Tips to Create Better Days

Hello there. I'm Danielle Ralston. I am the founder and head coach here at ND Out Loud. What is ND Out Loud? ND Out Loud is a team of neurodivergent coaches. We are neurodivergent, every single one of us. TBIs, PTSD, ADHD, autism, ADHD, and so much more. Bipolar disorder, all of the things. We also have a passion for supporting others like us so you don't have to struggle like we did in our past. We have All taken trainings and certifications and all of that so that we can support you in living a better life and upgrading all of the things that are frustrating about your life. What is this session going to give you? This session is going to give you actionable tips. So yes, we're gonna talk about our programs and all of the things that we offer, but I want you to walk away with something actionable for something that is overwhelming, frustrating, or just plain annoying you right now in your life. Or if you're a parent or a spouse of someone with neurodivergence, To help them as well. I want you to walk away with something today. So please sign up today for a free call. We can learn more about each other. Good morning, anyone. This is Danielle Invited with Indie Out Loud, and we're talking about tips to just create better days today.

Yeah.

It's Monday and we all have the Monday blues, especially anybody who's living where it's raining right now. It's raining and nasty and stormy here, and it's just so hard. hard to get motivated on days like this. And we're ADHD and not ADHD, so creating our own motivation is also a struggle at best. So how do you create a better day when things already feel like crap before you even start?

I have heard lots of different ways. You know, a lot of people show up, they're like, oh, it's a case of the Mondays. Or, I mean, it could be any day, right? But I think part of it is What do you focus on in the morning? Do you're like, oh God, I have to do all this stuff? Or do you really ruminate on negative things? Because that kills your entire day.

I think one of the big things for me to create a good day is have the same routine every morning, no matter what time I get up. It's not about getting up at a certain time or Because that's BS when you're ADHD. Forget that. But it's about having the same order of operations each morning.

Exactly.

They don't have the same order of operations. I'm screwed.

Yeah. I mean, I tell clients that too. I'm like, we need to develop a routine and you can do it. It doesn't matter if you started at 7, 7:15, 8, 10 AM, midnight. I don't care. But If this is your wake-up routine, this is your wake-up routine, and these are the things you do in order, because it tells our body that we are getting ready to start the day. You have to do the same thing for your evenings, because it tells your body that you're getting ready to go to bed. Because as neurodivergent people, we have a lot of systems running without our conscious effort, you know, that need also to be taken care of. So as you're getting ready in the morning, like, do you get up? Do you drink a cup of coffee? Do you feed the cats? Whatever. That's your wake-up routine.

Yeah. And for me, again, if any one of those things is thrown off, then I struggle to get on track for the day. It's not that I can't function sort of throughout the day, but I just feel off and something's not right. And I forgot to do something. And what is it that I forgot? And it drives me nuts. It's like, My brain is ruminating on it in the background cuz I cannot figure out what it was that I missed for the day. If I don't do things in order, I can't remember what I did and what I didn't either. So did I take my medicine? Well, I don't know. Did I take my medicine? Did I forget to? Did I take it twice? I mean, I get stuck in that because I didn't do things in the same exact order. And I have taken a step further over the years and I have a checklist. I have checklists all over my house because I don't want to have to think about what the order of operations is every day.

Well, and then, okay, then we also have our neurodivergent people that have PDA profiles. And sometimes we get bratty with our morning routine or our nighttime routine. So I am a person that needs to do things in order, and that's fine. But if you are not one of those things in order, this is my suggestion as a behavior modification expert. This is my suggestion. You still make the order of operations. Okay. But your specific list is a choose your own adventure. You know that you have to do all of these things as part of your morning routine, but you get to pick what order you do them in. Like, okay, let's look at the list today. All right. What's on the list? And then it's like, I have enough spoons to do this one. And then you do it and then you come back and you look at the list and you do it that way. So it doesn't matter what side of the neurodivergent coin you fall on, we can still make this work for you.

Yeah. And I have some clients who have just had a list and it's pick your own adventure. I have others that have to follow. I'm one of those. I'm autistic enough that most days, again, it depends. Some days I'm more ADHD than I am autistic. It just depends on who's winning today. But most days I have to have an exact order of doing things because If I don't, again, I feel off for the whole entire day. I think one of the other big tips was having check-in points with somebody else. Because if I don't check in with Vida each day, I feel like, like yesterday, Vida and I, it was Mother's Day. We were both doing, I never talked to Vida once yesterday. And I was like missing something yesterday and I didn't know what it was until about 7 o'clock last night. I was like, oh, I just haven't talked to Vida today. That explains why I've just felt off all day because it's part of my routine.

Yeah.

And I hadn't talked to Vita today.

And that's also why I think a lot of neurodivergent people have a hard time shutting down, like from work. Like if I was left to my own devices, I would work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week because there are things to get done. There's things on the list. There's. And so we have a hard time saying like, no, I'm only going to work for 8 hours, not 16, you know, or I'm only going to do this for this amount of time. We fall into a lot of all or nothing. And this is my thing that is, I have to remind myself, I have to be mindful of all the time. To create better days, you have to ration your energy because life is a marathon.

And that's a hard thing for me because I've always operated as somebody with some major, major health issues. I've operated for years on the, oh, I have a good day today, so I need to use the energy today because it's not going to be there tomorrow. It's not that I need to save it. It's not any of those things. It's that it's going to be gone tomorrow if I don't use it today. So I exhaust myself and I would get into this cycle of Using all the energy on the days I had it and then not having any energy, which was true for years for me, but it's not now. And Vida has to remind me it's a marathon, Danielle. It's not a use it all up today and remind me to take care of myself. Because that's one of the things in Vida, this is a Vida tip. Put your self-care on your list first.

Yes. Put your self-care on your list. Make appointments with yourself. For it. If you're someone who lives and dies by your calendar, put it on your calendar. And you can do that with anything. Like if you, like, man, I never get to my emails at work. Block time off on your calendar, set an appointment with yourself, mark it so you're busy and no one can schedule with you. And for that 30 minutes or whatever, you're doing emails. But just like we would do that for our workday, you have to do that for your self-care routine. If I did not do that for my self-care routine, it would not get done. Absolutely.

And understanding that self-care is the thing that's going to keep us from getting overwhelmed. It is the thing that's going to keep us from crashing. It is the thing that's going to keep us— and when I say keep us from being overwhelmed, overwhelm happens because you have too many things that you're overwhelmed with, not because there's one thing that's overwhelming you. It's always the Stick a fork in me, I'm done principle. It's all of the things. So if you can do anything to remove any little bits of overwhelm, the other pieces of overwhelm won't be so overwhelming.

Right.

And we forget that because we're worried about taking care of everything else. We're worried about missing the thing. We're worried about looking lazy. We're worried about all of the things. And the worry about all of the things adds— is a piece of overwhelming people.

Right.

So it's a matter of Finding how to create less overwhelm in your day. Self-care. That's one of the big ones. What's one of your best tips for when your energy is really, really low for getting at least your bare minimums done?

Okay. So when energy is super low, I tell clients that this is a survival day. We do bare minimum things. So this is, if it's a work day, You are going to get up, you're going to do your, your routine or whatever, but you are not going to take on these extra projects. Like you're not going to spearhead a new marketing campaign that particular day. You're not going to come home and say like, hey, I need to reorganize my closet. Everything, unless it is a safety or safety concern or a deadline, gets You hit pause and it gets pushed to the next day and you'd have to rest. So on the days where you have zero spoons, you are going to put in, and this is really hard for some people, but you're going to put in C+ effort. You're going to put in C+ effort for the things you have to do, and you're going to prioritize rest.

So this is a real, this has been a hard lesson for me because prioritizing rest and now this week. Vida worked with me and Gina. I, Gina was ready to beat me up, but Vida was very nice and helped work with me to set myself up for a week of very low effort this week. I'm on D minus effort this week.

And that's okay.

And I need to be because next week I'm doing a VIP week onsite with a whole entire family full of neurodivergents. So I'm gonna be working with neurodivergent people. In their home for a week. And then I'm tacking on the end of that trip, a promo trip to Disney World.

And yes, that is something we offer. So if you guys are interested, let us know. We can set that up. But as neurodivergent individuals, if we have things like that on our calendar, we have to have a week of prep. You have to have the week of, and then there's probably going to be a week of decompression when she comes back. And I don't mean that. She's going to do nothing, but we're going to slowly ramp her back up. You don't just hit it going 100 miles an hour again. You have to merge onto the highway, right? To merge off the highway and onto the highway. You can't just like, it is jarring for our brains. We have to give ourselves appropriate transition time.

So it's not just the transition time, it's It, well, it is part of the transition time, but I'm gonna be talking about this a lot next week cuz I'm still gonna go live with Vyda every morning next week because I have that built into, cuz that is a must. That is a bare minimum for me is to go live as often as I can. So I'm going to be doing that with Vyda next week, but I'm gonna be talking about the travel issues with being neurodivergent. And I'm, I've already had a couple issues come up. For me, so I, I've started making a list, but what is it like to travel when you're neurodivergent? Since there's gonna be a lot of sensory stuff coming up for me, a whole lot of sensory stuff coming up, but how do you keep that overwhelm from overtaking you while you're traveling, which adds to travel anxiety? So I'm actually gonna be talking about travel anxiety at some point this week. Florida and I have a lot to share on that one cuz there's a lot of travel anxiety. For us, but the big thing for me this week is to look at my schedule and go, normally I can do like 20 meetings in a day. I've got a max of 3 this week.

Hmm.

A max of 3 each day. And I've also made sure I have long white spaces empty in my calendar so that I can go take a nap each day, get away from my computer, move around, pack, do the things I'm, I, are going to come up because I have travel anxiety. About for this week. So again, this week is a D- week for me, and that's okay because I am understanding that my body is going to need that.

Yeah.

And then having my community, because I have a lot of travel anxiety, so I need a community of other neurodivergents who can go down the travel anxiety path with me.

Yeah, we could definitely do that because she knows that in advance. So we can prepare.

So part of this in understanding your tips to create better days is understanding how your body works, understanding how your brain works, and getting a feel of your patterns. And if you don't know your own patterns, pick another neurodivergent to go, okay, they have these issues. They've talked about these issues. I'm going to prepare for that. Go for the worst case scenario because worst case scenario means you're prepping your body and your mind and all of the things all at once.

Yeah.

So this week I fall back on Dope 66. Dope 66 are my minimum. So if you don't know what Dope 66 is, go to dope66.com, sign up. It's 100% free. That is my bare minimum habits for the day. So come check 'em out. If you have questions, ask. Dope 66 is an online community. It's free. Come join us. We can help you have better days because better days Makes for a better life when you're neurodivergent.

Yes, it does.

Have an awesome day, everybody.