#10 — Rejection, Meditation, and Feeling over Thinking | Leanne Maskell

Hi, this is Joseph Pack, and welcome to the Drug-Free ADHD Podcast. On today's episode, I'm speaking with Leanne Maskell. an ADHD coach and the best-selling author of ADHD and A to Z. We talk about rejection, meditation, and the importance of feeling overthinking. As always, In typical ADHD style, this podcast is completely unedited. I hope you enjoy it.

Typical ADHD style. You and I have just been talking for basically half an hour without pressing record. And there were some amazing things that we spoke about right there. So you're a very busy person. Yes. Yeah. And so you're a coach, an author of three books. Is that right? Yeah. Model. Yep. Speaker. Yep. Consultant. Yeah.

What else do you do? Is there anything I've missed? What else do I do? Oh, course creative. Retreats. Run the ADHD retreats, yeah. Yeah, wow, a lot. How are you managing all those things? I don't know, through great stress. Really? And actually, I don't know if you can hear it, but there's a car alarm going off right now. Can you hear it? I can't, no. That's kind of how my life feels all the time.

really there's more stuff good um yeah but I think I've done it by just sort of like embracing my ADHD and like being like okay I want to try out this thing and I've had coaching myself Throughout the whole process, I like left my law job a year ago and then just managed to make things happen as you go along. It's kind of like you figure out step by step.

rather than like being like okay here are 500 different things that we're going to be doing it's more like you know like the book come up at the right time and then okay i've got this book done and so it sounds it probably sounds a lot more impressive than it is Would you consider yourself a workaholic? Yes. Have you always been that way? No. I was actually thinking about this. I think that when I got diagnosed with ADHD...

I just, I had figured out how to turn all of the like kind of ADHD pain into like work, which was really effective. So. because when I graduated from uni I then got really really depressed and like my life just went off the rails like I would literally go out clubbing every night to be hungover the next day so I wouldn't be freaking out about my life

every day because I was modeling full time. I couldn't decide what job to do and kept changing my mind. So yeah, like I basically did nothing until I was 25 except travel around the world and freak out. and then and get drunk and then once I was diagnosed with ADHD and also I started actually before then I started writing this book about modeling and

I just figured out I could write this all day, every day and no one could stop me. And I was like, wow, I can give myself the job. Like, that's so good. So that is probably from the minute. It's kind of terrible, but I think like. before then I was really I was like very suicidal before I got diagnosed ADHD and I almost I've the reason I wrote this first book is I was like well before you die write a book because then at least your life hasn't been a huge waste of time and that you can like

help other people avoid getting into your position but when i look back and i'm like almost it's like doing a deal with the devil where it's like now write a next book and the next one and the next one we gotta keep writing to stay alive are you writing another book I am writing two books at the moment at the same time. Wow. Yeah. Are they both non-fiction books? Yeah. One of them is about emotional abuse and the other one...

about ADHD coaching. Okay, amazing, yeah. Who knows if they'll become books or not? I don't know. If I just...

But actually, that's an amazing thing because you're focusing on the process. Do you feel in yourself that you're focusing on the process or are you like, do you have the outcome of that in your head all the time? No, like literally the only reason I write books is to try and figure out processes.

i wrote the adhd book to figure out what adhd is for myself and i wrote the book the reality manifesto this year which was to basically become unaddicted to social media because I was so annoyed that like I couldn't get off it and I'll say I started working with people that were really addicted to it as well and I was like wow my experiences as a model might help you And then these two now, one of them is basically the emotional abuse one. It's like complex PTSD.

And because like, I'll still see myself repeating patterns and like being manipulated and getting really angry at myself being like, is there a book that these people have read out there that tells them what to do? Like, I need to write the anti book to that and figure out how to stop being like.

gaslit and manipulated um and then the other one is like the coaching one is literally from my coach she told me to write down all my processes because like adhd works my coaching business has got to the point where i sort of need to take coaches on um

And so instead of writing out the processes like a normal person, I started writing a book because it was the only way I could mentally like organize my thoughts. So yeah, they're not really intended to be books. I think that one might end up becoming a course. hopefully amazing yeah i mean do you so a lot of people that are listening to this are probably in a position where they're like okay i think they're very good not goal obsessed but outcome oriented

So to hear you say that you're just like totally focused on the process, which by the way, I believe is absolutely the right way to live. And if you look at like... i don't really want to go down the road of talking too much about like successful people but people that get this stuff done the people that actually achieve things they tend to be very process driven actually so like do you have some advice like from an adhd perspective on how to get more process driven

Oh, yes. I am coaching like seven people on writing books right now. We've got, I should start a publishing house. I think it's basically act now and think later. If you want to write a book or something like that, you want to write a book, start a course, do a retreat, do it. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. Don't give yourself the time to think about the end result.

stay off Instagram, social media, stop looking at people and what they're doing. Like, do you know how amazing it is? I'm coaching a woman on writing a book called ADHD and she wrote this book like four years ago. um before i'd written my book but she made this like beautiful beautiful powerpoint presentation and it's so good like her book will be amazing it's like all about the language um it's kind of it's so it's different to mine

But it's like all the language and words and like figuring it out for herself. But then she got like caught up into the social media, like, oh, I should make a load of followers. So I should build a brand or I should do X, Y, Z before I can do that. Whereas like me.

The whole time I've written books, they've just been like, the first one was literally a blog post. And I was like, okay, this is really important. I should try and make sure that it goes out to more people. How do I make it a book? And yeah. sound really somber but like because I didn't really intend to live past that I was like okay I'm just going to spend my money on turning this into a self-published book and then

And I didn't think like, oh, who's going to read my book? I was like, just get it done and then you can die. Which is not the most effective method. I would definitely not recommend that. Maybe don't follow that advice.

almost act as though like you don't have time to waste to think about like oh I've talked to a lot of people like oh I want to do that in the future or when I've got time or but like just start doing it right now because the minute that your brain gets especially if you've got ADHD when your brain gets hooked on the dopamine of just doing something then it will start like acting and like going forward and like

Just do it. Don't think about like, oh, how much money do I make? Like all of these things that like the brain likes to come in with. Like, oh, is that a realistic option? Just like force yourself off the cliff, not literally. And like they say, the net will appear and it does.

you just figure it out as you go along because you like talking to you seem like you're talking about quite very very difficult experiences that you've had but you're doing it in a way that you seem like as this past year like have you sort of like therapized yourself if you will from the feeling that you were in because you're so smiley and happy like do you feel really different

from there like has a lot changed basically oh since i was diagnosed i kind of think of my 20s like two halves like before i was diagnosed Even the diagnosis wasn't that helpful. But before I basically started like ADHD coaching and learning about my own brain and like understanding that this thing was like maybe real and how to interact with it.

my life was like a mess it was very awful i would like wake up in the night crying like wishing that someone would kill me like it was really horrible um literally every day i'd wake up and be like why am i still alive like why can't someone kill me um i'm so sorry to hear that It's fine. Like it was, it's really nice to not be like that now. And like, I do think it was really hard to experience, but now like.

it makes you really appreciate your life because how I actually got out of that is I've reached like what you'd say rock bottom and like kind of decided to die before the book um but then in that week I was like okay this is my last week here I should be doing like what do I want to do so I had like chocolate croissants for breakfast every day and I like went for big walks on the beach and I like didn't care about the future because I was like well this is my last week so I should

enjoy it and then I realized like I was happy and that is the main thing it's like getting off the path of what you think you should do and just living your life like and then I was like also I could die tomorrow I love that I'm here being like oh Sunday any of us oh because um I met a guy during that week and he was in this like mental health circle on the beach that I went to

I was actually volunteering at it because I was like, maybe they can tell me if I'm crazy. Maybe if I work there. But this guy, he said that he had been like, he left America and he was really, really suicidal and he'd broken up with his partner. He came to Australia and he was like, my partner was murdered last week. And then it just shook me out of what I was going through because I was like, oh my God, here I am thinking like.

I'm like, my life is so awful. I can't figure out what to do with it, et cetera, et cetera. Like, and then I was like, but they're like, everyone I love is alive. They're healthy. Like I've got the whole world at my feet. Like I can just enjoy it. I don't have to like.

stress out so much about it and um yeah I think it's a really important thing especially with ADHD because like the suicide rate is five times higher if you've got ADHD which is like something I never would have personally connected to so when I was diagnosed I was like that's not real I was like I've got a real problem no um so yeah but like these days my life is like yeah I can't put into words like how amazing it is

oh that's so good to hear keep going yes start living as though you're gonna die tomorrow and you'll start yeah it's just like start living your life that's not bad advice yeah in a way and you know it's like so

The number one thing I've used to manage my ADHD has been meditation. And I know meditation is really difficult for lots of people with ADHD. And I try really, really hard to communicate how to do meditation in a way that I think works better for people with ADHD.

When you meditate a lot and you also study the sort of, let's just call it Buddhism. Let's not get into the technical stuff. But when you study Buddhism and... meditate a lot you realize that absolutely every single thing in the knowable universe is transient in that it is here and then it's gone it's here and then it's gone including the atoms in our body are getting very deep

So do thoughts, so do bad events, you know, no matter how hard they are. But me speaking about this is talking about it on an intellectual level, which doesn't help. in some ways but we have to experience it so and we experience that through deep meditation or through yoga or through psychotherapy or through lots and lots and lots of things and you've just explained that by your experience on the beach

That it sort of like clicked you out of this sort of feeling like, because I, I have, I still do this, even though I meditate a lot and whatever, I still do it, which is that there's something very bad happening right now. It's going to be like this for the rest of my life. And I forget that this exact same thing happened 12 weeks ago and it lasted 24 hours and I was fine the next day. Exactly. I think loads of people with ADHD suffer with that exact problem.

yeah i was like literally historically crying and paddington station being like i'm trapped in my own brain i can't describe what is going on other than that and like Then I called up this woman that I actually talked to in the morning about working with me.

And I was like, can you coach me right now? Because she does, she's called Claire Hester, which is very, she does like embodiment coaching. So she gave me all these like breathing exercises to do like in, I managed to get to the park, like in the park and like.

um kind of like basically like feeling my own body and standing in certain ways or lying in certain ways because I was lying down I was like it's too embarrassing but it was so incredibly helpful because I do think that's really common thing with ADHD and like one of the ways that I coach people is on the ways that can affect our executive functioning and a huge one of those is self-awareness um and we like me I'm like I'm a really self-aware person except

I'm very intellectualized in my brain of like writing books about my problems and being like, here's a book. I have ticked the ADHD box. Thank you. Goodbye. But like not feeling them in my body and like actually being aware of like my own needs and like me as a human being and not as like a brain that's running off existing. And that's why.

I think it's really important to say, although like... people might look objectively speaking like successful or whatever they're doing like if you're not actually in your body and able to enjoy any of it I coach a lot of really really incredibly successful people who are not happy because like what is the point in like doing all this stuff if it's just

Like for what end goal if you can't actually like calm down enough to enjoy it? Yeah, that makes so much sense. And it's like, so I heard, so do you know the book, The Untethered Soul?

have you read that before yeah so michael singer like so i consider him my teacher basically i've never met him by the way but i've listened to him speak so many times that he is my teacher and he told a story about how he was working with a university professor and this guy had spent his entire life thinking so much so that he didn't even realize that he could feel so he

Michael Singer, this actually sounds ridiculous until I actually explain the next bit. So Michael Singer was doing a lecture about the heart, not the actual heart pumping blood, but the heart, the spiritual heart. And he said... At the end of the lecture, this professor comes up to me and goes, what do you mean by the heart? And then he said, you know, the feeling that you get here when something goes, I don't know what you're talking about.

And so Michael Singer gives him these, he says, go and do this over the next few weeks and come back to me and let me know. And anyway, he comes back and he goes, Michael, like, this is amazing. This is the first time in my entire life I've ever felt anything in the heart.

and so that's it it's like the one of the dangers of intellectualism let's say is and we can i have spent a lot of my life like massive bookshelf back there just reading books so that i don't have to listen to the voice in my head or feel the pain in my heart mm-hmm yeah are you the same yes on saturday i was literally like six o'clock in the morning making courses for like five hours until i had to leave the house and that's when i started crying on the train i was like what is wrong with me

So that was like a coping mechanism to like just to keep being productive so that you didn't have to face whatever was going on in your mind. Yeah. And I think that is the same for like a lot of workaholics. in adhd like in particular just find ways to distract ourselves that especially what is dangerous is when they seem productive and that's why i try to be really really open and honest about like my experiences because like

they look productive and they're technically speaking they are they do help people people pay me money sometimes but like it's not um it doesn't make you happy like there's a really huge difference between being productive and like being happy And when you've got ADHD and your brain is seeking...

dopamine it can get really stuck in the state of doing because you're not feeling things and then it's really hard to switch back and then when we're in that feeling place it can be really really overwhelming because it almost goes to the other extreme where we're like ruminating and we can't like get out of our own heads and again like into your body so i like did a yoga teacher training course in lockdown as a way to make myself do yoga

but like it's just that's that is an extra that is also an extreme way of trying to make yourself do yoga this is so for many days many months after that um but yeah Just like finding that balance where actually you can just exist in your body and be like, okay, it's okay to be here. You're not like...

And I do think we live in a world which is like, everyone should be super successful on LinkedIn by the age of 21. So, right. So someone messaged me the other day. I'm obviously not going to give away names or anything. And they were saying they really, really want to meditate. But when they start, it triggers rejection, sensitive dysphoria. Okay, I understand why that's happening. I don't really know how to respond.

to that person. Do you have any ideas? You know why it's happening. I actually don't. I know why it's... triggering a response but i don't know anything about the trauma or the reason or anything like that what would you say to them about that what would i say I would say that once you get down into meditation, you're starting to focus on, say, the breath, which means that the voice in your head becomes more noisy because you're actually focusing on something else.

Because you're not being distracted by a book or a film or TV or friends or something outside, you're having to deal with what's trapped in here. And it's desperately trying to release. But because it's so painful, you're... automatically without any without will uh forcing it back in and you don't realize you're doing it and what you actually need to do as much as this is going to be so painful and it's not going to happen overnight probably will take a long time is

slowly release it it's like it's been stored down with pain it's going to come back up with pain basically yeah is that the right thing to say because it's really difficult but yeah I think um yeah tell me what you think yeah I actually coach someone on this literally just now but like I use this planner with people sometimes which has got all these questions in it and the questions like

you know, what's one thing I can feel excited about today? And he was like, oh, who's someone that can make me feel happy today? you know, someone that I can reach out to and do something kind for. And he was like, the book is shaming me. And I was like, the book is, and then as I made him go through the questions and we're like, it's like, actually.

It's about how we perceive them. It's like the book is, you know, the questions, the thoughts, whatever they are, rejection, sensitive dysphoria, emotions. So I've got a whole course on rejection, sensitive dysphoria. That's why I was asking you. Come join the course. Because for me, I, yes.

sales moment i don't have that and i'm not i'm uh i don't suffer with problems with rejection so it's hard for me to answer that question for that person you see yeah Because again, you'd have to ask the person what they experience.

rsd to be because that can be different for everyone as well but i would imagine it's something along the lines of i'm so awful at meditating why am i so bad at this why can't i do anything right oh you remember that time that i made this mistake five years ago oh my god and worst person in the whole entire universe why does everyone hate me like i actually in my yoga teacher training course i had to do a lot of meditation for it

and i was like this is ridiculous all my thoughts about if people are annoyed at me or don't like me why do i spend so much time thinking about this it's such a waste of my time because again like i was just coaching this person i was like

it's impossible to know that all assumptions and every time you catch yourself making an assumption like maybe they don't like me like reverse it because and say this is something I do in the course and like with coaching a lot which is basically like Question your thoughts.

So like if you're trying to meditate and you get that thought, like, why am I so stupid? Why can't I meditate? What is meditating? Like, what is stupid? Like, how do you define stupid? How do you define meditating? Like, if you're just sitting there breathing, then you're doing good.

job like and it's all about listening to the way that your brain is speaking to you and like noticing what's happening in your body and like if you notice that there are loads of like really horrible thoughts which is a executive functioning part of ADHD because we have this inner monologue that's like a radio going off all day

and it's like you suck you suck did you know that you suck um and so it's like actually just tuning into it and like questioning the thoughts i didn't realize this myself um until i saw some I was like modeling in New Zealand and my friend took some photos and I looked at them and I was like oh my god I can't believe I actually look this awful and I just burst into tears and she was like

she was like you're a model and i was like i never really realized and she was like you're really horrible to yourself all the time but she was i didn't really realize that affected you because and it's all the ADHD like self-awareness like that's how I can talk to you about all the things that I just talked about like the suicide stuff and be completely fine because it is very disconnected probably if I was feeling it I would be sad but I'm like yeah

but like if i'm not like actually feeling that in my body and that's why all of these things i can be kind of helpful and unhelpful because like it is nice to be able to talk about this and not go into like very upsetting places and to hopefully be able to share that with other people but like if you're struggling with um like rejection sensitive dysphoria the main thing to do is to like catch

catch your thoughts and be like, is that true? There's a woman called Byron Katie. She's got really, really amazing work on this and like incredible books. and she gives you a process of like how to question your thoughts and find figure out like what the thought is like the thought i can't meditate um like what happens when you think that thought you beat yourself up you don't meditate

whatever you think that is yeah and then it's like who would i be without that for i would be able to meditate and then like what proof do you have for the opposite of that thought and it's really really effective for people that's that is amazing advice because like

A lot of the time I get people say to me, I can't meditate because my mind's too busy. I think a lot of people that don't have ADHD say this too, but obviously with ADHD, it's extreme. And I say, amazing. And they're like, what are you talking about? I was like, you just realized that you're not your mind. You just realized that your mind is talking independently of you. That is meditation. Just being able to sit and watch the thoughts without controlling them.

Like, that is amazing. You're like sitting in the seat of self, as it were. That's the technical term or spiritual term for it. And you can only go to great heights. from that point going much much deeper into yourself and so i've been meditating since 2016 and in the past two or three years i've got very very very deep into this and i now no longer listen to the voice in my head because it doesn't know anything

It is wrong all the time. And in fact, I've heard Michael Singer again say that he would rather shake a magic eight ball and listen to that than listen to his voice. It's that life just presents things to you as you go along. and you can and your job really is to respond to them yeah now um this is like extreme levels here i'm not expecting anybody's bill to do that overnight right now but that is where you can get to with this thing so

Do you believe that meditation is a good antidote for anyone suffering with RSD? Nah, it sucks. No. Rubbish.

the i actually have on my fridge written don't believe everything you think um and it's funny we're having this conversation exactly just coaching someone in there because it's like people can do stuff or the notebook can give you the questions but you get to decide how to respond to them like it's giving you the prompt to look for joy in your day um and the same with the thoughts it's like

The thoughts are going to keep coming because our brain is just constantly thinking up scenarios. And like it has been programmed by your experiences so far to like see certain reactions. So like.

you know like danger like i try i don't know i'm scared of going out at night because i'm like maybe i'll get murdered so it's like oh danger danger danger but then i can like question it and get in the middle of there and say that's not true like you've been outside in dark many times not everyone else kill you like um but I think the meditation and I think it probably is defining what is meditation like in my courses I have these live group coaching sessions and I

um read stuff it's kind of like a weird but I kind of made it up like I'll read out things like can you remember the first time that you found out about ADHD or like the your life before you knew about ADHD and when you beat yourself up for being lazy and stupid etc and like you know as a child when you experienced joy and happiness and you didn't care what anyone thought of you and then can you remember that point when that went away

and like kind of take people for a bit of a guided meditation if you like and then get journaling at the end and then put people into rooms to talk about it um which i think seems to work for my brain personally because

Like if someone's telling me what to think, it's a bit easier to hold on to than left alone in the room by myself with my own thoughts. And like, I actually had a therapy session recently where she was like, do you not think it's safe to feel your feelings i was like no like what if i die but then it's reminding yourself like that's not gonna happen like your brain isn't It's just trying to keep you safe and like actually picking them up and like, you know, for my.

But I meditated this morning, actually, for the first time in a long time. But I did it. I meditated. And just being in your body, I think, like, it's something that we should all do all the time. Like, it's not.

like oh is this good for this it's like this is good for literally anyone ever because it's just breathing and not doing something at the same time and like being trying to be nice to yourself is like a really good way of doing that and actually taking the time to like sit with yourself like a child like and just spend time with yourself yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly because like i do like a form of vipassana meditation now but again

To learn Vipassana, you have to go on a 10 day retreat where it's completely silent. You're not allowed to even look at anybody in the eyes. You meditate for 10 and a half hours a day, 10 days in a row. And then on the final day, you all come together and talk about your experiences.

now that is like extreme uh yeah i mean it's like well you go through you realize you realize you could read every single book on meditation and you wouldn't come close to what you learn during that time um because all the books are doing is trying to verbalize or intellectualize uh something that cannot be verbalized because

When all the thoughts, because there is a point that if you meditate for long enough that the thoughts just completely stop. Yeah. It doesn't happen like in an hour. It happens in like four or five hours or maybe a couple of days. But if they do stop, and when they stop, you realize, okay, the thoughts, when they're not going, it's literally the most beautiful place in the whole world. Because if you're not being bothered by the thought or by the pain, then it's just...

Okay, I don't really like talking about this because I think it's really hard for people to grasp because like I said, it's like it is about direct experience. But it is, some people describe it as the most beautiful thing in the entire universe.

and the best thing about that is that that is the pure version of yourself yeah exactly it's not that you're experiencing the most beautiful thing in the universe you're experiencing yourself and while the mind is talking it's blocking you from experiencing that the problem is that there are many many layers of the mind and at the very very top layer superficial layer there's a lot of stupid things that we

worry about like um whether we've got like a rip in our trousers when we go outside or something like that but deeper that's protecting us from the next layer of the mind and deeper there's something more painful and deeper than that there's something more painful and then deeper deeper deeper and right at the bottom there's like the big big things that have happened in your life that are causing almost all of your behaviors today yeah and with

long sustained meditation we get to those trauma we get down to it and then it's just we feel the pain again and it's absolutely horrendous but if we're able to sit there and let it out then we become liberated basically that's what happens so yeah the thing is that humans are feeling animals first like not a thing yeah yeah something someone did with me once was really helpful because i was like oh i'm crazy

And he was like, just put your hand on your heart and then like, feel like, can you feel a nice feeling in there? I was like, no, no, no, I can't feel anything. And then like, eventually you can feel something. And he was like, that's who you are. Like, you are not your thoughts. Like, you are this, like, feeling. And it was a really nice thing to do because I was like, oh, like, whew. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that's how I live my life now, pretty much. Because the...

like again talking about i know that people struggle with it and it's difficult with meditation but there is something that i generally advise people to do before meditation which is breathing techniques because as like the pranayama the breathing as being part of yoga obviously and meditation being part of yoga they're both connected to each other like the breathing helps me calm myself down enough so that i can get into a deeper meditative state but also the breathing

helps me stop having a panic attack. How do you avoid meditating? How do I define meditating? You said you want to do breathing exercise before? And meditative. I will do. My meditation is not. So I don't follow. I don't control my breath while I meditate. I follow the natural breath.

That's how I think of it differently. Now, there are lots of types of meditation where you do control the breath. The only reason why I do the type of meditation... So for many, many years, I did meditation where I was controlling the breath and focusing on it, but I've... vipassana meditation forces you to not do that because that's still the mind doing something so you have like the autonomic nervous system which controls the breath on its own without you having to do anything

But you can take over the autonomic nervous system to change the breath depth. So like I'm going to be breathing all night while I'm asleep. I'm not actually controlling it with my brain or like with my willful brain. But then when I wake up, I can take in a big deep breath like that. I decided to do that. Now, the autonomic nervous system also controls the heart, blood pressure, cortisol levels, all sorts of things, things that we can't just make a decision to change.

But the breath is connected to all of those things. So we can control blood pressure, heart rate, core, soul levels through breathing. I need to stick a drink of water. Oh, God. How do you define meditation? like the meditation you do or any meditation um meditation isn't a an action it's a state that we reach

So what we're doing by breathing and focusing on the breath and focusing on the sensations in the body are getting our mind into a state where we're in a meditative state. Then it becomes meditation.

the moment that we start and also if we i think if you meditate for a reason this is going to put people off if you meditate to be calmer if you meditate because you want to feel something at the end of this meditation session you're not meditating meditationism those are all benefits of meditation and reasons perhaps that you should do them but that is not actually the reason for meditation so i meditate so that i can release all of the

crap that i've been storing down there all the trauma and everything whatever it is my whole life and it's a it's basically i meditate around an hour a day and it's a practice so that throughout the day Whenever a thought arises or a feeling happens that I'm not happy with, I go back to that meditation practice in that moment, which is just focus on the breath as it's coming in and out of the nostrils and then just let the thought be.

So like my natural reaction would be to push the thought down or to act out the thought. Like that could be anger, get angry or pretend I'm not angry and push it away. No, neither of those things are the right thing to do. The right thing to do is just to let the thought be there. And I do that by then focusing on the breath, because if I'm focusing, my attention has gone to the breath, it's not gone to the thought. Yeah. But if I'm focusing on the breath, the thought's still there.

but I'm just not doing anything to it. Hmm. Thanks. Yeah. Is that the way that you would define it? Kind of what I said earlier, I think I would define it like just being with your... being mindful and being aware of like your breath and the thoughts that you're having because i think that's like in the book which i have there's a chapter zed is for zen which is all about this and like how hard it is to meditate with adhd they actually say that

um martial arts is really good for adhd to get you in that state and i do jujitsu and it is true it's so good it's like it is like i literally can't concentrate on anything else because i'm i just have to fight this person or if they're going to strangle me over there so that's amazing and i've been thinking about doing it as well martial arts you know i get that exact same experience from getting in an ice bath yeah exactly i don't want to do that though so you don't fancy it

no i don't like being cold so the ice bath is that the reason why i get in an ice bath is it boosts dopamine it boosts adrenaline and all sorts of things which is amazing and it lasts hours the benefit after but the main number one reason is because it's so unbelievably difficult to get in it that the things that normally affect me later in the day after the ice bath don't affect me in the same way because i think your body gets like a

like a healthy stress response when you get in the ice. It's like, at least I'm not so sad. At least I'm on the ice bath. It's not that bad. It's exactly the same as that. It's exactly the same. And then obviously you get all these anti-inflammatory benefits and things like that as well, which can be very helpful and stuff like that. So yeah, I find it incredible. Yeah, I think I'm in awe of people that can do that. I'm just not very good.

Have you tried a cold shower or anything like that? My ex-boyfriend has been really obsessed with cold water swimming. It was so nice. Really? like anytime we go near water you're like let's go in the water like no leave me alone like and he got really into trying this cold water thing for a while and like baths and stuff and yeah yeah like i did it

And so sometimes I would go swimming with him and like on the ADHD retreat, we did it because we went swimming in the ocean in October in like the morning and everyone said it was like so amazing and so helpful. And yeah, I think there's a lot of benefit to it.

i think it's probably been the number one thing that people have been interested in and what i've been talking about because i think that meditation is just too it also meditation so you get in a nice bath you stay in there for two and a half minutes you get immediate benefits immediately like you have it's literally completely changed your mental state yeah completely and it lasts hours the benefits of it meditation doesn't do that meditation is like

You start now and you're going to get the benefits in a year. Like the big benefit. That is like not, that's not something that an ADHD person wants to hear. Yeah. Like the...

I don't know if they'll be in meditation, but there's kind of like reframing your thoughts. I've got like worksheets on them that I do with people in coaching because it's like I get them to pretend to be a lawyer and like being... like a lawyer for the other side of their brain and like it's like turning it into fun and like making it like an instant gratification thing or like writing a letter to someone that like you know

to yourself or things like that like figuring out ways to make it and for me actually I do find like working and like writing in particular like quite meditative um however again I'm not sure that it's the most healthy form of meditation like that's not sure that's the most healthy thing because i'm not sure where the line goes between like meditation and like disassociation um yeah so

Have you developed lots and lots of tools yourself for coaching? Have you learned them from someone else or have you just made them up in an ADHD creative burst of energy?

I did an ADHD coaching academy course for like a year which gave me a lot I had coaching myself and then yeah and like in the book I that's kind of why I wrote it like each chapter has got different exercises in it so on things like sleep or routine or whatever medication time management like confidence so I kind of have a lot of them there now and like money like got me in my and I used to coach I've basically been like really like people pleasing my whole life and had

brought up like ways of coaching people around me forever so and like i guess i've done the same thing with me as well like yeah you know like i um gave for my exams i gave like i made someone change the password to my facebook back on the day um which worked really well so like i always kind of intuitively knew how to cope with stuff by creating like little tools um and so now with like coaching that's pretty much what i share with

people um that's so funny because i i've clearly done exactly the same things but in a slightly different way yeah and that's why i probably should consider what you were talking to me about before we started recording Because a lot of people have said, way before I even started writing about ADHD, you should be a coach because you've just got this empathy thing and you talk to people in a non-judgmental way and actually the advice that you give is helpful and you ask good questions.

yeah i know but like uh this is what i do for a career like i work in technology and build things and whatever and it's like i think i'm like stuck in that cycle of that's what i've been doing all right and a thought to me Say again. Yes, exactly. Like a thought that you're stuck in. Yes. Uh-oh. And that's like, maybe I just should just do it. Like you said, just do it and don't think about it. Yeah. It's like the worst that can happen.

I could lose all my money and go bankrupt and then that is not going to happen. Usually then what? You get your job back or you get a different job. Or like you, it's also like we don't, I mean, with ADHD, we're very much like, I must quit my job and do this thing or nothing. But like, there's always a balance in the middle way. And like, that's what I do with people's eyes, just break it down to steps and being like, okay, how can you?

try this thing out and see if you like it before like yeah or like it doesn't become the only thing that you do like i do lots of other things what else are you doing Right now, I've got three talks this week for companies. I've got a casting tour for a big job. How else have we got? How are you coping with the modeling work? So that's like...

It seems like a very different thing. So you're coaching, you're like, is it all remote? Yeah. So you're sat inside, you're... on camera talking to people but then your modeling is totally different to that so is that is there like a coping mechanism for being like switching between like the context switching between those two things um it's really good for me actually like you know the brand next yeah Like at the start of the year, I modeled for them like every week.

five months and I'd have to go to Doncaster. And it was such a completely opposite thing to what I was doing. That was a really nice break for my brain because coaching and particularly ADHD coaching is really emotionally intensive.

like you've got to be really present for people and you've got to be there and like present with them and holding space for them so then to just be able to switch off and do modeling it's like nice i have my photo taken easy and so like it's a real and like just chat about nothing like you know it's a really nice opposite thing to do but i've had to put in really really firm boundaries with like modeling with everything

But like I've had to get really strict with myself on like the boundaries and how much. And like, you know, you asked how I deal with the things like. I kind of have an image of what I want my life to look like. And then I know what to produce. So like, I don't want to be a model in the future. Like I don't mind modeling. I've never wanted to model ever, but I've been doing it since I was like 13 years old. So like, but.

It's kind of something that I can pick up and drop when I want to or not. I'm really privileged to be able to do that. but um like so that's not going to be something i prioritize now because i know what i want to prioritize so i get like short-term goals and i make sure i like meet these goals before i do like other stuff right yeah so do you how do you feel if you miss a goal

I don't miss goals. Yeah. I usually do my goals before I have to do them, but like, uh, I would be fine. Like, you know, the goals that I had, like, the last few months, one of them was, like, see friends and family more, and I have not done that. Right, yeah. Because I'm, like, I've done... quite well in life so far but i've never set a goal ever oh yeah yeah you should get coaching with me you're selling me

Because having goals, like I was just saying, and I think a lot of people, so that's also something I do when I start out coaching them. I'm like, pick three things that you want to have done in five years. And then we're going to work backwards of like what those things look like now.

because like I think having ADHD means we can struggle to think about the future and struggle to conceptualize them and we're very like oh now I've got a podcast okay like yeah I set up a podcast for the model manifesto in my first book because kate moss's sister messaged me and she was like i want to help and i was like okay i could create a podcast you could come on the podcast like it's just like oh but like that's exactly what i would do

yes that's what you've done yeah that's what i've done yeah now i'm stuck with it no i genuinely i genuinely am enjoying it a lot like yeah but like that's pretty much how i was living my life i was like okay and now i've got a book on social media and like oh my god i don't do anything seriously like

now i have to promote this book now i've got all like say but it's just not beating yourself up i mean like okay that was good like the adhd book literally no one um read it for like two months and i was like oh I didn't promote it at all. And it's just embarrassing and awful until like some senior person at Microsoft messaged me and was like, this has changed my life and helped me so much. Can you come and talk to us at Microsoft? And I was like, okay.

My dad was like, that's a hoax. Don't reply to that message. And I was like... i don't know i paid for my old model agent and i was like maybe you could charge them like 150 pounds i don't know and then they paid me like a lot more than that and yeah and i just did it on my lunch break and it's like and now now the book is like a completely

different like yeah god that's so crazy how popular it's been but like that's not ever been the goal for me it's more like oh kind of do things and then I look at them I'm like right but I think creating some kind of goals is really really really good for us in our life like and they don't have to be like do a TED talk or like be a millionaire or whatever like but just some kind of goal so we know

how to prioritize our life now is really helpful i feel like i really struggle to know what the goal should be like what i actually should want or do want or and Then I write, I mean, I have written a few goals down in the past. I've never even like taken a step towards them because I look at them and go the next day and go, well, I don't want that anymore.

So what I started doing was the reason why I was drawn so much to Michael Singer was because his whole approach was like one of surrender to it. So I was just like, just let life happen, basically. I was like, oh, that's better. I'll do that. And like that made me feel great.

But at the same time, I can feel that now as I'm working in technology and I've got this audience of people with ADHD, which is growing like way faster than I ever expected. This podcast, people asking me to be on it all the time. Like, because at first I would go and...

message people and say can you be on my podcast like i did with you but now i've got people like booked in way into next year who have just asked me to be on it so now i don't have to reach out to people anymore and i'm like i've have a newsletter that has to go out every single week and it's like I'm gonna take it what am I doing I'm taking on so many things here say again you don't make any money from it nothing I've not made a penny from it

so it's very nice that you're doing that but it's like that's a huge chunk of your life that you're spending like i did this on my podcast and i put something on linkedin i was like he wants to be on my podcast and then i got inundated with like 150 people being like can i run your podcast yeah oh and then like

the way that my weeks have been this meant i've done a few of them but then i have not been able to keep it up like right now which is fine yeah and then so i stopped it for a while and i might do it again in the future when i've got more time to do it like but like it's being really

there's something that someone is like choose your life otherwise someone else will choose it for you and it's like if you don't it's the difference between having goals like i must make five million pounds before i'm 30 or something and like yeah an intention Of like, I want to be happy or...

you know, like a common one that people will say, it's like, I want to be financially stable in five years. And then that ties back to like having to make money now, which is ADHD. We're very like, Oh, I don't want to make any money. I'm just here to help people. And that's nice. But then we burn out and then we're like, why don't all these people appreciate all the things I've done to help them? That is literally me right now.

like i spoke to you about it before we started recording the only thing that i've got the only thing that saves me is i get paid very very well already but uh that's you know i'm not getting i but i but i'm spending an inordinate amount of time on this adhd stuff and no so so funnily enough salesforce contacted me you know salesforce and they were like hey can you come and speak please

at salesforce tower and i was like yeah how much do you want and i was like i don't know like 500 quid or something so like i don't even know how much to charge or anything like that so it's you know yeah that's why like and so making this course and like book to help people in that world because i think especially there are not many adhd coaches and like no one tells you how much to charge for stuff and like if i didn't have my model agent then i would have been like

oh yeah oh my god cool um yeah i would have happily happily done it for free and i would most of my work that i do today like i would happily do it for free but it's like money isn't about charging money is not a bad thing to make it's actually like it's an exchange of value and time and like if you're going to go and talk at a company like charging money for that isn't a bad thing it's like they're profiting from you going

That's interesting because in my professional, I say, it's like I'm separating the two, but in my professional life in business and technology and stuff, I have no problem doing that. I'm very commercially minded. I've been selling. software and all sorts of things for years but then when it comes to the stuff i've been doing with adhd like it's there's like a block in my head it's like telling me that it's different in some way when really it's not

It's actually not because I am providing value in both sides. Exactly. So yeah, I'm going to do your course. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yes. I know you have lots. I'll make it now. In January, it will be up in January. I'll make it in December. It'll be my Christmas for myself. Incredible. Alcoholic prison. Yeah.

Because you were saying that a lot of people have said to me that there aren't that many ADHD coaches. But it seems like there are quite a lot. But maybe it's just that there aren't that many in comparison to how many people have ADHD.

I think that is definitely true I think there's not I think there's not that many and obviously like you know something that I'm putting in this course and the book and stuff is that uh the best way to start out coaching is like actually find a coach that's already working and help them out because that's what i'll be doing with my course the people that do my course can then come work with me but um when you

So like me now, I'm trying not to take on too many new clients. And so that's why I've created the courses so that they can do the course instead. But like, obviously, also in the UK, we've got like access to work so the government can pay for you to have coaching and like they want.

often want someone that's got ADHD or someone they know and someone that's quite tailored to them it's it's quite expensive quite different from like therapy where you can see a piece of paper and you're like oh no paper but coaching is not regulated either and most people don't really know the difference between like

i know the course i did adca or like the icf which um no not doing that no thank you no need no but like also like literally you could do coaching right now like there's nothing stopping you from doing that now and so it's just like i think it's a demand supply thing of like looking for a coach and like also yeah like with me i'm like quite full so i'll be looking to get people to help

out with like the how many people want coaching um because like if i took everyone on i would die and explode how many clients do you take on at any one time i try to keep it to 10. right yeah um have between like 10 and 15 usually like because i'm not saying no um but are they doing like is that like one hour per week per client but you know my old coach had like 55 clients

You can do it however you want. My coach, she said she does something like four days a week, five clients per day. Yeah, that's a lot. That would drain me. I would be dead at the end of that. i've had like that's why i wanted to do the course and stuff as well because it's like not only the money but like the actual timetabling of your life like if i did that every day

I would collapse and yeah and like even now I have to be really like that's what I want to do as well because like there are a lot of things people don't talk about like compassion fatigue like you're coaching people all day and hearing their stories and like you've got to be it takes a lot you've got to really look after yourself as well and make

sure that you can hold that space with them like know who you can and can't help like and what to do if like someone's got really bad emotional things that need therapy and like um yeah and like how to literally structure out your time and like how to do it because like I coached someone this morning and she was like I made her show me her schedule and it was like little meetings every day but it means that then she can't have any kind of like full

day of one thing but which might work in a way but like it wasn't working for her so but it's like figuring out what that is that works so you say like now I've got a framework of it so I like coach two days a week um mainly and then the other days like having coaching or therapy myself right okay yeah usually that's the way it's like hello please help me i've got loads of coaches at the moment um really

But I think it's really, really important because also the things I learned from my coaches and I put it back into my coaching. So it's like constant growing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. God, my mind is racing now. I've got a thousand ideas. Before we finish, where can people learn more about you? And what of the many things that you're doing would you like to send people to? We've got a book called ADHD and A to Z.

which will be out in November the 21st because it's been republished. I had to rewrite it. It was fun. It was very, very painful. And then I had to do the audio book, which was also very painful. Really?

yeah god um I like poured salt in my past sugar in my pasta instead of salt and I was like and someone I was like this pasta was disgusting and then they were like you just poured um sugar into it and i was like oh that's okay i'll just carry on and they're like carry on yeah can i just buy you some more plastic like no it's fine actually it's so good i'm like oh my god so bad my life

um yeah so there and then I guess go to my LinkedIn or website leannemasker.com or adhdworks.info if you want to talk about like courses or coaching or whatever maybe it will make it into my top 10 but yeah I'm pretty open like

yeah I've got like links on there that people can go on to if they want to do the courses and stuff like the courses has been really really nice like people seem to really really benefit from it um so I think if you're just trying to figure out what like ADHD is and what is you and like how do I

tell the difference between these things and manage it in a way because like for me definitely the most helpful thing is just learning like about it and how it impacts you so then you can basically stop beating yourself up so it's good of course yeah yeah which we're ending

You are enough. You're fine as you are. You are not lazy, crazy, or stupid. That's the book. Amazing. Quote, Leanne. Amazing. That's the title of a book called You're Not. Maybe I'm Not Lazy, Crazy, or Stupid. But, yeah. Amazing. Well. Thank you so much. This has been awesome. I feel like I've had a bit of a coaching session myself during this call, which is amazing. But thank you so much.

hopefully we can do it again at some point in the future actually because I feel like I've got about another few hours worth of things to talk to you about yeah it's so great to talk to you thank you