I am creating brain entrainment audios based on his work in an effort to make the audios even more useful to people. I will include the original podcast as well as the same audio with brain entrainment added. In this first set of audios I will include audios specifically crafted for meditation, focus and learning.

These audios may be used with or without earphones. As with any brain entrainment product they should not be used while driving or operating machinery. Please be aware if you are listening to them without earphones others can hear them and care should be taken to ensure that no one who is driving, etc. will be affected by them.

This is a list of the audios in this post:

Pavlina-004-Using Patterns for Personal Development.mp3      This is Steve’s  original unaltered audio.

Pavlina-004-Using Patterns for Personal Development.mp3 -7-Hz-Meditation.mp3     This is the audio with entrainment for meditation added.

Pavlina-004-Using Patterns for Personal Development.mp3     This is the audio with entrainment for learning added.

Pavlina-004-Using Patterns for Personal Development Study And Focus.mp3     This is the audio with entrainment designed to help in studying and assimilating ideas and concepts.

I hope you find these audios useful. If you wish to have a custom audio with or without brain entrainment created for you you may contact me at gene <at> talktoyourself.com just use the @ instead of the <at>.

I would enjoy feedback on the audios please comment so I may improve the audios I create.

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I am creating brain entrainment audios based on his work in an effort to make the audios even more useful to people. I will include the original podcast as well as the same audio with brain entrainment added. In this first set of audios I will include audios specifically crafted for meditation, focus and learning.

These audios may be used with or without earphones. As with any brain entrainment product they should not be used while driving or operating machinery. Please be aware if you are listening to them without earphones others can hear them and care should be taken to ensure that no one who is driving, etc. will be affected by them.

This is a list of the audios in this post:

Pavlina-003-Consulting Your Intuition.mp3      This is Steve’s  original unaltered audio.

Pavlina-003-Consulting Your Intuition -7-Hz-Meditation.mp3     This is the audio with entrainment for meditation added.

Pavlina-003-Consulting Your Intuition-Learning-with-audio-recordings.mp3     This is the audio with entrainment for learning added.

Pavlina-003-Truth and Awareness.mp3     This is the audio with entrainment designed to help in studying and assimilating ideas and concepts.

I hope you find these audios useful. If you wish to have a custom audio with or without brain entrainment created for you you may contact me at gene <at> talktoyourself.com just use the @ instead of the <at>.

I would enjoy feedback on the audios please comment so I may improve the audios I create.

I hope you find these audios useful. If you wish to have a custom audio with or without brain entrainment created for you you may contact me at gene <at> talktoyourself.com just use the @ instead of the <at>.

I would enjoy feedback on the audios please comment so I may improve the audios I create.

Bookmark To:

I am creating brain entrainment audios based on his work in an effort to make the audios even more useful to people. I will include the original podcast as well as the same audio with brain entrainment added. In this first set of audios I will include audios specifically crafted for meditation, focus and learning.

These audios may be used with or without earphones. As with any brain entrainment product they should not be used while driving or operating machinery. Please be aware if you are listening to them without earphones others can hear them and care should be taken to ensure that no one who is driving, etc. will be affected by them.

This is a list of the audios in this post:

Pavlina-002-Truth and Awareness.mp3      This is Steve’s  original unaltered audio.

Pavlina-002-Truth and Awareness-7-Hz-Meditation.mp3     This is the audio with entrainment for meditation added.

Pavlina-002-Truth and Awareness-Learning-with-audio-recordings.mp3     This is the audio with entrainment for learning added.

Pavlina-002-Truth and Awareness.mp3     This is the audio with entrainment designed to help in studying and assimilating ideas and concepts.

I hope you find these audios useful. If you wish to have a custom audio with or without brain entrainment created for you you may contact me at gene <at> talktoyourself.com just use the @ instead of the <at>.

I would enjoy feedback on the audios please comment so I may improve the audios I create.

I hope you find these audios useful. If you wish to have a custom audio with or without brain entrainment created for you you may contact me at gene <at> talktoyourself.com just use the @ instead of the <at>.

I would enjoy feedback on the audios please comment so I may improve the audios I create.

Bookmark To:

I am creating brain entrainment audios based on his work in an effort to make the audios even more useful to people. I will include the original podcast as well as the same audio with brain entrainment added. In this first set of audios I will include audios specifically crafted for meditation, focus and learning.

These audios may be used with or without earphones. As with any brain entrainment product they should not be used while driving or operating machinery. Please be aware if you are listening to them without earphones others can hear them and care should be taken to ensure that no one who is driving, etc. will be affected by them.

This is a list of the audios in this post:

Pavlina-001-Intro.mp3                                         This is Steve’s  original unaltered audio.

Pavlina-001-Intro-7-Hz-Meditation.mp3     This is the audio with entrainment for meditation added.

Pavlina-001-Intro-7-Learning-with-audio-recordings.mp3 This is the audio with entrainment for learning added.

Pavlina-001-Intro-Study-Focus.mp3             This is the audio with entrainment designed to help in studying and assimilating ideas and concepts.

I hope you find these audios useful. If you wish to have a custom audio with or without brain entrainment created for you you may contact me at gene <at> talktoyourself.com just use the @ instead of the <at>.

I would enjoy feedback on the audios please comment so I may improve the audios I create.

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Elevator opens and another man comes in.

Hi, my name is David Wilson, this is Fred Wilson, this is Mommy Wilson and this is Daddy Wilson. What’s your name?
My name is Neal.
What’s your last name?
My last name is so hard to pronounce.
What’s your last name?
My last name is Tanaka.

While we were in Las Vegas David went through the above process with several different people at different times. I observed with a smile in my heart and I thought how sweet it was to live in the present moment as my son asked his questions with joy. I felt joy as we experienced the moments together, David Wilson, Fred, Wilson, Mommy Wilson and Daddy Wilson and the people who used to be strangers when David asked the Question, “What’s your name?”

As adults we sometimes find it difficult to just ask the questions we are curious about. My son is living proof that at four years eleven months old it is possible to effectively communicate with people he has not met before. I was going to say he found it easy to communicate with strangers but I do not believe David has ever met a stranger.

Think for a moment and then tell yourself and me what a child can teach you about living life in the moment.

Hi, my name is Daddy Wilson. What’s your name?

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I have made some decisions about my life and am in the process of taking conscious action. I have hope for the the outcome of my actions but I also understand that I can not guarantee what the results of these action will bring into my life.

I attended the second Conscious Growth Workshop (CGW) in Las Vegas where I met a group of loving conscious people. I enjoyed being there with them and found the energy, and emotional connections to be so empowering for me that I made commitments to myself and a number of my new friends to make changes in my life.

I have decided to return to the field of life coaching full time. I truly love working with people and observing the moment a breakthrough occurs. I enjoy creating audios and videos to assist others in attaining personal growth. It is where my passion lies and where I experience a powerful connection of oneness.

Since returning to my home in Oblong Illinois I have sold my home and am in the process of packing and storing all of the contents of the house that I am not selling, giving away or moving to my motor home. We are going to drive the motor home on a trip to Las Vegas.  I am again actively seeing more clients and am open to accept new coaching clients.

I create audios using a number of techniques including audio brain entrainment and hypnosis. I have a commitment to three people at CGW to work with them to create new products. These friends have kindly offered to be beta testers for my new products.

I feel happier since the CGW than I have felt for many years. I know that some workshops bring participants to a high energy level while they are attending the event and for a few days after the event, then the energy slowly leaves. I have experienced a continuous feeling of purpose and peace since this event and am working daily to live each day consciously while making choices and taking action congruent with my life.

I’m back with passion to share. I’m back!

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As a teenager Steve began his journey of conscious pursuit of personal growth while sitting in a jail cell charged with felony theft. While there he made the connection between his thoughts, emotions and behaviors and the situation he found himself in and resolved to change. This book is the story of the principles he discovered and used in his trip from that personal bottom to a position of personal mastery.

This book is both a philosophical treatise and a practical guide to consciously living and improving your life. There are clear statements of principals and why they work in achieving a better life and life experience. The fundamental principles he writes of in the book are Truth, Love, Power, Oneness, Authority, Courage and Intelligence.

Steve expands and explains these core principles in a clear and understandable way. After reading the first half of the book where these principles are introduced the reader will have an intuitive knowledge about these principles and how they are pertinent to his or her own life.

The second half of the book is titled practical application and is exactly what the title suggests, a practical, realistic, and functional guide to using the principles explained in the first part of the book. The chapters in this portion of the book are Habits, Career, Money, Health, Relationships and spirituality.

A reader who wishes to make positive change in his or her life will discover practical tools in this book, which if practiced and incorporated into daily life will enable them to make the positive change they desire to produce in their lives.

From sitting in jail as a teenager to becoming the creator of one of the most visited self help blogs on the Internet to writing a masterful book to explain universal principles of personal development Steve has walked the path he writes about in his blog, book and that he speaks about in his public appearances. Steve Pavlina has often said he is happiest when he is able to provide value and is able to observe others living consciously and choosing lives which have meaning to them.

I hope you will buy the book and discover the useful and potentially life changing truths within. I have included a link at the bottom of this article which you may use to buy the book and even read other reviews of Personal Development for Smart People. If you have an interest in discussing the book and the principles contained within I suggest that you read Steve’s blog and participate in his online discussion forums.

I recommend this book to anyone who desires living a life of conscious choice.

Steve’s blog is here.            www.stevepavlina.com
Steve’s Forums are here.     http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/

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The spoken audio consists of three positive self talk phrases.

• I take care of myself.
• I make good decisions.
• I take action.

I take care of myself. This phrase is used because ultimately we are all responsible for our selves. We all take care of ourselves in the manner we are capable of in the present moment. Our goal is to learn how to take care of ourselves consciously and to make the choices which will enable us to have and live the lives we truly choose to have.

I make good decisions. We make decisions which determine what will happen in our life. If we eat well and exercise appropriately we are more likely to be a healthy body size and to be physically fit. Consciously making good decisions is part of the process of living the life we desire by choice not chance. If we work towards our goals we are empowering ourselves and living the life we choose and we plan.

I take action. The action step requires more than thinking, it requires doing. In small or large things action increases the probability of achieving our goals. When we take action and the outcome is not what we anticipated we use this new information to modify our actions to achieve our goals with new action. Success is becoming willing to take action and learn.

I suggest that you listen to this audio at least one time per day for 45 days. You may listen more often if you desire. You may use this audio as a way to relax and go to sleep by playing the audio while in bed.

I hope this audio is useful to you. I also hope you will leave a comment and tell me about your experience with the audio and what other kinds of audio you would most like to see on ??????www.talktoyourself.com.

The file is an MP3 and the size is 42 megabytes.Gene

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This audio Copyright 2006 by Gene Wilson and Talktoyourself.com

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You can try this audio with or without headphones as it will work with or without the headphones. The effect will be heightened if headphones are used.

You should try this when you have some free time ahead of you to see how it affects you. Then after you determine it is useful to you perhaps you would play it one hour before eating or preparing each meal and as many other times as you deem useful.

The text of the script is below in italics:

I am alive!

I’m glad I’m alive!

My life is important to me and I care for it in many ways.

I make choices to have a good and healthy life.

I choose what I eat and the quantities I eat.. I choose the times that I eat and the places where I eat. I choose who I am with, when I eat. I make these decisions to have a healthy mind in a healthy body. I enjoy taking good care of myself today in every way. I make good choices for myself and do not accept the urges and demands of my old habits when they are not good choices. I make good choices today in all areas of my life, including what I eat, when I eat, the quantities I eat, and who I eat with.

I question my thoughts and impulses about food. I make good choices about everything in my life today, including food.

When I eat, I take a deep breath before beginning and say to myself, this is fuel for my healthy body. I look at the food before beginning my meals and mentally comment to myself that, eating is good and healthy for me. I eat slowly, often putting my knife, fork and spoon on the table and chewing slowly. I savor the taste of the food knowing it is fuel for my body.

It is good to provide good nutritious food for my body. I deserve to enjoy eating good healthy food. I deserve to have a healthy mind and body. I deserve to enjoy life and I make the choices that make it reality for me. I am worthy of happiness and taking care of my body and my physical health is part of living a happy life.

I care about myself!

I care about others and I know I must care for myself before I can truly care about others. I must help myself first. Today I take good care of myself by eating good healthy food. I eat good food in healthy quantities. I eat at carefully chosen times. I eat slowly and think about the purpose of food in my life.

When an emotional issue arises I know that food is not the answer for me. I know there are other tools to deal with emotions. Food is fuel for my body. I use food as fuel for my body. I use other tools for other life situations.

I am proud of myself for the care and attention I give my self and my eating habits. My body is becoming healthier and healthier each day and even each moment as I realize how committed I am to being healthy.

It is never advisable to drive or operate machinery while listening to binaural audio unless you have previewed the program and determined you remain alert and safe during play.

This audio program is provided without warranty, as is.

I and this site are not therapists, do not provide therapeutic advice and are not medical professionals. Please consult you medical professional if you have any questions regarding the suitability of this program for you.

This audio program Copyright © 2007 by Gene Wilson and talktoyourself.com.
Gene

Download and listen to this audio presentation.
Downloading and listening to this audio is more effective than playing it on the web page!

If you enjoyed this audio and found it useful buy me a magazine by clicking on the donate button above. Thanks!

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The book, As A Man Thinketh, has inspired millions around the world and been a major influence in the self-improvement industry.

The author, James Allen was born in Leicester, England in 1864 and worked as a personal secretary for an executive of a large English corporation until 1902. At the age of 38 he retired to writing and moved with his wife to a small cottage at Ilfracombe, in Devon England. He wrote more than 20 works before passing away suddenly at the age of 48.

As A Man Thinketh, has influenced many contemporary writers including Norman Vincent Peale, Earl Nightingale, Denis Waitley and Tony Robbins, Shad Helmstetter, and others.

As A Man Thinketh was James Allen’s second book and the work which is most popular today.

The work may arguably be said to have started the modern self help genre. It is a classic with timeless wisdom which is a useful today as it was in 1902 when it was first published. The language is filled with instructions and hints on how to master the ship of destiny and plot a course to arrive at that place where we, in our hearts and our thoughts, wish to arrive.

Download and listen to this audio presentation of James Allen’s, As A Man Thinketh!
This audio program Copyright © 2007 by Gene Wilson and talktoyourself.com.

Gene Wilson

If you enjoyed this audio and found it useful buy me a sandwich by clicking on the donate button above. Thanks!

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The above is a great article published in Scientific American which may explain why some people remember traumatic events so vividly and others in the same events do not have the inense memories.

It would at least in part explain why some individuals suffer from PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and others involved in the same event have less or no problems as a result.

Click on the link at the top of this post to read the complete original article.

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Reviewed by: John M. Grohol, Psy.D.
on July 26, 2007 at 11:31 am

Managing emotions is an arduous task for some but a skill that is essential to success in business and personal relationships. Often individuals who can not manage their emotions choose dangerous or destructive courses of action.

Emotional control, a trait associated with adulthood, is best learned during adolescence, a life period often characterized by wide swings of powerful emotions.

“There’s a stereotype that teens don’t manage their emotions, their emotions manage them,” said Reed Larson, a professor of family ecology at the University of Illinois.

Accordingly, Larson and colleagues studied if teenagers can be taught to manage their emotions. Their article is published in this month’s journal of Child Development.

Read More AT Psych Central

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Researchers say obesity is not only caused by genes, but by overweight people being part of social networks of obese individuals. Investigators say the finding helps explain an epidemic of obesity over the past 30 years. VOA’s Jessica Berman reports.

Since the mid-1970s, the number of overweight and obese individuals has skyrocketed. The World Health Organization estimates there are now 1 billion overweight people, at least 300 million of whom are obese.

Experts define obesity as weighing in excess of 30 percent of ideal body weight, a condition that puts obese individuals at extreme risk for heart attack, stroke and diabetes.

Medical researchers know that obesity runs in families because of genes. But, it turns out, that is not the whole story. Investigators have found that social networks play a significant role in determining body type.

Matthew Gilman is head of the obesity prevention program at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Gilman says while genes can explain obesity, they cannot explain the so-called obesity epidemic.

“Genes haven’t changed in the last 30 years, but our environment really has,” he said. “And this study is adding a new perspective to that environment, that of social networks.”

Sociologists at Harvard University and the University of California at San Diego studied the intricate social networks of more than 12,000 people between 1971 and 2003.

After an exhaustive study of the individuals’ relationships – including friends, family and neighbors – the investigators found that a person’s chances of becoming obese increased 40 percent if he or she had a sibling who became obese and 37 percent if they had a spouse who became obese.

Most surprising though, was the risk of obesity among unrelated friends. The study showed that if the friendship was casual, a person’s risk of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if the friend became obese. If the relationship was strong and the two people claimed each other as friends, then if one became obese, the friend’s risk of obesity jumped by 170 percent.

The findings are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

James Fowler is a sociologist at the University of California and one of the study’s authors.

“We were stunned to find that people who are hundreds of miles away have just as much impact on a person’s weight status as friends who are right next door,” he said. “And so what this suggests is that it’s not the case that this causal relationship is due to people eating together or exercising together. Rather, it has to do with them sharing ideas about what healthy behavior is like.”

Co-author Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University says the findings have implications for the development of effective weight loss programs.

“We think our results suggest that treating people in groups my be more effective than treating them individually,” he noted. “So, collective or group dieting or efforts to participate in sports or other activities that are collective may be more effective than individual attempts alone.”

Observers say this is the first time it appears that groups of people have infected one another with a non-infectious disease, and they predict the study may lead to a new field called network medicine.

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Blinks: A Phenomenon of Distractibility in Attention Deficit Disorder
by James Reisinger, MBA, CLU, CFP, ADD

A second-grade girl told her parents, “It was just like you blink your eyes and then everything seems different.”

To illustrate the major impact of a short blink and its results, consider this scenario:

An elementary school teacher instructs the class to put their English book away and take out their math books, then continues, “We’ve been studying chapter five, but let’s go to the questions at the back of chapter six and work problems 1-5.”

A 3-second blink could mean that the students with ADD did not hear the change from chapter five to six, and therefore, incorrectly continued the work in chapter five:

When the teacher asks for a volunteer to answer the first question, the student with ADD, raises his hand, sure he has the correct answer. “Four,” he says. The classmates snicker. The teacher asks, “How did you calculate that?” The student says, “Five apples from nine apples equal four.” The class laughs and the teacher remembers that was a question in chapter five, and says, “No, you are in the wrong chapter.”

Consider a 20-second blink when none of the instructions were heard:

The student unblinks and finds the rest of the class is working with pencils and papers in the blue math book, and not the red English book. Trying to get with the program, the student changes books, gets a pencil and paper, and leans over to a neighboring classmate to ask what they are doing.

The teacher hears and sees, the student being disruptive again. This typically will result in some amount of rejection from classmates, another reprimand from the teacher, and the student doesn’t have the slightest clue why the rest of the class is in the math book. An eighth grader commented on this ever present condition: “I’d be sitting in class and then I’d look around and say to myself …. Where are we? What are we doing?” The result, one more slap in the face, one more failure, and one more blow to the self-esteem.

One of the writers on Prodigy’s Attention Deficit bulletin board related, “By high school and college, I had learned not to ask anyone what we were doing or where we were supposed to be. When I finally snapped out of it (blink), I just nonchalantly looked around and peered over to a neighbor’s book pages. I used to get terrible negative feedback when asking where we were.”

A skillful and confident ADDer with tact and fast talk will go on like nothing was wrong. The shy and somewhat “battered” ADDer will withdraw until class participation is minimal. Withdrawal is not a problem of language; it is humiliation avoidance. It can lead to a spiral of less talk, less vocalizing, lower self-esteem, and less talk. After leaping back to class, the ADDer may find the teacher asking, “Well, what is the answer?” Being bad is better than being dumb or stupid. Understanding how blinks cause a lack of information will allow teachers and parents to modify their input to the child with ADD and modify their responses to the child’s actions or lack of action.

The ADDer may conclude that there is no hope of keeping up. In their book Hyperactive Children Grow Up, Weiss and Hechtman wrote of one patient, “(Random outcomes) caused him to either hold in suspicion his own abilities, or to stop believing in those things which define him as good or bad.” When a student feels so out of control, he cannot reflect on a course of action and use it as a base of leaning and growth.

Blinks are unique to ADDers, and their pervasive nature causes confusion for all those involved. Often someone suggests that what I am discussing is a petit mal seizure. However, unlike a lapse of consciousness or an absence in time, that may occur during a seizure, a blink starts with a thought and is filled with thoughts, images, memories, or plans, that are often totally unrelated to the subject at hand. This all-encompassing aspect is significant because, when an ADDer’s attention switches into deep concentration on a tangent track, all other information that could be received is missed.

Non-ADDers often say, “Everybody daydreams sometime, they can be concentrating so much that they don’t respond when their name is called.” I asked one “non-ADDer, “How many times did you day dream at work yesterday?” The answer was, “Not at all. I was too busy to daydream.” That is the difference, the ADDer is never too busy. Unlike an average person’s daydream, blinks capture attention, not as some think of hyper focus, more like compartmental thinking.

UN/DIVIDED ATTENTION

Instead of having a choice of undivided attention, the ADDer’s attention MAY go whenever and wherever it is taken, Blinks have a magnet-like quality in that they wrap the person’s attention and hold the focus.

Most people mistakenly assume that with effort, dedication, or diligence, those with ADD could be attentive. Wrong! The blink is completely involuntary and all encompassing. There may be little or no volitional control of one’s deployment of attention, even though there is a logical flow to the thoughts within a blink. This mental transportation or “Free Flight” can last a few seconds or many minutes.

The ADDer has no indication before a blink is about to occur or that one is in progress. Emerging from the “cocoon” of a blink, he may have a startling revelation, a vague recognition, or possibly no awareness that a blink occurred. Therefore, if it cannot be foreseen, trying to avoid or stop it with cognitive or behavioral method is reduced or impossible.

If one is “isolated” while in the blink, self talk is about the subject within the blink.

PLUGGED-IN

Blinks chop the ADDer’s attention into ever-changing, inter linked segments. The ADDer’s mind takes in stimuli and adds to it all the unrelated thoughts it has been flying around inside. The ADDer’s mind seems to have a dozen open channels to every thought, sound, or sight. Thoughts spring from one to another other and then wander on.

When a person is “plugged-in” to a blink his thoughts may bounce around automatically like a pinball being shot back and forth even before it reaches the flippers. Until “Game Over” or someone pulls the plug they may be bouncing across a rapid trail on topics.

Blinks are a constant hindrance to fluid thinking or leaning. An ADDer can be continuously distracted with his thoughts jumping from topic to topic. The missing “local” information during the distraction is the root of many educational, social, and emotional problems.

High distractibility increases blinking. Blinks restrict both input from the local situation and output back to that level. ADDers may cope by mastering the ability to blend from one unrelated topic to another within a verbal sentence. ADDers may become jokesters or boisterous as a mechanism to save face or just give themselves time to catch up. ADDers miss more relevant input in large rooms and in one-on-one conversations they may seem uninterested because of their shifting eye or head movements.

A ‘reverse” track, where blink information comes into main discussions, is dangerous to the ADDer. The ADDer works very hard to keep the blink thoughts separate from the local discussion. There can be a large memory bank of all the ideas or problems solved while off track. This is where the creativity, attributed to ADDers, is processed. Some material is duplicated, and the ADDer has to be on guard to keep this sidetrack “analysis” or “scenario” thoughts out of an unrelated local discussion.

Another aspect of a blink can be just as disconcerting. The ADDer can visualize a train of thought so clearly, including a mental “sounding” of a conversation, that the episode is retained in “active memory” instead of “filed” as a subject to be discussed later. This is a case where the thoughts processed while in a blink become consciously recorded as the main conversation. Wives and secretaries verify that ADDers are often positive that they said something, when in reality they had only thought it out.

From teacher to teacher and from one job to another, it is not reasonable to expect the world to speak in short, simple format. A student might ask a teacher, “Please check to see that I have gotten all your requests before you leave.” But, consider going up to a new boss the second day on the job and asking to be quizzed after each instruction to be sure you heard it correctly. In some situations, the ADDers can make a list and read it back, but most life situations do not allow this. Many messages at work or school are one way. Reading, too, is one way; the sentences or paragraph blinked over is lost and the reader may NEVER have a clue that it was skipped. Slow reading speed, exaggerated by the need to constantly start over, is a major problem for the ADDer and the loss of skipped material is detrimental to learning living and loving.

Children with ADD have had so many miscues that their experience regularly proves the “wrong” answer is often a possible solution. After living with blinks and practicing the ‘normal” problem-solving process time after time with various outcomes, a child may conclude that the results of random choice are just as likely as those from deductive reasoning. To a teacher or parent, an answer may be so wrong that it seems to be just a guess, but based on the incomplete data the child received, it is their perfect “answer.”

If a complicated story problem is given for four Mondays in a row, the student with ADD is likely to do it four different ways. The missed information is random in repetitious situations because blinks do not occur on a regular schedule.

A successful marketing representative said, “I have developed systems of dealing with things based on incomplete information. I’m not sure when I’ve had a skip (blink), I just find out that I have missed things all the time. It is always difficult to conclude what is real and what is not. I have experienced common outcomes from seemingly different sets of actions or achieved various and contradictory outcomes from a seemingly identical set of actions in the past.’ This strikes at the very heart of learning. In the ADDer’s case, hard knocks are more frequent and more painful.

The intelligent ADDer will compare many experiences and, over a period of time make a preset choice based on a previous set of actions that has proved most frequently to produce favorable results. This contributes to the rigidity and lack of flexibility often seen in adolescents and adults with ADD. These preset choices are the ADDer’s handrails along the mazes and stairways of life. Just as a driver hits the brakes when he hits a pocket of fog and he cannot see the road, the ADDer brake back to the “handrail” of preset choices when there is a change of plan or time allotted for a task is shortened.

Educational “walls” typically block ADDers at grades 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 13 and 17. These are times when the style or type of learning changes. Most ADDers with average or superior intelligence get by well enough to complete high school. Many go on to college. The increased demand for concentration and attention in middle and high school, and more so in college, often leads to dropping courses, dropping out and career changes. Many do not hit the “wall” until college or even graduate school.

The observable body language that shows as one blinks away may look rude or even antisocial. Parents or teachers have had to deal with actions that are labeled as behavior problems; however, they may be the result of attention problems. These behaviors are disruptive, but the cause is ADD. It may not be a matter of being able to act but rather not being available to respond properly.

Ritalin has taken a bad rap. Ritalin has been around since 1953 and is used extensively, but denial, fear and confusion after a diagnosis of ADD complicate the clear thinking about medication.

Patients or parents present the question, “Must we submit to the “control of a pill?” It is important to clarify the misconceptions that from this question. The medicine enables or corrects an imbalance in the brain chemistry. Millions find it to be a ‘release,” not control. I was released from the scatter, static-like bombardment of thoughts that forever distract me. Marcel Kinsbourne, M.D., said, “The proper use of stimulant treatment is to improve the quality of life of the ADDer.”

Medication can remove up to 90% of distractibility for persons with ADD. According to the late Samuel Nichamin, M.D., a Diplomat of the American Board of Pediatrics, and a pediatrician who was willing to follow his ADD patients into adulthood and still provide treatment, ‘Almost any person who suffers from this attention problem can benefit from a medical approach if the medication is prescribed by a physician with expertise in the management of ADD. As Dr. Arthur Robin, author of Parent/Adolescent Conflict said, “You cannot behaviorally modify a physical condition.”

Advantages

A common question I am asked is, “Considering your academic, social, and business success, at what point in your life do you think medication would have hindered or inhibited you?” NEVER!! Even with a 5mg dose of Ritalin, my abilities increased immediately. I could be on task and pay attention whether working with individuals, participating in group discussions, or listening to a lecture. As the dosage was corrected, these improved and my ability to concentrate while reading new material was greatly enhanced. This enhanced ability to structure a thought and present an answer in a clear and complete manner was less stressful for both me and the listener. Removal these ADD impediments sooner would have helped me throughout all my academic, social, and professional endeavors. ADD was never good!

Being less interruptive or dominate in discussions has improved relationships. Being more patient improves interactions with peers. At the same time, my energy level is increased while sometimes I’m downright calm. Problems are reduced because I can voluntarily attend and when a sound, movement, or thought flashes by, I can hold my thoughts on what I am doing. The medication allows me to work things through to the end, thereby reducing the number of things left undone. A mother with ADD said, “After starting Ritalin, thoughts seemed to come in order and go on organized shelves in my brain for use later.”

Kinsbourne wrote, “The appropriate and timely initiation of stimulant therapy in coordination with behavior management and counseling, as indicated, arrests the spiraling decline in quality of life in most cases. Of course, the medication regime has to be individually selected, intelligently scheduled, and adequately monitored.”

It is obvious that, if not balanced or enabled with medications, the ADDer is operating at less than full capacity, If effective treatment stops, the damage is often displayed in terms of the child’s progressively plummeting self-concept. Frustration for the child, the family and the school “may be substantial and even, in part, irreversible,” says Kinsbourne. If a child with ADD was not learning, could learn with medications, then when medications stopped could not work up to par, wouldn’t we expect them to be more “burned” than those who never saw the normal side of life?

A person’s perspective comes from the knowledge they build as a matter of interpretation from many situations. What one brings to a situation as a result of growing up affects their interpretation. ADDers cannot avoid being creatures of their past, we all see what our eyes have been shown.

Reprint free with credits to author.
For a copy of the complete booklet, contact:
Blinks, c/o Jim Reisinger
P.O. Box 1701,
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106

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