Tunch Diptas is an accomplished executive & coach, a master of combining the discipline of the mind and body, turning the previously unobtainable goals into self-fulfillment and success stories. Post graduation, Tunch mastered in International Economics. He has cultivated advanced relationships with wealth advisors, private bankers, business bankers, insurance agents, trust specialists, advanced financial planners, and mortgage consultants, as a Certified Financial Planner. As a result of the long time interest, he set his heart on the consultancy. Tunch has worked with executives from Fortune 500 companies including, Wells Fargo, Northwestern Mutual, Chase Manhattan, KW Inc., guiding them to get outstanding results. So far, Tunch has worked with soccer teams to reach championship status; early career executives to obtain leadership roles; and successful professionals to accomplish their dreams. He is a Senior Leader with the Tony Robbins Leadership Academy, focusing on Business Results Training. He believes that “Leadership begins with an ability to persuade and connect. Engaging and captivating any audience from beginning to end for a powerful, lasting impact can be learned!” Tunch provides a rich set of practical and life-tested ideas, concepts, and frameworks that will help those who want to change; to be the best that they can be. His ambition is to make people better in their focus area, discover their purpose, make a strategic plan, and finally get measurable, quantitative results with a significant improvement in leadership and team building skills. With the ambition of inspiring people with impactful ways so that they can all have authentic and meaningful lives, Tunch is always glad to connect with new people!  Enjoy!

***CORONA VIRUS EDITION***

In this episode Peter & Tunch discuss:

:50-  Intro and welcome Tunch Diptas 

1:26-  So what’s your story?

2:15-  What prompted you to get tested for ADHD?

3:22-  What were the medications the put you on first? How did that go?

6:10-  Tell us a little about how you took control of your happiness after your diagnosis?

7:20-  On defining purpose

8:45-  On focusing on what’s important and what’s working

9:25-  What do you advise on negotiating the downsides of change and embracing the positive?

12:20-  Let’s talk about emotional fitness; how do you deal with anger, anxiety and communicating with your partner/family/co-workers, etc?

14:50-  How do you find a middle ground/balance with your work and life?

16:20-  How can people find you? At www.TunchDiptas.com and @TunchDiptas on INSTA  Facebook and YouTube

16:54-  Thank you Tunch! And thank YOU for subscribing, reviewing and listening. Your reviews are working! Even if you’ve reviewed us before, would you please write even a short one for this episode? Each review that you post helps to ensure that word will continue to spread, and that we will all be able to reach & help more people! You can always reach me via [email protected] or @petershankman on all of the socials. You can also find us at @FasterThanNormal on all of the socials.

17:26-  Faster Than Normal Podcast info & credits

STAY HEALTHY – STAY SAFE – PLEASE WEAR YOUR MASK.. until next time!

As always, leave us a comment below and please drop us a review on iTunes and of course, subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already! As you know, the more reviews we get, the more people we can reach. Help us to show the world that ADHD is a gift, not a curse! Do you know of anyone you think should be on the FTN podcast? Shoot us a note, we’d love to hear!

PS: If you’re looking for that special gift this holiday season for someone in your life who has ADD, ADHD, or any kind of neurodiverse brain, how about a conversation with me? I’ve finally been convinced to join Cameo, where you can request videos, shout-outs, birthday greetings, even a one-on-one talk about how ADHD is a superpower! You can find me on Cameo here!​

TRANSCRIPT: 

Hey guys, Peter Shankman… happy to have you here. As we enter the world of ADHD, ADD everything that are diverse, for another episode of Faster Than Normal, good stuff going on. We’re gonna be talking to a coach today who I love his bio. The guy seems to have done everything. Um, his name is Tunch Diptas and I want it to tell us it tells us his background because it’s, you’re gonna find it fascinating, but I can give you the highlights.

He mastered the International Economics. International Economics, right? He’s worked with companies, Wells Fargo, Northwestern Mutual, Chase Manhattan. Um, he led soccer teams to championship status. So I want to hear about that. And then we’re going to talk.. I want to focus a lot on managing stress change, conflict of crisis, which is his big thing.

So welcome Tunch, good to have you. 

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I’m excited. 

Good. So yeah. Tell us, tell us your backstory, cause you’re not from this country. Tell us where you came from, how you got here… and you said you weren’t diagnosed with ADHD until you were in your thirties. So tell us that, that as well, start at the beginning.

Sure. Uh, I’ll be happy to. Um, so I actually grew up in Turkey and, um, when I was growing up, um, I didn’t know anything about ADHD and my family didn’t either. And, um, I grew up with so many challenges, um, family challenges and then also challenges at school. But, um, I was able to make it happen and I moved to the United States actually with no money, no English and no contacts.  So, um, that was my journey from Turkey to the States. And, um, I was able to overcome the challenges and  I’ll be happy to talk about all of those. 

Yeah. Tell us, so tell us when you, what, what prompted you to get diagnosed with ADHD? 

So I, uh, after moving to the States and one of the things that I’ve done is I wanted to grow and learn the language and improve myself.  So that’s why I start growing and then going to libraries. And, um, and then later I, um, I started working in corporate finance world because my background… education background was economics, and, um, I became successful.  Uh, I was so hyper-focused with success and, uh, I made it happen. And one of the meetings about six, seven years ago, um, one of my colleagues told me that you have ADHD. And I said, I don’t think so. And he said, no, you’re bored in every meeting. And, um, and then also you’re easily distracted. So you got to go see a doctor. And I said, sure, because. I was successful, but I wasn’t happy. So I was looking for answers. 

That’s actually, that’s actually a trait, the concept of being tremendously successful in it, but still feeling like something’s wrong and you haven’t been able to accomplish a thing. 

Exactly. And I didn’t know what ADHD was because I grew up in Turkey and when I was growing up, it’s still a developing country and nobody told me anything about it, but I was always feeling the symptoms. And like one of the stories that I remember from my childhood, that, um, I was always falling down. Always like, um, had wounds on me. And once I had an accident and I fell, I fell down and it just, um, I had a big wound on my face and my chin and, um, and then I went back to the, uh, the class and my teacher looked at me and, she said it’s….  still developing countries,  so, uh, she said, why’d you do that? Why do you keep falling down? Why do you always, why are you so clumsy? So she looked at me and she said at in effect, she called my Mom, and my Mom came to the school because it had to, um, I had to go to a doctor for a stitch for stitching my chin and, um, my Mom looked at me, and she said the same thing. Why are you so clumsy? What’s wrong with you? And that story is just, um, got stuck with me and I asked the same question all my life to myself. I said, what’s wrong with me? And, but that was my primary question until I realized what I’m asking. I was asking myself and that’s when as soon as I realized, that’s when I stopped, I decided to change. And I went to doctor, uh, after, uh, hearing from my friend, and he said, uh, the doctor said you have high ADHD. Um, constant boredom was the highest thing that he said. And I said, okay. So they start giving me medication. And I used it may,  be short, maybe two, three months, and I decided that it’s not for me, and I made a choice. (4:51) What medication were you on? Um, Ritalin,  Conserta,  um, Adderall,  they tried everything and it was, it was interesting because I’m like, am I, why am I taking all of these things? Because I have more anxiety, I feel more depressed. I was feeling down and, um, and I was like, I was happier before. So, and that’s when I decided that I need to come up with steps to make myself feel fulfilled and happy., and if you want, I can go through the my steps, no, that makes perfect sense, but tell, yeah, tell us a little bit about what you,  how do you, so when you decided to take control, you know, a lot of people say, God, I need to be able to feel happy through it. And then they can’t put it into sort of actionable items.

So in a nutshell, you know, in a minute or less, tell us what you did. 

So, um, I looked at my background, my history, as I mentioned, I came to this country with no money, no English, no contacts. So how did I do it? How did I do it? Because I had a belief that I came to this world for a reason. And I knew that my purpose is to grow and discover myself and learn what’s going on in this world, explore myself and explore everything else, so that was my purpose when I was, when I came to this country and that’s what made me going. And then that’s what I know now, if I am so clear with my purpose, that keeps me going. And then also, um, It makes me progress. That’s what makes me happy. So that was the number one thing that I put it down. I said, I got to know my purpose, be clear with it, and, um, I need to align with every day. So that was my first thing. 

 I think, a lot of what happens, uh, when, when you, I mean, in general, but certainly when you have ADHD, you have this feeling like that if you’re not moving forward, you’re going backwards, right?   And so not having a purpose and not having really anything to keep striving for is probably the worst thing in the world for someone with ADD or ADHD.

Absolutely because, um, I mean, I have worked with clients and then also the colleagues that I noticed when someone who has ADHD, they, um, it’s just easily get distracted and easily, um, critique themselves so much that they go into depression mode.  Instead, what I came up with, I said, I got to remind myself my purpose every day, and that will give me the juice to move forward, to get motivated. So that was the first thing, but the most important to that, I figured out about five, six years ago and cheesy enough, but easy to say it embraced who you really are. And, um, embracing is like loving yourself with who, who I am, and loving I am, and um, why is that so important, because I used to, as I mentioned my, in my story with my mom and my teacher, I came up with that question to myself every time I’m forgetful, I, I used to say to myself, um, why am I like this? What’s wrong with me? Or every time I’m clumsy. 

 Well, that’s always the question. What’s wrong with me. Why aren’t I like everyone else? Why am I getting in trouble? Why am I the one being picked on?  Right, exactly.   So, and then I made a choice. I said, I’m going to love myself as who I am, and I’m going to reframe… that’s the third step.  Re-frame everything. So instead of saying I’m forgetful, I actually start telling people and myself first myself and telling people that look, I only remember what’s important only. And, um, I can, I can hyper focus on what’s important and I can make things work. Um, that way the other things, yes, I forget, but I remember what’s important. The question you get to keep that to heart. 

No question about it. In terms of, so, so one of the things that you, you focus on is managing stress and, and sort of change, you know, people want ADHD, we can do very, very well at change. If we have the tools to do that, you know, if not, if things like, for instance, when COVID started and, you know, all of a sudden I was home every day, instead of being on the road, you know, 300,000 miles a year, that was brutal for me, and that took a lot of changing, to get sort of under control and a lot of, a lot of work to make sure that I was okay because you know, all my creativity came from being on a plane and that was taken away from everyone, um, almost overnight. So in terms of a change, because 2021 is going to be just as insane, hopefully a little less, but you know it’s still going to be crazy.  What do you advise, especially someone with ADHD, you know, in a few minutes, tell us what they can do, and what anyone can do, to sort of negate um, the downsides of change and, and embrace sort of the positive side?

 Yeah. Um, so we gotta stay in house. That’s the challenge. That’s what you’re saying, right.

Well, just not being able to travel, not be able to do what I normally do. All of a sudden they have to, you know, I’m a home, but my, my, it was a massive change for me to start being home versus to be on the road all the time. I had to change my entire system of how I lived. 

Right. And that’s one of the things that I was my fourth step is, um, team up, teaming up with people, um, who can help, who can compliment you to overcome stress, and in also to make you successful is so important. And that’s why I took this time to build the daily habits, which will help me get motivated every day. And it kept, I kept doing the daily habits. Even though there’s no routine because I have a chaotic brain, creative brain I say it instead of chaotic brain, I said creative brain. And, um, I have a creative brain, so, but I still need to remember my purpose and then keep doing the activities, which help me get going. And then the other thing is this time is perfect to connect with people at a deeper level and also, um, help, help, it will help you get going. If you find the right people to team up, like right now, I am teaming up with people who can help me with organizing, who can help me with details, who I’m a, why person I’m a visionary person. If I find the right team, right person to help me right now, it’s even more important.  So, what I will say is connecting and then cultivating deeper relationship, deeper relationships will help us get going right now, get motivated, and in also coming up with the daily positive activities, which will align with your purpose, 

That makes a lot of sense. Um, you know, if you have, if you have accountability buddies that were, that tends to, uh, that tends to help.

So no question about it. Um, in terms of, um, uh, emotional fitness, right? A lot of time, we have a hard time expressing how we feel. I know that in my world, uh, and, and a lot of the guests you’ve had on the podcast, when you have ADHD, you need to feel heard and you need to feel validated. And if you’re in an argument with someone that’s not always the easiest thing to do. What do you suggest, in terms of dealing with anger and, and, and anxiety, um, either with a partner or on your own, what can you do to sort of, you know, top, top things to do to prevent that? Anxiety. And, um, what else do you, uh, anger of, you know, w with a partner or a friend or whatever. 

Okay. so what I would suggest is again, um, the connecting with people at a deeper level, and then also as far as the anxiety, um, my suggestion is, is, um, taking time to, of course, to meditate and doing something, which will make me, that’s what I do, which will make me get present. First. I get out of the state that I am in. Right now  it’s so important to get out of the house, um, do something which will make you present again. For me, it’s walking just to get out of the house and whenever I feel down, and then I start looking at where I, where do I focus?  Do I focus on what I have or what I don’t have? Do I focus on, um, what I can control or what I can’t control? Do I focus on, um, what’s present and what can I do? What can I learn? Or what’s what’s in the past. So I look at where I’m focusing on and then also, um, also doing something to get me out of a comfort zone. Couple of weeks ago, I was, I wasn’t feeling like top of my game. And I said, I got to do something to get me out of comfort zone, which I see your picture. I did go skydive to get out of my comfort zone. And right after that, what can I do to control my focus? That’s what I think the two things getting out of the comfort zone by changing the state, and the second thing is where’s my focus. And then also a third thing is how can I be optimistic about the future? Where do, what am I focusing on in the future, right. 

Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. Tell us, um, in terms of establishing a balance, you know, a lot of times, when you’re ADD/ADHD, we’re really all or nothing, right?  We go in and do everything or we do nothing. How do you find that middle ground? Because middle ground is really, really hard for people with neurodiverse issues. 

Actually, I don’t. ha OK –  Here’s why. Um, I used to, um, try to, I used to try to do like, uh, how can I find the balance? How can I find the balance?  Now what I do is, okay, I found what I love doing, which is coaching. And when you do that, and I just get obsessed with what I do and I love it. And then people around me are integrated with it, so, um, it’s just, I believe that work life integration. And I just, do my work, and then people around me. I just integrated it in it.  Um, and that’s, that’s my solution to it. And it, because I love obsessing. What I love and what I love doing. And that’s the, um, that’s the formula to success. If you want to be successful in anything, you gotta be obsessed with it, which we have that, as ADHD people as a gift as that’s what makes us unique.

Great answer. And I think that’s a great place to leave it right now. Definitely want to have you back on again, Tunch, thank you so much for taking time. How can people find you? Give us your website. 

Um, it’s um, I can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and, um, it’s Tunchdiptas.com. And they can find me, uh, with the same thing,  any, any social media. 

Awesome. We’ll put that all into the show notes. Tunch, thank you so much for taking the time to spend some time with us today on Faster than Normal, we truly appreciate it, guys, if you’re listening and you’ve listened this far, leave us a review. Ah, reviews that show up on the, on the site and on Amazon or Amazon or Spotify, or wherever you download your podcasts, they do tend to help and they do tend to get more people interested and more people can then know that ADHD is a gift, not a curse, been saying that for going on four years now, so we appreciate that you’ve been listening, we appreciate that you’ve been here. Any guest ideas, feel free to shoot me a note. [email protected]. We would love to have them.  Thanks again to our guests and to all our guests, and guys, ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Stay safe, wear a mask, we’ll see you next week.

Credits: You’ve been listening to the Faster Than Normal podcast. We’re available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google play and of course at www.FasterThanNormal.com I’m your host, Peter Shankman and you can find me at petershankman.com and @petershankman on all of the socials. If you like what you’ve heard, why not head over to your favorite podcast platform of choice and leave us a review, come more people who leave positive reviews, the more the podcast has shown, and the more people we can help understand that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. Opening and closing themes were performed by Steven Byrom and the opening introduction was recorded by Bernie Wagenblast. Thank you so much for listening. We’ll see you next week.