First Steps for moms with ADHD attention deficit disorder, Part 2 #002
First Steps for moms with attention deficit disorder, Part 2: This month on Motherhood in ADHD, we are discussing the first steps. Part 2 discusses outlining what your success story will look like with vision boards and goal setting.
Patricia Sung 00:03
Welcome to motherhood in ADHD, I'm your friend Patricia Sung. My mission is to be a lighthouse for mothers with ADHD, helping you find your path to success by learning to appreciate your ADHD as an asset. I'm seeking to change the paradigm that ADHD means your life is doomed to be a hot mess. So I'm sharing strategies and encouraging you in your pursuit of happiness, to love who you are every day of your ADHD.
Patricia Sung 00:37
Hey there successful mama, it's your friend Patricia. Today, we're working on our series, that is first steps of what to do when you find out you have ADHD as a mom. And today, we're specifically talking about determining what your success story looks like. So just like if you have in the car, you wouldn't just start driving and hope you end up somewhere good. You always have a destination in mind, if you're heading to work, or you're heading to the museum, or you're heading to the park, you know where you're going. And that's how you figure out how you're going to get there. And just like you could do it from memory, or you can look it up ahead of time, or you could just plug it into Google Maps, you can do the same thing with your life. If you decide you want to get to the goal of say, running a marathon. And you just plug it into Google and go that Google decides how you're going to get there, not you, which I don't know about you. But I don't want someone else determining how I'm going to get my success, I want to be the one who determines that. So yeah, Google's going to give you a couple of options. And you can do the research and figure out which one makes the most sense. That's a great plan. But just putting into Google and hit start, you could end up not where you want to be, because there's a traffic jam that comes up, etc. And that's just not how we want our life to flow.
Patricia Sung 02:01
We don't want traffic jams, we don't have time for that for moms, we got to get there as quick as possible. So in setting that goal of your marathon, you know, you're going to think about what's the plan, you know, I needed to sign up for the marathon. So I have a set goal, okay, I have three months to get this done. So I've got three months to train for this, because I've already signed up, I know it's happening, you come up with a plan of gradually increasing your runs, maybe you get a running partner to keep you accountable, you have that whole plan set ahead of you of how you're going to get there. And I want us to have that for our lives, too. So to figure out how you're going to be successful, you need to figure out what that looks like.
Patricia Sung 02:43
The reason that I think that vision boards or vision statements, or whatever you want to make or call them are so useful is that if you've known me for 2.5 seconds, you've heard me talk about how much I adore Marie Kondo and her whole method of organizing your house. And I recently went through lesson five, which is sentimental items. And I found several of my vision board vision statements that were floating around in boxes. And I had completed every single thing that was on those lists, except for running a marathon because it changed my mind. And I do not want to run a marathon anymore. But it blew my mind to look back at those and see what I had accomplished knowing that I had set my goals and my sights on something and was able to get there. One of the lists was probably from almost 15 years ago, and it was written in an old journal. And that was the one where I had done everything except for the marathon.
Patricia Sung 03:48
I also found one that was from probably 10 years ago that was drawn in crayon, and I had accomplished every single thing on there. And that was before I had gotten married and had kids but I knew where I was going. And I made it. So seeing those two things. And knowing how I was successful in those things that I set out just made this feel so much more impactful knowing that it works. So what's your goal? You need to have a vision for where you're going. And I know you're thinking, hey, Patricia, I don't have time for that. I'm alone. I get it. Figure out where you can make time for this. It might be on your way to the grocery store. You sit in the parking lot for a couple of minutes while your kids are strapped in, you give them a snack. They can't go anywhere. And you think about it for a couple minutes. Or maybe when you're doing an art project with your kids. You could color your vision board in some crayon. Try not to overthink this it doesn't have to be a work of art. It just has to be done.
Patricia Sung 04:51
One of the things that I've been really working on is the saying Done is better than perfect. So just get it done. Find that five minutes where you can pause, think about this for a second and jot it down. I know this can also be hard because you have to think about what is not going well also, which can be a little disappointing. And so know that this isn't necessarily the easiest task. But trudging through those yucky parts that you don't really want to think about is worth it in that. So just have that positive attitude.
Patricia Sung 05:32
When you go into it, knowing that, yes, I'm gonna have to struggle through some unfortunate parts. But it's just temporary. And I'm going to power through so that I can outline where my success lies. If you get lucky, and you happen to find a few minutes by yourself, and recommend doing a little bit of meditation, or clearing your mind just for a couple minutes ahead of time, so that you can really focus on you and not get as distracted by grocery lists and things to do. So as you scribble down a few sentences, or it can be phrases, you could draw pictures. Just think about what is that successful life look like for you in this season right now. I think a lot of times as moms, especially if you're a stay at home, mom, you think about your life just isn't as exciting. And you know, your goal isn't climbing Mount Everest or running marathons or doing some super cool thing. But then you're selling yourself short. You deserve to be successful, and feel good in your life, even when it's mundane and diaper changing. Snot wiping days, you deserve to get to the end of the day and feel good about what you accomplished. So don't sell yourself short, just because you're not having fancy dancy goals, they're still important, and they're still your goals.
Patricia Sung 07:04
Now, if you have time, that same day, great, if not touch on this a day or two later. But I want you to look at all those things that you put on the paper or in the list on your phone that would make you feel successful. And I want you to choose the top three, what would make you feel the most accomplished the most successful if you tackled these three things First, and got them tucked away in order. I think one of the things that people with ADHD struggle with is trying to do all of the things right now. And we can't be good at everything all the time. You can be good at lots of things at different times, but you just can't fix everything right now. So look at your list, figure out what are those top three things that would make you feel successful. And you might be someone who says I want to tackle three easy goals quickly so that I can get that momentum going. You might be someone who says I want to tackle the biggest hardest thing on here first, or you can look at it and say what are the three things that would make the most impact in my life. That's what I did.
Patricia Sung 08:15
Now, if you are totally in this, and you think this sounds like the coolest thing ever, I recommend looking into Laura Casey, she has a whole concept of cultivating your life. So if you think about a garden, when you go to plant stuff, 90% of what you do to garden is prep work, you're making your vegetable garden beds, you're prepping the soil, you're getting everything ready, so that you can have a fruitful harvest. And so she really works on that prep work in creating your successful life. And I just really enjoyed what she's doing. So you can dive in with her if you want to get super detail on this. But one of my favorite sayings she has is knowing your Yes, allows you to say no. So if your first goal is losing some weight or being more healthy or exercising more, and you know that you have plans on Tuesday at 9am to meet a friend for a walk. And then someone asks you Hey, could you volunteer at the school at 9am on Tuesday, if you know that your priority right now is exercising, then it's a lot easier to say no to someone asking you for that. But their commitment like volunteering at the school because you know what's most important right now what I am working on is exercising more. So it's just a lot easier to say no to that other thing. When you know what your yes is and that your exercise is more important in this stage right now because you've set that priority. So I'm gonna run through real quick some of the things that I wrote down for my 2019 goals brainstorm. Again, it's just freezes. I didn't even draw it this time or right now. sentences. But I prioritized the following three things that I'm going to tackle.
Patricia Sung 10:05
The First one is more sleep. So I've been working on trying different ways to get myself to bed earlier because I have a year and a half year old, who still is very inconsistent on his wakeup time, so I have to go to bed earlier. To accomplish that I actually have an accountability partner, I have a good friend who's been trying to do the same thing. And so we text each other at 1030 at night and make sure that we are both either in bed or working our way there.
Patricia Sung 10:38
The second one was calm evenings. You know, if you have littles you know that the doodoo hits the fan, calm around five o'clock. And then when you have older kids, that's when you're trying to get homework done. And you have all the activities. And one of the things my husband and I talked about when we were looking at what we wanted to do this year was it he just felt like our house was too chaotic, which, you know, when you have ADHD, you live in chaos all the time. So sometimes you don't notice that your environment gets really chaotic, because that's just your state of being. And so for him, it was just too much. And so I committed to making the evenings more calm. And so I've given myself like a rough schedule of how we're going to tackle things. And granted, it's a little bit easier for me in this stage, because my kids are both small. And we don't have so many activities going on in the evenings. But we do have the variability of my husband travels a lot for work. And so sometimes he's here, sometimes he's not, I would say he's gone probably 40 to 50% of weeknights. And so we have two different routines when he's here versus when he's not here. And that's okay, that's just what works for us. But I have a run through of kind of how I want the evening to ideally run, it never goes that way. But at least I have an order of things to kind of keep things running smoothly.
Patricia Sung 12:04
I've been working on prepping dinner stuff earlier in the day. So that way, I'm not trying to cook dinner with two grumpy kids at my feet. And so the other goal that I had for the beginning of this year is to get this podcast launched. And obviously, since you're listening to it, it's happening. My list included lots of other stuff, including trying to spend more time with friends spending better quality time with my family, not just being there, but focusing on the quality of it. So there's a lot of stuff on my list. But I can't fix all the problems right now. So I told myself, the first two that I'm going to tackle are getting more sleep, having calmer evenings and then getting this podcast going. And I'm already halfway through January and all those things are happening. You may need to only start with two things. Or maybe you only start with one thing. I didn't fix all those things at the same time I tackled one, got it going tackle the second one, got it going tackle the third one, got it going. And then I'm going to wait until those things are well established and are running on autopilot before I tackle new things.
Patricia Sung 13:08
They always say it takes 28 days to establish a habit. I think it takes longer than that. Considering that we're moms and we're not getting enough sleep and we have too much stuff going on. I'm going to try to give myself more time than that. But those are the three things that I'm tackling right now. Okay, for now, it's your turn. I want you to take a couple minutes. Don't think long and hard on it. Just jot down what's going to make you feel successful in your life in this stage right now. Take the top three things that you want to tackle first they are going to make you feel the best after you get those three things done. And start thinking about how you're going to get there.
Patricia Sung 13:47
Talk to you later. Sweet mama. Thank you for listening to motherhood and ADHD. For more resources head over to our website. www.motherhoodinadhd.com