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Before we start, quick pause. Your ADHD brain is not broken. It just never came with a user's manual. So we are going to build one together. That's what our three days to fall in love with your ADHD brain is all about. We will start on January 6th, and you can sign up for free at tracyoutsuka.com ilovemybrain. Richard Branson. Michael Phelps, Justin Timberlake, James Carville. Wait a minute. Where are the women? Greta Gerwig, Lisa Ling, Audra McDonald, Simone Biles. That sounds like a list of highly successful titans in a variety of industries. They all have 88, but you don't hear much about that now, do you? You know what else you don't hear about are the 43% of people with ADHD who are in excellent mental health. Why aren't we talking about them and what they're doing right? I'm your host, Tracy Adsuka, and that's exactly what we do here. I'm a lawyer, not a doctor, a lifelong student, and now the author of my new book, ADHD for Smartass Women. I'm also a certified ADHD coach and the creator of youf ADHD Brain is a ok. A patented system that helps ADHD women just like you get unstuck and fall in love with their brilliant brains. Here we embrace our too muchness, and we focus on our strengths. My guests and I credit our ADHD for some of our greatest gifts. And to those who still think they're too much, too impulsive, too scattered, too disorganized, I say no one ever made a difference by being too little. Hello, I am your host, Tracy Otsuka. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of ADHD for Smartass Women. My goal is always to show you who you are and inspire you to be it. So thank you so much for being here. First of all, happy New Year. I am not messing around today. I am just going to cut to the chase. And every year since this podcast began, I have encouraged you to choose one word to guide your year. Not resolutions, not checklists, not New Year, new you. What even is that? We have never done any of that here. Nope. We just do one word. And here's why this works for our ADHD brain so well. Number one, it's simple. We don't have a ton of working memory to spare usually. So one word is really easy to hold onto, even throughout the whole year. Number two, focus. It helps us decide what matters and what doesn't. Number three, it generates positive emotion. That right word, it just Lights up our brain, and it keeps us motivated, or should I say inspired, because we're talking about ADHD here. And you know what? There's science behind this, too. One emotionally charged word is easier for our brains to remember, to act on and to come back to, especially when life gets busy and loud. And if you anchor that word somewhere where you're going to see it every day on a bracelet, I always have mine. I had this year on my bracelet. Sometimes I've tried a ring. It's a little harder because the word has to be really short. I have added on my phone wallpaper. I have had it framed on my desk. So you want it somewhere where you see it multiple times a day. And what that does is it keeps your focus front and center without the pressure of some giant to do list, which, over time, I don't even see those anymore. I love that if I'm wearing it. If it's on a bracelet, I'm literally seeing it multiple times a day because it's just always there. So I want to share with you some of my past words, and by sharing them, I'm hoping to give you some ideas for your word for 2026. So in 2018, my word was nervy, and that was the word that helped me push past fear to start this podcast. Yeah, we've been here that long. Thank you. In 2019, my word was consistency. And that is what allowed me to keep showing up every single week, week after week, to the point where I can now say, I think by the end of this month, this podcast will have been seven years. I started it in 2018, but we didn't go live until the very beginning of 2019. So seven years, 2020 was. The word was impact, and that reminded me why I was doing what I was doing. My whole goal was to change women's lives, to give them resources where they could fall in love with their brain. 2021, my word was action. I learned how to shut down that ruminating chatter in my brain by jumping into action. And action builds. And so then what you want grows. It all makes sense. It's just a cycle. 2022, my word was outsider. Kind of a weird word, but that word helped me embrace my role as a problem solver and creator. You know, I stopped completely stopped trying to fit in, and I just stopped paying attention to what anyone else was doing. I put my head down. That was the year I wrote my book. And I just focused on doing what generates positive emotion for me and what I knew would change lives down the road. So I was writing my book. It was hell. But I kept my head down and I kept my eye on the ball in terms of not paying attention to what anyone else is doing. I'm just going to focus on writing this book. So then 2023, I switched from outsider and my new word became insider. Because once I was done with the actual writing of the book, that then allowed me to focus on connection and community. Right as I was bringing this book into the world. 2024. I don't know what 2024 was. My book came out at the beginning of 2024. And so I'm wondering, did I not have a word? Because I've looked everywhere. I don't think I did a podcast on my word. In fact, I'm pretty confident I didn't because I did look, I guess I didn't have a word for 2024, which was really odd because I've had words for years. Maybe I was that busy. Anyway, in 2025, my word was 1 million. My intention, my goal was to help 1 million women through the podcast book programs and trainings. And that was the word one million that I had on this bracelet, which I think is hilarious. It's. These aren't blood diamonds. These are man made diamonds. For those of you who are listening on the podcast and can't see, I am showing up basically a. I guess it's a tennis bracelet and I had 1 million engraved on the. It's a big kind of a thing clasp. So that's been my word. That's the word I've been looking at all year. I'm not sure. Was I able to accomplish a goal? I'm not sure. Or this goal, this 1 million goal? I'm not sure. But what I know is I really tried. And we're now at eight and a half million for the podcast. So between. And we sold 100,000 books. So between the book and the podcast and my programs. But you know what counts, I tried. So whether I did or didn't, I certainly tried. I acted like I did. 2025 though, it was a doozy and I had no idea what kind of a doozy it was going to be going in. But it really changed me this year. And just to warn you, this podcast is about a lot of personal stuff. Okay. But I'm going to do a training in it and there'll be a little bit of science woven in. You know, how I always like to do. So the first thing, how this year changed me, the first thing that happened was my Husband had open heart surgery. We found out in 20. I think it was 20, 23, that he had a congenital heart issue. So his mother had the same issue. He was born with two flaps on his heart valve instead of three, and it's more common than you think, but most people, they have no idea they have it. The real problem, though, wasn't the heart valve. It was the extra pressure from those two flaps. I guess when the blood flows, it caused an aneurysm. Heart valve replacement isn't usually an emergency. You plan it, you schedule it, you go in, and you get it done. Aneurysms, however, well, people drop dead from those every day. So when his cardiologist said the valve was narrowing enough that it was time for surgery, I was thrilled. It meant that they could fix the aneurysm, too. My husband is crushing it. He's always been super proactive about his health. I mean, to the point of it's sometimes annoying. We call him buzz kill Stefani because he doesn't drink, so. Because though he was so proactive about his health, it meant his recovery was way faster than average. He literally took one oxycod after surgery. Just one. And after that, only Tylenol for open heart surgery. I know. Insane. The doctors and the nurses were like, what is wrong with this man? He's back to working out. He was back to working within a couple weeks, and he's just beyond relieved to have it all behind him. And you know what? So am I number two. Then there was Marcus. In the fall, he had shoulder surgery. He tore his rotator cuff. I think a rotator cuff's here. And then he tore his labrum, which I think is in the front. He was rock climbing. He's been in physical therapy three times a week, and he's almost done with it, so he's super happy about that, and so are we. But that wasn't even the doozy for him. The real shocker, Marcus decided he wants to go to medical school. Yeah, that Marcus. The kid who started all of this, the kid who hated school. You know, the one teacher's told us, how can someone so bright be so unmotivated? Or there's nothing more that we can do for him. Yeah, we had a director of schools tell us that in his junior year. Or my personal favorite, if you read my book, the psychologist who was the expert. Expert supposedly in adhd, who told us that, as his parents, our job was to lower his expectations, to. So he wouldn't be disappointed in life. Well, what happened is his first Job out of college put him around a lot of doctors and apparently they lit a spark. So he started volunteering in the ER at Cornell. Weill on weekends. And mind you, I walk into the ER like this with one hand over my face, right? Because I'm so terrified I'm going to see something that I won't be able to handle. I am just a chicken. And so I was sure he'd go to the ER once and he would never go back. But I was wrong. It inspired him even more. I had no idea that medicine was ever on his radar. But he's since told me that. Actually, mom, it's been in my head since seventh grade when my friend Cormack died from a rare blood cancer. He just didn't think he could do it, so he didn't even try. He didn't take any science classes in college. And that right there, that's called the ADHD tax, right? But this fall he applied to a bunch of post bacc premed programs. That's really the ADHD tax. Right now you have to pay for a postbac pre med program. And on Thanksgiving weekend he found out that he got into his top choice, Temple University. He wanted to stay in the Northeast. So he will be moving from New York City to Philly in May. And by the way, there were 2,000 applications for 35 spots. Only 10 of them were pre med. The rest were dentistry, podiatry, physician's assistants, so on and so forth. And I'm telling you this because I'm so proud for my son. But it's also the perfect example, if you have a child like Marcus, of what happens when an interest based ADHD brain finally lights up. When it clicks, they're just all in. And it's been so wild and so amazing to watch. We haven't helped him at all. In fact, the only thing we did initially was we tried to talk him out of it. He's done all of this himself. But I'm not going to lie, right? The idea of eight to 10 more years of school, it kind of makes my head hurt. Especially for a kid who hated school this much. But I have watched how much Marcus has grown this year, how committed and mature and hardworking he's become. So I'm holding my breath, I'm sending out a lot of gold stars, trusting that where there's a will, there's a way. And it is all going to work out just the way it's supposed to. But that wasn't even it for this year. Nope. There was Another big one. We decided to sell our home. And you have to understand, to me, this isn't just a house. This is like my third child. I call her Bullfrog Farms. And as far as we are concerned, she is pure magic. Every time I look around, I'm reminded that our thoughts really do create things. Because this place, it came straight from our minds and our hearts. We raised both of our kids here over the past 25 years. It's the place that I last saw my mother. My beautiful mother. It's been such an honor and such a privilege to live here. But now it's time for a new family to have that same experience. And in truth, I would feel guilty like I'm hoarding her if I didn't. Beyond that, it's just too much house for the two of us and our to four legged children. The upkeeps can literally be a full time job. And honestly, we both have a full time job. And so then most of the upkeep it falls on my husband. And in truth, I just need more stimulation than the country can give me. It was picture perfect for raising kids, but now I just need to be in a city. So maybe we'll head back to San Francisco. Maybe we'll join our kids in New York. Although my son has really thrown a wrench in our plans. Maybe we'll do a little bit of both. I don't know. Bullfrog Farms will always be part of us. But it's time to let her go and make space for what's next. Now, getting our home ready to sell meant touching every item we owned. Closets, cabinets, garages, bookshelves everywhere. Past versions of us were still living. And through all of it, I kept thinking, this is too much. We have too much, it's too heavy, it's too noisy in all the wrong ways. And I realized that I don't want more. I want less. Less space, less stuff, less land, less upkeep, less chaos. That's pretending to be productivity. The only thing that I decided that I want more of is people, life, energy, creativity. I do worry about having less nature though, especially the birds. I love birds, especially hummingbirds. And I've built them a beautiful sanctuary here. I know I've told you in past podcasts, I have this little app called the Bird Buddy. I have a sanctuary for regular birds, but I also have one for my little hummingbirds. And so I create sugar water, you know, every couple days and put it in this little feeder and Bird Buddy has a little camera on it. And so when the hummingbirds come to visit, I get a little video with their little faces and bodies and how fast they move. I can see them out of my kitchen window as well. But there's something about those little videos where you're so up close and you can see these birds. I have a bird buddy for my regular birds too. And so I'm thinking, if I'm in a city, how am I going to find the birds? I'll figure out a way, right? But you know what I really want? I want simplicity. I want clarity. I want room for something new. Because what I know about myself is that's where my best work always comes from, the something new. And so once I saw that clearly, it didn't just shift my personal life. 2025 has really changed how I run my business too, but we'll get to that. So this is the deal. ADHD brains. Well, we just don't thrive on more. I mean, everybody thinks we do, but we really don't, right? More to do's, more clutter, more stuff that's actually a recipe for shutdown. Every object, every task or open tab in our life. It eats at our cognitive bandwidth, it drains our energy, it slows down our clarity and our creativity. Subtraction is actually dopamine's best friend. When we subtract, we make space for our executive functions to come back online. Our ability to plan, schedule, time management, emotional regulation. It also makes space for creativity to spark and for motivation or inspiration to feel possible again. Because we don't have a lack of motivation, it's our brain drowning in too much noise. So we don't need more willpower, we need less in the way subtracting. It's not about becoming smaller, it's about getting honest with ourselves. It's also not about owning two forks and a houseplant. Although that's kind of sounding good right now, when I'm thinking about having to do all the packing. But it's really subtraction. It's about identity. Because when you subtract the noise, you can actually start to hear yourself again. When you subtract the obligations, you can choose what's important to you. When you subtract what no longer fits, you finally make space for what actually does fit. So ask yourself, what am I carrying that I'm ready to set down? What am I pretending still fits even though it doesn't? What drains me weekly that I haven't questioned in years? And what do I say yes to out of guilt or habit? So that brings us to my word for 20, 26. And my guess is you probably already know what it is. Yeah, my word, it's subtract. Not in the quiet, minimalist way. I don't think subtract is passive. I think it's bold and decisive and it's a boundary that actually holds. It says, you know, this system needs to be simpler or this environment needs to energize me or this part of my life is actually finished. And so, just as I was starting to really sit with that word subtract, I got the clearest sign I could have ever asked for. So, again, we've lived here for 25 years, right? And in all that time, I've seen a single egret. The bird, a white egret. Well, actually, we've got white ones and we've got gray ones. I didn't know, though, that they weren't just egrets. They were called great egrets. So I've seen single egrets many, many times. And occasionally I can probably count on two year on two hands. In 25 years, I've seen two together, but never ever have I actually seen three. I'm half Japanese, and in Japanese folklore, the great egret carries real meaning. It's a bird of clarity and transition. So when three great white egrets glided in together with their magnificent wingspan, they are just the most beautiful, graceful birds. And they landed on the side of the acre and a half pond that we've looked out on for two and a half decades, I literally stopped because I just knew it was a message, enough that I went and looked it up. And I'm going to read you what I found. In Japanese symbolism. Three means completion and alignment. Past honored, present understood. Future ready. Three signals. Equilibrium. A cycle. Finished. Well, great egrets represent wisdom, refinement, and poised evolution. They don't cling, they don't rush. They move when it's time. So the meaning isn't maybe stay. It's your complete here and ready for what's next. Clean, confident, forward. Quick break. If you have ADHD and you've tried everything to make things work, listen closely. Adhd, well, you know, it's not a disorder. It's a different operating system and different brains need different strategies. In three days to fall in love with your ADHD brain, we talk about how your brain actually works, how ADHD shows up differently in women, and how to replace shame with pride. Then we build your ADHD user's manual together. One that fits you, supports confident decisions, and quiets that ruminating Brain. If you are ready to stop fighting your brain and start working with it, sign up for free@tracyotsuka.com Ilovemybrain we start on January 6th. Now let's go back to the episode. I love Bullfrog Farms so much that there are times that I thought maybe we should stay. Maybe this is impulsive. Maybe our kids will come back and live in Sonoma County. I don't think they're going to come back and live in Sonoma County. And there was this thought that we'll never be able to come back because there is no home like this. I'm never gonna find anything like Bullfrog Farms. We created it, we built it, right? And even for living in the country, it's so completely unique. Just the location and that was my fear. You know, we have another Covid and we need a family compound. I mean, it just, it took care of us so beautifully when, you know, so many people were struggling with COVID Covid. And here we were so privileged in this beautiful space and we're able to enjoy our family. I don't know, there's always that question, right? Is this the right decision? Is it the right decision to make now? But once I read this, there was a calmness. The. They don't cling, they don't rush, they move when it's time. So the meaning isn't maybe stay, it's your complete here. To get more of what matters, we have to subtract what doesn't. If I want more creativity, more ease, more joy, more impact, well, that's only going to happen when I make space for it. My family, it's the most important thing to me, which is why this has been so hard. I mean, Bullfrog Farms has always felt like part of our family. Just a magical, safe place to always come home to when the world could be harsh, right? But that doesn't mean that we're supposed to stay forever. We built her, we lived with her, we loved her. And now it's someone else's turn. It's time. And you know this theme of subtraction, it showed up everywhere, including in business. For years, I did what everyone else in the online business world does. Live launches. I do a free three day training. We'd have countdown clocks, big push energy. And while they worked, I hated how they made me feel. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, because it always does. If you dream of having an online business, I just want you to know it is really hard. No matter how many times you do what you do, something always breaks. And I was so tired of the chaos of things breaking and the stops and starts of launching. So at the end of 2024, I stopped live launching entirely. I let go of the pressure. I moved our AOK Academy to rolling admission. And then I focused on the very unsexy work of organizing. We moved everything into an application called Notion. You probably all know what Notion is. I had been on Notion for a couple years, but I had not been using it correctly. So what we did, with the help of a wonderful Notion expert, is we made Notion our central command center where every piece of everything we do in our business now lives. So I'm no longer forced to keep anything in my brain, which is so relieving. I had to let go of the way that I was doing things right. I had to subtract. The beauty of all of this is I moved our entire team into this command center on Notion as well. And that means that everyone on our team is now talking to each other, which also means that they're talking to me a lot less. And that is glorious. They're probably getting better answers, too. What I discovered is that the chaos, for me, it wasn't actually in the live trainings themselves. I actually discovered I loved those. It was in the system or a lack of systems that were behind it. There was just too much going on, too big of a mess. So again, we subtracted. So now that we built these fabulous systems, subtracting systems, I will be bringing back our free three days to fall in love with your ADHD brain training on January 6th for the first time in more than a year. And you can sign up right now@tracyoutsuka.com Ilovemybrain Tracyoutsuka.com IloveMyBrain Little plug in there. So what can subtraction look like in your life? Well, you can subtract one obligation, one weekly obligation from your calendar. You can subtract one drawer of clutter. You can subtract one should that you've actually now outgrown. You can also subtract the belief that everything has to be perfect before you begin. And speaking about perfection, your word, it doesn't have to be perfect. You're not signing a contract here. It doesn't need to sound cool or clever. It just has to mean something to you. Pick the one word that just makes you feel positive, emotion. And if it changes mid year, great. That means you're evolving. That means it's working. You don't build a life you love by adding more. You Build it by clearing the crap that gets in your way. Now, sometimes we don't subtract because we think we should be able to manage it all or because busy feels productive. It's not. Or because we've tied our worth to being needed, to feeling responsible, to being kind. Subtraction. It takes courage. So much of what we hold onto is no longer working. It's just familiar. Letting go of familiar is scary. Trust me, I know. People keep asking us, did you buy another house? Nope. Where are you going? No real idea. So what's the plan? I guess we'll figure it out. I know the way my brain works. If I have it all figured out in advance, I'm never going to do it. How long would it take me to find something new, a new place to live, and then feel good about it? Right. I'm always going to compare it to Bullfrog Farms. And we're not looking for another Bullfrog Farms. So I just need to jump. And so this is what I'm doing this year. Subtraction is how I will grow. Look, you can't shine if you're buried. You can't lead if you're lost in your own clutter. You can't create something powerful when your brain is full of noise. So what will you subtract in 2026? And more importantly, what will that subtraction make room for? I hope that you'll join me in choosing your own words so you know where you're going in 2026. And again, the happiest of New Year. If you like this episode, please let us know by leaving a review. Our goal is to change the conversation around adhd, helping as many women as we possibly can learn how their ADHD brains work so that they too may discover their amazing strengths. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you here next week. You've been listening to the ADHD for Smartass Women podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Outsuka. Join us at ADHD for SmartWomen.com, where you can find more information on my new book, ADHD for Smartass Women. And my patented your ADHD brain is a okay system to help you get unstuck and fall in love with your brilliant brain. One last thought. Understanding ADHD really helps, but trusting your ADHD brain, well, that changes everything. And that's exactly what three days to fall in love with your ADHD brain is all about. It's free, and you can sign up@tracyoutsuka.com Ilovemybrain we start on January 6th.