ah if you clicked on this video then it is very likely that you have a struggle with having too many ideas but very little implementation or follow through you probably have a lot of new hobbies and interests and careers and relationships but 25% down the line you have a tendency to poop out and then you're back at square one doing something new and as a result you're feeling like ah you're not Reaching Your Potential and you're not really getting anywhere in life and you're looking around at every else and you feel very behind so if any of that lands for you then keep watching because in today's video I'm going to walk through why this happens specifically for adult adhders and multipotentialites and more importantly what we can do about it to have more control over the things that we're actually pouring our energy into in life and that we can have better outcomes overall but before we get into it if today is the first time you are landing here then welcome my name is Caren Mill I an ADHD coaching Creator and I'm here for the busy ambitious brains who want to do all of the things but they can't because they want to do all of the things I know you know what I'm talking about right yeah I see you so let's start with breaking down why this happens and I'm going to start by looking through the lens of an ADHD person but let's also include multipotentialites in there because I don't think that this is solely an ADHD problem but it tends to be far worse for us so why is it that we have so many interests from a neurological standpoint we are Divergent thinkers that means that our brain is often going in a million different directions at once however a neurotypical brain tends to be a little bit more linear in the way they think so they have an idea and then they think about the next step and the next step after that until they get to whatever sort of outcome they want so obviously there is a big benefit to linear thinking in that you can focus on one thing from start to completion and get the satisfac of actually having completed the thing so you can move on to whatever comes next so it's very obvious then why this becomes a problem for Divergent thinkers because we have one idea we go 25% in that direction and we either stop because we get bored of it or we realize it's not the right thing or we want to do something else and then we come back to ground zero and start again with a new idea and we just keep doing that over and over again until we run out of space money time and people who will put up with all of our interest changes so at a high level that's basically what's happening in the ADHD brain and it is why we have a tendency to jump around an awful lot now there's other reasons for this obviously like for example we have interest driven brains which means we can only take a project as far as it is interesting to us and then at which point we may not have the dopamine levels in our brain in order to take it through to completion or there might be limiting beliefs at play which means we'll take a project to a certain amount amount and then our beliefs say well I never finish anything anyways or I'm never successful at anything so the minute something gets hard we say ah I might as well give it up right now and move on to the next thing because this is never going to work so there's a lot of things that are happening under the hood of the ADHD brain that makes us jump from thing to thing but I believe if we can embrace the idea I'm about to share with you with a true sense of awareness of where it's coming from I do think it will help us rein in those multiple interests so that they're more aligned to who we are and we make a lot more progress going further and I think it's also interesting to point out that the majority of people that seek out an ADHD coach do so because they say they're not reaching their potential and what that really means is that they're constantly jumping from thing to thing and never seeing anything through to completion which is what in their mind is considered their potential so by the end of this video I'm hoping that you have a much broader and deeper understanding of what's at play here here so that you can actually move yourself towards your own version of potential and hone in that tendency to jump from thing to thing to thing so let's get into it so I'm going to cut to the chase right now and start off with the real reason I think all of us deal with this problem and that is we have this inherent belief that who we are right now is not good enough now here me out when we are born and we're just little babies there are very few expectations of us right like getting your diaper changed getting fed and going to sleep but somewhere between the ages of I would say 0 to 5 the world starts applying scorecards to us and therein lies the issue we are never taught at any point throughout our life to decide whether or not we want to be measured by a specific scorecard we just assume that all of the scorecards are relevant to us and we have to hit 100% at all of them which is physically mentally and realistically impossible and there therefore we are somehow not enough or broken or not reaching our potential and our potential is us meeting 100% of some random scorecard that we didn't choose for ourselves Society put upon us so when a client comes to me and tells me that they're not living up to their potential my first question to them is what potential based on Whose scorecard and in what area of life like specifically tell me where you're fall short of your own potential there are so many scorecards out there that we are measuring ourselves against whether we realize it or not that we can't pin point where we're specifically falling short it's just a globalized feeling of falling behind or being a failure or somehow being broken what happens to a person who fundamentally believes that they are broken or in somehow wrong or bad well the first thing they're going to do is to continue to strive to improve themselves and try and rid themselves of that feeling and sometimes that's a good thing when there's something we want to do and we don't feel like we have the appropriate skills or education to do it it's great to try and improve yourself in that direction but what if you have a million different interests and you're going in a million different directions it becomes very difficult to pinpoint where you should put your focus or energy and also you have no idea what Reaching Your Potential looks like in any of those directions there's too much right so it creates a feeling of helplessness that you see that you're broken you can see where you're falling short of everybody else but you have no idea how to fix it I know you feel this way because I hear it from my clients all the time and I felt this way myself too so what do we do about it well you can definitely go to therapy and spend years and years trying to reverse these deeply socialized beliefs about yourself or if you want a more immediate solution to help you manage all of these different interests is to Simply accept that this part of yourself exists there is a part of yourself that has been socialized to believe that it's not measuring up and it's not just you we all feel that way we are all measured against scorecards where we don't feel like we're enough regardless of whether you're neurod divergent or neurotypical it doesn't matter we all feel that way so if we can Embrace this part of our Human Condition then at least we can accept why we have been trying to do so many things all of these years that we have been driving in a million different directions just trying to rid ourselves of that feeling and accept that if it hasn't worked so far then whatever we're doing to date is not working and we need a new approach and what I'm going to give you in terms of a new approach is going to feel very uncomfortable if you are a Divergent thinker and you have a million thoughts and a million aspirations all at once I want to tell you that it's okay if that is part of your nature it is okay to want more than one thing the problem we get into is that some of the things that we think about or go after are things that we really want to do and another portion of the things that we go after are based on shs obligations and imposed social scorecards that other people are putting on us and the true work for you that's going to transform the chaos you have in your life is to learn how to discern the difference between those two things the things that you want to go after because of inherent interest and the shoulds and the obligations and the scorecards so that is a very broad statement let's bring it down to a tactical area grab a piece of pen and paper pick an area of your life where you feel like you are not measuring up or you're not Reaching Your Potential or you feel like you're somewhat inherently not good enough and that can be home life family friends work health wealth put whatever area you have decided upon at the top of your paper and then what I want you to do is take a minute to write a list of all of the things that you've done in the spirit of striving towards betterment in this area what have you signed up for what have you bought what have you promised and not delivered on what have you committed to but not followed through with list all of the things that you have done and take a few minutes and really rack your brain on this one and feel free to pause the video in order to give yourself some time to think about this look at your list and ask yourself of all of the things that I have done on this list what have I done because of social expectations or scorecards or because I felt like I should or because I felt obligated to and just make a check mark beside each of those things that apply to that question now I want you to go back through that list with this question in mind of all of these things that I've done what did I do because I truly wanted to do and by that I mean either you had a desire to do it or it felt easeful or it felt align to who you are like it just felt like something you thought was the best way to go even if it wasn't a popular opinion go ahead and circle all of the things that you've done that felt authentic to you now that you're done I want you to look at that list how many of the things that you did have a circle around them meaning they're the things that you wanted to do or felt most aligned with you versus how many things have you tried that have a little check mark that indicates that you did it because it was either an obligation or you you feel like you should do it this list right here is actually the only scorecard you ever need to measure yourself against in your life and that scorecard will tell you how much you are operating from a place of shoulds commitments or social scorecards versus operating from your authentic self your intuition your gut sense your instincts and who you really are as a person and the more you can discern between the two of those and choose in the direction of what feels natural authentic and true to you versus obligations shoulds and social scorecards the more you are going to manage this chaos of picking up new things all the time and not being able to follow through with them why the more you are able to choose in a direction of authenticity the more your interest driven nervous system is going to be in alignment with that path the more dopamine you're going to have the more interest and energy you're going to have and the more motivation you're going to have to follow through and complete whatever it is you've started everything in that direction is going to make your life more easeful everything you choose out of obligation or should is going to feel harder you're going to procrastinate more it's going to be pushing a boulder up a heel again and again and again and the less likely you are to follow through and I know you're thinking but Karen there are things in my life I just have to do that are in this category absolutely you have to pay your taxes or you'll go to jail you have to go to work or you'll lose your job however within all of those categories where you feel morally or legally obligated to do them there's always choice for example you get to choose the career you want to go after if you choose a career based on social status it is going to be a slog the entire time if you choose a career based on natural interests and the way you like to work it's going to be much easeful everything in life that you are obligated to do or else you'll go to jail still has so much Choice within it yes you have to pay your taxes but you have the choice as to whether or not you do them yourself yes you need to have a roof over your head but you get to choose where it is what it looks like whether you own it or rent it or share it with a bunch of people everything in life that is an obligation still comes with a myriad of choice and that is the privilege of living in a first world country I recognize that not everybody watching this video will have full autonomy in this area but there is so much choice and if you do not believe that you have Choice even in the things that you're obligated to do then that is coming from a victim mindset and it is a very limited view of the world there are infinite choices for all of us at any point in life all you have to do is build that muscle of discernment is this what I want to do because it inherently Curr L feels aligned to who I am or am I doing this out of a perceived obligation or to meet some sort of social standard as adults we absolutely have control over how we spend our time money energy and who we spend all of that with not 100% of the time that's for sure but for a large majority of us we have the ability to make choices and the more you choose in alignment with who you are the better choices you will make the less choices you will make because you will follow through with things more often so to wrap up if you are feeling that sense of chaos and overwhelm because you have way too many interests and commitments and hobbies and all of these things and yet you can't seem to move forward on any of them pause and ask yourself where is the striving coming from am I inherently operating from a place of not feeling enough like I need to improve myself in some way or can I accept that I am a whole person just as I am and the ding part of my personality may always be there but I don't need to let it run the show and then make a commitment to yourself to go through all of the chaotic areas of your life and do that exercise of defining what is in alignment to who you really truly are and what you want versus everything else and trust me on this the more you move in that inherent authentic Direction the more you will feel a momentum of peace in your life and over time you might realize that the feeling of striving and trying to fix yourself starts to recede and what it's replaced with is an enjoyment of the Journey of life because that's all this really is there is no destination for any of us other than death so you might as well enjoy the journey as you're going so that is what I've got for you today I hope that that landed for you in some way and thanks for watching I'll see you in the next video bye for now