You know that 'difficult' employee? often late, disorganised and sometimes unmotivated? 🥱
Yeah, that was me! 🥲
Here's the thing.. (affirmation time) — i know i’m talented, driven and compassionate.. SO why exactly *have* i spent my entire life feeling like that isn't the case? it turns out that trying to navigate education and workplaces *without* understanding your brain makes it a lot more difficult for both you AND the people around you 👩💻
Fast forward to now:
i’ve written a book with my best friend, published by Harper Collins..
i’ve delivered training sessions to multiple large organisations (including Sweaty Betty, who i *idolised* in my early 20's)
i’ve also been booked onto many panels, sold over 20,000 workbooks that i designed myself, and not to mention, grown a community of over 100k people on Instagram 😌
..so, what changed?
My understanding of my own brain and how i navigate my environment did! 🤸♀️ when i *finally* realised i was neurodivergent, it all made sense.. but it actually also needed to make sense to other people too if i wanted anything to change for others like me and my best friend Jess — who was also trying to navigate the same difficulties alongside me 🥲
So, after years of helping each other through unhealthy relationships, being fired, and a bunch of other struggles..We launched our brand I Am Paying Attention! 🏆
I’ve gone from insecure and lacking in confidence, to running a business that caters to my brain and allows me to develop my skills and abilities. learning about this stuff can be overwhelming, and i’ll be honest.. it was an extremely *brutal* time whilst we realised how ableist the world *actually* can be.
Having each other was critical to this journey, and we wanted to provide that same feeling of support for other people who *didn’t* have it.
So, we started creating and selling some affirming resources (that to our surprise, went down *extremely* well) ..we were still trying to figure out how to ends meet, but at least now, we were more confident, skilled and definitely doing better together than we were alone 🥲
Alongside our growing community, our story began being shared in various news outlets.. 🗞
As much as this journey’s going well for us, me and Jess didn’t become self employed by choice. We’ve learnt so much about neurodivergence in general but even more so how workplaces aren’t set up to really get the best out of ALL of their employees.
Yes, our teams are becoming more diverse, but are you actually changing how you manage teams to reflect this? because if you aren’t its likely you have ‘difficult employees’ that seemed great when you hired them.
Sure, we’ve both always been driven and worked hard, but we’ve also been ‘let go’ several times from jobs we had, or experienced constant ‘extended probations’.. like a LOT of other neurodivergent people.
Looking at the stats, reflecting on our own experiences, and having conversations with our community led us to realise that this is happening because workplaces are failing to accommodate a lot of us — because the knowledge when it comes to neurodivergence unfortunately isn’t mainstream yet.
So, THAT’s why we’ve poured energy and time into developing workplace training in hope that we can change things! 🤸♀️
and.. based on the feedback we’re getting, we’re making some progress towards real change in exactly the way we’d hoped!
