Inspiring Mantras for Adults with ADHD: Personal Mottos to Guide Your Life
As I stood in the cereal aisle at Walmart, trying to decide which breakfast option to buy, I never imagined it would be a life-changing moment. My thoughts went something like this:
I don’t know what to get. I really want Cinnamon Toast Crunch. But I can’t get that. I should get the Special K.
We are taught from a young age to follow shoulds and musts, some of which are valuable, while others are more arbitrary. In this particular situation, I had made a rule dictating which cereals I could and could not buy, and that was when it hit me – there are no rules! I can buy what I want, I can do what I want!
My Walmart moment may not seem like a big deal, but it was an epiphany to me. Growing up, my parents taught me very specific ways of doing everything from folding towels to emptying the dishwasher, which was both helpful and harmful. It wasn’t until I was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult that I realized why I struggled to keep up with everyone else’s rules and norms.
Living by rules set by neurotypical brains can be one of the most frustrating aspects of living with ADHD. More importantly, we don’t always recognize what’s happening – we beat ourselves up for stumbling over rules that don’t work for our neurodivergent brains.
After that Walmart moment and with an understanding of how my brain works, I remind myself constantly that there are no rules. There is no “right” way to do a thing – there is only the way that works for me.
My second motto came from a post I read on social media, which says that “anything worth doing is worth doing poorly… because doing it poorly is better than not doing it.”
Starting tasks is immensely difficult for ADHD brains. Overwhelm and fear of failure tend to keep us at a standstill, perpetuating the cycle of exhaustion we tend to create. But this motto gave me permission to do what I can and forget about the big finish line. To me, this motto has helped me see that getting 10% of a task done is better than getting none of it done.
Maybe I cannot bring myself to do all the dishes, but I can do the glasses only. Laundry is exhausting, but I can focus on folding just my shorts. I cannot write a 40-page paper right now, but I can jot down some ideas. By giving myself permission to do a little at a time, I reduced my stress and increased my productivity.
These mottos have helped me practice self-compassion and affirm my own neurodiversity. Embracing the fact that there are no rules and that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly helped me adapt and learn to accept things as they happen, not as someone else says they should.
However, when sharing these mottos with my clients, I hear concerns from them. They worry that they will spin out of control if they become too self-compassionate, that being hard on themselves is the only thing keeping their lives in check. This black-and-white form of thinking keeps them trapped.
If you want to practice self-compassion, these four steps can help:
- Recognize the critical voice in your head
- Redefine perfection
- Practice self-care
- Take baby steps
These steps can help you work towards living with more self-compassion. Perhaps you will use these mottos or develop a few of your own:
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