Celebrate. It is essential that you celebrate your victories. And every task that you cross off your BATDL is a victory. Unfortunately, I find that most of my clients attach what I call “Yeah, buts” to most of their successes. I got that done but… It took me too long.… I had to work late… It could’ve been more perfect… I had to be reminded… I didn’t get something else done… Regardless of whether or not these other things are true, it doesn’t take away from the victory.
the reality of life with ADHD is that everything is harder for us than our Neurotypical counterpartss. And I don’t mean harder as in the traditional sense of difficult. It’s the boring, tedious, repetitive, every day things that are our kryptonite. It is significantly more difficult for me to muster be initiation and detention to do the laundry or empty the dishwasher than it is for my Neurotypical wife. This is not an excuse. I still expect myself to pull my weight in my relationship. It just takes more of my resources to do that. So whether it’s a big thing, or a small thing, I celebrate everything that I get done. I suggest you do the same.
It’s very difficult to work hard to accomplish something and immediately attach a negative to it. That does not in sent you to work hard to do the next thing. But if you take a moment to celebrate your success, to truly experience feeling good about accomplishing something, you consolidate that good feeling into your sense of self and you feel accomplished. And that feeling will encourage you to accomplish more. And that will lead to more good feelings about yourself. And that will encourage you to accomplish more things. I think you see where this is going. So don’t beat yourself up. Acknowledge your flaws, but don’t let them dominate your sense of self. We certainly can’t ignore our weaknesses. But we do have the power to focus on and accentuate our strengths.
Standard disclaimer: When posting my thoughts here, I feel that content is far more important than perfection. I try to practice what I preach that ‘done’ is better than ‘not done…perfectly.’ So, unlike with my book, I don’t edit much, if at all. I hope you can look past any small imperfections and find the content useful.