Creating Abundance: How to Thrive with ADHD and Live Authentically
What if everything you’re seeking: peace, purpose, connection, has been inside you all along, and it's not that you need to try hard... but soften into who you already are?
In this soulful episode, I sit down with Cathy Heller, a renowned teacher, top podcaster and bestselling author. She hosts one of the top spiritual podcasts, Abundant Ever After, and she’s the author of the USA Today bestselling book, Abundant Ever After: Tools for Creating a Life of Prosperity and Ease.
Join us for a spiritually grounded conversation about what it means to come home to yourself and how everything begins to fall into alignment when you do. We talk about the cost of hiding who we are, and how real healing begins when we honour our true desires. This episode is a reminder that when you show up as yourself, the universe meets you there, because who you are is the magic.
Preorder my book: The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit here.
What you'll learn in this episode:
- How burnout can come from disconnecting from your true self.
- How ADHD women can thrive when they stop masking and start honouring their true rhythm.
- Why spiritual fulfilment often begins with asking: What do I truly desire, and is that desire aligned with my values?
- How creativity, softness, and self-connection can support healing, especially for neurodivergent minds.
- That your worth isn’t based on what you do, but on who you are and how you love.
- How our inner resources, empathy, insight, love, are what truly connect us.
- How to let go of urgency and honour your soul to let life come to you.
- Why being yourself is the most powerful way to connect with others and with life itself.
This conversation is a powerful reminder that everything you're looking for begins with being who you already are.
You can connect with Cathy via her Instagram page (@cathy.heller).
Timestamps:
- 02:48 - Cathy's Journey to Self-Acceptance: Understanding Neurodivergence and Personal Power
- 15:16 - The Power of Desire: Understanding What We Truly Want
- 22:42 - Breaking Down Belief Systems
- 30:13 - Embracing Creativity and Letting Go
Links and Resources:
- Missed our ADHD Women’s Summer Series? Get the workshops on demand [here].
- Next ADHD Wellbeing Workshop: A bonus Q&A to ask me anything about ADHD and my new book! - July 8th 24th @1.30pm. Book [here].
- Join the Waitlist for my new ADHD community-first membership launching in September! Get exclusive founding offers [here].
- Find my popular ADHD webinars and resources on my website [here].
- Follow the podcast on Instagram: @adhd_womenswellbeing_pod
Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
Welcome to the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.
Speaker A:I'm Kate Moore Youssef, and I'm a wellbeing and lifestyle coach, EFT practitioner, mum to four kids and passionate about helping more women to understand and accept their amazing ADHD brains.
Speaker A:After speaking to many women just like me and probably you, I know there is a need for more health and lifestyle support for women newly diagnosed with adhd.
Speaker A:In these conversations, you'll learn from insightful guests, hear new findings, and discover powerful perspectives and lifestyle tools to enable you to live your most fulfilled, calm, and purposeful life wherever you are on your ADHD journey.
Speaker A:Here's today's episode.
Speaker A:Welcome back to another episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.
Speaker A:And I get super, super excited when I invite people on whose books I've read, whose podcasts I've listened to, who I've followed and have really, really helped me.
Speaker A:And today is one of those days.
Speaker A:I'm trying not to be a crazy fangirl.
Speaker A:But today I have Kathy Heller.
Speaker A:Now, Kathy, if you don't know who she is, she is a dynamic, transformational coach.
Speaker A:She's a spiritual guide, a meditation teacher, and an inspirational speaker dedicated to helping so many people find more ease, joy and fulfillment in their lives.
Speaker A:And she is the host of the Abundant Ever after podcast and the author of the empowering book, Don't Keep youp Day, how to turn your passion into your career.
Speaker A:And also this brand new book which I've just read called Abundant Ever After Tools for creating a life of prosperity and Ease.
Speaker A:It was a brilliant, brilliant book and came just at the right time.
Speaker A:I was just telling Kathy that I probably read it in about five days and it landed in my nerves, nervous system and in my body so deeply.
Speaker A:And so I'm very, very grateful.
Speaker A:And I just can't wait to bring you here for you to share your wisdom that you share and your incredible podcast.
Speaker A:And hopefully all the listeners will glean a little bit of the insights that you've.
Speaker A:You've so beautifully given in all, all the episodes and all the books.
Speaker A:So thank you so much, Kathy, for being here.
Speaker B:Oh, my gosh.
Speaker B:Well, everything you just said was so beautiful, but it's the way you said it.
Speaker B:You have really, really beautiful energy and I'm delighted to hang out with you.
Speaker A:I can say truthfully that everything you say deeply connects from, like, somewhere very deep inside.
Speaker A:And I know from a spiritual perspective, we're very much aligned.
Speaker A:We both follow Kabbalah, and it's something I've talked about on the podcast before.
Speaker A:And if you are interested, I had David Guillam on the podcast.
Speaker A:He was fantastic.
Speaker A:But everything you talk about from a spiritual perspective connect with the practical world as well.
Speaker A:So I guess I wanted to start a little bit with the person that might be listening to this podcast who was feeling burnt out, exhausted by life.
Speaker A:They are trying so hard and they are trying to make life work for them.
Speaker A:And they've probably been kicked down quite a few times.
Speaker A:And then they will have discovered that they are actually neurodivergence, that after all these years of trying and trying, trying, that actually it's been been adhd.
Speaker A:That's been a really hard and heavy thing that they've been carrying without, without knowing how does someone who has struggled and felt like life is just difficult.
Speaker A:That's just how life should be.
Speaker A:How do we connect back to that kind of ease and that calm and that abundance when it feels really, really hard to grasp?
Speaker A:And it's a big question.
Speaker B:It's a beautiful question.
Speaker B:And first of all, I just want to start with the neurodivergent ADHD piece, as you kind of named it.
Speaker B:My mom had, has adhd and she also found out as an adult that she was on the autism spectrum, which she didn't know, but she did know she didn't, if that makes any sense.
Speaker B:And what I think is really powerful in the journey that we're all on is to come to really know thyself.
Speaker B:And so often what makes life, quote, unquote hard is that we are trying to fit in, to be something we're not, when we're not actually designed to be what we're not.
Speaker B:And so I know for my mom, for instance, she was teaching me and then eventually I was there to kind of be her guide, right?
Speaker B:Like we did that for each other and in so many ways.
Speaker B:A friend of mine said, I think anyone who's written a book wrote it first for their mother, right?
Speaker B:As it's like there's a soul contract, right?
Speaker B:So I've really had a face to face look at this.
Speaker B:And in one respect, you can see where my mom definitely struggled, right, to have so much happening inside of her mind, inside of her even nervous system, right.
Speaker B:As a result of what she was coded with.
Speaker B:And at the same time, she has unbelievable gifts, right?
Speaker B:Which is not a surprise.
Speaker B:You know, those things usually go together.
Speaker B:So she's an incredible performer.
Speaker B:She was most talented in her senior yearbook.
Speaker B:She got that superlative.
Speaker B:She is a natural when it comes to playing piano, singing Doing imitations, coloring outside the lines.
Speaker B:So much of what I feel like is my superpower is because my mother prioritized my creativity over my achievement.
Speaker B:And so it gave me tremendous space to play.
Speaker B:And as a kid, I was always encouraged to paint, make collages, skip school if I wanted to.
Speaker B:Like, life was about expression rather than trying to fit into some rubric.
Speaker B:And also, she's so, so sensitive, and she's so easily spun.
Speaker B:And so it's only as an adult, it's very, very recent that she came to appreciate that as opposed to making herself wrong for all the things that she is in her essence, she started to understand, instead of me adapting to the world, what are the practices that I can do that honor what is inside of me?
Speaker B:And the world doesn't necessarily remind us to do that.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And it's really one size fits all.
Speaker B:They actually have said.
Speaker B:And this is not me making a diagnosis.
Speaker B:I'm just quoting that children in school are more likely to have a diagnosis of ADHD than when you take them out of school.
Speaker B:And again, some people, they'll have the diagnosis either way.
Speaker B:But what I'm saying is that's so telling because it shows that just putting a child into a system and saying, this is the system, not everybody's system is going to function at all in that.
Speaker B:And so I think later, it's only recently that my mom has understood that she has a superpower, which is to constantly be able to come up with a creative thought, and her mind will take her into galaxies that other people maybe necessarily wouldn't.
Speaker B:And she can empathize and emote.
Speaker B:And also because of that, she needs to regulate herself.
Speaker B:She needs to have time where she is paying homage to all of that.
Speaker B:And no one taught her that growing up.
Speaker B:And so what she felt was otherness.
Speaker B:She felt stupid.
Speaker B:She felt wrong and crazy that she had all of this going on.
Speaker B:And now she spends a lot of time gardening.
Speaker B:And she's amazing at it, right?
Speaker B:And she knows that she needs to take news breaks sometimes, and she does some meditation, and she's finally like.
Speaker B:She's like, I must be a late bloomer, because now I'm actually finding that I have this gift, right?
Speaker B:That's number one as far as the overarching right for everyone who's listening, no matter what your relationship with neurodivergence is.
Speaker B:I do subscribe to the idea that for all of us, life is not meant to be a struggle.
Speaker B:Now, why does it feel like a struggle is because our soul has a blueprint it has divine instructions.
Speaker B:And it is literally, as my rabbi says, we're each a masterpiece, a piece of the master.
Speaker B:We are someone because we're some of the one.
Speaker B:And we come into this world having seen the whole movie.
Speaker B:God showed us the entire assignment of the path, and we volunteered for this mission.
Speaker B:We knew what the gift would be.
Speaker B:We knew what the path would be.
Speaker B:And we came to the world on assignment and fully, fully willing to go through this journey for our soul.
Speaker B:Correction.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And for the betterment of the collective.
Speaker B:When we are born, there is a essence.
Speaker B:There is a peace.
Speaker B:There is a sense of, well, being, just being who we are.
Speaker B:And very quickly, the world starts to get so loud around us that we start to take on identities that have us striving for things that our essence doesn't even want.
Speaker B:And that's when things start to feel really hard.
Speaker B:We start to have this sense that in order for us to be whole, we have to achieve things, or we have to measure up to things, or we need a big pile of things.
Speaker B:And at the end of the day, what we're really seeking is to have inner peace.
Speaker B:And we don't realize that that's inside.
Speaker B:It's the Dorothy, click your heels.
Speaker B:You have it already.
Speaker B:So what I mean is, anything that we would be finding hard is something we're trying to externalize.
Speaker B:At the end of the day, the thing that feels the most fulfilling is the understanding that literally, this is not metaphorical, literally our heart.
Speaker B:The heart that we each have is an electromagnetic device.
Speaker B:It is literally electromagnetic.
Speaker B:And when we are centered inside our being, as opposed to outsourcing and externalizing what we're grasping for.
Speaker B:But when we are centered within, the heart literally opens up and feels coherent.
Speaker B:We feel like we are.
Speaker B:There's an equanimity.
Speaker B:There's a beingness that comes through.
Speaker B:There's an aliveness that comes through.
Speaker B:And then it literally, and I keep saying literally because I want people to know, this is science.
Speaker B:It gives everyone around us a biological update just by being in our presence.
Speaker B:That's how powerful that electromagnetic energy comes off of us.
Speaker B:In fact, it'll change the plants in your house.
Speaker B:It'll affect everything that you're around.
Speaker B:You become like a wifi router for everything that you interact with.
Speaker B:You love it into life.
Speaker B:That's how powerful we are in our integrity.
Speaker B:So what's the struggle?
Speaker B:The struggle is somewhere along the way, believing that in order for us to be whole, there's a million things we have to achieve.
Speaker B:The approval, the wealth, the piles of things.
Speaker B:And that feels like a struggle.
Speaker B:And here's what's extra cool.
Speaker B:The way that manifestation works is that when we are in this receptive mode, when we are in connection with our truth, right?
Speaker B:And we're walking with that wholeness and we're no longer needing something outside of us to make us feel at peace, we're projecting peace.
Speaker B:We are peace.
Speaker B:We are right?
Speaker B:What happens is we become such a laser that we change the 3D dimensions around us.
Speaker B:And then we do manifest the most divine, exquisite reality because we get back literally the resonance of the same frequency that we project.
Speaker B:So when human beings start to develop their own capacity to manipulate their own energy, to conjure it up, to call it into motion, to find the power within, right?
Speaker B:To become spiritually aligned within themselves.
Speaker B:You make quantum leaps in your life because everything around you wants to be around you.
Speaker B:And you start to become so powerful just being in your presence.
Speaker B:Other people will have good ideas just being with you, right?
Speaker B:Because you become a portal.
Speaker B:It's an energy that opens up abundance of all kinds.
Speaker B:The abundance of love, the abundance of creativity.
Speaker B:It opens it up for yourself and for anyone around you.
Speaker B:That's how powerful a human being is when they're tapped in and turned on.
Speaker B:And there is nothing that feels more abundant.
Speaker B:There's no amount of money that you could be given that feels as abundant as it feels to be fully in a flow state with yourself, to be fully in synchronicity with the world, to be having mystical experiences and.
Speaker B:And divine little connections, little winks from the universe.
Speaker B:That is actually what we're all after.
Speaker B:And that is actually easy because it's already been set in motion.
Speaker B:It's knowing that you're always at the right place at the right time.
Speaker B:And that the question isn't what do I need to do, but who do I need to be?
Speaker B:And when we tap into the energy and we tap into what's within ourselves, we.
Speaker B:We become the vessel by which all the shefa, all the abundance that's already here, that God already put here in front of you in escrow, you just start receiving.
Speaker B:You become a vehicle for those miracles.
Speaker B:If that makes sense.
Speaker A:It makes beautiful and perfect sense.
Speaker A:And I love hearing it back from you in.
Speaker A:In that way.
Speaker A:And I'm going to just start going back to what you were saying about your mum, because your mum is in this community.
Speaker A:Like this is, I hear from amazing women all the time, similar to your mum, maybe a bit younger, maybe a bit older, I don't know how old she is.
Speaker A:But I hear from women this, in their 70s, you know, late 70s, telling me that they have finally realized, and they're living very similar to your mum in the sense that they are finally understanding themselves, finally understand their energy, what makes them tick, what makes them happy, and doing these things that they've been told for decades that aren't on right, you know, like, try again, do something different, push, push against that door.
Speaker A:And everything that I do is to hope that more women don't have to get to their 70s, find this alignment, find this truth, find this connection, this authenticity, so they can start working with themselves, with this energy and with this connection, this love.
Speaker A:Because what you described, then we can.
Speaker A:I was just thinking in my head, like all the different times, you know, when that happens.
Speaker A:And then I've just been going through a bit of a thing in my life where I have been pushing against things which I don't think have been right for me and my nervous system and have created a huge amount of stress and pressure.
Speaker A:And it's just made me think like that was because I was being sucked into this story of this is how it needs to be.
Speaker A:Well, if you're in this, this kind of line of work or in this, this space where you should be doing it like that, and there was my soul saying, you don't like that?
Speaker A:That's not good for you.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:You know, in Hebrew, the word is ratzon, which means desire.
Speaker B:And it's really interesting to talk about it because there's two schools of thought.
Speaker B:And one school of thought is that you should have a very specific, clear sense of what you want in order to manifest.
Speaker B:And the other set school of thought is you shouldn't desire anything because desire is the essence of suffering.
Speaker B:Well, Judaism says something different, which is that desire, having ratzon, having desire when you wake up every morning is life force.
Speaker B:You should have desire.
Speaker B:However, to get to what you were just saying, how often is the thing that plays constantly in our mind that we desire not actually what we want?
Speaker B:Meaning to say, the holy desire that we are embedded with is a divine assignment, and that's what's worth pursuing versus what the world has told you is your desire.
Speaker B:So very often there is a sense of urgency that I need to make more money, or I need this book to be a bestseller, or I need.
Speaker B:It's like, is that your desire?
Speaker B:Is that your soul's desire?
Speaker B:Maybe or maybe not.
Speaker B:And often what is the soul's desire is this quiet whisper, and it has nothing to do with what your ego needs for approval, and it has to do with what feels deeply rewarding for your soul.
Speaker B:And sometimes that real desire is to build a garden.
Speaker B:Sometimes that real desire is to have a slow morning.
Speaker B:Sometimes that real desire is to write a book, but just to write the book.
Speaker B:What happens with it is none of your business.
Speaker B:So the hard to go back to the question before is when we take on a desire that's not ours.
Speaker B:When we understand that as a soul, we don't answer to people, we only answer to God, then we can name what is the desire and let everything else go.
Speaker B:What's amazing is when we do that, we get led to the most amazing fulfillment because we're not in it for some external desire that somebody gave to us that we're holding like a.
Speaker B:You know, it feels like a sack of bricks on your back.
Speaker B:And so often when I meet people, they realize they have their ladder on a wall of desire that's never been theirs.
Speaker B:They don't necessarily want a $10 million business.
Speaker B:They don't necessarily want this constant frenetic nervous system.
Speaker B:What they want is something that's different than success.
Speaker B:It's significance.
Speaker B:They want to feel significant.
Speaker B:They want to make an impact.
Speaker B:They want to have a deep understanding of their own character and their own inner world and an inner monologue.
Speaker B:They want to have a meeting with the divine every day.
Speaker B:They want to feel like their life is potent and rich.
Speaker B:So much of what people come to me for and tell me is their desire within 10 minutes, I unpack that and realize that's what their parents wanted for them.
Speaker B:That's what their uncle said.
Speaker B:That's what their teacher said.
Speaker B:And then the most wild thing is that so often when people follow their actual desire, they find the significance, and then success follows the significance.
Speaker B:They weren't even looking for it when I started my podcast.
Speaker B:I started it in my closet.
Speaker B:And I had been a songwriter and my quote unquote desire my whole life was to grow up and be famous and be a singer like Carole King, Sheryl Crow, whatever.
Speaker B:And I got a record deal and it felt hard, but I did it.
Speaker B:And I didn't like the environments I was in late at night in these studios.
Speaker B:And then I got dropped from Interscope, and then I got signed to Atlantic Records, and I was, like, crunchy.
Speaker B:It was, like, hard to be in it, but I was doing it.
Speaker B:And this is that.
Speaker B:Eventually I got dropped again.
Speaker B:And then it's a long story, but I wound up writing music for television shows that you'd hear me singing in Pretty Little Liars or Younger Switched at Birth or Target commercials.
Speaker B:And I made a few hundred thousand dollars a year writing music for TV and.
Speaker B:And film and ads and theme songs for 10 years.
Speaker B:And then one day, I just had this whisper, this nudge of, like, you should start a podcast.
Speaker B:And it didn't make any sense on paper.
Speaker B:Cause I didn't have an email list.
Speaker B:I didn't have an Instagram account.
Speaker B:I had no social media.
Speaker B:And it wasn't about that.
Speaker B:It just felt like, you know, I've learned all this Kabbalah and this Jewish wisdom.
Speaker B:I studied meditation.
Speaker B:And I'm just a girl, and I'm just a mom, and I'm a regular person, and.
Speaker B:But I feel like it's really deep, beautiful stuff, and it feels very unique to me, and I want to share it.
Speaker B:And so I sat in my closet and put my laptop on my shoe rack and just spoke into this laptop without a microphone.
Speaker B:And the reward was doing it.
Speaker B:Just doing it was the reward.
Speaker B:I just wanted to kind of share these ideas.
Speaker B:I had three daughters.
Speaker B:I still do.
Speaker B:My youngest was three weeks old.
Speaker B:I felt like, maybe this will be like, life lessons.
Speaker B:They'll go back and listen one day, you know, like.
Speaker B:Anyway, so overnight, it became a huge success, and it made, you know, I had a million downloads then 50 million downloads.
Speaker B:The podcast started making millions of dollars that I never expected.
Speaker B:And I wrote two books.
Speaker B:And what's interesting is the whisper that I had when I was a kid was, use your voice.
Speaker B:And I wound up using my voice, but not.
Speaker B:Not for the sake of being seen.
Speaker B:Because when I was little, having two parents that were struggling with their own mental health and got divorced and all of this, I think I felt invisible.
Speaker B:And I also knew I was supposed to use my voice, but I needed to be seen.
Speaker B:And when I started the podcast, it wasn't about, look at me.
Speaker B:It was about, how can my voice lead you back to your voice?
Speaker B:And it wasn't about being seen on stage.
Speaker B:I was actually not even seen.
Speaker B:And it wound up being the thing that was actually where I was meant to be of service.
Speaker B:And so that was ultimately the most fulfilling thing, because it was no longer about my addiction to something outside of myself that I needed.
Speaker B:It was actually a way to use my gift for somebody else's benefit.
Speaker B:And millions of people have come to me and said, your podcast.
Speaker B:It just made me feel like myself again.
Speaker B:Your podcast gave me the courage to do this or that or remember that there is a God and that I had a bad relationship with the divine, because I was taught it in a way that made me feel so far away.
Speaker B:And now I feel so close to God, and thank you for that.
Speaker B:And I didn't go into it thinking there would be a external reward.
Speaker B:So I think it's interesting.
Speaker B:What is the desire?
Speaker B:And when we get quiet, it shouldn't feel like urgency or pressure, and that's how, you know it's your actual soul's desire.
Speaker A:So many of us have those little nudges and those whispers, but we.
Speaker A:We dismiss them or we don't get still enough, or we don't get quiet enough, or we don't give ourselves the opportunity, or we just.
Speaker A:We just dismiss it going, that's ridiculous.
Speaker A:Like, how.
Speaker A:How's that going to happen?
Speaker A:And we go into the how.
Speaker A:And I had a similar experience with the podcast as well, with my.
Speaker A:This is three years now of the podcast.
Speaker A:2.8 million downloads.
Speaker A:And in a million years, I never thought that I would still be doing this after, like, my first little.
Speaker A:Exactly the same as you in my closet in the middle of lockdown, telling my kids, four kids, go, go away, go away.
Speaker A:I'm just recording a podcast.
Speaker A:And it.
Speaker A:There was lots of, you know, duffer episodes and things like that, but it's still something that I come back to every single day, every single week, because it's.
Speaker A:It's effortless for me.
Speaker A:I love doing this.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:It feeds so many of my desires, even though I don't know where it was going to go.
Speaker A:But I guess my question to you is, it's that it's the belief systems that we have to break down, isn't it?
Speaker A:Because I think I've worked so much on my belief systems and my development that I was curious enough to do that, whereas I know there's a lot of people going, well, that's crazy.
Speaker A:I'm not going to start a music career or start a podcast or write a book or make big change, because how's that going to make me money?
Speaker A:Or who am I to do that?
Speaker A:Or that's crazy.
Speaker A:And I think.
Speaker A:Would you say that the belief systems, the trust in yourself is probably where we all.
Speaker A:We all need to kind of like, peel back.
Speaker A:We need to go back to.
Speaker B:I think it's very common, what you just said.
Speaker B:I think the most common thing I hear is the worry around, how am I going to figure this out?
Speaker B:Or am I really even good at this?
Speaker B:Like, can I do this?
Speaker B:Yeah, right.
Speaker B:So what's really wild is that the most impressive people in the world are not the people with the greatest skills, and they're not the people with the most money, and they're not the people with whatever.
Speaker B:It's arbitrary.
Speaker B:What makes a person most impressive is how loving they are.
Speaker B:The most impressive person in a room is the most loving.
Speaker B:The wisest person in the room is the most loving.
Speaker B:And I say that because, you know, my grandmother didn't go to school past the fifth grade and came through a horrible, you know, second world War and all of this.
Speaker B:She had tremendous wisdom and compassion, and she made a giant impact.
Speaker B:And wherever we would go, she would really impress upon people something they would, you know, just remember her.
Speaker B:And she was so loving and wise and compassionate and deep.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:And so when we remember that.
Speaker B:That what is most valuable about us, we actually have to the max.
Speaker B:Like, what is most valuable about an individual is not your resources, but the resources within you.
Speaker B:Your passion, your conviction, your passion, your vulnerability.
Speaker B:Then that actually becomes the leading.
Speaker B:The leading tool that you have.
Speaker B:Number one when it comes to opening any doors, right?
Speaker B:It's having the capacity to be in a space and be curious.
Speaker B:Like, why am I here?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:But I'm going to be here with my whole heart.
Speaker B:And then what will come out of whatever the project is will be bigger than what you thought, because it's bigger than us.
Speaker B:And that's what I'm saying.
Speaker B:When we show up with our full.
Speaker B:Okay, so you have a little whisper, you want to start an ice cream store.
Speaker B:You have a little whisper, you want to write a book.
Speaker B:But if you surrender, like, how it needs to look, and you just show up for the assignment, which is, I'm gonna trust myself, so I'm therefore gonna allow myself to create, even if it feels mediocre.
Speaker B:I'm gonna be vulnerable and present and honest, and something interesting will come back as a breadcrumb.
Speaker B:I'll be led to this other thing.
Speaker B:I'll be led over here, this person, and I will have a conversation, and I won't have an agenda, but because I will be there with my whole heart and being present and having compassion, there'll be a whisper.
Speaker B:There'll be a clue that will lead me to the next thing.
Speaker B:To the next thing.
Speaker B:To the next thing.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I wasn't the best songwriter, but it's the energy, right?
Speaker B:And so other songwriters who I would co write with would say, you make me better in these rooms just because you're so fun to be with and you're so present and you're such a good listener.
Speaker B:And it just makes the songs come to life, actually.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And I used to think, oh, my God, they run circles around me with their talent.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And my voice is fine, but it's not the best voice, but it's very honest.
Speaker B:And so when I sing, it feels like I'm talking right to you.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And that's.
Speaker B:Bob Dylan is not known for having the best vocals.
Speaker B:He's known for being so connected to what he's saying.
Speaker B:And so I'm just saying that's number one.
Speaker B:And number two, Is that the how is the fun part?
Speaker B:It's not our job.
Speaker B:That's God's job.
Speaker B:And what's so awesome is that it's so much cooler and more synchronistic than you could ever think.
Speaker B:And it's not on you to figure it out.
Speaker B:It's on you to say, okay, God, I hear this whisper.
Speaker B:You're telling me to start a podcast, so I'm just going to, like, throw it all out there and go for it.
Speaker B:And I'm going to let go of the how.
Speaker B:And I know that by the end of the day, every day, you're going to send me a wink or a whisper that's going to lead me to the next clue.
Speaker B:To the next clue, to the next clue.
Speaker B:And I think you know this story.
Speaker B:I told it before I put it in the book.
Speaker B:But when I started my podcast, I went to this conference called Podcast Movement, and everybody was there trying to network.
Speaker B:And I said to my friend, I didn't bring business cards, so I feel uncomfortable in this networking event.
Speaker B:And she said, well, if you stay in this networking event, you might meet somebody from Apple Podcasts.
Speaker B:And this was seven, eight years ago.
Speaker B:She said, apple Podcasts can feature you.
Speaker B:It would change your career.
Speaker B:I said, you know what?
Speaker B:This feels a little bit stressful.
Speaker B:So I'm going to leave, and I'll come back in an hour when the conference begins.
Speaker B:And I left, and I went to another hotel, ordered an iced tea, sat down, and I was just at peace again.
Speaker B:And this man comes in, and he sits down next to me, and he's reading the newspaper, and he realizes he and I have the same badge from the other conference.
Speaker B:And he said, were you at the podcast conference?
Speaker B:And I said, yes.
Speaker B:And he tells me he's from the Midwest.
Speaker B:I told him, my husband's from the Midwest.
Speaker B:We have a lovely conversation.
Speaker B:And he stands up and hands me his card.
Speaker B:And he said, listen, I'm the head of Apple Podcasts, and I really like you, and if you want you can meet me at my offices.
Speaker B:I'd love to have breakfast with you.
Speaker B:So I was floored, right?
Speaker B:Because I literally left the networking event and then I walked right into him alone, sitting next to me, just the two of us.
Speaker B:How does that happen?
Speaker B:Because when you're not worried about trying to grasp for the how and you become whole, you just find your well being.
Speaker B:It'll meet you.
Speaker B:That's how powerful the universe is.
Speaker B:But here's even something more crazy on the card.
Speaker B:When he gave me the card, his address was directly across from my daughter's school.
Speaker B:And I said, oh, I go to that address every day and I always notice that there's a building with valet parking, but there's no sign on the building.
Speaker B:So I used to wonder, what, what is that?
Speaker B:And he said, it's Apple.
Speaker B:I said, that's where Apple is.
Speaker B:He goes, yeah, I know your daughter's school.
Speaker B:I can see it through the window of my office.
Speaker B:So he said, when are you going to be there next?
Speaker B:I said, tomorrow morning.
Speaker B:He said, great, come have breakfast with me tomorrow.
Speaker B:That's how immediate it is.
Speaker B:It's beyond the beyond the beyond.
Speaker B:When I got married, what was fascinating is I rented an apartment.
Speaker B:And the day I went to look at that apartment, the landlord and I were walking down the stairs of this building and this woman walked over to me, she was in her 70s, and she said, are you going to rent that front unit?
Speaker B:And I said, I'm considering it.
Speaker B:I never met this woman in my life.
Speaker B:She said, well, you should rent it.
Speaker B:Because every year that becomes open.
Speaker B:Because every year a woman moves in there and she gets engaged and moves out.
Speaker B:So there's something in that unit.
Speaker B:I'm promising you, if you move in there, you're going to get married.
Speaker B:I promise.
Speaker B:It has good energy.
Speaker B:So I said, okay.
Speaker B:I was 25 at the time.
Speaker B:I moved into that apartment and I got engaged.
Speaker B:And the man that I got engaged to is the son of that woman.
Speaker A:Oh, wow.
Speaker B:And she had no actual thought in her life that that would happen.
Speaker B:In fact, it was very difficult for her.
Speaker B:She had been a widow since the 80s.
Speaker B:He was basically her rock.
Speaker B:It was so fascinating, the soul correction of all of that, because she said that to me.
Speaker B:And little did she know that that would ever happen to her own son, who she had a really hard time letting go.
Speaker B:And then it was a very difficult road for the three of us.
Speaker B:So I didn't see that ad when I was looking for the apartment, right?
Speaker B:It didn't say, and it comes With a husband.
Speaker B:I wasn't looking for him.
Speaker B:What I'm saying is the path we're on when we just trust, when we let go, we walk right into the mystical.
Speaker B:And it is so much cooler and so much bigger than anything you could pencil out and try to figure out.
Speaker B:So it's not your job.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And you don't have to plan it.
Speaker B:Your job is to continue to mine for the gold inside of you, which is, what's my next move?
Speaker B:And having a breakfast with God every morning and asking, where would you have me go?
Speaker B:What would you have me remember?
Speaker B:And he'll do the rest.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think so many women, especially, need reminding of this because we want to control everything.
Speaker A:We want to have our hands gripping on the steering wheel, and we're like, white knuckling through, and we just, like, we'll just do this.
Speaker A:We'll just try harder.
Speaker A:We'll just change that.
Speaker A:And if that person just did this and we're.
Speaker A:We're all exhausted and we're all burnt out, we get this understanding and this realization that we have got adhd, which has made life harder.
Speaker A:And what you're saying now is an invitation.
Speaker A:It's like a permission slip for women to finally be like, you know what?
Speaker A:I don't have to do it all.
Speaker A:It's not up to me to have to micromanage absolutely everything and to be able to just lean in to what they enjoy, where they feel aligned, where they want to go.
Speaker A:Those whispers.
Speaker A:And I talk so much about this in a lot of my coaching and my workshops and everything.
Speaker A:It's like, we've been so conditioned to be in this firefighting mode, and now it's like, okay, you can put down the hose, and it's okay.
Speaker A:Like, you don't have to save everything and everyone.
Speaker A:You don't have to control the outcome.
Speaker A:And it feels very freeing and also very scary.
Speaker B:What I will also say is that I think for women who have adhd, or just people in general, creativity is a must.
Speaker B:It's a must.
Speaker B:And in general, I see people suffering because they don't let themselves play, play or create.
Speaker B:And I look at the school system, and I just shudder thinking how devoid it is of what it really should be focused on, which is kids getting to build things and ask good questions and make things messy.
Speaker B:And I say this specifically to women who are diagnosed with ADHD or whatever it is, because we now know if you don't create, if just for its own sake, if you're not arranging flowers or gardening in the Backyard or writing poetry or journaling or learning choreography or whatever suits you creatively.
Speaker B:If you're, if you're not doing anything creatively, you need a vehicle to channel that creativity.
Speaker B:And if you don't have it, it will turn into sadness and pain and depression and grief.
Speaker B:It needs a place to go.
Speaker B:And so I would recommend.
Speaker B:There's a great book that I didn't write by Julia Cameron called the Artist's Way.
Speaker B:Whether you've done it once, do it again.
Speaker B:If you've never done it, do it.
Speaker B:It's a 12 week journey of creative recovery.
Speaker B:And it's not because you're Van Gogh.
Speaker B:It doesn't matter if you're talented.
Speaker B:It doesn't matter.
Speaker B:Not the point.
Speaker B:It just forces you to go on a artist date.
Speaker B:It forces you to journal, it forces you to take pictures, it forces you to play and create, which is just so important.
Speaker B:It's essential for every human because our greatest joy is emulating God.
Speaker B:And God is the ultimate creator.
Speaker B:And so when we're not creating something, it feels without us realizing it, there's a depression because we are that talented.
Speaker B:Polar bears are beautiful, but they don't create.
Speaker B:Owls are gorgeous, but they don't create.
Speaker B:What does that mean?
Speaker B:They just do what they do instinctively.
Speaker B:There's a code inside of them.
Speaker B:They don't have free will to not do the code right.
Speaker B:They're going to be just like every other owl, and it's perfect and it's beautiful because they create an ecosystem that makes everything make sense.
Speaker B:But human beings have free will and creativity.
Speaker B:God gave us that.
Speaker B:So we have the ability to turn something from nothing into something, a thought into a thing.
Speaker B:Walt Disney, Jim Henson, Picasso, like that lives inside of every human and it comes through in a different way.
Speaker B:And if you're not expressing it, you'll look high and low.
Speaker B:You'll try to make money, you'll try to achieve it won't even do it.
Speaker B:What you need is a place where you can just be creating.
Speaker B:And whether you're gardening and you just find the rewarding ness of that pulling your own tomatoes every night, or you're painting, you're painting because you want to just learn to paint, great.
Speaker B:But what happens is if we're not gifted, quote unquote, if someone never told us that we're a genius at playing piano or whatever it is, we just leave creativity completely to the side.
Speaker B:No, that's ridiculous.
Speaker B:Have you ever been to a preschool and seen a child that's not creative?
Speaker B:Every child is creative.
Speaker B:Along the Way people get ridiculed because people can be rejecting.
Speaker B:And then people stop creating because they don't want to make something that's not going to get an A plus.
Speaker B:So they don't make anything.
Speaker B:But everything is designed to be creative.
Speaker B:Creating a business makes you creative.
Speaker B:Coming up with something to post and write on Instagram is creative.
Speaker B:Setting two friends up on a date is creative.
Speaker B:There's a million ways to create and to be in the world.
Speaker B:Creating something and utilizing that part of yourself.
Speaker B:If you are a human being, you need to be doing that.
Speaker B:And when you're in creative mode, you won't be anxious because you can't be creative and anxious at the same time.
Speaker B:And so I just find that in my work, a lot of what I do.
Speaker B:It's funny, the path that I took, because as a songwriter, I was a creative person.
Speaker B:That's what I did for my whole life, for a living, everything for 10 years straight.
Speaker B:And I was a creative growing up.
Speaker B:I did theater and dance and piano and voice lessons.
Speaker B:I was always doing creative things.
Speaker B:And I find that in the spiritual work I do.
Speaker B:And I teach Kabbalah and I teach meditation and Jewish wisdom.
Speaker B:But I'm often telling people things that allow them to start getting messy and creating.
Speaker B:And I think that's a big part of Jewish mysticism is be like the creator, create something.
Speaker B:Come up with a.
Speaker B:A legal pad of ideas every day, even if you don't use them just to start flexing the muscle of here's ideas that were are coming out of me.
Speaker B:And maybe it's an idea you'll give to someone else, maybe it's an idea for someone else that you'll meet.
Speaker B:It doesn't matter.
Speaker B:It'll give you the sense of taking this extra bandwidth and channeling it so it doesn't make you feel pent up.
Speaker A:If that makes sense, 100%.
Speaker A:It's a stagnation and we keep that flow going.
Speaker A:And I was just reading the book that Martha Beck wrote about.
Speaker B:Yeah, she does the same thing.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's.
Speaker A:Everything that you're saying is incredible.
Speaker A:It's kind of like coming back to what we already know.
Speaker A:And it's a reminder and it's like a deep, deep invitation for so many women who you describe who are feeling pent up and feeling anxious and feeling like they're frazzled and they have tried all the physical stuff.
Speaker A:And then what you're saying now is that we can just let go.
Speaker A:But I just want to say, first of all, thank you for sharing your wisdom.
Speaker A:I've kept as quiet and as silent as I can just to let you talk with the time that we've got.
Speaker A:But if people would love to hear more from you, Kathy, where, where can they head to?
Speaker A:Where's the best place?
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:First of all, you're lovely.
Speaker B:So lovely.
Speaker B:People can find me on Instagram at Kathy Heller.
Speaker B:Kathy's with a C.
Speaker B:My book is sold wherever you want to buy a book.
Speaker B:And if you go to katheller.com book there's a few goodies like a free meditation you can listen to, which people have said is really helpful.
Speaker B:And I have a podcast which is also free and a cool tool.
Speaker B:I think we've done a thousand episodes and yeah, I would love to have you on to share your insight and story.
Speaker B:So we'll set that up.
Speaker B:And yeah, I really appreciate you.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:Well, thank you and I hope that we can do that.
Speaker A:That would be amazing.
Speaker A:Thanks, Kathy.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
Speaker A:If today's episode has been helpful for you and you're looking for even further support, my brand new book, the ADHD Women's well Being Toolkit, is now available to order from anywhere you get your books from.
Speaker A:I really hope this book is to going, going to be the ultimate resource for anyone who loves this podcast and wants a deeper dive into all these kinds of conversations.
Speaker A:If you head to my website, adhdwomenswellbeing.co.uk, you'll find all the information on the book there, which is going to be out on the 17th of July.
Speaker A:Thank you so much.
