The. ADHD BURNOUT Cycle | ADHD BUSINESS TO BREAKTHROUGH DAY 1 | Business Coach Val Nichols

We try and fix our burnout using systems that were never built for our brain. With our ADHD brain, it works until it doesn't. It works until you start hyper-focusing on one thing and then the rest of your day is shot. What is up, my beautiful, amazing ADHD entrepreneurs? I am so incredibly excited to welcome you to day 1 of ADHD Business Burnout To breakthrough. If you are excited for your breakthrough, let me know in the comments. If you are excited to get this going, let's do this. We are on day 1. We are talking about the ADHD burnout cycle, how burnout is not a sign of failure. It is a predictable cycle that will happen when you try and force your beautiful ADHD brain into a neurotypical business structure. Over the next 3 days, I wanna show you what is possible. I wanna show you what's possible when you stop fighting your brain and you actually start working with it. And you're gonna learn how to break free from ADHD burnout and create high energy, high motivation. I am going to give you a clear roadmap for building a burnout-proof business that actually fits your brain and works with your brain. And so welcome to everyone. If you're brand new here, say hello. I would love to say hi to you. I can't wait to meet you. Let me know where you're watching from. You know, if you're live or if you're watching on replay, put hashtag replay and then follow along as if you are watching live and I'll come back and answer your questions. This is a safe space for ADHD entrepreneurs, for business owners, creatives, coaches, um, consultants, singers, authors, speakers. If you're tired of running on empty, And questioning if you're even cut out for this. If you keep trying to force yourself into a system that was never built for your brain. If you're here, you've probably experienced some level of burnout in your business, in your job. Maybe you've been pushing hard, you've been trying to keep up with a million things, and then suddenly you hit a wall, you shut down. Your motivation completely disappears, and you start questioning everything. You are not alone in this. I've gone through this. I've cycled through all the things. I go through this myself. My clients go through this. It's normal. You're not alone. And most importantly, again, it is not your fault. I've had business coaches that were neurotypicals that told me, you just need to push through. You just need to get more organized. You need to get a planner. You just need to, um, time block. You just need to do all these things. And the thing about that is like ADHD burnout is real. There's people out there that don't understand it, that, that don't know what it's like to be in ADHD burnout, but it is a real thing. And today we're gonna be diving deep into why it happens and how to stop it before the cycle takes you completely out. I've seen so many amazing, talented, gifted, incredible entrepreneurs business owners, influencers, creators who get in that cycle. They hit the wall, they get in self-doubt, and then they either start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. They get in overwhelm and indecision, overthinking, analysis paralysis, and they just end up not even making a decision, or they completely walk away from their dreams. They give up, and even worse, they give up on Themselves. And maybe that's you. The first question I think about is why do ADHD entrepreneurs burn out so much faster than your normal person? Because burnout is something that everyone experiences at some point. Everyone will have burnout, whether if it's from the pandemic we went through, we had Zoom burnout, we had burnout from Whatever it is, your job, all the things, but ADHD burnout is a totally whole different beast. Reasons why we are more prone to burnout when we have ADHD is number one, our brains are wired for urgency and excitement. The shiny thing syndrome. We start, we stop, we get motivated, we do these things, and then all of a sudden we're not motivated anymore. It's because we thrive on dopamine-driven tasks. The more exciting, the better. This is why you can do a launch, you're all excited, you're all in, you're 120%, and then all of a sudden the dopamine runs out and so does your motivation. It's like, oh no, I'm doing the wrong thing. I need to go do this, or I need a new niche. I need a new program. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna give up on this one and just do, go all in on this. And it's like, so we run on the dopamine-driven task, but as soon as that dopamine runs out, so does the motivation. And this is one reason why we are so prone To burnout because of those highs and those lows and those highs and those lows. I went through this the last week. I just had some amazing things going on. Everything was great. It was Valentine's Day. My birthday was on Monday. I had a girlfriend's birthday last week and then two events. Two of my clients ended up doing these out events. I should say like stepping out into their confidence in their brand, building their brand, doing their first live events. And it's like all these good things, these this dopamine, this high, this like energy. And then Sunday morning I woke up and it was like, boom, emotional hangover, because after all the dopamine, I hit the crash. Another reason why we tend to burn out quicker is that we struggle with time blindness and energy and emotional regulation. This is huge, guys. Time blindness is such a difficult thing for me. I can tell myself, oh, I know it always takes me 30 minutes to get from my house to that place. But this time I'm just gonna push it and I'll, I'll give myself 15 things. Or no matter how much time I have, I can have like all this time. All of a sudden I'll still end up like rushing out the door at the last minute. It's like, ugh. But we struggle with time blindness and emotional and energy regulation. There's these 2 extremes. We're hyperfocused for hours and we're just like, go, go, go, go, go. We feel unstoppable, or we just can't even get started at all. Start, stop, start, stop, start, stop. Most of us, and this is something I've learned with working with hundreds of ADHD entrepreneurs over the years, and it is that we overestimate what we can do in a day. We have that big, huge checklist, right? Like, I'm gonna do all of this. And I actually have a method I teach my clients where it's like you go through and you prioritize and then you schedule things in. And it's like most of the times, myself included, in the first few times we go through this, it's like they actually look at how long it's going to take to do things, and it's like 36 hours. I'm like, are you really going to work for 36 hours? Or what do we need to push off? What is priority? All of those things. Because we also underestimate how much sleep we need, right? Because sometimes we're so hyper-focused that we feel unstoppable. We don't sleep, but we underestimate how much time we need to actually rest in between these things. And honestly, I can feel it now that I have this Now that I know, now that I understand my energy cycle, sometimes it's like I'm high, high, high, high, high, and then I'll just, I get tired or I'll need to like rest for a while. We actually need a lot of rest and thinking time. As a CEO of your company, you get to incorporate this. And a lot of times we try force ourselves into the neurotypical productivity systems. This is another reason why we burn out so quickly. It's like flame on, flame off burnout. Flame on, 120%, flame off, burnout. Because we're trying to force ourselves into a productivity system, task batching, endless to-do lists, just use a calendar, just push through, just sit at a desk for 8 hours a day. And these things just don't work for us. It's not built for our ADHD brains. And then we end up feeling like we're failing because we can't stay consistent at the thing. How many of you end up feeling like you're failing because you're not consistent at the tools that were never designed for your brain. So you may be able to keep it up for a minute, but you can't sustain it, so you're not consistent. So then you think you're failing, and then you just give up. How many of you have been there? If this is resonating for you, drop a me or drop 100% in the chat. I would love to hear, is this resonating for you? The truth is that ADHD burnout isn't just about overworking. Or not having time boundaries. It's not about that. It's about the way we work, the crazy amounts of pressure we put on ourselves, and the way that we are consistently overriding our natural energy cycles. Is that making sense for you guys? Like, we are overriding our natural energy cycles, trying to force something because we put so much pressure on ourselves. We start shoulding on ourselves. We— I should be doing this. I should be doing that. I know what I need to do, but I'm just not doing it. How are you feeling? Let me know below. Okay. So let's shift for a moment. Now we know what it looks like, what it feels like, why we tend to get in burnout more often. Now I wanna talk about the 5 stages of ADHD burnout. I want you to listen closely and see if you recognize yourself in any of these. So stage number 1. Of the 5 hyperfocus mania, you're either all in, you're obsessed with the idea, you pull all-nighters, you skip meals, you forget to take breaks. And like a lot of my clients have said, I even procrastinate using the restroom. Like I don't get up to go pee because I'm so hyperfocused. You feel unstoppable in stage 1 when you're in the hyperfocus mania. It's like you can do it all. You can do all the things. And then stage number 2. Is you start overworking without even realizing it. You keep pushing past exhaustion because you don't feel tired yet. There's times where I'll keep working in the night and be like, well, I don't feel tired. I don't feel tired. And then it's like 4:00 AM and I'm like, I still don't feel tired. You start ignoring your body's warning signs because the work is so exciting. You get that dopamine hit, you get that like rush, you get that feeling, but you're actually ignoring the signs that your body is giving you. And you start saying yes to everything, the clients, the projects, the ideas, because it all feels so urgent. It all feels so exciting. That's why I have a rule in my life, in my business, in my company that I don't say yes to anything on the spot. It's give me 24 hours because everything feels so exciting. It feels urgent, right? So you start saying yes to everything. I've seen people who start going into things that they have no business doing. And I mean, even just add-ons for clients or yes, I can do that. Yes, I can do that. Yes, I can do that. And they try and be everything everyone because it all feels so urgent and so exciting. And let me tell you something that has saved my sanity and saved my boundaries in my business is that someone else's urgency is not my emergency because everything feels urgent, especially when there's pressure, right? The pressure we put on ourselves. So stage 2 is you overwork without realizing it. You keep pushing past exhaustion. You say yes to everything and you start ignoring your body's Stage number 3, exhaustion hits you like a brick wall. Suddenly you wake up one morning, you feel drained, your motivation completely disappears. Simple tasks even can feel so overwhelming. You start procrastinating, or maybe you even avoid work completely. You start avoiding clients, you avoid your emails, you avoid the stacks of things that are piling up. Like, you start just like procrastinating and avoiding completely. And And that's level 3. You're exhausted, no motivation, overwhelmed. You start procrastinating, start avoiding. And then stage 4 is the avoidance and guilt spiral. This is where you start beating yourself up for falling behind. Anyone recognize themselves in stage 4? I know I've definitely been here. You start beating yourself up because you're not good enough. You're not doing all the things. You start avoiding emails. That guilt and shame starts making you even like push even further because now you have imposter syndrome. And the shame and the self-doubt, they sit in, they're like camping out, hanging out in your thoughts and stealing your joy. And then stage 5 is the full shutdown mode. This is the last stage of ADHD burnout where you just shut down completely. Maybe it's mentally, emotionally, Sometimes even physically. You know, if we're ignoring the signs our body is giving us, our brain is giving us, if we don't take care of it, if we're at this shutdown mode, we get into an ADHD freeze. You start realizing that you don't even care about the things that used to excite you anymore. And this may take weeks or even months to recover from. So if you've been through this cycle before, let me know in the comments, 1 through 5, any one of those places. And then what stage do you usually hit before you realize something is wrong? Do you know which stage do you usually hit before you realize something is wrong? So drop 1 through 5 and let me know where you're at now. And again, those 5 stages are stage 1, hyperfocus mania. We're all in, we're obsessed, we're skipping meals, we feel unstoppable. Stage 2 is overworking without realizing it. We're pushing past exhaustion because we don't feel tired. We're ignoring our warning signs. We're saying yes to everything. Things start stacking up because it feels so urgent. Stage 3 is exhaustion hits like a brick wall. Suddenly you're drained, your motivation disappears, you feel overwhelmed, you start procrastinating and maybe even avoiding work completely. Stage 4, we start beating ourselves up like you're so far behind. You start completely avoiding emails, projects, commitments, maybe even like bail or start ghosting people, and then the shame and doubt sets in. And then stage 5 is full shutdown mode. You completely shut down mentally, emotionally, and sometimes physically. You don't care about the things that used to excite you, and you can stay in this cycle in this stage for weeks or months. So let me know in the comments where you at. So let's talk about why traditional productivity hacks don't work for ADHD entrepreneurs. This is where ADHD entrepreneurs usually go wrong. Why? Because we try and fix our burnout using systems that were never built for our brain. We try and use things like time blocking, which is a great tool. Sometimes, but for us with our ADHD brain, it works until it doesn't. It works until you start hyper-focusing on one thing and then the rest of your day is shot, and then you feel even more behind and you start in the beat up. We have things like the rigid to-do list, right? Like we have the never-ending to-do list, and it's like, I don't know about you guys, but I am constantly putting things to tomorrow, putting things to tomorrow. Can either forget about our to-do list completely. We can feel so overwhelmed that we don't want to look at it. Looking at it makes us feel just like, or we just don't look at it at all. We forget. We don't look at the thing because it's not in front of us, right? That if it's out of sight, out of mind, too extreme for us. We also try to push through, right? This is something I had. I had a business coach that did not understand ADHD, did not understand my brain. And I felt like so often it was like, We'll just push through it. Just show up. Just suit up and show up. Fake it till you make it. All these things. And my brain, our ADHD brains, do not respond well to forcing things. Your ADHD brain does not respond well when you force things. ADHD burnout, it's not a sign of weakness. It's not like if I could just push through, if I could just show up, if I could just start the thing, if I could just do the thing. It is not a sign of weakness. It's just a sign that the way you're doing your business, the way your business is structured, isn't in a way that fits with your brain. So we need to build a business that works with your brain, with your energy, with your normal energy cycle, with the ebbs and the flows, that works with your ADHD brain, not against it. And if you guys are ready, I would love to share with you your first steps. Your first step to breaking your burnout cycle is it all starts with awareness. If you do not know what is triggering your burnout, you cannot stop it before you start getting in the ADHD burnout cycle. If you do not know what's triggering your burnout, you can't stop it before you get into the spiral. Guys, take out your pen and paper. I want you guys to do a burnout tracking exercise for the next week. We are gonna track 3 things. For the next week, we are gonna track these 3 things. You are gonna track when you feel burnout creeping in. So you might be like, ugh, okay, this, this is burnout. It takes so much pressure off when you're able to identify that, when you're able to go, okay, this is burnout. This isn't me. I'm not a failure. I'm not an imposter. All these things— imposter syndrome, shame, doubt, fear. So track when you feel your burnout creeping in. And then number 2, what triggered it? Was it a specific event? Did you overcommit and now you're struggling to catch up? Is it a boring task? Maybe like sitting down to do your taxes or return emails, you know, all those boring things that we have to do. Or was it stress? Were you putting pressure on yourself? So what was it that triggered your burnout feeling? Overcommitment, boring tasks, missing a meeting, double booking yourself, um, not creating a boundary. What is it that triggered it? And then number 3, how intense is it from 1 to 10? How intense is your burnout feeling? So the next week I'll do this with you guys. We are gonna track these 3 things. When you feel burnout creeping in. What triggered it? What event? What specifically triggered it? And then how intense is it from 1 to 10? How intense is the feeling? This one habit alone will start showing you the patterns of your burnout, the triggers, what's happening. And once you know those patterns, then you can really start making the real change and break away from burnout for good. Put me or put like a fire emoji, put your favorite emoji in the chat if you're gonna try this. We're gonna track for the next week. I will do it with you. This is gonna be amazing, and I think you're gonna be like utterly shocked at some of these patterns you start noticing. I know I was. I was like, I didn't even know this is how I was showing up in the world, but this is what is my trigger. Just know that this one thing is gonna help transform you so many ways. I am so excited, you guys. So let me know if you're in. Let's go. Let's do the thing. All right, you guys. So today, day 1 of the ADHD Business Burnout to Breakthrough Masterclass with yours truly, Val Nichols. We did a lot of heavy lifting today. We uncovered why ADHD entrepreneurs burn out so fast and what the cycle actually looks like. And tomorrow we're taking it even deeper. Tomorrow we are diving into the biggest myths about ADHD burnout because everything you've ever been told about fixing burnout is probably making it worse. I am going to share the exact strategies I have used to keep my energy and motivation high without forcing myself into a neurotypical system. I teach this to my clients, And just know that everything you've been told about fixing burnout is designed for a brain that is not your brain, so it will make it worse. So if you guys wanna learn all about the strategies I've used to keep that energy and the motivation high without forcing myself or making it worse, then tune in tomorrow because this is gonna be an exciting day. And if this hits home for you, imagine what's possible when you actually start making the right Changes. I mean, if you're ready to finally build a burnout-proof business, then keep showing up because this is just the beginning. This is just day 1. So comment, I'm in. If I will see you tomorrow, and remember, your ADHD is not a weakness. It is actually a superpower. So let me know if you're going to be here tomorrow so you can learn how to use that beautiful superpower. And remember, your ADHD is not a weakness, it's a superpower. So let's learn how to use it so that you can thrive. I love you guys. Bye. See you tomorrow. Feel free to share this out if you know anyone that needs to hear it. I would love for them to join. Let's share in the group. Share what's coming up for you. What are your triggers? What did you hear me say? And what are your takeaways? I would love to hear. Bye.