Meeting Yourself Where You're At
Let's start this off with a little bit of permission. We don't have to do everything. Even those things that would be really good if we did them. I know. We should. We really really should, right?
But - and this is a big but - it's going to be okay if we don't.
Of course, there are going to be some things that we just can't not do - we've still got to file our taxes and pay our bills, those things have clear consequences for not doing them. But that's not really what we need to focus on today.
Today we're focusing on those things that we know would be good for us to do. The things where we feel guilty about not doing them.
I'm sure during my list in the intro most of you were nodding along, going, "yeah, I should be doing those things too."
But one thing that we all have to accept is that we only have so much time in a day... but not only that, we only have so much energy we can pour into one day. As Eric Tivers often says, we don't need to be shoulding all over ourselves.
And there are a lot of things that we "should" be doing that we can put on pause for a bit. It's okay that I haven't folded my laundry in the last 6 months. Sure, it takes a bit longer to find matching socks and some of my stuff is a little more wrinkled, but that's where I'm at right now and that's okay.
And here's a little tip for those of you also living perpetually out of your laundry basket - just get another laundry bin so you can still have a place for the dirty stuff to go while the clean stuff is living in the basket.
And I don't want to diminish some of the other things that I know many of us aren't doing, I know not folding my laundry is fairly low on the list of things that are actually important - but it's still something that a lot of us cling to as a sign of whether or not we have things together.
It took me a long time to accept that I only had so much time every day, but the one I'm still working on is accepting that I only have so much energy. And this fact is incredibly important to keep in mind. Often we'll get to the end of a day and feel like, "well I could have done so much more if I hadn't procrastinated so much doing x, y, and z." But that totally ignores the reasons that we were procrastinating, which is usually that we're all just incredibly exhausted.
And I think this is a great place to bring in Brendan Mahan's Wall of Awful model - I did an episode with Brendan last year looking at the Wall of Awful that you can check out - but the quick and dirty of the wall of awful is that we all have tasks that we've built walls around and often these can be simple things like mowing the lawn or doing the dishes. These aren't hard things, but because of the wall of awful, they can suddenly feel like insurmountable tasks. We build our walls through things like failure, disappointment, rejection, and shame.
Check out the episode for tips on getting past your Wall of Awful - hackingyouradhd.com/wallofawful
But the important part here for this discussion is that we do have these seemingly simple tasks that are incredibly hard for us to activate on. And this is important because we tend to try and ignore the fact that we have a wall of awful around these items when we're planning - "we go, well making that phone call is going to be easy so I don't need to really dedicate much of my day to that... except it's actually really fucking difficult for us to do. While that task may be trivial in theory it is something that is going to take a lot more of our energy to complete.
Last year I did an entire series on Energy Manage and its various forms that we call on - Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual.
One of the key takeaways from that series for me was just starting to think about how everything I do takes some sort of energy and that if I want to effectively manage my day it isn't only about sure I have the time to do things. There are certain activities that are going to drain me far more than others.
Take the Live Q&A for example - I love doing the Q&A, it's a ton of fun to engage with everyone and answer questions, but it also takes a lot out of me mentally. If I try and schedule myself to do something like editing or writing for after the Q&A I'm going to have a bad time and I'm not going to get much done. It's a much better time for me to schedule something physical like exercising or something fun like having lunch with a friend.
The point being that I have to meet myself where I'm at with my energy levels. I can't just force myself to do creative tasks when I'm drained... I mean I could, but I wouldn't have very good results.
This is important to keep in mind when we're trying to set our goals as well.
Often when we're looking at our goals - and especially those process goals I was talking about, where you're setting those things you're going to be doing to reach your goals - we tend to set our goals where we want to be rather than where we're actually at. Which of course, why set a goal to stay at the same place - what I really mean, is that when we're setting these goals we're not thinking about where we're at. We're only thinking about where we want to be and then we find ourselves burning out on our goals because they are too far beyond our current abilities.
One of the ways this pops up is that we try and do what worked before without thinking about how our situation has changed. A lot of us are going through this with coming out of our COVID lockdowns. We had all these pieces of our life that existed before 2020 and now we just want to get everything to fit back together. We know what to do, we've seen the finished picture before so it seems like we should be able to figure it out, but as we jam one piece in another two fall out - and we don't blame our circumstances having changed, we blame ourselves because we can't do it.
When I was in college I got into going to this gym, Pure Fitness. When I first walked in to get some information I was encouraged to try out a free session with a personal trainer - I was new to gyms and didn't realize this was the hook to get you signed up for a big package... and that's what I ended up doing (it can be hard to resist that sales pitch with ADHD impulsivity and being a people pleaser). While I hadn't planned on all this it actually worked out fairly well for me. I was doing summer school so my class load was fairly light comparatively and my then-girlfriend (now wife) was working, so I had a lot of time on my hands. So I was at the gym a lot and it showed. I ended up being in some of the best shape of my life working out regularly and really following a meal plan. But all that didn't last. I got back to regular school and having a social life... oh and the gym got sold to LA Fitness and a bunch of stuff changed and then I moved farther away from the gym and I didn't really like the closer ones... yeah...
But the point here is I felt like I had everything figured out for that active lifestyle, but whenever I've tried to repeat that has been less successful. I mean I had those puzzle pieces figured out - it's shouldn't be that difficult, I've already done it so I should be able to just do it again.
But... I have kids now and a job. I'm 36 instead of in my early 20's. I'm living a completely different life. I have a different relationship with exercise as well.
This is a key piece of meeting yourself where you're at - you have to understand that despite having fit the puzzle pieces together before, now you have new pieces. They may look like the old pieces, but they aren't going to fit together in the same way - and they especially aren't going to work it you try to force them.
Additionally, one thing that's become clear with my ADHD is that I'm not always going to have the same level of ease at doing things over again. My ability to complete a task is variable. Some days I'm able to get after it and some days I find myself stalled out from the get go. Often this does have to do with my energy levels day-to-day, but other times it's harder for me to pin down why I can't just do the thing. What this means practically is that we can't plan on things always going their easiest - we have to plan for those days when things are hard. Sure it means our written schedule won't look nearly as busy, but it will be much better at reflecting reality.
Our big question now is, well how do we meet ourselves where we're at? How do we avoid going overboard on planning and overwhelming ourselves?
Just as I started out the episode with, we want to start with self-compassion. Being able to tell ourselves that it's okay that we're not going to do everything is going to make everything else easier. If we're stuck on what we "should" do we're not going to be able to make any progress here. We absolutely need to accept that there are in fact limitations to what we can do and that we only have so much time and energy. And beyond that, it doesn't help fighting that notion or being bitter about it.
I know, this part is hard. I recently was listening to another podcast that comes out twice a week and thinking oh man, I should try and do something like that and... then eventually I calmed myself down and accepted that I wasn't that person. That they probably had a team working on his podcast while it's just me putting this thing together right now.
And that there is a key that we don't realize in a lot of comparisons - we're only looking at the front end of what they're doing. We're not thinking about all the backend that goes into these things. That person that seems to be able to do everything? Maybe they have an assistant helping them along... or a team of assistants. We rarely see the entire picture of what someone else is doing and without knowing we make bad assumptions.
Our next step is going to be deciding what we're not going to do. I always still battle this one because I don't like setting the limitations but whenever I've actually set out those "not-to-do" things I'm always happier with my choices. ADHD's impulsivity makes a lot of ideas seem really great in the moment and that can lead us to starting many more things than we could ever keep up with. If spend a little time defining those things we're not going to do this can help cut down on those spur of the moment - oh I'm going to start up a meditation practice or I'm going to sign up for the course on how to do watercolors. Yes, both great things and sound like fun... but do I honestly have the capacity to fit either of those things into my life now? Yes, but only if something else comes out... and I'm not ready to give up anything right now.
While there will always be more things I want to do, it is better to just do a few things well (or well enough) than to do many things poorly.
Once we know what we're doing, we can then work on figuring out what we're capable of - and again, not what we wish we were capable of but really, what could we get away with on a bad day, because remember we want to plan for when things are bad not when things are easy. When things are easy we won't really need the plan, but when things are hard that plan is absolutely a necessity.
And this a great way to start with our process goals. Let's say I did decide that I wanted to get into meditation. Well, I've seen plenty of things for 15-30 minutes, but I don't think I'm there yet. While perhaps that would be more ideal, maybe I'm at getting in 5 minutes a day... or hell even 1 minute. If I want to build up this practice it doesn't really matter where I start, what matters more is if I create a practice that I can maintain. I know that I'm not going to maintain 15 minutes a day.
And this comes back to self-compassion because maybe you did start out with a goal of 15 minutes a day but found that just wasn't sustainable for you. That's okay. It's okay to admit that it's hard, if it wasn't hard then meditation wouldn't have become a multi-billion dollar industry with 1000's of apps. Yeah I know we're just sitting there, but even those people who don't have ADHD have trouble with it, so let's give ourselves some slack.
Or take my laundry example - if I decided that I really wanted to get on top of it, well, then, my smallest step might be putting away 1 piece of clothes every time I got a new outfit out... I wonder, would one sock count or would I want it to be a pair... regardless, that's a small doable step. And maybe I could do more. Maybe I could put away 2 or 3 pieces every morning or 5... but the point is to just start small in the beginning. Again, we don't want to overwhelm ourselves by doing too much - and yeah laundry is a small thing but it still takes capacity to get it done.
And one of the most important things is we can celebrate our small wins because they are our stepping stones. We're not going to get to those big wins without a string of small wins along the way, so celebrate those wins. We don't need to diminish those wins with things like, "oh, it was nothing" like hell it was nothing because I went to the grocery store I get to have a healthy dinner tonight and that's awesome, that's absolutely a win. This is the 80th episode of Hacking Your ADHD, but I could have never gotten here if I didn't release each and every episode before that. Each individual episode may not feel like a big win to me, but over time and putting it all together it does create something that, well I think is pretty awesome and I hope you think so too.
This Episode’s Top Tips
We only have so much time and energy we can put into any given day - giving ourselves the self-compassion to accept this is our first step in meeting ourselves where we're at.
When we're trying to add things back into our life that we've previously done it can feel like we picked up the wrong puzzle pieces and this is because we often don't think about how our circumstances have changed. Just because we did something before doesn't mean it will be necessarily easy for us to just pick right back up.
After we approach what we're capable of with self-compassion we need to decide on some of the things that we're not going to do. This gives us the mental space to focus on the things we can do right now.
Celebrate your small wins because they are the stepping stones to reaching your goals.
