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I’m sharing a story about how my own ADHD impulsivity can trip me up, even after all my training and coaching. I have this urge to say yes when I know I need to say NO. If that sounds like you too, then you’re going to appreciate today’s little “story time”.
ADHD Impulsivity + my Reactive YES
This is a story about my ADHD impulsivity and getting involved in a business venture that I had no business doing. I impulsively said yes to starting a company with two other people (that I barely knew) even though I was drowning in work with my own business.
As the business planning progressed, I found myself becoming increasingly unaligned with the project. There wasn’t anything wrong with the project, but it just wasn’t how I approach business, and yet – I ignored my gut instinct to pause, and think through if this was right for me or not.
Long story short, it wasn’t until we were weeks into planning that I finally listened to my inner voice that was screaming at me at this point. I finally accepted that I had made a mistake, and had to go hat in hand to my co-founders to tell them I needed to back out. It felt horrible, but the longer I waited, the worse it would be to backpedal.
How to Avoid ADHD Impulsivity
This story highlights the importance of listening to your gut and the significance of getting clear on your time commitments. It also points to the importance of aligning with your own guiding principles and how this can impact your decision-making process.
One of those guiding principles (for me) is a commitment to being a solopreneur versus working with a team. Had I listened to my intuition in my decision-making process, I wouldn’t have found myself in that awkward situation.
I hope that sharing my experience illustrates the trouble we can get into when we say yes impulsively, and the importance of pausing to think through decisions before committing.
Do you struggle with Impulsivity and Overcommitting?
If this is something you struggle with, please know that you’re not alone, and that impulsivity gets the better of all of us at some point. If you struggle with saying yes a lot, I suspect you often find yourself in cycles of burnout and overwhelm. If that’s the case, and you’re looking for a way to calm the chaos, check out my ADHD-specific program on getting clear on priorities and following through with what you set out to do. It’s based on the latest in neuroscience and pulls the best of my coaching tools into one, simple and fast program.
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