What You Pay Attention to Grows

ADHD Education

This small statement is the foundation upon which I have built my most successful coaching principles. If you are not aware of what you pay attention to on a daily basis, you will not be aware of what is growing or not growing in your life.

Patterns of Thoughts

Over the last decade of coaching adults, many of them business entrepreneurs and executives with ADHD, I have consistently witnessed patterns of thoughts and beliefs to which they seem to cling.

In my experience, most adults with ADHD are not aware of the beliefs that dominate their lives. They are also not aware how these beliefs do or do not serve them well.

These same adults with ADHD are basically not aware of their thoughts because most of the time they are not paying attention to what they pay attention to in any given moment.

When I coach my clients, I watch their lives non-judgmentally, noticing a consistent pattern of beliefs and thoughts that are directing their lives. I view them from their perspective and what they truly desire in their lives.

Learning to Witness Your Thoughts

It is very important to learn to develop the skill of identifying your most dominant patterns of thinking during the course of a day, a week, or a month. When you learn this invaluable skill, you will be developing the life changing skill of becoming your own witness.

You will have the ability to dramatically improve the quality of your life. You will be able to trace back many of the actions you do or don’t take based on your newly identified thoughts. You have the power to choose what you will focus on and create in any given moment.

How Thoughts Affect Your Brain

It is also important to understand how the brain works in relation to the thoughts you create in your mind.

As the famous American writer, poet and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, stated: “The ancestor to every action is a thought.” When you can trace any action back to its original thought, you will discover the original source of that action.

It is vital that you understand how your thinking and beliefs can have an impact on the way your brain functions. Being aware of the dominant beliefs that guide your life is the key to understanding the chemistry that is created in your brain. This knowledge can be instrumental in empowering you take the first step towards positive change.

Your Brain Converts Electricity into Chemistry

Our brains basically work on electrical charges or currents. These charges are created by the strongest thoughts we consistently focus on in any given moment. If your strongest daily thoughts are negative they will create a negative electrical charge in your brain that eventually can be converted into a neurochemical called adrenaline.

Adrenaline is the neurohormone that is responsible for activating the “fight-or-flight” syndrome within your brain that eventually becomes strong emotions and physical reactions in your body. It can cause anxiety, helplessness, negative rumination and more.

Pay Attention to What You Are Paying Attention To

Understanding what you pay attention to and understanding how it can impact your internal chemistry is powerful knowledge that can be used to direct your thoughts and energy in a positive way. Fortunately, we have the ability to create consistent, dominant positive thoughts whenever we choose to do so.

The strongest positive beliefs we focus on can be transformed into a positive “feel good” neurotransmitter called serotonin. This is the chemical that is used in a class of medications called SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) and include medications like Zoloft, Prozac and others. These medications have been very effective in dramatically improving the lives adults, with ADHD, who are frequently diagnosed with co-occurring conditions such as mood and depressive disorders.

Memory is Powerful

To give you an example of how we all have the ability to manufacture serotonin in our brains all you have to do is remember a powerful memory of joy success, fulfillment from you past.

When you revisit that positive memory by pausing to pay attention to it and really take it in, you can relive the positive emotions and energy of that experience. So many people do not take the time to pay attention to past successes. They leave them buried in the depths of their subconscious.

Being aware of the dominant beliefs that guide your life most of the time is the key to also knowing what kind of electricity and chemistry you can create. It will also be instrumental in taking the first step towards positive change.

Pause and Observe Your Dominant Thoughts

A good coach works with his clients to empower them to identify the patterns of their most dominant thoughts and then challenges them to pause and observe them rather than just react to them. The coach questions his client about specific beliefs being conveyed in the coaching session and asks them: How is what you are paying attention to right now serving your desired goal?”

Disharmony in Your Body is the Prompt

A coach’s long-term goal for his clients is for them to learn how to pause and ask how any thought or belief is serving them when they feel something is out of harmony.

You will learn how to develop a system that will remind you to pause and question what you are focusing on in a specific moment in time. With enough practice and discipline you can learn to do this automatically. It takes a disciplined approach with prompts and reminders of what to do when our bodies are feeling something is not right. This could become one of the most important skills for managing your tendency to act impulsively.

This skill will ask you to think before you react so you can respond with better decisions and actions.

Copyright, ADDCA, 2010

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