Foreign.

Welcome back to a Monday More Yourself episode.

Hope you are all well, the beginning of this week and today I want to bring you a snippet from inside a recent workshop as part of the More Yourself community.

And I loved this guest workshop with Belinda Eddington, who, who is a executive function expert because what she gave us was taking away sort of the clinical explanations and understanding how our executive functioning really impacts us and shows up and validates how life can feel quite challenging and quite difficult when we have more compromised or more challenged executive functions in a very neurotypical world.

So this wasn't about just sitting in that place of, you know, victimhood.

This was recognizing how they show show up, why they show up, what parts of our brain it shows up, but then how we can help ourselves.

And that's what I loved about this workshop that we did.

And that's why I wanted to share it 10, 15 minutes from it so you can really sort of get some practical tools, insights of what we're getting inside the membership.

So Belinda, just so you know, is the director of MindSpark CIC, a not for profit that works closely with schools and youth organizations and other corporates to support children and neurodivergent adults.

And as an executive function coach, she also has lots of experience of working with ADHD and neurodivergent children and people, helping to improve critical life skills, which is essentially what executive functioning does when we don't know about, when we don't understand that we don't have the language, the articulation, the awareness and the recognition of why or how this is impacting us.

We genuinely think it's a character flaw.

We think there's a problem with our personality, we think there's a problem with our discipline, with our habits, and we make it very, very personal.

And I think through this session and this workshop, so many of the members of More Yourself were recognizing, wow, so much self judgment, so much self criticism has been put on myself.

I put so much on my shoulders that I just have to do more or be better or change.

And actually this is leaning into who we are, recognizing where we find those difficulties and those challenges and then discovering and recognizing different ways that we can work and live and where that support is needed so we'll understand why these executive skills matter and how they affect our daily life and how it's not a lack of effort or motivation and how executive functioning actually impacts our work, our relationships and our emotional regulation.

Really, really important to recognize this.

And then we can improve over time.

We can change our Brains, our brains are plastic so we can improve and grow over time.

This is all about a growth mindset.

So I really hope that you find this episode helpful.

And as always, the more yourself doors are always open.

So they are here for you.

You know, whether you want to just come in and watch some of the workshop replays, you want to engage with the audience or you just want to come in and be part of a community for a few months, for a year, whatever that is.

It's very flexible membership.

So come in, get what you need and I really hope it meets you wherever you are.

Right now, here is the workshop.

Just thought I'd share a little bit about what are executive function skills and myth busting.

And they are cognitive processes.

So we're talking about brain skills.

They predominantly are in the prefrontal cortex, which as I said is this front bit of the brain.

They allow us to filter distractions.

So really important when we're thinking about attention, where we're going to focus our energies.

They help us prioritize tasks when we're looking about a life journey.

Executive function skills are actually such a strong predictor of success in both school and education, but really importantly in relationships, in the workplace and lots of long term outcomes.

One of the really famous researchers into executive function skills, Adele diamond, she's absolutely wonderful.

If any of you wanted to know more, just if you pop in, you know, in YouTube, you'll see some fantastic of her talks there.

A great way to think about it is these are the skills that help you get stuff done.

So these are what, how they show up practically in our day to day life.

Now the first one we talk about is metacognition and that is an ability to think about thinking.

There are some other skills.

So what we have is response inhibition which can be used interchangeably with impulse control.

And that's that ability to just take a moment before you think, act or say something.

And I think we can all identify with impulsivity.

And so this is just that, that internal pause button that you take for a second to think about things.

I mentioned working memory already.

So that's how you hold information in mind as you kind of using it in your daily, your processing in the moment.

So kind of think of it in terms of memory.

You know, if you're using a copy and paste button on your computer and you store something on the clipboard just for like a few seconds, it's there.

It's really, really important that you store it for the time you need that information.

But once you've Finished the task, you get rid of it.

You don't need to put that in your long term memory at all.

You don't need to save it.

But it's really important for functioning and that also helps you bring in past experience to current situations.

The next one we talk about is cognitive flexibility and that is sort of problem solving, thinking about solutions that are not directly in front of you.

It also matters if you have a plan or a vision how something's going to be and it changes.

That can be.

You need to rely on your cognitive flexibility for that.

Emotional control is that regulation of our emotions.

And I think we can all be aware of our emotions.

They are so important.

We are not saying you need to regulate all emotions, we celebrate our emotions but it's about making sure that they are right for the situation we are in.

And I think this is about regulating emotion as well.

I'm sure we're all aware of the tendency to hyper focus, but this is about managing our attention.

So yes, it is great to be able to focus on things but being aware of what might be distracting us as well.

Task initiation is how you get started on a task.

So it's the skill that helps you overcome procrastination.

It is based on Peg Dawson and Richard Grare's work.

And I've got a slide as well.

Just showing you their book later which is smart but scattered.

So if you get any of their books, if you research them online, you can get some more information about these definitions as well.

But just to touch.

Everybody has affected.

So yes, if there is a neurodivergence quite often you can see challenges with the executive function skills.

But everybody has strengths and challenges now just so quickly these myth busters.

So thinking, you know, executive functioning is all about willpower and effort.

And I just want to say sometimes it's not, you know, these are real cognitive skills.

Sometimes there's a difference between that sort of knowing doing gap.

You might know what needs to be done but it's, it is different.

It's not just willpower.

And again, a personal example, thinking about, I was mentioning time management.

My relationship with time is I'm very here and now.

So that classic now, not now.

My world exists now and I find it hard to be seeing time, you know, in a linear way.

Whereas you know, for example, my husband sees time in a very linear way.

He's always aware of what's happening in the future and it is just, it's a difficult thing.

It's not willpower, it's not that I don't care about it.

It's just very hard to change how I experience the world.

But by understanding, you know, at least you can develop that.

Yeah, understanding things from my perspective, from other people's perspectives.

And if it's organization, you know, you can be putting things in place if it's regulation.

So, I mean, motivation is part of change and behavior change.

However, it does not tell the full story.

I'm going to introduce just for a few minutes, some of the things that impact executive function skills.

So we see things using a biopsychosocial model, which might sound a little bit like a mouthful, but I will break it down for you.

And it's really behavior is complex.

There is going to be influenced by so many different factors.

It's quite useful to break things down to things that are neurobiological.

So everything in our body from a cellular level to the chemicals, for example, the dopamine or the neurotransmitters in the brain, what's going on on that level.

But to our whole bodies, to our fitness, to our, you know, have we had enough sleep?

Are we rested?

And of course, this covers things like genetics, covers things like our personality patterns.

But then there also is the side that's really important, which is our psychological factors.

If you have had so many negative comments and you have this sort of self, you know, shame or blame or negative mindset because of life experiences, that's impacting how you feel and that sense of self and that in your memories, your perceptions of things all come into psychological.

But then it's really important to think about the social aspects.

And that can be everything from one to one, relationships, from family relationships, friends.

But it also gets us thinking about culture.

There's a fantastic guy, Dan Siegel, who does a lot of research as well, is not only can that social impact how we feel and the psychological, but actually changes the brain structure as well.

But this is quite useful to be unpicking what can be influencing someone's behavior and in particular their executive function skills.

What can be impacting our executive functioning?

And some of you may have come across Professor Russell Barclay, again, lots of really fantastic content of his if you want to pop them in Google now he's saying there's lots of people who might have that on that big circle challenges were their executive function skills.

But there is a large overlap with those who have adhd.

And he actually says you could rename adhd.

It might even be better as an executive function deficit disorder might more clearly describe the challenges with adhd.

And then you have an overlap as well with an autism diagnosis where quite often there are challenges with executive functioning, but they're not quite as overlapping as with an ADHD diagnosis.

I really just want you to think about, you know, how can we use this understanding to reframe behaviour?

Now we talk a lot about an executive function lens.

So if we start looking at behaviour, taking on board what we've just been sharing, and I love a reframe.

So here, if we are going to reframe this behaviour and if we're talking about ourselves, we're not.

I'm not lazy.

It's not that I don't have focus.

I'm not disorganized, impulsive, forgetful.

If we kind of go, oh, I notice I'm having a challenge with my task initiation, what is impacting my ability to regulate my attention or to be organized or my challenges with response inhibition?

Okay, my working memory.

That is why I keep, you know, forgetting to follow up a task.

And if using this language really shifts and not.

It is a problem with me, it is a skill and then it is a skill that I can work on or put scaffolds in place.

Want to touch on the concept?

Neuroplasticity is so important.

Our brains continue to be malleable and change over the lifespan.

So even while some things are challenging, we can work and we can rewire the brain.

And we talk a lot about growth mindset as well.

And it's almost like neuroplasticity is, is the science behind a growth mindset.

And a growth mindset is, you may know, it's like the power of yet I cannot do this yet.

I know learning is going to be a challenge, but I can change.

And it's a bit like the analogy of growing a muscle in the gym.

The more you use it, the more you strengthen and those pathways.

I just want to introduce you to some ways how we can be supporting executive functioning.

So the first thing and we've been talking about already is reflecting on your own strengths and challenges.

Really knowing your own profile pattern can be really, really helpful.

Sometimes it is us identifying the barriers to get us where we want to be.

So sometimes we are talking about the challenges because it's through identifying those challenges and barriers, we can take the steps to move forward.

I mentioned time.

Maybe it's because it's one of my challenges, but I think it's so common as well.

Time is really tricky.

Time is also something very, very hard to visualize.

So if time management is a challenge for you, thinking about it, how can you make time visible.

And that's why lots of different ways of planners, whether those are digital, whether they're paper, none of this is going to be new to you in terms of using planners.

It's more just taking on the thought, how can I make it visible?

Another little strategy you can use is beginning with the end in mind.

And sometimes that can be tricky if we're a kind of in the moment, you know, person.

But if you can start thinking what does done look like, then you can start working backwards.

Because if you haven't thought through that process, sometimes taking the first step can be so massive it's like you're taking a step off a cliff.

So trying to define what done looks like and working backwards can help overcome procrastination and help you take task, initiate, you know, build on that task initiation.

If this episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for more tools and more guidance, my brand new book, the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit is out now.

You can find it wherever you buy your books from.

You can also check out the audiobook if you do prefer to listen to me.

I have narrated it all myself.

Thank you so much for being here and I will see you for the next episode.