The Body Double

As a business and personal coach, I specialize in working with highly skilled and innovatory, if sometimes overwhelmed, Attention Inadequacy Disorder ( ADHD ) adults. Among a potpourri of coaching skills, I use many organizational tools and techniques to help my clients stretch their goals. Over the caducity I’ ve gathered some unusual tools and techniques for both the extraneous engagement of alignment space and for the internal occupation of clearing away the nonessential, prioritizing what remains, setting next vitality steps and staying the course.

Some of these tools I have learned from my clients themselves. I ' d like to share with you such a tool, in this circumstances, a gimmick for transitioning into and completing an single boggling job. It was a client, whom I will call David, who first brought this tool to my attention. I have since come to remit to it as the body double.

When I first met David, he was a retired vice director of a major enterprise. In his retirement, he was running three businesses out of his home - based office, two of them overseas. In observing David in his work space, I absolutely found him to be absolutely organized. He wasn’ t sitting eagle-eye high in papers. In fact, he infrequently had any papers around him at all, and he had many working systems in place, but he felt severely punch-drunk and distracted.

Much to his surprise, David had been recently diagnosed with ADHD, which explained to him and to his wife, a surviving difficulty in accomplishing certain mundane tasks that others seemed to hilt with ease. As a v. p. in the corporate world, he had always had an executive assistant to connect the dots and pull loose ends together. Now, he had the time to do these tasks, and he had will to do them, but he couldn’ t keep on pathway. David’ s wife also ran a business out of their home and had her own well organized office. She offered to advise him, but they both agreed that this just didn’ t work. That ' s when they asked for help.

Together, David and I made modifications to his storage systems to better access for frequently needed items. We honed time management and prioritization systems to work better for him in his style of business. This, however, did not superscription the problem of his inattention and distraction. He explained that there were days when he easily got off passageway or would find it hard transitioning from one mission into major. Frustrated, puzzled and fairly embarrassed, he confessed, “ You know, it seems that, sometimes, if I just have someone sitting in a chair nearby, even my wife, I can accomplish more than if I’ m alone. ” Plainly having augmented human being sitting nearby, enabled David to stay on lane.

David had identified something which I had noticed before, when I worked specifically as an organizational coach, with someday other clients. There were times when just being in proximity, not counselling, sorting, or strategizing, brought clarity and core to the client. I felt it. I knew the client felt it, too. This phenomenon of just being there, David first described, and I now direct to as the body double principle.

But why does a body double work? There are at leading a few possible explanations. The simplest explanation is that the body double serves as a physical and emotional moor for the distracted discrete who feels more centered by the presence of heavier person in their space. The distracted ADDer may feel both obliged to and for the body double. This perception translates as, “ I can’ t leave this place, until I’ m done” or “ my body double can’ t leave, until I’ m done.

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The body double may also serve to ration not only a physical boundary, as a sort of living fence, but is also a physical stop watch or clock by which the frequently time - challenged ADD brain can now measure itself - “ I need to establish this now and work toward outcome, while I have my body double here. ”

Ultimately farther explanation might be that the body double serves as a clement of mirror - a display for the indiviual with ADHD of how his or her over - stimulated mind and body would like to be at the moment. The body double then becomes a model of oversight, and a mirror confidently reflecting back the message, “ I can poke. I am working. I am focused. ”

One last explanation - in eastern cultures energy is referred to as chi ( or qi ) and is viewed as being either in or out of balance in the human body and in the surrounding environment. Acupuncturists stir chi to put the body back in balance. There are many forms of exercise and meditation, such as tai chi and chi gung among them, which are about the management and flow of energy. Feng shui, ( fung shway ), is the 5000 stretch senescent art of balancing positive and negative chi in the room around us, with the goal in mind of optimizing energy in one’ s living and action opening.

So, what exactly does chi have to do with a body double? The body double competence be a gentle of chi balancer or rub splinter to contain the flux of energy and cogitation in an ADD brain at wager of spilling out into the tumbled star. The body double power also standpoint as a buffer against distracting energy from the guise, winged to bombard the radically - loath unusual.

Whether you promote the practical, psychological, or occult explanation for the capacity of the body double, contemplate it a handout from David and all of the others, who have experienced what they, too, discovered, but were distressed to admit. If a engagement at hand requires your attention and seems impossible to complete speculate the possibility of beg, borrowing or smash for a body double to sit in the chair next to you.

Who and what should you look for in a body double? Find someone who can be fairly noiseless. He or she can sit, read or author education. They might even do some small task without interrupting you, being it requires energy to instruct, engage in or be interrupted by greater person, and that expenditure of energy equates to distraction.

This is not to say that there is a definite time and need to hire facade help - a coach, competent log, or office assistants. There is such a time. I positive David to hire a student, housewife or friend retired sanctuary part to sit and keep him company. We both agreed that his wife may not be the best person for the job but, perhaps, he could use her in a muddle. In the months to follow David hired different short term office substratum help, who served sometimes as body double, other times as office assistants. Knowing when to hire someone to help with office work or with just noteworthy the bills, is also a useful tool.

The body double, at its simplest, is a chair holder, space taker - upper, karmic sleep, a wedge between you and the door. This might be a useful tool in your own magic bag of tricks to use at just the right time for getting a job done and staying on pathway.