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At 46 years old, Chris Steinorf finally received the answer that explained a lifetime of questions.
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ADHD.
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For most people, the diagnosis would have brought closure.
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For Chris, it raised an even bigger question.
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What if ADHD wasn't the whole story?
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He refused to let a diagnosis become the end of the investigation.
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Instead, he followed the evidence.
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He studied the science.
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He searched for patterns.
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He tells assumptions.
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He tested ideas.
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And with every clue he uncovered, one thing became increasingly clear.
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There was more to the story than anyone had ever told him.
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When he discovered Transform not only his focus and his health, but the way he understood himself, and the way he now helps others understand themselves.
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Today, people know him as the ADHD detective.
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Because every symptom tells a story, every pattern leaves a clue, and every clue deserves to be investigated.
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This is ADHD Case Files, and the investigation begins now.
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In today's episode, I'm gonna share with you the filtering system I developed to help me prioritize the massive amounts of information I was gathering.
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This was created once I realized one of the biggest problems in my life wasn't that I didn't know what to do, however, that there were too many things I could do, too many ideas, opportunities, books to read, courses to take, people to meet, skills to learn, things to practice, things to implement.
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Now if your brain works anything like mine, something new can enter your world and within minutes you can see everything it could become.
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That's one of the things I really love about the way my brain works.
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I can see possibilities everywhere.
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But I've also learned something.
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Just because I can see the potential in something doesn't mean it deserves my attention.
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Because attention has a cost.
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Every time I say yes to one thing, whether I realize it or not, I'm taking time, energy, thought, or focus away from something else.
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So I needed a way to decide what actually earns the right to enter my life.
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That's where I developed something I call my four quadrant system.
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It's become one of the filters I use when something new shows up.
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It could be a business opportunity, a course, something I want to learn, a new habit, a new idea, a friendship, a new acquaintance, a potential business partner.
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It really doesn't matter what it is, before I'm willing to give it a meaningful piece of my life, it has to survive four questions.
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And the first one is simple.
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How do I feel about it?
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Before I start building spreadsheets around it, before I start researching it, before I start figuring out how to make it happen, I ask, how do I feel about this?
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What is my internal response?
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Am I curious?
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Am I energized by it?
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Is there something about it that draws me toward it?
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Or is there something inside me saying, Chris, this isn't for you?
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Now that doesn't mean feelings are facts, and it definitely doesn't mean discomfort automatically equals no.
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Some of the most important things I've ever done scared me.
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So I'm not asking, does this make me comfortable?
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I'm asking what's my internal response telling me about whether this deserves further investigation?
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If there's nothing there, I'm done.
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I don't need to spend the next three weeks trying to convince myself to want something.
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But if there's something there, it earns the right to move to Quadrant Two.
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What do I think about it?
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Now the detective comes out.
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Because I can get excited about a lot of things.
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Excitement isn't evidence.
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So now I start asking questions.
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Does this actually make sense?
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What's the commitment?
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What's the cost?
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What's the potential return?
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What am I being asked to give up?
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What are the risks?
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What evidence do I have?
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What happens if I say yes?
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And what happens if I say no?
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This is where the idea has to survive investigation.
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Because I've learned that I don't want my emotions making decisions that my brain has to clean up later.
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Something can feel incredible and still be a terrible idea.
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And if I investigate it and the thinking doesn't hold up, boom, it's gone.
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I don't keep negotiating with it.
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But if I feel good about it and I think it's a good decision, now it moves deeper.
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Quadrant three.
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Does it match what I believe?
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This quadrant is different because now I'm not evaluating the opportunity.
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I'm evaluating alignment.
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Does this fit who I am?
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Does it align with what I believe?
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Does it fit my values, my faith, my commitments, the kind of husband, father, grandfather, friend, businessman, and human being that I want to be.
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Because there's something that I've had to learn.
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Something can feel good.
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It can make perfect logical sense.
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Could even make a lot of money and I can still say no.
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Because if I have to violate what I believe to get it, I don't want it.
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There are things that cost more than money.
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There are things that cost pieces of yourself.
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And I'm not interested in building a successful life that requires me to become someone I don't respect.
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So if something doesn't match what I believe, it's done, no matter how attractive the opportunity is.
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But if it passes that test too, there is one more quadrant.
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And this one eliminates a lot of really good things.
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Quadrant four.
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Does it move me toward my ultimate goal?
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This might be the hardest question of all.
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Because something can feel good.
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It can make sense.
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It can completely align with what I believe.
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And it can still be a distraction.
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I call those good distractions.
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And if I've started to believe that good distractions can and I've started to believe and I've started to believe that good distractions can be more dangerous than bad ideas.
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Think about it.
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A bad idea is usually easier to eventually recognize.
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But a good opportunity that's harder.
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Because you can justify it.
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This is good for me.
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I'll learn something.
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This could make money.
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These are great people.
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This could turn into something.
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All those things could be true, but there's still another question.
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Does it move me toward where I've decided I'm going?
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Because I don't have a limited time.
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Because I don't have unlimited time.
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Neither do you.
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And every yes has a cost.
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Every hour I give one thing is an hour I can't give something else.
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So if something makes it through the first three quadrants but doesn't move me towards my ultimate goal, I don't necessarily call it bad.
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I call it not now.
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And there's a huge difference between no and not now.
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Not now means this may be valuable, this may be worth doing someday, but it hasn't earned a place in my life today.
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And that brings me to the part of the system that may actually be the most important.
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Four yeses still doesn't mean yes.
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Let's say something makes it through everything.
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I feel good about it.
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I think it's a good decision.
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It matches what I believe and it moves me toward my ultimate goal.
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You think that's an automatic yes.
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It's not.
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Because there is a problem.
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My life is already full.
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I already have responsibilities, relationships, business, health, learning, commitments, goals.
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I can't keep adding another thing and another thing and another thing and pretend there isn't a cost.
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Eventually everything becomes important.
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And when everything is important, nothing is important.
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So I made another decision.
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I want to identify roughly five major things that deserve my concentrated attention.
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Not twenty-five, five.
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And that means if something new survives all four quadrants, it doesn't automatically get added as number six.
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It has to compete for a spot.
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I have to look at what's already there and ask, is this new thing more important than one of the things I'm currently given to my life?
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If that answer is no, it goes on the shelf.
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And that's okay.
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But if the answer is yes, then something else comes off.
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And this was a big realization for me.
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Removing something from my priorities doesn't mean I failed at it.
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It doesn't mean I w it was a bad idea.
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It doesn't mean I shouldn't have started it.
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It simply means something else has become more important.
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That's focus.
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Focus isn't just being able to concentrate really hard on something.
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Focus is deciding what doesn't get access to you.
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And for somebody whose brain can see pop whose brain can see possibilities everywhere, that matters a lot.
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So I want you to think about something that's competing for your attention right now.
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Maybe it's an opportunity, a relationship, something you want to buy, maybe it's a course, a project, a new business, a habit.
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Maybe it's maybe it's something you've been thinking about for months.
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Put it in the middle of the table and investigate it.
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How do you feel about it?
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If it passes, what do you think about it?
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If it passes, does it match what you believe?
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And if it passes, does it move you towards your ultimate goal?
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And if you get four yeses, don't stop there.
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Ask yourself, what am I willing to remove to make room for this?
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Because that question forces you to determine what the opportunity is actually worth.
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It's easy to say something is important when adding it costs you nothing.
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It's different when you have to decide what you're willing to give up for it.
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And that's where priorities become real.
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But there's another reason I wanted to talk about the system today.
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Because I've started realizing that this isn't only a system for deciding what to do.
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It's also a way of deciding what deserves further investigation.
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And that's important to where we're going next on ADHD case files.
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Because there came a point in my own investigation when another question started getting louder.
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What if ADHD wasn't responsible for everything I was experiencing?
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Not whether ADHD was real, it is.
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The question was different.
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What else might be contributing to what I was experiencing?
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The brain fog, the exhaustion, the inconsistent focus, the way my body felt.
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And instead of immediately accepting another explanation, I started looking for evidence.
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That investigation eventually led me to somewhere I never expected.
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It led me to blood work, numbers, inflammation, fatty acid balance, actual, measurable information coming from my own body.
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And suddenly there was a new clue sitting on the table.
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Now I'm not going to tell you that inflammation causes ADHD.
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And I'm not going to tell you that a blood test diagnoses ADHD.
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And I'm not going to assume that because something happened in my body, the same thing is going to happen in yours.
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That's not investigation.
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That's assumption.
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What I am going to do is show you what happened when I decided to investigate mine.
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What I tested.
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What the numbers showed.
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What what changes happened.
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What I changed.
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What happened?
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What I changed.
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What happened afterward, and why it caused me to start asking completely different questions about symptoms I'd spent years attributing to my brain.
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Because there's something I want every person listening to ADHD case files to understand.
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Getting an answer doesn't mean you stop asking questions.
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Sometimes an answer simply tells you where to investigate next.
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And then the next episode, we're going there.
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We're going into my blood work.
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We're going into inflammation.
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We're going into what those numbers actually showed me.
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And we're going to investigate one question.
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What if ADHD was real, but ADHD wasn't responsible for everything I was experiencing?
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That's where we're going next.
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Because this time, we've got evidence.