Welcome to Learn To Thrive with ADHD. This is the podcast for adults with ADHD or ADHD like symptoms. I’m your host coach, Mande John. I’m here to make your life with ADHD easier. Let’s get started.

All right, today I’m going to take you through a mini course how to Not Quit. You can never fail if you learn to not quit, and this was a really important one to me. There have been some things that have really moved me forward as far as my ADHD and I hope that this is helpful to you as well and one of those things has been to learn to set my sights on something and not quit, no matter what. That’s what this mini course is set up to teach you, so to set yourself up for success. You can download the workbook If you look in the show notes or the description. If you’re viewing this on YouTube, you can find the link there to the workbook. Turn off all distractions, relax, take what applies and leave the rest, and then take action. I’m Maddie John. I am a coach for adults with ADHD. Here is the workbook. You can go ahead and grab that, and the workbook will help you as guide you through the lesson. So it’s very helpful to go and grab that.

So why Do People Quit? For immediate gratification, fear of failure, lack of confidence, negative self-talk, loss of vision, overwhelming stress, lack of clear goals, social influence, and perceived control. And we’re going to walk you through what to do about each of these. Okay so, delaying gratification Build the muscle of delaying gratification. You can do that with a 10-minute rule. There’s lots of 10-minute rules. I work with my clients on the 10-minute rule of getting started for task initiation. In this case. What this 10-minute rule is when you want something in the moment, set a timer for 10 minutes and see if you still want it as much when the time is up.

Belief around failure you can’t fail if you don’t quit. That is my belief, that I offer to you. If you’re just willing to move forward a little bit every day, you can never fail. So can you make this a learning experience? Decide what you will say and believe about yourself ahead of time. The biggest problem with failure is what we say about ourselves, and if you can decide ahead of time that you’re not going to beat yourself up, that you’re not going to tell yourself terrible things, then there’s nothing to be afraid of. So how is it? A steppingstone If you’re having challenges. How is it a steppingstone If you believe that you’ve failed? What did you learn from this? How’s it going to set you up for the next thing?

Self-confidence. Self-confidence is your belief in your ability. I have a person sitting in a chair here. In this image, if you’re listening to the podcast, there’s a little stick person sitting in a chair, and what that represents is I’m sure you have confidence that you can get up from your chair. You’ve done it before. You know you can do it. You have complete confidence that you can get up from your chair. You have to do new things to build yourself confidence and with that is a risk of failure, but also an opportunity. Okay, past evidence what you haven’t been able to do in the past means nothing about what you’re capable of now. This might be the first time you succeed. If you try to use past evidence, you will never accomplish your goal.

Check your self-talk. So what is your inner critic saying? You want to tune into that. You want to understand what’s happening so that you can talk back. Basically, what could you be thinking instead? That’s one way to talk back, right. If you’re thinking something negative that’s holding you back, what could you be thinking instead. What would be more helpful? Your inner critic’s job is to keep you safe. That’s important to know, because when the inner critic starts up, you can understand that it’s nothing terrible is happening. It’s just doing its job.

What do you have to lose? Time, money, and reputation are what we have to lose Now. The time is going to pass anyway. How do you want to use it? Money is renewable and your biggest fear is what you’ll say about yourself.

Managing overwhelming stress. Break it down. Take one thing at a time. Break it down into tiny, tiny steps. Manage your thoughts. If you want more on managing your thoughts, on YouTube we have the self-coaching series and that will teach you how to manage your thoughts. You can slow down, but don’t quit. You can pause, you can go a little bit slower, but make sure that you’re going to get back to it. Consider the big picture. Quitting will relieve stress in the moment, but it’s at a cost A cost that’s not worth it. Right Clear goals.

How exactly will you know when you have accomplished your goal? What are the steps to get there? What exactly will you do? Daily and weekly Support and accountability. You can lean on friends and family. You can get accountability groups. You can have a coach like myself. You can do body doubling and you can set daily intentions. We have an accountability group in the ADHD Academy where we set daily intentions and support each other there.

What control do you have? I want you to notice what control you have. In any situation, you have some form of control. What can you do to move forward? Or what choices do you have? Decide ahead of time, make the decision ahead of time to do what you set out to do, no matter what. You don’t have to know all the steps. You just have to know that you’ll persist.

Shut down negotiation. Your brain will offer you all the reasons you don’t need to go after your goals. Remember its priorities, take pleasure, avoid pain, and keep you safe. Decide ahead of time that you will shut down negotiation. Plan and stick to the plan. So what does this look like? If you say you’re going to go to the gym, what happens? Sometimes? Our brain will negotiate with us. We don’t really need to go to the gym today. We can do that tomorrow. So you want to shut down that negotiation from the beginning and that way when it shows up and it will you already know your answers.

Expect obstacles. You will have setbacks. You will have days that you won’t want to do what you planned. You will have days that you will make a minimal effort. This is normal and to be expected, and that’s no reason to quit. Let’s talk about minimums and maximums. What is the least you will do towards your tasks and goals and what is the most? This will give you a sense of knowing that you’ve done enough and it keeps you going.

Create your new identity. Embrace the identity of the person that you need to be to accomplish your goal. Start with I’m a person who and really think about this. What type of person do you need to become to accomplish the goal that you want to accomplish? What you think is examine your thinking around, your goal and your abilities. Are your thoughts useful? Are they helpful? Are they serving you? What could you be thinking instead? That is also true. So, if those thoughts aren’t helpful, what could you be thinking instead when you’re struggling? Simplify what is the easiest way you can continue to move forward. Fall back on your minimums.

We talked about our minimums and maximums just a bit ago. Right, this period will pass. Act in a way that you’re proud of the way you handled it. Okay, we made it to the end. So ways to take action Choose a goal, big or small, that you can fully commit to. Break it down to clear daily tasks and create your new identity and review it often. So congratulations, you completed the mini course. I hope you had fun with this. This is a bonus in the ADHD Academy. If you’re not in there, join us. It is a great place to be to learn about your ADHD and learn how to move forward with life. Thank you all. See you next week.

Thank you for your time, and especially for your attention today. If you haven’t looked into the ADHD Academy, you’ll want to do that. This is my membership, with binge-able courses, weekly life coaching, new courses every month, a community of like-minded people and more.

Be sure to head over to www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/membership to get the details. See you next week.