We ADHDers never tend to think of ourselves of people who can achieve goals for two main reasons; one we’ve put down so much that by the time we reach adulthood we think we’re incapable of doing anything write or/ and two; we’ve never learned to set goals in a way that really benefit us. Fortunately, and unfortunately, I’ve been on both ends of that spectrum.
“The route of all goal setting is self-belief, which unfortunately ADHDers tend to lack.”
When I was younger, I thought goals were stuff like achieving the top grades, or being particularly good at something, stuff which I never felt like I was very good at growing up. Little did I know that goals have nothing to do with society’s measurements of achievement. Sure, there will always be outside pressures trying to make you achieve certain things by a certain age, but that isn’t what goals are about.
To understand this, we need to consider the famous quote by Ignacio Estrada “if a child can learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.” We’ve been taught to look at goals through society’s lens of mass majority average, but what us ADHDers need to realise is that we’re not the mass majority and we’re certainly not average either. Therefore, a different approach when it comes to goal setting must be used.
“Unfortunately goals often get linked in with society’s neurotypical milestones which automatically makes them unrealistic for us.”
ADHD Girl
I had lots to get done last week and started making a per day check list and yet I realised that by doing this I wasn’t giving my ADHD brain the flexibility it needed, and I wasn’t allowing for other factors such as mood, emergencies etc. So, I got rid of the days and just a made a list of everything I needed to do that week. This meant each day I could look at my list and say, ‘ok what feels manageable to me right now?’
Goals are only goals if they work for you, otherwise they are just burdens for us to shame spiral over. When you are planning goals, it is important to consider the following:-
Why? – Why do I need to achieve this goal? What will the benefits be? Will it give me less stress? Will it give me a sense of achievement? Is it necessary?
How? -How can I make this work for me? Do I need to break it down into smaller tasks? Do I need to give myself a few breaks while doing it? What will get me motivated to do it? Do I need support with it?
It’s these two important elements that I find are the key to completing tasks whether big or small, just keeping my eye on the why and working through the how, because it enables us to be more flexible with our own needs when it comes to goal setting. Of course, I also live for a good check list and don’t even get me started on how anal I am over my finance budgets…. I just seem to get hyperfocus for crunching numbers to make them work.
The point is achieving goals is more about setting and managing them than it is about proving anything to anybody else, and as soon as we understand that the possibilities become endless. Catch you next week ADHDers and allies where I’ll be talking about how I’ve got on with my new healthy lifestyle eating/ coach which fits in well with this month’s podcast episode.
