ADHD Motivation: Persistence Beats Consistency

Let's talk about determination and being ADHD and the motivation. Let me tell you, the last few months have been a tough way. It's been tough to stay motivated and determined to fix these things and get moving. So how did I stay motivated? How did I do that?

Okay.

Bye now.

Yes, ma'am.

That's how I stayed determined. Oh, I love that. When you have community and support, I mean, it's really been everyone. So many of you that have followed me and jumped right on the bandwagon when I had to move and restart and do all those things. There's so many, I can't even name all of the names at this point. All of you have been amazing. We've got Avery and Vida, obviously, and Catherine and Denise and Mary Beth and Emma and Jess and Jessica. And all of the peoples. And I know I'm forgetting a lot of names, ladies. I'm sorry that there's too— it's too early and I've only had this much coffee. But staying motivated and concerned is all about— it always comes back to like my top— why have I found success in life? Community, accountability, and body doubling. So when you are frustrated and can't get out of your own way, what works for you?

I'm frustrated and I can't get out of my own way. It's definitely accountability. It's— I have to, whether it's my husband or 9 times out of 10, it's you or even my kids. It's like, hey, I really need to get this laundry folded. Can someone tag team it? Tag, you know, with me or just hang out with me and talk to me while I get it done? Because ADHDers will show up for other people. We just have a hard time showing up for ourselves sometimes.

I don't know what I would have done without all of the people in my community, in my world. Even though I felt like my world just fell like apart. Without, I, there's no, I was showing up for everybody else. There was no way I was showing up for myself at that point, like at all. And even that was calling it in for a while. Just energy. I was so tired. I was so burned out. But I think one of the coolest things is the, the feeding of the dopamine needs. When you can't make your own, when you are frustrated, when you are burned out, when you are falling apart, and let's be clear, September, October, November was me falling apart. You gotta steal somebody else's dopamine.

Yeah.

Gotta.

Yeah. Or share it anyway.

Yeah. Oh, I'm stealing everybody else's. Like I was a dopamine sucker. Now, being on the other side of having people suck my dopamine, that gets hard. And that made me feel terrible because I just wasn't able to get my own. I just, I had to rely on others, but you want to know what?

I could. Mm-hmm.

I had other people to go find it from. So what are you determined to change this year? We're still in January. I haven't been able to come in here and do all of my normal January New Year's Stuff, and you know I'm not huge on well I hate New Year's resolutions. But what do you want to accomplish this year? We've been talking over in the Money Networks community. Somebody is like, "I'm in the same spot as I was last year." I feel so frustrated. I feel so I'm angry with myself. But what did you accomplish this this last year? So what did you accomplish last year? I bet if you start writing down the things because we have accomplishment amnesia. We have Advaita has an amazing blog post about that. You should drop that below the live, the link to the blog post. But we have accomplishment amnesia. We forget what we have done and what we actually have been able to do. And especially when you're looking at, oh, 2023 was horrible. I couldn't do anything. When I sit down to think about 2023, I'm obviously hyper-focused on all of the negatives that happened in September through December, I could give you a long list of 9 million horrible things that happened in 2023 and why I failed and why I did horrible and why, why, why, why, why. That's not true. That is totally not true. So what did you accomplish? And Ida, what did you accomplish in 2023?

Well, I did drop that, the link to that under our life, but also that was in 2024. So in 2023, I accomplished, I feel like buying into the business that I created even more. Like there, I let go of the edge of the pool. It was just me out there. So sink or swim, I was betting on myself. And before I let go of all the safety nets to do that, I was talking to my husband and he goes, babe, if there was anybody in our family, anybody in our house, anybody that I was like, I will bet on that person because they will 100% get it done. He goes, it will be you. He goes, you will get it done because that's what you do. So that was motivating and a little bit of pressure. You know, I'm not going to lie. It was a little bit of pressure, but it was motivating because it's like, if this is how other people see me, then I should see myself that way. Because I think what happens, because for a lot of us, we are so high accomplishing, high masking individuals. We don't see ourselves as the get shit done person because we see ourselves as the neurotic, drowning, crying in the bathroom person because that's the side that we don't show anybody else. But it's, if we don't believe that public persona, if we don't believe our own hype, if we're not our biggest hype man, how is anyone else going to show up for us?

It's always this, this weird for me because I am a get something done person. I am very much that get things done. I will, I will sacrifice myself, mind, body, and soul to get things— which is bad, just to be clear. I will sacrifice myself, mind, body, and soul to get things done because I'm the get-things-done person. I'm not the sit-down-and-have-an-emotional-breakdown-because-I-feel-like-I'm-failing person. Never have been. And then September hit for me, and I'm healing, like, physically Mentally, I've been working with a therapist, so I am healing past trauma. All of these things with all of this stuff in September, and it was a you don't get which you never get more than you can handle type things. I fell apart. I was that emotional basket case, which is not my normal, which made me go, "Oh my God! How do I do this? I can't do this. There's no way I could do this. I'm going to fall apart. This is going to." Because I wasn't able to bring out my normal—

Masking.

And that's exactly what that is, that always sacrifice yourself, mind, body, and soul to get things done is a form of masking. I wasn't able to bring that part of myself out, which then crippled me, which then made me mad, which then made me more frustrated, which then brought RSD at like full, full vibe. Massive amounts of RSD and massive amounts of just Frustration and all of these things came up because I wasn't able to mask anymore.

And then you have these things like, if I show people my true self, are they still going to show up for me? Or are they, they still gonna— because essentially we're just people that want to be loved or validated. And it's like, so if people see these true forms of myself, are they still going to show up? And the answer is normally yes. And if they don't, then they weren't your people anyway.

Yeah, and I found I had somebody that wasn't. It was such a weird process for me to stay determined because I will tell you, without Catherine, without Vida, without Gina, without Avery, without Lauren and all of you guys, I would not have been— because I can show up for somebody else when I can't show up for myself. And that's the first time that would have been true for me. So it's been a huge learning curve in being unmasked over the last few months for me because I'm crazy. We know I'm ADHD. I lean into that quirkiness a lot, but that's its own mask sometimes. Leaning into the Star Wars-loving quirky quirkiness, that's its own— can become its own mask when you don't know what to do with all of the trauma and the other things in the background.

I think that Society is more acceptable of our ADHD, like our quirks, like, oh, she has ADHD, blah, blah, blah. I don't think they're as accepting as our autistic tendencies unless they're those fun quirky ones, especially autistic burnout, you know? And that is something that it's like, I think 2023 for me was, it was letting go of the side of the pool, but also battling burnout, right? Trying to find a good work-life balance because we have a tendency to just Work ourselves, sacrifice, you know, body, mind, and soul. And then all of a sudden we're sitting there and we're just a husk because we haven't been paying into the cup. And so 2023 was a lot of learning for me. It was like, there are things that I have to be real with myself. Like maybe I've taken on too many tasks. And it's funny because not all of these tasks are tasks I have for work or a job or a paycheck. Some of them are just homework assignments I've given myself. It's like, okay, I don't need to read 4 books this month. Like, I can just not read any books this month and just focus on the crap I need to do. But it is the panic that sets in when you're not doing anything because rest seems ridiculously self-indulgent. Mm-hmm.

Well, and we've been called lazy and stupid, and and and and and there's a million a list a million long. You're being too dramatic, whatever that we've heard our whole lives. So it's been beaten into us mentally, maybe physically beaten into us that we can't rest, that it's not okay. And then as a American, we really have that beaten into us, that hustle culture, especially if you are a female entrepreneur. The female entrepreneurial world is toxic as hell, like so freaking toxic that you can never take time off. You always have to be on. You always have to be that influencer type personality. You can't— oh wait, what are you doing for your business? And even self-care becomes something about your business, not for you. And when you have to rest, oh my gosh, I mean, life coaches will give lip service to the resting and giving your body what it needs, but it's just lip service because you should still be talking about that and going live about that. And, and, and, and, and.

Yeah, I mean, I grew my TikTok the first year, like 11,000 people, like in the first year. Like I was doing well, but I got to a point where I felt like I just didn't have anything else to say. I didn't have any value content to post, so I just didn't for like 6 months. And it was okay. Like I still interacted, I still did stuff on there, but I just didn't put out new content cuz I kind of ran the well dry. Mm-hmm. And so now I post, but I don't post as much as I did like that first year. Yeah, I grew up, but I was posting like 3 times a day. I was like doing lives. I was doing all the things that they say to do to grow it. And it did work. But it was not sustainable and it burned me out. So now it's like on my own, I try to post once a day. That's my goal, once a day, and try to make sure that it's valuable or relatable. And if I for some reason don't get it posted, then it's like, it'll be okay. The world still goes on. I'll post the next day. It's a deal about letting go of that shame. Like, success does not have to look Like this box.

And that's exactly a big, that's a big thing is that success doesn't look like, have to look like a box that somebody else told us existed. Success is, and even consistency, because you guys know I do talk about consistency and especially if you're an entrepreneur, there has to, well, no, if you're a mom, a wife, breathing and alive, there has to be consistency in life or we won't have We won't thrive. But consistency looks different every single day. I have my good, better, best versions of consistency. What does my good day look like? It does not look like my best day. And how many best days do I have a month? Maybe 2. Maybe. You can't put yourself in a box. You can't put yourself at and hold yourself to a standard that's not sustainable. It has to be obtainable. It has to be actionable and it has to be supportable when you're ADHD. So if your list of things to do every day isn't actually obtainable every single time, then it's a shit list. And if it looks like the— trying to think of TikTok influencer— influencer people, the social media gurus, the coach guru, whoever you are, whoever you follow, because I want to know how much I pay attention to that now. I don't. If you are trying to look like someone else, then that's not sustainable. That's somebody else's box that you don't belong in.

I have to tell my, like, I have to tell people that quite a bit. It's like, it is okay to look at things and possibly model it once or twice to get yourself off the ground. But if that's your like, well, this person's doing it and it's really successful, so I'm going to do it. It's like, man, just be you. The right people will show up and it's persistency over consistency. Like we struggle with consistency, but Persistence is a lot different. Persistence is that I show up every day and I try, and I can do that.

Showing up every day is possible when it's your version of showing up every day.

Right.

And some days it looks like this, and some days it looks like this over here, and other days it looks like sitting on the couch and answering a message, and that's all you get to. Who cares? You're still showing up. Show up how you can.

Right.

So determination, being determined to be you, that's like, that should be like everybody's mantra. Be determined to be yourself and be you in the way that works today. Today's me is going to have a different energy than tomorrow's me. And tomorrow's me is going to have a different energy than today's me. And I might do things to make future me very, very happy. I might do things to give future me mega amounts of pain because I just wasn't in a space to be able to handle doing things to make future me It's life easier, but understanding that that is going to happen and that's okay is fine. And Lauren says, my best days are almost nonexistent this month. It happens. It really happens. Last month for, or this, the beginning part of this month for Vaina has been hell. You all know that September, October for me was hell on earth. And then November got slightly better and December got even better, whatever. And January has been amazing so far for me. But let me tell you, if I keep my focus on how bad things were September or October for me, I would still be stuck there. It's so easy to get stuck in that.

It's the deal about crying over spilled milk, right? I know that it's such a silly old saying, but like, there's no crying over spilled milk. Like, okay, that's not true. We're going to cry over the thing that happened, but we're not going to wallow in it. Like, because life is essentially a runaway train. It's the deal like on Dope 66. Like, there are days when we don't meet all the markers, and the next day it's just a clean slate. We just start over. We shake our Etch A Sketch and we go on because life is not stopping because we had a bad day.

Uh-huh.

So we're gonna shake our Etch A Sketch and we're gonna try to beat our high score the next day, you know? Like, it's, it's just Keeping— it's just keep swimming is essentially what it is. It's a Dory.

It is. And knowing that it's okay to keep swimming. Maybe we need a life preserver some days. Maybe we're the one dragging other people's life preservers with us. Whatever it is that you need. And maybe you need the little motorboat today with a motor driving you somewhere because you just can't do it yourself. Where are you in your energy? In your abilities, is it obtainable today? Is it actionable today? And can you get support to get the actions done? Those are like the three things that really support ADHD life, ADHD life, neurodiverse life. I don't care wherever you are in that process or on the spectrum because we are a spectrum. We're a spectrum. We're at a different spot on the spectrum every single day.

Even Danielle and I, who share. Quite a few comorbidities. Like, it's, uh, like there are days where I— we're sitting there talking, we're planning stuff, and I'll just lose all my words because my brain just decided to take that moment to restart.

Loading, loading, loading. And there are days I just can't. I just can't. And I— and most of you will notice that I'm allowing myself to be in just can't. I just can't today. And that's something new for me. And that's been really hard for me to accept that there are days that I just can't. But you know what? It's okay to just can't today and rely on somebody else for the motivation, the body doubling, the accountability, whatever it is you need for the day. I want to tie up this video. I'm so happy I got to go live for a whole entire 25 minutes in the Facebook group. This is like, this hasn't happened. I am so excited to be back. Vida and I are actually have made a commitment. With each other to show up more like this throughout the weeks. You guys are going to be seeing, I'm not going to say every single day because we're going to be going live in multiple different places. So we're going to be showing up live.

Who knows where?

Might be on TikTok, might be on Instagram, might be here on the Facebook group, might be on our business page. Follow us around. We will be going live and talking about life, talking about being entrepreneurs, talking about just being ADHD. We are so happy to be back. I, I am so excited to be able to do this again, guys. You have an amazing day. If you have questions, if you need anything, just ask the questions below. We're Always, we are around, and now I can actually post in here, and apparently, and answer questions and stuff. So please ask questions if you have them. Have a good day, everybody.