Are you tired of struggling? Sick of feeling like you’ll never get life right? Pay attention. You’re about to discover my top secret for how to live successfully with ADHD.
This trick that has worked miracles in my life. And, in the lives of my ADHD coaching clients, too. We’re talking about a sure way of making ADHD easier to live with.
You see, ADHD adults have a major flaw that stands out above the rest. A flaw that snowballs; making everything about living with ADHD harder.
What’s this flaw? We focus on our weaknesses. Pushing and struggling to get better doing things we don’t do well.
You do this, right? Pick one thing you really struggle to do. That one thing that is painfully difficult for you to do. I bet that every day you bust your gut to get it done. Or, at least think about it.
And, maybe you can do it for a little while. A few days. Maybe a week. Two weeks if you’re lucky.
But then you fall back to your old habits. And, before you know it you’re right back where you started from. Frustrated and fed up.
This is why you need to rethink how you live with your ADHD. You need a better way.
A Different Approach to Living Successfully with ADHD
Here’s the most important trick. It’s not really a trick. It’s a truth. Accept your weaknesses and do whatever you can to avoid them!
Build your life around your strengths. Focus on improving your ability to do the things you naturally do well.
Why?
If something is hard for you to do, you will avoid it. That means you’ll procrastinate. No matter how noble your intentions, it’s hard to force an ADHD brain to do what it doesn’t feel like doing.
If something is hard for you to do you’ll struggle doing it. You’ll forget; get flustered.
Building your life around your strengths makes you more reliable; more consistent. You’ll find life easier and more joyful, too. Basic ingredients to a successful life.
4 Magic ADHD Success Secrets
Here are four ideas to make this magic ADHD success secret work for you:
- Look at your strengths and weaknesses at the task level. It’s as simple as figuring out what kinds of things you’re good at and what you’re not good at. I’m horrid at math, details, and writing long reports. I’m good at listening, thinking up ideas, and helping others solve problems. That’s why I was an awful and miserable systems analyst in the corporate world and I’m a great and happy ADHD coach.
- Delegate as many of the tasks on your weakness list as you can. There is nothing wrong with getting help! Tami, a client with four kids in school gets overwhelmed keeping track of their homework. She finds delegating homework details to a tutor well worth the cost. Sure it sounds like an extra expense. But it’s sure a lot easier for her to work an extra hour a day to cover the fee then it is for her to fight with her kids about homework.
- Find creative ways to make challenging tasks easier to do. Ed, a client who bogs down paying his bills finds on-line banking so quick and easy, he enjoys doing it. Downloading his bank transactions into Quicken helps keep his check register in order, too. Once he gave up the thought that he needed to balance his checking account each month, keeping his finances organized became almost easy!
- Say NO to volunteering or working in areas focused around your weaknesses. I used to belong to an international service club with lengthy weekly meetings. My ADHD made sitting through those meetings almost painful. I resigned from the club and now volunteer in more active community projects. Also, before taking a job think about what tasks you’ll be expected to do. Can you do them easily? If not, beware. You’re setting yourself up for struggle and potential failure.
This is important. Pay attention to your strengths and weaknesses. Especially if you want to live successfully with ADHD.
Tired of struggling with ADHD? You’re in the right place. ADHD Success is loaded with free, practical tips to help you get organized, manage your time, and live more easily with Adult ADHD. Like what you read? Sign up for the newsletter now! No Spam. I promise!
Hi Dana,
I’ve been searching for information to show my partner that me and our relationship gets lost to him often. I’ve asked him to schedule time in for us just as he does for work meetings and personal appointments that he doesn’t miss because they matter to him. He’s made a commitment to them and he’s really good at his job and knows that if he misses too many appointments, he will not get another or he will have to pay a fee. Money is very important to him ever since he was a young adult and messed up with his credit cards. He is quite intelligent technically and financially. When it comes to his personal life especially our relationship, he is extremely weak. We have done a dance of me feeling lonely and sad, then expressing how I feel and what I need, to him arguing and feeling attacked and not being very nice or accurate with his communication or memory, to me not knowing what to do and giving up, to him seeing what I was saying and apologizing with providing hope for things to be better- for just about 7 years now. I actually moved out last June and had given up but then I was convinced to wait and see that things really could change. However, as you said in your post, it would be a week or two and then old patterns would resurface. I would then make attempts to repair but after a few cycles of doing so, I would have enough pain that I could not continue. Which would happen and does happen every few months. We have educated ourselves a lot with books and courses and podcasts. At the same time, his weaknesses are communication, conflict, organizing, planning, not self aware or aware of his son’s symptoms either at times, nor can he see the symptoms they both share when he’s frustrated, dealing with past trauma and the effects it has on him and others in his life, not remembering past interactions and conversations or want to think about the future (because adhd lives in the now, I know). He has been taking the same medication for years now, and started seeing a therapist over the past year for help working through his trauma. I could write a book about our life but I won’t right now. My entire point to this email was to ask you the question of: Are you telling me that the weaknesses I expressed should not be worked on? And he should miss out on truly healthy and connected relationships? And just focus on work, money and whatever he wants because that is where his strengths mainly lie? I ask because that is what I perceive when I read “Here’s the most important trick. It’s not really a trick. It’s a truth. Accept your weaknesses and do whatever you can to avoid them!”.
Thanks,
Krystal
Hi Krystal, I’m sorry to hear of your struggles. This sounds very complicated. Some weaknesses we have to work on in order to live a life that we want to live. He can get better at communicating – though he may never be really good at it. He can get better at organizing and planning if he learns ways to do it that work for him. What kind of life do you want?