SuccessFULL With ADHD

Burnout Recovery and Finding Your Flow Again with Jamie Toyne: 3C Activation ADHD Coach Alumni

• Brooke Schnittman MA, PCC, BCC • Season 1 • Episode 91

Share episode

Have you ever felt stuck in a cycle of burnout, pushing yourself to the limit only to crash and start over again? My guest today, Jamie Toyne, knows that struggle all too well. A former professional tennis player turned entrepreneur and ADHD coach, Jamie has experienced burnout—first on the court, then in business. But through his journey, he discovered the power of flow and alignment. Now, through his Flowjo method, he's helping ADHD entrepreneurs break free from burnout and step into their full potential.

Jamie is Coaching with Brooke's 3C Activation ADHD Coach alumni. After researching the connection between 'ADHD', 'Burnout' and 'Flow' Jamie developed a coaching program called 'Flowjo' which helps ADHD founders to cure burnout, harness their ADHD superpowers, and start flowing towards their goals. Jamie is also the Author of the 'Pressure Gauge Mindset' and Founder of two other companies called Dealflow and Exitplanr, that helped more than 400 entrepreneurs successfully exit their business.

 

Episode Highlights:

[00:57] - Meet Jamie Toyne: From professional tennis to ADHD entrepreneurship.
[03:15] - Getting diagnosed with ADHD at 11 and struggling in school.
[07:56] - The pressure of professional tennis and a dramatic exit.
[10:42] - The realization: ADHD and burnout are deeply connected.
[13:36] - Understanding flow: More than just peak performance hacks.
[19:15] - How different people access flow and why it's personal.
[22:03] - The difference between active recovery and passive recovery.
[25:07] - How to recognize when you need to step back from flow.
[31:48] - How Jamie helps ADHD entrepreneurs master their own flow.

 

Connect with Jamie Toyne:

Thank you for tuning into "SuccessFULL with ADHD." If this episode has impacted you, remember to rate, follow, share, and review our podcast. Your support helps us reach and help more individuals navigating their journeys with ADHD.

Want to be ‘SuccessFULL with ADHD’ by Activating Your ADHD Potential?
Order our 3x best-selling book/workbook for adults with ADHD ▶️ http://bit.ly/activateadhd

Jamie Toyne:

Flow is our natural state of being. It's less about adding things and more about removing the things that are blocking you from flow. And I love that analogy of the river, you know, and there's a bunch of boulders blocking the water from flowing, and if we can just remove those boulders, we can flow. And what I mean by boulders is anything that's zapping your relationship or that's out of alignment. Example, when I was a kid, the reason I was struggling to learn is because I was in a classroom with girls I wanted to talk to, and boys I wanted to play with, and a teacher that was boring and so that wasn't in alignment with my style of learning. I then started to really focus on bringing things into alignment. That's why I came up with the new Word Flow Joe, right? You know the word Mojo, which is an Afro Caribbean word, which means unique, magical power. And I mashed it together with flow. It's like, how do we harness our uniqueness, our strengths, our passions, our purpose, our values, and make sure that everything in our life aligns to that?

Brooke Schnittman:

Welcome to successful with ADHD. I'm Brooke Schmidt, let's get started. Welcome back to another great episode of successful with ADHD today, I have a special guest for you. Jamie Twain, he's a serial entrepreneur and author, founder of flow Joe. He is an ADHD coach as well, recent graduate through the activation for coaches so thrilled that you're here today, we're going to dig into his ADHD journey. What he does in burning out to flow with ADHD. We know that so many of us burn out pretty much regularly, like multiple times a day, sometimes multiple times a week, multiple times a month. So Jamie is going to lead us through that. And just a little bit about Jamie, he was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, and he's burned out three times in his career, once as a professional tennis player, twice as a business owner. And after researching the connection between ADHD burnout and flow, Jamie developed a coaching program called Flow Joe, which helps ADHD founders secure burnout, harness their ADHD superpowers and start flowing towards their goals. Jamie's author of the pressure gage mindset, and the founder of two other companies called deal flow and exit planner that helps more than 400 entrepreneurs successfully exit their business. Well, welcome, Jamie. I don't even know that. I knew that you're a professional tennis player

Jamie Toyne:

that was a really long time ago, and I'm a bit like icky about it, and if I share some of my story, maybe, maybe that will make a little bit more sense. But I played on the professional circuit for a year when I was quite young, and it ended very dramatically. So, yeah, I don't talk about a part of my bio that I talk about very

Brooke Schnittman:

much. Okay, yeah, I'm a tennis player. I actually just came from a tennis match myself lost for the third time in a row. Not fun, but I do love tennis. It is my sport of choice, so I am glad to hear that. So I just learned something new about you. Anyway, tell me, Jamie, when did you learn you had ADHD,

Jamie Toyne:

I was 11, and I was getting into a lot of trouble at school. I was spending a lot of time on home suspension, actually, for behavioral issues, and so, like the school recommended that to my mom that they, you know, I go and get checked for ADHD, and I did, and I was diagnosed, but mum didn't like the idea of medicating her 11 year old child with meth at that age. So so I continued on medicated, and I continued to struggle through school, but luckily for me, there were certain things that I could hyper focus on and get into a flow state, and one of those was tennis, which was kind of a savior for me, and it allowed me to it opened up a lot of doors. I got to travel. I got to, you know, it was a positive experience for me. I had a good relationship with my coach, because I wanted to be there on the tennis court. It was great to my self esteem, because I realized I wasn't just this, like terrible kid that had no respect or any discipline or anything like that.

Brooke Schnittman:

Yeah, isn't that amazing? So I know you personally, so obviously I have seen firsthand the difference between when you're interested in something and when you're not, and the fact that you were able to literally just drive purpose out of the passion of tennis for however long it was when you were suspended from school, but your self esteem was lifted because you had purpose, you had passion. You were really good at it. That's it's so wonderful. So what happened? Happened with school after when you were playing tennis, were you home schooled?

Jamie Toyne:

Yeah, so I continued to struggle through school till I was about 16, and then I got permission from the state. Well, at first I moved interstate to a sporting school, which actually I grew up in Australia, but the schooling system mimicked the American College system, so we had to get a certain GPA as a sports player to be able to play the sport. And my GPA was terrible because I was playing up in the classroom. So I was going to this great tennis school. I got a scholarship there, but I couldn't play the tennis because of my behavior in the classroom. But I was playing at a relatively high level at that point. So the State Education Department gave me permission to drop out of school and basically train full time and join the men's pro tennis second so at that point, I finished my last two years of schooling by distance education, essentially. So I took my books on the road with me, and I had a tutor online, and I was like, I did do a nomad before that was a thing?

Brooke Schnittman:

Yeah, yeah. I used to work at a school that worked with a lot of professional and tennis players that were on the circuit. That's a lot of work, a lot of work for you trying to travel and then fit in education as well when you're not playing tennis, traveling, training, all the things,

Jamie Toyne:

totally, yeah, it was a big it was a big shift, right? Because I went from this like punishment and reward system of school that I really struggled with to having to create that for myself. Essentially, yeah, I had to manage my diet, my conditioning, what time I went to bed, what time I got up, when I did my schoolwork between matches, it was really hard. And, you know, I think that's probably hard for any adult. I still struggle with that sort of stuff as an adult now, but with a, you know, for an unmedicated teenager with ADHD, it was, it was a really big challenge. But the really interesting thing about that experience was I did actually sort of learn better, because I was working when I'm on with the tutor, and I was working in my own time when I when I sort of felt like I didn't have the distractions of the classroom. I wasn't focused on making people, kids laugh in the classroom and things like that. I just was there with my books. So I really, I found a way to finish school that worked for me, and that was a really pivotal sort of moment in my life. And I think with managing or harnessing, rather, my ADHD was really designing a life that works for

Brooke Schnittman:

me, yeah, yeah, without even realizing it at the time, right? Yeah. So fast forward, so you had the one on one education, you weren't being medicated, you were thriving. You were doing better in a one on one environment with a tutor teacher. Then what happened after high school?

Jamie Toyne:

I got this so I started getting these sponsorships, and most of the sponsorships were exciting. They were free, free equipment and free clothing. But one of the sponsorships that I got was more like an investor, and the deal was, it was a pretty rare situation. I didn't know any other kids on the circuit with this deal, but basically, this wealthy man who was obsessed with tennis said he'll pay for everything, travel, training, everything, and in exchange, he would take a 10% cut of my prize money. Now he knew he wasn't going to get $1 back on his investment unless I really cracked the top 50 or top 20 or something like that. And I was so far away from that as a 1617, year old boy, and it put an immense amount of pressure on me. The tennis court became it went from being this sort of sanctuary where I could drop into a flow state and get out of this sort of scattered chaos of my mind and into my body. And I remember like it basically, as soon as I got that sponsorship, it changed. The pressure just totally changed. And I was in my head all the time on the tennis court. In training, I started throwing tantrums on the tennis court. I even started to deliberately lose matches because I was just so overwhelmed by it all. And so on my 18th birthday, actually, I in very dramatic form. I smashed all my rackets, I forfeited the match, and I quit this one forever. Sound

Brooke Schnittman:

like John McEnroe, yeah. Marc

Jamie Toyne:

so anyway, I went to I went to business school, I got a job at a tech company, and got the opportunity to move to San Francisco and started sort of buying and selling small businesses, and started my own consulting business a few years later, headquartered in San Francisco there. And then I moved to Mexico. The business was doing quite well at that point. And so, you know, I'd sort of, I was sort of living my dream. I grew up in a small desert town in the middle of Australia, so like living on the beach, running a, you know, a successful company, surfing and learning Spanish, things were going really well. And then I. I burnt out again, and I packed my bags, and I flew back to that small desert town that I hadn't lived in in 12 years, or something like that, and I moved back in with my mom, and that was when I started to really start sort of questioning my the relationship between ADHD and burnout and why I was burning out? Yeah,

Brooke Schnittman:

yeah. I'm really interested in hearing the next steps of, you know, questioning the ADHD and burnout, but it sounds like every step you've taken along the way has proven that you really are a free spirit, right? You don't want to be held down and you want to follow by your own rules, your own passions, not by someone else's.

Jamie Toyne:

Yeah, that's that's spot on. I think I'm very lucky to have had a mother who really understood fundamentally, that if she tried to control me through through discipline, that it would not work for me, and she was incredibly supportive. A lot of parents would have felt really uncomfortable about letting their kid drop out of their kid drop out of school, especially one that was struggling to study at all. So yeah, I think she sort of gave me that permission when I was younger, and I've just sort of followed that through out my life. Yeah,

Brooke Schnittman:

so you said that you eventually, when you had moved back in with your mom, you had noticed that there might be some connection between ADHD and burnout? Yeah, yeah.

Jamie Toyne:

And I think, I think for me, I because I had sort of such a close relationship with sort of flow states, you know, that that sort of altered state of consciousness when we're performing at our best, you know, I'd experienced that on the tennis court. I'd experienced that on the dance floor. I'd experienced that in, you know, really beautiful, deep conversation, and at times, running my business as well. And so I knew that there was this sort of potential. You know, you talk a lot about unlocking your potential. There were moments when I would like be in my potential, but a lot of the time, I felt really blocked from that. And I became obsessed with flow, basically. And so I became, you know, during that time, I took six months off. So I stepped down as the CEO of my business, and I took six months off to basically garden and do therapy and hang out with my mom. And in that time, I just geeked out on flow, and I became convinced that the antidote to burnout was flow, and so off I went to unlock flow. And what's really interesting about flow, and what I learned in those two years before I burnt out a third time was that the way that we approach flow in the West is almost synonymous with peak performance now. So we look at flow through a really narrow lens. This is the ice baths, the saunas, the breath work, you know, all of this sort of bio hacking, trying to hack your biology, your mind, your body to perform at your best. And I got really good at those things, but a couple of years I burnt out again, and, you know, I was doing really well. That's when I published my book and launched my first software company, and I burnt out again. And so it was after that third burnout that I looked a little bit deeper into, I guess, the meaning of flow historically, because it's been around for ages. Like the ancient Greeks called it enthusiasm. Zen Bucha called it Zazen. The Taoist monks called it Wu Wei. So it's been around for a really long time. And what I realized was that I was approaching flow in a really narrow way,

Brooke Schnittman:

almost in a reactive way rather than a proactive way. Yeah, correct.

Jamie Toyne:

And I think I was trying to add all of these things to my life, to sort of, you know, reduce anxiety, increase focus. What I realized by reading these sort of Eastern texts is that flow is our natural state of being. You know, we experience flow all the time as kids, and so it's less about adding things and more about removing the things that are blocking you from flow. And I love that analogy of the river, you know, and there's a bunch of boulders blocking the water from flowing, and if we can just remove those boulders, we can flow. And what I mean by boulders is could be anything, it could be anything that's zapping your relationship or that's out of alignment. So, example, when I was a kid, the reason I was struggling to learn is because I was in a classroom with girls I wanted to talk to, and boys I wanted to play with, and a teacher that was boring and so that wasn't in alignment with my style of learning. And you know, there's, there's myriad examples throughout my life, but I then, I then started to really focus on bringing things into alignment. And I think that's, that's really, that's why I came up with the new Word Flow, Joe, right? It's like, you know, the word Mojo, which is an Afro Caribbean word, which means unique magical power. Power, and I mashed it together with flow, because it's, it's like, how do we harness our uniqueness, our strengths, our passions, our purpose, our values, and make sure that everything in our life aligns to that, yeah, so that that sort of became our focus, yeah. So you

Brooke Schnittman:

talk about the aligning piece, right? To make sure that you get all of the pieces together to be in flow. But give me another example of some restrictions of flow. So yeah, there's that external piece, like you're in a classroom, the teacher is boring. You want to flirt with the girls and talk to the boys, but like day to day workflow or day flow, like you seem to love what you're doing right now. So what types of barriers would come your way that would block you from the flow?

Jamie Toyne:

I love that question. So I mean, it still comes back to those, those same things around alignment, but let's say I'm procrastinating, or, like, there's a project on my to do list that I've been delaying or off, you know, putting off for for weeks and weeks and weeks. One option is to sort of just try and push through that. I talk about the carrot and the stick, right? You know, the discipline stick and dangling the character, the character of motivation, so that that's sort of how I used to approach things, and I would try and push through. But it's, it's kind of what led to burnout, I believe, if you keep using that approach. So I try to ask myself, like, what is the resistance? Like? Why? Why am I not? There's a good reason I don't want to do this. And sometimes it can be as simple as the projects poorly defined, or the timelines realistic. And so, you know, using things like we we cover in your your amazing program, you know, using SMART goals, you know, making the task, you know, defining the tasks better, could be a really simple intervention, but it could also be a really big thing where it's like, oh, I actually don't like the idea of being on Instagram, you know? And maybe one of the things is like, I've told myself, Oh, I've got to build a personal brand on Instagram, and I've got to start creating reels. I could outsource that to someone else, but what? Why? Why? Why do I keep resisting this? And so you go back to your values, and maybe there's a misalignment there, where there's something about being on Instagram that just feels a bit icky, and really giving yourself permission to listen to that and honor that. So it's almost like the mind creates all these stories about what you should do, and just checking in with the body and going, you know, because your body's got its own brain, I believe. And so, you know, checking in with the body and how does that feel, and then trying to investigate why I talk about these two parts of myself I have, like my higher self, which is the general that comes up with the plan of what to do. And then I talk about my lower self, which I call my workhorse, right? And I sort of picture the general sitting on the back of my workhorse with the carrot and the stick. And that relationship has always been very damaged. You know, my higher self, my general is sort of setting these unrealistic expectations, or it's the mind saying, I should, I should, I should. But it's, it's the workhorse that has to get up and actually do the work. And so I really focus on making sure that those, those two parts of myself are working together as a team. And for you know, I would say most of my life, they haven't been and it's, it's taken a lot of conscious effort to to get those two parts of myself to work together.

Brooke Schnittman:

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So what are your thoughts? Stephen Cotler talks about the different ways that you can get yourself into flow with hard charger, having quiet spaces. What are your thoughts about that? So, like I know from a higher self, when you have your purpose, your vision, your passion, all those things, and you move, remove the traction, and you ask yourself, why you have resistance? And maybe you you move away from that right then you could be in flow. But tell me, like, do you? Do you believe that people have different flow styles? Yeah, the way

Jamie Toyne:

that we access flow is completely unique to us. It comes back to Yeah, like figuring out what works for you. But Steven Cutler, you know, and he works for the flow the he's one world the co founder of the flow research collective. That whole body of work is really looking at flow from a biological perspective, and it's scientifically proven to work. So there are what they would call flow triggers, that trigger flow. So there's types of music that can drop you into a flow state. Is co founder, Ryan Doris, talks about, you know, our brain wave frequency, and if we can, if we can start work within 60 seconds of of waking time when our brain is still in that in that. Theta, I think between theta and theta gamma, gamma, yeah, theta and delta, yeah, yeah. You know, we can drop right. There's a lot less friction, a lot less resistance, we can drop right into a flow state. So there are a bunch of flow hacks, essentially, that can get you there. What I found is the efficacy of those flow hacks really depend on how things are going in your life more honestly. I mean, if you're going through a breakup or you're having a you know your relationship with your business partners deteriorating, or your investors are about to pull out, it doesn't matter how many ice baths you do or how much breath work you do, it's going to be really hard to get into flow. Yeah. So I do. Usually I'm looking for the big boulders first. It's almost like focus on removing first, and then focus on what you can add. Because once, once, once the river's clear from boulders, you add those float, those flow triggers in there. It acts like rocket fuel, whereas the other way around, if you focus on that first, which is what I did between my second and third burnout, it's almost like you're, you're delaying or postponing the burnout, or you're, you're minimizing the the symptoms. We do this all the time in the West Brook, I feel like we we focus on the symptom rather than the underlying cause,

Brooke Schnittman:

of course, yeah, like the hack or how to treat the thing, rather than what is getting us to feel that way, right, like, correct? We're really only supposed to have one doctor, but we have 20 doctors because we're treating all the different symptoms, like Casey mean talks about, I appreciate that. So you mentioned that you've been in burnout three times. How do you with being in flow state, because you can get to extreme exhaustion when all of the neuro chemicals and transmitters are being used right? It's like this high. So how do you slow yourself down and avoid burnout when you're constantly in flow active recovery? Talk to me about that there's two different

Jamie Toyne:

types of recovery, I suppose, or two different states of not not working, I suppose. And that's active recovery and passive recovery. And so an example of passive recovery would be, you finish the day of work, you might have been in a flow state. You might not have been, and you crack open a beer, and you jump on the couch and you watch some TV. And so, as we know, TV is highly stimulating, and it's it's using all those same, you know, your dopamine system, and all those same neuro chemicals. So you're not giving yourself a chance to replenish those neurotransmitters at all. Another example would be doing scrolling on social media or YouTube or what have you? An example of active recovery, switching off your phone and going for a walk or listening to a podcast or cooking or putting around in the garden or going to the sauna or, I mean, the gym. You know, depending on what you're doing, if you're over exerting yourself, probably not. But you know doing doing things that sleep is the obvious one. Or, as Andrew hibman preaches, a non sleep, deep rest protocol, that's kind of the simplest way I could, just like, explain how you don't burn out on a regular basis just from getting into a flow state. Mihai chick sent me high, or maybe it was Stephen cottler. I'm one of the two Stephen cottler Definitely talks about. I'm not sure if Mihai came up with it, but talks about the four stages of the flow cycle. There's two stages, basically, you're on or you're off, and you're either struggling. So stage one is struggle, where you sort of, if it's on the tennis court, you're training hard, you might not be in a flow state, but you, if the challenge is way, way exceeds your skill level, then you're going to experience stress and overwhelm. And if, if your skill way exceeds the challenge, you're going to experience boredom and apathy. And if you can get the right balance between those two things, that's called the flow channel, and you're more likely to experience flow so in the struggle phase, you might really jack up the challenge to skill ratio. So the challenge is what you're training really hard, and you're putting, you're deliberately putting stress on the body, and you're not going to be able to access a flow state. But then you the next phase of the flow cycle is release. And so that's very similar to the active recovery. You do all the same things. You know, there's a famous director whose name I can't remember, but he used to when he gets stuck on a creative problem, he'd jump in the car and drive home and have a shower and then drive back to work, and in that time he would fix he would have the aha moment and get unstuck. So that's sort of like the release phase. And then the third phase is the flow state, and then the fourth phase is the recovery, the active recovery. The goal is to not get stuck in any of those phases and to keep moving through them. And there's different techniques you can use, but they're really simple. They're really, really simple, you know, creating a time block. Okay, this is two hours. I'm going to get up in the morning and I'm going to struggle, or hope. Lead drop into a flow state, and depending on whether it's struggle or flow state, you might modify the way that you actively recover or release essentially. So

Brooke Schnittman:

I don't want to give away all of your secrets, but how does someone know when they need to go into active recovery and they're not in flow for too long? Because we know, as ADHD ers, if we're hyper focusing for too long, we burn out, we've released all of the chemicals. So how does one recognize that? Okay, it's time to recover. Now, I've been in flow for too long.

Jamie Toyne:

That's such a great question. You know, it's interesting, because we sort of oscillate between hyper focus and hyper focus, right, where we can't focus at all. And I think that that really harsh sort of relationship, that that contrast between those two states means that whenever we get into hyper focus, it's like, it's so precious, and we want to, like, squeeze every drop out of it, because we don't know if we're going to get there again for another week. This might be the only day of the week where we actually able to focus and get some really meaningful work done. And on a really micro level, I experienced this with Pomodoro time, right? And a lot of my ADHD clients, like, I can't do Pomodoro. It doesn't work for me. It's It's learning to trust that we will get back into that, that flow state again. It's almost, it's learning to trust the flow cycle, essentially. So what I mean that's not a very concrete answer to just

Brooke Schnittman:

No, no, no, no, but I hear you, and I think I might have talked about this in a different episode. But like the flow Maduro method, like you can either push through the flow the Pomodoro, because you're in flow, right? Or if you have a hard deadline where you have to, like, leave and go pick up your kids, or you cannot stop, then you you stop whatever it is that you're doing midway through. So if you're writing, you you stop mid sentence. So this way, when you come back to it, you haven't finished your thought you're in, you go back to that mid thought, which will help you get back into that creative flow again.

Jamie Toyne:

Correct? Actually, Stephen Cutler talks about, like, you know, writing his books, and how leaving not actually, not like, finishing the full chapter of something and being like, that feeling of like, Ah, I've done it, and actually leaving it at a point where it's like, juicy and it's like, there's energy there. You're like, excited to write this next sentence, like, leave it there, because you're much more likely to get up the next day and be able to pick it up from there, exactly what you're saying. Yeah, I would say the other thing, just going back to the flow cycle, on a micro level, with Pomodoro, is that the reason I struggle with Pomodoro so much, and if people don't know what Pomodoro is, it's just time blocking 25 minutes on five minutes off, or 50 minutes on 10 minutes off, and then repeating the process. I didn't treat the break properly. So let's say I have a three hour block of time where I'm doing deep work and I'm trying to get into a flow state that three hours I'm treating like an exam. My phone's off, I've I'm in a room. I've got like, you know, and so when the timer goes off and says, time for a break now, in this really annoying American voice.

Brooke Schnittman:

I know, I know we don't have an Aussie voice.

Jamie Toyne:

So in that five minute break, I do release or active recovery. I don't check my phone. I don't check my emails. In that break, I sit I get a glass of water, I go to the bathroom, I stand outside and look at the sun with my eyes closed. You know, I do things that I'm still in my deep work session. I'm not like, it's not like 25 minutes of focus, five minutes of distraction. It's 25 minutes of focus, five minutes of release, and then I'm going back straight back into the flow state. Yeah? And I find that if I, if I, if I have, if I use that break properly, I can drop straight back in and pick up from where I left off. It's when I don't treat that break

Brooke Schnittman:

properly. Yeah, it's amazing. And I think that, like you said, with ADHD, we try to, like, just push through it. Oh, we don't know if we'll ever get back into the flow state. But what you also have to recognize is that we have diminishing returns after our optimal focus time is done. So if you think of you mentioned studying right or reading a book, there is a time where we stop our focus right and we start drifting. Well, if we try to just, you know, put on our boots and push through it, actually it's worse, right? We are sitting there with diminishing returns, and then all of a sudden our focus goes back to where it was. But what did we do for that whole time? Right? We just wasted a bunch of time. So why not be active? In our recovery and do something that's healthy to our brain, and give our brain oxygen and nourish our brain, and do all of the things that is going to help us optimize our focus. Yeah,

Jamie Toyne:

absolutely. And I think that's a really cool thing that you know, Steven co the guys at the flow research collective are doing that's really positive, is they're really emphasizing they're linking active recovery to peak performance. A lot of stories about peak performance, traditionally, is about, you know, pushing yourself, pushing yourself, pushing yourself with the with the carrot and stick until your fingers are bleeding and you're, you know, you're about to pass out, and that's how we obtain peak performance. That's fine for the struggle phase, right? But you need to then switch off. It's good to put stress. It's good to put stress on the body. You know, we go to the gym to put stress on our bodies, but then we don't just stay at the gym doing bicep curls, 24/7, because our muscles will get smaller, not bigger, right? And so it's, it's that oscillation of stress, ON OFF, ON OFF, between stress and recovery. Essentially, stress can actually be really positive.

Brooke Schnittman:

Yeah, absolutely, you're right. Like you put the stress on the muscle, and you start burning, and then your muscle gets bigger, right? But you have to take a break so it can actually recover to get bigger. So talk to me now. You have the ADHD certification through three activation. You have the flow Joe that you've created, right and all of the flow training that you have learned. So how have you married the two and help your clients with ADHD,

Jamie Toyne:

yeah, I feel like doing your training was the missing piece for me in terms of the connection between, sort of like the neuroscience of flow, which I'm I'm teaching in my course, along with the sort of Eastern philosophy of flow, more holistically, and then really being able to explain to my clients with ADHD, the neuroscience behind ADHD and a lot of the you know, explanations and interventions. I remember when I did your course, there was, you know, a little bit of overlap between some of the interventions, but the framing within ADHD has just been so helpful for me personally and also my clients as well. So it's been really cool.

Brooke Schnittman:

That's wonderful. So what would you say to an adult with ADHD, because you're working with adults, right? So what would you say the number one thing that you would want to leave them with here today, if they, you know, got one thing out of the the multiple nuggets you've dropped along the way, one thing that you want them to remember with ADHD and flow? Yeah,

Jamie Toyne:

it would be, find your flow, Joe, find a way to design your life around your superpower, which is what is uniquely you. Part of it's your ADHD brain, and part of it's just you as an individual. Really get clear on like who you are, you know what, what your values are, what your passions and your purpose are, really check in with the body and see what lights you up and follow that energy. That's really what I feel like is our superpower and what we're you know, if we can, if we can, shed a lot of the negative self talk around you know how we're different and really, really embrace that. It no longer needs to be this neuro developmental disorder that we need to manage, rather our superpower that we can harness to live the best version of ourselves.

Brooke Schnittman:

Yeah. Amen. So Jamie, if people want to master their flow using your flow, Joe system and understand how to maximize their ADHD potential. Where can they find you? They can find me

Jamie Toyne:

on my website, which is just my name.com, Jamie, toyn.com and, yeah, I have a, I have a sort of a diagnostic tool. It's, it's very bare bones, but it's just, you know, in an Excel spreadsheet at the moment, but there's a bunch of questions on there, sort of like a quiz, and you can, it's sort of diagnosed. It's like a diagnostic tool that runs you through a bunch of questions, and you can suddenly get a feel for where you are on that scale of burnout and flow at this present moment. So it's kind of fun to check out. So that's free that, and that's, that's Jamie towing, com slash flow finder.

Brooke Schnittman:

Well, Jamie, thank you so much for being on the pod. It's been a pleasure working with you professionally and personally, and now getting to learn even more into your system, and I know you have such an open mindset and a growth mindset. I. And I know if we when we speak in a year from now and two years from now, you're going to be doing like 10 other amazing things with flow and ADHD and, you know, business and public speaking, I'm sure. So I can't wait to keep up with you along your journey. I know you are a lifelong learner, and that's part of your values as well. So thank you for your time today. It really is invaluable. Oh,

Jamie Toyne:

thank you so much. It's lovely to hang out with you again. Brooke, yeah, I hope to speak soon. Absolutely.

Brooke Schnittman:

Thanks for listening to this episode of successful with ADHD. I hope it helps you on your journey, and if you need any additional support for you or a loved one with ADHD, feel free to reach out to us@coachingwithbrooke.com and all social media platforms at coaching with Brooke. And remember, it's Brooke with an E, thanks again for listening. See you next time you.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Brooke Schnittman MA, PCC, BCC

Host