Why Is Change So Hard? (Even When You Want It)

Drawing from The Charisma Myth and her work coaching adults with ADHD, Megs breaks down why lasting change requires both a clear vision and a deep belief that you're capable of it. She explores why people with ADHD often carry limiting beliefs that block growth, how the dopamine pull of novelty (hello, online shopping) fits into that picture, and what it actually feels like to sit in discomfort long enough to forge a new path.

Article referenced in show: Never Enough: Why ADHD Brains Crave Stimulation

Whether you're part of an ADHD community looking for real talk, searching for an ADHD coach, or just trying to figure out why you keep ending up back at square one — this episode will give you language, perspective, and empowering beliefs to carry with you.

You'll hear: the hiking metaphor for building new habits, the "Pandora's box" of self-awareness, why community and coaching accelerate change, and a set of affirmations you can repeat daily — including "My patterns kept me safe. I get to choose different now" and "Good things are allowed to happen to me and stay."

In This Episode:

04:57 — Why your beliefs are blocking change (even when you're trying really hard) 

06:26 — What discomfort actually is — and why it's proof you're capable 

10:20 — How therapy, ADHD coaching, and mindset work together 

13:45 — A guitar lesson on the power of community for ADHDers 

15:45 — No-spend month as a real-life example of belief in action 

19:15 — The Pandora's box of self-awareness: facing data, emotions, and avoided realities 

22:12 — The hiking metaphor: forging a new path through your brain 

27:56 — Be the hero of your own story — and take action 

29:54 — Beliefs to repeat daily if you have ADHD 

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, beautiful people. Welcome back to another episode of organizing an A DHD Brain. I am your host Megs, and I am excited to bring you a new solo episode this week. I haven't updated you in a little bit, so just a quick fill in because I am still not fully ready to share just really everything that is going on, but all things are good considering, of course the state of the world and everything else going on. I am taking a singing class on Wednesday evenings, and it has lit me up in ways that I didn't realize was possible I'm finding my voice in a way that I never thought that I ever actually would. So that has been a really interesting progression. I've also been joining my mother at the local senior center for a watercolor painting class. And I will say instead of going and diving headfirst into buying every single watercolor accessory that I could, I took my time deciding what I wanted to buy for myself. and I've also been sharing with my girls, which has been really neat. We've been learning together. We are still in the temporary home that we moved in in Massachusetts and we're about to move on May 1st. So the journey that we have had going from a home that we had meticulously put together and worked really hard to create spaces for everything to a home that had nothing curated for us, has been really interesting. Just a journey into understanding what our next steps are. if you've been listening for a while, you know that we have a big plan for what we want in life, and part of that is having land and having spaces to breathe and living a balanced life where we do prioritize connection and being together as a family. But one thing I've really started to incorporate into my life more recently is also developing a community, a local community. People who I want to be around and I want to run into at the store and saying hi and, and getting to know what they do. And I have met some incredibly fascinating people. I've subscribed to my local paper to see what's going on locally, and I've been finding other ways to get involved that aren't simply. Being involved online, I've actually deleted most of my social media apps, so if you follow me anywhere on social media, you noticed, I don't post very often and it's taken me a while to figure out where I wanna show up and truly to understand that social media tends to be something that I succumb to. I get sucked in because the algorithm knows exactly what it's doing. And so I have found ways to combat that in showing up in other places, and this has happened over time. So I thank you so much for listening to the podcast because this is a really good way for me to show up and to show you who I am without coming up with endless arrays of content that you might see and forget about almost immediately. I wanna give a huge shout out to not only my clients, but also my membership, because the membership is what keeps this podcast coming to you every single week. And more recently, I have upgraded my recording equipment. So I just wanna thank my clients and my membership so much because. Investing in me is what allowed me to invest in this equipment to be able to bring you my voice with more precision each week. All right, that's enough for now. I will continue to fill you in as more things happen, and as promised, I will be bringing an episode soon about some of the perspectives and realizations I've had over. Living in more temporary housing over the last, nine to 10 months or so. It has been very interesting going from owning a house to renting. I'll continue to keep you in the loop today. I wanna talk about beliefs and I wanna talk about getting uncomfortable with change. As we know, we're talking about the messy middle. And in the messy middle is. Is this version of you that you've always been used to. It is this version of you that is chaotic, one that you can't trust, one that you rely on to get things done, but in a stuck capacity in a way where things get done. But it is a lot of stress and it is a lot of pressure on you. And then there's this new version. Of what you look like and what you could be like. But in order to get there, you have to consciously make that decision to change. You have to consciously in the front of your brain say, this is who I want to be. And we do that in a multitude of different ways. Sometimes we simply just say, I want to be more organized, and this weekend is the weekend. I'm going to do it. Or we say, I want to live a life where I have more financial abundance and I am simply going to do it, but then we wait for the perfect opportunity for all of that to happen, or we don't. Or we don't actually wait for anything to happen at all because a part of us doesn't actually think any of it is going to happen. I was reading a book the other day. I was listening to it on my walk and I called my husband immediately because I had this realization about discomfort and change that I don't know that I've fully put together before. And the book is the charisma myth. It's really good if you are looking to, Develop your charisma. As I'm reading the book, one of the chapters is about being comfortable, getting uncomfortable. Now, in the corporate world, I repeated that phrase all the time, but looking back, I did not know what it meant. I had no idea what it meant. I mean, ultimately there were things that I did that I got uncomfortable with, like saying certain things on the phone when I was an entry level employee and I wanted to grow in my conversations. Or it was having difficult conversations with employees when no other leaders had ever had them before. So yes, there were spaces that I put myself in where I was uncomfortable. But I grew through that discomfort. I share that with you because none of this is necessarily new, and you've likely heard that before, but I wanna dive a little bit deeper into what I understand it now to be, and also what I have seen in myself and in my clients as well. One of the first things I do with my clients when we start to understand the path that they're on is we develop their vision. We understand where they wanna go, because that's gonna define the steps you take to get there. But then part of that is defining the belief that is going to allow you to get there. And the belief could be something along the lines of, I am capable of creating a space that is peaceful for me. I am capable of creating a space that is less cluttered. I am capable of having a schedule that allows me the peace to exercise or to get enough sleep at night. I am capable of being a good mother. I am capable of being a good wife, of being a good husband. I'm capable of being a good friend. Now, apparently I got stuck on this. I am capable thing, but I say that and give all of these examples because what I realized as I was reading this book is in order to get uncomfortable. To find your comfort again'cause you are changing yourself, which means you have to very consciously do something that's not ingrained in your neuro pathway is a already to do this, you have to believe with some part of your body that you're capable of it, that it's something that you can do. And what's interesting is that for much of our lives, we have been told we're not capable of this. And because we've been told we're not capable, we have ingrained that truth into our bodies and we look for the evidence. And when we look for the evidence, we see the evidence. The part that hit me that I had to call my husband about was I finally realized that there is a group of us out there that simply don't believe that we're capable of this change, that love the idea of it. I mean, you would dream about it all day long, but the belief that could drive you forward to get uncomfortable is not actually there. In fact, it's so not there that you expect the bad. You expect the negative. You expect bad things to be happening to you on a regular basis. Now this is based on not only my own research in my clients and reading, but I am also not a therapist. So I'm telling you simply my observations based on coaching and my experience and when it comes to beliefs. One of the questions I ask my clients before I start working with them is. Have you worked with a therapist before? And the reason why I ask them if they have and always encourage them to do it is because when you are in therapy, in my experience, You tend to start to explore. Yourself and things that have happened to you from differing perspectives. Perspectives that allow you to see things from a different angle. Not in all cases, there's so many different types of therapy, but the reason why I bring this up is because it allows you to start to see yourself from an angle that perhaps you could accept. Where you could accept not only. The negative things about yourself, but perhaps some of the positive things as well, where you start to understand that perhaps I'm not alone with the way that I feel about the world in my life and the way that it's happening, and perhaps there is change that I could make. In no way, shape or form does a coach try to convince you that you are ready. That is never my job. I don't wanna be in that job because if you have beliefs that are deeply ingrained in you, and you are not willing to explore those beliefs and how they're showing up in your actions and how you manifest your life to this day. Then there will not be change in a positive way. But research has shown that everyone is capable of change. Everyone is capable of creating new neuro pathways that allow you to see things from a new perspective, that allow you to make the changes that you wish so you can indeed teach an old dog new tricks. And I will tell you, I have people that listen to this podcast that. Are in their twenties, are in their thirties, their forties, their fifties, their sixties, their seventies, and every single one of them has been showing up to do the change because they do believe that it's possible, even in the teeny, tiniest of ways. I'm thinking to myself, how could this be so profound? This seems so simple. Of course, if you don't believe it, you're not gonna make it happen. Well, it got me thinking about all of the views that show up on social media. All of the people that we see constantly interjecting their opinions in our lives or the way that the world should be, or what people should be doing or shouldn't be doing, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And on social media, it's very interesting because there's a spectrum of people out there that simply believe in themselves or don't, that have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset that believe in power as a structure versus equality. And you could see that in the way that they speak. And it's very interesting to start to notice when you're allowing yourself to see some of the people that do believe in themselves and some of the people that don't. And I will say, after reading this book, I started to see myself in ways that I had put up barriers to learning certain things because I had decided, I had this belief that it was just never going to be. For example, playing the guitar. I tried to play the guitar when I was in high school. My parents got me one for Christmas and I loved it. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. In fact, when I went to college and I still had it, I would carry it on my back on the tee, and I'm so sorry to those of you that thought I was so cool and I didn't actually play the guitar. I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry that I carried it on my back. I was actually taking it two guitar lessons that I took for maybe three weeks or so. Those moments, I felt really incredible. I always wanted to learn how to play the guitar, but there was this belief that I had that I just wouldn't be able to, and then my fingers would get all sore and I thought, well, other people's fingers must not have been sore. This is why we have community people, because obviously you have to have sore fingers. In order to build the calluses, you need to be able to play the guitar in a way that you build the skills that you need. To be able to show up and perform or do whatever you want with a guitar community tells you that, Hey, I've done this before. Of course your fingers are gonna hurt in the beginning. That's what I'm doing here with organizing. You're gonna not be good at it in the beginning, and that's okay. All of that is okay. We're taking baby steps forward. So after I started thinking about the beliefs, I got back to this discomfort thing Like in order for you to be able to change in a positive way, you have to be willing to get uncomfortable. But what does that actually mean What does it mean to be uncomfortable? I wanna try to paint you a picture in a way that I understand it, because on a regular basis I tend to get uncomfortable and It's very annoying. I. This month in the community, we're practicing a no spend month And so I'm gonna use the discomfort of not spending as an example of what this looks like because, uh. As a ADHDers, we crave novelty. We crave newness. We crave something that is gonna satiate our dopamine deprived brains. And it's not that we're necessarily deprived, but the receptors in our brains. Are not as great as those in a neurotypical brain. So therefore, when we're seeking dopamine, we're seeking something that's going to really excite us. And then ultimately kind of die off almost immediately. So now we're looking for the, the latest and greatest thing. So in the community this month, I put together a presentation and I'll link an article below based on what I just said so that you can read a little bit more about it. It's a really, really good article about why we're always seeking something, something else. And of course there's the regulation piece of it too. Something I've always done to keep myself comfortable to make the negative feelings go away, so to speak, is I would go on Amazon and go shopping for fun. I would constantly add things to cart or look for the newest, the latest, the greatest. Try to find the perfect rug for the corner of the room or a piece of art that I could hang on the wall. And then as my husband and I have gotten really clear on our debt journey and getting out of debt. We had to put a stop on a lot of those things that had brought us joy before. In fact, we kept doing it because we just simply thought that we'd be able to fix it as we had so many times in the past. So the discomfort here is going to this thing that we've known to take care of us for so long. Actively, consciously making a decision to find something different. And in those moments, I know how relieving it would be to simply give in to my desire to purchase something in this moment and to move through that to get to this next level It's uncomfortable not to give into those desires right away. It's so uncomfortable and honestly, so much of social media has you believing. That you can't get in front of it, that because you have a DHD, this is your life now, and if that is fueling a belief you have that you can't actually change the way that your spending habits are, then you'll continue to fuel those beliefs. But I'm here to tell you that getting in front of what you've always done. Even if it's not comfortable, even when you get the bill at the end of the month, it's way more than what you expected to be spending, and you don't actually want to be in debt anymore, but you continue to put yourself in the position of getting into more debt. You are staying comfortable in this stuck cycle of being reactive in the moment, and so when you're getting uncomfortable. You have to truly look at these things that are keeping you stuck, and that's really uncomfortable. I describe it sometimes like Pandora's box. Have you guys ever heard it's in Greek mythology, So I'm gonna read this from AI on Google. Bear with me here. According to legend, Zeus gave Pandora a jar later translated as a box, as a punishment for Prometheus stealing fire. Despite being warned, her curiosity led her to open it, releasing all evils diseases and misery upon humanity, with only hope remaining inside. The idea behind Pandora's box is that once you open it, you can't put it back away, but It is like this comfort that we're keeping to ourselves. Like we have this jar of comfort that we can live in this vision of what life could be like. But when we do open Pandora's Box, we do uncover so much of what we have been avoiding for so long, and that is the spending, the amount of stuff that's coming into our homes without being used. it's really uncomfortable to stay where you are. At the same time, it's comfortable because you are able to fly under the radar without being conscious about it until you become conscious and then, ultimately you find a way to fix it in the moment, but it's not long lasting change when you decide to get conscious about it. And you start to see everything and look at the data really, because all of the things that are around you are data. It's just information for you to collect and gather and then to make decisions on you start to move forward. And that's uncomfortable too. And what's uncomfortable about it is the emotions. The emotions come up because. Oh my gosh. You wish you could go back to this version of you that didn't know about all of this other stuff? Wouldn't that be amazing if you could just put the lid back on and go back to the way that things used to be. But because you know so much now, you also know that you actually don't want to go back there. As comforting as it may seem, as it may feel in your body as as you might be painting that picture out to be because the version of you that you want to be become is also. A more comfortable version of you. It's also pretty incredible and it's a space where you start to see how capable you truly are in life. Maybe having a coach is simply the permission to be able to believe something new. You're granted the permission to be able to hold on to a new belief that you can start to take action on because the old beliefs have not been serving you for such a long time. And I do see with A DHD, we are given some extra limiting beliefs that we have kept with us for a very long time. I want you to imagine for a moment you're on a hike, and if you don't like hiking, that's fine. You're not actually going on a hike, but come with me for a second So you've entered this hike and it's in the woods, and you've got a canopy of trees overhead, and the path ahead is clear. It's wide enough for you to walk down. Every once in a while you have to climb over a log, or maybe you have to duck under a tree that's overgrown. But for the most part, you're able to handle this without thinking too much about it, and you can move through the trail with ease. but then you start to hear people on the other side of this trail, you can't quite see them. Or maybe you can through the trees, but it's, it's far in the distance. And you start to notice that from this clear beaten path that's really easy to walk down. You see multiple trails off to the side, not easy trails. In fact, some of them are labeled like most difficult. Don't go down here. Very risky. Incredibly uncomfortable. But you can also hear laughter. On the other side, maybe there's some peace. Maybe there's pride and self-trust on the other side for doing something that not everyone dares to do. And maybe you take this trail on a regular basis and you're like, Ugh, I could never go off on one of these unbeaten trails. That looks too difficult. Too hard. I'm safe here. I'm safe to not think so much about everything that happens until I have to, until a deer crosses my path. Or maybe I'll run into a bear one day, but today is not that day. I like it here. But the promise of what's on the other side continues to beckon to you, and one day you start to take a step on a little trail. That makes you stomp down on the branches that aren't quite beaten down yet and then the next day you take a couple more steps into this unbeaten trail. Maybe you have to snap a few twigs to get them out of your face to prevent scratches, but you get scratches anyway, because let's be honest, there's just too many twigs to stop and break. And maybe at one point you even have to trudge through a little bit of mud where there hasn't been a bridge built for you to easily walk across yet. So you gotta walk through the mud, but the more you walk down that trail. The unbeaten one, the one that you're working on, the more you walk down that trail, the more you prove to yourself that you can do hard things, but you're allowing it to be easy on yourself. And whereas before you were the person who said, I could never, you're now the person who is like, Hey, it's actually kind of fun. It's interesting, and I'm learning a lot about myself along the way. And you're starting to understand how you are actually capable of making change. And in fact, you could even be a leader in this change that you're making. And some days you show up and it's really easy. There's only a few twigs to break, and you do it and you're like, I'm a champion. And other days. You wear your nice shoes and those are the days that you actually have to walk through the mud and you're kind of pissed about it because they're suede and there's no coming back from muddy suede. There just really isn't. Honestly, I don't know a lot about suede or mud, but I could just imagine. But still, because you started and maybe you've started a lot of things. And haven't actually followed through, and that's okay. Ditto. But maybe that's just more data because then you know, the voices start to get louder on the other side and you realize how cool it's gonna be once you get there. But actually how cool this experience has been. The experience of learning so much about yourself and that you can actually take chances, that you can step outside this little comfort bubble of yours to see what a version of you on the other side could look like. What's really interesting about so many of the people that I meet and we talk about not finishing things, is that you haven't given up on anything. Just you don't give yourself credit for the fact that you're doing so many other things. And as we are time blind, we often don't. So we keep accepting more and more and then put more pressure on ourselves for not doing those actual things. But I don't know, the messy middle is full of that. This is the journey. The journey of getting to the other side. I don't know that the version of Meg's last year could have recorded the same podcast. Maybe a version of it. It would be different, but I can tell you that the path that my husband and I are forging together is available to us because. So many others that have taken a not so conventional route forward in the past. And when I got to the other side of the forest and I saw all of these other people that had taken those little paths and beaten down the path forward for themselves. I realized that when they got there, they didn't stop. In fact, they were more confident than ever that they could keep going and that they could find new beliefs to hold onto. And that they get to be the hero in their own story. for so many of us, we are waiting for the perfect tool. It's the perfect thing for someone to say, the perfect message, the perfect book. We're waiting for it all. Where are the answers? How, how, how, how can I do this? And yet, we are the hero in our own story and all those other people who are giving us the information that we're soaking in. And we know we have it all in our head. They're just lighting the pathway. They're holding a torch. Maybe they're even holding our hand, but they can't do it for us. So what the hell is my point? What is my point today? Get to the point they say, get to the point. Well, the point of this is, is that you can do it and it's gonna suck. It's really awful. And also, community makes it easier. Perspective makes it easier, and taking action is everything. And you're gonna learn so much about yourself. Getting a therapist makes it easier. Finding a coach is even better if you're financially capable of making that happen. What's even more interesting about all of this as I was listening to that book, is I realized that we are expecting the discomfort to be because it is emotional and hard, but what we don't expect is that the discomfort also comes up when the good things are happening. when we're leveling up, a lot of us are ingrained to expect it to fail anyway. To expect that something negative is gonna happen, and that is also really uncomfortable because we're allowed to actually think of the best case scenario. We're allowed to allow the best case scenario to happen, but that's also uncomfortable. Because we've got to work through so much of what we've held on to our whole lives, just waiting for that worst case scenario to come through and worrying about it. When I talk about organizing an A DHD brain, what I have found is that. In the very beginning, when I first started working with people and with myself, I thought for sure, once we got you organized right, we put things in places, then things would be okay. But what I started to understand very quickly is that we needed to define the time to do it. We needed to understand what else was taking up that space, and we needed to understand. What are all the other things, including the beliefs that are keeping us stuck and our reaction to life. And so this podcast is yes, about organizing, putting things in places, but more about understanding your brain in a way that you can support it. And so today I wanna support you in finding a belief that you can. work with, and I'm gonna give you a list of them. I want you to pick one, just one, one that you take with you that you could repeat in the event that you're having a hard time. and then to piggyback off of what happened in last week's episode. Maybe you give this to someone you love, to remind you on the days when you're trudging through the mud in your suede boots. Here's a belief you could repeat. My patterns kept me safe. I get to choose different now I'm not broken. I'm someone whose learned to survive chaos, and I can teach it something new. I don't have to maintain it, I just have to return to it. I'm allowed to let this be easier than I expected it. Good things are allowed to happen to me and stay. one of the beliefs that I use often because my client and I worked on it together is This is temporary and I am supported. And one of the things that I constantly repeat to myself as I'm building my business is I am exactly where I'm meant to be, and I believe that because all of the experiences that I have had have led me to this moment. I don't wanna be anyone other than me, but that is through a lot of work that I've gotten there. So I encourage you to pick your own belief, and even if it does not feel right, right now, what's something that you could take action on that would support that belief? Like I don't have to maintain it, I just have to return to it. Like good things are allowed to happen to me and stay. What? What would that mean? And if it's hard to even think about what a good thing happening to you could mean, I truly encourage you to find someone to speak to about that. Or find a friend. A friend who wants to listen, who wants to understand what you've been through because there is a light on the other side, and I'm determined to help people understand that you're also allowed to trust yourself, to know what's best for you. And I'll leave you with this because this is important to know. I'm constantly getting uncomfortable, constantly, and it's annoyingly so, and sometimes it's because I've been taking such tiny steps that I finally get to this thing that I've been building and I'm like, oh my God, this doesn't feel good because it's uncomfortable. even though it's good, but when I start to feel this discomfort creeping in and I wanna go hide in my closet or under my blankets or Maybe even go scroll on my phone because that keeps me safe too. I try to sit with it and allow it to be okay, and I remind myself that I'm actually safe in this moment. I'm safe to allow all of these things to be happening, and I'm safe because I can handle anything that is thrown my way. I can do this and I'm capable of it. So do you see that I remind myself I'm safe and then I repeat something that is empowering even if I do not feel empowered in that moment. And if you get to the point where your brain is telling you so many yucky things, that is where you can have someone else remind you, you are capable of this. So if you don't have that person, I'll remind you. It could be that you are not ready to declutter your home right now because you haven't gotten the support. Regardless of where you're at, you're capable. I believe that with my whole heart, that you are capable of being the hero in your own story. And you can do anything you put your mind to. You gotta put your mind to something that is an empowering belief to allow you to make it to the other side. those beliefs, drive everything forward. On that note, I hope you have a wonderful week and I will talk to you next week.