How Do I Want To Feel?

Great question from on of my adult ADHD coaching clients that she has started to ask herself to help her change her life.

I suggested she use it as a mantra. Ask the question often. It will provide clarity.

It’s helped her get more stuff done, do less of certain things and clarify what’s important and what to do. Also who to be to get the feeling she wants.

We ADHD adults often have trouble thinking about the future. We often just live in the now or the not now. We’re often time blind.

Asking ourselves how do we want to feel? Can help us ADDers think about the future more often, and in a less stressed, anxious way, and a more useful, calm way.

It can help us think about what we need to do and not do and be and not be to get that feeling.

It can also reduce the ODD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder that many adults with ADHD have to some degree or another even if it’s just subclinical.

It can reduce resistance and friction from other sources too, because we’re focused on what we want, a powerful emotional state and a positive outcome vs the traditional negative ADHD guilting, process, I have/must/should do this.

It’s a delusion that we humans are mainly driven by logic. We’re often mainly driven by emotion and often use logic after the fact to rationalize our decisions. Why not cut out the rationalizations?

Say you’re going away on a weekend trip, how do you want to feel when you come back home? Maybe relaxed.

What do you have to do before you leave to have that feeling? Maybe you often leave a pile of dishes in the sink and seeing it stresses you out. Perhaps clean up your kitchen before you leave so it’s clean and you’re not stressed out when you return but relaxed instead.

Why don’t you ask yourself the question “How do I want to feel? On a daily basis. And do so in a calm thoughtful way, not a stressed / shaming / guilt inducing / anxiety provoking way.

Asking that question calmly and thoughtfully will help gently motivate you to clarify the results you want. It will help you discover what is in your way of making it happen, what you could do to overcome it and what NOT to do.

And who you need to be to increase your chances of getting what you want.

How do you want to feel by the end of today? What do you need to do and not do and who do you need to be to get that feeling.