“Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
The nature of the ADHD mind is a creative one, a nonlinear broad highway that winds and turns in an innately curious way, a seeker of novelty and stimulus. When honed and harnessed, these qualities become amazing assets, but when they are untamed and out of control they drive us to live in a fast paced, reactionary, impulsive, anxiety producing, disembodied, whirlwind of chaos.
In my previous articles on the Six aspects of a Whole ADHD life, I talked about the need to attend to those aspects of our lives which have been neglected or unsupported until now. When we do this intentionally, with wisdom we more fully utilize all our creative assets in a more purposeful way, honing them into the tools needed to mold the life we truly want for ourselves.
One of the ADHD Life Aspects I’ve identified is Meaning. The Meaning aspect of a life encompasses all of the people, things, actions, values, choices, skills, experiences or behaviours that mean the most to you! I realize that to point this out sounds a bit obvious, sort of like me saying; ‘The most important aspect of living- is breathing!’ As obvious as it may be, sadly it’s also one of the most overlooked parts of our lives, especially for people with ADHD.
“Finding meaning in your life is not a difficult thing, but it is harder than living a numb, fast-paced superficial life.” – Juanita Gomez.
As long as our wild and untamed minds stay in that un-honed, chaotic state, we’ll forever be just keeping up, surviving not thriving. In this super busy and modern life we live in, we’re drowning in the dross, admin and to-do lists, quite unable to take a deep enough breath, as we barely keep our head above water. Many people coming to Coaching for ADHD are naturally looking for an end to this chaos. They want the systems, the strategies, the routines, the habits, the energy, the motivation and the discipline to conquer all this chaos. To finally be able to tame the to-do lists! As drowning people understandably do, they’re so focused on survival that they fight with all their energy against whatever it is that’s keeping them from breathing.
They imagine that once they’ve finally conquered the admin, the house work, the to-do lists, the never ending dross they’ll emerge victorious, hungrily and take the much needed deep breaths they crave and begin living. But what happens next is that unless they’ve got a plan (a boat to get into, a destination to head towards, the meaningful goals to pull them forward) they’ll find after all that struggling to the surface that they’re still surrounded by water. It’s just not going anywhere…
It’s literally everywhere they look and now they need to start the fight to stay afloat all over again. Only now they’re exhausted, demotivated and wondering what the hell is this life is all about.
The untamed mind of ADHD doesn’t innately plan, organize or self-motivate and as long as it doesn’t, it will continue to stay in survival mode, treading water, taking sips of oxygen while continuing to battle with the to-do list! Which is why Meaning is one of the most important aspects of your Whole ADHD life. It gives you the much needed drive, direction, purpose and energy to keep swimming, to rise above the to-do lists and to get into the boat you’ve created and start steering…
When you take the time to set out what is meaningful to you, and then carve out the time for these meaningful things in your day, week, month and year, what you’re doing is giving yourself the vehicle and the navigational tools to skim over the waves, to pass by the dross, to put into perspective the waves, and to steer away from the rocks. You give yourself the Missing Motivation to just keep swimming, the reason to tackle that to-do list or to ignore it. You’ve created externally what’s missing from our innately wild, chaotic, untamed minds. The purpose, the Beacon on the Light House that keeps calling us back to what’s important, so when we find ourselves deep diving again into the dross, we’re now called back again and again to the main event, the whole reason for swimming in the first place.