There’s a fairly familiar quote, usually attributed to Einstein: “You cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it.”
It often feels like the easy route. The shortest route. We do the minimum required. But do we ever really sort it?
If we’re being brutally honest, we don’t solve the problem; it always comes back in some shape or form. We might cover it up, squash it down, boot it into next week, run away from it, face the other way, or just get angry at it. But we don’t solve it because we’re operating at the same level as the problem.
I know this from a lifetime of personal experience, and from all the clients I see in my practice on a daily basis.
When we are stuck, it’s often because we are operating from a survival layer of the mind. It worries about bills, judges our performance, and frantically searches for the “right” answer. It’s loud, repetitive, and basic. It’s like a warning siren that we can’t turn off, so we have to just zone out or numb it out.
And yes, ADHD can amplify it.
Trying to find a creative solution from that place is like trying to see the horizon while standing at the bottom of a well. You don’t need to dig harder; you need to get out of the well.
This is where the real work happens.
My coaching work is designed to help you stop digging. It is designed to access higher and deeper layers of the mind—places beyond the noise of the daily grind. We move past the cognitive “loops” to bring in inspiration, creativity, and to reconnect with that sense of ourselves that is simply ‘who we really are’.
One of the familiar phrases that comes from this place is a ‘sense of ease’. What’s happening is that the unconscious mind has stopped fighting with itself and every ‘part’ of who you are is back on the same team. From this place, higher-level solutions arise.
When you connect to these deeper layers, you aren’t just “calming down.” You are accessing a version of yourself that is more capable. You find that the creativity you needed to solve that business problem or the courage you needed to have that difficult conversation was there all along—it was just obscured by the clouds of the lower mind.
If you are feeling stuck right now, stop trying to “solve” it with the same old thinking. The answer isn’t in the noise. It’s in the layer above it.
And yes, my neurodivergent brain is capable of all this. And so is yours.
I offer private 1:1 coaching for neurodivergent adults who, despite their past, know there is more waiting for them in life, and are ready to discover what that is.