Introducing the Impulsive Thinker

Discover my story - the journey of a high-achieving ADHD entrepreneur - and learn something new along the way.

Why I Started the Impulsive Thinker

The Impulsive Thinker started as a place for high-achieving ADHD entrepreneurs to come and discover strategies, understand ourselves and understand our unique ways of functioning in the world around us.

Diagnosed with ADHD and Asperger’s myself, I hope to share what I’ve learned through my own journey (you can read more about that on the my home page) through the podcast and on this blog.

Don’t feel like reading right now? Listen instead! This blog post came from my first episode of the Impulsive Thinker where my friend Nicole Solitar from Strategic Coach interviewed me.

Why the Impulsive Thinker?

The name The Impulsive Thinker came to me through my work with Strategic Coach, an entrepreneurial coaching program. In the program, you work to identify your unique abilities and best habits. I’ve determined that my unique ability is my impulsive thinking.

Through this program, I discovered that as an impulsive thinker, all of my great and unique ideas and solutions have come from talking with other people as we try to solve a problem.

Impulsivity is one of the symptoms of ADHD but when it’s managed, it’s one of my biggest strengths. When managed, saying without thinking opens a lot of doors. It allows me to think and see things that other people can’t.

Before my diagnosis, I would find faults in the way I thought and functioned because it wasn’t the same as other people in the neuro-typical world. Coming to understand myself better, I’ve noticed this way of thinking which I was thought was an obstacle was an opportunity and if managed, a strength.

And so, The Impulsive Thinker was born.

Creating Strategic Boundaries

After my diagnosis, I learned a lot about the ADHD brain and started applying boundaries at work, with customers and staff as well as on the types of tasks I performed. The biggest shift? I stopped doing tasks that caused a lot of frustration.

By communicating boundaries and the “why” behind them both at home and professionally, I was able to create systems that were easier to follow and left me with more mental energy at the end of the day. For me, that looked like creating a log book of my tasks to reduce surprises in my day-to-day life.

Taking on New Projects

Generally speaking, self-confidence decreases in people with ADHD over time and it’s something I’ve worked on. Despite being a successful entrepreneur, it’s easy to move past those positives quickly.

In my professional world, this showed. I loved setting up my businesses, putting out fires, solving problems and being intellectually stimulated. Once that slowed down though and there was a routine, I became bored.

I looked for problems where there weren’t any and so I created them. Projects were delayed, I lost team members and I damaged relationships with awesome customers. In short, I was letting my symptoms take over.

It was when I learned to manage those symptoms and use them as opportunities that things changed.

Functioning Differently

After masking myself to meet the demands and expectation of the neuro-typical world, my ADHD diagnosis unlocked what I needed and validated what I’d always known: I worked differently than most.

The diagnosis helped me realize that’s ok. I am me and you are you.

My turning point came through a free writing exercise when I forgave myself for being my biggest critic.

Everyone wants one simple way to define others and you can’t do that. Our biggest struggle is to see the positives in our lives. At the end of the day, ADHD is part of me but it isn’t all of me.

Thank you for reading! I can’t wait to share this journey with you. Feel free to reach out anytime and be sure to check out the podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts.