00:00

Welcome to Make More Money without Selling Your Soul with me Polly Lavarello, evergreen marketing expert. This podcast is for you if you are an online entrepreneur who is looking to simplify their business to scale.  On this podcast you can expect to hear regular talk about wealth, about selling and about wellbeing. Because I believe these three core fundamental things are pivotal to your growth moving forward.

00:44

Hello, and welcome to make more money without selling your soul with myself Polly Lavarello, evergreen marketing expert and cushy business pioneer.

and today I am talking with Michaela Thomas, who is a clinical psychologist, therapist and coach who supports female entrepreneurs to balance their brilliant ADHD brains, with their busy businesses, Michaela is the bestselling author of the lasting connection develop love, compassion for yourself and your partner, and host of the award winning pause, purpose, play podcast and beyond that, she is also my client of many years. So I’m delighted to be having what feels like a relatively personal conversation on this podcast, talking all things ADHD. I am undiagnosed, but strongly believe I probably am ADHD and likely autistic, but usually when I have conversations with Michaela, as she is my client, she is generally grilling me, so I’m really excited that the tables are turned, and today I get to grill Michaela on all things ADHD and as a psychologist, I’m particularly excited to hear what she has to say. Hello, Michaela, oh my gosh. I am so excited for this episode and to be talking to you, because we’re kind of swapping roles. Usually you’re grilling me, and today I’m grilling you. But Michaela, for anyone who has not met you, tell us a bit more about yourself. You know, today, the subject of today is ADHD, but before all of that became at the forefront of what you do, tell us a bit more about your journey in online business. How did you become self-employed? How did you start in this journey?

02:25

Wow, I’ve been in business for a decade now almost so it’s a long time having gone from being, you know, a qualified psychologist, to then trying to be a qualified business owner, whatever that is, having worked in the NHS for about seven years in the UK, experiencing burnout twice and realizing I don’t want this. I don’t need this. And when I became a parent to my first child, I realized that I couldn’t keep that going. I needed to work in a way that worked with my brain, not against it. So I went into, you know, in 2014 I started seeing clients privately, and then it’s just been growing it bit by bit. So easing it up alongside my NHS work to begin with, and then I felt I had to take the plunge. So from like 2018 2017 that’s all I’ve done as and I’ve been working fully for myself in the business, being a practice, owner of a psychology practice with associates and a team of admin and Operations Manager and podcast manager, this type of other things. So, yeah, I absolutely love it. It’s the best thing I’ve done for my energy brain.

03:37

I love that. And I’m so excited to be talking to you as a psychologist, about ADHD? I mean, there’s so many of us out there, myself included learning about ADHD purely through memes and funny reels, but so to have this real conversation with yourself, and what I also find really fascinating is that obviously you understand the brain far more than the average person on the street. So I’m really curious to know as a psychologist, what was it like for you learning to recognize that you yourself may have ADHD? Did you first recognize it in others and then start to see it in yourself? Like how did it come to your awareness?

04:13

Well, it’s funny. I’ve worked with ADHD for a long time in various forms, because specializing in anxiety and depression, which are common mental health problems. It’s not uncommon to see neurodivergence alongside that. So it wasn’t like I wasn’t seeing autistic clients or ADHD clients, as you as you also know it’s very common for them to come into burnout, so stress, anxiety, overwhelm, all these things. I was starting to see them more and more in my private practice, because I was putting out messages around perfectionism, overthinking, indecisiveness, impostant voices, self criticism, you know, beating yourself up, all of their stuff, I was basically calling them in by describing how they thought, felt and behaved. Without saying because you’re ADHD. So when I noticed that like half my caseload was suddenly looking like they needed an ADHD assessment, not only did I train to provide the ADHD assessments, but I was doing that through the lens of the lived experience as well. So I got my own ADHD assessment. First went through the grief and the relief, as I call it, the the basically the grief and the DNR.

05:25

GNR baby, yeah, GNR Guru, the Guru of coming to terms with your own brain. So I went like, inside out, you know, the experience of, what is it like for me? How’s that shown up for me? What do I need to iron out before I can offer that service to others so that I can be truly aligned, truly near Affirmative. So, yeah, it’s kind of hard to say. It was paint by numbers. So from A to Z, it was sort of like all of these pieces had to fall into place. But they are still falling into place. I am still learning. I am still work in progress, but I didn’t open the doors to my assessment service until I had learned enough figured myself out, enough to be able to hold that space for others.

06:15

Yeah, and what does it mean to you to hold that space for others? Because it sounds incredibly personal. I mean, that must be the challenge, right? Being a psychologist is, I’m always assuming from my experience around psychologists, is that there’s that sense of being somewhat removed from the other person’s experience, but at the same time, you’re experiencing it too on some level, like, how does that work for you and for your clients?

06:38

That’s a lovely question that I’ve actually never been asked on a podcast, and I do a lot of interviews, I wouldn’t say it’s removed. I would say that we do parallel processing. So I with you as the client, and then I with me as the person observing the client, because I have to parallelly process what’s showing up for me so I can tease out what’s my stuff, what’s your stuff? So that’s why I think the ADHD brain lends itself really well to clinical psychology, because we have to bounce all of these different things all at once. So imagine doing that when you work with couples. So it’s person a, person B, the relationship between person A and B, and my relationship to them, and what’s going coming up for me. So that’s like four different things to juggle at the same time. And I thrive off that I love, that I love the way I get to use my brain and the radar and the sort of built in sense I have for what’s going on. So I’m not removed at all from the person in front of me. I’m highly invested in that person in front of me, but I’m also working with a consciousness and an awareness of what’s happening for them, what’s happening for me. So I think that that’s a key thing that’s really helped my brain, for me to function as a business owner, a parent, a wife. All of it has been that conscious awareness, basically training my brain in mindfulness so that I can become more aware of what’s happening right now, watching the ADHD as it occurs, basically, rather than just reacting to it. It’s just happens, yeah? And it sounds really just along the ride, you know? Yeah.

08:15

And I can imagine it creates a really safe space for your clients in understanding that you’re not just observing, but you you really understand it on a deeper level than someone can understand us through texts and books. But I also want to come back to you, because we are going to talk about, you know, how it impacts business and stuff. But I think a really significant piece that we kind of brushed over very briefly there is the grief. I didn’t really experience grief when I mean, I obviously have not been diagnosed yet, so maybe I will do when I actually get the diagnosis, but the moment, I started to become like 99% confident that I myself was ADHD, I just felt galvanized. I felt relief. I felt and that’s not I’m not saying this to dismiss or poo poo on grief, but it means I’m really curious. I’m curious to know what that grief you know, if you don’t want to talk about from your own personal experience, saying what, perhaps, from what you’ve observed, what does that grief look like for people who’ve been diagnosed as ADHD, like, what are they grieving in that time?

09:18

So I’ll get answer to both points, because I think there’s a point of vulnerability here, and to be neuro affirmative means that we do have to speak about that vulnerability more how it is for us, but it also means to answer your question about how I hold space for for others, is to really, really know that I should not assume that my journey in terms of my neurodivergence And my assessment and my relief and grief will be completely different to anyone else’s, because if you have met one neurodivergent person, you’ve met one neurodivergent person. So I think that’s one of the differences between, you know, the content creator you see making these funny reels about the things you didn’t know, or ADHD, it’s like they’re doing that. They’re basing it on their own lived experience. I’m. Facing on what we know could be lived experience of many, and knowing that the formulation work, the time you spent with someone going deep, trying to figure out, what does this puzzle look like for them? That’s the bit that you pay for the expertise for from a clinical psychologist, because they can formulate and lay that puzzle. So that comes from that curiosity of the ADHD brain as well that I really want to figure out how it is for you, so my grief and relief will be very different to someone else’s. And yeah, you may feel more grief if you did go through the assessment process, because just the impact of reading your own assessment report can trigger grief that can be really, really challenging. And as a lot of us know from perhaps reading documentation about our children when we read it as an adult, if you go through adult assessment, then you have to be faced with literally decades of your lived experience that you now with the lens of ADHD could have gone, oh, maybe that needed not to have happened. Yeah, could be traumas you’ve been through, then maybe that could have been prevented. So the grief can be around loss. The grief could be around a yearning, or a longing around a life that you wish you had had. It could be around loss of relationships. Maybe some of these relationships could have been salvaged, maybe the some of the friendships you’ve loved bombed on and then maybe couldn’t adhere to or you’ve forgot them, maybe some of the romantic relationships that had too much chaos or drama, like any of these things could maybe have been salvaged. And so it’s not about like crying over spilled milk. It’s about giving yourself compassion that you spilled the milk in the first

11:41

place. I guess it’s a different level of processing. And I just wanted to, like, stop a moment and touch on this part, because I feel like everything I see online is always the kind of positive side of ADHD, almost kind of laughing at, laughing at what it’s like to live with ADHD, and maybe in some ways, almost trivializing it. And you know, it’s it is massively life changing to get a diagnosis, and I’ve seen how it’s impacted various friends of mine, and potentially, is one of the reasons why I have some resistance to getting a diagnosis myself. So I just really, like you say, wanted to normalize that if anyone is holding back or feeling fear around it, I just thought it’d be really interesting to hear your experience of grief. So thank you for sharing that. Because, yes, even just hearing you, I could feel heavy, heaviness in my body thinking, oh, yeah, no, that that would be a lot to be thinking about. So I appreciate that. And as a mother of a daughter and a son who’s where I’ve had to fill in various forms, I really appreciate that. So I’d like to get on to working, you know, being a business owner, which I find fascinating, because you both support business owners with ADHD, and you yourself are a business owner with ADHD. When you became aware of the fact that you yourself have ADHD, what light bulb moments did you have around how it is, I was gonna say was, but obviously still is impacting you with how you run your business

13:06

in every single way, every single way. And I mean, I’m not gonna toot your horn too much, but as my long term business coach, you’re aware of the differences. It’s sort of almost like metamorphosis that I’ve had because of confidence awareness, if you compare how we work together in 2020 when I didn’t know that I was ADHD, and now when I do know the last 12 months, or say, 18 months since I had my diagnosis, I have realized that it affected everything from revenue generation to day to day work satisfaction. You know, how I showed up at work. It affected visibility of how I showed up on Instagram. It affected my messaging. It affected who I attracted, how I delivered. Like, one of the things that was really difficult for me, personally was the over promising and under delivering, because I just couldn’t my money where my mouth was, and that was because I didn’t yet have the self awareness, partly, and the support systems around me. So it’s even led to me developing a whole, you know, framework and roadmap of working with ADHD is business owners who who have these challenges because I had that lived experience myself. I’ve realized I needed support systems and self compassion. I already had the self compassion piece. That’s how many compassion practices I needed to rope in the support and the system. So I was like, oh, but how can I do this when I cannot do it for myself? It really triggered imposterisms, you know, it really triggered sort of hypocrisy. So that’s when I started working with my operations manager, Laura, who I’ve collaborated with for many years, and I brought her into my own group coaching program, right? Because of the way she basically sorted my shit out in my own business, I realized. That other people need these systems as well. Other people need to really go through these processes. And we don’t want to, because it’s boring, right? We are, we are motivated by interest, challenge, urgency and novelty, not by importance. And you know, with you banging on about all these important SOPs, these systems, we need to do the fundamentals in business. They’re not feeling that interesting to us to begin with. But when I clicked around how I basically do this repeatedly, I will have that same, you know, cycle of bright idea to then not being able to implement it, to then feeling shit about myself, progressive faffing, and realizing, Oh, here’s another revenue goal I didn’t hit because I didn’t have the right support and systems and self compassion in place. So that’s what I’ve really been working on over the last 18 months, building the business from the ground up, realizing that I can invest in all the mentors, all the masterminds. But if I don’t invest in actually working with the brain I’ve got with complete, unique self awareness of me, none of that’s going to work, none of the hit. I will just own the business into that ground and I will burn myself out in the process. Gosh, you

16:20

know it was funny. I had this visual when I was listening to you. Listening to you, of like a racing track, although the racing track’s going somewhere really beautiful and but all these racing cars, and the ADHD brain is like a boat, like the boat could get there, but the boat needs to go about it a different way. And if you’re trying to race in a boat on a road, when everyone else is in a racing car. You’re not going to get very far. And I just love that you’re talking about this, because that’s, you know, what you just referenced in terms of investing in mentors, investing in masterminds, investing in, I don’t know, another real strategy, or any of those shiny things that US ADHD is love. You know, ultimately, like you say, if we, if we can’t control the actual vehicle our brains, then it’s just gonna be another thing in that museum of shame, right? And we all have a museum of shame, all those like things that we invested in that we’ve since ignored. I’ve literally bought online courses that I have never opened. Yep, yep. I probably, I mean, I don’t even want to count. I wouldn’t be able to because I’ve got about 80,000 on open emails.

17:27

Yeah, I don’t know what my record is at the moment, but yeah, I have literally created Asana cards by going through, you know, purchases I’ve made and put them on Asana, I’d be like, must review that one. Must review the thing that I bought and then never used, and it’s just again that comes with self awareness and not beating yourself up for being a boat when everyone else is a race car. You know, boats could still be very effective. Maybe we know that are actually quite good for the environment compared to racetracks, anyway. So to build on that metaphor, like if you see ADHD just as that shiny superpower that, you know, I can do stuff that everyone else can’t do, but then you ignore that there’s actually a disability feature to that. Then you might, you know, your boat might well sink because you’re not taking care of your brain as if it’s a boat. You’re taking care of it thinking it’s a race car. And that means you think, I can just keep going, going, going, I’ll just refuel, like, throw some more petrol in. But you don’t actually allow it to sometimes, just tug along. Sometimes you just need to float. Sometimes you need to think, you know what, today is enough if I just stay afloat. Like those days when you start the morning with a humongous meltdown from your kids, and then you realize that you are just shaking with nervous energy. And then you think, I’m gonna sit down and smash this thing out. I’m gonna be slaying my goals and all these things. I don’t think anyone says slay anymore, but you know what I mean, that pressure, no, of course, form as if you were a robot and not a woman in probably perimenopause with a cyclical, energetic fluctuation. So that’s been a huge thing that I realized for myself and my clients, is that you cannot assume that every single day in your business is going to be the same, because you don’t know what your day is going to start with, how stormy it’s going to be on the seas, and when your boat needs a bit of maintenance, and just turn the engine off and just float for a bit for a day, and the best outcome of that day is, well, at least I didn’t sink today.

19:29

Yeah, yeah. No. That really, really resonates. And I think something you touched on earlier as well, about if you know one person with AD ADHD, you know one person with ADHD, and obviously they say the same for autism, which, of course, can be a crossover of the two as well. And I think that’s also super relevant when we think about this urgency and this temptation to hustle and this temptation to do everything right now is even when you surround yourself with other people who claim to understand ADHD. D or say they themselves have ADHD, or may have it 100% they may be diagnosed as well. But we, I think what you shared about earlier on, about self awareness, that’s such an important piece, because ADHD can look so different for so many people, like my daughter, I would say, has it on a very I mean, she, she can barely sit down and read a book or write a sentence. You know it’s really, really impacted her. And I know other people with ADHD will happily sit there and read books for hours like it shows up for everyone so differently, which is why I think the work that you do is all the more valuable, because ultimately it’s creating your own compass, your understanding your own vehicle, and allowing yourself your own pace, right? Because otherwise, you know burnout. Like, let’s talk more up. Let’s touch on burnout briefly. Because I know certainly before, one of the things that helped me recognize I might be ADHD were ADHD tendencies. Like, okay, we’re launching so the emails going out today. We’re inviting everyone. We’re going to do it next week. Okay, can we have the ads and the sales page and everything ready in a week? And people being like, my team be like, No, we can’t do it in a week. Polly, oh, never. I want to do it now. I want to do it. If I wanted something, I needed it right there and then. And if my team couldn’t do it for me, I would be jumping in and trying to do those pieces to get it out as soon as I wanted it to be. And while I didn’t hit burnout entirely, I would have things like I would launch and then not be able to get a bed for a week afterwards, I would just be done in I would find myself not present with my children when I finished work, I would find myself working long hours, getting up early, staying up, all these ugly habits that suddenly would stack up until I’d look at myself and think I’ve created a monster. And that’s when these extreme things would come like, I’m pivoting, I’m I’m doing a new business, I’m doing an entirely new offer. Because this is all like, because if I change the external thing, right? That will change this. This will change these ugly habits. Because those ugly habits won’t come back if I have the new thing, and obviously that’s changed a lot for me, and that’s why I work with people like yourself and do the kind of work I do around creating a business model that supports us to have a life that lives but yeah, with burnout, if someone is working with ADHD in business and what kind of habits could lead them to a situation where they are burning themselves out. Well,

22:24

firstly, there’s so many things you say, and there are so important for me to answer to, sort of like two ADHD is walking to a bar having a great conversation, and now we’re gonna have to try to keep track of all the tracks, basically like you and me to a T there’s a few things there. One is the sort of the cost of the ADHD overworking, right? And the impact. One of it is the sort of the ups and downs that even when you are like, Okay, let’s do this, let’s, let’s, let’s do this. Click, click, click, let’s do it now. Manage to get everyone around us to fall in place, throw those emails out, lastminute.com and then you crash, right? So the slump is the, what I call the hyper focus hangover, right? We can just step into gear. We can just go, oh, urgency. I will now just go, go, go, all systems go, but it’s extremely taxing. It’s not energy efficient. That’s sort of like the equivalent of throwing rocket fuel in your boat, and then we’re like, Oh, why did that burn through the engine? Was that that was not the fuel for that boat. And in my example, there would be things like caffeine or sugar. I know we’ve talked about things like wheat or other sensitivities that if we throw that into our bodies, it’s the wrong fuel for our body, and we might be able to, short term, put in a bit of a blast and get some stuff done. And we’re like, right? Feel great. Got shit done. And then there’s the hangover, right? And that usually looks like a huge slump, in some cases, not being able to get out of bed. It never really gets to that point for me, but for a lot of my clients, they’re like, I’m taking a week off work, having to take a mental health day from your own business, or just your spark goes, and it’s so visible. And if you are your own brand, if you are you know, trying to embody your own leadership, it is so obvious when you try to talk to others, when your energy is gone because you have not looked after yourself. So coming back to that self awareness piece around burnout is, what do I need? What kind of fuel do I need for my engine to run smoothly?

And that will look very different to another person. So let’s make this less wooly and more concrete, right? I’ve just been to the coworking cafe that I go to when I need to get shit done. I have a very clear intention in my mind what I want to get done when I’ve been there. I’ve diarized it in my diary, saying, get shit done at Canal Street. And I’ve had that one thing in there that’s one way of sort of creating a system or kind of support around yourself with self compassion, not beating myself up for the fact that I procrastinate things I need. Get done. But like, you know, how will I get this over the finish line? Right? So that works for me. For another person might feel I can’t go to a busy co working space because the noise there will overstimulate me. I’ll be distracted by everyone else. So cookie cutter, yeah, like Polly, well, I’ve seen you in a very busy, noisy environment, and you do not look well. So I know that. So for some of us, we thrive off the bus, and for some of us, we can go, No, it needs to be completely silent. So you cannot just keep looking at these cookie cutter reels. Do this, if you are ADHD, what you need to have, like the three things too, blah, blah. It does not work. And this is why I am building things that are long term, slow investigations. This is why it needs to be allowed to take time. So this is also why I committed to working with you for 12 months, because I knew I needed to, almost, like, set that permission stamp in my mind that you know what, I’m not going to fix this in a quarter. I’m not going to fix this like in 90 days. It’s going to take me 12 months to not quote, work fix, but to do it sustainably, to lay down all the foundations, to work it through, to allow it to take time, to allow myself to get the awareness, try things, tweak it, sit with it for a bit, come back to it again, and that slow and sustainable way of looking through yourself and your business is what I prescribe. I don’t see any changes happening with quick fixes. Nothing that will last, because that goes against our nature. We want to do something really quickly, like, Oh, I just need to download that one, that one app that’s going to help me be accountable, or like that one planner, we’ve all been there.

26:44

I think I’ve got that. I literally am looking at a stack of 12 planners, or maybe quarter third, maybe one page filled in, because that one planner can come around time and time again. And by the way, can I just say, as a reflection from someone who’s been in business 10 years, I am loving hearing this from you. I think I’m just, I almost want people to, like, pause, go back 60 seconds and listen to what Michaela saying again, because it’s so true about the quick fixes. And I just want to reflect as well that you like, I know you’ve just shared that you have really changed the way you work, but you really have, you really do model it so beautifully, that self awareness, that leaning into support, that working through the less sexy things, like systems and processes to enable you to actually have more space for fun and play, and the things that do tinkle your ADHD bells, raccoons or to

27:41

use know, to use the example of, you know, I’m due to go on holiday to Albania in two days, right? Today is Tuesday, due to go on Thursday. We’ve been tracking the weather forecast, and it looks atrocious, right? Go, my bestie. We’ve been looking forward to this for months, and I really need this. And I plan in a September getaway as a way to reset and recharge after the school holidays, right? So people go like, why are you going to holiday? You’ve just had holidays? Well, I have holidays with neurodivergent children. It’s not a holiday. And for me as a business owner, I need that reset before I go into the next quarter. I need to look after myself and regulate my brain. Otherwise it’s running on that frantic nervous energy of like, go, go, go, go, go. But I’m not really conscious, right? I need to sort of down regulate. I need to come down a bit to then go up again in energy. So we’re going to go to Albania, but the weather looks atrocious. We’ve been tracking this for like a week or so, and getting closer and closer to when we need to either confirm the hotel or cancel it, and then we just had a brain wave. Right? The brain waves, the sparks, are one of the most beautiful things of the ADHD business mind, right?

So this is why we can come up with lateral thinking solutions to stuff me and my bestie both think, why don’t we do something else? Why don’t we cancel that hotel and go somewhere else. I cannot change the weather or where I’m going, but I can change the location of where I’m going, because, like Einstein supposedly said, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity, and that is what I teach. You need to start doing something different if you want to have a different result. So we’re going to Barbados, right? Love it. I’ve always wanted to go to Barbados. My bestie has heritage in Barbados, so she can go and see her dad. We can do our like lifetime trip, and it’s less than 800 quid for flight accommodation. The point of reflection here of how this relates to my business is that I then have built a business that has the spaciousness where I can then add on two more days of travel, because I can, I’ve put the systems in place where my team knows what they’re doing. I can go to the Caribbean instead of Europe, and I know it’s. Mind to step away, right? That did not come from week one, right? Like you say, the push before the Kush, I couldn’t step away to Barbados three years ago. Then I was, you know, birthing my second baby. So it’s all a stage and a phase, right? All different seasons of your business. If you’re listening to this, you kind of go easy for her to say she’s jet setting up to Barbados. These are systems that take you

30:26

bloody well. Earned it, woman.  We all deserve it. We don’t have to earn it. We deserve it anyway. But, yeah, that is practicing, no, but like I say, you being through the push before the Kush. And I don’t mean to talk over you there, but I just felt the need to get that bit in there. You’re so right the push before the push. If anyone ever thinks that’s good for you, that will never happen for me. This is why the work you’re talking about is so important. Because when we stop fixating on what’s going to happen to us in the next 90 days, and instead make decisions today for the person who we want to be and the experiences we want to have in the next year, three years, five years, that’s what makes all the difference, and that’s the difference I see in you, Michaela, and that’s what I see you supporting your clients to do through that gentle self awareness of who they are and what they need, and learning to how, how to because it’s one thing to know what you need, but it’s another thing to actually Get it right. You know, learning how to actually communicate it in a way where it’s received. Oh, so powerful, hearing everything you’re saying. And I’m very, very, very jealous of Barbados, I’m going to sneak into your luggage. That’d be really creepy, wouldn’t it? Um, that’d

31:35

be very creepy. But that’s, that’s the thing of the sort of the brainwaves, isn’t it? That, you know, when we get a spark like that, coming up with a oh, well, let’s do something different. That’s the beauty of the ADHD lateral thinking. The difference between impulsivity, which we can get into a lot of problems in our business with. We like impulsive spending or investing into one or another digital course we’re not going to watch, and actually spontaneity that makes us feel alive, revitalized, energized and, you know, passionate, the way that we can often do is that piece of self awareness is that piece of being mindful and measured. So I didn’t just go, Fuck it. I’m just not going to go to Albania. Let’s book a flight to Barbados tomorrow. And then didn’t think of the consequences. And then my team was like, but you can’t be away two more days. I sat with it. I watched my thoughts. I observed how I felt in my body. I thought about how it feels to go to Albania in the rain versus staying in the UK. I thought about the impact on my business. I thought about what things I need to line up beforehand. All of that is the difference between being like, you can’t see me, but I’m having my hand on my face, like a face, like an alien, versus putting a little bit of space and distance between me and the hand and going, Ah, interesting. I can observe that from every angle. Now, what is it that I need to do that’s going to be really powerful for me to do right now? What does my body say? What’s my intuition saying? What does Sense and Sensibility tell me to do right now? That’s the bit that I teach, that wedge of self awareness and compassionate mindfulness helps us to just make wiser decisions, so that you can actually make the revenue that you deserve and also make the time and the energy the peace you deserve, so you can step away and have a bloody great time with your best in my radars, if that’s what you want to do.

33:20

I love that, because also what you just shared there essentially equates to slowing down for a moment, right? Rather than letting our kind of anxious energy take over the show, it’s slowing down, which leads very beautifully onto the question I like to ask my guests at the end of the show, which is how people can learn more about you. But obviously, as we referenced you earlier. I do work with you, so I know you’ve got a fabulous reset coming up, which is going to support slowing down. So would you like to share more about that? Thank

33:52

you. And slowing down might get like, a boo hiss boo kind of reaction in some of you, and I would really urge you to slow down and notice that really just be curious about why is it that I’d be like, I don’t have time for that. When I asked my community on Instagram how they feel about slowing down, the vast majority said, I need it, but I feel guilty if I do it. Some people said I prioritize it. I already do it, and some people said I don’t have time for that. But the vast majority did recognize, again, with awareness that this is something that is crucial to prioritize. For you as a business owner, you need to slow down, but we don’t allow ourselves the permission. So in my challenge, the reset that I’m doing over four days, I will go through my pause, purpose, play and permission pieces to help people actually utilize what we already know. I mean, you’re not stupid. You know from everything you’ve seen on Instagram that slowing down helps you to achieve success faster in the long run, it just is hard to do it in the short term, because it feels triggering, right? So noticing that, so that’s what I’ve got coming up. I’ve called it the sustainable success challenge, but it’s essentially a. Said, where you get bit more comfortable with slowing down and seeing that how powerful that is. When you are regulating your nervous system, you’re regulating your business income as well.

35:10

I love it, getting them off the rage race track and into the sea where they can thrive. Yes, the turquoise Barbados see exactly and again, that’s sort of what we’re going to do. And the challenge is to really kind of do a roadmap of what you need, not prescript to be like this is what every business owner should do, because what regulates you will be very different to what regulates the next person. What day is the reset? Oh, sorry, I mean to talk over there, 24th

35:39

to the 27th of September. Four days, we’ll do a short little live in a circle community. We’ll do a zoom link, but you can chat inside the circle community. And I will give you one little task to do, short mini thing. You can stack it on top of all you already do day to day. So we small tweaks with big impacts. And then the final day, I will do a longer masterclass. So if you’re like, can’t be bothered with this, you can also just come along for the fourth day, if you wanted to cut some corners, but I encourage you to just dedicate the time for the four days, because that’s when you get a really powerful transformation at the end.

36:14

Yeah, it’s that pattern break which is really powerful, isn’t it? It’s actually for the fact that it’s delivered over several days is part of the work that you need to do to show up for yourself every day, like that is a good habit to set for oneself. I love that, and the link will be in the show notes for anyone who is interested, as well as links to Michaela’s website so you can have a little mooch around there too. Is there anywhere else you’d like to hang out on social media where people can come and connect with you, ask you any questions they may have about this reset. Yeah, sure.

36:42

I’m the Thomas connection on Instagram and the thomasconnection.co.uk, it’s also my website, but you can also hang out with me on pause purpose play the podcast where I have interviewed Polly Lavarello many moons ago. I’m pretty sure that, yeah, we’ve we’ve both come a long way since then, but that’s where I speak to other successful business owners, and I speak about how to balance your ambitious ADHD brain with also avoiding burnout. So come and listen to the podcast. Beautiful.

37:14

Thank you so much for your time today. Michaela, I cannot wait for my listeners to go and learn more about you. I know from the popularity of my previous ADHD episodes, there’s a lot of you out there, so do go on and check out. Michaela, thank you again. Thank you so much for having me. Polly.

37:33

Well, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode with Michaela Thomas, psychologist. I myself gained so much from the conversation a real reminder of the importance of slowing down and honoring the vehicle that is taking you on this journey to success, recognizing not to compare your journey to anyone else who is on a similar trajectory to you alongside because it can look so different for all of us being Curious and showing compassion to ourselves all along the journey and learning as much as we can in terms of self awareness to support ourselves as and when we come up against the challenges which are uniquely ours as ADHD business owners. Anyhow, that was amazing. And I’m really, really enjoying having guests on this show. Next week, I will be talking with the Les Wilcox about her 20 minute email strategy. The episode’s already been recorded, and it is such a Corker again, another episode that I walk away, walked away with such tangible, solid, fabulous tips. In fact, if you are on my mailing list, you’ll already be experiencing the impact of that episode, so I cannot wait for you to get your ears around it. If you found today’s episode Great, please do share it with your other ADHD business besties. Drop it a review, or do anything you can to help my episode reach, or my episode, my podcast, reach as many ears as possible. I really, really want to reach as many people as possible, sharing all this good knowledge as far and wide as possible. Anyway, I think I’ve said possible enough times now, as I said, next week, me and Liz Wilcox come and join us, and we’ll be in your ears then.