Time to Flourish
The ADHD Life Guide Coaching Framework
Your ADHD journey isn’t about fixing — it’s about flourishing. This is where structure meets soul and skill meets self. This journey will take you from overwhelm to intention and from survival to momentum.
🌿 FLOURISH
Live intentionally. Grow meaningfully. Flourish daily.
ADHD minds are like white-water kayaks — agile, dynamic, built for exhilarating speed and creative movement. But without a strong paddle, clear riverbanks, and skilful steering, even the most powerful kayak can be thrown off course by sudden rapids and swirling eddies.
FLOURISH is your paddle, your compass, and your shoreline guide.
It’s not about forcing calm waters — it’s about strengthening your steering and choosing your course through both still pools and roaring currents.
This isn’t just a coaching framework. It’s an adventure trail — a life map — helping adults with ADHD build internal resilience, external structure, and deep alignment with their values. Developed by Dr Manaan Kar Ray and Mrs Monjistha Kar Ray, FLOURISH blends psychology, lived wisdom, and values-guided action into eight powerful phases.
Each phase strengthens your ability to move with purpose, to steady yourself in the storms, and to live a life that is not just functional — but deeply flourishing.
🔍 F – Focus
Gain clarity and build readiness.
Before you can set out, you need to climb a lookout and truly see the terrain. In the Focus phase, we strengthen your "mental balcony" — giving you the perspective to act intentionally rather than impulsively.
Like a hiker climbing a watchtower before the trek begins, you learn to observe your thoughts, feelings, and patterns from a wise distance. You begin not by running faster — but by seeing clearer.
Highlights:
~ Learn the FOCUS framework and the "balcony view" approach
~ Strengthen attention control and present-moment awareness
~ Clarify your current challenges and inner values
~ Begin mindfulness practices using Breathe Now and Focus Flow
📘 L – Learn
Understand your ADHD profile with compassion.
Knowledge is the map you unfold before setting out. Here, you gently explore the landscape of your mind — noticing patterns without judgment, and beginning to replace shame with curiosity.
Imagine discovering an ancient book of trails, with your personal history written between the lines — full of insight, not blame.
Highlights:
~ Explore all 18 ADHD symptoms using the DISCOVER book
~ Replace judgment with curiosity and practical strategies
~ Personalise your learning to match your lived experiences
~ Complete wellbeing monitoring (SWEMWBS)
🛠️ O – Optimise
Lay the groundwork for executive function.
Every trek needs preparation — a solid backpack, a sturdy compass, a clear packing list. In this phase, you don't just organise — you optimise: designing external systems that strengthen your internal movement. Think of optimising not as adding pressure, but as packing wisely for an epic adventure — making sure what you carry truly supports your journey.
Highlights:
~ Apply the HABIT framework to build strong, sustainable routines
~ Scaffold motivation, task initiation, and follow-through
~ Use external tools to enhance and streamline your inner gears
Use Safe Life Guide's HABIT framework to guide your next steps.
🔗 U – Unite
Link habits into strong, living routines.
After optimising through small habits, the next step is to Unite, bringing your habits together into steady daily routines that carry you forward with less effort. A single step is powerful. But a path — a true path — is made by steps linked together, flowing one after another. These routines become your living trails — steady paths that support your ADHD journey, even when motivation fades. You don't need to force it. You need to LINK it. Layer habits, Identify anchors, Navigate obstacles, Keep evolving.
Highlights:
~ Build ADHD-specific routines: morning, evening, work, leisure, exercise
~ Use small linked actions to form bigger, sustainable daily flows
~ Troubleshoot routine breakdowns with flexibility and self-kindness
~ Grow living routines that evolve
🌀 R - Reflect
Explore emotions, identity, relationships.
The mind is like a still forest pond — sensitive to every ripple, every falling leaf. You sit by the waters of your emotional life, watching the patterns that ripple across the surface and run deep below. You begin to decode the hidden messages of shame, sensitivity, and emotional storms — not to control them, but to understand and navigate them.
We keep it REAL — Reflect, Explore, Acknowledge, and Learn — to understand how ADHD and habit change ripple through your life.
Highlights:
~ Make sense of mood swings, impulsivity, and rejection sensitivity
~ Explore how ADHD interweaves with trauma, anxiety, BPD, depression
Build emotional literacy and self-compassion
🧘♂️ I – Instil
Build skills for staying grounded.
Storms will come. Winds will rise. Waves will crash. Regulation isn’t about preventing chaos — it’s about building a sturdy shelter beneath a great tree, a place to wait out the emotional rain. In this phase, you gather tools to ground yourself, you learn to RISE CALMly through emotional storms: CALM helps you soothe the body when emotions surge. RISE helps you navigate your emotions thoughtfully once the storm begins to pass. You don’t have to be perfect. You only need to keep returning to your center — one breath, one choice, one steady anchor at a time.
Highlights:
~ Learn distress tolerance and sensory grounding strategies (CALM)
~ Build emotional resilience and values-based responses (RISE)
~ Create simple reset rituals to return to baseline quickly
🛟 S – Safe
Plan for emotional risk and build safety structures.
Sometimes, the waters flood, the rapids surge, and quick action is needed. The SAFE phase is about building cabins of care along your trail — proactive plans that catch you if you fall. It's not about expecting the worst. It's about trusting your preparations so that when distress comes, you're ready to respond.
Highlights:
~ Use the Safe Life Guide app for safety planning
~ Identify early warning signs of emotional storms
~ Create compassionate, pre-prepared action plans
🧭 H – Hope
Live by your values, not just your diagnosis.
At the end of the trail — and at every turn — lies HOPE: Not the fleeting hope of easy fixes, but the steady, starlit navigation of a life lived by what matters most. In this final phase, you learn to set your direction by the true north of your values, not by the map of your struggles. You follow your stars, not your fears.
Highlights:
~ Use the HOPE model to reconnect with your deepest purpose
~ Set direction with intention, not perfectionism
~ Flourish by building a life rich with meaning and growth.
🛤️ What to Expect in Each Session
Step by step, with steady hands and clear maps.
Each FLOURISH session is a purposeful waypoint on your journey. Sessions are structured but flexible — meeting you where you are, while steadily guiding you forward. You’ll come away from each session with practical tools, reflective insights, and small, meaningful actions to carry into daily life.
Highlights:
~ Begin with a values-guided check-in and set a clear focus
~ Explore new skills, metaphors, and frameworks at a gentle pace
~ Reflect on successes, challenges, and shifts since the last session
~ Co-create simple next steps that feel achievable, not overwhelming
~ Build momentum through encouragement, compassion, and adaptation
Each meeting is like adjusting your trail gear — tightening laces, realigning the compass, celebrating distance already covered — and setting off again, stronger and more surefooted.
🌿 How FLOURISH Comes Together
FLOURISH isn’t just a collection of skills. It’s a living ecosystem — where attention, knowledge, organisation, emotion, resilience, daily rhythm, safety, and purpose are all interconnected streams feeding into one greater river: a meaningful life.
Imagine you are preparing for a long, beautiful journey through changing landscapes.
First, you gain your bearings (Focus). You learn to see the terrain clearly, noticing not just the challenges but the possibilities ahead. Next, you understand the nature of your vessel (Learn) — your ADHD mind — with its unique strengths, vulnerabilities, and ways of navigating the currents.
With deeper understanding comes the need to pack wisely (Organise), creating systems and habits that keep you steady even when the path grows steep or tangled. But journeys aren’t only about logistics; they are lived through the heart.
You pause to reflect gently (Understand) — on your emotions, your relationships, your identity — learning how they rise and fall like waves, and how you can ride them rather than be capsized by them.
When the storms hit, as they inevitably do, you anchor steadily (Regulate), using tools to calm the internal waters and return to a safe, centred place. And from that centred place, you walk daily (Implement), weaving insights into small, repeatable acts of living — not just surviving, but shaping your path one intentional step at a time.
You prepare for unexpected turns by sheltering wisely (SAFE), building structures that catch you when you stumble, ensuring that moments of crisis become part of your story, not the end of it. And through it all, you navigate true (HOPE), following your inner compass — the values that give your life richness, depth, and direction, even when the road is rough or unclear.
🌱 Step by Step
Each phase supports the others.
Each tool you build strengthens the next step.
Each step you take brings you closer to a life where meaning isn’t something you find at the destination — it's something you cultivate along the way.
To FLOURISH is to live intentionally, grow meaningfully, and walk your path with courage, clarity, and heart. 🌿
Any Questions
Starting a journey like FLOURISH can bring up a lot of good questions — and that's exactly how it should be. This coaching framework is designed to meet you where you are, while guiding you towards where you most want to go. Below are answers to some of the most common questions about how FLOURISH works, and what you can expect.
Mon - Fri: 8AM - 6PM
Sat - Sun: Variable
Brisbane North Medical Specialists,
15 Dallas Parade, Keperra, QLD 4054
(07) 5221 3489
reception@bnms.com.au
