Welcome back, guys. Today we are talking to Ciarra Morgan, and I got on Facebook. Basically, I’m not sure I was in the business Women group. I think we met in the I think podcasting women or something. There you go. I just we never know. Like all the places we’ve been, Ciarra was saying the same thing that I was asking what we were going to talk about.

And she’s like, I don’t know. I’ve talked to so many people, but we met there and I was looking for ADHD people that would be interested in talking to professionals and entrepreneurs with ADHD. And Ciarra is here because she’s a multiple business owner like myself, and I thought we could have some really interesting conversations. But Ciarra, would you introduce yourself?

Yeah. So I’m Ciarra morgan. I’m the owner, empowered of beginnings here in Austin, Texas, where I birth and postpartum agency and all sorts of services. And then I also have a birth baby podcast where we talk about all things pregnancy and birth and postpartum related and then were also birth doula trainers. So we have something called Birth Baby Academy.

And I’m a mama to two kids. I have a 14 year old and a six year old. So I do everything I do and have a pretty rockstar, amazing husband who just is along for our crazy ride.

Okay. So we were having a conversation in the beginning and something that I really like about what Ciarra’s doing in her life is she has a really good grasp on accepting the way her brain works, and she suspects ADHD checks all the boxes. But isn’t interested in pursuing medication.

So doesn’t really does that is that putting it correctly? It doesn’t really see the point of getting a diagnosis if we’re not pursuing medication. Yeah, I mean, I’m thriving with ADHD, so I don’t really want to take medicine and mess that up. I don’t know if I’d be successful. Okay, exactly. So like, you’ve done like I said, you’ve done a really good job with acceptance.

Can you talk more about that? How are you thriving? How is it benefiting you? You mentioned even that it’s your superpower. So, yeah, you know, I think that part of the reason is because for a long, long time I didn’t know I had it. So there wasn’t a reason for me to consider, I might have it and this might be affecting me negatively.

I just have always kind of run this way. And then when my daughter got diagnosed with ADHD because she was having some troubles with reading comprehension, and that kind of snowballed into us getting figuring out what was going on with her. And it turned out it’s ADHD. She also chose not to be medicated. We gave her the option and she’s like, It’s not bothering me enough to feel like I want to do something about it.

But I then realized when she was getting diagnosed, I was like, hi, yes, that’s me. Everything we’re talking about with her describes how I’ve always been. And because I didn’t know, I didn’t even know before I started my companies. So because of that, I just always cared. I kept trucking on and doing the things the way that I did.

And everyone was just like, You have so much energy. You’re constantly going and like, it’s just how my brain works and I look back and I see the people that I did know growing up that had ADHD and always seemed like people were trying to train it out of them and,

you know, you’re supposed to conform and like, that’s not how people usually behave or do things.

And so you kind of got to rein yourself in to make everyone else comfortable and I never knew I had it, so I never thought I had to rein myself in. I just thought I was outgoing and had a lot of energy and passion. So I do say that ADHD is my superpower and I can be bop around from my companies and dealing with my kids and my husband and I have three dogs and I’m okay with those distractions because I’m used to having my brain distracted and eventually I pop back over to what I needed to do anyway.

And it kind of it just works for me. I don’t feel that I should have to change myself to make everyone else comfortable. I’m pretty comfortable with how I am. Yeah, absolutely. That’s great.

Okay, so you described kind of like bebop.

Being around, I think is how you put it. But you mentioned a poem and I love children’s books. And so I recognize where this is coming from. If you give a mouse a muffin, if you give a pig a pancake, or is it if you give a mouse a muffin, what do you give the mouse? I can’t remember.

You give a. yeah. From the kids if you give him a cookie. Cookie. There you go. And I loved these books because when I got them and I was reading them to my kids, I’m like, my goodness, this describes ADHD. And but you mentioned that if you give a mom a muffin, Can you tell us about that?

Yeah, I to read you the first couple of lines to see see where it goes. If you give a mom a muffin, she’ll want a cup of coffee to go with it. She’ll pour herself some. Her three year old will come and spill the coffee. Mom will wipe it up, wiping the floor. She will try to find some dirty socks.

She’ll remember she has to do the laundry. When she put the laundry in the washer, she’ll trip over the shoes and bump into the freezer, bumping into the freeze. It will remind her, blah, blah, blah. And at the end it’s like enchant. She’ll pour herself some more. And chances are, if she has a cup of coffee, her kids will have eaten the muffin that went with it.

So it’s it’s just this big circle of what happens in our day. And you’ll see things all over, you know, Instagram or whatever. You’ll see reels of people going, This is what the day of a life in the life of a mom is. And they’re going around and, you know, she’s trying to take out the trash. And then she realized that how many bags.

So she has to put them on the shopping list. And then she’s like, I need to make my curbside order for groceries. And then she realizes all by then she’s like, I never even started boiling the water to make the dang pasta or whatever that she was going to originally do. And that is I do sometimes joke, moms have some form of ADHD because we kind of just have to.

Maybe it’s not willingly. We just our kids require that of us. They just interrupt us constantly. But yeah, I totally resonate with the if you give them a muffin. Yeah. And what what I was talking to Cierra about before the call is I used to describe this as pinball. And what it looks like for me is like, I go to get dressed in the morning.

I didn’t have the shirt I wanted. It’s in the laundry room now. I’m on my way to the laundry room, but I see something that needs to go into the bathroom now. I’m in the bathroom. I see something that needs to be thrown away. Now I’m empty in the trash. And so it would just go like, on and on and on.

And I called this pin Bolly I thought that was a really good description. Like a pinball machine. Where, like, we’re a pinball in the machine and we’re bouncing all around. But I was, I was doing some research. I found that it actually had a name, and the name was environmental hyperfocus, and it sounds opposite of what it is.

Actually, if we were hyper focusing. Yeah, we just get dressed, right? We just have the muffin. But that is the name for it. That’s the official name. So that the hyper focus is that we’re hyper focused on everything in our environment. So anything can pick up our attention. We’re like hyper focusing on the things and then not grabs it.

And now we have to do that. Yeah, and I don’t know which specialist this was. I want to say it was Dr. Hallowell who said it’s not a lack of attention. That is the problem with ADHD. The problem is that there is too much attention given everywhere at once. And I was like, that’s not his exact quote, but that’s what he was describing.

And I thought, that is such a good description. I watch my daughter, who is the one with ADHD of the three kids that I have, and she will go and like touch everything. She’s going to pick it up. She’s going to move it. She’s going to pick at it. She’s going to pull the label off of it.

Like she will touch everything. And, you know, if something’s been messed with, you know who it was. And it’s just because she sees everything I used to walk into my in-laws house and it’s is so inappropriate, but I would see like mail on the counter and I would like flip through the mail and like, this is none of my business, but I just saw it and like, automatically did it.

And so it can like kind of put us in some bad positions sometimes, but it’s just that you see everything going on and that is such a you mentioned superpowers that really can be a superpower. Like, I notice everything. I notice every reaction. I notice everything in my environment. We own a gym and when I’m working out, by the time I’m done, I have a list of 15 things that need to be taken care of because I noticed something was damaged.

I noticed something was dirty. I noticed I just noticed everything. So that really can be if we let it a superpower. But one thing that I really noticed in our conversation is I feel like you do a really good job with acceptance of how your brain works. Like what advice would you give for people listening if they’re having trouble accepting their the the way their brain works?

Yeah. Instead of thinking of it as a flaw or something that you have to fix, think about something that you might be doing actually better because you have ADHD. Try to find that thing that makes you unique and thriving. Like be proud of yourself in that you know, and the people around you that love you. They love you for who you are.

They loved you before you ever got diagnosed with ADHD, or they knew that about you going into being with you or being in a friendship or relationship with you. And they liked you anyway, you know, And maybe because of it, maybe there are things just kind of like my husband. I don’t think I said this on the podcast yet, but he also has ADHD and he owns his own business.

And he told me he was like, I don’t really want to get diagnosed and I don’t really want to get because I wouldn’t want to take medication because you guys love me the way that I am. And I would worry that maybe you guys wouldn’t love me as much if I didn’t have this, like, silly randomness to me and the ability to just stop what I’m doing and go play with our kid because he wanted me to go play something and I got distracted and I can do it with him.

Whereas I might be, you know, the medication kind of organizes that that thought process and allows you to stay on the thing you need to stay on rather than being distracted. And he’s like, I kind of think I like being able to be distracted. So find those pieces of your life that are actually probably better because of the way that you are now.

Yeah. And as you’re describing that one thing that I think of, I’m like, Gosh, what is that for me? And I think it’s like the next great idea. The next great. I think we can all relate to that as people with ADHD where it’s like this next I like, I call it the big idea, the next big idea.

And so many times those big ideas pan out where my husband is like, gosh, where are we going with this? no. Like, as supportive and awesome as he is, he doesn’t always love my big ideas because they mean work for him. But it always works out. It’s always a good idea. And later on, like years later, I’m like, Aren’t you glad I had that idea?

And he has to admit that he is glad. And so that is a good thing. But you looked like you had a thought there. that’s just describing my life completely. Everyone’s like Ciarra. Why? Like, as if you’re not busy enough already, you know, I’ll text somebody happy birthday to their baby that they had with me as a birth doula.

And they’ll say, you know, I listen to the podcast, it’s so cool what you all are doing. And I’m like, yeah, did you hear? We’re going to we started an academy where we’re training other birth doulas and they’re like, When do you relax? And I’m like, What’s relaxing? Could you define it and use it in a sentence?

I don’t know, because that is how my brain works. It’s always the next big idea. And my business partner, her brain does not work this way. Notice I say the way that my brain works, not like a defect of my brain that’s making me do something negative. It’s a positive thing about my brain, but hers is just different and works a different way.

And so, you know, I come out of a massage with a bunch of ideas for now, starting a podcast when I was supposed to be quote unquote relaxing and she’s hollering at me, Why in the heck are you throwing this around? You were just supposed to be relaxing for an hour. I’m like, Yeah, I, I didn’t have enough distractions in there.

My brain was able to really focus on all of these ideas for this thing. I want to do. And she’s like, All right, I’ll do it with you. It’s always kind of like your husband, like, okay, whereas, you know, this is going to make a lot more work for her, but she trusts that. Well, you know, statistically and historically, when Ciarra has these big ideas, although it is a lot of work, it is worth it.

And there’s a payoff at the end of it. And maybe that payoff isn’t monetary, but it’s a really cool resource that we have to our clients or something we just really enjoy. The podcast has been so fun for us. The one that we have, so I definitely see that. And she’ll even say sometimes, yeah, I think that people are just going to think we’re crazy if we do this.

Like who are we to be doing this? I’m like, Listen, when I first started my work in this business, people thought, Who does? Who is this girl and where did she come from? And here I am five years later, and it’s gotten giant and huge way more than I ever anticipated because I allow myself to just go with that.

There is that acceptance. I know it’s silly that I’m coming up with a thousand things. I know that I make myself very busy, but I thrive in that. And if I have a day where we have no plans, that sounds good. But when we come to that day, I find that I feel really down and like kind of bummed out feeling.

And I realized it a couple of weekends ago and I was like, I haven’t gotten anything productive done today. And I know people say you shouldn’t have to be productive, but it actually makes me happy. It’s the endorphin rush of getting something done on my to do list, and that has to be okay. It’s not for everyone. And that’s all right.

Yeah, it’s interesting. Like there’s a balance and it’s different for everyone. Like some clients I’m working with, with being okay with doing nothing. And because they’re feeling that pole to like, relax and do nothing, but they don’t feel okay doing it. But there’s also the opposite, which is kind of like me, where I very much relate to what you’re describing, where it’s like, if I have nothing to do on a Saturday, I’m going to kind of get in trouble, like I’m going to do something that’s not the most productive thing to do and I at least shop.

Yeah, big money and eat food I shouldn’t eat. I’m like, would I do that? Exactly. We call that encroaching buffering like something that you’re doing to, like, not deal with your feelings, which I think the feelings that we’re talking about here are boredom. If we don’t have something like I at least have to have something fun planned.

I was scheduling my coaching this morning and I scheduled coaching on Saturday because I was like, I have nothing going on this Saturday. I need some support. So it’s for you, not for them, right? Well, yeah, it’s not me coaching, but I also get coached and so I do like my personal coaching, but looking at Saturday, being blank and going, I better put something in the middle of the day here so that I can talk this through.

And what else am I going to do? I’m going to cook some fun recipes. I’m going to I have a rabbit tree of speaking of big crazy ideas. I show rabbits and so I have a rabbit really needs their nails trimmed. And so I’m going to do that on Saturday. And I love working with them. So that’s going to be lots of fun.

But one thing that we talked about is a lot of people with ADHD are asking me like, what’s the best type of work for me? And you’ve worked in some different environments, like the one environment that you worked in before. It sounds like you still had kind of a a, a choice in the order that you did your work and things like that.

But you were in an environment where you had a boss. It was more structured. Yeah. How was that versus working for yourself?

I think that I did okay in a corporate type environment where I was a project coordinator at a civil engineering firm. So I kind of managed the project managers, except I wasn’t their manager, I just was underneath them kind of helping things go smoothly.

And I did have a little bit of flexibility on what I got done in that day or not what I got done, but kind of the order of things getting done in that day. But I was reliant on other people to get their work done in order for me to be able to get my work done. And that was pretty frustrating for me because when I’m on fire about something, I need to do it now, not an hour from now, or else I’m going to lose my motivation to do it.

And that was a little bit of a struggle for me. Or some days I just don’t feel super productive. You know, I tend to be a very productive person. And then there are days where my productiveness is not in something work related. It’s like I’m going to clean out my pantry and now I want to do the floors.

And then I did the floors and I realized I need to do the toilets. And it’s if you give a mom a muffin, except if you give a mom a trash bag or something, you know? And so I really struggled with not being allowed that kind of leniency of doing what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it.

And maybe that’s just not life, that’s fine. But in my business, you know, there are days where I am on fire and then there are days where I’m like, I’m getting nothing done for my company. Today. I’m taking my kid to urban Air. I’m going to we’re going to go get snow cones. In that time. I might listen to some podcasts that are like invigorating and, you know, helping my brain work in a certain way.

Because like you said, I think it’s boredom. I think that there are people who say that they’re going to spend a day doing nothing and then they get they feel guilty doing that. And I don’t feel guilty. So if you’re feeling guilty for not doing it, I agree, then that’s that’s a problem. Right? But for me, it’s I just feel bored if I’m sitting around doing nothing.

So we’ll still do something. But maybe it’s not work that day that I’m, you know, hyper focused on and the freedom to do that within my own company and not having a boss looking and going, man, today was a really lackluster day. Well, trust me, I did plenty of work in 4 hours yesterday to where I can do nothing today.

And that’s fine, you know? Yeah, I love that. As you’re describing that, I think I homeschooled my kids for a while and with especially my oldest son, I was like, Here are the subjects you need to do math. You need to do language arts. Here’s here’s how you’re going to do those things. What order do you want to do them in?

And I even had like the little strips on a magnet board so that he could say, you know, Hey, I have a lot of energy today, so I’m going to go ahead and knock out math first because I feel like I could focus on that. And he’s not the one with ADHD, but just having that ability to make the choice, having the what’s the word I’m looking for, where he’s able to give me autonomy.

Thank you. Where he’s able to have that autonomy and what he’s going to do that was so helpful. And I find that with adults as well, if they have jobs where they have that autonomy and they can, you know, say what they’re going to do day to day, what order they’re going to do it in the day, that’s so much more helpful.

So one thing, speaking of what you were doing in that engineering firm, you mentioned Trello. I heard that you were like the Trello, what would you call it? Would you describe total? I’m a Trello nerd, but they did call me the Pit Bull because they said I was always barking at them to and aggressive to try it. By the way, I love pit bulls, but to try to get them to do their work like did you update that on Trello?

Because here I am reminding you to do something verbally. I’m like, You’re audible Trello and Trello already told you to do it, but you didn’t and you didn’t check it off the list. And then I go in the room and like, I did do that. Well, how would I know? Because you didn’t update Trello. So I’m a little bit obsessed and I still use it and it’s like been a game changer in my business.

Yeah, I really love Trello and those of you that have been following me for very long, I’m sure I’ve offered you some sort of Trello board, but I use it for groceries. I with my assistant, we get like everything done in the coaching business and, and through talking to Ciarra, I’m like, I need to use this in my gym business as well because the girl that we have in the office, I tend to like throw five things at her while she’s still working on thing number one and it’s just not useful.

But if I were to put it all on a Trello board and watch it progress, that would be so much more useful. But you guys, you can do anything with Trello and it is the ADHD or is best friend because it is offloading your brain somewhere else and it’s just so useful. So we had to kind of nerd out on that a little bit.

Well, and if you find whether it’s Trello or not, right, if you are someone that experiences ADHD and that is just the way that you live and you’re trying to learn how to refine that into something that can be productive and you’re not feeling productive, you got to put something down somewhere. Like you said, it’s it’s the sounding board almost for or the dumping ground for your brain.

And even the other day I was sitting there talking to my business partner. We were at a coffee shop working next to each other, and she was working on something and I was spitting out questions that we needed to ask. And she wasn’t typing as fast as I was speaking. And I said, Can I take this over real quick?

Because my brain’s working too fast, I’m going to lose it. And so I just met her and she’s like, Thank God because I was I can’t keep up with your brain and that’s fine. But if you have kind of a dumping ground like Trello where, you know, as powerful as it can be to have ADHD sometimes and be able to throw around all these things, the missing piece sometimes is the coordination of being able to pull that all together into something productive.

So Trello or whatever can be that piece where, you know, for example, we have we’re birthday lists and we check on people in their provider appointment days if it’s a midwife appointment or the doctor appointment. And with 2530 clients at once on our books, I’m not remembering that and I’m sure not writing it down on a paper calendar.

And so even though I kind of hate technology and things like this, I do it because it reminds me annual it’ll put a notification on your phone because there’s an app and then that app dings my watch and it tells me that I need to check on them because they had a provider appointment today. And then who looks like a rock star?

Me because Trello made me a rock star and helped me remember that, which I never would have remembered before. Yeah, yeah. And like in running a coaching business, for example, there are so many things I could be doing that aren’t necessarily important right now, and it’s so useful to like, get on that board that I share with my assistant and say, this is going to be something in the future and just put it down as a card and leave it there until I’m ready to move it to you.

This is something we need to be working on now. It’s just so helpful. But I think of people that are listening, you know, with their work or with their home. Like you said, it doesn’t necessarily have to be Trello, but Trello is very useful in that way, especially since it does give you notifications. When I’m working with my assistant, it’s like at her name and it sends her a notification that I talk to her with my family.

Yeah, it is free. We use it for groceries where like any of us can put on the list. This is what we need from the grocery store and whoever goes has the little Trello thing on their phone and they can just click it and they see exactly what we need. And as they’re getting it, they can move it off the list.

Like there’s so many uses. It’s, it’s, I think it’s an ADHD or as best friend I love it. So

Sarah, thank you so much for coming today.

I love our conversation that we had. I love talking to somebody that’s like using their ADHD energy and using your brain just the way it works and thriving with it. So I think everybody can take away something from how you described your life. I think it’s very inspirational, but I wanted you to be able to let people know where they can find you.

You’re so because I have a thousand companies, I have quite a few places you can find us. I’m sure you’ll put them in the show notes as well. But Instagram is probably the best place to find us. If you’re interested in our podcast, it’s Birth Baby Pod or at Birth Baby podcast on Instagram, or you can find it at

www.birthBabypodcast.com if you’re interested in potentially becoming a birth doula and learning from us and training that is wwwbirthbabyacademy.com

And then we have empowered beginnings where that’s in Austin it’s at Empowered beginnings ATX underscore Doula which is stupid Long and then our website is empowered beginnings ATX dot com and we do have some virtual services and virtual classes that we can give to people. So no matter where you’re living, all three of our companies could potentially be beneficial to you.

Potentially sleep consulting or something like that. So yeah, all our websites and then our Instagrams are pretty active. Very good. And Sarah’s correct. That will be in the show notes and it will also be in the YouTube description. So you’ll be able to find that information everywhere. But thank you so much for being with me today. I appreciate you coming on and having this conversation.

Yeah, thank you for having me. All right. Thank you. All right, guys, Thank you for your time and especially your attention. And I will see you next week.