By Jeff Copper, MBA, PCC, PCAC, CPCC, ACG – March 13, 2023
When you’re observing someone else, it can be easy to make judgments and describe who they are and what they do. When you have to turn the tables on yourself, particularly if you have ADHD, it can be challenging. This is especially true if you are a creative type or a problem solver.
When emotions come into play, they can overwhelm you and make it difficult to articulate who you are and what you do.
For example, you may find yourself in an interview and asked why you’d be good for the job. What would you say? I have found a simple way to shift your mindset to answer this question easily. Just take the emotion out of it. This will take you out of the mix so you can look at the question for what it is. With just a bit of a mindset shift, you’ll have a different lens to see yourself objectively.
If you find yourself struggling to articulate what you can do, check out my video to learn how to communicate yourself with confidence: https://youtu.be/5aqaBpMkMDo
TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome, everybody, to this edition of Attention Talk Video. I’m your host, ADHD and attention coach Jeff Copper, and today I’m here to talk to you a little bit about getting to know who you are, finding the job, really a lens or a context that I found to be very useful, particularly those that are very creative, those that are problem solving, and those that generally just struggle sometimes to really understand what’s going on.
What I have found in the world is that when you’re looking at somebody else, it’s easy for you to see things, make a judgment call, and kind of whatever, and many people are very good at that. But when your skin is the game and it affects you, emotions kind of come in and you get a little bit overwhelmed and it tends to get a little bit challenging. And if you’re trying to articulate who you are and what you do, particularly if you’re a creative or a problem solver, it’s not easy sometimes to point to it.
What I found is it’s very helpful to make yourself inanimate, like a thing, and so this is just a simple little brain. It’s a brain. I worked with a couple different people where we defined the product that they’re selling in an interview, which is the brain. And we begin to talk about not the brain itself, it’s what the brain can do. So, you buy a computer, not because it’s just a physical thing that can sit on the counter, but what you can do with a computer or what the computer can do.
Recently, I’ve been working with an individual who’s really good at taking a big picture snapshot at meta systems and using behavioral models to redesign those systems. And what he’s done is he’s basically defined the brain as… He’s a brain scientist; he’s defined it; that’s what he does, and he’s got about 35 different outcomes that he’s pointed to that are basically the manifestation of everything that he described. The idea here is by defining himself, not by who he is, but by this thing. It’s tangible. He looks at. It takes the emotion out of it, talks about not what the brain is but what the brain can do, and then shows the evidence of the things that it’s done in the past to kind of connect the dots.
It’s very helpful because number one, it’s given him confidence. Number two, giving him the ability to articulate kind of who he is and what he does. And by explaining it in these terms and then using the success in the back as kind of case studies, people begin to see the pattern that’s there and have had a lot of success with this. So, if you’re a creative, maybe you’ve done different things in different areas. Maybe you’ve created different videos or musical-type things or a jingle, or… I don’t know… or maybe you kind of solve problems by… say this brain is what you’d be doing and it’s really good at problem solving in these particular areas.
And let me give you an example of 15 of those. I kind of use this in the light of when you’re going on an interview. It’s not, “Hi, what’s your job?” “Hi, I’m a squirrel; I climb trees. Do you have any trees for me to climb?” Or, “I’m a brain; I creatively solve problems. These are the types of problems that I have solved. Do you have a need or can you benefit from them?”
By doing that, it takes you out of the mix, you’re focused really more on particularly what you can do, and often those that are interviewing you are like, “Wow, I guess we do have that.” And if by chance they don’t need your skills or what you think, “No thanks, we don’t really have …’I’m the squirrel’ and any trees for you to climb.” It’s not a negative that you’re not really a good person. It just means that they can’t benefit from what you do.
So, anyway, this is just really a mindset and a lens that I found a lot of success with for those with ADHD that are particularly difficult. We hope you’ve enjoyed it. I am ADHD and attention coach Jeff Copper. You can learn more about me by going to DigCoaching.com. We do encourage you to comment on this video. Your comments actually spur other videos, and if you’d subscribe to our channel by just clicking on the subscribe button down at the bottom, we’d certainly appreciate it. So, with that, we hope you enjoyed this edition of Attention Talk Video. Take care.