October is ADHD Awareness Month so we wanted to go back to basics and talk about tips for living successfully with ADHD.
What does living successfully with ADHD mean to you? Perhaps you think success is focusing more easily or following through on projects. Perhaps it’s getting organized or finding a job more suited to your creative personality. It means something different for everyone.
But what you need to know is that living successfully with ADHD is possible!
Fortunately, as an ADHD Coach, my clients show me firsthand how targeted guidance and hard work make success possible. These successful ADHD adults have found ways to translate ADHD’s emotional sensitivity and impulsiveness into emotional intelligence, intuition, and boundless energy.
You can live a satisfying and successful ADHD-friendly life!
9 Tips for Living Successfully with ADHD
1. Increase Your Personal Awareness
Awareness is a challenging, yet essential, ADHD Success skill. We tend to careen through life like pinballs, impulsively chasing whatever grabs our attention. To be truly successful, you need to gain awareness of your thoughts and actions. This doesn’t mean you won’t occasionally ‘pinball’. However, it’s essential you frequently check in with what you’re doing so you can catch yourself and get back on track.
2. Create Systems and Structures to Make Your Life Run More Easily
Many ADHD adults avoid systems and structures, thinking of them as boring; limiting flexibility and creativity. In reality, the structures and systems will make your world more ADHD-friendly. Cleverly set routines in your personal and business life allow you to stay on an even course so you can accomplish essential everyday tasks while still expressing your individuality and creativity.
3. Exercise Regularly
Medical research shows that regular aerobic exercise helps to regulate the chemicals in the brain at the root of ADHD, allowing for better focus and less impulsivity. For ADHD adults with hyperactivity, exercise will also help burn off extra energy.
4. Eat a Healthy Diet
I often compare the ADHD brain to a high-performance race car. Like a race car, people with ADHD need excellent, regular fuel to function optimally. That means well-balanced meals of lean proteins, hearty grains, fruits, and vegetables. Easier said than done. It’s common for ADHD adults to forget to eat or buy groceries. How can you change your habits and create structures so you will eat an ADHD-friendly diet to give your brain the fuel it needs?
5. Get Enough Sleep
Exhaustion makes ADHD brain fog and concentration worse. Do you know how much sleep you need each night to function at your best? What’s keeping you from getting enough sleep and what can you do about it?
6. Improve Your Self-Talk
How do you talk to yourself? Do you call yourself names like stupid or lazy? Negative self-talk undermines your self-esteem and limits your success. As the saying goes, ‘What I Say To Myself is My Reality.’ Talk nicer to yourself. ADHD success starts from within.
7. Learn How Much You Can Handle
Every ADHD adult I’ve met has an optimal number of activities he or she can juggle at any one time. Stimulation helps us focus and having multiple things to choose from provides that stimulation. However, having too many things to do shuts us down with overwhelm. You’re looking for the balance between being bored with not enough to do and being overwhelmed with too much to do.
8. Play to Your Strengths
When you focus your world on improving your weaknesses, you will struggle. Building your life around the things you’re good at naturally leads to more effortless ADHD success. Sure, you need to manage your weaknesses; there are things in life you just have to do. But, a strength-focused, weakness-managed, life makes the difference between success and struggle.
9. Get the Best Treatment for Your ADHD
Sadly, many people think that once they start taking medication, their ADHD will magically disappear, only to find this isn’t so. Studies show that a three-tiered approach, including medication, counseling, and ADHD coaching, provides the most effective ADHD management. Working with ADHD is a highly specialized niche. Make sure the professionals you select are highly ADHD trained.
Success often seems like a far away dream to ADHD adults. But it’s not. Living successfully with ADHD is possible!
Dig deeper into living successfully with ADHD with:
- Kick Some ADHD podcast: Episode #144: What’s Blocking Your Sleep?
- Kick Some ADHD podcast: Episode 49: Self-Talk Sabotage
- Sign up for the ADHD Success Club to learn systems and structures to help! You can join at any point – check it out here.
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!
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