Tracey (00:02.976)
If you want to break free of everything that is holding you back, it starts with deep self-awareness. There is no way around it. You have to get really clear about your ADHD. This is what I call your unique ADHD blueprint. It provides you with all of the information you need to know about yourself and it helps.
Keep you on a path to where you want to go. Imagine this for a moment. You're building a house. A builder would not build a house from start to finish without a blueprint. And if they did, there would be serious problems along the way. This is not any different than living your life without having a deep clarity on your unique ADHD.
ADHD just doesn't look the same person to person. And if you've been comparing yourself over and over again, it's not going to help. ADHD strategies do not work when they're built on a shaky foundation. What ends up happening is a continued sense of uncertainty, confusion, comparing yourself to other people, shame and guilt, they wreak havoc.
Low levels of awareness mean that you spend more time reacting, feeling overwhelmed and distracted, and you may feel lost. There has to be a foundation built so strong that it can withstand challenges and obstacles that come your way. Because of course they're going to. This foundation provides you everything you need to claim your ADHD.
Ways to thrive and live your life the way you desire with clarity and focus. It isn't a one-time experience.
Tracey (02:03.786)
It's something that grows and evolves and helps you have the sustainable happiness you want to have in your life. So if you're wondering what I mean by your unique ADHD blueprint, I created it because I was noticing that there is so much deeply personal about ADHD for each and every one of my clients that I work with. There's the challenges that are unique to you.
The strength areas that are unique to you. There are your own past experiences and what you believe about those experiences that are also unique to you. Having clarity around all of these aspects of ADHD is what's going to help you move into the areas of your life that you want to find more ease and clarity in. Like I always say, ADHD is not a character flaw. It's not
Fixing yourself, it's not trying harder. It is about figuring out what makes you you and how you are going to strengthen areas that you want to strengthen and also celebrate the areas that are working in your life. Oftentimes, the areas of strength or the areas that work, our brain does not recognize them. It only goes to what is difficult. So I want you to continue.
Consider what's the foundation you're currently working off of? Is it one where you are white knuckling it and you're pushing harder and harder to get everything right? Does it feel like you can't even stop to think about what we're talking about here today? Because if that's what it feels like, we need to slow it all down, which I know might not be your favorite way of doing things.
I want you to think about: do you hyper focus on the areas of your life that aren't working, like we were just talking about, that your time and energy are going into, you know, all the things that you haven't done, or the worry or fear that prevents you from doing what it is that you actually want to? Things like indecisiveness.
Tracey (04:21.89)
Worrying, shame, and guilt. They make using a planner difficult, following through, hitting deadlines. It makes it nearly impossible. So if I were to ask you right now what your strength areas are, what would you say? I want you to grab something to write on if you can, or come back to it later, and write a list of your strength areas.
If this feels like a difficult question, that's okay. Sit with it for a while. Consider what do you feel comes naturally to you? What are things that you enjoy? What things do you feel like spark your curiosity? Those are often really good ways to tune into what your strength areas are.
I want you to be able to rattle these strength areas off without even having to give them another thought. So if you're not able to do that right now, that's okay. Like I said, take some time, sit with it. You could ask someone close to you. You could ask colleagues. Remember, it still might not be in alignment with what you feely, feel truly, deeply inside are your strength areas. So this is something not to rush.
It's something to think about, it's something to put your time into figuring out what feels right. There was a study done in 2025 at the University of Bath, and there haven't been studies done like this before, looking in particular at ADHD strengths. They wanted to see if there were differences in what folks with ADHD endorsed as strength areas compared to people.
Without ADHD. And what they found, not surprisingly to me, is that there were differences. There were particular strength areas that people with ADHD endorsed. Some at the top of the list were things like hyperfocus, not surprising, creativity, using your imagination, intuition, and spontaneity. Those are
Tracey (06:40.21)
extraordinary strengths to have and when your brain is in your own unique strength zone it is going to be able to experience and express it far beyond what other people are capable of that do not experience ADHD. ADHD is all about extremes so it makes sense that the challenges can feel so big, the strength areas can
Also be that big as well. And the study saw that when people are tapping into their strength areas, so number one, they they recognize what they are, number two, they're actually tapping into them and using them, that feelings of well-being were also improved. This is such amazing news because the more clarity you can get, the better. It's going to help you skyrocket.
Rocket in all areas of your life. I want to share a little bit about a client that was really struggling in this area of strengths and having a strong foundation to build her life around. Robin was a lawyer in an environment that was, I would definitely say, high pressure. She had been performing really, really well and enjoyed her career.
She ended up experiencing perimenopausal symptoms and then added on a late diagnosis, ADHD diagnosis. What was happening was her output had changed as far as the pacing. She had started to feel some challenges around organization.
What happened from this high pressure environment was lots of you better hurry up and get on the right page or you're out. And as soon as that pressure became embedded inside of Robin's brain, her performance became really difficult. Her anxiety increased, and she during our first session that we met felt lost, wasn't able to name her particular
Tracey (09:02.544)
Strength area that had provided so much, so many rewards in her career. It had dampened it so much, the pressure and the challenges she was facing. So we had to start there. We had to think about her unique ADHD blueprint. We had to consider what were her true strength areas? Where was the gap between those areas?
And the challenges, and where was the shift needed to be able to help her move into that place of feeling confident and calm? And it took building this strong foundation so that then she could add on all of the strategies that she needed to help herself get from A to B in her own unique way.
So when you take a look at your ADHD, learning as much as you can about it, and you start taking a look at your own unique strength areas as well as the challenges, and you start to rewrite what your experience is, that is where you are able to tap into your own extraordinary talents and you're able to work through the challenges that arise.
So what I would love for you to do this week is take a look at those strength areas, get really clear, give yourself space and time to do that so that you can have the clarity that you need.
If you are listening to this podcast during the month of September or October, I do have a new program starting called the Focus Formula, and it's all about helping you with this unique ADHD blueprint and figuring out ways to help your brain focus so that you can bring more calm, ease, and confidence into your life.
Tracey (11:16.428)
All the details are available to you on the website, so check out tracybromleygoodwin.com for the details. And I look forward to the next time we talk.
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