Case Study
Maya worked hard to build a salon with a great reputation. She has eight stylists working full-time but finances and business planning terrified her. So she hired an assistant to handle all of it.

For the past three years, the assistant managed marketing, bookkeeping, tax stuff, and lots of admin. Maya just showed up and did hair.

Then the assistant left to start her own business.

Maya had the SOPs. Detailed instructions on everything. Step by step.

But knowing how to do something and feeling capable of doing it are completely different things.

Maya opened the SOP for payroll and froze. Her heart started racing. She could follow the steps but what if she messed up? What if she filed something wrong and got audited? What if she accidentally paid someone incorrectly?

She closed the document.

"I'll find someone new. I'll hire someone to do this again."

But while she was looking for someone new, the bills were piling up. Marketing wasn't getting done. She wasn't sure if she was on track financially or not.

The constant worry set in. "What if I'm actually losing money and I don't even know? What if the business is failing and I can't see it because I'm not looking at the numbers?"

She'd wake up at 3 am thinking about it. Is the business okay? Should I be worried? Am I about to go under?

It's a Thinking Skill
There's a difference between knowing how to do something and being able to execute on it.

Your brain uses 28 thinking skills to take action.
When those skills are strong, it’s easy for you to follow through. When they're weak, it becomes a lot harder.
Maya's fear wasn't irrational. She had a few weak thinking skills that were sending her into panic mode. 

Maya struggled with 2 thinking skills that made it challenging for her to learn some concepts:
1. Clear Perception
2. Abstract Thinking

As we improved each thinking skill, her brain slowly got the tools it needed and it started seeing it actually can and WILL do this. When both thinking skills were stronger and they were working together, Maya looked like a new person. She showed up differently as she knew she’d be able to handle whatever was thrown at her.
We started off by improving clear perception.

Clear Perception
Clear perception is being able to take in information in a clear and organized way. We take in information through our 5 senses and most of the time, hopefully, the information is coming in clear and organized.

If you ever walked into a messy room but instead of cleaning it like you needed to, you just walked out and closed the door, you were probably experiencing blurred perception. That’s the opposite of clear perception. Too much information coming in at a time.

Or if you’ve come back from vacation with hundreds of unread emails and just got overwhelmed by them all but instead of responding to them, you closed out the tab, same thing, too much information coming into your brain at once.

I had Maya do the following exercise multiple times till she could feel her brain stayed calm even with a lot of information.

Find a space that feels chaotic, a cluttered desk, a full inbox, a big project.
Don't clean it yet.
Just stand there and look at it for sixty seconds without doing anything.
Your brain will probably want to shut down or run away.
Take a deep breath and then start listing out what you see: “Sticky notes, yesterday’s to-do list, a bill to be paid.”

By listing it out, you help your brain take in the information in a clear and organized way.
Once Maya felt clear perception had been somewhat improved, we moved on to improving abstract thinking.

Abstract Thinking
Abstract thinking is the ability to think about, talk, and use abstract information.
If you need things to be written down or drawn out for you to be able to understand them, there’s a good chance you’re struggling with abstract thinking.
Right, I can show you a real red apple, I can draw you an apple, or I can tell you “think about an apple,” each is getting more abstract.

Maya struggled with many new concepts that were abstract, as her brain couldn’t imagine them. And it made it even harder that her brain got overwhelmed by a lot of information.

By improving both those thinking skills, she was able to learn a lot faster, so her brain calmed down, knowing she would be able to figure it out. No matter how complex or abstract it seemed.


Here are 2 exercises we did to improve abstract thinking:

1: Work backwards from the outcome.
Pick something you want but don’t have yet, maybe a top-rated podcast, a calm morning routine, a system for paying bills, etc.

Take a moment to visualize what that looks like.

Then work backwards.

What happened right before you achieved the goal? And before that? And before that?
Abstract thinking requires your brain to hold ideas that don't exist yet and work with them as if they're real. Working backwards from an imagined outcome is one of the most direct ways to practice it.

2: Draw to Visualize
Often, we’re trying to visualize in high-stakes situations. Yet there’s already enough pressure to make sure things are okay that our brain doesn’t have the capacity to learn will a new skill.

You want to develop visualization in a safe environment where there are no big stakes.

So at a time when you’re relaxed, think of an invisible trust, momentum, consistency - and draw it. Doesn't matter if you can't draw. You’re not hanging the picture up in your office.
What shape is trust? What color is momentum? What does consistency look like as a picture?



Maya's brain struggled because finances were hard to imagine. By drawing it out on a paper, Maya was able to visualize the service rendered, the invoices created, the customer paying etc.

Then, when she went to learn the system, her brain had something to hold on to so it made it a lot easier to learn what was needed.




While Maya DID find someone to take over during her 90-days in Optimize Your ADHD Brain, she approached the whole situation differently.
Her old employee ran the whole thing, and Maya didn't touch it her work with a 10-foot pole because she was scared.
Now Maya isn't scared of the work; she simply trusts her employee. And if the employee is out, Maya still feels calm because she knows that technically she can handle it.


Cheers to Peak Brain Performance!