By Jeff Copper, MBA, PCC, PCAC, CPCC, ACG – June 24, 2024
Are you familiar with the ADHD Machine, Mind, and Mission Model? To me, it’s an exciting tool to help you understand how to move forward with ADHD. The model can also explain how medications and other treatments, like coaching, can affect progress differently. It’s a mental model for those who are struggling to move forward. It’s a great way to put things in context, not just things like exercise, diet, and medicine, but also coaching and other types of treatment.
Historically, doctors have explained things to patients in a very medical kind of language that nobody really understood. People couldn’t relate to it. Instead of talking about the prefrontal cortex of the brain and dopamine neurotransmitters, David Giwerc of the ADD Coach Academy came up with his Machine, Mind, and Mission Model.
The MACHINE is the brain, that engine in your car that allows you to get out of the garage every day and drive somewhere. The MIND is the fuel that powers the engine. The mind is not talked about nearly enough because the beliefs in your mind have an impact on the proper working of the engine, your brain. So, if the beliefs of your mind are not in harmony with the machine, then you can’t pursue a MISSION, which is what it is to be a human being, having values, principles, and things that are important to who you are as an individual.
Your machine works differently from everybody else’s, and you have your own beliefs. But if you’re not paying attention, then you fall back on bullying yourself: “I don’t meet the standards,” or, “I’m not good enough.” A lot of individuals with ADHD will do this because they don’t meet the strict standards of performance in school or at work. Then, the beliefs that they create become their failures, when, in fact, the brain, the human machine, should not be limited.
It’s so simple because using the analogy of an engine puts things in a context you can comprehend, but yet, it takes a lot of understanding to see how it all works together. This blog post is targeted to ADHD folks, but it can really apply to anyone with issues concerning their values, principles, and character traits. I encourage you to check out my interview with David Giwerc on Attention Talk Radio, “The Machine, Mind, and Mission: A David Giwerc ADHD Model,” http://tobtr.com/2066989.