How do I know what I want?

This question was asked by several participants in my latest program on "Embracing the Power of Good Enough".  It really got me thinking....  This question gets to the very heart of life!  It sure is relevant to my life right now.  Maybe yours too? 

I've been rethinking a lot of my needs and wants, lately.  Like this blog, for example.  

• How do I want to express myself with it?
• What purpose do I want it to serve for me and my tribe? 
• How do I want to share my point of view?  In small, realtime chunks like Twitter? or with well thought out inspirational and educational articles?  Do I want to be more transparent and share my thought processes about my work and about my own life with ADHD and a hyperactive creative brain? 

One thing for sure, I want to reflect on and write more about all aspects of life with ADD. In my coaching, I help people with all areas of life...so why aren't I talking about all of them on this blog?  

Almost 5 years ago, this started out as an organizing blog...but living with ADHD is SO much more than that. So I want to talk about all areas of life with ADHD, Creative Personality Type, and Highly sensitive personality including, Relationships, Career, Money, Health, Eating, Addictions, Emotional Self-Regulation, Boundary setting, and more.  

I want to talk about the meta-cognitive skills that truly empower us to live more effectively with ADD, not just the technical skills of organizing.  

Meta-cognitive skills like Decision Making, Filtering, Establishing Criteria, Prioritizing, Planning, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Goal setting, do not come naturally to creatives and ADHDers who prefer to open up possibilities,generate ideas, and keep options open. 

( Metacognitive Skills = The ability to reflect and assess the quality and process of one's own thinking, beliefs and understandings.) 

Skills such as Inner dialogue, listening, Motivating Ourselves, Valuing ourselves and embracing our imperfections and well as our strengths also do NOT come naturally to us.  We have to learn them from the ground up. 

So.this blog is going to shift again.  I'm getting ready to share a lot more...and I hope you are ready to go on this new phase of the journey with me!  

I'm not going to post stuff that I think can found all over the web...I'm going to post stuff that I don't hear people talking about very much.  Or, I might just start pulling out some "quotes" from conventional tips I find around the web and post how and why they do NOT apply to people with ADHD or how they might actually be biased against people with ADHD without even realizing it! 

I'm not interested in writing "tips" anymore.  5 ways to do this, 6 secrets to that...  UGH. I'm so tired of it.  It doesn't inspire me...so I think that's why my blog has been rather quiet.   If I'm not inspired, why would you be?  

I'm also rethinking my whole business and my role in it.  I'm working on hiring a Business Manager so that I can truly devote 80 - 90 % of my time to coaching, writing and creating while someone else handles the technology and business aspects.  

So how do I know what I want?  One way I know is by how I'm feeling.  Another is to listen to my own complaints and excuses to figure out what I'm really frustrated about and use them as a stepping stone to get to what I DO want.  E.g.  If I don't want that, why?  what is it I really want instead?  And sometimes, I have to look at my wants and expectations to see if they are realistic...or need adjustment. 

If I want to hire a business manager tomorrow...well, that's too bad.  It just ain't gonna happen.  I have to allow time to become ready to welcome the new Bus. Mgr. into my life.  "Become ready" means I have to organize and rethink everything I do through the lens of "what if someone else could be doing this for me?  What would that take? 

What do I want?  I want to stop saying: 

 "I can't do that project, or finish that book, or that audio program because I'm too busy trying to keep up with email, setting up autoresponders for classes, sending out reminders, fulfilling orders for products" etc.  Why?  Because I don't have a system for delegating these jobs to someone else.  

But I can't just STOP saying that....I have to do something differently. I have to replace those thoughts with something positive AND specific.   Like "How can I create a system for delegating?  Who would be the right person to help me do that?" 

I WANT to be INSPIRED...to have time to really think, reflect, and express - whether writing or teaching. I want to be able to put on more classes and coaching groups.  I want to MAKE the time to do it by giving over the actual implementation to someone else.

So, for a while...I'm going to experiment with using this blog to inspire myself to make this happen and hopefully inspire you too.  I'm going to use it as more of a journal of how my thinking is evolving...what I'm learning...what I'm clarifying for myself. 

With that intention and inspiration in mind, here are just a few of the "bullet points" I'm incubating in preparation for the final session of the Getting Unstuck coaching program on June 17.  It's been a year and a half and I have learned and grown so much along with the members of the program.  I'm going to keep the community of 70+ people going for free for now...but I'm working on a sustainable way to keep the connection, healing, learning, safety, sharing, love and support going.  Once I have a Business Manager on board...there will be many new possibilities for me...and my tribe...to learn and grow together.  

So here are more of my thoughts on "How do I know what I want?"

• First, this is a much better than the all too common complaints "But I don't know what I want" or "But what if I don't know what I want?"  The trouble with those statements / complaints is they tend to cause people to give up in frustration and overwhelm.
• The question  "How do I know what I want?" is a great one because at least now your brain is inspired to start thinking about ways to figure out what you want!
• The question can also be very overwhelming though.  Why?  Because it's very broad. It's not quantified or contained in any way.  There are so many ways to answer it that we freeze up...it makes our brains explode or maybe even implode : ) 
• So what's the first step to dealing with anything overwhelming like that? Start narrowing the question itself.  When? where? in what part of life? for whom? from whom? emotionally? physically? materially?  Then keep narrowing it down till you get to question you CAN answer  : ) 
• Another thought....Keep in mind that what you want or need varies hourly...our whole lives are a journey of noticing and assessing what we want / need now vs tomorrow vs. next week or month, etc.  Where we have trouble prioritizing is in deciding which need is more important at any given time.  This hour you may NEED to eat...so your question might be:  How do I know what I want to eat?  Next you may be tired and need rest...your question might be "How do I know what kind of "rest" I need right now?  a nap? a change of scenery?  a walk?   Still not easy to answer for some of us, but much more doable.  
• Even more challenging, how do I know if what I want or need right now is just as important as what others need?  How do I balance my wants / needs with those of others? 
• Because we have to make SOOO many decisions like this every day....the more we can automate "templates" or guidelines for making wise choices the more we can lower our stress.  To make templates for decision making we need "criteria". Like "Even though I love to research every option, sometimes I need to limit my number of choices, without sacrificing my need for adventure, so that I make sure I have time for ALL my needs...not just the needs of the moment."    : )  

IThanks so much to my clients, blog readers, subscribers and fellow learners who continually inspire me to reflect on what I know and put it to good use helping others navigate the challenges and adventures of life with ADHD!  : )

Comments

[Cecilia Garrett]

I can't wait to see the evolution of your blog! I know that you have much to share with us, and I've been really identifying parts of my life where I haven't identified what I want because I felt like it meant that I was giving up another possibility that might be better, or maybe not. I have only recently realized that my decision NOT to go back to college was based as much on fear ("I don't know what I want to do when I grow up") as it was on financial reasons.

But I've been thinking about what I want to do to contribute to my family financially and whether I really want to do that, or if it is a societal push. I decided that I DO want to contribute but not if it takes me away from my home for extended periods of times. I want my children to have positive memories from their growing years of being with their mother who wasn't stressed out constantly by caring for them and trying to be outside of the home to work at the same time.

I'm not sure that going back to school right now is in the cards or not, but at least I know what I want to do. WRITE! (from home, of course! LOL)

Yea! I'm so excited!

[Ariane Benefit, M.S.Ed.]

Thank you so much for your supportive feedback!

You are not in alone in not "knowing" what you want to be when you grow up. I used to beat myself so much for all the "evolving" I did which I used to think of as "why can't I stick to just one career or one type of work?"

When I finally gave myself permission to think of myself as a "renaissance" woman and my career as an exploration of life itself...my entire sense of self-worth transformed. I was not just "allowed" to continuously learn and reinvent myself as I integrated my learning - I had "right" and maybe even a responsibility to do so!

After all, what good is it to learn and grow if you don't change? Learning is defined as changing. If you don't take your new insights and skills and incorporate and use them in what you do...what was the point?

the thing is your life purpose can remain steady...no matter what you actually do at any given time in your life. I realized that purpose can be satisfied in many ways. If it can't, it's not really a "Purpose" for example...part of my "purpose" is to make a positive difference in the world. To alleviate suffering and contribute to empowering people to develop the skills need to move toward a more fulfilling life.

Everything I've ever done in my career has been an expression of that. From teaching, to writing, to managing projects to coaching the people that worked for me, to helping my friends. Even before college when I worked as a live-in nanny for single low-income moms in exchange for a place to live...I always had that underlying "drive" to share and teach and uplift.

I wish I'd known then that there is no way to shortcut the path to "finding your calling"...I wish I'd known that your "calling" can be something than unfolds and blossoms over time and that NO experience is wasted if you learn from it.

So keep learning,keep writing and trust that your purpose will reveal itself to you when you are ready to see it...even if you can't articulate it right now...it is THERE! : )

[cassie]

Hello Ariane,

I love your blog and your approach, and your idea that those with ADD or ADHD do their best work when "inspired" - I really feel like that, and have learned, better than before - to anticipate periods of not-knowing, and realize that actually DOing any new task or set of tasks, starts with a period of confusion, but when I keep approaching it, making time to approach it when rested, after a few times, I start to have some ideas about how to handle it.

I also love very much, your blog on, "How do I know what I want" - As someone advocating for my youngest brother who has Brain Injury and Autism, I have been SO frustrated over time, with the approach of science driven social service system, who send in new people over and over and over, to always look for answers by asking HIM "What do you want". They have no idea of the complexity involved in that question, which you outline very well, and especially for him, living in restricted worlds, all they are really seeking is something to fit onto their standard form, that they can then move on to planning - but the question itself was wrong and the choices do not reflect his actual situation, only the thought of the moment, or what he thinks is expected by the interviewer. I find it difficult to advocate for him, when this process repeats itself and is legitimized by the helping services system. Cassie Quinlan

[Ariane Benefit, M.S.Ed.]

Hi Cassie,

I can only imagine how difficult it is for you to advocate for your brother and deal with all those new people every time. Please remind yourself EVERY day that you deserve lots of credit for EVERY little bit of progress you make. Remember that you deserve just as much care and advocacy as your brother does. I truly hope you have a support system that nourishes and replenishes your spirit.

Thanks for taking time out to provide me with support and support....it means so much to me to hear from readers that my work helps them in some way...that's what I'm here for! Having my contribution recognized and appreciated is what motivates me to keep going through all challenges of running the business end of things.

Thank you : )