Starting Over Again in The New Year with ADHD

Why consistency doesn’t work for ADHD brains — and how learning to come back without shame creates real change.

If you’ve ever felt like you can’t stick with anything — routines, organizing, decluttering, goals, or New Year’s resolutions — this episode is for you.

Book a Call with Megs > Calendar

In this episode, Megs talks honestly about why starting over is not failure, especially for ADHD brains. She breaks down why so many systems don’t stick, how social media narratives can quietly box people with ADHD into believing there are things they “just can’t do,” and what actually creates sustainable change.

This conversation is about the messy middle — the part no one posts about. The part where motivation fades, routines fall apart, planners get abandoned, and shame creeps in. And why that middle isn’t a problem to fix — it’s where learning happens.

Instead of pushing consistency, Megs introduces a more realistic (and ADHD-friendly) concept: persistence — the ability to come back without shame, even after you forget, avoid, or fall off.

This episode is a gentle but powerful reminder that:

• Your ADHD brain is not broken
• You’re not lazy or inconsistent
• You don’t need to change everything at once
• And there is always a moment you can begin again

Article Referenced in Podcast > What is Executive Dysfunction in ADHD?

01:03 — How Social Media Shapes ADHD Beliefs

02:31 — Why the New Year Feels Like a Reset for ADHD

03:22 — Noticing ADHD Patterns That Block Change

05:55 — Persistence vs Consistency for ADHD Brains

09:12 — Organizing Strategies That Actually Work With ADHD

19:52 — Why ADHD Community and Support Matter

24:33 — Microdosing Mindfulness for ADHD Overwhelm

Would you like to learn more about hiring Megs as your ADHD coach? Start here> The Perfect Place to Start

The Community is OPEN! Join right here: Organizing an ADHD Brain

You can also learn more about the community HERE> OrganizinganADHDBrain.com

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants: 0:39

Hey everyone. Happy New Year and thank you so much for being patient as I had a much needed break from the podcast. I am thrilled to announce I just finished my A DHD coaching certification and I am so excited. I learned so much during the process and one of the things I really wanted to do after going through the certification process was involve my local community in. Getting together to talk about A DHD, and I'm proud to say that yesterday was the first time I met in person with people who just wanted to talk about A DHD, and it was fascinating. I can't wait to share more on the show, Almost 35 people showed up. There was this gentleman who was there when I first arrived and he was sitting in a spot in a horseshoe of chairs, and I asked him if anyone else was joining him and if we could join him because it turns out there was a lot more people than I was originally expecting. And he said, yes, no problem. Now I'm not thinking that he's there for this event, but soon enough I'm sitting right next to him and there's about. 35 people sitting around him. And last night my husband and I were laughing about it because we were like, what if he didn't wanna be there? And now he's stuck there surrounded by 35 people and he doesn't feel comfortable enough to get up and leave. I was like, oh my gosh. That thought didn't even cross my mind until last night and we were dying about it. However. He shared with me at the end of the show that he was diagnosed with a DHD about 30 years ago, and he recommended a book to me, driven to Distraction, and he was talking about how he sometimes in his own brain can either be distracted by the smallest thing. It could be a small noise in the house, or a dog barking outside, and it can be so incredibly annoying or he can drown out. Everything around him and he doesn't focus on anything at all. And when he said that, I was like, oh, that's absolutely something I experience. Right Before him and I had started to speak, and this kind beautiful woman came up and she said, I'd love for there to be like a better seating arrangement.'cause there was no place for me to put my coffee or what I was eating. and my coffee spilled everywhere. I was like, oh my gosh, I had no idea. I didn't even know your coffee spilled. I didn't notice, so I was like, oh, it must have not been a big deal. Well, last night when I was talking to my husband about it, he's like, oh yeah, they had to move all the chairs out of the way and people were helping her clean up. And I was like. Where was I this whole time? I was completely absent from that experience because I was so involved with either whatever I was talking about or listening to someone else asking a question. It was just really fascinating, now, maybe this is why that gentleman had actually said that to me. Oh, for goodness sakes. I don't know about you guys, but I have realized very recently that I do a lot of auditory processing Alright, let's get on with this episode. Today my intention is to help you understand, resolutions or any change you wanna make. We talk a lot about the messy middle and a lot of the times the messy middle actually holds you back from getting you to where you want to go, especially with a DHD. One thing I've noticed recently about myself is that specifically social media and people talking about how we can all relate to so many things actually holds me back a little bit because there are so many things that I've found that work so well with my brain that I don't do so many of the things that I see on social media anymore. But I find that when I see. Someone throwing away a planner because it's never gonna work for them. Or saying that waking up early is for the devil or something like that. With a DHD it almost puts us in a box and that there's certain things we can do and there's certain things we can't do. But there's actually nothing we can't do. It's just so often we have so many incredible ideas at the same time that it's hard for us to focus on any of them. And you know, I talk about this all the time. If everything is important, then nothing is important. So when you think about organizing your home and decluttering and finding some peace in your life, you can't stop your life to actually do that. So are you also trying to get healthy at the same time and meal plan There's so many things that you're striving for that it makes sense that some of these get dropped. So as the new year approached, I started to think about my perspective of it. Now, as someone who's worked in this space, as someone who has coached people, I have the community as well, and I wanna give you my perspective on, on. Everything. So let's talk about New Year's. I think one thing that's really good about it is just the fact that it's a reason to start again. It's a reason to start over. It's a reason to be like, oh my gosh, I had so much sugar over the holidays. Let me start thinking about adding more vegetables to my repertoire. It is a reason to say January is a month that doesn't have a ton of events in it or holidays. So this is a great opportunity for me to spend some time decluttering and I wonder how I can incorporate that into my life. January is a great time to start again. It is a new year and oftentimes we're waiting for that feeling or that right time or that moment when it's time to start again, because we want so much to succeed. We're just trying to understand ourselves to get to that place of succeeding. I also talked in the last episode about noticing, noticing our patterns, noticing the things that we do, and this is really important for a couple of reasons. This helps you understand the changes that you want to make, but it also helps you understand some of the patterns or the things that you naturally go back to when things don't necessarily work out the way that you want them to. Then of course, your reactions to things, whether it's fight, flight, freeze, or appease. What tends to come up when it comes to your clutter, when it comes to any change that you're trying to make? I love that organization can be this entryway into making change in your life because oftentimes other things are outta sight out of mind. But your clutter is there. It's stuff that you can see and it's not gonna go away until you do something about it. But what's cool about it is when you start to see progress and you start to notice the change within yourself, this is proof that you can actually change anything else that you want to as well. It's just about. Putting barriers on yourself so that you understand that this is your main focus right now. But that's not easy. Not easy, especially when we've had 15 great ideas at the same time that we wanted to execute for our whole lives. But you can absolutely create change and have better priorities in your life. You can. I'm living proof and my clients are living proof. There's so many other people living life with a DHD where they have gained an understanding of how to allow some of the other things to not be a priority right now. Anyway, so the new year is such a great place to start over again, but what happens? People sign up for gym memberships. They go for the first week and then they stop going. People start dieting. They do it for the first week or maybe even a whole month, and then they stop doing it. People try to make these drastic changes overnight, and then those things are not sustainable, but that's for good reason. Making a drastic change overnight is not sustainable. That makes sense. It makes sense because you actually haven't changed as a person yet. Changing as a person, changing your beliefs in the way that you act based on those beliefs even coming as far as examining your values and what you understand to be true about the world, that all comes through what you do on a regular basis. And if you're used to doing one thing your entire life and now you wanna change it in a week, that's silly. But you can still change. It's just gonna take time. You know, I see all these people like, oh, this is the one thing that'll finally work, this, is it the app that will change your life, buy all these bins? I just got a pamphlet in the mail saying that we've been here for four months now and they're like, it's time to start organizing. And there was all these little advertisements of all these bins we could get a perfect garage organization system, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, cool. But organization losing weight, understanding your A DHD brain. It doesn't happen overnight. It happens through. Consistency. Oh my God. But I hate that word, but consistency doesn't mean what you think it means. Consistency doesn't mean doing everything the same every single day in and day out. In fact, some days you're gonna completely forget, anything is happening differently. And then one day something comes up and you're like, oh yeah, I forgot I was doing that. That's where we change the word to persistency. How can you be so persistent that even when you forget, you come back to it, you come back to what you wanted to do in the beginning? Now, what's interesting about this is that with a DHD, we love newness. That's why we buy a new planner or a new journal or a new app, thinking that this is finally going to be the thing that gets us in a place where we've conquered the world. Except that's not reality. What is reality is coming back to the things that have worked. And continuing to build off of them. So for example, if you start a planner and you only use it for three days, but it actually worked for those three days, even if you come back to it in three weeks, it could still work for you, even if you've missed days and now you've got blank spots in the journal, right? It's not perfect, but you can actually come back to this journal. This is something that you could try again and actually trying again will allow you to practice to see how it could work for you. And you could start to ask yourself, well, what didn't work last time? But this can only happen through noticing some of the patterns through saying, I notice that I start everything and then I don't finish them. Well, why not? It's not exciting anymore. It's not as exciting as it could be. But what if it's still exciting? We just have to get through the task initiation aspect of it. We don't like being bad at things. However, we have to be bad at things in order to get through the hump to actually be a little bit good at it. Case in point when I was in the corporate world, I used to say how much I hated Excel until I had to learn Excel. And then when I learned Excel, I found out how brilliant it is and how incredible it is, and how beautiful the different equations are that you can create to make these cells talk to each other and paint a picture of the data that you're trying to analyze. I can't believe I'm saying these words out loud. It's so embarrassing'cause I'd much rather be painting a picture. But because I learned this thing that I had this perception of being evil and stupid and why would anyone wanna use this, I got to this other side of truly understanding how beautiful something could be. Coming back though, if we're not excited about something anymore, how do we get back into it? We notice. We notice, okay, if I keep starting things, but I don't finish them, what if some of them actually could work if I came back to them? Because it's about persistency, it's about being persistent in doing the things that you want to do. You want to be more organized, be persistent. Maybe there, is a weekend that you empty out a closet and you put it all back together and you think that it's perfect, but it gets ruined three days later. But then you're like, okay, what did I do differently this time that I did last time? And what could I do differently in the future? Could I communicate more effectively? Could I try a smaller project next time to see if that would actually last longer? Or is this even sustainable? Does this fit my brain or am I trying to fit a perfect picture on Instagram because I wanna post it and it looks really nice. I started organizing because I love design. That's something that I thrive off of and I really like it when things look really nice. I like labels. I like the way the boxes look, but that's not gonna be the same for everyone with a DHD, especially if you've got a ton of kids. If you got laundry, like you don't have time to stop and meticulously put together your pantry right now, and that's okay. And also organizing doesn't start with buying the perfect bin. It actually starts with decluttering and understanding what truly fills up your life now and what was filling up your life last week, and what you think is gonna fill up your life in the future. Because we don't know, and we wanna be prepared for everything the thing is, some of your resolutions or your goals or the things that you wanna do might actually disappear forever. You might think of them one day and then it might be gone with the wind the next. Wouldn't that be okay? What if it was okay? Because you've got so many brilliant and beautiful ideas that will continue to come your way. They're not gone. I think sometimes it's hard because we feel like a truly joyful emotion when those really awesome ideas come up. And then when they're gone, it almost feels like that emotion and that crazy delicious feeling is gone forever with it. But it never is. It never is.'cause we always have another one. And some of them we actually do remember. And then when we come up with a way to. Remember some of these things or come back to them. It's even cooler sometimes. I come up with ideas and I write them down. I come back to them later and I was like, what was I even talking about and how did I think this was even remotely revolutionary? Chances are you're listening to this podcast because getting organized and decluttered is a huge part of your life. Maybe you listen to this podcast in the past and you just came back to it today because you need a little inspiration. Maybe this is your first time tuning in and maybe you've been here forever, but regardless, you're still tuning in because there's something that you need to hear that will keep you going. The thing is, if you're here, because it's your first time you started, and that's important. If you're here because you came back, well, you came back to it, that's persistence. And if you're here and you've been here the whole time, then what is that telling you? That you've really, truly dedicated your life to figuring out what makes sense when it comes to organizing your life with a DH. D. if you're at the point where you're truly ready to make some of these changes, As I've said before, and I'll say again, we're not curing A DHD. Your brilliant brain is not going anywhere. Your ideas are still going to come up, and you are always going to be chasing dopamine or understanding how to make yourself feel better when life does get a little bit more uncomfortable. But when you start to notice and when you start to understand your patterns, you can start to see that just by understanding those patterns, you can interrupt them. And there's literally always a time to start over again. So whether it is the new year or it's a new month, maybe it's a new holiday, or maybe it's right after the holiday. Maybe it's a new week and maybe it's a new day. Maybe it's a new hour. Maybe it's a new minute where you get to notice. See those patterns and interrupt them and say, I wonder if I could do this just a little bit differently. And sometimes that's noticing how your brain is in a fight or flight response In those moments and seeing how oftentimes we're just trying to keep ourselves comfortable by avoiding putting something away or finding a place for something, or making a full decision on getting something out of our house. Or making a full decision on whether or not we actually want to finish a project or not. That's something that we don't often consider. I hear people putting themselves down so much for these unfinished projects and yeah, I used to do that too, but what if I don't even wanna finish the project? What if I'm done with it? What if I don't wanna be persistent with this. You don't have to be. But what if there are some things that you do wanna be persistent with, so you can put that in a place where you're not gonna forget about it. So often if we put something out of sight, it's gonna be out of mind. So if you wanna finish a project, but it's down in the corner of your basement, it's just not gonna happen. Not unless you have a huge reminder somewhere that reminds you it's downstairs, or you put it up on the dining room table and then it's right there to remind you every single day that this is something that you want to complete. But if it's surrounded by 15 other projects, yeah, it's probably not gonna happen. Now you have 15 projects instead of just the one. Right. That's what happens with our clutter is that we get so surrounded by all of this stuff that it's hard to really figure out what's next. But what's interesting is it only takes one decision at a time. Now, our brain noticing is always going to want to make 18 or 20 decisions at a time. It's overwhelming. We constantly wanna make all these decisions at once. It's like, okay, well if I can't make them all at once, then I can't do anything. Or if this can't be perfect, then I'm going to avoid it until it can be. But that's not actually moving us forward in any way, shape, or form. Maybe minuscule, but certainly not to where we have expectations for. So what if we just made one decision at a time and started to understand what we want now? What if, instead of thinking about what you want in a year, you started to think about what you want in a week or what you want, even just today. And is it realistic? Because so often, and I read this in an article the other day about executive function, is that it's not just about breaking tasks down into smaller steps, but executive function also has to do with the way that we speak to ourselves. And that's internally, but also externally as well. So the way that we guide ourselves to do the next thing, Introspection in that I wonder how this is going to affect me, or could this support me in the future? Oftentimes we're not thinking about that because it's not been a part of our regular practice, but what's cool is when you notice these things, when you're noticing what comes up, you can interrupt it. And you can say, I notice you brain that that's what you're doing, and now I can actually take control of this. It's not always that easy. This is a lot of practice. It's a lot of practice, okay. But it can be done because I've done it. I'm at the point now where I've decluttered my whole life. My whole life, I have so much less than I've ever had before. I'm still decluttering. It's a part of my life now, and it's a part of what I do, and it's opened up so many other doors to allow me to understand what else I have capacity for, like building this business. Building a business is difficult because it's not as exciting after you've started. And then there's so many stupid little admin tasks that you have to do, you have no choice to do, and those are certainly not fun. It's full of task initiation, but then it's also full of excitement again. I've seen so many A DHD business owners start something and then. Start something else, and then they're getting a certification here and then a degree over here, and there's nothing wrong with that. I love that because you're building off of who you wanna be. That's exactly what I did in the beginning. I did so much in the beginning because I thought I needed to be all of these different versions of myself, but actually I just needed persistence because every time I come back to this podcast and share something new with you, it's because I'm building off of this foundation that I have. And because I've stuck with this, even though sometimes it's harder to get back into, I continue to learn more and more, to a depth that I didn't truly realize. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know yet, which is fascinating because this world is so vast with the information that it holds. There's so many worlds out there that we live in, that anything that we wanna discover or create is available to us. We just have to be open to receiving that. My point here is that if you wanna set a goal, do it. If you wanna New Year's resolution or do anything different, do it. You can do it. If you wanna try it with 20 things at first, do it. Are you gonna succeed? Likely not, but why? Ask yourself, notice what is going on. Maybe you journal. I actually, keep a journal and I don't journal every day, but I am persistent. I journal the whole year. Some months I journal 20 days out of the month and some months I only journal five days. But I read my journal from last year and it was so reflective of who I am today and all of these different things that I've gone through to be the human I am now. And it was fascinating because oftentimes we look back and we don't give ourselves enough credit for the things that we actually went through. We only beat ourselves up for the things that we haven't done yet. And so having a place to write it down and be able to reflect on some of these incredible things that you've done is really beneficial. Noticing is worth it, and notice that you can do it. Yesterday when I was in this group. In my community it was really amazing because I started to see how people were talking about what they can and can't do with A DHD. They had put themselves in a box and I saw it firsthand and I didn't point out anyone in particular. I just brought it up and said. If you don't believe that this is possible for you, then you're absolutely right. But I will say that I have a DHD and that is absolutely possible for me because I decided it was so, if there's something you want to achieve, you can absolutely do it. There's so much information about A DHD out there, and it doesn't mean that you need to go in and consume it all. It means you need to start taking action on understanding what is holding you back, what is your barrier? But that comes from noticing. Noticing what your patterns are and what's happening, and maybe you keep track of it. So we'll build off the noticing this week a little bit. Notice what it feels like to fall off and notice what it feels like to actually notice that you have fallen off and you forgot that there was something that you wanted to achieve in the first place. And when you start to shame yourself because you are like, oh, I couldn't do this, and obviously there it is, just more proof that I can't do this. What if you actually changed the narrative and said, oh, well that's a story I've been telling myself for a really long time. What if I just tweaked that a little bit and was like, I see that I did this. What if I tried again? Or I see that I did this. Is that even something that I truly want? And if it is something that you want, then absolutely try again. There were so many times that I tried organizing and decluttering and letting go, and then I failed and I thought that was it. I can't do this. But I tried. Again, it was something I wanted. It was something that I kept coming back to and look, I created an entire business around it. But organizing with A DHD is so much more than simply just putting things in places. It is understanding your patterns. It is understanding your habits. It is understanding the way your brain works so that you can notice what needs to get interrupted so that you can get to this other side. Because the messy middle is messy. It's so messy. And honestly, you might not even wanna post a before and after picture after the messy middle, and that's okay. But it is full of growth. It is full of learning. It is full of introspection. But all of that comes with a conscious thought. It comes from getting out of where we are in the comfortable right now and getting a little uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable to change. That's why working with a coach is so incredible because they remind you who you are and why you're doing it, and why you're so incredible and why you're so damn capable of making these changes that you want. I do have two openings in the month of January, so I'd love to chat with you if that's something you're interested in. Also, the community just opened back up, so I don't always have the community open for new members. Part of that is because I really love nurturing the relationships I have on the inside of the community. But it is open this month. This month we are talking about knowing where to start, and a lot of that comes from this all or nothing thinking. And also the overwhelm that comes with A DHD. We meet Mondays for body doubling. There's a group coaching once a month. There's a webinar this month that I'm going to be presenting, and sometimes we'll have a guest expert come in to share their knowledge and help us grow. We do virtual decluttering with one another, and then there's a body double room that's always open. So if you make a friend in the community or just wanna invite other people to join you, it is a great place to get conscious on what you wanna get done and make it easier because you're doing it with a friend. It's always easier with a friend. It's easier with community, and that's why I'm working really hard to build mine, not only in the virtual space, but in my actual community, because it's important to help people understand that they're not broken. I have got some really cool episodes coming up for you this year. Some awesome interviews. We're gonna talk more about money. We're gonna talk with more a DHD coaches, more experts in the area. And then of course, you'll continue to hear from me as I share with you my own journey, not only in organizing, but as a coach as a business owner, and as a fellow, A DHD, who just simply wants to make it in this world. All right. This is a side note and just something I really wanna share. I joined the library last September and it has been life changing. My girls and I go all the time. They have really cool activities. The librarians are beautiful and amazing, and I even have a couple free events coming up at my local library in Western Massachusetts. All that aside, I downloaded the library app and on the app you can get any magazine you want. There's no wait list or anything like that. So randomly I got the new science magazine and I. Read through every single article in there. It was so fascinating. But one of them was called Microdosing Mindfulness, and there is a book coming out later this year written by Eli Sussman. this guy was talking about microdosing mindfulness in micro practices, and it's fascinating because I feel like this is gonna be such a game changer for the A DHD community. Something that I've been practicing just over the last couple weeks or so, is. Instead of coming up with this whole elaborate plan to get in shape or to have a new diet, or to give up this or change that, or stop that, or all of these abrupt things that I feel like I need to stop and plan. I've just been doing things. in teeny tiny ways. So one thing I notice is that I can sometimes be unkind to my body. So whenever I'm being unkind to my body, I do something like an exercise to work out that part of my body. So the other day I was not being very complimentary toward my buttocks in my head. So I got on the ground and did some butt exercises, and then the next day I was like, why is my butt sore? And I was like. Oh yeah, exercises. So I thought about it and I did some arm exercises in the moment. It took me less than 30 seconds and I just did it because I'm like, okay, if I could just do this whenever I'm thinking about exercising, then why not? I'm actually, I'm just lifting some fake weights right now. I thought it was so fascinating about microdosing mindfulness, Noticing is a micro practice that you incorporate into your life to start to notice your habits and then, and then to write them down and, and start to reflect on what's working and what's not working in your life. You can do this as someone with a DHD. Is it gonna be hard at first? Maybe? Is it gonna be uncomfortable? Certainly. But can you do it? Most definitely. That's something that I wanna continue to talk about because yeah, it's something that I started practicing right away. What a cool idea behind microdosing, mindfulness and having a micro practice in your life where if you think about it, you do it and that could be something that you do with organizing if you think about it. What's one thing you could put away right now? What's one thing you could make a full decision on, right? Where does it go? Meaning, where would you go to look for it if you were trying to find it? Or does it even live in this house anymore? Is it a piece of trash? Go throw it away. That's it. All you have to do is if you're thinking about it or if you're noticing it, do one thing. That's it. And that's part of task initiation in getting out of this paralysis in our head that we often stay stuck in. And it's because of the emotion driving our brain. We're living in this amygdala instead of living in our current state. But mindfulness helps us practice living in the present and truly making a decision that's gonna help future you succeed. Oh also, I'm gonna be dropping the podcast now on Wednesdays instead of Mondays. I've been wanting to make this change for a while, so this is the week I'm doing it. So happy Wednesday and I'll see you next week.