56. How can ADHD entrepreneurs use manifestation? The science being 'the law of attraction' explained!

Katie [00:00:00]:

Manifestation 101 is for neurotypicals. So let's talk about how we manifest things when we have ADHD! Manifest, the life you want, the Law of attraction, what you focus on grows. These are all things that ADHD business owners are fucking sick of hearing. And I say that as someone who fully believes that manifestation and the Law of Attraction actually do work.

Katie [00:00:31]:

But the way people talk about them, the way they are taught, do not work for ADHD people. They work for neurotypicals. So those of us with ADHD get so frustrated that we're doing everything the way it's prescribed and it's still not working for us. So if you have ADHD and you've been working on manifesting and it hasn't been working, I want to tell you that's normal. I want to just let you off the hook here. You are fine. You're not a broken manifesto. You aren't like, uniquely screwed up and not able to manifest what you want.

Katie [00:01:09]:

The way you're manifesting probably just doesn't work for how you are. And we're going to talk through a better way. So sit back, relax, and start making a list of everything you want because we're going to talk about how you can get it right. Now, before we get into this, I want to cover the basic principles of manifesting. So Manifesting 101 is that what you focus on grows in your life, and you have to focus on it in a positive way. You have to feel good when you're focusing on it. So, for instance, if you want to buy a new car, you want to focus on the feeling of how good it will feel when you have this new car. The gratitude you'll have around having this new car, how good it'll feel when you can buy it outright.

Katie [00:02:03]:

You can feel proud of yourself that you've made that money to make this happen. What won't help you is if you think about this new car you want and focus on the fact that you don't have it yet, that it's so far away, that there's so much stuff I have to do in order to get that car that is not effective manifesting because what you're focusing on is the scarcity of it. What you're focusing on is all the stuff that you're going to have to do in order to get the car, which if what you focus on grows, all that work that you're going to have to do in order to get the car, that's what's going to be growing, right? That's manifesting 101. Okay? There's some other stuff that goes into it. And if you're interested in manifesting, then I urge you to go and read books like The Law of Attraction or this Brick of a book, the Miracle Power of Your Mind by Joseph Murphy. It's a little religious. If you're not religious, I'm not but you can kind of just blow past the God word and go with like universal consciousness or spirituality or whatever, whatever it is that you believe in. That said, I want you to take all the advice that you're given and take it with a grain of salt.

Katie [00:03:17]:

Because the typical advice that's given around manifesting is for neurotypicals, not for people with ADHD, which, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have. So there are a few reasons why this is hard for people with ADHD. For one, for you to focus on something, you have to remember that you're supposed to focus on it. And if you don't already have it and it doesn't exist in your world, then there's no physical representation of it in your life. People with ADHD tend to have problems with object permanence, right? So this is why when you pre buy Christmas presents in October, by the time December comes around, you've kind of forgotten that they exist. And then you go out and buy presents all over again. This is also why you can end up with like seven bags of almonds in your cabinets because you put them away in the cabinet. That was the mistake.

Katie [00:04:16]:

They weren't out in the open. If you want almonds and you're going grocery shopping, you're going to think back to when you last saw the almonds, and you're not going to remember that you put them in the cabinet. And so then you're going to go and buy new almonds. I mean, almonds are great, they're healthy, but seven bags is a little excessive. So the out of sight, out of mind bit makes manifestation really hard for people with ADHD, because we just forget to focus on the thing that we want. The other bit that makes it hard for people with ADHD is feeling the positive emotions around the thing that we want. Unless you're a sociopath, everyone basically has a voice in their head that tells them all the ways in which they suck, all the ways that they screw up all the time and all this stuff. If you have ADHD, you have a couple other voices going on, right? Because you're different from some other people, and this voice in your head is aware of it, and it likes to use these differences to paint a picture of yourself to you, of how you suck even worse than normal people.

Katie [00:05:26]:

And because you have these extra voices in your head. I'm making you sound crazy, but you're not. Don't worry. We all have it. Because you have these extra voices in your head telling you all the ways in which you're not great and you can't do stuff and you're going to be late for this and that's not going to work. When you go to manifest stuff, oftentimes those voices can take over. So instead of being able to focus on the positive emotions that come up, when you're focusing on the thing that you want, you start bringing up a lot of negative stuff as well, which, if we're talking about manifestation, what you focus on grows. So instead of growing the thing in your life that you want, you grow the negative feelings, which does not help.

Katie [00:06:08]:

And we don't want that, right. We also get worried about how it's going to happen. We get really hung up on the details, right. Because following instructions for us is kind of hard. So we always try to find the way to create the shortcut. And this is one of the reasons why people with ADHD are so brilliant at starting businesses, right? Because we can usually find the innovative way to solve any problem. But that doesn't necessarily work in manifesting, right? Because when you are taking like a complicated problem and you're trying to figure out how you're going to solve for it, you're focusing on a lot of the negative bits, right. And in manifesting, that's not what you want to be doing.

Katie [00:06:52]:

You want to be focusing on the positive bits. So I want you to imagine you're trying to manifest a mansion, and it's like a beautiful mansion. You want to have like seven or eight bedrooms and like nine bathrooms, which you're crazy. You don't want nine bathrooms. You're going to have to clean them all. Gross. You're also going to have to manifest someone like a house cleaner if you don't want to do that unless you really enjoy cleaning bathrooms, which in that case, do you want to come over to my house? Because I hate doing that anyway. You're trying to manifest this mansion.

Katie [00:07:22]:

And instead of focusing on how nice it'll be to have this massive house and how many parties you're going to be able to have and how you're going to be able to have friends visit from far away and stay with you and have really relaxed evenings in watching movies and all the things you start worrying about the type of furniture you're going to get. You start stressing out about, oh my God, well, if I have that big of a house, I'm going to have to buy a lot of furniture for it because I'm in a two bedroom apartment now. I don't have enough stuff for that. So then instead of just focusing on calling in this mansion, you're now freaking out about the extra budget you're going to have to make available to buy the furnishings and the decorations and all the stuff to fill the mansion. What does that do? That has us focus on the lack rather than the thing we're calling in. And it's kind of a ridiculous idea that we'll worry about furnishing a mansion before we even own a house, right. But we do that all the time. If you're single and you want a relationship, how often do you think about, well, oh my God, this person that I'm going to call in is probably going to have a terrible family like their parents are probably super annoying.

Katie [00:08:44]:

Oh, my God. And what if they have different politics from me? And what if they, like what if they don't like eating pizza in bed? What if they're one of the anti food in bed people? And I say that as a food in bed person, right? Instead of focusing on calling in the love of our lives, we focus on all the problems that they'll potentially bring in, which is absolutely crazy, and yet we do it all the time. And this is really common for people with ADHD. If when you're thinking about all the things you want, you immediately focus in on all the problems that might come up. I want you to take a deep breath. You're not alone. I do it, too. Everyone I know who has ADHD does this as well.

Katie [00:09:31]:

And here's how you're going to hack this. Instead of focusing on all the things you want, I want you focusing on the style. I want you focusing on the feeling you're going to have in this place. I'll use an example. So I have recently decided to manifest my dream home. It's a home that I'm actually going to build myself. So I need about five acres of land, and there are a lot of details for the house. So one of the things that I'm calling in is I want a massive vegetable garden.

Katie [00:10:09]:

I have this desire to grow a lot of my own food and to grow it organically and to can a lot of it that I don't use and also make it available for community members to come and grab if they're struggling to afford food. Having little baskets of, like, carrots and zucchini and celery and some lettuce and maybe some strawberries just ready and available on my front porch that people can come and grab and return the baskets when they're done. Something that happens when you have an organic vegetable garden is you have little critters that like to eat stuff. You have caterpillars and slugs and, I don't know, aphids like other bugs. I'm not a bug expert, so I'm not worried about that. But I've decided I also want ducks because ducks are great at managing all these little pests. They eat them. That's how they manage them.

Katie [00:11:02]:

It's not like they organize them into unions and say, you can do this and you can't do that. Which actually that would be such a cute kids cartoon, wouldn't it? Like a little group of ducks, they go around, they have, like, clipboards, and they're saying, okay, well, you're allowed to eat this leaf, but you can't eat this leaf because it's against union rules. But they offer incredible health insurance to the bug, so it works out for everyone. They also have an amazing pension plan. Now, I could totally get so flipped out about, oh, my God. Well, if I have ducks, I'm going to have to have a pond. And am I going to want to find land that's on a pond. But if I'm on a pond, then there's going to be a mosquito issue that I'm not going to have control over.

Katie [00:11:43]:

But if I build a little duck pond like, oh, my God, I'm going to have to make sure there's good filtration. I'm going to have to also make sure that it's clean from time to time. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A lot of problems. And you see how easily my brain went there. It's natural for our brains when we think about what we want, to immediately identify all the problems that can arise from us getting it. So how do you work around this? And I'm going to walk you through it. Oh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out.

Katie [00:12:15]:

But first, squirrel. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. It's natural for our brains when we think about what we want to immediately identify all the problems that can arise from us getting it. So how do you work around this as a master manifesto? With ADHD, you turn what you are trying to manifest into your absolute hyper focus. So one of the things that I have a lot of fun doing when I'm doing my manifesting work is I go and I research different species of domesticated ducks, which sounds crazy, I know, but there's a lot that goes into it. Like, you want ducks that are friendly. You also want some ducks that are a little shy. You want a bunch of different personalities, right? You want ducks that aren't going to be destructive to the vegetables.

Katie [00:13:13]:

There's a lot of factors that go into this. There's also the look, I want pretty ducks. And I'm not ashamed to say it looks matter to me when it comes to ducks, but you can do this for anything. If there's a type of car that you want to call in, there's so many reports online. There are reviews you can go and look up, like horsepower and all the other stuff that happens with cars. I don't know anything about cars, so that's a bad example. If you're manifesting a new wardrobe instead of going and identifying the exact pieces that you want to call into your closet, instead of identifying all the pieces and how expensive they are and, oh, my God, are they still going to be in season when you can afford them? Focus on the style. Focus on how comfortable the fabrics will be.

Katie [00:14:01]:

When we're manifesting things. What we're really doing is this neurological trick where we're telling our brains, I'm giving myself permission to want this and to seek it out in the world. And what that does is it flips a switch. So if you've ever decided that you were going to buy a very specific new car so, for instance, when I was younger, I wanted a yellow Jeep. I thought it would look so cool living on Cape Cod and driving around in a soft top yellow Jeep that I could put down and have it be convertible. And it was bright and happy, but also kind of rugged, even though I'm not rugged at all. Anyway, I just thought it would be so cool. And I saw yellow Jeeps everywhere all the time.

Katie [00:14:45]:

Into my 20s, like into adulthood, I would always notice the yellow Jeeps because my brain got a very clear message that we are looking for an opportunity to get a yellow Jeep. And so your brain is naturally going to start identifying that's a yellow Jeep and that's a yellow Jeep. And that's a yellow Jeep because there might be an instance where there's a yellow Jeep driving down the highway that has written on the window for scale $4,000. And at that point you just follow them home. Well, probably follow them to the police department because they're going to notice that you're following them. And that's what you're supposed to do when someone's following you is drive to the police department and it scares people away unless they don't actually have bad intentions. God, I'm making myself sound so creepy. But really if you are driving along and you notice someone's following you, go to the police department.

Katie [00:15:34]:

Don't mess around. Be safe people. But my point being is you want to make whatever it is that you're calling in your hyper focus. You want to let yourself become absolutely obsessed with it. And not only that, you want to start leaving reminders for yourself all around your living space wherever you spend the most time. So if there's a particular kind of car that you want, I want you either getting the poster of it or a little model of it and have it on your desk or near where you spend most of your time. If you're calling in a house like I am, draw the floor plans. It doesn't have to be exact.

Katie [00:16:19]:

Write down all the things that matter to you. It was amazing. When I moved to Philadelphia a few years ago, I remember saying to my friends and I would talk about it a lot, all the things that I wanted in my apartment. So one of the things is I wanted an open concept living area, right? I wanted an island in the kitchen because I like that kind of like thing that people can kind of gather around while you're cooking and while you're doing stuff. If you're having friends over for dinner. I wanted two bathrooms. I wanted a really big bedroom and then a smaller bedroom. I wanted big closets.

Katie [00:16:53]:

I wanted lots and lots of light. And I very specifically wanted windows that led out to the street that my dog Luna could look out through because that's one of her favorite things. She just kind of sits there and watches the world go by and she's really quiet about know, the only time she really barks is if there's a cat walking across the street. Otherwise, she just really enjoys watching things happen. I got exactly what I wanted. I also wanted hardwood floors. I also wanted some stained glass windows. Like, all of it.

Katie [00:17:24]:

I got all of it. And I got the nicest landlords. And the other thing that I wanted was I wanted an apartment that didn't have a lot of apartments around it. And my apartment was the only apartment in the building. My landlords were artists and they used the bottom floor for their art studio. So I had this apartment pretty much all to myself in this beautiful building. I also had access to the backyard, whatever. Everything I wanted that I kept naming.

Katie [00:17:53]:

I want this. I want this. I want this. I got and also, this was the first apartment I viewed when I moved to Philadelphia. I found it online. I requested a tour, and I think I was the first person that they offered it to as well. It was also under my budget. When we focus on all the things that we want and how we want to feel in a space or how we want to feel when we have the thing, that's where the magic happens.

Katie [00:18:26]:

We can't get hung up on, I want that apartment. I want that house. Right? Because then you get stressed out about, well, when's the person going to move out? Back to my point about leaving reminders for yourself all around. You can do this on your computer, you can do this on your phone, you can do this physically in your space. But here's the thing that's going to happen for those of us with ADHD. If you haven't heard of vision boards, I'm going to talk you through it right now. A vision board is basically a visual representation of everything that you want. Like cut out pictures from magazines and print things up from the interwebs and you paste it all together on this collage board and you hang it up in your room.

Katie [00:19:08]:

The problem for folks with ADHD is like, once something's in our space for enough time, we become blind to it, right? This is why I stopped noticing the massive pile of clean laundry taking up a whole corner of my room. It's just part of it. It's no longer a problem. It's just where I store my clothes. This is why when you walk into a kitchen of someone who has ADHD, oftentimes you'll see cabinet doors open and you'll see everything that they use on a daily basis out there on the countertops. To you, it's going to look super messy. Even if you also have ADHD, right? Because your own mess is like you're not going to be bothered by your own mess, but other people's messes, that drives you crazy. It's clutter for them.

Katie [00:19:56]:

But for you, if it's put away, it doesn't exist anymore. So obviously it needs to be left out. The reason I bring this up is you're going to become blind to these items that you have that are representing the things that you want to call in. So in addition to this, you're also going to have to schedule and put in your phone reminders and alerts to spend five minutes here, ten minutes there, focusing on calling this thing in. Those reminders, they'll interrupt your day and just remind you to focus on the thing that you want. So I've recently completely overhauled my routine. I wake up around six or seven, I read for 30 to 60 minutes. I read a book for pleasure.

Katie [00:20:41]:

I don't read anything that's going to help me in my business or anything. It's usually something that's fantasy romance, but it helps me ease into my day and feel inspired and that I've done something fun that allowed me to cross something off the list. Then I usually have breakfast and coffee and while I'm eating my little toaster waffles because they're my current dopamine breakfast, I do what I call M and M time. And it's not where I eat M and Ms, it's where I do manifestation and meditation. So I'm doing my manifestation work. I have two different routines that I do for manifestation. One for high vibration days and one for low vibration days. If you want details, if you want the complete breakdown of the two different types of manifestation that I do, then I want you to go and check out the premium podcast of the Weeniecast for winners.

Katie [00:21:33]:

Go to weeniecast.com winners and you'll be able to access this premium episode where I'm going to break down exactly what my manifestation practice is for both days, for high vibration days and low vibration days. Anyway, so I do my manifestation and then I do a little meditation. And for me, it could be my transcendental meditation that I'm trained in, or it could be some kind of visualization that I want to take myself through, or it could simply be focusing in on everything that I'm calling in. But it's scheduled and I'll be honest, I don't do it every day. There are some mornings where I snooze and I snooze and I snooze and I have enough time to eat my breakfast and drink my coffee and I'm getting to work. Okay, I'm not saying that I have a perfectly dialed in routine, but more often than not, I have that M and M time, right? And for you, you can either schedule this in and it's a regular thing in your day, or you can set random reminders for yourself. Whatever works for you. There are no hard and fast rules.

Katie [00:22:45]:

And that's one of the reasons why those of us with ADHD struggle with manifestation, because we feel like there are right and wrong rules. There aren't. It's whatever works for you that allows for you to stay in that positive vibration or allows you to work through some of the shadow work that's getting in the way of the positive vibration. Those of us with ADHD have more anxiety than the typical person. And when you have anxiety, the anxiety looks for something to focus on. So you're going to be naturally inclined to focus in on not having it yet. And remember, Manifesting 101, what you focus on grows. So we don't want to grow not having it.

Katie [00:23:38]:

So here's what I want you to remember, because part of what's going to get in the way of you calling this in is focusing in on, well, I don't know how it's going to happen. I have to really figure out how it's going to happen, and then it'll happen. And then you're going to try a bunch of these random ways you think is going to make it happen. And it won't work because you're not focusing on calling it in. You're focusing on figuring out how it's going to work. Did you know exactly how you were going to meet your partner or spouse before you met them? Did you know exactly how you were going to meet your best friend? Did you know exactly how you would get all of the jobs you've ever had in your life? Did you know exactly how you'd discover your ultimate career? Did you know how you discovered the hobbies that light you up every single day? No, you did not know how all that would come about. You had no idea. All that when you look back, I bet a lot of the time you're saying, oh my God, that happened by accident.

Katie [00:24:44]:

I was so lucky. I just happened to come across that one person who worked for that one company who had that one opening. And because I spilled my coffee and we had this random conversation because they helped me clean it up, they mentioned this job and I was like, oh my God, I'm actually looking for a job, and I have all the specialties that that job calls for. And that's how you landed your first corporate role. Whatever the accidents that come into play for you to meet your romantic partner, I can think of a few instances where I couldn't have planned that, nor would I have wanted to in some instances, right? So here's my point, is that there's no way to plan for good things to happen to you, and good things will still happen for you without the plan. In fact, the best things usually happen to you without a plan. So while you're focusing on manifesting whatever it is you want in your life, set aside needing to know how exactly it's going to happen because it will never go to plan. And have faith that because you are focusing on it.

Katie [00:26:09]:

Because you have flipped that switch in your brain and told your brain full permission to start identifying different opportunities in the world where we might be able to get what we want, that your brain is going to be able to make those connections. Your brain will identify things that are already out there in the world and available to you, and you'll be shocked how quickly things can happen. An example that I like to use is like, imagine you're out in the garden and you want to see a cardinal, which is if you're not familiar in North America, it's a red bird that has some black on it as well. They're really pretty. But imagine you decide the way you're going to see this bird is you're going to put a little bit pile of bird food in the center of the yard and you're just going to stare at that one spot. You're just going to stare at that one spot. This plan is going to work. I got the bird food that the person at the bird store said that cardinals really like and I put it out in the open, they're going to see it, obviously.

Katie [00:27:12]:

And you just sit there with your head on your hand and you stare at this spot for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. Now, I can almost guarantee you if you live in an area where there are cardinals if you had it, just let yourself relax and let your eyes just kind of scan around. You would have noticed in the corner of your eye a little red flicker, another little red flicker. And one of those flickers, at some point is probably going to be a Cardinal. But if you're so intent on this thing happening, on seeing that cardinal in one specific particular way that you decided is going to work, you're shutting yourself off to all the other opportunities for you to spot it. So have faith that you get to let go of knowing how it's going to happen and just focus in on believing that it will happen. And if you want to hear exactly what I do for my manifestation practice, I'm explaining all of it in the premium podcast and you can find it@weeniecast.com winners. We also have the link in the show notes.

Katie [00:28:23]:

You can hear Luna going, not getting my way. My life is so hard. I didn't get enough treats today. I'm not getting enough attention. Who has been texting me?