Reframing New Year’s resolutions for the ADHD mind.

The new year is such a wonderful time of year. A fresh start, motivating. Summery. You have TIME. It feels so… aspirational.

You’ve spent the last quarter of the year duly trudging through, dragging yourself to the finish line of the year that is Christmas, and a summertime break.

Living life with ADHD is hard. Every day takes a lot of energy to get through. You just want a little sprinkle of change, to make life a little bit easier and smoother to manage.

Enter the aspirational, New Year’s Resolution ADHD brain. It tells you:

“This year; something is inherently going to be different. Better.”

I’ve made resolutions before. Plenty of them. They’ve probably lasted a day, or a week. So this year I feel sort of… nervous about the concept. A bit, defeatist almost.

Couple that attitude with a fresh new year, some sunshine and the aspirational ADHD brain and I’m feeling pretty confused, to be honest.

Then I read this wonderful, thought provoking excerpt from a Canadian author, and it really gave me a new perspective-

“You may have achieved outstanding goals this year. But if it wasn’t that kind of year, notice the ways, small as they may be, that you’ve lived and loved well. Count the occasions in which you’ve made new choices, held to your truth, made your boundaries known.

Celebrate your interior steps, even if they haven’t yet become outer strides. If you are enduring something, take a moment to greet the strength in you that kept going. If you’ve sustained a direction, kept a vision alive, or moved even a little closer to what once felt impossible - glance back to see all you’ve overcome.”

- Toko-pa Turner.

Beautiful, right?

The next day, I happened to listen to KC Davis, talking about how our executive functions are morally neutral; that you need to give yourself compassion as you identify your struggle and find workable solutions.

And then a friend of mine shared this great fb post from ‘adhdlove’.

What I’ve learnt from ALL of this, is that successful ADHD New Years Resolutions aren’t likely to fit the ‘societal norm’.

So many of our resolutions are to FIGHT our executive dysfunctions, to will ourselves to improve them. To aspire to fit into the neurotypical world.

Effective New Years’ Resolutions for ADHD brains.

• Celebrate and reflect on last years’ wins. The internal work that you did, that you can be quietly proud of. You persevered!

• Know that your executive function challenges are morally neutral. You are not a bad person for having a poor working memory, or a disorganised home.

• Make aspirations that are compassionate to your self. Aim to make small habit changes. Not entire personality overhauls.

• Make resolutions that are incremental changes to support self-compassion and executive functioning.

If there’s only one thing you aim for in 2024- let it be compassion to your true self!

Links:

Find more of Toko-pa Turner’s work here: https://toko-pa.com/

Visit adhdlove: https://www.facebook.com/ADHDlovevids?mibextid=LQQJ4d