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Are you constantly feeling overwhelmed by your never-ending to-do list? In this illuminating episode, Mande invites special guest Jessica Blake to share groundbreaking strategies for managing chronic pain and fatigue – conditions that can severely impact productivity and quality of life. Drawing from her own experiences as an engineer and ADHD coach, Jessica provides a fresh perspective on understanding and alleviating these debilitating issues.
What you'll learn:
Insights into "neuropathic pain" and how our brains process chronic pain signals
Powerful techniques like "somatic tracking" to rewire the brain's pain response
Root cause analysis methods such as fishbone diagrams
Strategies for optimizing your energy levels by maximizing "green zone" times
Creative tips for pairing dreaded tasks with pleasant activities
"Our brains are so powerful. Hearing stories about others who have relieved their pain can trigger your brain into relief." - Jessica
By the end of this powerful episode, you'll be equipped with a wealth of actionable strategies to finally conquer chronic pain and fatigue. Jessica's innovative approach, rooted in her engineering mindset and personal journey, offers a fresh perspective on managing these debilitating conditions.
Useful Links Mentioned:
Connect with Jessica on FB: https://www.facebook.com/jessicablakecoaching/
Jessica Blake's Website: www.jessicablakecoaching.com
Schedule a Consultation with Mande https://linktr.ee/learntothrivewithadhd
Free Resources https://www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/free-downloads
The ADHD Academy https://www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/membership
Whether you're grappling with chronic pain, fatigue, or simply seeking ways to boost your productivity, this episode offers a wealth of eye-opening information and practical tools. Subscribe for more inspiring stories and strategies to navigate life with ADHD.
Engage with us in the comments or on our social media channels. We'd love to hear your experiences and how you're implementing the tips shared in this episode!
Remember: You don't have to let chronic conditions control your life. Stay open-minded, give yourself grace, and tune in to discover strategies that could work for your unique brain and body.
Listen to the Episode:
Click here to read the transcript:
All right. Welcome back, guys. This week, we have Jessica Blake with us. She is an LCS certified coach, but the reason I have her here today is because of her engineer mind.
And we will talk about ways that she kind of addresses things a little bit differently and tools that she has because of the way she thinks that I think will be helpful for all of us. But, Jessica, could you go ahead and introduce yourself? Good
morning. My name is Jessica Blake, and I am an LCS certified coach. I'm also a Gallup global strengths coach, some strength finders, which is interesting,
but most of my adult professional
life I've spent in more technical roles.
So I have an engineering undergrad and engineering master's, and then I worked in manufacturing and construction for many years. And then in 2018, I launched my own consulting business. So we do continuous improvement and LEAN. There's some certifications that I help companies with, and we also do some other project management type stuff. Yeah, so that's me. We're a team of four right now and we've been a business about six years.
Very good. And what is your ADHD story?
So this plays into, you know, owning my own small business when I was 35. So two years ago I was starting to realize that I was having memory issues. And so I would be talking to someone, I would look over and then come back and they'd be like, So what do you think?
And I'd be like, I have, you know, I lost the thread. It's like it was in my hand and it just dropped and I have no idea what they're talking about. So I realized like, Hey, my brain is really struggling to keep up and it keeps erroring right? So I talked to my doctor and
got that evaluated, and ADHD was the best fit for that.
So I was having memory issues and then once I started learning about ADHD, I was like this like a lot of this stuff I've masked and I've come up with strategies throughout my life that have supported it and helped it. But I reached the ceiling of what my current capacity can handle and my brain just
wasn't able to keep up with
all of the stuff that too little kids and a business and, you know, coaching certification.
I think that was around the same time. And
so it just everything together.
I was no longer capable of fully managing that without additional resources. And I feel like we'll talk about productivity, but I feel like in your life, right, you go from you're a middle school student and you go to high school and things get harder and then you go to college maybe and things get harder and then you work
and things are just they get harder.
And a lot of times we're not taught the skills to help us cope with that. How to manage our workloads, how to manage our brain. That's a great example. And so we
reach that plateau and we that that peak of wherever it is that our brains kind of are at capacity and then we struggle. And so for me, that was 35, but I do a lot of coaching and I like to prep people ahead of time.
So if they're in college and they're about to start working, like, hey, it's going to get a lot harder and it's great if you can practice some of these skills now until you get to the point where you can't manage your own work. How wonderful
is that? Yeah, Yeah. So that's my story.
Probably typical to a lot of people.
I had anxiety and perfectionism as a child
all the way through. And, you know, as I'm learning like that, those
are very ADHD woman type symptoms. So it
all kind of makes sense. And I
find it really empowering and positive that I have this diagnosis now that my failures are not moral flaws, that they are a function of my brain and I can work with my brain and not, you know, for not performing how I want it to.
So it's been very positive in my life to to be diagnosed with ADHD again and learn those tools. Yeah.
And you describe something that kind of touched something in me, like when I was 18 or 19, you know, maybe, maybe I wasn't following through in college the way I would have like to. And I didn't
really know at that time.
I had ADHD, but when I was like 20 something and I was substitute teaching, that is when I realized I had ADHD. But I thought, You're out of high school, you're pretty much done with college. What does it matter? It's no big deal. But that capacity that you're talking about, I was like, okay, when I realized this, I didn't even have children.
And
then once I got once I had children and I was like
trying to manage myself and a home and all my interests and my hobbies and, you know, my relationships and all of that, that is when I like kind of hit the ceiling and anxiety and overwhelm took over and were just kind of my go to emotions all the time.
So that was really interesting that like I never thought about it that way of it being like a capacity issue. So thank you for sharing that. But as I mentioned before, your engineer minds, when we were talking ahead of time, you mentioned a lot of really interesting like tools and tactics that you have that I think are very unique to the way that you think.
So would you mind sharing those with us?
Yeah. So I do a lot of support with companies and manufacturers, nonprofits and agencies, all kinds of people. So this
can apply to lots of different things. But I love applying these tools to my life.
So I'm taking these established tools that have been around for
100 years, maybe more, right before somebody named them.
And I'm applying those to my
life and other people's lives right. And it is so powerful. Like we don't we don't need
to start from scratch. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We there are tools and techniques out there that can help us. So I wanted to share a few of them. And I think a good example would be Let's go with my daughter.
I got a letter in the mail that my daughter was late to pre-K like 15 times in like one semester. And I was like, mortified, right? my gosh, I'm failing as a mother, as a parent. So instead of just beating myself up and saying, we need to do better, we need to try harder, right? I have, you know, time, blindness and other ADHD things.
And instead of just berating myself like maybe I would have done in the past, I decided to do a root cause and
corrective action. So this is a tool we use in manufacturing
and Lean and I used a tool called
Fishbone Diagram, which is one of the kind of more technical tools you can
use. But basically you draw Fishbone and you draw your problem as the the
head of the fish and then the bones of the fish
are all the contributing factors to that problem.
And so kid was late to
pre-K, right? That's the result. But there's dozens of factors that go into that. So, you know, she eats breakfast while watching TV, so she's super slow in the mornings. We're
not getting her to bed in time. So she's tired in the mornings and cranky pre cares and then she doesn't want to put her pants on.
And, you know, that goes
me and my husband, we're going to bed too
late. So we didn't want to get up and we weren't, you know, getting up early and getting her up and, you know, getting everybody ready, like we
were rushing in the mornings as well. And then one interesting factor that came up was it's always a problem with your socks.
We can never find
socks. She doesn't like the socks we have. Right. And of course, when kids are cranky entire day, you know, those things are huge. Otherwise she can only handle it. So that was a really low hanging fruit. Like we want to rank those ideas, all those
influencing factors.
We want to rank by effort and impact.
So it's kind of like the potato concept where
of the solutions are going to give you 80% of the value. So we decided buying new socks was a really low hanging fruit. Let's try it right. Kind of about new socks, theme free socks so she couldn't throw fit about it and that was great. We also realized that we probably as grown ups needed to go to bed earlier so that we could get her in bed earlier so that we could all get up and have
breakfast together.
So those two things, so they're going to bed earlier with more of a kind of process change took more effort, but it had a huge impact. So between those two solutions, we had no more LATES for the rest of the
year, did not get any more letters, which was great. So if we had just stopped at we need to try harder, it would have just been kind of pushing uphill.
Right? And instead we worked with we really evaluated what the problems were and the influencing factors and found some solutions that were that were helpful. And I literally drew this out on the board. My husband rolled his eyes every time you walked by it, but I was like, No, I'm doing this.
I'm using my tool and
I love that.
So it's something to think about it,
something so interesting that just happened this week that I can kind of relate to with this. As of this recording, we're running a 12 week challenge and
the people that are joining it are bringing any kind of goal that they want. Well, what I noticed this week is part of that for
me is like filling out a habit tracker.
And I didn't have a great week. I had like a score of 66%
and we just noticed my 12 week year book before we started. And in there they have you score yourself. And what
I'm noticing from a mindset piece was, okay, I got 66%, what's going on here? And I looked and I'm like, okay,
you're not meal planning.
And therefore if you're not planning your meals, you're not honoring your plan because there's no plan to honor. So you're losing, you know, two points right there every single day. But I just saw it as like data. Okay? Instead of beating myself up over like a 66% score, I'm like, this is the information. This is the data that this gives me and here's how I can do better.
But that school, when they sent you that letter 15 times, they were offering you data like 15 times out of the semester. And you took that data and you went okay, I can choose to be, you know, failing as a mother or I can choose to take this data and make an improvement. And so
I love that chosen to do thought work around like, you know what, it's not that important and it's
pre-K on time.
Who cares? I mean, they're social impacts. But, you know, you have to really decide, is this problem something I want to coach myself to realize it's not a problem which in some situations is really helpful. Right?
And then sometimes you actually want to solve it. So
yeah, I like that example of flipping demo. Absolutely. Yeah.
And you had some other tools and one of them was around energy levels.
Yeah.
So I love reading. I don't know if you can see on all my books I have beautiful color order, so they make my brain happy. I love reading, I love distilling knowledge for my clients, for myself, my customers, everybody. So one of the books I read is called At Your Best, and I don't remember the guy's name that wrote it, but it talks about energy levels and Green Zone, Yellow zone, red zone for your day.
And so it has. You start by tracking that, just jotting
down on a little piece of paper like time of day and how you feel and just kind of getting some data again and then using that data to plan your week so your day is going forward. So Green Zone times are times when you have the most energy for your day, your focus, your distraction free, or you need to make
a distraction free.
Yellow zone times are like, I can kind of do some mediocre stuff. And then red zones. That's like, you're 3:30 p.m., you're at the end of the day and you're done with the day and you're just like, I'm just going to delete emails, right? So planning very consciously and just strategically knowing that it's not a moral failing, it's not a flaw, but working with that.
So what can I do in my Green Zone times that will add the most value? What do I need my most capacity for? That's usually things like composing a difficult
email or writing or doing a lot of thinking or planning things that really take your full self in your full brain. Plan those things for your Green Zone. For most people, that's like 8 to 10 a.m., I think is the guidance they give in the book.
And that's pretty has been pretty true for me. But some people it might be 11 p.m.. Right. It's 9 hours that like to stay up. Maybe that's our go time. So being very conscious and strategic about protecting that green Zone time, you know, some companies that implement this
don't have meetings from 8 to 10 a.m. every day.
You come into work and you get started immediately on the important things for the day and then the rest of the day. As your energy levels wane, you can do meetings and other things that can. Don't take away all of your brain, don't take as much creative advice. So it's been really helpful for me. I know you you, Mandy, tell us tell us a little bit about what how you implement that with your clients.
I know you've talked about that. Yeah.
We're always working with energy levels and for various reasons for sleep issues or for there's lots of reasons that we're working around energy levels. I
do have a little story that about my energy levels. I was trying to work on a logo. I, I just got started with my business, you guys.
I started imperfectly.
My website still sucks.
It's they're good. But there
was something where they were saying, like, have a logo. And I'm like, I don't have a logo. And I was creating
the ADHD
academy and I'm like, I need a logo for that. And so I was sitting there trying to do a logo and I think it was like 6:00 at night, not super late.
This shouldn't be too much of a problem. But I was struggling and my husband was kind of sitting over across the room like, I just
got this
and I was working on it for like an hour and a half and
didn't like anything. It was terrible. And he's like, Why don't you just go to sleep? Why don't you just save
that for tomorrow?
And for once I listened.
I was like, okay, I'll and but I must have like,
went at this
for hours. And
the next morning I
think I woke up.
I think I'm
mistaken. I think it was like kind of late at night.
And I woke up
at like 6:00 in the morning and I just went right over to
my computer and I designed two logos in 15 minutes.
And you can see, like the difference with the our brain capacity and the energy levels of like that night I was just done and wouldn't accept it. And so I listened to my husband's advice on that. And in the morning I was just so much more clear and it was just easy. And so I love that about about the different zones and paying attention to that.
I can definitely see that throughout my day. I had about 2:00 and I'm just finished. There's not going to be. And it's interesting that my workday goes from about 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.
when we can do that, which is exactly with our brain.
Yeah,
I'm not trying to do like a 9 to 5 or anything like that.
Of course I have, you know, another business, but I, you know, I'm just kind of managing that. And I say that from like a distance, managing that, like just doing orders
and, and just making sure things are taken care of and things like that. So that doesn't take a lot of my brainpower. So, yeah, well, what's the next direction you'd like to go with this?
Well,
two more things to add to this kind of energy level. So one of the things that as a business owner, I work from home, I have full flexibility. Obviously, I've got clients and things that have hours, but I take a nap almost every day. So I take a nap
around between two and three. I try not to do it too late or it'll keep me up, but that can recharge my my energy levels because I was realizing I was using all of my energy all day long and I was getting I was just like powering through and I was exhausted at 4:30 and then my kids come home and they were getting the
worst
of me. And I realized that I did not want to be like lazy and not lazy. That's a very loaded word, right? But like sitting on the couch, low energy. I don't really want to go out and play because I had used up all my energy during the day. So
I knew as a parent that I wanted to save some of that for them.
And so I very consciously and strategically plan a nap in so that I can take a nap. I can also wake up and get back. It takes a little while to get back up to speed, but when they get home, I can be present. We can go do fun things in the evening. And it really has changed my my relationship with the kids and the time the time of day.
They're getting the best of me, even though I just work the whole day. So give yourself permission to try things. Right. I think culture and society tells us we have to. You know, you're going to run a business. You need to be at your desk from 8 to 5 and you need to,
you know, whatever, like throw it all away.
Like, do what my
ADHD brain is like. No, no, no.
Absolutely not. But I think we still have those lingering thoughts and those lingering guilt and shame and all of that. Like, it's kind of embarrassing. So I have to like, coach myself around the fact that I schedule a nap every day and I put it rest and restore time on my calendar and I make it private so nobody can see it.
But, you
know, I had to change my thoughts around what
it means to take a nap because I had lots of cultural thoughts in my brain about that was something lazy people
do. And, you know, that's not a real business owner and all of that. So I have coached myself a lot around that and it has been super helpful.
It has made my
life better by implementing that kind of change. Yeah, So, you know,
go
ahead. I've talked about it before, but Jessica put together this wonderful group of coaches that are able to offer coaching and then get coaching. It's called Coach it Forward. Right. And I remember you talking about this in a coaching call. Yeah.
About the NAP was like coached around
my boss around napping
slightly I remember that So what a coincidence that like full circle, here we are and I'm like, I'm good with it.
It's fine.
The other thing all about this, like Green Zone Red zone is that I because I am a business owner, I can go to my kids like parties and things like that at school. Sometimes we don't get the kids to daycare in school and I don't get started until ten. And because of that flexibility, I often save some like really easy kind of menial tasks.
Like I need
to format this document or whatever. I'll save that for the evenings. Kids go to bed. I can put on a show, my husband and I can watch it and I can just like, doodle around and do those like low energy tasks. I very strategically save some of those, or that might be evening time where I'm, you know, spend another
half hour, an
hour and I can finish something.
But it doesn't take a whole lot of energy. So being very strategic, it doesn't have to be during your workday that can, you know, the weekends and wherever it is that you can get the most value, but that energy levels you have at that time. So, yeah,
I love hearing that because sometimes I do work on Saturday and it's just like little things that I wasn't able to get to during the week.
And I think there's a little bit of guilt around that
right now. And so what I hear you saying guilt around
working or guilt around not finishing like I
should be able to get it done during the workday, I think is the thought around that. And what I hear you saying is like, we can give ourselves permission to do these things whenever we want to and let's save the brain dead type things for when we don't need a lot of thinking power.
So and
maybe what I'm hearing when you say you work on the weekends as you're using your Green Zone time for something that's kind of strategic or mean,
maybe you're doing a little menial stuff, but you know, you're saving your capitalizing on that super
great mental capacity and applying that to your business, which is which is cool. And
the time that I'm doing laundry
all the time I'm working on Saturdays is probably like
during the Green Zone, actually.
So that's so if you can swap,
you know, do laundry at 4 p.m. on a Thursday and then save an hour of your Green Zone time on a Saturday. You know, that's a great I think that's a great swap with family and all of that. But it
can work. You know what's interesting is like with things like that, like laundry, it's it doesn't take any brainpower.
At least now it doesn't. There was once upon a time that it did. I don't know if you guys have experienced this, but when I was like younger, like a younger mother, basically, I didn't have like, a certain way I folded things and that really hurt my brain. Like, it was like there wasn't just one way I folded t shirts or anything like that.
But the reason I'm even talking about this is I don't make laundry like a thing. It's something like I squeeze in, like I put a load of laundry and that takes, you know, a few minutes. I switch it at some point in the day. That takes a few minutes. I fold
it right out of the dryer. That takes a few minutes.
It's not like I think. But then I know some of some of my clients are like, I need a laundry day or
I need to focus on it or it doesn't happen. But for me, I wonder, like, what other types of things? Or are you guys listening? What other types of things do you just not really make like a big priority in your life?
Like I just don't let laundry. I was scooping the cat box one time. It's just so gross. But I was
scooping the cat box and I remember like my husband was like, in that like pantry area where it is and I'm like, This is not my best life. Like, I got an
automatic cat box and one
we got a what is it called, a litter robot or something like that.
Yeah.
And now it's the kids
job to like take care of
that and all of that. It's like, what in your life can
you just, like, minimize so much that it's just not
a thing? Yeah, I mean, and that plays into
clean and continuous improvement, right? You're spending your time. It's taking
you however many
minutes and mental energy every day to do it.
What could you eliminate? What could you engineer out, Right. Somebody engineered a love that
saves so much time.
We have the same
I have a cheaper version of that one, but it scoops and once a week I think, okay, dump it out right.
That brings up another idea that I'm
sure your clients are aware of, but pairing fun things with not so fun thing.
So if I have to take the laundry, I'm going to put on a fun podcast or I'm going to watch my favorite show or I'm going to do something I like so that I can pair it with something that isn't as much fun, but I can kind of look forward to at 4:00. I'm going to stop working and I'm going to go do laundry and I can listen to a fun podcast, right?
I'm saving that red zone. Time doesn't take a lot of mental energy. So pairing that, and I know that's a book and a strategy and it can't remember,
what is a tiny habits or chronic habit?
It's one one of those atomic habits. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. They all come into my brain and get
mixed up. So what's so
funny is like, we don't
realize the stuff that we just do naturally.
Like when you say that, I'm like, there is no folding laundry without a book or a podcast. That
does not happen
if there's no book or no podcast, if there's no entertainment, there's no folding laundry. Yeah,
I think so. This is kind of funny, maybe, or some of us, maybe you or some of your people can identify with it.
Like showering is a is an issue for me. I don't know if
it's a sensory thing. I think it's like 15 minutes that I have no stimulation and no brain stuff. So I will listen to a podcast
or a book on tape or some really fun music, and that helps me take showers because otherwise
I just read them.
And I
want to point out to my sister talks about like hating doing dishes, and she realized that she didn't like her hands being what she, you know, the sensory weirdness of wet hands and yucky.
So she just got herself a pair gloves and she puts on music and a podcast or whatever. She's always wearing
her headphones and she will do dishes and doesn't mind it a bit.
So, you know, when we think about I'm dreading this thing, do that root cause analysis, think about what it is that I'm really what bothers me and give yourself grace that it's not a moral failing, right?
It's it's just something we need to figure out. And so what
is it about it that is a problem? And what creative solutions
can you come up with that will help with that?
So that's
exactly you know, it sparked my mind when you said 15 minutes for the shower. Like, I want people to understand, like, I think all of us have our 15 minute dread kind of activity. I had a neck injury that I, I
still
I found a different way to do these exercises so I don't have to do this dreaded one to Jessica's point.
But the dreaded exercise was I had to lay on a neck block
for 15 minutes and as a hyperactive ADHD year to lay down on the ground on a neck block for 15 minutes, even if I was listening to a book or a podcast was just torture, like I couldn't do it. I'm okay if I'm
doing something, you know, if you're showering, you're like, you're doing things right
or doing dishes or whatever.
But just to lay there and do nothing, which I also work with my clients a lot about, like dealing with the discomfort of doing nothing, but there's not work to be done to. But that is a real thing. And I just want you guys to know if you're like dreading like 10 to 15 minute activities and you think something's wrong with you, there's nothing wrong with you.
Like, it is very normal. It's very common. I would even go so far as to say all of us have these these activities.
And Jessica is giving us very good tools as far as working around them. So thank you for that to be
creative. Right. Come up with like step back and think, okay, this is the problem. How can I solve this problem?
And be really creative? Maybe ask friends, ask your spouse or whoever just to help you brainstorm some solutions. Do it because you don't have to do it any certain way. That's what's beautiful about like
absolutely do. Absolutely. Yeah. And another another thing that I wanted to bring up
and another reason I wanted to bring Jessica on was chronic pain.
I notice there's a lot of my clients and a lot of you out there tell me you are dealing with chronic pain. And Jessica has been doing some interesting things, learning some interesting things about this. You want to share kind of your story around chronic pain and what you're doing about it. Yeah.
So I want to I will kind of start with my my story.
So I've had back pain and headaches,
shoulder tension, that kind of thing, since probably college probably started with poor posture and, you know, studying and looking down at a book all day. And it just has gotten worse and it's gotten worse inside. I've realized it's gotten worse during really stressful times in my life, and I never really made that connection.
So I was rectum ended an app on curable. So it's like five bucks a month. It's not crazy expensive. They do have like a $300 program and a $2,000 thing that you can.
But
I've gotten a lot I've gotten an enormous amount of value
out of just like the $5 app. But basically it it introduces you to the concept of neuro plastic pain.
So neuropathic pain means that if you have something that's like an acute pain sprain, your ankle, your brain recognizes this as pain. But then once that injury heals, no more pain, right? Chronic pain comes in when the brain kind of takes that acute pain and it latches onto it and it just keeps giving the signal inflammation, pain, information, pain.
And it's it's a physical response. It's not just that pain is all in your brain. But if you think about the example of, let's say you're like got a broken ankle and you're running from a London, right, you can bet you will be able to get up and run from a lion and you will probably not feel much of any pain until you're safe.
And then your brain will be like, my gosh, pain right in blood. Your brain, that will be the worst pain in your life. But that just kind of shows the example of how our brains can turn on and
off pain. It's kind of like it can regulate it. You think about people with like a phantom limb syndrome.
They have itching and pain from a limb that's out there because all pain comes from the brain, even if it's in response to something acute or some information or some signal, it's created in the brain. And so with chronic pain that that alarm system gets stuck on the on button. And it just says pain, pain, pain, pain all the time.
So it can start interpreting normal signals of pressure and tension
as pain. And it basically just starts doubling
down and it just starts, you know, the more pain you have, the
more pain you feel. And it's this vicious cycle and it's very much related to, you know, mindset and coaching. So it plays into that really nicely. It fits into that model really well.
So this curable app walks you through all of
these brain training exercises, meditations, writing exercises,
you know, a lot of things that can help you program your response to pain. So there's like visualizations and somatic tracking, which is where you and one of my favorite exercises where you don't do it when you're in extreme pain, but when you're in a moderate amount of pain or mild, you can lay down and you can pay really attention, really close attention to what it feels like and be curious.
And the very first time I did this exercise, it was so interesting that when I was having pain, let's say here and I was just being curious and I let it happen and it was very like meditation based things. And the pain moved and moved to a different place. And it was
interesting like that was so validating that it was neuropathic
pain.
And I was like, okay, this is amazing. The other piece of information that I thought was really helpful is that with
back pain, a lot of people have done studies. There's a book called The Way Out that's Connected. I don't know how connected to the Curable Creators. And one of the people wrote this looking at the studies, and he's a doctor and he did is back pain studies and he brought people in with that back pain without acting to an MRI.
And they looked at the physical manifestations like what's going on with your physical structure that could be causing pain and about half the people that should have pain didn't and about half the people shouldn't have pain did. And so there's not a lot of correlation between pain and the physical structures, right. Like golfers and disc degeneration and all of that.
And we hear about like this is a physical problem. It
doesn't correlate with the amount of pain we have,
which is really interesting. So they put in solutions like, let's go have surgery. And then most of the time surgery doesn't. And so your brain still has the pain, it doesn't have the physical thing. And so this whole program is is about changing your mind and changing the brain.
And it has I mean, I've seen it where you just knowing that it is your brain can help. And it's not that it doesn't exist. Right. It's not that that's fake or that it's all in your head. It's real. Pain is real. But
hearing stories about other people who have relieved their pain can be helpful for your brain to relieve its okay.
So it's fascinating. There's an app, there's a podcast where they interview recovery stories and just listening to those can trigger your brain into some relief, which is incredible. Our brains are so powerful. So it's all based on neuroscience. There's a lot of research. Most doctors aren't yet familiar with neuropathic pain, so they won't know that term, but that, you know, it's starting to become more, more popular, more common and simple.
So
And you said something interesting like all in your head. I remember due to my ADHD, I was dealing with a lot of like anxiety and depression. And I remember people saying things like, It's all in your head. And I'm like, Yeah, it's in my head. And
it's kind
of the same with pain, right? Like, it's like it's
all in your head.
Well, yeah. So I have a hip that I will often have a lot of pain with. It's been better since I've found some exercises to help with it, but I mean, there was a good two or three years of just constant everyday pain and just, you know, shooting down my leg and just it would affect like the whole right side of my body.
And it was just an everyday occurrence and not as bad as those of you that deal with like migraines and things like that. I can't even imagine. I hear the descriptions and I'm like, That's got to be hard. But it's not that bad. But it was just constant pain and I wish I had known then, but of this, did you call it somatic?
Somatic tracking? Was the exercise neuroplasticity? It was the head of the
somatic tracking is what was super interesting to me that that pain moved for you, that
wow.
So that that
whole, that whole concept I think
is revolutionary and can be really helpful. The other thing I'll add is that I had chronic fatigue. I had chronic Marto in high school and I
had chronic fatigue all the way through my twenties, early twenties, and it's mostly resolved now.
But a lot of people that have
chronic fatigue, it turns into chronic. So there's there's a huge correlation there. There's a huge correlation between early childhood
traumatic events, adverse events and people's lives. And even like the age of of a traumatic event can
impact the likelihood of chronic pain. So there's a correlation and it's it's our brains trying to keep us safe, right?
Like we had this traumatic event
and our brain is like we want to stay home and not let you go out to be in danger in the world. And so it's like it's this like trying to keep you safe and isolated and just protective in your little bubble. Like, when I get pain, I want to go lay down in the dark and I want to sleep and, you know, that kind of thing so well.
And with with
the traumatic events, it also makes me think like it gives you something else to focus on besides the traumatic event. And so it's it's like, no, look over here
again. And the that goes into a lot of that. So they they have these exercises where you're kind of processing some of that. You're identifying the places, the times in your life where you had more pain.
And then it has to kind of think, okay, what was going on in the rest of your life at that time? And that was really interesting for me. When I had my most painful episodes of years of episodes. Those were times when I was in a really high stress job, when I was in college, right when I'm running my own business.
So they were these kind of key times in my life that I could point to where the pain really correlated with the amount of anxiety and stress and all of that that I was experiencing, too.
Interesting. Interesting. Well, is there anything else that you think the audience should know?
I would say just to kind of wrap it up, you know, take these tools that we've talked about.
Right. The root cause and contraction of fishbone.
And one of my favorites is David Allen's getting things done right. He has a whole series of tools about capturing all the ideas.
Take it and iterate. Don't stop there, take it and make
it best for you. So if if you're not updating something, if you're not making changes to
it, maybe once a week it probably isn't working great for you and you're going to abandon it.
So I've ended up on this where I am right now. It might be different and I'm okay with that, right? I have my today board and I actually call it next few days, so I don't feel too much pressure, but it's my now board, right? And then I have a bigger board behind me. That's my longer term project.
Things I need to capture. I don't want them all loose in my head, Right. Because our brains are terrible at remembering things, especially mine.
But I can capture it and I can throw it on that project board or that long term board. So that's the system that works for me. Currently, I have tried
lots of different things and I wouldn't say they've been failures.
They just taught me more about what it is that works for me. I'm I need to see things
visually or I'll forget them because of my age.
So I have these seven sticky notes
in front of me and these are the things I need to do here in the next few days, and the rest of it can stay
out of my sight and out of my brain.
So take what works
on it. It's so
important to be native
and give yourself that grace to know that just because it works for somebody else. I hate buying like I hate buying planters because they're something that works for somebody else. I like to have a template and then I can edit it and then I can change things around.
And look, I need to capture
my hours and I need to have a waiting on section so that I know the things I've set out into
the world. So just be creative. Give yourself permission, like brainstorm with a friend, brainstorm
with a coach. That can be something that a coach can give you some new ideas and challenge those kind of sticking places.
It's great to work
with someone to work together on that. Don't be alone.
Yeah and I wrote down, I noted here changes. And it's so interesting because I showed Jessica, my planner, and I've showed you guys. If you look at previous episode episodes, I've showed you my Now Not Now tool that I put together with my Google calendar because I, you know, I work with you guys with appointments and things like that.
And I do like Jessica. I only do like the she does the first you know the next what did you call it the next few days? Next few
days? Next
few days? I do. Basically
it turns into the next few days. But I do like what's important today. What's important tomorrow and today gets highlighted in one color and tomorrow gets highlighted in another.
And then there's some things on this list that don't get highlighted at all. And it's why? Because it matters. But nobody's going to die and nothing's going to catch fire if it doesn't happen. And then I plug those things into my calendar. But at the same time, I have like a month of you sitting here in front of me on Month View.
It says Record Jessica Blake podcast.
You know, like things like that that I want to remember and keep the front of mind. But this is like an iteration. That's kind of my whole point with the changes.
If you look back at the video I did two years ago
about time management when I was first learning to manage my time, It's very rigid.
It's not very ADHD friendly, although I thought it was at the time, you know, And I like that you're giving permission for people to change because oftentimes I'm working with clients that are looking for a
system and they want that system to be the place they land. And I don't think we ever land anywhere. And Jessica's point here is like, you shouldn't land.
Don't even don't even try. It's just a you
stagnant and you're not growing and you're not learning and you're not stretching
yourself, right? You
want to love that. Okay. So Jessica is a multiple business owner. Like most of us listening.
And I
you know, you have your engineering business, but where else can people find you if they're interested in your productivity information?
Where can they find you? Yeah,
I do have a couple of openings for productivity talking or coaching. You know, sometimes it's just jumping on the phone and giving some ideas to somebody and they can take it and run with it, right? I don't, I don't have a, a six month package or anything that I sell, but I'm happy to figure out together, Right.
Continuously improve, figure out what it is that that person needs and be able to offer that. So I have a website. jessicablakecoaching.com
You can also find that same profile on Facebook and connect your family then that's kind of where I do a lot of my free webinars on continuous improvement and fun, some other fun stuff. So even though I to talk about I Yeah, so yeah, I do lots of fun stuff but
very good.
I mean and I love to make
it also I'm well thank you so much for being with us
today Jessica we appreciate all the information you shared with us. All right.
Thank you. Thank you.
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