Your ADHD isn’t broken. Your systems are.
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It's December. Again.
It’s been the roughest year of my life so far.
In 12 months, major family events and personal life struggles have been crashing down in the midst of building a new career from scratch.
Oftentimes, it feels like it’ll never end. Constant crawling out of low after low.
But I’ve just accepted that’s how life is. And you get to choose how you respond.
Maybe you just need a tiny reset going into the new year. Or maybe your brain, body, and/or life has been stabbing you in the back all year.
Either way, here’s a dead simple ADHD system to get you back on track.
1) Meet your brain where it's at
This comes from my own ADHD coach.
If you're hungry, sleepy, overworked, your brain simply isn't going to be able to operate at 100%.
That's okay. The shame, rushing yourself to "do more," and beating yourself up over how you compare to "everyone else" is only going to make things harder for yourself.
Step one is to let that go. Society tries to convince us otherwise, but everyone has a different starting line.
In fact, everyone is running a different race.
Your brain is where it is. Start there. Not from where you hoped it could be by now.
2) Take the smallest step forward
Begin again. And again. Start over a million times if you have to.
But start at square 1.
You're not completing your goal today. You're moving your foot the first inch of that first step.
Set a goal
Identify a recurring action you can take towards that goal
Forget about the goal, just take the action
For example:
Goal: "I want to get physically fit."
Action: "I'm going to walk to the gym once a week on Tuesday mornings."
Goal: “I want to finish this big work project.”
Action: “I’m going to spend 10 minutes every morning to review the next task.”
You can and should have goals as lofty as Mount Everest and beyond.
But focusing on how far you are from the goal will take away from your ability to make progress towards it.
Brains thrive on momentum, ADHD or not. Once you start the first action, you’ll know exactly what to do next.
3) Build your fallback plan
I'm not going to sugarcoat things. Resetting is hard.
For the longest time, I felt like I had to do everything alone. But just because you can operate on hard mode doesn’t mean you should.
Build a support system:
A list of friends with ADHD who get it, who you can call on to co-work with or just vent to
A list of activities that energize and lift you up when you're feeling low
A toolkit of habits and systems that you know work for your brain (that you can get from this newsletter =) )
Coaches and mentors you can ask for personalized help when you get stuck
4) It's never 100% negative
Despite this past year being extremely challenging, I’ve also experienced the most growth. And, as much as brains like to zoom in on the negatives, there’s a flip side.
Every low almost always follows with a corresponding high.
There is always joy and positivity everywhere, if you simply turn your attention outwards instead of inwards.
ADHD brains are very forgetful, so celebrate your wins.
Even if it feels like your progress is slow, I guarantee you have made progress.
Some of my wins on this newsletter this year include:
14 posts (and counting) emails were sent this year
This newsletter grew by over 3x (!!)
I got to meet many of you in person and over video
Many of you even emailed me to tell me I was missed when I took some necessary breaks. A lot of you read every single thing I write.
For that I am endlessly grateful.
Whether you're cruising in life or crawling out of a rut right now, you're doing excellent.
You got this. =)
This Week: For You
Need help resetting? I’m offering 1:1 ADHD strategy sessions to help you build systems that actually work for your brain. Spots are limited so click here!
Hi, I’m Kat! Welcome to my newsletter—your weekly dose of strategies to work with your extra-interesting brain, not against it.
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— Kat