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Today we're going to talk about how to use easy habits to do anything. In this episode, I'm going to help you create ADHD friendly goals. And when I say goals, I do not mean it's the new year. You'll hear more about it here so stay tuned!
If goals are not your thing, stay with me.
These methods may change your mind about goals.
Get the Habit Tracker here
What you'll learn:
How establishing simple daily habits can lead to achieving larger goals
The importance of asking 'why' to maintain motivation
Utilizing a habit tracker to maintain focus and progress on goals
Recommendations for resources and tools, including the book 'Goals' by Zig Ziglar
"You need a why for why you're doing these things. You're not going to want to do the things you set out to do to get the goals if you don't really care about them, if you don't have a good reason."
Useful links mentioned:
Free Resource list
Learn To Thrive With ADHD on YouTube
Listen to the Episode:
Or watch the video on Youtube
Click here to read the transcript:
Welcome to Learn to Thrive with ADHD. This is the podcast for adults with ADHD or ADHD-like symptoms. I'm your host, Coach Mande John. I'm here to make your life with ADHD easier. Let's get started.
Okay, welcome back, guys. I have something prepared for you that has really helped me with my goal setting, and I will talk to you about something I have coming for you for goal setting, but today we're going to talk about how to use easy habits to do anything. So set yourself up for success. You can download the habit tracker.
You'll find the link in the description on YouTube, or if you're listening to the podcast, it'll be in the show notes. Turn off all distractions, relax, take what applies, leave the rest, and take action. And I just wanted to let you guys know I'm in a little bit of a different situation. We once a year go out to a cabin and that's where I'm at right now.
So, the lighting is not ideal. That's okay. But I want to make sure I'm showing up for you every week. So here we are. So, I'm an experienced ADHD coach for adults, multiple business owner, mom of three. Wife of 25 years, animal lover. I do have ADHD. Yes, I'm ADHD hyperactive and I'm a teacher at heart. So, I like to teach things in this way.
Here is the habit tracker that I was talking about, and you can go to learntothrivewithADHD.com/free-downloads to get that. So, ADHD friendly goals is what we're going to be creating here. And when I say goals, I do not mean it's the new year. We'll get to that, but I will share with you how I made my goals super ADHD friendly.
If goals are not your thing, stay with me. These methods may change your mind about goals. So here is a book recommendation I have for you. I actually did all my goal setting, got it all together, really went through a method to do it and then realized that most of the methods I was doing came from this book Goals by Zig Ziglar.
So that is something that I would recommend you read. If you're not big into books, that's okay. The goal setting webinar that I have is going to combine what you would learn in this book along with the many Habit books that I have read. Along the way, so, um, you'll get the information no matter what, but for the ADHD brain, if you've not heard of Blinkist, this is not a promotion.
This is just where they have book summaries and a lot of times you can do the summary and read a book in 15 to 20 minutes and decide if you got all the information, you needed or decide if it's a book you want to read in full. I want to talk about the most important areas of your life. And with my clients, I call these buckets.
And I actually use buckets as a tool to prevent overwhelm. But there's an amazing way to use them to prioritize your goals. And you want to use constraints with your goal setting so that you can make success more likely. So, we're going to separate your life into your four most important areas. Okay, you need a why for why you're doing these things.
You're not going to want to do the things you set out to do to get the goals if you don't really care about them, if you don't have a good reason, and by setting up the four areas of your life, it gives you all the good reasons, because why? They're the four most important areas of your life. So, what to do?
How do you do this, right? Write down everything that you can think of that really matters to you. And now I want you to take all these things and categorize them into four broader areas so that they all fit. And let me give you an example. So, an example would be, and these are my personal examples, personal, spiritual, health would be one area.
Business or for people that might work for other people. Family and home relationships. Self-work slash improvement. So, what's interesting is these are my four for this year. My four for last year were actually a little bit different. Mostly the same, but just a little bit different. And so, this may change year to year.
So, we want these goals to be important, but doable. We want them to make a significant difference in these important areas of your life. And you want to know what you will work on daily and that you can do it. Okay, so what are the actions? Under each of your four goals, what are the actions you know you need to take regularly in order to accomplish these goals this year?
So, reduce and simplify. I put a little kiss here because what's that saying is keep it simple. Stupid. Let's say keep it simple, silly. Let's do that one but reduce the actions that need to be taken for each goal down to three to five of the most important actions for each one. You want to take into consideration what's going to happen automatically, and you can just take those off the list completely.
And now turn these things into regular actions, daily, weekly, and monthly actions. So, why track habits? It keeps your habits in front of mind. It keeps you motivated. I don't know about you, but I am a box checker. It makes, nothing makes me happier than to check the box to say that I did it or mark the thing off the list.
It actually gives you a hit of dopamine, which is what we need. It helps you evaluate your days, weeks, and months. And again, you can go to learntothrivewithadhd.com/free-downloads and you can get this habit tracker and you're going to have this every week. So, you're going to want to print this out each week and fill it out.
And keep track of what you've done. So, make your daily actions towards these goals silly easy. Make them simple enough that you don't feel dread. Make them easier to do than not do. And you won't always feel like doing them, even though they're super simple. I had a personal example the other day where there was a thing left on my list that I needed to do, and I really didn't want to do it.
And honestly, this thing was going to take me three minutes. But my brain was telling me, you don't have to do it. You don't, this isn't really that important. It's not something we need to do today. And I was able to look at it logically because I had the tracker right in front of me and go, okay, do I want to look at this tomorrow and have this not marked off?
Or do I want to take the two to three minutes that it's going to take to do it? Do I want to be upset with myself that I didn't do it? Or do I just want to go ahead and take the time to do it right now? And so, I just went ahead and did it. So, the tracker is super helpful, keeping them so simple. But it's kind of hard to say no, it's so helpful, especially to our ADHD brains.
So, what makes this different? You're in touch with your goals daily and taking action daily. You won't forget, drop the goal, or give up on your goals after a few weeks. And it's never been this easy. So, what do we usually do when we have goals or when we have something that we want to change?
For example, we'll do really good for a week or two weeks.
And then we'll give up and there's reasons for that. Our, our brain has its priorities, it wants to keep us safe, it wants to keep everything the same, it wants to conserve energy, and that's what's happening is we're kind of fighting our brain's priorities. So, this is what makes it different. It's super simple.
You're going to be in touch with it every day. Accountability. You can work with a coach one on one like me. You can join the ADHD Academy where we have group coaching, courses, resources, communities. When you work one on one with me, you actually get both the Academy and the one-on-one sessions. And the one on one is really cool because we're working specifically on your goals, on what you want to achieve, on what you want to change, on what you want to improve, what skills you need to build.
So, goal setting the ADHD way, finally a way to break down and achieve goals that work, little typo there, that work for your ADHD brain, and you will see a link in the description or the show notes to get on the waiting list for this. So, I will give it to you free when it comes out. Make every day a new year.
I don't know where I read this. I think it was in a book, but they talked about make every day a new year. Don't wait till January 1st. Make every single day a new year. You can start anywhere. Belief is the most important thing. You have to know that you can do it. Treat every single day like the new year.
We just talked about that. Never miss twice. Never miss twice is something I got from Jerry Seinfeld, and he talked about, when he would write his jokes. And his goal, he would have a big calendar that he would write X's on there when he did his joke writing. And his rule for himself was never miss twice.
And so, I do that with my clients all the time when they're working on daily habits. The goal is never miss twice. And what that does for you is it makes it where weeks and months don't go by, where you haven't done the thing, but also what it does for you is it allows you to go okay, yeah, I didn't do it today, but I can jump right back on tomorrow.
Alright! Thank you so much for being here, and I will see you guys next week. Bye.
Thank you for your time and especially your attention today. If you haven't looked into the ADHD Academy, you'll want to do that. This is my membership with bingeable courses, weekly live coaching, new courses every month, a community of like-minded people, and more. Be sure to head over to www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/membership to get the details. See you next week.
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