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Foreign. You are listening to the Navigating Adult ADHD Podcast with your ADHD coach and expert, Xena. Hello, my beautiful friend. Welcome back to navigating adult ADHD. Wow. I'm recording this on Monday, the 22nd of December, and technically, this is my last day of work for the year, which seems so appropriate to be recording this episode today. Today I'm going to share with you six questions that I ask myself at the end of every single year. And these questions are really simple, but yet really, really powerful. And they definitely help when it comes to self awareness, which is something that our ADHD brains can have real difficulty with because it's one of our executive functions that doesn't always function, which is something I'm going to talk about a little bit more as we go throughout this episode. All right, my friend, if you are listening to this at the end of the year or honestly, at any point when you are feeling reflective, I want to start out by saying that when we have adhd, our brain is not a reliable historian, okay? It's not reliable at, you know, giving us the facts and relying on history, shall we say? It's not that you have not grown, it's not that you haven't tried, and it's certainly not that you haven't achieved anything meaningful this year or full stop in your life, okay? What actually happens is ADHD brains. And the way in which we are wired, the way in which our brains have developed is that we focus on what's wrong. Our brains have this negativity bias, which is very, very strong. All human brains have it, yes. But for ADHD brains, very, very strong, okay? Especially when we have difficulty with rsd, rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria. We're always on the lookout. You know, what could go wrong, what is wrong, what do I need to fix? So our brains, ADHD brains, they focus on what went wrong, what haven't I done, what's unfinished, and what feels emotionally loud right now, right? Where are the problems? So what this means is ADHD brains live in what I call the gap, okay? Most ADHD is live in the gap. So I'm about to reference a book called the Gap and the Gain. I'm gonna explain this concept. It's a book by an author called Dan Sullivan, who has adhd, which I love, because if you do get the book, bright blue cover, it is so easy to read and understand, and it is full of activities that really help us to see our entire life through the lens of what we have accomplished and how far we have come I found it to be so incredibly helpful. I found this book years ago, and I plan to revisit it over the Christmas break. Okay. But I want to briefly talk about it as we approach these six questions I'm going to share with you. Okay, so when we talk about the gap, the gap is the space between where you are and where you think you should be. Okay? So if you were to imagine a ladder, there is a ladder. It's on the ground, and it's leaning up against the side of a tall building. If you were standing on that ladder and you're looking up to the top of the ladder thinking, oh, my God, I should be at the top. I have to get to the top. Fuck, I'm so far off the top. That's focusing on the gap. The gap between where you are now and where you want to be or where you think you should be. Okay, here's what it often sounds like when we're living in the gap. I'm so behind. I haven't done enough. I should be doing more. I should be further along by now. Okay. That's what it sounds like. Which is a very familiar thing. I hear this not only from, like, the ADHD community I get to support, but also that was my internal narrative for so long. So I'm very familiar with this. So in this episode, I want to help you shift from the gap into what's called the gain. Okay? So we live between either. We either live in the gap, always looking at what we have to do, how far we've got to go, where we're not all of that. And then there's the gain. Right? The gain is the space between where you started and where you are now. So if you go back to the ladder example and you're standing on this ladder, living in the gain is looking back down, down at the ground and seeing how far you've already climbed, how far you have come. It's acknowledging, wow, I'm not down on the ground anymore. So to put this into a lived example, actually, one of my clients literally just messaged me this morning to celebrate a weight loss achievement that she has been working on for a while. And she messaged me the amount that she had lost. And I said to her, you know, it wasn't that long ago that you were talking about the dream of, like, you know, losing weight. And obviously she's not. She's not yet at her goal. Like, she wants to lose about twice as much as she had. But she messaged me and said, holy shit. Like, I've actually can see now how far I've come and how much I've lost. And I'm seeing it here and there. And, you know, my clothes are looser and all of that. That is living in the gain. Instead of being like, oh my God, I've still got so far to go. I'm not even halfway, or I'm barely at halfway. Like it's taking forever. Like, that's living in the gain. Okay, so I'm going to share with you these six questions that are really about building self awareness, self trust, and creating more accuracy in the way in which we speak to and treat ourselves about our story, our experiences, what we have and haven't accomplished. Okay? Because you can't build a life that works for your ADHD brain if you keep deleting the evidence of the things that are working, of the areas where you actually have made some positive improvements. Right? If you're listening to this right now and you're like, yeah, but I haven't. Nothing's working. I haven't made any improvements. I'm sorry. I love you. And I'm calling bullshit because the fact that you are listening to this is proof that you are doing something to improve your life. You are doing something to get educated about your adhd. Right? You being here is the proof that there are things that are working and you have taken positive step. Okay? Love you. So again, as I was saying, our ADHD brains can be really quick to delete the evidence of what's working in our life, where we have made improvements, the accomplishments we've had, however small they might be. Okay? So this, this process. I'm about to walk you through these six questions. Don't worry, I'm almost there. But I really just want to drive home why this is so important. Okay. For our ADHD brains. We know as people with adhd, we struggle with working memory. Out of sight, out of mind. And what's so fascinating is I've made a start on these questions. I haven't finished them. I will share some of my answers with you. But as I started doing it, I was like, oh, my God, I completely forgot about that. I completely forgot that we went on that trip to the Gold coast with the kids. Wow, that was actually such a highlight. That was such a positive thing. I looked back, I'm going to tell you how to do it. And I was like, oh, my God. I completely forgot about so many things that happened throughout this year. So again, when we're out of sight, out of mind, we forget the good things. The things that have worked, the positive experiences, the improvements, the achievements, whatever. But we often hold on to the not so good ones. Isn't that fascinating? Right, so another thing, another reason why this matters so much for ADHD brains is, as I was just saying, like, emotional memory can often outweigh factual memory. What I mean by that is if we've had a negative emotional experience, we will hold onto that much longer and stronger than we would a positive emotional experience. Okay? So we have to show our brains what else has happened, what else is true, all or nothing thinking, right, makes us think we've either achieved it or we haven't. For example, I had a goal on my goals list for, for this year of achieving a certain amount of savings in my personal account. Now, I did achieve one in my business account. I didn't achieve one in my personal account. But that's not to say I didn't save anything. I actually achieved 75% of that goal. And if I'm not careful, my brain with all or nothing thinking is like, oh, you didn't achieve it, you suck. It's like, actually, if we look at it from the ladder based perspective, I've climbed 75% of the way up my ladder. If I look back at the ground, holy shit, that's pretty impressive. I've come a long way. Okay, the other thing, the other reason why this is so important, these six questions is self awareness. As I said at the beginning, self awareness is one of the executive functions ADHD brains often have difficulty with with. So this practice isn't about simply reflecting, okay? It's about helping our ADHD brain to develop that skill of self awareness. It's helping to build that muscle. Okay? Because that's exactly what we're going to do in this exercise, is we're going to literally use self awareness to help ourselves grow. And as we move into the new year. Right, okay, this is the bit where we like literally pause, you know, reflect on what's worked, what hasn't, et cetera, learn from things, make some decisions about the new year so that we can leave the baggage in 2025. Okay? Leave the baggage behind and move nice and freshly into the new year or whatever time of year you're doing this. Okay, all right, let's just get to it. I know you're like, hurry up and tell me the questions already. All right, I'm going to give you the questions, but I'm going to walk through them one by one and then recap all six together at the end. Okay? So you can Write them down then, if you haven't already. Right, question one. What were your highlights this past year? What are the things that went well? What did you achieve? What worked? What are you proud of? Okay, this is where, again, we are consciously, deliberately moving from that gap. I didn't achieve this, I didn't do that into the gain. Okay, so in the example of, like, I just shared with you the financial goal I had, a personal savings goal that I had, which I didn't achieve. Actually, a huge highlight is achieving 75% of that and looking at that and being like, yeah, that's pretty cool. I'm really proud that I have actually achieved that. Even if it's not the number I was aiming for, that's still pretty fucking awesome achievement. Okay, so what were the highlights? Now here's what I recommend. I recommend you get out your phone and scroll back to the beginning of the year and look at your camera roll. Look at your photos for reminders. That is how I do it. And I find it so helpful. And this is how I had all of these memories come up. And I was like, oh, shit, I forgot about that. I forgot about that. Oh, yeah, wow, that was really cool. So helpful. Also, if you have a journal, that's another great way to get reminders. I grabbed out my journal and went through it and was like, it helped me because often I journal about, like, the difficult things I'll brain dump. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I'd forgotten about that too. Or, yes, that still stings. Very helpful. Okay, now when we talk about the highlights, I break this down into different areas of life. Because ADHD brains, we can be quite quick to be like, I don't know, unless we give a little bit more context. Okay, so here is what I want you to do. Break this down into health and well being. What went well? What were your highlights? Health and well being. Wise career and work. The next one is relationships. Then we've got joy and happiness. That's number four. Number five is finance. And number six is personal growth and learning. Okay, so those are the six categories. Now this question of, like, what are your highlights? It matters. Don't let your brain skip over it, okay? Because we can be so quick to dramatically undercount our wins. Now, literally, if you had to. If you had to find something or else nobody was going to give you food for the rest of your life. Okay? I don't know. I'm just trying to come up with a very dramatic example. If you had to find something for every single category you would be able to come up with something. So again, what is something? Just one thing. If you can come up with more fantastic, I'm not stopping you. But what is something in each of these categories that has been a highlight, that has gone well, that you are proud of, that you have achieved an area where you might have grown? Okay, again, if your brain doesn't like, if you don't intentionally look at this, your ADHD brain is going to default to the bloopers reel. Right? And the trouble when we look at our own bloopers real is we are not laughing, we are judging it. We laugh at other, other blooper reels that we look at. Okay, I love me some bloopers on, on TikTok, especially cat related ones. But when it's us, we are just judging. Okay, so I'm gonna give you some examples, right? Health and well being wise. For me, one of the highlights this year was joining FIT club and training. So joining a small group, training with women. Our trainer Matt, he's been on the podcast. I was not training with him at that stage, but after a few conversations I was like, yeah, I actually want to give this a go because I was really interested in how he can gamify workouts. And holy shit, it has been incredible. I love working out and not knowing what's coming, not knowing what I'm walking into, but also seeing myself go from like deadlifting, I don't know, 40 kgs to deadlifting 70 kgs and then like knowing I'm going to be able to do 100kgs real soon. Like just seeing that has been so fantastic, so enjoyable, like seeing the progress. Also another one is advocating for myself with hormones. Like hormones in terms of health and wellbeing has been a struggle. So it's going to show up in the next category we talk about. Okay. But also seeing myself advocate, like listen to my body, learn from my body, research, ask questions, try different things has really helped me to develop a lot of self trust which has been beautiful to see. So in terms of the joy and happiness category, a lot of travel actually featured in that for me this year. So it was the trip to the Gold coast, which I'd forgotten about until I looked at my camera roll. It was spending time in Hawaii going on beautiful hikes. It was also some of the hikes and adventures that I had closer to home on a Sunday. My partner and I, which is a habit we've fallen out of now, which is so good to, to see it in the camera roll is that we had this habit of, like, every Sunday we would go on a different hike or walk, and that was so fun. And we would get the kids involved and when we had the kids, and that was just really joyful. So that memory, I was like, oh, my gosh, that's something I want to bring back now that the weather's good again. Okay, so capturing the things that brought you joy and happiness. I had a client share with me that one of the things for her was spending more time with her growing children and just seeing them develop and seeing how far that they had matured and how. How much they'd grown, that was very joyful. So in terms of personal growth, one of the highlights for me this year was finding finally a really good therapist whom I resonate with, experiencing some emdr, some internal family systems, and working on some of my own deep internal work. I'm very proud of myself for doing that, because it's been uncomfortable as fuck, let's be honest, But. But so valuable. I also had a client say one of her big sort of highlights and wins for the year in terms of personal growth is really getting to know her own limits and understand, you know, what's going to lead her towards burnout and when she works best and how she's better to get up early because she doesn't function well, late in the evenings and all of this sort of thing. I had another client, a beautiful soul I work with, say one of her most significant highlights in terms of personal growth was finally learning how to be kind and compassionate with herself. Oh, I love that one. All right, question two, my friend. Question two is, what were the lowlights? Now, this is about gathering data without attacking yourself. Okay? What were the things that didn't work out? Where did you struggle? Where did you not achieve whatever you set out to achieve? Okay, now this is where many of us either avoid reflection entirely because we don't want to relive that discomfort, or we turn it into a personal attack and beat the shit out of ourself. Okay, These low lights are not a assessment of your character. What this is, is about getting data, about learning about your capacity, about the systems that you might need to pop in place and the support that you may be missing. That's it. Okay, I want you to imagine that you were a scientist approaching an experiment that didn't go as planned. What do you want to do? You want to gather as much information as you can. You need to gather the facts. You need to find out what worked, what didn't work, so that you can Then get really curious about what you could do differently. Okay, so you are the scientist approaching these things. Again, we're going to do this. The low lights from those six areas, health and well being, career and work. Number three is relationships. Number four is joy and happiness. Five is finance. And number six is personal growth and learning. Okay, so I'm going to share a couple of mine and weave in some client examples here too. So, in terms of health and well being, one of my lowlights was experiencing a lot of ongoing neck and shoulder pain throughout the year and taking a shit ton of Voltaren, which I'm not too happy about. Okay. Another low light for me when I reflected back was seeing how I stopped posting regularly on social media. It is something I'd been really good about in 2024, and it had brought a lot of new, beautiful ADHD is into my world. Was posting sort of three times a week on Instagram, Facebook, all of that sort of thing. And I just, like, let that drop off the radar completely this year. And another significant low light for me, which I had started to sort of feel and notice lately, was relationships, specifically friendships. I did not prioritize my friendships this year the way in which I had wanted to. It was something that I had journaled on earlier in the year and kind of when I'd explored that area of my life, I'd been like, yeah, actually, that's something I want to focus on this year. I did not do that. Okay. I did not do that. And I think, if anything, this is an area where I've kind of gone backwards in terms of friendships and not having the kind of connection that I want to have with the people in my life. Another example here from a client actually was noticing that she shuts down and disconnects when she is very quick to assume the worst or that people are attacking her. So she had a lot of growth and development in that, which was really beautiful. So another one for me in the lowlights was the personal growth in that category. I consumed a lot this year, but it wasn't like TikTok and Netflix and stuff, right? I consumed a lot of educational podcasts and educational audiobooks, but I consumed so much that I started to notice this pattern that I constantly had noise in my ears, in my face, and I started to feel anxious. It was so interesting when I started to, like, stop doing that so much, I started feeling less anxious. And I think what was happening internally, and this is what the next one. The next question is, like, what are your lessons? And this is part of the lesson from this for me is that I started to think I should do that, I should do that. There was a lot of should starting to show up. Like, it felt like a lot of pressure. I need to do that. I need to come back and answer these questions. I need to come back and give that tool a try. So it started to build this kind of pressure and anxiety in me. Very fascinating to see. So question three is, what are your lessons from this year? Okay. And this is not shame based lessons. No. Okay, remember, we're back to the scientist gathering the data, getting really, really curious. Oh, what? Like, what's the lesson in this? Like, why did this happen? What are my takeaways? Okay, this is such an important question for us, for those of us with adhd. Okay, what did this year teach me? What did I learn about myself? What did I learn about what works and what does not work? Okay. We know as people with adhd, we can often repeat patterns. Not because we're lazy. Right. But because our brains like to be efficient and we're so quick to beat ourselves up instead of pausing to take a look under the hood to learn from the data. Okay, so back to our scientist. Right? This is the part where we get super, super curious. You know those toddlers who are like, why? Why, why? Like that? Okay. Get really, really curious, really fascinated. I like to again, break this into those six areas. Health and wellbeing. What's a lesson from my health and wellbeing? From career and work, relationships, joy and happiness, finance, personal growth and learning. Okay, so one of my career lessons this year was seeing that I get really. I got really stuck in, in terms of posting on social media. I got really stuck in the how. I was like, how should I show up on social media? It's not so much the how, but what specifically should I be posting about? How do I want to do this? What do I want to be known for? I got very st in that, thinking that there was a right way. Now that, my friends, is a sneaky form of perfectionism. I did not see that until the end of this year. When I paused and started to explore this. I was like, oh, okay. It was perfectionism. My brain thought that there was a right way, a better way, a way that I should show up on social media or what I should put on and. And, you know, show up with whatever. And when I saw that, I was like, oh, my gosh. I talked all about this in the perfectionism podcast. Oh, my God, I know exactly what this is. I had stopped focusing on who I want to be right. And I was so focused on the how, how do I need to do it, how should I do it, blah, blah, blah. Who do I want to be? Who do I want to be When I show up on social media, I want to be authentic. Who do I want to be? I want to be me. Who do I want to be? Imperfect. Like who do I want to be, right? Like who do I want to be? I just want to be showing up. I want to be learning as I go. So this was like really, really interesting. So watch out for how I show up on social media next year. Oh, so fun. Another lesson for me, as I just said was like relationships was one of the low lights but the relationships lesson for me is that they don't happen by accident, they do require intention. And my brain is so out of sight, out of mind like most of ours, right? We're out of sight, out of mind. But literally with people in our life, I miss that connection. So what I want to do is put supports in place to create that every single week. I want to have a reminder in my calendar, a reminder on my phone with an alarm so that I check in with at least one person, hopefully more, right? I want to block out, I'm thinking 15 minutes just to contact a couple of people and reply to a couple of people and just check in. And then I want once a week and I'm thinking I could make this once every two weeks. I haven't sat down to plan it out yet, but I want to be deliberate about seeing somebody. So see a friend in person or video call one of my overseas friends and be very deliberate about this is like a non negotiable because I do want to improve this area of my life and I know that I need some supports in place, some structure in place, some systems there in order to do that because otherwise my brain's just going to forget. I'm not going to expect it to remember shit. So big lessons there in relationships for me. I had a beautiful lesson from one of my clients when I asked her this question throughout the week, she said in doing this, in seeing, you know, a lot of the sort of hurdles that I've gone through this year, it really helped me see how I'm such a good problem solver, how I can literally figure out anything, like I will always find a way. And that's such a beautiful lesson because it's developing this self trust, this self belief in yourself and I love that, love it. All right, question four. This might just be my favourite this one's super fun. Question four is about taking a snapshot. Okay, this is the question. What do I want out of life and who do I want to be? Mmm. I love this because this is all about your values, okay? This is really a compass. Okay? If we think back to the latter example, this is where what you want at the top of your ladder, it's the neon flashing signs that you want at the top of that ladder. Okay? So as I said, I haven't finished going through this yet, but when I did a first, quick, quick sort of draft over the weekend, when I thought about what I want out of life, who I want to be, specifically who I want to be, these were the words that came up for me. I want to be authentic. I want to be courageous and brave. I want to have freedom and autonomy. I want to be colorful and bright. I want to be stand. To stand out, to be known for standing out. But also I want to make a positive difference. So those were the things that first came to me. Now, from an ADHD perspective, this really matters because ADHD brains move when something has meaning, okay? When something means something to us, when it's important to us, when it is driven by our values, the things that really matter to us, we move towards it. We fight for it. Okay? So again, the question is, what do I want out of life and who do I want to be? This is like the compass pointing us in that direction. So question five, what do I want to stop doing that would improve the quality of my life? So think about some activities or some actions that aren't really congruent with that life you want to be after you've just explored that, that question of, you know, who do I want to be, what do I want out of my life? What are some of the things that maybe don't line up with that? So I had one of my clients share a beautiful, you know, vision for what she wants for her life and who she wants to be. And one of the things that she wants to stop doing is she wants to stop going to her 9 to 5 job. She's building a business, but she wants to stop going to her 9 to 5 job so early. She was telling me that she literally will arrive some mornings at like 5:36am in the morning. I was like, what? We need to talk about that. She said, I don't want to get there before 7:30am and she said, and I want to finish at the latest by six, right? So I want to reduce the hours that I'm spending there Because I'm not paid for them. I was like, fantastic. And when we look at what you just said you want for your life and who you want to be, that is a great thing to stop doing because it's not aligning with that. They're so beautiful. Number six, the last question. What do I want to start doing? So this is the gentle things, the supports you can put in place, right? The scaffolding to pop in and around you to help you move towards that snapshot of what you want in life and who you want to be. Okay? This is not some massive, massive hustle list, okay? No, no, no, no. Right? So for me, it things that I've jotted down in this category, I want to start prioritizing friendships, right? How can I do that? What scaffolding can I put in place? Set calendar reminders, okay? Put it in my calendar. Set alarms. Another thing I want to do is I want to start writing. So I want to block time three times a week, specific. I want to have it the same sort of hour or time in the week every, every week. So that, that is my protected writing time. And I want to create a really supportive system around that where it's protected. And I'm going to get used to having, like, no distractions and just write imperfectly. Even if I'm staring at a blank screen, even if I'm writing the same word over and over. I just want to get into the habit of writing because that's something. It's going to help me move towards some of the things that I want for life. Okay? It's not about perfection or rigidity here, okay? No, I think there is. God, where does this come out of? It's out of one of those, like, habit based atomic habits, I think, maybe, I'm not sure. Somebody said we don't rise to. What is it? I can't remember the quote. We don't rise to our intentions. We fall to the level of our systems. Right? So when I think about the things I want to start doing, it's like, what are the systems I want to put in place to help support the actions that I want to take? Okay. I had a client share that one of the things she wants to do is have a weekly zoom date with her daughter. Her daughter is like overseas away from her, so she wants to have a weekly zoom date to keep that connection going. And I said, great. Find a day and time, communicate that. Find one that works for her every single week. And then it's a repeating thing. Like, you both know, every Single week, it's going to become a habit. Another one, somebody said they want to join a sports team. I was like, beautiful. Okay, so again, my friend, these six questions are really simple, but they help us to build our self awareness muscle, which is so important for those of us with adhd. And they help us to move out of the gap, that place where we're always focusing on how far we've got to go and, you know, what we haven't done and what we should do and all of this and help us realign with the gain and seeing. Actually, these are the things that are working. This is how far I have come and am I even on the right ladder? Is this the one that I want to be climbing? Super important. Okay, so let's go back through the six questions. I just want to recap them so you can write them down if you would like. Number one, what are the highlights? Think about what went well. What did you achieve? What are you proud of? Again, we're doing this in those six categories. So the first category is health and wellbeing. Number two is career and work. Number three is relationships. Number four is joy and happiness. Number five is finance. And number six is personal growth and learning. The next question, what are the low lights? So what are the things that didn't work out? Where might I have really struggled or not achieved what I set out to achieve? Okay, again, remember, this is not a personal attack, right? This is where we go in and we gather that information, that data, like a scientist, so that we can learn, so that we can be really, really curious, so that we can see what support and systems we need in place. Question number three, what are my lessons? What are some of my key takeaways? Again, I want these to be in a positive light. These are not where you beat yourself up. No. What did this year teach me? What did I learn about myself? What did I learn about what works and what doesn't? This is where we get really, really curious. Okay? In those same six categories. Question four. This is where we get the snapshot. What do I want out of life and who do I want to be? Love that question. Question five, what do I want to stop doing that would improve the quality of my life? Okay, so this is some of the actions or activities that aren't congruent with the life you want to live and the person that you want to be? Now, question six. What do I want to start doing that would help move me toward the snapshot that I want for my life? Okay, now, if you know that you are likely to beat yourself up when you do this exercise, then I really want to encourage you to find a friend, a safe person, right? Whether that be your best friend, your sister, your cousin, fellow adhder. Find somebody whom you can do this with right out loud, together in a safe place. Someone who knows you and can help you with this and help show you some of the growth. Okay, Again, grab your camera rollout. Grab your journal. Use that to help jog your memory. Because, hello, we can't rely on it. We can't rely on our brain just to know and remember. So we want to look back. All right, my friend, have fun answering these six questions. They are super powerful. As I said, I answer these every single year and they help you to really set me up for the year ahead. All right? Huge love, my friend. Happy New Year. 2026 is going to be amazing. Let's fucking go. Hey, friend, if you want some more help navigating and thriving with ADHD and some help applying everything that you're learning here on the podcast, then head over to our website, Navigating Adult adhd. Com.