The Power of Attention Aligned with Intention

ADHD Education

Rewind to 1984. I was living in Manhattan and working my dream job as an advertising executive for Young & Rubicam, one of the world’s largest ad agencies.

It was an exciting time: I was 28 years old, single, making money and working with nationally recognized clients and their brands.

Things were going well... except for one thing...

There I was, a recent graduate of Syracuse University, managing the giant Miller Brewing Co. account. I wore an expensive, stylish suit and sported the confidence of a young man who saw every interaction as a possibility to bring in more business and more money.  As a sports enthusiast, I loved my job. I handled all of the professional sports marketing in stadiums for Miller, plus strategic planning and promotion, including merchandising supporting national advertising campaigns.

I had six sports field account executives that reported directly to me and were responsible for working with the NFL, NBA and MLB teams in their particular regions. These six field account executives covered the major in-stadium and community promotional activity with all the major metropolitan sports teams across the United States.

My love of sports and my sincere excitement for my clients’ business goals made this important account a natural fit for me.

I was getting rave reviews from my clients and the company’s creative department. The creative stuff came so easy to me: While others spent hours preparing a pitch, I could invent a presentation on a dime and practice it in my head. I knew that, for me at least, scripts didn’t work.  

I was spontaneous with my ideas and language but rehearsing a script would have driven me crazy. I just needed my mind map with keywords and circles that I usually jotted down on a napkin or index card. The agency management was content with my consistent delivery of superior results, especially how I was keeping our million-dollar clients happy.

Things were going pretty well — except for one thing.  As naturally as the creative side of my job came for me, I dreaded the administrative pressure of submitting expense accounts, writing reports and sitting still long enough to process all the different things going on in our area of the business.

It was just brutal.

The attention required for these activities — which held little or no interest for me — had always been a struggle, not only in my professional life but in my academic life, too. I intuitively knew that if I had to spend too much time in the administrative area of my profession, it was going to drain my energy and also take me away from those areas of the business where I was already excelling.

So, what did I do? I ignored the administrative stuff altogether.

You can imagine the result: Paperwork piled up until it became a small mountain on my desk of unfiled reports, unfinished forms and unanswered correspondence that, frankly, began to look sinister. I became immobilized just thinking about it. It wasn’t that I was lazy or didn’t want to do it.
I didn’t understand that my undiagnosed ADHD was creating internal neurological battles in my brain, and the part of my brain that needed to be excited or engaged with the task at hand wasn’t getting stimulated. When the task involved people, presentations, promotions and pictures, I was 100 percent dedicated to doing great work.

But the moment the administrative tasks were due, the harder I tried to pay attention to them, the more my brain shut down.

Luckily, I finally decided to reach out to my boss and ask for support. Although I didn’t understand why I had so much trouble with focusing on the administrative activities, I intuitively knew something was wrong and I would need help.

My boss, a great guy, took me very seriously and hired an administrative assistant who literally organized my files and took care of my expense reports, eliminating for me the angst and frustration that I felt whenever I had to do that work.

This also was a great boost of confidence for me because I felt my company was saying to me, “David, you are important enough to our organization for us to provide you with the support you need to do what you do well, so everyone else will do well, too.” And that is exactly what happened.

My relationships with my clients expanded, the accounts grew and so did the revenue I generated for the company.

This experience taught me a very important lesson that has guided me ever since: Pause in the moment and pay attention to your strongest thoughts because what you pay attention to grows.

It not only grows in the external physical world, but it grows internally by affecting the chemistry of your brain, which facilitates your ability to perform effectively.

But I also discovered that to truly focus my attention, it would have to be dually partnered with intention. To put it simply, I would have to pay attention to my underlying intention. I would ask myself: What is the intention of your attention, and does your intention serve you well?

When I discovered this idea, that whatever I paid attention to would grow, I realized that this simple yet powerful concept could make or break the quality of my life. If I knew what I wanted to pay attention to, then I had to know, too, the direction or path of my intention.

Fundamentally, why was I paying attention to what I was paying attention to? Intention asks the question, “To what end or purpose?”

Was the intention behind what I was paying attention to clear and aligned with my strengths and values enough to ignite my actions?

Just learning to pay attention was not enough to live a better life; my attention and my intention would need to work together.

An excerpt from the book: Permission to Proceed,The Keys to Creating a Life of Passion, Purpose and Possibility for Adults with ADHD, by David Giwerc, Founder/President, ADD Coach Academy, Master Certified ADHD Coach, MCAC, MCC;   http://addca.com/adhd-coach-training/Permission-To...