Future You is Counting On You with James Ochoa

Oct 23

We love to say it: “Your future self will thank you.” It’s a mantra for hopeful planning, a reminder that the effort you put in now will pay off later. But for people with ADHD, that phrase can land like a challenge you keep failing to meet — because the gap between Now You and Future You can feel impossibly wide.

This week, we welcome back our friend James Ochoa, licensed professional counselor, author of Focused Forward, and creator of the new reflective tool 11Q Your ADHD. Together, we’re digging into what makes long-term planning feel so fraught for ADHD brains — and how we can reconnect with the version of ourselves we’re trying to help.

We’ll talk about the emotional weight of goal-setting, how perfectionism sabotages progress, and why redefining responsibility as self-support — not pressure — changes everything. James highlights how planning isn’t about control or productivity; it’s about compassion. When you treat “future you” like someone worth caring for, you create the emotional safety that makes real progress possible.

We also explore practical scaffolding: tools, community, and systems that “have your back” when motivation dips — because ADHD management isn’t a solo project. Whether you’re learning to forgive past missteps or just trying to make tomorrow a little easier, this conversation will help you find hope and grace in the small choices that compound over time.

And stay tuned — James introduces his new project, 11Q Your ADHD, a reflective experience designed to help you strengthen your internal guidance system and cultivate a kinder, more curious relationship with yourself.

Future You isn’t a stranger. They’re someone you can start taking care of — today.

Links & Notes

Pete Wright
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Taking Control, the ADHD podcast on True Story FM. I'm Pete Wright, and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer
Hello, Pete Wright. Hello, everyone.
Pete Wright
Oh hi, Nikki Kinzer. Great to see you again.
Nikki Kinzer
Really? Because I didn't get that feeling when you just said that.
Pete Wright
No, it's true. It's really true. And I have to say, I think right now, the three people who are on this podcast livestream have been on the show the most of any other people who've ever been on the show.
Nikki Kinzer
It's true, yeah.
Pete Wright
It's true. And I'm very excited to talk about our conversation today with our fantastic guest James Ochoa. Before we dig in, head over to takecontroladhd.com, get to know us a little bit better. It is a crazy economy out there, and this show is made possible by the kind and generous people who have headed over to patreon.com/theadhdpodcast to support this show. Visit there. You'll get early access to episodes. You get access to the live streams, you can join us, you can ask direct questions to our fantastic guests. Patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. It's a great investment for you and your ADHD, and we hope to continue to make good on it for everyone who was listening to this show for free. It is thanks to the people who have chosen to level up at Patreon.
So that out of the way, I will say we do have the paperback version of our book, Unapologetically ADHD. It's sort of sneaking out.
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah
Pete Wright
I think on Amazon it's still as of today available for pre-order, but we just got boxes in the mail.
Nikki Kinzer
We got some. Yeah. Surprise. I had no idea they were coming, did you?
Pete Wright
I did not.
Nikki Kinzer
I did not either.
Pete Wright
I did not know that it was coming. I'm very excited to see the book come out in paperback. I feel like that is a good thing. And I've got to tell you, it strikes a nice pose in paperback.
Nikki Kinzer
It does.
Pete Wright
It's good looking, good looking book. It's a handsome book, you might say.
James Ochoa
It is a handsome book.
Nikki Kinzer
I think so, I think so.
Pete Wright
A handsome book. So auspicious day. If you just want to collect every edition of the book.
Nikki Kinzer
It's possible.
Pete Wright
Paperback is here now. You know what makes a great gift? The paperback version of Unapologetically ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer
It might fit into a stocking, maybe a big stocking.
Pete Wright
Because paperback rolls a little bit.
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright
You can roll it.
James Ochoa
This is true.
Nikki Kinzer
That's right.
Pete Wright
Yep.
James Ochoa
This is true.
Pete Wright
All right.
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah.
Pete Wright
So that's it. Thank you everybody for hanging on through my announcements. And now, okay, you have heard James on this show before. By my count, this marks number 12. 12 times. He is a licensed professional counselor, the author of Focused Forward and one of the most heart-centered voices in ADHD. This week we are digging into the phrase we say all the time, your future self will thank you. For many of us, that's easier said than done. Why is it so hard to act in the moment on what we know will help us later? How do we rebuild trust with our future selves after years of feeling like we've fallen short? So James is here to help us explore how to make planning emotionally safe again, turning self-discipline into self-support and learning to treat future you with the same compassion you'd offer a friend. James Ochoa, welcome back, friend.
James Ochoa
Wow, what a wonderful space to drop into. And I just want to notice I look across my office at the clock it is 11:11 which is my favorite time which will just foreshadow and highlight a wonderful project that I've launched this month called 11Q Your ADHD. It's a wonderful space. We'll watch that open. I'm more than excited to be here. It becomes one of these testimonies of time. I don't have words to really describe the experience outside of it just feels like it's needed and necessary to keep maintaining, not even beating this drum, but just like this huge air horn across the world about look, we can manage ADHD top to bottom without a doubt. I absolutely know it.
And one of the opening things I will tell you is one of the phrases I've come up with recently is I'm very clear now after 36 years that I've been running a live experiment with myself on what works and what doesn't work.
Pete Wright
Sure.
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah.
James Ochoa
And I continue to. And I'm at that cutting edge in a space that's just fun. So yeah, let's start talking about the idea of resourcing and future self. I'd love to get into that.
Pete Wright
I think it's a fascinating thing to think about. And I don't think we've had anybody who is as focused and intentional about the idea of visualizing your future self as you James. So your future self will thank you. What do you mean when we say that?
James Ochoa
It means that, first of all, it's not a natural position for us, if for nothing else, the differences that we carry neurologically in our prefrontal cortex that don't prevent us, but do by default many times we don't reflect on the nature of who we are. We don't have that internal evaluator. Wonderful grandfather Russell Barkley would have talked about that over two decades ago, regarding that internal evaluator's interactive for us with ADHD. So it's not a future-oriented self a lot of times that we naturally think about. Okay, so that's one of the first spaces to understand within this.
And then we look at the nature of the disruption as I've coined for over 20 years now that the emotional and mental stress that's going to throw you off of the center is another aspect that throws us away from thinking about that future self. So, why is it important? Because a complete relationship with yourself in the future is as important as understanding your past history and making sense of it and resolving it.
Pete Wright
That is the paradox because we're really terrible at looking at our future self, but man are we able to look to hate on our past selves.
Nikki Kinzer
Yes, so true.
James Ochoa
Yes, in micrograins, right?
Pete Wright
Yeah.
James Ochoa
We can really drill down and tell you exactly when I was eight years old when that teacher berated me and I felt this horrible shame. And we could play it over and over and over again, right? As a trauma-related issue. No wonder. I mean, we just don't think about future selves. And so yes, that's one of my big moves this year is really thinking about not only resourcing but this visioning your future self because if you don't hold a vision, it's hard to get to where you want to go. Your book says that beautifully regarding planning systems and organizing systems, and you've got to know what's coming at you to be able to sift it and understand it to know where you're going.
Well, this is our future selves, and so loving, caring for, envisioning that future self is critically important on the ADHD spectrum. The first thing I want to say about the process of doing that is you're going to have a response reactivity to not wanting to do it. It's not gonna feel natural.
Nikki Kinzer
Oh right.
Pete Wright
No, yeah.
James Ochoa
It's gonna feel like, oh, this is just a pie in the sky.
Nikki Kinzer
No, no.
Pete Wright
It feels absurd. Yeah.
James Ochoa
It's absurd, exactly.
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer
And I think that's why it's so hard to do by yourself, right?
James Ochoa
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer
I think that's where community and these things that James and I and Pete put together to help people. We need those supports because it's so hard to do on your own. It just isn't natural. So we need a map or a guide to help us figure out how to do that and break it down.
James Ochoa
You do. And those maps, and that's what I love about Unapologetically ADHD, is it's a customizing system for those systems.
Nikki Kinzer
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
James Ochoa
Okay, this is not one size fits all. This is your size fits you. Okay, so stop, you can look at other people's systems, but don't believe that you're gonna take them lock stock and barrel off the shelf and use them just the way they are.
Nikki Kinzer
Right.
James Ochoa
No, you're gonna customize them like crazy and personalize them and you're going to need to do that over and over again throughout your life and it can become an adventure. Okay? So that's a critical piece of this because outside of customizing those systems, right? You've got to learn as we're talking about to be able to resource yourself. This is with the multiple pieces around you, pods of support, whatever you want to call those spaces.
Pete Wright
Why do you think it's so hard for us to flip that bit? Isn't it the same kind of mindset to be forward looking versus backward looking? I mean, shouldn't we be better wired to do this stuff?
Nikki Kinzer
Ooh, I hate that word shouldn't, should. You just said should.
Pete Wright
I just shoulded all over this podcast.
James Ochoa
Nikki's gonna, you did.
Nikki Kinzer
You really did.
James Ochoa
You did.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
James Ochoa
Could. Let's go to could. It's at least a two, if not a three-prong answer. One is, is it as easy? It can become as easy. I don't think it's naturally as easy if you don't understand the neurological difference you bring to the table and you haven't begun to understand the stress you live through, and how much of a champion of resilience you are, and all these other pieces. So by default, we look at that negative piece because of the survival instinct in the brain. We're gonna survive before we thrive because that's what we are as human beings. Okay, we are threat modulating. We have that spectrum going around. Where's the next threat? Where's the curve? Where's the, oh I gotta watch out for this? So it's easier to fall into that space. And we get locked into it.
Okay. The future piece, this is the interesting piece on the ADHD space. We do the future framing, we just do it through what? Daydreaming, brainstorming, hyperfocusing on these great visions that we can see happening. But the vast majority as you I'm sure see and many of the people you work with, right? Is those are pies in the sky. There's like, no, it's never gonna happen. And so it becomes, unfortunately, it reinforces this old history that I'll never get there.
Nikki Kinzer
There's such a mistrust. Like I think that's the biggest thing that I hear from clients is that they just don't trust themselves. They don't trust that they're going to do anything different or that anything is gonna be different. And they dismiss anything that they've done that has been good and has moved them forward. They forget about all of that.
Pete Wright
But this is what's so interesting about that, Nikki, is that and it's why I use the word should intentionally, because we are already wired to do this. We do it unintentionally all the time. Like the structure, the scaffolding is there. And I just want to highlight that as an opportunity. To once you get over the part of thinking, oh, it's impossible for me to look at my future self seriously, soberly, without laughing. Then it's actually, we are hardwired to live in this space for a period.
James Ochoa
No, and I think we are, Pete. I think you're absolutely right. This is what I was saying as far as this whole brainstorming, seeing these shiny object kind of visions and those pieces. The peace we have to come to terms with is accepting where we are at any given moment, okay? And knowing that that future is something that we will walk toward, pull ourselves toward, make sense of in a way that makes sense to us until you really start customizing.
Nikki Kinzer
So tell us more about what you mean by accepting, because I think that's hard to grasp.
James Ochoa
Okay, so you've heard me say for years now, okay, the accepting piece is first of all not a singularity, it's not a single moment. It's an evolution over time, right? We have to continue to accept because it continues to be hard in different ways. And so acceptance is not a single moment that's like, oh, I accept my ADD. I'm like, well, what am I going to do when the next storm hits? Okay. I've had the last eight months been very intense in my life for some different ways that I've had a lot of things to deal with in ways I could have never predicted. I mean those storms, so I had to accept a lot of things about myself that were difficult in any given moment that oh I can't do everything. Oh, I am not always the hero. Oh, I do need to ask for help on a regular basis. I mean things that I know, but we learn those over and over.
So acceptance means first of all, this is where I am today. There's nothing bad or wrong with it. It may be out of balance, it may be disruptive, it may be challenging, it may be frustrating, but there's nothing wrong with me as a person.
Nikki Kinzer
You're not bad. Yeah.
James Ochoa
No.
Nikki Kinzer
I think that's key to remember. Yeah.
James Ochoa
It's so key to unlocking that shame spiral to believe that you see and you have value, which is why it's important.
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah.
James Ochoa
To look at where that value is on any given day in minute or miniature ways of things you will write, appreciate, you have great gratitude for. Those aren't just trite symptoms. Those are really elixirs that can really help you stay buoyed up within yourself and learning how to do them. But remember, when we do these actions, we're still gonna have a lot of resistance and reactivity. That's what a lot of people believe. Okay, I accept this, I get my life, and I do this appreciation and gratitude. I still don't like it sometimes. I hate doing it. I'm like, well, that's okay. That's part of, that's a natural part of the process. Do your best to ignore it and keep walking. Keep doing.
So one of the funny games I've been playing this year with myself. As I said, I get to be my own live experiment in my own life. Is I've been playing with what I call mirror work. So mirror work is just looking at yourself in the mirror. It's a psychological, we don't see ourselves from the outside in. And the first judgment most people have when they see themselves is not good. Okay, I've got big eyes or big ears or whatever. The reality is if we can neutralize that in a way of acceptance. So when I pass up by a mirror this whole entire year, when I've been passing by my mirror, I will say something kind to myself. This is not a trite issue again. I've hated doing it most of the year. I'm like, okay, this feels so awkward. This is so weird. What am I doing again? But it reminds me back when I wrote in Focused Forward how I talked to myself when I walked into my office in the morning. That's building that future and the relationship with yourself as you go.
So I've just been playing this little mirror game, thumbs up, winking at myself, saying something funny, making a funny face. It's a way of counteracting that space and normalizing that reactivity. Okay? Because I just—
Nikki Kinzer
You're building that relationship with yourself, it feels like, right? Like you're engaging in it.
James Ochoa
Yes.
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah.
James Ochoa
So it's normally it's gonna feel awkward. It's gonna feel strange. I go talk to ten friends and ask them to look at themselves in the mirror and see what kind of response you get. They're like, are you crazy?
Nikki Kinzer
Well, I can tell you what my friends would say. They would go to the SNL skit of I'm good enough. They would go to that. But that shows my age too.
James Ochoa
It does. So yes, those kind of things as far as resourcing or accepting are really a big part of what we're doing.
Pete Wright
I need to take a sidebar. Nikki already dropped the word trust, and I've been reflecting on it a bunch. We're gonna talk more about 11Q Your ADHD, but you have a question in there. I've taken the questions. And you have a question in there about ESP and MSG, your mental support group and your emotionally safe place. And those play a key role in this sort of visualization, the structure of visualizing future you. And I find myself that was the question that really had me stuck because I've spent a lot of years thinking about my ADHD. I've spent a lot of years resourcing and talking about it.
Nikki Kinzer
And talking about it, yeah.
Pete Wright
And I feel pretty aware, self-aware, right?
James Ochoa
Yeah, you are. I would agree.
Pete Wright
But what I realized is this the mental support group, right? Creating a group of people who are both real people that I like—I count you guys as definitely in my category of my mental support group—but also imaginary folks. As soon as I take that visualization leap, I do not trust them. I have no reason not to trust them, other than my first reaction to what they would say when I'm in a storm, an ADHD storm is get yourself out of it. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps. People deal with hard stuff all the time.
I've internalized, and as someone who has been doing this a long time, I have internalized some ridiculously negative language in the voices of other people. And I find that really interesting, even as I find I'm getting better at my own internal self-talk. When I apply other people to it, it comes from a place of mistrust. I'm curious your experience with that.
James Ochoa
Well, Pete, it's a great experiment kind of point in time of reality of you being really vulnerable and exposing those kind of pieces, which is what you did two years ago when we're talking about the gems of your life history kind of piece. So look, the insight, first of all. Okay, so I created this 11Q Your ADHD as a way of reflecting on our own ADHD each year in our own personal Idaho space. Me not to talk to anybody about it, it's me and only me. And we just don't have that privacy, okay, and to see what happens.
So for you in going through the questions, it popped open something you might not have popped open otherwise if you get a chance to reflect on throughout this year and look at, and you'll get a chance next year because those questions will be there again in October. The fact that the insight is there that says, oh, all these voices in my head or about other people and it's mistrusting, how interesting.
See, the first thing I would tell you to do is to go, well, it's time to create someone in your mental support group that is absolutely supportive of you beyond the shadow of a doubt. And you likely may have to create out of nothing. Okay? So I've played with ideas that I've had Deepak Chopra in my mental support group for years and I personally choose someone like Richard Branson, who I believe is a dynamic entrepreneur who gives back to the world and really loves who he is and still takes. So I play with people like that, but I've created people out of nothing. This is what I need. I need a person who's gonna support me when I have these storms or these other and is not gonna tell me that I have to pull myself up by my bootstraps.
You get to create. But that creation is a developmental relationship with yourself to embed a different sense of character of what you want to see yourself become and be, because these mental support group pieces, am I talking to Richard Branson or Deepak? No. I'm not going to go play quantum physics games and all this other stuff where you could say, well, maybe it's happening in some strange science space. No, the reality is—
Pete Wright
I'm talking to myself. I mean, that's, I'm talking to myself.
James Ochoa
Yes, that's it.
Pete Wright
Let's all be clear, let's all be clear.
James Ochoa
It's a reflection of yourself.
Pete Wright
Right. Yeah.
James Ochoa
And so, but because it's a reflection of yourself, guess what? You're deepening the relationship with yourself. Guess what? It helps you to see your future self. Guess what? It makes you a more complete person inside that can feel contentment that can be happy, okay? So these are a little strange for some people like how am I going to use my imagination like this? This is kind of strange. No one's— that's exactly what I want people to do. I want to shake that up because we could do a whole podcast on imagination and why it's important in the world of ADHD. Because it's an internal tool we can use for our mental and emotional health.
Pete Wright
I think one of the things that—
James Ochoa
So does that help? I mean, that's what I would tell you to do.
Pete Wright
Well it does. I think it's such an interesting space because I'm someone who I consider myself having a pretty good imagination, but it unveiled a sort of dark corner where my instinct had been programmed negatively in the voices and faces of the people that I would have expected to come to my aid. And frankly, the real versions of those people would have come to my aid. I reprogrammed them and thinking of them as a manifestation, obviously a manifestation of me, of course that's the case. But I did not see it. I just hadn't plumbed those particular depths ever until I put their faces to those words.
James Ochoa
Right. And this is why I created these questions because I wanted people to self-reflect in different areas around their ADHD and it became really clear to me and all the work I've done with my own attention issues and how to resource and how to be an expert and a leader in this space. It just hit me. It's like, wait a minute. And so because I had done this in another space with 10 questions from a spiritual point of view. And that's what gave me the idea. I'm like, oh, we need this in the ADHD spectrum. And of course I'm going to make it 11 because I love the number 11. It's a flat number, and here we go.
It becomes this playful kind of space, but as playful as it is, is as meaningful and deep as it is in the development of the relationship with yourself. So I'm really glad that you had a kind of chasm open and that's what I want people to do. I tried to make sure that it was not something that was a shame-based deal that you're gonna feel horrible about yourself after you answer these questions because I'm not doing any of these things in these eleven questions. It's not what this is about. And I try to explain that in this space. This is just about a reflective space to, huh, let me think about these areas of my attention issues regarding systems that I'm using or how I advocate for myself or how I— because Pete, I create the questions and I go take them. Okay? I go take them myself.
Pete Wright
Yeah, sure.
James Ochoa
I'm like, I create the questions. Now let me go personally really just sit down and think I'm taking them.
Pete Wright
What a fun raccoon trap you've created for yourself.
James Ochoa
It was a fun raccoon trap. And the door closed on me. And the one place that the door closed on me which really got highlighted with all the stress I'd been through in the past eight or nine months or so is asking for help. I do not ask for the kind of help and the level of help I could really use sometimes. And when I got to that question, I was just like, oh my God. I really, I was like at a three out of ten. I was like, really? I couldn't believe it to myself. So it was even insightful for myself, but that's what happens on the ADD spectrum. Okay, underactive prefrontal cortex. I miss that evaluation or that reflection. I need my own system to reflect on to get it. How odd is that? It's weird, but it's strange.
Nikki Kinzer
I have a question for you because we just had a guest and we were talking about advocation or advocating for ourselves and asking for help, like asking for it. But I think a lot of times people don't know what to ask for because they don't know what they need. So what kind of advice or guidance would you tell our listeners of, okay, I hear what you're saying. I don't need to do this alone, but I don't know what I need.
James Ochoa
Correct. And so knowing what you need starts with what you're doing. I would naturally ask you to look at your daily process and say, okay, what am I doing that is any somewhat effective in my life? I'm able to brush my teeth. I'm able to do whatever. So it's first acknowledging these are the things I'm doing, that I am advocating for myself by taking care of myself. But then asking what are the areas of my life that I want to be better in, that I want more effectiveness in. And can I ask for help in those areas? I've come to your organizational piece. You will likely see me back there in June because my worlds have grown again as they naturally do.
So how do you know you need to ask for help? You take a look at what are the things I want to do better in my life? What do I want to be more effective in? Now asking for that help and finding it is a really critical piece to sift through your life because it comes back to trust again. If I go ask for that help, am I going to trust that I'm actually going to get the help I need? So I've got to have someone in a trusting relationship that I can talk this or think it out with. This is why close friends, the pod of support of two or three people where you can say, okay, let me just think this out. These are the areas of my life that I have needs in that I probably need help in that I'm not quite sure what to do. Now I'm brainstorming, right? And I am getting grounded with another body double in this way from a brain. That's how we do it. That's how we start to do it, Nikki. And we do it one piece at a time.
I have a good three to five in my pod of support that I can call and say, okay, I feel a little crazy today. Help me sort this out and you just do it. So does that help as far as kind of how to operationalize that?
Nikki Kinzer
Absolutely.
Pete Wright
Well and I can see how just the process, the process of engaging the pod of support, the process of engaging the dialogue—
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Is one that to go back to the issue of trust, like you've got to put yourself in a position to hear those words to rebuild the trust in yourself to be able to act on it, right? Like I can trust my wife. I can trust Nikki. I can trust those people to tell me, hey, here's where your head is objectively, it feels like this is what we're witnessing and here's your guidance. But do I trust myself to listen? That is a trained activity for me. That's a muscle to build.
James Ochoa
And it is a muscle to build because it's one of the ones that needs a pause for us. We're running so fast. What did I really say? What do I really need? Let me listen to who I am, what is going on. Wait a minute. I am feeling a little overwhelmed. I don't really want to do this right now. Oh, okay. I can say no to going to this movie with a friend and feel much better. Okay? So it can be as simple as that, right? But that's a trusting element with myself of slowing down rather than just doing everything all the time. So it is simple, but the trusting peace and asking ourselves and listening, yes, those are great examples of it.
Pete Wright
I wanna just follow up to the practical approach to building this muscle, right? Because I mean we talk about the pods of support but I think there's a how do you microdose future self-thinking, right? Because I just, I know for myself like I can feel all in on it today and tomorrow I'll sit down on my couch and I won't know what to think about. So I want to know practically how you build that muscle.
James Ochoa
That's a brilliant question and I appreciate it and I'll give you as much authenticity as I can on what I do in that space because first of all, it's learning that for my hyperactive, impulsive, driving mind is always going to have ideas and running forward is the nature of it. It is hotwired and that's going to come and go based on how much sleep I've had, is the weather outside beautiful. There's 10,000 things that kind of activate that, but that's always going to be that way. That's first step.
Second step is understanding that I'm gonna feel differently about these future vision pieces at different times, but that doesn't mean that they're not valid. So sometimes I'm gonna feel really excited about them, and other times I'm gonna feel like I'm a flaming idiot. What am I thinking I'm even trying to do here? And I just go, okay, well that's just part of the process. Let me just see if it—here's the key piece for me. Let me see if it sticks around.
So what I do is I put these through my filter. I call it a higher order thinking measure. Okay, it is a brainstorming piece, but there is a whole piece in the science of the mind regarding flow states, particularly gamma flow states of the mind, where you feel like you're really on point and you're really seeing things in a big picture kind of way. I've done a lot of things to manage myself staying up in what I call as that gamma flow state to really see these pictures. Now at the end of the day, when I wake up the next morning and I've had this great vision, I go, okay, I don't know if that's ever gonna happen. Oh okay. What's the next thing?
And I will ask myself kind of next questions, okay. What's the next thing I could do in that space? Oh, I'm going to call John and ask him about what Robert said when I heard I'll follow some little thread on it. But I follow these threads, I follow my patterns, but I don't shut down the process of telling myself, I'm an idiot, there's something wrong with me, this is never gonna work. I have exercised those voices out. I just said that's not an option. I don't need you. This is not something right now. This is fun. I'm just an adventurer. Whatever I say, but I sift through those things and the ones that stick around as I say.
I've probably had six or seven this year. And two or three are sticking around. 11Q I had envisioned last year. I'm still scared about it. I don't know what it was gonna do. It could go viral. I don't have a really heavy backend system to manage it completely yet because I didn't know how it was gonna work out. And until the day I launched it, and even the day I launched it, I'm like, okay, these are probably idiotic questions. And I just ignore that. It's like, okay, I know that's just a reactive stress.
So if that helps you at all, but what I do is I sift through my future visions. I know they're coming. I know they're there. I talked to my pods of support around them. I'll write them. I've got a whiteboard I can see across behind my door right now that's empty. I emptied it on purpose two or three weeks ago. And I'm getting ready to fill it with the things that are currently in my vision board or where I'm working on things. And I don't know when I'll put it up there, but I will. At some point I'm gonna map out what's happening right now. Well, this is my pattern. This is how I do these things. Nikki's gonna do it differently. You're gonna do it differently.
You have to honor how that process of development works for you. By seeing the future, staying with it, how do I put these pieces together? We all do it in different ways. And this is where I love the neurodiversity spectrum of pieces that are going on right now. We are all unique and different. And when we can honor that everybody is different on the planet lock stock and barrel, and we can get rid of the word normal, I think we're in a different day. So that's a long answer to your question. You can play off of that.
Pete Wright
This may be the most Pete question I've ever asked on a podcast. When you're thinking about your future self, do you refer to future James as I, you, or he?
James Ochoa
That's saying a lot.
Pete Wright
And does that matter to you?
James Ochoa
Okay, I'm gonna give you, okay, how far do you want to go here, Pete?
Nikki Kinzer
However you look at it, yeah.
James Ochoa
From an existential spiritual point of view, I see it as a be, we, and us. Okay, I am, there is a philosophy I have behind a lot of my systems that we are, we are in relationships for ourselves, by ourselves, and with ourselves. Okay, we take ourselves with ourselves out in the world. Here we go. Okay, we are for who we are. We advocate for who we are. We really believe in who we are, our passion. But then we are by ourselves. We have a relationship that nobody will ever know but us in relationship to self. It's those three pieces when I look at the future, those all go together.
If you want to get spiritual on what my spiritual belief is around the whole planet Earth and what we are, it's the me, you, we of all of us. We're all connected together. Okay? So when I think about my future self, I cannot, I cannot take it away from the inner relationship with others and myself. So I just gave you a little bit of a twist in there, but that's how I look at it.
Pete Wright
Yeah, it's a, no, I mean you gave me the answer I wanted and needed. And I'll tell you why, because I feel like I risk not being as in tune with my future self when I refer to him as future Pete, as an external—
James Ochoa
Yeah. I would agree.
Pete Wright
Right?
James Ochoa
I would agree.
Pete Wright
And I hear that kind of language all the time when we have these kinds of conversations. And I wanna make sure for me it's important to me that when I think of tomorrow's Pete, it's also me. And it matters more to me than if I'm thinking of him as some neutral third party.
Nikki Kinzer
That's a really good point, Pete. I'm glad you bring that up. Yeah.
James Ochoa
Very much so. Because if you see that future self as separate from you or different than you, no, the future self is you, you're becoming, right, you lose the connection, exactly.
Nikki Kinzer
Because you lose the connection. You lose that connection.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Right.
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Right. And I just think that's training in language.
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah.
Pete Wright
It's a shift in language. But it is one of those things that it's like the insidious part of language that we don't think about because it's so subconscious.
James Ochoa
Yes, or it's what I call the auto language. It's our automatic language that just comes out. But it's one of the things you just stumbled upon even earlier in the ideas of the emotional safe place and the mental support group, right? This is how we do this. We keep sifting, we keep looking. And when we come across these chasms of like, wait a minute, I'm seeing my future self differently. It's not, no, it is me. Then you get a chance to shift it.
See, this is for us with ADD that people are like in the world, they're like, I don't get why you don't see that. You're like, well, I don't see it because my brain doesn't see it the same way as you. But once I get it and I see it, I'm totally there. And you'll shift it.
Pete Wright
Totally. There's an exercise. I am a beard wearer, a seasonal beard wearer. One of the most interesting experiences that I have in my season, twice a year, really once a year, is when it comes time to shave, when it gets hot. There is a day in which I know that tomorrow I will be a shorn person. And I visualize that shorn person. It's like unconsciously, I know what that guy's gonna look like, but he's not me. He's not me today, he's me tomorrow. And tomorrow I get to think back to, oh yeah, I remember when I had a beard. Now I don't. That is such a dumb expression of exactly what we're talking about that happens over 24 hours and it's kind of magical.
James Ochoa
Okay. So you can take the judgment of dumb off of it. Okay, I'll just set it aside for you.
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah.
James Ochoa
It is a personal, very micro chasm of your life that is so personal and beautiful because it's who you are as an individual. And if we don't celebrate that, we never get to the future. So the fact that you, you're gonna—I was just thinking, is that how sheep feel when that happens?
Nikki Kinzer
Right?
James Ochoa
When they go—
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah, they think about their yesterday self and their today, like what happened.
Pete Wright
Oh, they're getting the clippers ready.
James Ochoa
Hey! I got all this fluff going on. Yes. Oh my god.
Nikki Kinzer
And they didn't have a choice.
James Ochoa
Right. Man, I feel totally— so I just think, Pete, it's precious. All right, on that space. And so yes, you think about that personally and you have it as a pattern and it's a self-care, self-reflective space, and it's perfect.
Pete Wright
Really interesting stuff. I want to go back to the 11Q as we get to wrapping up here because I know we've dropped some hints to it and I totally spoiled one of the questions. I'm sorry about that, but it was weighing on me.
James Ochoa
I don't care. I want people to know the questions. I don't know if they'll be the same questions next year, but they might be.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
James Ochoa
We'll see.
Pete Wright
Well, the idea of giving someone, giving me an opportunity to reflect in these areas, I would like to know how you went about defining the criteria, right? Defining the areas, because I guess maybe I was surprised at some and surprised at others you chose not to be necessarily important for this round. How'd you come to them?
Nikki Kinzer
I think we need to tell people what it is.
Pete Wright
Yeah, start with that.
Nikki Kinzer
Yeah, let's start with that.
James Ochoa
So 11Q Your ADHD is a system in which you can engage with it on my website and you sign up for it. There's no cost to it. It's a gift I want to give back to the world of ADHD for them to be able to see themselves a year later. And who was I? So in the world of October of being ADHD Awareness Month, it's every October it will open on October 1st. It'll close on October 31st, and you'll have an opportunity. Right now I'm limiting the number on it up to about 250 people based on the systems I've set up to see how it operates.
But it's 11 questions to reflect about your ADHD regarding where you are in the process of developing systems, of advocating for yourself, of being able to ask for help, how well do you use your mental support group or emotional safe place? It gives you the things that because so we use those questions of the self-reflective tool. You go through, you answer the questions on a scale of one to ten. I give you some options on how to think about that scale from metaphors in your life or kind of how you look at it in a way that makes sense to you. So I try to make it neurodiverse friendly.
Nikki Kinzer
And I just, I say that is so smart because this is not your first rodeo.
James Ochoa
It's like—
Nikki Kinzer
It's so obvious, right? Because when you give an ADHDer rate yourself from one to ten. They either look at you with like a deer in headlights, like they have no idea how to do this, or they'll rate themselves really low because they're not giving themselves enough credit. So kudos to you, James, for thinking this through. Yeah.
James Ochoa
But I'm telling you that one to ten spectrum is a linear model. I don't know that I can get out of it because of the numbers in it. And so we have this reactive response of like, oh, here's a linear. No, it's not a linear model. Use colors, use metaphors, use whatever you want to make sense to you. It's you building an internal system of reflection for yourself. So there's a lot built into the space. But you answer the questions on a scale of one to ten, but then you have an opportunity to reflect on how do I see it right now? What does this remind me of? Where am I right now? In this open-ended kind of way.
So there's just a very simple question with each question. It's just as well, where do you see yourselves right now? And it gives you a chance just to diatribe, a short piece of text that you're gonna see again next year. So next year you're gonna answer the questions. Once you hit yes, I've completed them all, you can do them all at once, by the way, if you want to hyperfocus on them, or they'll come to you once a day, okay, for 11 days. I am going to close this on October 31st this year. And so the people who want to do it next year after that point they can sign up for next year for it to go out. But I want to put that limitation on it because I want to actually, I want to put a little functional pressure is what I call it to do something, to get something done to take care of yourself.
You answer the questions, you seal it in this digital vault. Next October we send your answers back to you. So you get a chance to look at them a year later. Who have I become? Have I done anything with this? And I've had, there will be a lot of ADD foils around this, meaning how am I going to remember am I going to think about these at all next year? I'm not so worried about that. I am more focused on the self-reflective future self resourcing. What am I going to do to take care of who I am?
So this is a system that's up and running. You asked me how I came up with the questions. I actually had about 50 or 60 questions, Pete. That's just like too many. There's way too many on the ADD spectrum. And so I sifted through them for what felt most significant for development long term. Now, what you've given me is an interesting idea though to have a reflective space to say, hey, are there questions here we missed? Are things you would like to see in future years? Because I'm not completely set on the fact it's going to be the exact same questions every year. So that's a process that's in development. And so if you have ideas on questions you feel like we missed or you wished were in there—
Nikki Kinzer
I would do both. I would do the same questions and then I would add a couple more because I do think that having that reflection, because you know what's going to happen is a lot of ADHDers are going to forget they even filled out the questionnaire.
Pete Wright
It's gonna feel like a different person. When I see my answers next year, yeah.
Nikki Kinzer
It's gonna feel different. So I think there's value in that.
James Ochoa
It's gonna feel different and it's gonna feel similar and familiar. And you're gonna start building threads. This is one of the underpieces of it. You're gonna start building threads and patterns to how you work. And that's kind of the back end of this. So I want people to start thinking about that. But I wanted to have a functional tool that wasn't so complicated for them to do that. It wasn't hard to do.
Nikki Kinzer
And it's not. Yeah, it's not at all. It's very easy.
James Ochoa
But I'm excited about it. 11Q Your ADHD. There will certainly be a link in the show notes. I will make sure that certainly everyone in your listener systems will have an opportunity. I really wanted to make sure they had an opportunity to do it and think about it and certainly am open to feedback on it. We do have a four system question of feedback from a Google Doc that we may send to folks at some point to see what they thought about it. So it's a, you know, you talk about these future visions, Pete, and seeing myself and thinking about these things. This one's driven me crazy for two years. So I've been thinking about this one for two years.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
James Ochoa
And I almost pulled the trigger last year, but I just kept running into problems that I couldn't resolve and I'm like, I am not ready.
Nikki Kinzer
Not ready, yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
James Ochoa
I am not gonna do that. And so I waited another year.
Pete Wright
Nice to be able to dust it off.
James Ochoa
And did it and did it again. And even this year I felt like, well, I'm like, no, it's got to go. So it's out there for folks to look at. It's a way to self-reflect about your ADHD. It's not going away and it's something I want to build for the future.
Pete Wright
Well, and I'll just add, and I want to add because Melissa in the chat room also took the exercise and I want to echo what she said. It will offer you the opportunity to answer all the questions now instead of having the questions sent once over once a day. I recommend doing the once-a-day option. I also did them all at once and while I found the exercise was powerful, I feel like I did myself a disservice by jamming all eleven into the same amount of time.
Nikki Kinzer
Rushing. Yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah. Set aside a little time for reflection and introspection. Given the one to ten rating is the easy part, but reflecting on what you felt about your rating and what you might want to leave for an answer in a year is gonna take some time to answer honestly. I found that true as well. And each question one through eleven took me a little bit longer to answer because I realized what I was doing. I didn't get it on the first couple of questions, but by the time I got to 6, 7, 8, 9, I was, it was a thinker.
James Ochoa
Good. And I wanted it to be that way. It's the process of helping to begin to create self-reflection for us in a way that doesn't happen naturally because of our underactive prefrontal cortex, but we can find ways to do it that make sense to us. As really I am looking at how to normalize this, not from a point of view that we're like everybody else, but that we have systems that work for us, the things that are gonna help us help ourselves. That's been a huge mantra of mine over the years, whether I'm doing my town halls or my all-day conferences. I want you to understand what this is so you can help yourself more effectively. Because that's where the key is. You've got to learn to customize systems for yourself in a way that work for you.
Pete Wright
Melissa's follow-up. My brain felt like it had run a marathon by the time I finished all 11 questions in one sitting.
James Ochoa
I was a little concerned. I thought about even 11. I'm like okay this might be too many.
Pete Wright
Yeah. I totally agree with that.
James Ochoa
Because I'm giving people it's a lot to think about. I know, I know. So I was trying to find, I didn't throw out 50 questions to you, so yes, 11 is enough.
Pete Wright
Yeah. No, thank goodness. No, this is fine. Eleven is fine. I think it's a little time capsule of your life with ADHD. And I on that front I love it. It is a generous act of internet on your part, James. I appreciate that and appreciate you for showing up here.
James Ochoa
Yep, absolutely. I'm here for y'all whenever you need me. I just keep helping the folks we can help.
Pete Wright
Link to 11Q Your ADHD in the show notes, but you can find it at jamesochoa.com if you want to just head over there right now and get it. Get to it. You only have a couple of weeks as we record this. You only have a couple of weeks. So jump on it and answer your 11Q. I think that's it, everybody. We had a great show. We made a podcast. Sure appreciate everybody's for downloading and listening to the show.
James Ochoa
Again, again.
Pete Wright
We appreciate your time and your attention. Don't forget, if you have something to contribute to the conversation, we're heading over to the Show Talk channel in our Discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a valued supporting member at the deluxe level or better at patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer and James Ochoa, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control, the ADHD Podcast.