How to find - and to fight - your brain's kryptonite.

In the previous installment, I discussed how focusing on LIFE in the life-work balance can make our lives more fulfilling and our work more productive. Developing flow in our work is extremely rewarding. It helps us work joyfully, almost effortlessly and brings out our most creative selves. And yet, we still need strong boundaries to prevent the good thing - the enjoyment of our work - from becoming destructive to our whole being.

But finding the balance of flow and boundaries is not easy.

Because the very nature of flow is that the work must challenge us to stretch our skills and abilities without overtaxing, the work must be right for each individual. But even after we have found "our" type of work, flow is not a given. And with many obstacles and interruptions in our lives, balance is not a given either.

One-size-fits-all recipes for "finding your flow" – or for setting boundaries - do not work because our minds are unique, and there is no such thing as a "normal" brain. We are a mix of unique patterns, and we need to know what helps us and what derails us.

I talked to Caroline Stokes, a coach extraordinaire and emotional intelligence expert, ?author of Elephants Before Unicorns: Emotionally Intelligent HR Strategies to Save Your Company. As a very successful professional who also had to figure out how to be “friends” with her neurodivergent brain, Caroline knows a lot about optimizing our lives for flow and balance - in ways that work for us. The key proposed by Caroline?

“Work out what’s your kryptonite.”

For some of us, working out our kryptonite is easier said than done. For years, our parents, bosses, and random strangers called us “lazy” “scatterbrained,” or, in my case, “lacking willpower.” Until we fixed internal “flaws” - which might actually be features of our brains rather than flaws – we “would not amount to anything.” The "problem" was solely us, individuals. Not something external and toxic to us, like kryptonite. Us.

We need to go beyond self-blame and generalizations. Are we always "lazy"? Are we really “scatterbrained?” Does something trigger procrastination or cause breakdowns of willpower? How can we work around these triggers and defend against the kryptonite to maintain our flow, balance, and productivity? What distinguishes situations of doing our best work from situations when we try but fail? What derails us?

Like many neurodivergent professionals who were not identified as such until later in life, Caroline went through a process of frustration.

“I confess, when I didn’t have the ADHD diagnosis for decades, life was hard. I kept thinking I was lazy, unable to concentrate, and just didn’t have much respect for myself. Everything was hard. One day I was talking to Gabor Mate about his new book project and he just blurted it out.

It was a wake-up call of denial, disbelief, and confusion. Two womens’ ADHD specialists confirmed the diagnosis in 5 minutes. They laughed. I still didn’t find it funny or amusing, and my whole sense of self went down the toilet.”

Shake-ups to our self-concept, such as an adult neurodovergence identification or other major life events can be hard to navigate. Yet, with increased self-understanding,?we can let go of the “one-size-fits-all” illusion, along with self-blame, and rebuild our routines to align with who we are.?

As Caroline continues, “I’m a spectrum, like many others in .... non-neuro typical situations who have to find their way to operate effectively.

To arrange my work-life to create more flow, I cap my interactions daily, I have a list of things I need to achieve in a week and if more assignments or projects creep in I’ll simply tell the person I’ll schedule it for the next week. I give myself more space now to avoid the anxiety of overload which enables me to have a great deal more thinking time to formulate strategies and hypotheses. It took a lot of time with coaches, discovering my discomfort zone, and accepting my nuances as a super power of sorts to find this new mode of operation. At 49, it feels like I got it right for myself.

Everyone needs to work out what will work for them. Be curious and observe internal reactions to your experimentation. Life is a game and you can hack your own non-neurotypical way and feel good about how you make an impact.”

But wait, what is Caroline's typical kryptonite, and how does she deal with it?

It's interruptions.

"With ADHD, when I’m in the flow, if anyone gets in my way, it can derail me where I feel like it’s a catastrophe to pick up where my work was left.

Being distracted and having to refocus myself to get to my place of creativity and innovation (i.e. serving my clients with solutions in that moment) significantly derails and untethers oneself from the task at hand.

People can politely call that passion. I call that not being able to take a beat, create boundaries and give myself the space so I have that balance. My best tip, as a neuro-divergent professional: work out what’s your kryptonite. Is it interruptions that don’t inspire your solution mode? If so, protect it by having your devices on “do not disturb”, put earbuds in, remove distractions from your conscious ambient and the visual periphery that can make you go “squirrel,” then breathe and find your flow."

We all have our kryptonite. I might have autistic super-focus, but even that can be shaken by the kryptonite that comes with my complex PTSD - emotional dysregulation and its multiple triggers. It took me a long time to figure out those triggers, and it was not a fun process - but absolutely worth it.

Next time, I will discuss dealing with my kryptonite. I will also share some insights from another expert on finding flow for unique minds, Corey Hollemeyer.

Wishing you a wonderful, kryptonite-free week.