Fear of Failure as a Mom with ADHD? The Truth About Being Consistent vs. Persistent #181
Consistency is not a requirement for success, even though a lot of people will tell you otherwise.
You are not them.
You’re a mom with ADHD.
You have tiny humans that are not predictable.
You have hormones and a cyclical nature.
Perhaps your gift is persistence.
What can you do with that? A whole lot.
Let’s talk about being successful with ADHD in ways that do NOT require consistency.
When you know that you feel so much better with structure and don’t want the structure to suck the joy out of your life, I hear you! That is why I created Time Management Mastery for ADHD Moms - to give ADHD Moms the best of both worlds: structure and flexibility. Stability and freedom. Confidence and being you.
If that sounds like what you’ve been looking for, join me over here.
Patricia Sung 00:00
I have a confession to make. I hate sticker charts. hate, hate hate, hate. Hate hate? Why? Let's discuss. Are you overwhelmed by motherhood and barely keeping your head above water? Are you confused and frustrated by how all the other moms make it look so easy. You can figure out how to manage the chaos in your mind, your home, or your family. I get your mama, parenting with ADHD is hard. Here is your permission slip to let go of the Pinterest worthy visions of organization and structure fit for everyone else. Let's do life like our brains do life creatively, lovingly and with all our might. When we embrace who we are and how our brains work, we can figure out how to live our lives successfully, and in turn, lead our families. Well, at the end of the day, we just want to be good moms. but spoiler alert, you are already a great mom. ADHD does not mean you're doomed to be a hot mess mama, you can rewrite your story from shame spiral to success story. And I'll be right here beside you to cheer you on. Welcome to motherhood in ADHD. Before we jump into this week's episode, let's read our review of the week. This one comes from Martha Hank called the best podcast for ADHD moms. Oh Patricia, how you get me through every day. Being home with a baby during a pandemic when you have ADHD is hard. Every day is a challenge. And when I'm looking for guidance or feeling like my brain is on a loop, this podcast gets me through. As soon as I put my baby down for a nap, I put in my headphones and I listen to Patricia while I go about my chores. It's become a little daily ritual that has helped me also much as diagnosed with ADHD two years ago, and I've been studying it ever since trying to make sense of my brain. This podcast is by far my favorite resource because not only is it chock full of helpful tips, great info and positive vibes, but it's directed at mothers with ADHD. It couldn't be more perfect for my current state of life. I'm not kidding when I say it gets me through the day. I always feel better about my situation. After listening. Keep doing what you're doing. Patricia, I need you You are my friend. And we've never even met lots of hearts, emojis, all Murtha I can just picture you in that pandemic, vacuuming and listening. Because Ooh, that pandemic was so hard. So, so hard, especially on moms, especially with moms of HD, it was just too much. So thank you, and I do hope we get to meet soon.
Patricia Sung 02:34
Hey, they're successful mama, it's your friend Patricia Sung, I get why neurotypical people love sticker charts, they're trying to build a habit. And that's a good thing in for them, they can build habits a lot faster than we can. So when they put their sticker chart together, they get to celebrate all their wins, which are not the best. For them, it feels good to put other stickers on. But for us habits are a lot more difficult to establish it takes more time, we start to get bored after a while. So we get this weird conundrum between trying to build the habit through sameness but not make it so seem like so similar that it's boring. Here's your permission slip to say it's okay to mix it up and do something differently. It's okay to use a plan for a while and change it into a different plan or go back to the plan you had before. Because now that's working again, it doesn't mean that you failed. It means that you're keeping things interesting. What matters is that it works if you have seven different meal planning ways. As long as they work. That's what matters. The goal is to get to the goal not to get to the goal only this one singular way I change my meal planning plan every couple of months when it stops working for us a change it and by us. I mean usually me I used to feel really guilty about this, but I don't anymore because things change. My kids are older, they eat different things. In some stages of motherhood, you don't have as much time for cooking. The way you're gonna feed your family when you have a newborn or a toddler is different than how you're going to feed your kids when they're bigger. If you're working if you're not working if you're working from home if you're and when I say working I mean an outside of the job like outside the house job. We're all working a lot. Okay, let me back that up. Just saying
Patricia Sung 04:17
Okay, anyways, mealtime looks different throughout your motherhood, the extracurricular activities, people's work schedules, like it's constantly different. Right now. I don't like cooking. I used to love cooking. This used to be like before we had kids this was one of the date nights that my husband and I would do you know, have a glass of wine and take a leisurely time to like make a great meal and sit down and enjoy it without you know talking. That doesn't happen now. Now it's like feed kids bath bed things are happening. practice the piano homework. Let's go Time for bed moving, moving, move it. It's not a relaxing time anymore. There is not the space in our schedule to leisurely sit about so right now. We're moving into a different phase of meal planning. Now, caveat, let me be clear, change isn't always good. Sometimes you need to stick with something a little bit longer for it to fit, there has to be a balance, like you can't stick with something forever when it's not working. But you also need to give it time to settle in. Because when you give up before you know whether or not it works, then you don't get anywhere. So don't scrap what's working because of some bogus reason, which is usually the opinion of somebody else. But I think you know, when you're being wishy washy, and when you're making like a concerted concrete decision to do something different for a good reason for you, when I look at sticker turrets and gold trackers and all that, I know they work great for lots of people. But a lot of times when we have ADHD, we don't look at all the stickers that we have accumulated, we look at the places that we don't have stickers. Is this you to do you look at the person next to you that has more stickers than you? Or do you think about how many stickers you could have, if only you had fill in the blank, some Shamy reason about how you should have more stickers, because of the years of conditioning that we messed up and we didn't do it correctly, you didn't follow the instructions, right? When you have ADHD you tend to look for or very alert to the negative note, sometimes this is a gift, you might have a gift for noticing. Like, what's off what's unusual What's strange here, you see the missing puzzle piece, this is really great for problem solving, not so great for self esteem. I believe that this gift of knowing the solution, along with our resilience and persistence.
Patricia Sung 06:31
This is why so many people with ADHD become in excel at things like entrepreneurship at inventing or innovating. Because when you own your own business, or you're inventing something new, it is literally failure after failure after failure. So when you can harness that, for good is a huge strength. You can also use this as a, like an awful internal narrator who just points out everything that's wrong, what you didn't do. Well, you didn't get right, that is hard. It's a hard habit to break. Because a lot of times, you don't even realize you're doing it. Because when you realize how negatively you're speaking to yourself, it's like a knife in the heart like, oh, how do I treat myself like this. But the good news is, we can do something about that. I'm like, Oh, I so want to go down on that tangent. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna rein it in here. What matters is that we keep trying, and we keep going to find the thing that does work. In the last couple of episodes, we've been talking about this analogy of life at sea, it is hard to live a life at sea in and of itself. And when you don't have anyone around you showing you how to do it. It's so much harder, but you're persistent. When you're trying to achieve a new goal or new habit.
Patricia Sung 07:42
Ask yourself, how can you make this fit you? What can you adjust? How can you be a scientist and keep experimenting and finding the thing that works for you, you have the gift of resilience, kind of wish you didn't probably but you do. I am going to write you a permission slip to be like, Hey, you don't have to do everything exactly right the first time. You can figure it out. Even when you figure it out. You don't have to do it exactly correctly every time. Like I teach a class on how to use your calendar for ADHD brains. It's called daily planning. I teach how to do that. I teach a class to build and keep rhythms and routines in your day for people with ADHD. It's time measure mastery for ADHD moms. And you know what, I don't use my calendar every day. I don't stick to my routine Exactly. Every day. I use it most of the time. Most days I look at my calendar. But sometimes I forget I have ADHD. You know what, at this point, because I built my habits, they're so ingrained in me that like, it's generally fine. I have probably looked at my calendar enough times this week that I mostly know what's going on. Even if I didn't remember to look at this morning, I have followed my routine enough times that even if I don't do it exactly right, most of the things get done. If I forget to do laundry today, it's okay because I've already done it in the last like few days, it will be okay.
Patricia Sung 08:57
When you start out making routines, learning how to use your calendar, all these things, they start as a map. And they give you as much like instruction and direction as you want. So when you look at them, like you can follow it step by step or you can sort of follow it and eventually you figure out what works for you. And those routines and the plans that you made move from being a map that you're following more closely, or consulting more often to more like a guidebook. Now I just check it when I get lost. I don't have to be staring at it all the time. I don't have to post it in my kitchen like I did at the beginning. Because I've put in the work and I figured out how to make it work for me. And I use it as part of my toolbox because really like when you're starting a new habit like what's your expectation to do this new thing you've never done 100% correctly every time if you've never played an instrument, are you just going to pick it up and be like an expert pianist the first week if you've never like danced, swing dancing, can you just hop on the floor and start doing you know lifts if you've never driven a car Can you perfectly parallel park? You know, day one? Probably not. You probably need time and space to practice and figure it out and modify. Like, it is okay to learn like, quote unquote slowly. Expertise doesn't happen overnight. Like if you've never driven somewhere you get off the GPS, you follow it step by step. Eventually you can go by memory, then when you get lost you turn the GPS back on, where do I end up? Oh, here I am. Okay, great. Because we've been chastised for messing up so much in our life. We think that these little mistakes like quote, unquote, mistakes or blips are not okay, this is what it means to be human. No one is going to be perfect. The goal is to improve. The goal is to get better, the goal is to feel better not to do it a certain way. That is why we create your rhythms for the day they are a guideline for you is your framework. It's not written in stone, it's there to use as a tool for you is your tool. It's not meant to cage you in and remind you of all the things you didn't get done. It's a tool to help you get done more than you would have without it.
Patricia Sung 11:06
Do you wish there was a way to feel like you're not feeling it life and motherhood every day? I know what it's like to run around all day like a headless chicken stressed because you're late to everything. And when you finally sit down after the kids are in bed, you think about how you didn't get anything done. And somehow your to do list was longer than when you started out this morning. You're tired drowning in feel like you'll never catch up. But imagine this. When you sit down at the end of the night. There's no MT laundry, you know what's for dinner, you spend some quality time with your kids and Medusa mom didn't even rear her ugly head at bedtime. And you did something kind of just for yourself today. If you did even one of those things today, you'd be thrilled right? It's not a fairy tale, Mama. There are other moms with ADHD getting their days together, in you can do. That's why I created time measure mastery for ADHD moms where I teach you how to create a rhythm for your day in an ADHD friendly way. The puts the lengthy To Do List of motherhood on automate. So you don't have to think about when you'll sleep next, or how you'll find time to pay that bill you've been putting off, you'll be able to make a plan for your day that is fluid enough for your ADHD brain to stick with been structured enough to feel like you're in control. Remember, our rhythms and routines serve us not the other way around.
Patricia Sung 12:25
Over the next 11 weeks you will create a flexible framework for your day and walk away with a community of moms who understand you enter cheering you on and say I'm right there with you. Because being a mom is hard, we will get off track. That's just part of ADHD. But now you will have the support to get back on track. When you are struggling. We meet weekly to help us remember oh yeah, we're working on a goal. Most importantly, you'll learn about how your ADHD brain works so that you make decisions from a place of competence because a healthy mama leads a healthy family. Being proactive comes from a place of strength, which takes a ton of strain off your relationships because you are in a better place. When you're ready to lighten your load by making a daily plan and figuring out what makes sense for your ADHD brain and enjoying more of your motherhood. It's time to sign up for the time management mastery for ADHD moms program. The program starting right now. Hello immediate gratification. So sign up right now at bit.ly/adhdframework. That is bit.ly/adhdframework and that's all lowercase letters bit.ly/adhdframework. So sign up now before you forget, okay. I can't wait to help you feel good about your day. But more importantly, I want you to feel good about yourself. Sign up at bit.ly/adhdframework.
Patricia Sung 13:59
Example my laundry rhythm when I started my laundry rhythm, I had a whole plan I figured out different experiments of like well this on this day it worked on this day it didn't know I wasn't over here like furiously scribbling notes because that's not how I roll. Like I just tried different things and figured out what worked and then I stuck with it. So my current laundry rhythm is in the morning when I'm getting dressed. I look at their laundry hampers and I'm like how much is in this basket isn't more than half full. Okay, then I need to do this basket soon. Do I have time today? What's today? Am I working today? I mean now working today? Is it the basket that I can throw in the wash and then whenever I get around to throwing in the dryer, it's fine. Doesn't matter if it's wrinkly or is this stuff like has to be hung up so it doesn't get wrinkly? Like how does this fit my day? Okay, cool. I can do this one today or no I'm gonna have to wait till tomorrow and all that thought process is like five seconds in my brain because I know now what works and what doesn't sometimes the night before I'm like we're really gonna get this done and I'll take it out into the kitchen so I remember when I am making my son breakfast in the morning to throw it in the wash, but I never do I'm super behind on it, because it's a rhythm. It keeps flowing forward. I know that I've done laundry recently. So it never turns into Mount laundry. I haven't had mount laundry in years.
Patricia Sung 15:12
This is the kind of rhythm that I teach in time management mastery. It's loose, but it's useful to you it fits you were so worried about what's going to go wrong that we don't even try. I know this well, because a few years ago and actually chose my word of the year as failure a purposefully made myself fail at things and take big risks, because I was so afraid of messing up so concerned about my perfectionism that I was hurting myself and keeping myself from growing. And that has not been an easy process. But now I'm so much more okay with messing up than I used to be. And I'm still working on it. Like this isn't a one time thing. So when we talk about consistency, and how people need to be consistent to meet their goals, I disagree, because to me, the word consistent is a little too close to perfect. And as a very iffy coping mechanism for ADHD. I don't feel like that's the goal. I think perfection and consistent. They might be your goal. If you're like trying to be a concert pianist or an Olympic medalist or you're, you know, doing rocket launchers. Okay, cool. Gotta be perfect. Try not to kill anybody got it. But like, I don't need a gold medal in laundry. This is not my goal. I don't need to be the best of the best. I just need to figure out how to keep my family close. For me, the goal is persistence. How do I keep going? How do I not give up? Where can I look for another solution that might fit better than this? My barometer is, more often than not, it's not to be consistent every day. Because if I do the laundry more often than the days I don't do laundry, I will stay ahead. If I wash the dishes more often than I don't wash the dishes, then I'll stay ahead.
Patricia Sung 16:58
Also sidenote, my husband's the dishwasher. I'm the dish put her aware I'm not very good at it. I'm constantly forgetting to put away the dishes. But I'm working on it. And again, I try for more often than not, I'm in the kitchen. I tried to more often than not put the dishes away. And I'm making it like it's getting better. And then I play with it. Like I tried doing it in the mornings. I'm like, No, I'm too tired. Like we get up at six. Because school starts way too early. Like I'm not I'm not putting the dishes away, then it works better if I put it in a different time of day. I make it fun. Let me try this. Let me try that. This is the attitude that I want you to have so that you can enjoy doing time management mastery for ADHD moms like try it out, see what fits. The goal is to make your life more you how can you be the best mom, you can be the best mom for your kids. How does this fit you in your season in your life. Because as you develop these skills for creating the rhythms that fit you then you know one how to modify when things change, because the rhythms that work for you when you have babies or toddlers or not the rhythms that are going to work for you. When you have elementary school kids, when you have one kid, two kids, four kids, your kids keep changing. They keep growing, so we got to stay on our toes and modify quite often. That's one of the hardest parts about setting habits as a mom is like, dude, woman on my kid, they were taking two naps.
Patricia Sung 18:16
Now they're only taking one nap. Now we don't even get naps, like you're constantly dealing with the unexpected. So I want you to have the skills there so that you can modify through every season, are we it's summer got new routines. Oh, back to school, new routines, oh, it's holiday break new routines. We're not starting from scratch every time we're just modifying what already worked, and figuring out like, okay, hmm, you know what the routine I had the first version stopped working. So I have a second version. Now I'm on the third version. It's like, well, you know what, maybe this fifth version is actually a version of number one, or a version of two and three together. Because things are always different. I want you to have the skills to be able to structure it for the life that you have. Remember, we live life at sea and summer beach might be different than winter beach tides coming in is different than tides going out. So we're going to be flexible. We're going to learn how to survive the hurricanes, the tides, the shifting seasons, we're going to learn how to roll with all that. But number two, I also want you to have these skills in place that you fully understand that you can then turn around and teach your kids how to do this. Because we know as moms with ADHD, there's a pretty good chance one of our kids will also have it. And when you understand how to create solid habits and rhythms for your life that are not consistent but persistent. And that more often than not, you're getting things done. And overall, you're average as being above average, then you can teach those skills to your kids. They can learn how to create and build the habits and rhythms that make sense for them no matter how their brain works, because if you can teach habits on the beach, with the tides changing, not going over your sand castles, you keep truckin for sure that person on the prairie is going to be like wow, I mean I can I can definitely build a sandcastle in the prairie with my mind, it's not gonna washed away. Your ability and skills are transferable to so many types because you are flexible, and you know how to deal with life at sea.
Patricia Sung 20:15
So, Mama, come join me in time management mastery for ADHD moms, this course will change your life, you will learn the skills on how to make the daily rhythms and habits that make sense for you. The course is spread out with plenty of time for you to watch the modules, they're all captioned. They all have transcripts, if you prefer to just read it. You can just listen, you can watch the video, you can speed it up, you can slow it down and figure out like what's your learning style, make this work, it gives you plenty of time to like, work through in your head how you want to set up your schedule, draw it out on paper, or put it on your computer, like whatever it makes sense for you to put it out and like look at it and be able to see like, this makes sense for me in the season that I'm in. It comes with three months of successful mama meetups. So you have accountability of showing up making your plan, being able to ask questions in the community. I'm on that bulletin board every workday I check in make sure like who has questions, how am I going to answer this? I'll write you back. Sometimes I make a video if I have too much to say. And I'm like I just I can't type all this out. Let me just say it like, I'm here to answer questions. This is a steal of a deal to get in this class and learn how your brain works. And have me there to answer your questions to have a committee of moms to help you be accountable. On top of that there is a special that as today we're when you join time measure mastery, you also get two of my other courses included. So you're getting my morning routines course and my evening routines course included with time agent mastery, those two are both amazing like all by themselves. And they will help you really step by step go through how you want to set up the evening routine for you. And the morning routine includes both for you and for your kids. I really want to do an evening routine class for kids too. But I'm Patricia slow down. And right now, so many ideas, I tell you all the time, so many ideas. So you will get both of those courses included when you buy time edge and mastery through today. So get in there, get this course make your life fit you mama, head over to bit.ly/adhdframework. That's bit.ly/adhdframework in sign up for the program.
Patricia Sung 22:36
Now, remember, our goal is to do these new habits more often than not, our goal is not to be consistent. It's to be persistent. It's to be a scientist and figure out what makes sense for our brains. Because you know, not every single human on the planet is successful by consistency. When you think about the fisherman, when they go out to fish. They don't go out every single day they go out when the conditions are right. They don't head out into the storm and be like cool, I'm gonna still catch some fish. Even though it's thundering and lightning in my boats getting toppled around. I mean, unless you're on the Deadliest Catch one of my favorite shows, by the way. But that's a whole nother story. Even then they're still only fishing for crab when the time is right when the conditions are right when it's crab season, right? So fishermen look at the conditions and say is this the right time for me to be successful, and they go, then they're persistent. They're also okay sitting home for five days when the conditions aren't right. So you don't have to be consistent. Our gift is being persistent. And by continuing to try and continuing moving forward and doing things more often than we don't. That is how we reach our goal when we have ADHD. So join me in time management mastery with this great promotion, you get two extra courses. It also anytime comes with three months of successful mama meetups like you cannot beat this deal. Come join the course. Get in here, be with other moms who can support you and understand what it's like and figure out the habits and the rhythms and the systems that make sense for you and your family bit.ly/adhdframework. And I will see you next week in your very first meetup. Let's jump in and make this happen, Mama.
Patricia Sung 24:27
Ding ding This is your captain speaking again. Just like last week, I had this episode recorded like a month ahead of time. And rather than trying to like change every nuance that exists in this. I'm just going to tell you the updates. So yes, today is the very last day do grab this super awesome three, four, where you get time into mastery and the simple morning routines course and the simple evening routines course. However, should you need some extra time to think about it you have until April 4 to sign up for time management mastery and on that day I'm going to close it for a while like add in all this awesome neuroplasticity stuff that I've been learning in my certification class. So I'd love to see you in there. And I'm also doing the coaching portion alongside of this. So if you're one of the eight moms who was meant to be in Lighthouse with me for the next three months, meeting going through your obstacles, working on your emotional regulation, figuring out how to make your day roll smoothly when things fall apart, how do you still stay calm, cool and collected and patient and loving with your family. Lighthouse is for you. You have until April 4 to sign up or until all eight spots are taken. So I cannot wait to help you with a smile. Ah, come ask me any questions you have. Send me a DM, send me an email, go over to the website bit.ly/adhdframework sign up for the course there on the checkout page, you'll see the option add coaching, and I cannot wait to help you make your day run smoother, easier, faster. Just pull your whole life together and make some amazing strides in the next three months. I'll talk to you soon successful. For more resources, classes and community head over to my website motherhoodinadhd.com