NEW 🔥WIN Category · Thriving ADHD Mompreneurs

Katherine Lizardo

Aug '25 • 🥳Wins

NEW 🔥WIN Category

Hi, my Thriving members!

You've likely heard me say this like a broken record...

Celebrate your wins - big and small!

To encourage our ADHD brains to do that...

I created this new category dedicated to our "Wins!"

So when you write a post about your wins, you can select it so we can easily find it when we filter posts for "wins!"

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Why is it important to celebrate wins?

Brain plasticity (neuroplasticity) --> Neuroplasticity is our brain's ability to learn and change our behaviors. This is backed by thousands of scientific studies.

By acknowledging our wins (big and small)...

We create new brain connections telling our brains and body: "What we just did was great! It made me feel good. I want to do more of that. Let's do that again!"

So, the very FIRST step in creating new brain connections of positive habits and feelings is to ***acknowledge*** our wins!!!

Yes, it's that simple. But everyone else makes it complicated. 🤪

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I'll start!

My win for today is: I made a pot of coffee this morning!!! 🥳

We used to have a Keurig that made one cup of coffee...you know, the fast and easy kind. But it felt wasteful for the plastic Keurig cups. So we decided to switch to a coffee machine that makes more coffee using ground coffee.

BUT...I didn't anticipate the friction it caused my ADHD brain! Ever since we bought that coffee machine, my ADHD brain has been avoiding using it. So, my husband ends up making coffee all the time.

When I stopped to figure out what was causing my friction, it was because using that coffee machine was a lot for my ADHD brain's executive function. What do I mean? Because there were too many steps to perform to make a pot of coffee. Yes, they're simple steps, but for our ADHD brains, that alone causes overwhelm. And because I haven't paused and taken the time to understand what's happening with me, my ADHD brain was suffering from overwhelm whenever I saw that empty coffee machine.

I was feeling overwhelmed because my ADHD brain was trying to communicate with me, but I wasn't listening...until now.

So, today...I paused, listened to my ADHD brain, and told it: "We can do this one step at a time...do the first step and see what happens."

So, I did all these micro steps (I also shared what my brain was thinking at each step to get me moving past the friction points):

Get the filter part from the dishwasher.
Get the filter holder part from the dishwasher.
Get the bigger filter holder part, whose name I don't know, from the dishwasher.
Put all 3 parts together.
Put the fitted parts on top of the coffee maker where they fit....Ok, that wasn't so bad after all!
Get the coffee container from the cupboard.
Open the coffee container...that smells good! I love the smell of coffee!
Scoop 4 cups of ground coffee into the coffee machine.
Get the water container from the coffee machine.
Walk to the fridge to get water.
Fill it up with water...this is taking a while, it's okay, I can watch the water flow, it's relaxing.
Walk back to the coffee machine and put the water container back.
Press brew!

See how many micro-steps there are! 😆

My ADHD brain had already processed that many steps and had already started feeling overwhelmed.

But for me, I haven't broken down the steps before, so I had no idea how hard making a pot of coffee can be for someone with executive function challenges. Now I know!

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Your turn!

Every time you have a win - big or small, create a NEW post about it inside our community.

So we can all cheer each other.

I'd love to cheer you on...especially with my cup of coffee. 🤪☕

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