equally, coaching can sometimes have a bit of a label, and back to that word stigma that I used earlier on, because it's seen as being remedial. There's something that you're not doing well enough, there's something you're not doing right, there's something that's broken that needs fixed, is language that we'll hear, you know, as coaches. And that's really not what it's about. For me, it's just about holding the space to allow a client to be able to explore what it is, is going on with them. I wonder from your experience, and obviously, you know, with confidentiality in mind, Alan, from your experience of working with people that have a neurodiverse diagnosis, what are some of the differences that coaching has made for them? Have you got any examples you can share?

Yeah, well, I, you know, obviously, you know, speaking totally confidentially, the, the, the thing that I see time and again is when people are able to let go of this, this shame, this kind of black cloud of shame that, you know, these unhelpful narratives that they've been holding on to for years and years and years. Something that I see especially in clients that are diagnosed kind of later in life. And clients that are, again, sort of high achievers. There's almost a sort of converse effect of, you know, the higher they achieve, the more that they have achieved in their life, the more shame they've carried about things that they've been unable to do. Because they think, I've done this, I've started a company, I've, you know, made X amount of, you know, pounds or dollars in my life, but I struggle to open my post, I struggle to you know, reply to messages, you know. And so, you know, you give them, you know, that insight. And, you know, it can be really, really life-changing for people, you know. And again, it's often people that come to you with— clients that just say, you know, I'm not interested in the emotional stuff. I just need some help designing some better routines. But the more you get into it, the more you help them see themselves, really see themselves. And again, like you said, that thinking space, you know, I've seen it, they'd have some really these positive, unexpectedly cathartic experiences when they're able to, you know, for the first time often understand themselves properly. And, you know, as we've mentioned, Scott, you know, coaching is not about handing someone the answers. You don't sort of come to coaching and say, I need to know how to do this. Well, here's what you do. But, you know, you need to be a sort of a useful and proactive partner so that they can develop the solutions and the systems for themselves. And so, you know, I really love working with, with these sort of clients that I do because they're, they're really brilliant. They're really, really brilliant people, whether they've sort of lost sight of that or not. And then When you see that kind of brilliance start to come back, they start to sort of see themselves as that whole person again. They see the brilliance coming back to life and they can, you know, go out and start attacking work or relationship, you know, whatever it might be with that kind of renewed energy. I mean, yeah, it's what gets me out of bed every morning, really.

Yeah, and look, and I think that From certainly for me as a coach, and I won't speak for anybody else, but when clients have those aha moments and you almost see a big giant exclamation mark rising cartoon-like above their head and they have that moment and you just sit there and you just don't say anything, you just let them sit with that. And that is so, so rewarding. And I can imagine, yeah, that, you know, even, you know, whether you're an ND coach or an ADHD coach or just a, you know, like me, a regular common garden coach with no specific skills in that area, just those moments of magic are exactly that, just magic.

Yeah, I think just like you were saying, having the space and the opportunity to just think gift is in a way that, that is not, you know, to be able to think for a client, to think and not think, oh, they're expecting me to say something. I've, you know, we don't really have that a lot in our lives. I think that's coaching, any kind of coaching. I think that's why it's so effective, that space to think, that space to kind of really, you know, to do that introspective work.

So often we hear, it's so great to have an hour to talk about me because we never have that in our lives. We never have an hour just to talk about us, what we're doing, how we're feeling, how we're doing stuff, what our struggles are, where we want to be, where we're coming from, all those things. And as I said earlier, I think that's our job to hold that space. If somebody— and we're at the end of time, which is, which is, yeah, really annoying because I could talk about this, Alan, for hours. I wonder What I love, I said this earlier on, is that I love guests just leaving maybe some really practical advice for listeners. I think we covered some of this off earlier on when we talked about the Manual of Me and some of those other tools. But if somebody listening right now has a neurodiverse colleague or somebody with a neurodiverse, a neurodiversity diagnosis on their team, what's the best advice you would give them as to how they can support them?

As I said, it's, you know, sort of calm, maybe off-the-record conversations initially, asking them what they might need. You know, is there anything you might need? Simple as that. And then I think for anyone who is neurodiverse considering a potential diagnosis or, you know, trying to work out What it means is, you know, talk to other people, you know, just seek out people who sort of match your experience. As I said, you know, I was diagnosed at 40 because growing up I didn't match the typical mold of an ADHDer. But now we know that, that obviously there's, there's a lot of variation, a lot of nuance. Seek out other stories, seek out other, you know, people that, you know, are like you. Find out what it meant to them. And yeah, you know, my sort of mantra is do the work. Either with a coach or on your own or with friends, but give yourself time to understand yourself a little better. Because, you know, working in the creative industries, you know, I was in a lot of situations that I look back on and now think I found really draining. You know, my sort of social battery, my ability to kind of regulate my feelings, emotions, my energy were completely zapped a lot of the time. So understanding yourself and understanding how you function best is a gift. And so— Powerful. If you are considering it, do just go through with it because it can be really, really life-changing in a good way, in a positive way.

Brilliant. Brilliant. Alan, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Thank you so much. If you want to learn more about what Alan does, pop along to his website, wherefocusgoes.com. And as I said, what we'll do is we will pop some of those resources and links into the show notes so you will find them there. Alan, thanks so much. For being on. It's been a pleasure.

It's great to catch up. Thank you, Scott.

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