A Reminder to Reframe
My fragile, aging body reminded me yesterday of the importance of reframing difficult situations as worthy challenges. I’m signed up to race the 20 km Fischer Loppet at Hardwood Ski and Bike tomorrow, and despite my limited training this season, I’ve been feeling pretty good about it. I have fast new skis, I know the race course well, and I’ve been focusing a lot on good technique. But when I woke up yesterday morning, I knew right away I’d have at least one unexpected challenge on my plate: a bunch of muscles in and around my lower back were in agony. I herniated a lower back disk three years ago, and despite a nearly complete recovery, I’ve had to live with an injury-prone back ever since.
I was furious with myself. The strain was almost certainly a result of pushing too hard on my bike on Wednesday. I haven’t been to yoga - great for my back - in months. I could see a really race result slipping away.
As is so often the case, it was my wife who triggered the reframing. “You’re doing this to have fun, right?”
Yes, I agreed. I’m almost 43 -I’m not trying out for the Olympic team.
“And you can always withdraw.”
True. And if it keeps hurting like this, I will. I have a whole season of bike riding to look forward to, and I don’t want to risk that.
It’s often difficult for people with ADHD to see the positive side of things. Our attention has so often been called to what’s wrong that we have a hard time acknowledging what’s right. Certainly that’s how this flare-up in my back made me feel.
Peter Jensen, a superb motivational coach who works with elite athletes, taught me about the concept or reframing. Reframing involves taking the “picture” of your life, and taking it out of an ugly (negative, pessimistic) frame, and replacing it with a beautiful (postitive, optimistic) frame. The “picture” does not change, but the context changes completely.
Here’s how I reframed my back flare-up:
- I acknowledged that I race for fun, and that if I have to withdraw, I can.
- I took the injury as an opportunity to visit my friend Ed Tonus at Active Healing Centre. He’s the best massage therapist I know. I hadn’t seen him for a while, and he did a fantastic job working out the worst of the discomfort.
- I made a commitment to myself to devote more of my workout time to strengthening my core and improving my flexibility - both of which should reduce the chance of another injury.
- I reminded myself that my family and I have made the race a chance to get out of town for a couple of days and enjoy a hotel pool, sauna, and hot tub. My kids are thrilled.
Reframing isn’t always easy. But when you can make it happen, it’s a powerful way to turn a difficult situation into an opportunity for growth and positive change. I’ll be blogging more on techniques for managing personal change soon.
How to Love Monday — Start by not Hating it
I want to love Mondays. I mean it, I do. I want very, very much to be one of those people who launches forth into the week with a spring in his step and a well-flossed smile. The detritus and chaos of the weekend (in my family, that’s usually skis and boots in the winter, two days’ worth of cottage supplies in the summer, and always, always, the inexplicable mess in the breakfast room) will be squared away, and the house — and my wife and kids — will be ready and eager for a fresh start. When schoolyard conversations with other parents drift toward how hard Mondays are in their house, I find it all rather tiresome.
But secretly, I agree. Monday is hard, especially for families with school-aged kids. And when ADD is added to the mix, the risk of things going nuclear before the kids get to home room is substantial. I have ADD, and it’s possible that two of my three kids do, too. More than once in the final minutes before we all head out the door on Mondays, I’ve found myself barking like a drill sergeant to get jackets, boots, and backpacks in order before the long march to school. And by the time I wave (or if I’m lucky, am hugged) goodbye by my kids, my stomach is knotted with shame and regret. I’ve already had to tear the kids away from Harry Potter, Lego, and memories of the weekend. Why would I do anything that makes it even harder and more painful to begin the week?
As an ADD coach who works with adults and families to manage, among other things, the overwhelm of daily life, I feel like a bad parent when this happens, as well as a hypocrite. I’m neither of these things, of course — I’m a pretty good dad, I know it, and I’m not trying to buffalo my kids into grudging compliance. It just comes out that way sometimes. Overwhelmed by the task of juggling the needs of three kids under nine years old, I react by applying pressure. “Dad, the more you yell at us to go faster, the slower we get!” protests my eldest son. Never a truer word was said.
Einstein described insanity as dong the same thing over and over again and expecting the result to differ. In an effort to avoid being labeled insane (by even more people than already think I am), I’ve chosen to examine what I could do differently to get a different result. After looking for the root causes of these rough starts, I’ve created the 3 “L”s: a simple 3-step system that — here’s the critical part — I put into motion on Sunday night. If your family, like mine, gets caught behind the 8-ball on Monday mornings, try these steps:
- Laundry: I’ve wasted many, many valuable minutes furiously struggling to help my kids find clean clothes for Monday morning. Do a couple of loads of essential laundry on Sunday night. Even if they’re still in the dryer while you shower and eat breakfast, everyone can head off with clean clothes. Even better, if your laundry is caught up, especially for younger kids, help them choose their clothes for Monday as they go to bed Sunday night. Do the same for yourself –especially if a shirt needs ironing or shoes need polishing.
- Lunch: Is anyone staying at school for lunch? Do you take your lunch to work? Try preparing lunches as you clean up the kitchen after dinner the night before. Make sure lunch bags and Thermoses are ready to be loaded while you’re preparing breakfast.
- Launch: one well-known ADD coach advises creating a “Launch Pad” by the front (or back) door of your home. The launch pad contains all the crucial items you need for the day. If the launch pad is properly “loaded,” you minimise the chance of needing to scramble through the house to locate crucial items at the last minute. Consider creating a launch pad checklist (astronauts swear by them!). Launch pad checklists can be as long as they need to be. Mine looks this
- wallet
- keys
- mobile phone
- lunch
- briefcase, gym bag, backpack — don’t forget key books, files, running shoes, etc.
- in winter: gloves, hat, scarf
- in summer: bike helmet, bike shoes, bike lock
Don’t be afraid to experiment with different variations on the “3L” approach. People (and families) with ADD often find planning ahead to be a challenge. But once it’s structured into their routines in a way that works for them, they can be extremely organized and effective.
Not everything — JUST the kitchen sink
Filed under: Clutter, Planning, Proactivity, Procrastination
Being proactive is hard when you have ADD. It’s not in our nature. Throwing it all together at the last minute –the project, the presentation, the meal — is much more our style, and often, despite ourselves, it work out. But as an ADD coach, I’m striving to put in place some of the habits I gently nudge my clients toward — and every time management guru in the book seems to put proactivity right near the top of the list every time.
My post tomorrow is on making Monday more manageable — a worthy task, most would agree. The main thrust of that post is the importance of having what you need ready to go on Sunday night. The ugly truth is that at 10:00 p.m. Sunday, that’s not always as easy as it sounds. The hustle to get everyone off to bed at a reasonable hour (currently in my house, that’s after the Clone Wars, a few pages of The Lord of the RIngs, and satisfactory brushing of teeth) often results in a mysterious pile of dishes in the kitchen sink. From my vantage point at the sink, I also see a jumble of crayons on the breakfast table, a pile of boots and backpacks by the back door, and the weekend paper piled on a couple of dining chairs. Being proactive, if I can bring myself to do it, will mean taking care of some of this detritus.
Don’t get the impression my house is a mess. But with the typically frenetic life of a family with three kids under 10, there’s a lot of cargo coming and going,and not everything always gets put away. One of the great paradoxes of my version of ADD is that while a) I could easily procrastinate about the dishes and the mess, persuading myself that it won’t take long in he morning, b) once I finally screw up the self-discipline to get going, I want to get the house — or at least the kitchen — in immaculate shape. Spic-and-span, top to bottom. I could be at it for a couple of hours.
But it’s now 10:15, and I plan to get up early tomorrow to work out before the kids get up. I feel the urge to tidy and clean welling up — not because I love cleaning, but because the perfectionist in me craves the notion of a truly clean house.
I’m not sure what signaled it this time, but I was able to rein myself in by asking myself the question I ask all my clients whose ADD runs to perfectionism: “What is the least I need to do here?” On the surface this might look like an invitation to laziness. But for a perfectionist, this question is a lifeline, offering rescue from work that could wait until later, could be done by someone else, or perhaps doesn’t need to be done at all.
For me the least that needs to be done is that the kitchen is ready for breakfast tomorrow, so that I can hit the bike. Not everything but the kitchen sink; just the kitchen sink. And a couple of countertops for good measure, but that’s it.
One of the best — and funniest — advocates of the “kitchen sink theory ” is FlyLady, who runs a fantastic website on conquering household clutter. I’ll be visiting her site again soon.
Driven to Distraction: Still the Gold Standard for ADHD Books
2009 will mark the fifteenth anniversary of the publication of Driven to Distraction, and with it the birth of contemporary ADHD literature . We have learned an enormous amount about ADHD in the years since it appeared, and thankfully it’s now got plenty of excellent company on bookstore and library shelves. Personal stories, self-coaching guides, and explorations of ADHD brain science, as well as the highly readable followup to Driven, Delivered From Distaction, now offer a wide range of perspctives on this maddeningly, brilliantly paradoxical kind of brain wiring. But as with so many things, the first is often the best.
Part of what gives Driven to Distraction its power is the extensive use of real-life stories –the daily experiences of people with ADHD, and the challenges we face. And the book gives such a varied and detailed look in to the minds and lives of ADHDers, that at some point every person with ADHD reading it will inevitably at some point look up from the page and say to himself, “I’ve felt exactly like that!”
Another wonderful thing about Ratey and Hallowell’s book is how forcefully they shattered the myth that ADHD is nothing more than the result of parents failing to discipline their rambunctious redheads. They revealed to the world that it is a complex, paradoxical, and very real neurological condition. And they made it clear that ADHD is not a childhood disorder — it often persists through adolescence and right through adulthood. Driven to Distraction lifted the veil on the tortured lives of struggling parents with ADHD kids, and again and again showed us the puzzlement — and relief — of adults who finally learn about their own ADHD until relatively late in life.
Despite all that’s been written about ADHD in the last 15 years, the fundamental prescription for treatment remains exactly the same:
- Get an accurate diagnosis by a trained psychiatrist or psychotherapist with expertise in ADHD;
- Educate yourself about ADHD. The more you know about the condition, the more you will understand about how it affects your life. Greater understanding will make it easier to explain your condition to others, as well.
- Get structured. Systems and organizational habits do not come as naturally to ADHDers as they do to others. The chaos that results can be very destructive. Structure and ritual provides stability and a sense of control.
- Seek coaching and/or psychotherapy. Coaches are a powerful ally, helping you to maximize your strengths, minimise your weaknesses, and keep you focused on the goals and challenges that you define. Therapists can play an important role if other conditions co-exist with ADHD.
- Consider Medication. There is a wide and growing range of safe, effective medications that can help people with ADHD to reduce their impulsiveness, remain focused, and reduce pressure and anxiety. For some people, medication can make a tremendous difference.
As an ADHD coach, I like to keep up with as much literature about the subject as I can. But when I’m struggling for a simple explanation, or hunting for the perfect description of a classic ADHD behaviour, I find myself returning again and again to Driven to Distraction. IF ever there’s an ADHD Hall of Fame, Drs. Ratey and Hallowell should be the first inductees.
