S2E26: ADHD-G & Forging Your Own Path + guest Ron Shuali

Julie Legg welcomes author, educator, and improv-driven motivator Ron Shuali, known for his unique blend of martial arts, humour, and unorthodox teaching. Diagnosed with ADHD in early childhood, Ron defied expectations and built a life around passion, curiosity, and non-conformity. From creating Yogarate to launching “Unprofessional Development” workshops, Ron’s journey is a masterclass in trusting your instincts, challenging norms, and harnessing your neurodivergence as a mighty strength.

This fast-paced episode explores the beauty of authenticity, the power of play-based learning, and how to find stillness even in a racing ADHD brain.

Key Points in the Episode

• Why Ron has never followed the rule book, and why that’s his strength
• The importance of play, curiosity, and defiance in his ADHD journey
• How ADHD allowed him to hyperfocus and master diverse passions
• The birth of Yogarate and behaviour mastery for neurodivergent learners
• Why he’s on a mission to revolutionise “professional development”
• A surprisingly powerful ADHD-friendly strategy to find instant calm
• Why embracing your inner child is essential for growth and connection

Links

LINKEDIN:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronshuali/
WEBSITE: www.unpd.wtf
YOUTUBE:  www.ronshualisyoutube.com
TWITTER:  https://twitter.com/realronshuali?lang=en
FACEBOOK:   https://www.facebook.com/RonspeakECE/
INSTAGRAM:   https://www.instagram.com/ron_shuali_m.ed/ 

Thanks for listening.

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🌐 WEBSITE: ADHDifference.nz

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📖 BOOK: The Missing Piece: A Woman's Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing and Living with ADHD

ℹ️ DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or ADHDifference. Read More

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Ron Shuali
• 1:15 Childhood defiance, ADHD diagnosis, and a non-medication path
• 2:53 Following passion, hyperfocus, and non-linear learning
• 4:57 From karate parties to a preschool business empire
• 8:03 Creating Yogarate and behaviour mastery tools for kids
• 11:01 ADHD strengths shining brightly
• 12:37 Redefining professional development: fun, freedom, and play
• 15:52 ADHD strategy: “I wonder what my next thought will be”
• 17:41 Final thoughts: ADHD as a gift, not a flaw

Transcript

JULIE: Welcome to Season 2 of ADHDifference. I'm your host, Julie Legg, ADHD advocate, author of The Missing Piece, A Woman's Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing, and Living with ADHD, and an unapologetic doer of many things. This season, we're turning up the volume with a global lineup of brilliant guests bringing their lived experiences, insights, research, strategies, and resources. And of course, along with a healthy dose of humour and humility. Whether you're neurodivergent yourself or just curious, there's something here for every curious brain. Let's dive in. Today's guest is anything but ordinary. Ron Shuali is an author, motivational speaker, and the creator of Yogarate and Behaviour Mastery. With a wild mix of martial arts, improv, and unfiltered humour, Ron brings drive, laughter, and light bulb moments into every room he walks into. This is Unprofessional Development, and we're here for it. Welcome to the show, Ron. [Thank you.] Now you've been called the 'messiah of the mind' and 'the bad boy of early childhood' and it suggests to me that someone who doesn't really follow the rule book. So I'd love to ask you what did that journey of self-discovery looked like for you? 

RON: It started apparently when I was one years young. My mother told me that when she tried to change the TV station on our TV in 1976, which if some of you remember just two buttons, she changed a channel. I apparently got up, changed the channel back, turned around and said, "I'm the boss." Stomped my foot. And that's when my oppositional world kicked in. I just everything inside me is just defiant towards everything. I don't know what it is. I feel like I have a certain clarity that I see things differently than other people. My wife and I see things amazingly, which is why we're both ADHG, meaning gifted. You know, just magically aligned with each other. For me my journey has been about understanding about the programming that's been programmed into me from government schools. People call them public schools, but we know what they really are. Here in the United States, absolutely and just understanding you know, that there's the things that don't feel right, don't make sense, but we're told to "This is the way it is. This is the way it should be." I started creating a life that I wanted, that everything that was the norm I would immediately do the opposite to see what happened and most of the times it made more sense with your ADHD. 

JULIE: I love that. Are you formally diagnosed with ADHD-G? 

RON: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean my parents had me diagnosed by a psychologist, psychiatrist. I mean, I remember even as young as four, five, but you know, the immediate Ritalin, Adderall thing, it didn't make sense. My nationality, my family's Israeli. I was born in Israel. My mother, while raising me, was a teacher at a school that was super, super tough that she was getting yelled at, screamed at, harassed by students with knives and weapons. So she learned how to get those kids to somehow connect. I don't know how. But so that when it came to the American world here in 81, 82 like at least she was very like "What do you mean you're going to medicate my kid? No. Do you work with them? You do what you have to do to figure out there's a challenge, there's a need, there's a deficiency, figure it out the... What do you just want to zombify? No." And that was awesome. I mean, that was incredible that she just had the understanding to go like, but you know, that's coming from an absolutely different world. The different world of as soon as you're out of high school, 3 to 6 months, you're in the military for 3 years. So, you come into real life after 3 years of military. 

JULIE: Now, tell me how your career has developed. It's really interesting, you know. How do you think your ADHD has assisted in your approach to your teaching and your performing? And you've got martial arts and you've got improv and you've got a whole bunch of things that you have brought with you to get to this point. Can you share a bit of info about that? 

RON: Yeah. For me, just doing whatever I want has always been just a really important thing. And then I discovered my inner child was running me for a long time. And I aligned with it and take it on and whatever I want to do is whatever I wanted to do. I mean, when I was 12, I saw Hulk Hogan being interviewed and I just saw him going, "Let me tell you something, brother. I roll the maniac and say your praise." And I'm just like, "I don't know what this is, but I want to do it." Like, I'm like, "Okay, what do I need to do?" I started martial arts. I started improv classes. I watched standup comedy since I was even younger than that. I started lifting weights. I started doing gymnastics. So it's like when I was interested in something I would hyperfocus for days and then you know, but         the problem is that I didn't have people around me that understood it. My dad's a computer engineer so he understands like 9 to 5, 9 to 6. My mom is neurodivergent but I don't think she ever learned about it or had people in her life to explain what it was. It was just, you know, you're different and you're not supposed to be different, especially from her perspective and annoying my grandparents. So, my whole world was just doing the opposite. So, I mean, I was learning as I was going to college just to go to pro wrestling schools. I never wanted to go to college because college never made sense to me. I mean, it's like, wait, if I want to go to school for business, why don't I just go learn from businessmen? And I mean, if a plumber goes to a plumber, an electrician goes to electrician, and a mechanic goes to a mechanic, why don't I go work at a business to learn business, which is what I did after I dropped out of college the first time. And the second time at a GNC nutrition store learning how to be an assistant manager. And then at 21 doing real estate and learning the real world of real estate. I mean, I spent 40 hours in a real estate course knowing this is ridiculous. All these laws, all this NPC programming, and I sat at the office of the guy that hired me, number one real estate organization in New Jersey. First thing out of his mouth, "Forget everything you learned in real estate. Cool. It's about for sale by owners expires being a listing agent." I mean, it's like I learned bar tending at a bar tending school and then went to my first job and said, "Forget everything you learned in bar tending school. You're only going to open beers and pour wine." So it's like through life I'm seeing all the school and the education is the horse poo designed to I don't know, try to get money from you and lie to you to tell you that a degree or certificate is the only way where now it's beautifully completely opposite. Like I love working with kids and teenagers and I coach parents and teenagers and how to get out of American high school as fast as possible. Get a mentor, homeschool, world school, unschool, micro school, so many options. And because I see that kids only have a certain path. Me, I've been oppositional about everything. I mean, I was teaching, what's it called? Doing a karate birthday party. I was taught how to do karate by a husband and wife team where the husband was an elementary school teacher, wife was a preschool teacher. So, I started learning how to teach kids karate. I'm doing a karate birthday party. A director comes up to me from a preschool and says, "You're great with the kids. Can you do this in a preschool? Do you have lesson plans and curriculum?" And I've already trained my brain yes and improv to go "Absolutely yes," and note to self: create lesson plans and curriculum. And then two months later, I go in there, I'm playing with the kids, I'm doing this, I'm loving it. It was super cool. And then I called up the yeah, it was a chain called the Goddard Schools. There's like 500 preschools. I'm sure you have preschool chains there. And basically I called up the next school and said, "Hey, look, this school loves me. Here's a testimonial. Do you want karate?" Because I was doing karate with kids 24 months. Because the people that taught me, their words to me literally is, "You're going to get a master's in education without the BS of all the theory and stuff that actually works in a classroom, which is insane. The opposite of what traditional education is." So, I call up this other school and I go, "Do you want to do karate?" Like, "No, but do you do soccer?" Soccer. So I'm like, "Yes." And I'm like, "I do soccer." Absolutely. Because I was always taught by them that I'm not teaching karate. I'm not teaching soccer. I'm teaching kids. And then the avenue that I go, so karate is to teach, the vehicle is karate to teach respect. And as I'm doing this deposit, I'm crying going like, I just created something like this didn't exist. So anyway, fast forward 10 years later, I'm running a preschool enrichment company. We're in 80 different preschools. I have 15 instructors. I'm teaching yoga which I created because I started doing yoga about a year before that, I was introduced to it. But a slow beautiful Raja low impact, 2 hours of stretching the fascia of the body and releasing trauma. Not a yoga class that's Americanized. You're doing big stuff. And I fell in love with yoga. And then I'm like, I want to create yoga and something karate together. Roof open, light went in. Ho ho ho. And I literally saw the words yoga, karate, and the K dropped off and the A dropped off, and it was yoga-rate.  I created a behavior system that really works and teaches people how to work with neurodivergent exceptional kings and queens like me and like a lot of the kids that I love teaching. And now the government's preschools, and there's a preschool head start in every town in every city everywhere. It's insane because they understand that you know, early childhood is the most important time of development when it comes to kids not like high school, especially with phones now that they've zombified themselves. And now I'm talking to you. 

JULIE: That is awesome. Well, it's all interconnected. That's what I wanted to say. Look, I've been writing down some notes, Ron, and bringing it back to the ADHD traits. I guess your journey has been a culmination of a whole bunch of things. I've written down 'no barriers'. And that's something that I don't see barriers. If the drive is strong enough, you do it. So, that's loud and clear. I've also got 'following your own path'. And you did that at a young age. And maybe it's rebelling, maybe it's non-conforming. [It's authentic.] Absolutely. I've got 'interconnected' too. I think that everything you're here today and you're doing what you're doing today because of all of these beautiful things happened in your life all coming together. It's not that you were trained in one thing and therefore felt well, "That's it. That's your life." Beautiful to hear. I've got 'entrepreneurism'. And again, that's an ADHD thing if you allow it to happen. And the last one on my list was 'impulsivity' because grabbing these moments, you truly encompass all of those beautiful ADHD traits. So, yay you. And I thank you for sharing that. That's awesome. Awesome. So, I want to ask about the now. You've done so much in these, you know, the decades leading up to right now. What's currently lighting your fire or what's an idea that's brewing that you're going to jump on next? 

RON: So for educators and people that they've heard of the term 'professional development' which is what everybody has to take whether you like it or not. Majority of professional development there's a PowerPoint presenter on there and I don't know, I've just learned that when a PowerPoint slide comes up there it's like the soul of the person leaves the body. So what our whole goal is Unprofessional Development. It's literally just creating workshops, trainings, keynotes. I mean, one we just did, we did it at a water park. Another one we're going to do at a place where they have go-karts and places to sit and eat and just have fun and be silly and let the inner child out. So, it's about creating opportunities that are fun because you know, you know this, if you try to learn something it takes 4 or 500 times to do it if you're doing it like repetitions. But if you do it through play the brain is just goes into a learning a play second play is activated it's like "Oh cool I want to learn about this. I want to learn about a new game. How's this? How's this?" You walk into a casino now you want to learn about all these games not when you're sitting on the computer. So we want to, we want unprofessional development to be huge. We have other speakers that I've met during my travels that I'm trying to get them to be more unprofessional in their keynotes and just do huge things. And then probably in about 5 years, I'm going to when all the systems are set up, I want to start my standup comedy career. But I have a personality side of me that I let out in unprofessional development, it depends on the director. I just did two trainings over the weekend. One was a little more stiff. The other one within a half hour we're dropping the f-bomb. Some of my stuff gets really deep, but then I play a music video. I play a video of a Shiba Inu puppy having a 2-minute spa day and they forget about it, but the seed's already planted. I eventually want to do standup comedy where I also open up their brains and then tell an inappropriate joke that has them just whatever. But the seeds planted and then if they then think about this thing that I planted a month later, they take ownership of it and all of a sudden like things like understanding the dopamine system and understanding right and wrong. And when you say to a child "You get what you get. You don't get upset. Why are you being... aren't you listening to me?" No, thank you. They don't understand that this dopamine system is running. And now after I work with them, I'm like, you can say to a child, "You're not being a good listener." Or you can ask a child, "How can I help you understand my directions?" Because being a good listener is like, what does listening have to do with following directions? But unfortunately, in the... in our language, it's stupid. We took listening and following directions, we matched it together to make it mean the same thing, and then never told the kids. So, I want to do that on a larger scale, but also standup comedy. 

JULIE: Oh, that sounds an exciting future ahead in the not so distant future at all. I love the idea about this unprofessional development. You know, you talked about dopamine and it again that's another ADHD thing. On that front, do you have an ADHD friendly strategy that may seem unprofessional but works really well working for others or for yourself? 

RON: Yeah, let's do it right now. Okay. So, so our brains go often. We have, I mean, if tell me about you, but I have multiple voices in my head. I have a voice that goes, "You're still chubby. Lose weight." I have a voice that goes, "Why are you being so mean to him? He's really healthy. He's had his blood test." And I have a third voice going, "Why are you always annoying him?" Like all this stuff. So, I'm going to give you a question. I'm just going to ask you to ask yourself a question in your brain. And then after you ask yourself the question, I'm just going to ask you what happened. Okay? So, here we go. And this for people watching. Ready? Ask yourself this question in your brain quietly. "I wonder what my next thought will be?" What happened?

JULIE: Nothing. 

RON: Oh, isn't it so nice? I don't know. It's nice for me when there's somebody not yelling at me. I mean, that doesn't sound like my mom's voice, but so what I've discovered, and here's the funny part, too, is when I say discovered, I saw this on TikTok two and a half years ago, one time. It came into my light. And then I've never seen anything like this ever again, 

JULIE: Ron. When would be a good time to practice this? What's your next thought? 

RON: Any anytime. Anytime. Literally, I mean, I do it all the time. When I feel myself be any way that I don't want to be, I wonder what my next thought will be. 

JULIE: That is brilliant. That is brilliant, Ron. Thank you so much. For someone who's listening who's just beginning to realize that their brain is working a little bit differently than others around them or feeling overwhelmed, what would you like them to know?

RON: You're an X-Men. You're an Avenger. We are the gifted. We are the ones that have the superpowers. We are the ones that can hyperfocus. There's nothing wrong with you. They don't understand you. They don't get us. Check out the YouTube video, The Disruptors, that has amazing people with ADHD that it just explains it's a hyper, it's a skill set. Look into it, research it, understand that I can do nothing for a week and a half. I can sit and play video games for hours and days or whatever and I just sit and then there's times that I'll make myself wrong because I'm not being proactive. And then my wife has to remind me, "Didn't you just write a book? Didn't you just create an online course, 10 hours of it? Didn't you just do this? Didn't you just perform in front of 5,000 people?" And then she says things to me like, "Are you mad that it's peaceful now? Like isn't that your goal?" And I'm just like, "Oh." So also find somebody in your life that understands you. ADHD is great because we forget everything in 10 seconds. We don't fight. I've been with my love from day one. We met four years ago in June. And we don't fight because if you don't remember anything that just happened and you're just in love and joy and happiness and wonderfulness. Yeah. Then that's it. You just got to keep on finding the people and be authentic and listen to the universe and use your gifts and get mentorship from people like us that understand it and can guide you. You know, go do yoga, go do martial arts, do one or the other. Doesn't matter how young you are. 

JULIE: Ron, that was awesome. Brilliant words of advice. And on that note, I'd like to say thank you so much for joining me today on the show.