Happy May Day! Do you remember when May 1st was the day we gathered flowers from the garden, tied them with pretty ribbons, and left them on friends’ doorsteps? I can remember picking little violets, tying them with a ribbon, and bringing them to Mom. She would help us make little bouquets for our neighbor friends. It was fun and exciting to work with the flowers, and the anticipation of surprising a friend with flowers was so delicious!

Where did that happy ritual go? It definitely feels like one worth bringing back. Here’s my May Day bouquet for you!

Here we are closing the first quarter of 2012. Have you enjoyed your first vacation of 2012 yet? Have you treated yourself to a trip or a fun break of some sort?

We need something to look forward to as we go through our days and weeks. Having a quarterly break, treat, or fun experience to look forward to is invigorating and energizing. If we don’t select something and schedule it, we are unlikely to make it happen.

It’s not too late to squeeze something in now! And while you’re at it, get something planned for this next quarter. You can use it as a reward for working toward your goals. I really urge you to give this vacation-a-quarter concept a try. It can be life changing.

Recently, I read about a businesswoman, Andra Rush, a member of the Mohawk Indian tribe of Ontario, Canada, who started a trucking company when she was 23 with the intention of making a quick fortune so she could tackle poverty on Native American reservations across North America. Her time frame and initial plan didn’t work out the way she expected, but at 50 now, her start-up trucking business has grown to a $400 million business that employs thousands of Native Americans. “I like the fact that you can start to get some momentum and keep challenging yourself – and then suddenly you lift your head and it’s been 25 years.”

Several things stood out to me about Andra’s story:

• Her youthful vision and ambition to impact poverty

• That she chose a humble service business as her vehicle to impact poverty
• She took a big risk to get herself started in a male-dominated business
• She kept asking herself how she could do more to make a difference

An interviewer asked how her Native American heritage influenced her approach to business. She replied, “In our culture, when you make a decision, you consider its impact on the next seven generations. That means you take environmental precautions from the outset. Teachings like that help you with your choices.”

That statement really struck me as I thought about persons impacted by ADHD. We often have big ideas, visions, and ambitions. We have the passion and willingness to work and make a difference. But we often get immobilized when it comes to considering implications of our actions for the future and then holding onto our big picture as we trudge through day-to-day mundane activities. I don’t know how Andra Rush kept her focus on the big picture of impacting poverty as she had to focus day-to-day on meeting delivery deadlines. Perhaps one clue is that she enjoyed challenging herself to make more of a difference.

What I do know is that she was able to keep the big picture in mind and use it to drive her daily decision-making and actions. She stayed curious and open to learning how she could have the most impact without getting stuck doing it the way she first envisioned or as fast as she first intended. It also sounds like she had fun and stayed in touch with the people she wanted to help.

Maybe there’s a lesson or guiding principle in Andra’s story for us. As ADDers, we do have to work harder at holding onto our visions and sustaining our energy toward our goal. But when the goal is one you really care about, you enlist help and lots of supports, and you remain curious about how you can reach your vision, your goal can be a entertaining journey filled with variety, ongoing new challenges, and joyful rewards beyond what you can imagine. I’m curious what this example says to you and what you choose to do toward your dreams now.

I ran across this quote from Saint Paul recently:

My own behavior baffles me. For I find myself doing what I really hate, and not doing what I really want to do!

Wow, does that sound too often familiar. For example, this morning I really wanted to be writing on my book, but instead, I spent my time answering emails and vacuuming the house. Now, I don’t really hate doing those things, but they certainly weren’t what I wanted to be doing. This past week, I spent several hours doing what I call administrivia – handling administrative details like sorting, setting routine maintenance-type appointments, and following up with people and projects. It’s easy to spend a lot of time on these kinds of things, and it can look like I was productive. But the reality is that this stuff wasn’t fun nor are those things the best use of my time. They didn’t move me closer to my goals, and they didn’t brighten my day or give me energy.

When we impulsively jump into tasks, we miss the opportunity to think whether the task is valuable, the best use of our time, or what we want to be doing. We can’t spend every minute of every day doing only the fun things we want to do, but we can and must set aside some of every day for what we really want to do or we’ll end up being very sad puppies.

In my experience, if we can do something we want to do early in the day, it definitely gives us momentum to carry us through other tasks, and it can set a positive tone for our day. Have you found this to be true for yourself? If not, give it a try. The thing you want to do doesn’t have to be big or time-consuming; it just has to be something you’re drawn to and will enjoy.

It’s easy to find ourselves feeling like Saint Paul, baffled by our behavior, if we aren’t consciously choosing to put things we want to do and enjoy doing into our days. The key is to make that choice and do it early in day.

It’s often very hard for someone impacted by ADHD to hold onto the value or importance of a goal as the person moves through her day and week. Here’s an example. A friend of mine who owns rental properties told me the other day that when one of his houses becomes vacant, he figures it costs him $75 a day for every day it isn’t ready to be rented. That $75 cost keeps his mind focused on the goal of getting the property cleaned up and back on the market.

That’s actually a good way to keep a goal in mind – identify the cost of not getting it done, and make that cost something you can see and/or feel every single day. Use that knowledge as part of your decision-making as you choose how to use your day.

For those of us with ADHD, it’s so important to have consistent and powerful reminders or prompts to help us stay on track toward our goals. This is just a simple yet powerful way to help ourselves.

If it’s difficult for you to work out an actual cost, talk with a coach or friend who could help you come to a cost figure. Then try saying to yourself each morning, “If I don’t work on X today, I’m losing (so many) dollars.” Notice how saying that feels and let that feeling guide you in choosing what to work on.

So, thinking of a goal you care about, what is it costing you today if you’re not working on it? How much will that be if you don’t work on your goal this entire week?

March is the month where we begin moving from winter to spring. It’s a time when we can feel a great deal of gratitude for the prospect of new life and new opportunities.

What has been incubating in your mind and heart this winter?
What new possibilities are ready to bloom for you?

Take a few moments to open yourself and notice.