Podcast Episode #41: ADHD and Decision Making

This episode is sponsored by Cure Hydration. You know that moment for me, it’s around like 2 or 3pm when my ADHD brain just decides we’re done for the day. We’re done here. The afternoon slump hits, the lights go off upstairs and suddenly answering an email or doing basically anything feels like climbing a mountain. That’s when I reach for Cure Energy. It’s a clean plant based energy drink mix made with 100 milligrams of natural caffeine and electrolytes so I get the focus and hydration boost I need without jitters, without a crash and without that like I drink battery acid. Vi vibe that some of the energy drinks have. The peach tea and akai berry flavors are my current go to’s crisp, refreshing and they don’t taste fake y’. All. They don’t taste fake. I’ll drink one before recording a session or when I need to get help through like that afternoon drag. And honestly I I drink it anytime. My brain just needs to cooperate. What’s wild is that Cure Energy is only 25 calories and has zero added sugar. It actually helps me stay hydrated while giving me energy. Okay, I love coffee, but coffee could never Staying hydrated isn’t just about water. You also need electrolytes. And that’s why I love Cure. It’s clean, it tastes great and it actually works. And remember, Cure is FSA HSA approved which is amazing. You can use that money to pay for cure and for I have ADHD listeners, you can get 20% off your first order@curehydration.com I have ADHD with the code I have ADHD. And if you do get a post purchase survey, make sure to tell them that you heard about CURE right here on the podcast. It really helps to support the show. Don’t just drink more, upgrade it with Cure. Did you know you can opt out of winter with VRBO? Save up to $1,500 for booking a month long stay. When thousands of sunny homes are waiting for you, why subject yourself to the cold? Put the snow shovel down, put the parka back in the closet and don’t you dare scrape another windshield. Slip into some flip flops, consider a sunless tan and use the monthly Stays filter to save up to fifteen hundred dollars. Book your warm getaway at vrbo.com. Welcome to the I have ADHD Podcast where it’s all about education, encouragement and coaching for adults with adhd. I’m your host Kristin Carter and I have adhd. Let’s chat about the frustrations Humor and challenges of adulting, relationships, working and achieving life with this neurodevelopmental disorder. I’ll help you understand your unique brain, unlock your potential, and move from point A to point B. Hey, what’s up? You are listening to The I have ADHD podcast, episode number 41. I am your beloved host, Kristen Carter, and I am so glad that you chose to tune. Tune in today, guys. I am pumped because as of this podcast, once I am done recording it and it’s. And it is. What do you call it, like, uploaded into Libsyn. Guess what? I’m a whole month ahead for the first time in my podcasting career. I’m so excited. Do you know how hard it is for an adult with ADHD to work ahead on something? Yes, you do. I know that you do. It is no easy feat. And I am so glad that I took the last two weeks to really pump out some content because it’s really important to me that I show up more for you this year. 2020 is going to be our year, my friend, mi amigo. We are going to be there for each other more often. So I think I said that last year, in 2019, I had a 71% average. And while we know that Cs get degrees, I want to do so much better this year. So, yeah, I’m excited that this podcast is representative of me being a month ahead. So it is only January 2nd today, and yet it will be posted on January 28th. So do a happy dance with me because I know that you know how hard it is to work ahead, and yet I did it. Which means, guess what? You can do it too. So I’m nothing special, just a normal human with adhd. So if I can do it, you can do it. All right, today we are going to be talking about the concept of making decisions. And you guys, this is something that we really struggle with as adults with adhd. We lack the executive functioning that makes decision making easy. Okay? So for us, most of the time, decision making is laborious. It is hard, it is difficult. It can take a long time. We waver back and forth between the options, and a lot of times we just choose not to make a decision at all. A lot of times, we are just living our lives on default. We are just choosing to avoid decisions and therefore, the being at the mercy of whatever is going on around us. So if this is you, I am really looking forward to this conversation today because in the last several years, my life has changed by the way that I have processed decision making by the way that I think about it, by the way that I approach it and, and by the way that I implement decisions in my life. I do not want to do anything on default anymore. Don’t want to do anything just because I haven’t made a good decision or any decision, just because I’ve wanted to avoid the discomfort of decision. And so the last several years have allowed me to kind of exercise that muscle of decision making. I want to share with you what I have learned. So of course you know that as an adult with ADHD we have low executive functioning skills. This is because the area of our brains where the executive functions lie is underdeveloped. And because ADHD is a spectrum, some of us struggle with it more than others, some of us struggle with certain symptoms more than others. That just kind of is what it is and there’s no way around that. So ADHD is a spectrum. There are varying degrees to which we all struggle with this disorder. So this advice I think can apply to people who are very high functioning and to my lower functioning friends as well. I think that no matter where you find yourself on the spectrum, I think it can be really helpful to you either way. As ADHDers, we often struggle with analysis paralysis, meaning there are so many options, there’s so much information, there are so many varying opinions. We are really ruminating and spending so much time researching and trying to figure out what the right decision is that we end up being paralyzed and not making a decision or putting the decision off until it’s absolutely necessary. We can’t go a minute longer without making the decision. That’s oftentimes where we find ourselves, isn’t it? Putting off the decision until there’s absolutely no time left and then our brains finally comply because they don’t have a choice. It’s like, okay, fine, I’ll make a decision since I have to make a decision right this second. So I want to give you several tips in the decision making process that I think will be really helpful to first of all, empower you to make decisions that you feel good about, and then also making decisions more effectively, more quickly, making them in a much shorter amount of time, and not spending all of your brain power on going back and forth between the options. We are inundated with decisions every single day and this can be completely exhausting to us. We can finish a day at work and come home and just feel completely spent because of all of the decisions that we’ve had to make. And it has taken so much of our brain’s power and energy to make those decisions. I’ve found that parenting is very similar in that way. There are so many questions that my kids ask, so many, many decisions to be made on a day to day basis that staying home and being with my kids sometimes is much more exhausting than working. And a lot of that is because of all of the conversations and questions and decisions that have to be made throughout the day. And especially decisions that there’s really no right answer to. So for example, child A hits child B because child B poked child A in the butt with a pencil. And so it’s like, who’s right in that scenario? Who do I punish? Who do I yell at? I don’t know. I honestly have no, I have no idea. And so like decisions like that where it’s like there’s no clear answer. It doesn’t seem like there’s a right and wrong in this scenario. Those decisions I think are the most exhausting and the ones that we avoid making. So the decisions that we’re faced with can be really, really insignificant. For example, cleaning out our closet. What do we wanna keep? What do we want to? What’s just like got holes in it and needs to be thrown away or what can we donate or give away? While that is insignificant, it’s very inconsequential. It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of life. We spend so much time trying to make those decisions and often we delay or just don’t make decisions. And that’s what I mean by living our lives on default. So now we live with the cluttered closet because we’re not willing to make the decision of do I love this? Is it holy? Do I have holes in it? Can it be donated? Okay, so then we end up living with a really messy house or a really cluttered closet because we don’t want to have to make all of the decisions involved with decluttering. And then there are some decisions in our lives that are major. Who are we going to marry? What are we going to choose as a career? Are we going to have children or are we not going to have children? If we do have children, how many? Those kinds of decisions that really affect our lives and the lives of others, those can be very paralyzing as well because it’s huge. Like am I going to marry person A or person B? That’s a big decision and it’s going to determine the course of my life. And a lot of times we delay those decisions. We put those decisions off because we’re just too afraid to choose. The wrong path. And so whether you’re in a place right now where you’re making a lot of little decisions or you are faced with some life altering decisions, I think think this list of tips for really good decision making will be helpful to you. I really, really hope it’ll be helpful to you. So first and foremost, here’s something that I learned that has totally changed my life. Most of the time, there’s really no right or wrong when it comes to the decisions that we’re making. Now, I know that sounds crazy because we are programmed to think that every single thing we choose is either the right decision or the wrong decision. But what if that’s just not the way the world works? Now, as a person of faith and fairly conservative, I definitely believe that there is right or wrong in the world. I definitely believe that killing is wrong. So if you’re deciding, should I kill this person or should I not kill this person, I’m going to say there’s definitely a right or wrong in that scenario. Right. If you’re deciding between robbing the bank or not robbing the bank, I’m going to encourage you to recognize that there is definitely right or wrong in that scenario. And however, most of the decisions that we make, like what should I do with my career? There’s no right or wrong with that question. You can choose to be a physical therapist and you can make an amazing living and a great life out of being a physical therapist, or you can be a computer programmer and you can have an equally satisfying, amazing life being computer programmer. I think that what we do is we put our happiness outside of ourselves and we say, if I make the wrong choice, if I choose the wrong path, then what if it’s wrong and I’m not happy? But I want to offer to you that happiness is not a thing that is out there somewhere to go find. Happiness is inside. And I know that’s like super cliche. I’m sorry. There’s no way around it. There is no way around the fact that happiness is something that is created inside of you with the way that you think and the way that you feel. Happiness is not something that’s outside of you with the next thing or the next job or the next relationship. And so when we think that the decisions that we’re making are either a right or a wrong or a black and white, of course we’re paralyzed. Of course they feel huge. Of course it feels like, how in the world am I supposed to decide this? I remember when I was trying to choose which college to go to. And I was 18 years old. I had ADHD, which really meant that I was processing life at the developmental age of a 14 year old. And I really had no business making this decision for myself. But I was choosing between three different schools, and I didn’t know which one to choose. They all seemed pretty equal to me. And honestly, I agonized over it and I prayed about it. And I was like, I just want to know the right thing to do. And I’ll never forget my dad. He’s so awesome and so wise. And he was like, dude, there’s no right or wrong here. Just choose. You can be happy doing any of it. And he was so right. I wish I had applied that to all of the decisions in my life. It didn’t matter what college I went to. I was going to study music either way. I was going to live a wonderful, fulfilling life either way. And hopefully, no matter where I went, I would end up right here, which is not using my music degree, but connecting with adults with ADHD and coaching you. Hopefully my path would have led me here either way. So did it really matter what music school I went to? It really didn’t. So I just want to offer that unless your choice involves something that is morally right or morally wrong, and I know we define that differently, but at least let’s throw that out there, then you don’t need to worry about there being a right choice and a wrong choice. We spend so much time indulging in indecision because it protects us from feeling like we’ve made the wrong choice. It protects us from actually having to decide. If I don’t decide, then I don’t have the opportunity to fail. That’s really not true, because if you don’t decide, that in itself is. Is a decision. So if I wasn’t willing to choose the wrong school, I would have ended up not going to college at all. I would have failed ahead of time to avoid failing, you know, making the wrong decision. I would have just not decided, not gone to school, maybe kept waitressing or lifeguarding or whatever I was doing at the time. Oh, I think I was working at Rite Aid, which was a magical career, but it’s not something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. However, maybe I would have ended up working at Rite Aid for the rest of my life because I wasn’t willing to choose which college to go to. Right? So do not put off your decision and fail ahead of time to avoid a perceived failure in the moment. Okay. Realize that with most things, there’s not a black and white, there’s not a right and wrong. There’s just two really good choices that you have to decide between. So when you’re faced with a decision, I want you to ask yourself, is this a moral black and white issue? Is this a moral right or wrong issue? Or is this just a couple good choices that I’m going to need to choose between? If it’s a couple good choices that you need to choose between, then really it’s a win, win. There is really no fear of failure. It’s just deciding and then making that decision. The right decision, which we will talk about in a minute. Okay. So that was the first step in making great decisions is realize that usually there’s not a right and wrong. So you don’t need to feel paralyzed because there’s not a right or wrong. There’s just great and great, and you choose one. The second step in making a great decision is writing things, things down. My friends, I feel like I’m always saying this. We have to externalize our thoughts. So this is going to look like us maybe doing a thought download on the decision that we have to make. So which college do I want to go to and write down all of my thoughts about it. You can also write down your vision and your values and keep those very close. You want to make sure that you’re making decisions with your vision and your values in mind. Do not forsake your vision and values. That’s very important. If you haven’t listened to my vision episode or the episode previously on oh Golly. Priorities. That’s what it was on, Priorities. Then go listen to those episodes and realize how important it is to have a very clear vision and very clear values. And then when you’re making your decision, it’s actually a lot easier because you already know who you are, what you care about, and what you see in your future. And then making decisions oftentimes is not that difficult. You can definitely write down your pros and cons. You can definitely write down all of your thoughts, especially the really painful thoughts, because those are the thoughts that are holding you back from making the decision. Because if you already feel like a failure, if you already feel defeated, if you already feel like it’s not going to be a good decision, of course you’re going to avoid it. So notice the thoughts that create those feelings. Notice the thoughts that put you into a self defeated mindset. And then ask yourself how you want to feel. Certainly you don’t want to feel defeated. Right. Do you want to feel confident? Do you want to feel self assured? Do you want to feel secure that you can make a decision and that you won’t be a failure? So then start writing down the thoughts that would be helpful in that capacity. Okay, so if you’re feeling self defeated, if you’re feeling like a failure already, you will avoid the decision 100% because our feelings are what drive our actions. So the feeling of failure is going to lead you to procrastinate and avoid. So if you don’t want to feel like a failure, ask yourself, how do I want to feel? How do I want to feel about this decision? A lot of times I really want to feel self assured. I want to know that I’m making the right decision. Even if the people around me think like, girl, you crazy. At least I know why I’m making the decision and I feel confident with what I’m choosing. Okay, so tip number one is ask yourself if this is a moral issue, if this is a moral right or wrong, and if not, let yourself off the hook a little bit and realize that there’s really probably not a right or wrong decision. Tip number two, write it down. Externalize your thoughts. Make sure it aligns with your vision and values. You’re writing down your pros and cons. Ask yourself how you want to feel about this decision. Tip number three is constrain. And this is huge. We suffer from Shiny Object syndrome. We suffer from wanting to know all the details. We want to have all the options. We don’t want anyone to tell us no. We want to make sure that we have the opportunity to do everything. See everything, say everything, read everything. Here’s the deal. Shiny Object syndrome does not lead to effective, productive decision making. Instead, I encourage you to constrain. This is a word and a concept that I love. Love, love, love, love. Constrain. Limit your options. Do not read absolutely everything on the subject. Read enough so that you’re informed. Talk to enough people so that you’re informed, but limit your options. You don’t want 100 perspectives. You want maybe three or four perspectives from people or sources that you respect. Okay, Limit your options. Number two, limit your time. Do not give yourself unlimited time. To make this decision. You need to limit your time. This is why we save decisions to the last possible second. Because we’re going to take however much time we’ve been allotted. So if we have a year to make a decision, we’re going to take a year. If we have five minutes to make a decision, we’re going to take five minutes. When I am with my clients, coaching in, focused or in a one on one scenario, I am often encouraging them to decide right there in the moment. So they’ll say like, I’m not sure what to do. And I’m like, yes, you do. Go ahead, decide right now. And then they decide. It’s like magic. It is absolutely crazy. So know that you’re going to take as much time as you’ve been given. So limit your time. Make effective, productive, quick decisions. It will change your life. If you force yourself to decide things quickly, promptly, in a very timely manner, then you won’t waste your brains and energy ruminating on it. You won’t waste your brain’s energy researching, talking about it, thinking about it, praying about it. You will just decide. And sometimes I would say most of the time, the only way to know if it was the quote unquote right decision is to make the decision and then see what happens. We don’t have the luxury as humans of knowing the future. How in the world are we going to know if it’s the right decision or the wrong decision? The only way we know is we decide and then we adjust as necessary. Okay, so this leads me to my next point number four. Make it the right decision. So once you’ve decided, then magically awesome, it’s the right decision. Don’t go back and forth, just decide and move forward. Okay? Do everything in your power to make that decision successful. Be willing to fail over and over again in order to get to the point where it was the right decision. So for example, should I start a new business or not? So maybe you decide to start the new business, but then you lose money the first year. Does that mean it was the wrong decision? Or does it mean that you just need to keep doing, trying and failing and trying and failing until you get it right? What we do is we wimp out too early here. It gets hard and then we say, oh, see, it wasn’t the right decision. This happens a lot of time in marriages too. Like, how in the world are you supposed to decide who the right partner is for you, right? So like you date someone, you try really hard to choose the right person. You do. And then guess what? Marriage gets hard. And that’s across the board. It gets hard for all of us. And so it’s really easy for people to say, oh my gosh, I think I made the wrong decision because this is really hard. Instead of working really hard to ensure that it was the right decision, that it was successful, now if it turns out that the decision that you made does not yield the results that you were hoping for, okay, I’m not saying it was the wrong decision, but I’m saying, you know, what you thought was going to happen didn’t happen. No matter how hard you tried, how much you worked on it, it really just did not yield the outcome that you were hoping for. Here’s tip number five. Have your own back. Okay? Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t shame yourself. Don’t say, I knew I was a failure. I knew I wasn’t gonna get it right. I knew, like, none of that, just that is not useful, it is not helpful, and it will only lead to repeating history, I assure you. I guarantee it. Okay? So don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t yield great results or the results that you were hoping for. Just have compassion on yourself. Know that you did your best, and it’s time to pivot. It’s time to make another decision. Know that you always have the option to pivot. This is how amazing lives are created. One deliberate decision at a time. And then a pivot and then a decision and a pivot. And that is just how we roll. This is how we create the life that we want. So we decide between the options that we’re given and we do our best to choose the option that we think is going to yield the best results. And if it does, great, we continue down that path. And if it doesn’t, ok, then we know. Maybe we choose the other thing that we were deciding between, or maybe a new option has presented itself. But I am a huge fan of taking away a lot of the pressure in decision making. Here’s my last tip. I really encourage you to anytime you’re making a decision, make sure you really like your reason for your decision. So once you decide, once you feel like you’ve made your decision, make sure you really like your reason or reasons. That’s going to help you to really trust yourself and have confidence in the decision that you made, even if it wasn’t a decision that yielded the results that you hoped for. Because you can still look back and say, hey, I had the information, I did the best I could. I really liked my decision because of this reason and this reason and this reason, and it didn’t work out the way I was hoping, no problem, I’m going to pivot. Instead of the story that we so often tell ourselves, which is, I’m a failure. I can’t believe I did it again. Why am I even bothering? I’m never going to measure up. I’m never going to be like that other person, blah, blah, blah. What that leads to is just repeating history. Okay, my friends, so let us review. Instead of procrastinating, avoiding, and living our lives on default, we are going to start making conscious, powerful decisions from a place of confidence. Okay? And here is how we’re going to do it. We’re going to understand that most of the time, there’s no right and wrong when it comes to decision making. Unless we’re making a moral decision, there’s probably not a right and wrong. Now, you may define something as being wrong, like, oh, my gosh, I just lost $10,000 on this decision. Obviously it was wrong. I personally do not look at decisions that way. There is a cost no matter what decision we make. And if it loses me $10,000, it doesn’t necessarily mean it was the wrong decision. I think my husband would disagree on me, disagree with me on this point, and that’s okay. But for me, I still do not choose to measure a decision based on necessarily the outcome. It’s for me, like, is there a moral right or wrong here? No. Okay, great. Then there’s really no right or wrong. Let’s just choose the best one and move forward. Pivot if we need to. Secondly, write it down. Make sure that you’re writing down your vision and your values, the pros and cons, doing thought downloads, extensions, externalizing all of the clutter in your brain so that you can process the decision really well. Number three, constrain, constrain, constrain. Love this concept. Limit your options. Limit your time. Limit the number of people you talk to. Okay? Force yourself to decide. Don’t ruminate for weeks or months. Just decide. Number four. Make it the right decision. So make the decision and then make that decision, the right decision, by doing every single thing you can to ensure that it’s the right decision. Try and fail and try and fail and try and fail until it becomes the right decision. Number five, if it ends up not yielding the results that you were hoping for, have your own back. Don’t beat yourself up. Know that you always have the option to pivot. Know that this is how an intentional, amazing life is created, by one decision after the other. Make sure you like your reasons for the decisions that you make and know that you’ve got this. We are all in this together. And the only way to create the life that you’ve always wanted is to try and fail and try and fail and decide and fail and decide and pivot. Until you get there. Okay. It’s the only way that I know how to do it. Hey, if you know a different magical way to do it, then contact me, because I would love to learn. But as far as I know, in all of the books I’ve read, in all of the coaches that I’ve studied, this is the only way to do it. Try and fail. Decide and fail. Pivot and move forward. It’s the only way to create the life that you want. Hey, thanks for hanging out with me today. I have enjoyed our time together. If you would love to take this concept deeper and study it, I would love for you to check out my coaching program, Focused. You can go to www.ihaveadhd.com focused. To get more information, and I would absolutely love to work with you. I’ll see you next time.