The Coaching ADDvantage

My name is Joseph Griffin and I am a recent graduate of Ari Petroff’s ADD coaching program.  I am 33 years old, married and a father of 2. I was diagnosed with ADD in October 2009 and what a ride it has been since then.  My doctor gave me two options, go on medication and or see a psychiatrist to help with CBT.  Neither of these options appealed to me and actually I left his office ticked off and went home and started researching online resources for adults with ADD.  I bought 3 books and read through them very quickly.  I looked into some counseling programs but none of them stimulated me enough to follow through nor could I afford them.  My persistence paid off as I stumbled across Ari’s website.  It took me a few days before I emailed him.  He got back to me promptly and set up a phone consult.  I had many questions for Ari and he answered all of them like a champion.  What convinced me to give him a try was his answer to my last question, “why should I choose you?” I asked. Ari said, “go with your gut man!” That was it for me.  Most people don’t say that kind of stuff.  Ari was speaking my language and there was an instant connection and it just felt right.

It was an incredible few months with highs and lows.   Ari brings tremendous value to the process.  The fact that he has ADD is huge and when you add his authenticity, willingness to be vulnerable and share his personal experiences, his knowledge of ADD, and his ability to adapt quickly to what’s relevant in your life week to week and still help you stay focused is what helped make this a life changing experience for me.  I have hope that I didn’t have before.  Knowing why I have struggled with so many areas of life has brought freedom and has brought more clarity than ever before.  I have more awareness of behavior patterns, thought patterns and symptoms of ADD that have had a negative and positive impact on my life. Ari’s coaching has helped unlock the door to a whole new world of possibilities to my life and as a result, I have begun a process designed to discover my gifts and talents so that I can continue living from a strength based approach instead of living a life of fixing my weaknesses and compensating for them.  I still struggle at times and find myself overwhelmed with the dark side of ADD symptoms, but the difference maker now is that I have tools now to help ground me during these times. 

My life has been forever changed from Ari’s coaching and the journey we went on together.  What Ari does, has incredible value and can change people’s lives and I hope that more people can have access to ADDcoaching and experience this life changing process.  

Joe Griffin - Plattsville, ON

I'm also a university student with ADHD, and I've been working with Ari since June, 2009.  It was one of the best decisions I've ever made.  I contemplated and wavered back and forth after seeing him speak to us back in March, but kept putting off calling him for some reason.

What?  An ADHD'er proscratinating?  Never, Never!! :) 

I'll just say that working through the summer to get myself ready for school was something I never did before and it's really created a momentum leading into this school year where I've done more work in the first month than I probably would have done over the first four in my first 2 years.  Somehow we've developed a system that works for me and if you have ADHD and are reading this, let me just say that you if you're smart and are struggling at school, you MUST call him.  You have nothing to lose.  It's covered by the student bursary, and he provided me with all receipts to make my claims.  It's FREE for students.  FREE!!!  Wake up and take the chance and make the phone call.  Even if it wasn't, knowing what I know now would be worth every penny (and it's not as much as I thought it would be). The cool thing is that we barely even deal with school stuff for the most part. We just work on my day to day life and creating that structure is incorporated with my school work.  He's a life coach, but man does he know ADHD.  He has it too.  He's one of us lol.

Call him, you have nothing to lose and SO much to gain.

Gill S. (York U)

After I was first diagnosed with ADHD, I asked myself what the heck is this ADHD, and more importantly what can I do about it? I found out that coaching is
one option and I said to my self “I will give it a try”.

To this day I am very happy that I made that decision, I started and have been working with Ari for about 3 months now and I have to say that my life is much more organized than it was 3 months prior. I am a university student and was diagnosed with ADHD
quite recently. When working with Ari, I always learn something new every-time,
and now I feel more confident to answer that same question I had 3 months ago
“what is ADHD?”

I think that whether one has ADHD or not, it is a must to give it a try because
the benefits of having a coach are huge. I work with Ari over the phone on a
weekly basis and together we tackle some of the issues that I face on a day to day basis with regards to focus and organization, but more importantly he’s helped me develop new ways to really emphasize and pay attention to what’s working as opposed to giving “too much undeserved respect” to the areas that are not.

Ari’s commitment and passion to his work is unprecedented and he really cares and tries his best to help you through some tough times.

Each call really gets me recharged so that I can’t become lazy in the ways that my ADHD seems to always affect me for the negative.  Working with confidence rather than focusing on what I’m not doing is a big deal for me.  From my work with him I really see that ADHD is truly a hidden gift that I’ve always had, but never knew it.

Anthony (University Student) Toronto, Ontario

After a very rough and far below GPA in University. I decided to take some time away from school to figure out what was wrong with me. I had kept in contact with a councilor at York that advised me to take an Educational Assessment test, and I found out about my Learning Disability ADHD.

It took me some time to build up the confidence to go back to school, but surely enough I went back. However, by the end of my fall semester I started to detect that things were starting to go down hill despite all the effort I made to improve my performance.  In my mind I was saying, "I have all the pieces to this puzzle why isn't it working." I had all types of gadgets to make things more easier for me to do, I had a daily planner to get me on the right track, but I still felt myself going down the road of failure again.

I previously attended an information session about ADHD Coaches, and thought that it really was a waste of time and money. However, I was desperate to prevent the failure I had experienced previously, and sought out Ari' help at the recommendation of one of my counselors at York.

After talking to him I was really excited and motivated to get started.  I thought it would take a bit of time to get it going, but his energy really was contagious and right away I was motivated to do each task he had set out for me to do each week.  I like that he didn’t make me do anything, or make me feel bad if I wasn’t up for it.  He never had me do anything without my agreement before we finished our calls.  I was expecting these huge difficult tasks, but they actually were very small that seemed kind of pointless in the moment, but he assured me to give it time and see how important these small steps were in the long run. Ari would constantly tell me we have to break things down and build momentum.  He used a lot of analogies that I could relate to rather than just telling me things and hoping that I would get it.  It was really simple and casual and most of all pressure-free.  Kind of like a personal trainer to overcome my difficulties from my ADD

My first task was to change the place I was studying at.  I didn’t love it at face value, but when he asked how my current plan was working, it kind of made me bite me lip and say I’m going for it.  We agreed that I would try going to the library at least 2 times the first week. He just said, get yourself there and commit to 1 hour. I would have never have tried something like that before.  Going to the library for an hour seemed pointless, but the result was that I got myself there and once I did that, 1 hour wasn’t such a big deal that it actually led to like 3 or 4.  The tasks he gave me weren't difficult but just required me to be consistent.

It was around my 3rd month during a conversation with him that I really started to see how big of an improvement I had made in such a short time. He gave a great comparison to it being a form of muscle building and that the little routines were building each week. The changes were so subtle that it really didn’t feel like work most of the time.  But after 3 months of following through each day we stopped to reflect on the progress I had made to that point. I was amazed how easy it was and the result that spoke loudest was that my grades improved in a big way.

The biggest thing Ari made me realize was that ADHD does not have to be a disability. If shown how to harness your potential it will become your greatest asset.  Ari really helped me with getting to know more about who I am, and what I can do. Sometimes you have all the keys in your hands, Ari helped me to figure out which key is right for me.  All I can say is that for anyone with ADD (or ever those without), if you’re a student and you have a bursary that covers the costs of coaching, do yourself a favour and just call him and see what it’s all about for yourself.  If you work with him, it’s covered.  It doesn’t make sense to not even try if you’re struggling with school and not achieving the grades that you’re there to achieve in the first place.

Ryan James (University Student), Toronto, Ontario

"When I asked my doctor about what options I had beyond medication to help me cope with my ADHD, without hesitation he gave me Ari’s business card. 

I called him and I remember literally knowing that he was right for me within’ the first minute talking to him.  For some reason I was nervous when making the call, after all I had no idea what an ADD coach was.  His positive energy and sense of humor, (not too mention he was a human ADHD encyclopedia) put me at ease right away.  We connected right away and I think I made an official appointment within’ the first 10 minutes.  We’re  still going strong to this day.  I wanted help working through my ADHD challenges when it came to school.  After years of repeatedly selling myself short, we worked together to get me over the hump that I’ve known all along I had in me to do, but for some reason I just couldn’t put the pieces in place in order to follow through.

I’m struggling trying to keep this short since there’s so much we’ve accomplished in such a short time.  So I’ll just make this statement, and if you take anything away from this make it be this: 

If you have ADHD (or even if you don’t), and you aren’t satisfied with the results you’re getting in your life, at least make the phone call to find out for yourself what I want everyone to know.  Ari Petroff Rocks!!!  Make the call and find out for yourself."

Hilary Hall Toronto, ON

"I am a student who recently newly found about my Learning Disability/ADHD. I struggled with university a lot, and the reason I started coaching with Ari was because, I needed structure in my life. I was always all around the place, doing everything at the last minute and not prioritizing properly.

Working with Ari was more fun than work. He uses a lot of out the box ideas, expressions and metaphors. We set a time that we both commit to every week and we work an issue that I am facing. The best thing is that I'm not limited to that 45 minutes a week. Ari has made himself available anytime via e-mail and is good with responding.

Ari helped break things down for me and look at things from a different perspective. He made suggestions based on my lifestyle and what I can do outside of school to improve my school life. Ari saw where I had weakness and then worked with me to improve it. For example, I usually let myself off the hook for not getting anything done. He implemented structure and made me accountable so I had to work done.

I would highly recommend it to anyone who needs to implement structure in their personal or school life. With Ari's help I was able to get awesome grades (lowest was a B). If you have ADHD/LD, you just aren't able to get things done and you don't know why... CALL ARI NOW!

Himanshu  Toronto, ON

"Discovering I had ADD in my early 40’s was a hard pill to swallow. I was told about ADD coaching, and that eventually led me to Ari Petroff at The Coaching ADDvantage.  Prior to working with him, I was iffy because I had seen therapist before, and he immediately made me realize that this wasn't the same as when I would see my therapist.  He came from a positive direction helping me realize that there are so many positive attributes I already had that were directly the result of living with ADD for 40 years.  He assured me that pretty much all people tend to focus on the negative side of things and this overshadows the positives.  That’s what caught me right away. 

His passion for what he does resonates loud and clear right off the bat, probably because he knows what it's like to have ADD as well.  The best part was that he would have me make subtle fundamental changes daily that were far from overwhelming, and the next thing I knew it was 3 months later and things were really starting to change for me.  I never felt a particular moment when it happened, and that was the beauty of working with Ari…the fact that it was fun and never felt like “work.”  It was great having someone neutral to work with, but mostly just to have someone to listen to me, and not make me feel like I was being judged.  I could be myself and not feel intimidated in doing so.  All in all I still had to take all the necessary steps to make the changes I was after, and he would help steer me, and would challenge me. 

I really feel it was worth the investment in working with a coach because there’s absolutely no price I can put on how much I’ve grown since I started working with Ari.  I've now been working with him for 7 months and have no desire to stop, it's that empowering and it ignites my energy to keep myself moving rather than falling back into my old less productive ways."

S.M. Collier  Whitby, ON

"In the beginning of 2007, I was having difficulty sleeping, quelling strong emotions, and repeated conflict with my wife over my lack of assertiveness to defend her and our needs as a married couple when it came to my parents. I found Ari Petroff through the ADD Coaching Academy, started working with him by phone, and things haven't been the same since. He started coaching me around these issues and I discovered how my ADD, which I had felt I was already well adapted to as an adult since diagnosis in 1997, was still manifesting in other ways to cause imbalance in my life. Ari really helped me discover how my lack of clear boundaries about what I expected of my parents and how my inability to articulate those boundaries to them was a barrier to attention that was harder for me to filter out due to my ADD. He showed me that I could learn to pause long enough to identify signals when my boundaries were being violated so that I could articulate and ask for what I wanted of them. This then freed up some of the hyperactivity of negative thought patterns that had plagued my mind and allowed me to start focusing better. I am now able to maintain more positive thoughts about my parents and defend issues my wife and I both have in the family in regards to family get-togethers and time demands. This has improved my relationship with my wife and started to do the same with my parents. I truly can't thank him enough for opening my eyes to how better things can be and how calming my thoughts can be if I am more in tune with when ADD is manifesting in ways that prevent me from filtering out negative thoughts and pausing long enough to see these patterns. I have found him to be very engaging, supportive, and creative in our coaching sessions. He uses wonderful analogies to generate awareness of patterns and beliefs I was maintaining that I was unaware of. I hope that any of you reading this get as much benefit as I have from working with Ari. There is no amount of money not worth the investment in self reflection and learning to ask for what you want from life; coaching has reaped dividends tenfold and made small ripples to improve the quality of my life and I hope the same for you."

    S. C.   Laguna Hills, CA