Reply To: Positive Feedback

[Rick Green – Founder of TotallyADD]

My mom is 90, and she doesn’t want us to pick stuff up, she wants to go get it with us. (And she never runs out cause she stocks up with way more than she needs… so she never runs out.)

I have to add in here, Positive Feedback is so crucial. Encouragement. Belief. Acknowledgement. Huge!

There’s a tremendous book about what research is showing into Happiness. It’s called Positivity, by Dr. Barbara L Fredrickson. (If we don’t have it in the TotallyADD shop, I’ll see if we can get it there.

Amazing research is showing if you have roughly 3 positive experiences for everyone negative your happiness will spiral upwards. Less than that and it will spiral downwards.

And it’s so, so, so  easy with ADHD for people to focus on the small mistakes. Here’s one thing I’ve noticed. I crave positive feedback. I crave being acknowledged for small victories as well as the big ones. I crave being acknowledged and thanked for doing the routine stuff. And yet, and this was very confronting, how often did diagnose it should others around me? How much did I knowledge my wife for everything she is doing. How often did I give her positive feedback for the hundred and 1 things that she does every day? And how often did I only focus on what didn’t get done, or was still to do, or took too long to do, or whatever.

I think it was Gandhi who said, “be the change you want to see in the world.” Which I figure was a reference to an Urbana, global peace, humankind linked arm in arm singing, “We are the world…”

But I started being more knowledge and of Ava, people I work with, friends, family. Not to inventing stuff, or trying to gloss over things that had gone wrong.  Not, “well it’s great that you dropped that vase because now we can have a fun shopping trip.”

But just being able to find something positive, actually seeking it out, had me discover a  files in one things I hadn’t noticed before.

On November 26 I’m doing a webinar about how to defend yourself from people who are dismissive of ADHD, or the possibility that you might have it. But I’m going to make a note now also talk about positivity. Will actually do an exercise during the webinar, one I did many years ago that was life altering for me.

But I have to say when I started to  give positive feedback to everyone around me because the profound shift in my view of the world. More than simply, “the glass is half full.”

The other thing that happened was that by being the change I wanted to see in the world, namely more positive feedback, the more positive comments, and feedback, and gratitude came back to me. And it worked way better than me asking people to be positive.

And it was a lot harder. At least for me. It’s just so easy for me to focus on the negative. It’s kind of my Go To setting.

So, @sdwa, @blackdog, and @dithl, thank you for this posting. I love that you’ve brought this topic up. And I love what you’ve shared. Cause it’s painful. And I suspect it’s common, if not universal, for adults with ADHD.

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