5 Ways to Keep Motivation & Make Accomplishments with ADHD
Quick Question- Does this resonate? Because of ADHD, you struggle with staying motivated and often get distracted or unfocused on your goal causing you to get overwhelmed.
The good news is, there are ways to stay on track and sustain momentum, while feeling calm and focused, even with ADHD. Read below, to learn 5 totally manageable ways to stay on track and achieve success.
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Grab an accountability partner or body double with someone. This can be a best friend, family member, or anyone willing to spend time with you while doing a task. By having a person with you, it will encourage you to complete the task, decrease distraction, and may make the task that needs to be done more enjoyable. This can either be done in person or over video chat. The important piece is to have someone with you there, live.
Take One Small Step Each Day By Taking a small step each day, it allows you to see big progress over time. A project, goal, etc. can seem a lot more manageable when you only need to do something small. Also, by doing one thing each day, it keeps your goal on the radar.
Use A Tracker Sometimes, you know you want to accomplish a goal, but it can be difficult to stay on track. Using a tracker can help you keep your small steps organized and allow you to see progress overtime. It will also keep you on track and helps with accountability.
Practice deep breathing/paying attention to your breath. Before you begin working on a goal, practice some mindful breathing or deep belly breathing. Doing this type of breathing helps with overwhelm because it is calming. It also helps you be more grounded and oriented to your task, which helps with focus.
Here’s How you can Mindfully Deep Breathe:
Begin to notice your breathing (your inhalation and exhalation).
Next, deepen your breath by breathing into your belly for 4 seconds and exhaling out for 6 seconds while deflating your belly. Do this for at least 3 rounds of breath.
If you get distracted, it’s totally okay! Just bring your attention back to your breath. It will help to get you calm and focused for a task. Also, by bringing the attention to your breath, you are training your brain to focus and redirect your attention when it needs to be redirected.
5. Pay Attention to your Self Talk Whether we realize it or not, a lot of the time, we say things to ourselves that are sabotaging our success. Before you start a task, do a quick check in- and ask yourself, “What thoughts are surfacing as I think about completing this task?” If thoughts such as “I can’t do this.” or “I’m not competent” surface, it may only mean you are feeling overwhelmed and need to break the task down more or let yourself know it’s okay to make a mistake. If you’re struggling with changing your thoughts, it would be helpful to talk it out with someone, such as an ADHD coach.
I hope this has helped you sustain motivation and make accomplishments. With a few changes, you really CAN do it! If you would like to go deeper and have someone help you with each step of the way, feel free to reach out for a free consultation HERE.
Also, if you’d like to learn more about my experiences with using these simple, but powerful tools, read below.
My Experience with the Above Strategies
My Accountability Partners Having an accountability partner or partners has been extremely helpful for me. Believe it or not, I couldn't have built this business and you wouldn’t be reading this blog right now without accountability partners. I meet with a group of people on a regular basis who are also business owners. When we see each other, we work on goals together.
Taking 1 small step each day has been really helpful! I definitely have a tendency to get overwhelmed when I am working on a goal. There have been many times when I looked at a task and just felt completely stressed about it. When I was studying for my psychotherapy licensing exam, there was a ton of information I needed to learn. It was a lot! I bought a huge book that had all the information I needed to learn in it, but it looked like too much. I decided to look at the table of contents and go chapter by chapter. Each day I would look at a small amount of the material (a few pages or sometimes paragraphs) and study. Sometimes, taking one small step would lead to me doing even more than I had planned. I did this for about a year and was amazed by the amount of information I absorbed by studying a little at a time.
Using trackers has been helpful to see how much I have done. When I was building my business, there were a lot of parts to it, which felt overwhelming. A tracker helped to break down all of the parts of the business that needed to be accomplished. Sometimes I would feel discouraged because there was a lot to do, but when I would look at my tracker, it would help me see how much I had done and stay motivated. It was a nice dopamine hit.
Practicing Mindful Deep Breathing. As a yoga instructor, I have seen the value of deep breathing many times! Even though it is such a simple technique it is incredibly powerful. I have a tendency to feel dread before I start a task, especially if it is something I don’t enjoy. Breathing helps bring me into the present moment and see the task one step at a time instead of one big scary task. It grounds me so I can focus on what’s in front of me and helps me from daydreaming or thinking about other things. When I was becoming a psychotherapist, I had to take a licensing exam. I had spent a year studying for this exam, which was a struggle in itself. However, with the help of accountability partners (people I studied with who were also taking the exam) and taking my studying one step at a time (see above), I was able to prepare.
It was a long 3 or 4 hour test where I needed to be seated for a while. The idea of taking this exam was daunting and very uncomfortable, not to mention overwhelming. Also, standardized tests are challenging for me. When I sat down to take the test, I noticed myself getting distracted and overwhelmed, so I started to mindfully breathe. As I paid attention to my breath, I was able to become more focused and grounded. It also allowed me to check in with my thoughts. This brings me to my next stratedgy, paying attention to your self talk.
Paying Attention to Self talk is really important. I notice when I pay attention to the things I say to myself, I feel better. For example, when I was doing my yoga teacher training, we had to come up with yoga class sequences to teach. I loved doing yoga, but didn’t pay attention to how the classes were organized or how to transition into different poses. When I got ready to design my class, I seemed to be avoiding time to work on it. I actually did some deep mindful breathing and then checked in with my self talk. I heard, “You can’t do this!” As I paid more attention, I realized I needed to break down this task.
First, I needed to get more information on how to logically organize a class. Next, I had to decide what type of theme I wanted to have. After that, I had to choose which poses would make the most sense for me to include in my class. Next, I organized the class in a logical sequence, starting from the warm up, the middle part, and the cool down. I was able to create this whole yoga class sequence because I did some deep mindful breathing and paid attention to my self talk. This led me to successfully become a yoga teacher. I even continued my training and took a second yoga teacher training to deepen my knowledge. From these two tools, I was able to create my yoga class, which led me to make more accomplishments. Without them, I would not have been able to accomplish as much.
COPYRIGHT © 2024 Mary Ginnetti
I shared my own personal experiences because I wanted to show you that these strategies can really work! I hope this article has given you tools to help you keep up momentum and have successes. Change really is possible! If you would like, reach out for a free consultation HERE.