Last week it was a neighbour’s birthday. To celebrate, their family put colourful balloons and a garland in their garden as an extra birthday surprise.
It probably didn’t take that much time to do, but I bet it helped make the day fun and memorable.
In a recent Facebook Live session in the free Untapped Brilliance Facebook Group about working looong hours, one of the questions I answered was:
How do you prioritize yourself and family when you have a history of prioritizing work because work is where you get respect and appreciation?
Putting work ahead of everything else is something that lots of ADHDers do.
It can happen for many reasons including:
- You enjoy your work;
- You are rewarded at work by the positive feedback you receive;
- There is a sense of accomplishment when you finish a task or project;
- You feel appreciated by other people for your efforts;
- This positivity is a confidence booster;
- There is clear structure and external accountability.
In contrast, at home, family members can take you for granted. There is no finish line for housework, and unless you are expecting guests, there is no external accountability. Plus, if you don’t think you are good at ‘home stuff’, your confidence in your own abilities gets nibbled away.
Of course, you love your family more than words can say, but your time allocation might not reflect them as apriority.
One way to disengage from work and spend time at home is to make home life as compelling and interesting as work.
How do you do that?
One way to do this is to be intentional about creating memories.
In order to create a memory, things have to be a little bit different to your normal.
Image if you sit and watch TV every day for 365 evenings in a row. When you look back, each evening will blur into one memory.
In contrast, if you have a movie night where you pick a movie ahead of time and find a new pizza recipe to test out, the movie night will stand out from all the other evenings.
Creating memories takes a little bit of forward planning – just enough that you start to feel a little bit of excitement but not so much that it starts to feel overwhelming.
A reason why creating memories like this is a helpful technique is that ADHDers are often motivated by new and novel things.
By their nature, this type of memory creation means that you are experiencing new things.
Let me know what memory you are going to create next!
If you want more ideas like this to help manage ADHD naturally as well as support and accountability as you implement them, consider joining The Untapped Brilliance Club.
Click here to learn more >>>> www.untappedbrilliance.com/yes
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