Change Your Habits and Create Your Best Year Yet
Happy New Year!
If you are like most people, you are probably thinking about goals and resolutions. As the months progress, people who struggle with executive functioning may find themselves scratching their heads while their peers are busy checking off academic and professional bucket list items.
Focusing on goals and resolutions without effective habits to achieve them may lead to finding yourself in February wondering where your momentum went.
This Washington Post article on building habits comes with a number of familiar, yet powerful strategies:
1. Set goals
2. Identify your motivation
3. Let go of perfectionism and just get things done
4. Reward positive actions
5. Be patient
6. Be kind to yourself
Why do these steps work?
They address the fact that setting goals is no guarantee of achieving them. For individuals with learning differences, life passages are mired in vagueness, a lack of clarity that reduces learners' motivation, consistency, and resilience.
Progress is not a steady line for neurodiverse individuals. We stop and start, have good days and bad, and may experience entire weeks where forward movement appears invisible. At times like these, we seem to lack traction. We may even question whether we have set the right goals in the first place.
People who struggle with executive functioning experience the world through a lens of vagueness. For progress to be achievable, we must find ways to concretize the steps that help us get where we need to go.
The secret sauce isn't setting better goals, but developing better habits to achieve them. Steady on! If you fall off track, get back on as soon as you can. And let go of judgement - it's dead weight.
While you may not be especially interested in developing a new exercise routine or dieting regimen in the new year, baby steps and traction are also indispensable when executing tasks related to academic, professional, or personal goals.
Looking for support in creating your best year yet? Schedule a complimentary information session.
As an executive function coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, and college transition.
If you are like most people, you are probably thinking about goals and resolutions. As the months progress, people who struggle with executive functioning may find themselves scratching their heads while their peers are busy checking off academic and professional bucket list items.
Focusing on goals and resolutions without effective habits to achieve them may lead to finding yourself in February wondering where your momentum went.
This Washington Post article on building habits comes with a number of familiar, yet powerful strategies:
1. Set goals
2. Identify your motivation
3. Let go of perfectionism and just get things done
4. Reward positive actions
5. Be patient
6. Be kind to yourself
Why do these steps work?
They address the fact that setting goals is no guarantee of achieving them. For individuals with learning differences, life passages are mired in vagueness, a lack of clarity that reduces learners' motivation, consistency, and resilience.
Progress is not a steady line for neurodiverse individuals. We stop and start, have good days and bad, and may experience entire weeks where forward movement appears invisible. At times like these, we seem to lack traction. We may even question whether we have set the right goals in the first place.
People who struggle with executive functioning experience the world through a lens of vagueness. For progress to be achievable, we must find ways to concretize the steps that help us get where we need to go.
The secret sauce isn't setting better goals, but developing better habits to achieve them. Steady on! If you fall off track, get back on as soon as you can. And let go of judgement - it's dead weight.
While you may not be especially interested in developing a new exercise routine or dieting regimen in the new year, baby steps and traction are also indispensable when executing tasks related to academic, professional, or personal goals.
Looking for support in creating your best year yet? Schedule a complimentary information session.
As an executive function coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, and college transition.
