When you were a teenager, your friends maybe started smoking, and all of them want you to smoke with them. They make fun of you because you don’t want to smoke, and they’re generally giving you a hard time. Every day. Some kids resist, but others may cave in to the peer pressure. They finally break down and start smoking.

When you do, here’s the process: Most people say that they smoke to release stress. Especially when they get really anxious or really wound up about something, people will run right outside and start smoking a cigarette.

What’s interesting about that is that cigarettes dramatically add to your stress level. Your blood pressure rises, your heart beats faster—your body is showing every symptom of stress, but smokers still believe that cigarettes reduces the stress level in their bodies.

What really happens is that you’re squirming and guilty. You aren’t happy with yourself. Your mind goes, “Great. I’ll go smoke a cigarette.” So, you grab the pack. You take out a cigarette, put it up to your lips… You’re getting ready to light it, but before you even take your first drag, your brain remembers: “My friends aren’t going to pound on me anymore. I can relax. I can be happy.” Neuro-chemicals are released into your body because you aren’t getting a hard time anymore. It’s not the cigarette that’s doing that… it’s you!

Before you take the first puff, you’re feeling better. From then on, the smell of a cigarette, the feel of a cigarette, the look of the cigarette, and even the smoke from the cigarette tell your brain to relax. Your brain starts relaxing the body or gives you the illusion that your body’s relaxed. Bam! You think it’s a stress reliever and you continue to believe that for the rest of your life. Thus, every time you get stressed out, you want to go and you want to smoke a cigarette. Make sense?

When you’re talking about these habits that are so quickly ingrained, you really have to sa,y “How can I change a habit, or create a new habit?”

You just have to create a positive, better, more powerful habit.

You need to identify what the old habit is that you’re replacing. I’d like to give you an example of this, just to really drive the point home and explain how this whole thing works. Let’s say you’re driving a 1986 Oldsmobile, four-door sedan and it’s leaking oil like a sieve. It’s blowing thick, black, smelly smoke out of the back. It gets about three miles to the gallon. Max speed is about 35 miles per hour and you get AM radio. Those are your wheels.

Let’s say you work as a part-time nurse. You have low income. You’re just barely scraping by. You’re working in a hospital. You’re on call that night and somebody gets rushed into the hospital. It doesn’t matter what the situation is really, but one way or the other, you end up being responsible for saving their life, and you do it.

You saved his life, right. Your self-esteem just went higher, but still, it’s just part of your job. Right?

A couple of days goes by, and you are coming home from a 12-hour double shift. yuo’re exhausted! But when you get to your driveway, there’s a beautiful BMW, sitting out in your driveway, or whatever your dream car is.

What happens if you see that this vehicle is clearly intended for you? There’s a greeting card tucked underneath the windshield wiper with a key taped inside. It has a nice note from the person whose life you saved. They say, “Listen, without you I wouldn’t be alive today. I did a little investigating. I found out what your dream car was and I bought it for you. Thank you, so very, very much. By the way, insurance is covered for the rest of your life. It’s completely legal and ready to drive right now. I already cleared it with the hospital, so we’re not violating any of your employment rules.”

You pull up. You park your Oldsmobile right next to that vehicle. It’s been a long day. I mean, you are wiped out. You decide to take it for a spin tomorrow. You get up in the morning. You look out the window of your apartment and you see that, in fact, there it is. It wasn’t a dream, right?

Now, which car would you drive to work? The new one, right? And the following day, which car will you drive? The new one! I think anyone would do the same thing.

Here’s why: You’re now excited. You’re pumped. You’re ready to go on driving the new car. It’s perfect. It’s all about intensity. You don’t have to think about it and you don’t give your old car a second thought. Your new, souped-up car is perfect for every situation.

Habit is like that. The only way you’ll beat an old habit is to create a new one that’s much more satisfying.

We’ll discuss that in a future article.

If you have ADD, do find yourself wanting to make more money? Do you want to be happier?

You may find that if you just cut loose when you’re ADD-driven, the next thing you know, you’ll look around and say, “Oh, my gosh, where did all this mess come from?”

When you realize that it’s all yours, you’ll probably feel horrible. ADD people really do like to have things tidy. So, if you create a system to deal with the messes you inevitably make, you’ll know where everything goes and if you decide to clean it all up, it can be done easily.

Otherwise, don’t you feel overwhelmed?

Stop wallowing in the, “Oh, gee, why can’t I get anything done?” mode. Make the decision to eliminate confusion from your life because it doesn’t serve you in any way.

When you have ADD, using systems makes life easier. Then, you can stop being so overwhelmed and have success.

But you won’t always get the steps right, the very first time around. Try writing them down on paper. You don’t need to do that with simple systems, even if you have ADD, but if you devise something more complicated, don’t try to remember all that stuff in your ADD brain because that’s just another kind of clutter.

If you’re creating your own systems, think them out and then, write the steps down. You may write them down on paper or you may enter the steps into your computer. You may want to print them out or put them all in a notebook. However you record the system is up to you. Then, when you go to use the ADD-friendly system, you can bring up the steps immediately, and just go through them as you would a checklist.

For an example of a simple system, ADD people are always leaving their personal effects around–their wallets, their purses, their keys, their cell phone–things you always carry with you when you’re heading out the door. And when you have ADD, they’re probably spread out all over the place.

Do you have a system for just keeping track of the basic stuff that you need on a daily basis, when you’re on your way out the door?

What is it that you do naturally when you come in with your keys, your wallet, and your Palm Pilot and whatever else it is that you’re carrying? Where do you put it?

You probably come into the house or office and just drop your things somewhere. So, think about that. That’s what you’re doing naturally.

Organizers have a system that they call a “launch pad,” and what they mean by that is to create a place that’s easy for you to access when you first walk in the door, like a shelf with maybe some pegs for your keys or a bucket, but a launch pad that you can access on your way out the door, too.

It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s just got to be something that works for you and is geared toward your ADD brain. Some people like a drawer. Some people like stuff hung up. The easiest way to deal with losing important stuff is to just have launch pads so that whatever you do naturally, you can train yourself to “Put it on the launch pad.”

Systems are enormously helpful to folks with ADD. They don’t have to be complicated, but if they are, record the system’s steps in written form so that you never forget. Systems make life easier when you have ADD. Create some to solve your biggest problems and you’ll be a much happier person.

Do you wake up every morning in a great mood and immediately start wanting to talk about all of your great ADD-induced ideas? Are you full of energy and ready to leap from the starting blocks? Many of us with ADD are.

But maybe your partner isn’t quite so lively in the morning. Does he or she wake up in a quiet mood? It’s not that they don’t like mornings, but maybe they’re just not ready to hear about the exciting ideas you have planned, until he or she’s had coffee.

You can look at this situation and find the disadvantage in this, which is that your ADD has you talking and talking in the morning, while your linear partner just wants you to shut up for a few minutes. The bright side of the ADD-linear equation is that you’re usually in a good mood.

On the other hand, you can look at the negative in the way your partner wakes up in the morning and say, “You wake up sounding grumpy.” Or, you can see the positive side to this and say, “My partner wakes up not talking. That means he or she’s there to hear my ideas.” Most ADD people love a good listener.

But if your partner’s behavior is irritating to you, look at that characteristic that’s annoying you, and ask yourself, “What’s the advantage to that behavior?” because there usually is one. Obviously, it doesn’t work to have someone with ADD who wants to talk someone’s ear off and somebody who wants quiet first thing in the morning.

Maybe you can make an agreement that you can’t talk to your mate about ideas, until after morning coffee.

But your ADD brain won’t always remember that agreement.

That’s okay because the way it actually works is that about half the time, you will remember the agreement, and maybe you can just talk about mundane things until everyone’s had coffee. Or, you may get your partner to remind you, “Hold on,” in as nice a way as possible, “remember, I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

You may be grinding your teeth a little bit because your ADD has you wanting to interact right away, but you have to realize that your partner doesn’t have ADD and moves in ways that may be mysterious to you. You have to realize that in their linear mind, your ADD behavior is pretty mysterious to them, too.

Another idea is to keep a pad of paper and a pen nearby so that if you have an idea you want to talk about, and it’s not time for that yet, you can use the pen to write your idea down, even if it’s in the middle of the night! You can capture your great idea so that you’re not chomping at the bit to try to force your ADD brain to remember.

ADD-Linear relationships take some work, as do any other relationship combinations. If you’re one way and your partner is another, you can come up with simple solutions to simplify your life and keep everyone involved happy. Again, it all comes back to systems that we’ve written about in previous articles. Once you find a system that works for the relationship, everyone feels better and the relationship thrives.

We’ll talk more about realtionship issues in our next article…