When Ambition Exceeds Capacity

tly met at the Neurodiversion: 2025

G: Yeah. I am super excited to dive more into this topic with you, Diann.

G: So can we go back, Meredith, to you, figuring out that you had ADHD and, you know, how it's really changed your life in the process and has led to a completely different career? Because you've probably always been an ambitious, driven, hardworking individual who just didn't know she had ADHD for a while.

G: I had a lot of really, really big wild dreams as a child. And as I, you know, grew into adulthood, I still really considered myself a dreamer. But reality starts to hit when you go to college, and then you have children. And, you know, I still really felt like I wanted to go for big things. So as far as my career and diagnosis journey, I kind of had this pattern where I would work in the corporate world, usually in training and development type role for a few years, and then I would have a kid and then I'd want more freedom. And I'd want to use that opportunity to dive into that side of me that wanted to create and do something different. So I would start a business and I would be successful for a while I would do really well, I had really exciting ideas, I would love it.

And then I would burn out and I would crave kind of the consistency and routine that a corporate job can provide. So go back into the traditional workforce, and then have another kid, rinse and repeat 30 times. So you know, around the time that my middle child was diagnosed with ADHD, several years ago now over a decade now. And when I was going through that process with her, I really was looking at that paperwork and all of those descriptions of the symptoms and thinking, O\oh, my goodness, she's not the only one that's experiencing these symptoms. And she's not the only one that's had a big impact. So after her diagnosis, I pursued one for myself. And it really changed so much for me and how I viewed what I saw were failures with those businesses, how my relationship with burnout and capacity. I really got to see it through a new lens, once I realized really what the roots of these struggles were.

H: It makes so much sense. And, you know, something that I often say is because we have these interest based brains, we're either full ass or no ass. We are not capable of half assing anything. If we care about it, we are obsessed with it. And if we're obsessed with it, we have to do it, and we have to do it right now. And we will do it to the very best of our ability, which even just hearing myself say that, obviously, it's going to lead to burnout or just blowing the idea out of the water and getting sick of it even if you don't reach burnout because there's no pacing. It like, starting a business and going after it like a sprint instead of a marathon, you're not gonna be able to sustain that very long. And yet, most of us have to go through that several times before we see the pattern. And then learning that we have ADHD, it's like, oh, that's why. Did you feel a lot of shame about that when you first put those thoughts together and connected the dots?

G: Absolutely so much shame, so much shame that I even hesitated to try again, when I felt called to getting into ADHD coaching. I went through my whole coaching program, and got to the end of it and was giving myself every excuse to not move forward. I was still working as a contractor in the corporate world at the time. So I was kind of like, well, that was fun to learn. But I really was struggling with the shame of making another announcement, another pivot sharing, you know that with the world again, I could picture everyone being like, there she goes, again, she's starting a new business again, you know, here we are. Again, we do a lot of work around questioning those stories in our brain but the shame is real. I think oftentimes, a lot of us have been conditioned to feel that we're supposed to pick a path.

And we are supposed to stay on that path consistently year after year, until we retire. And then we can enjoy our lives a little bit. And that it's rare to find the ADHD-er that has done the exact same thing every single day for their entire life and felt really happy about that there are people that have stayed in the same field. I don't think that necessarily means we completely bounce around and change jobs constantly. But oftentimes, those people have some variety or novelty that's built into the roles that they are in, and they found that kind of right fit for them. But I've met way more ADHD-ers that have been, you know, on several different paths that, you know, sometimes seem logically connected, and sometimes they don't. And viewing that differently as being multi passionate, I think can be a really hopeful shift that we make. But if we have all this shame around what we're supposed to do and how it's supposed to look, it can be very hard to embrace that.

H: I love that you use the term conditioning, Meredith, because I agree with you a 100%. I think even if we are, in a more progressive family or a more progressive corporate culture where they say, oh, we are here to disrupt. We believe in innovation. We want people to bring their creativity to the table. In truth, our culture works based on the conditioning that we're supposed to pick and stick. We're supposed to pick a path. We're supposed to pick a person. We're supposed to pick a political party. We're supposed to pick a place to live. We're supposed to pick a friend group. We're supposed to pick our hobbies, and we're supposed to our faith early in life, we're supposed to pick and we're supposed to stick, and we're supposed to stick with it all the way down the line.

And if we change our mind, if we lose interest, if something else happens to tickle our fancy along the way, if we get bored, God forbid, or we just don't feel like doing it anymore. It's like we have to have a story. We have to be able to justify that. We have to be able to rationalize that. We have to be able to excuse that. And other people are like, you really have a hard time staying the course, don't you? And then you're thinking, God, do I have commitment issues? Am I a quitter? Am I a flake? Am I, afraid to be successful? And we can't turn to our neurotypical peers to answer those questions for us because they're judging. So I think it's why, you know, learning about how our brains work and learning the personality traits that develop from those ADHD brains and then making the bold choice to radically accept ourselves. I think we have to because we can't get that acceptance from other people who aren't like us. They don't get it, we barely get it sometimes.

G: Yeah, that radical acceptance, I think is so important. And oftentimes, there's this big focus on understanding your brain and learning about your brain. But we stay there and we don't move into that acceptance piece. And until we can accept how our brain is wired and accept our capacity, and understand that whole piece better, then we're gonna keep kind of feeling stuck, I think, and that race to find that approval from somebody else, somebody else around us.

H: Yep. The majority of us ADHDers identify as people pleasers, even if we don't like the way that sounds. And yet, it's inevitable if we don't decide to accept ourselves no matter what. In fact, I love that you say that, you know, just understanding our brains doesn't really get us there. The way I created my coaching program, the first stage used to be self awareness, and the second stage was self acceptance. I've learned to put self acceptance first because if we don't make the decision to accept ourselves no matter what, we might not even have the courage to really study who we are and how we are. That'll feel like a very risky proposition. That might trigger more shame. That might trigger more of a need to hide. We might not like what we find out.

We might not even wanna take a deeper look because, you know, it might just be more stuff that we feel bad about. But deciding, you know what? I'm not gonna put my self esteem in the hands of other people. I'm not gonna outsource that anymore. I'm gonna decide that I'm okay no matter what, even on my worst days. Not as a way of excusing, but as a way of saying, I can accept myself as I am, and I can get better. It's not one or the other. But one of the things I think that we have a hard time accepting is that our minds are full of ideas. And you and I like to start businesses. So those ideas are often business ideas, and they come with the ambition that it's not enough just to have the idea. We want to execute it. We want to make it real. But that rarely, if ever matches our genuine bandwidth and capacity. And that's where I think we get ourselves into a lot of trouble, including burnout.

G: Yeah, it can be very, very hard to accept that we can't do every single idea that pops into our head. It's so fun, I think being the type of person that can generate these ideas. I think we get so much energy from that it lights our brains up so much. But there's then this like poll where we try to start moving forward on all these ideas and we can't go full ass on everything. We may have to half ass other areas. And oftentimes, the conflict I see is that we can't accept that it's not all going to be able to play out because we have the vision, we have to look at what our limitations are. People with ADHD, our bandwidth is different.

I don't know that it's always less, but it's going to be different. The things that stretch our bandwidth are going to be different than what stretches other people's bandwidth. So there has to be some understanding and acceptance of that before we can truly work on the things that are the most important and choose and we don't always want to have to choose. We're kind of mad that we have to choose. But you know, you don't have to like it, you can accept something without liking it and that's, I think, important. So, I don't like that I can't follow every opportunity or move forward on everything. But understanding that I'm not the only one here that's struggling with that, I think can be really helpful. And just also there's a lot of growth and recognizing what you are able to do. And when we turn our focus to that versus what we're not doing, I think it can be really helpful.

H: You've said so many valuable things. I wanna circle back to a couple of them. You're right, I get mad, my clients get mad. I'm happy to hear you say you get mad too when you're confronted by the truth, the reality that we are not going to be able to use all of our great ideas. In fact, at the risk of sounding arrogant, I would venture to say that I have had more brilliant ideas go to waste than most people could ever hope to have. And two things happened as a result of that. One, it really grieved me that I wasn't going to be able to use them all. It's like, what do you mean kill my idea children? This is like Sophie's choice, I'm not doing this. But then also there was kind of a cavalier, taking it for granted.

I would sort of fluctuate between the two, like, oh, this is a great idea, it dare not go to waste. I need to act on it. I need to act on it now. Push everything else to the side, we're going ahead with this. And then to have my team say, no we're not like, we see this pattern. This isn't the first time we've been here, and we're not going to do this. And by the way, you were the one that told us to throw on the brakes every time you pull this. I'm like, oh, yeah, that was me. But then also feeling like, oh, I don't have to act on this idea, another good one will come along soon. Kind of like, you know, buses, oh, if I miss it, there'll be another one in fifteen minutes, I'll just catch that one. And then really not even taking some of the ambition, some of the ideas seriously, which meant sometimes I was trying too hard and sometimes I wasn't trying hard enough. Do you see it with your clients?

G: Yeah, I do. I think that there's also a piece too that can kind of fit in with that second scenario of okay, maybe there's gonna be another idea, there can be that thought. And then there's also I think, this pattern of you have pursued some of those big ideas, and it didn't work out and you didn't get to the finish line. So you don't always trust yourself to actually pursue any of the ideas at a point. So there can be this pattern of like going for things. I think in our younger days, when we are trying those big, ambitious goals, and we haven't been able to play the long game where we don't have the right support, or we are trying to juggle way too many things at the same time. So we just think that we can't follow any of the ideas when in reality, we've got to pick and choose the ideas. So yeah, it is this kind of like, evaluation that needs to happen I think, as these ideas show up to think about what is my actual capacity right now, what are my actual priorities, and because things like prioritization fall under those executive functions that we struggle with ADHD, we might need support figuring that out too.

H: I would say almost inevitably we do because our defaults are impulsivity and overthinking when it comes to decision making. We either just jump in without a plan, without knowing what the path is going to be like, just because it's an impulse and we're getting a lot of dopamine from that impulse. And many of us have this thought, well, I'll just figure it out. And we often do, but not always and not in an efficient way and not without a lot of trauma and drama along the way. But not knowing I always think of it as being like a one trick pony. If the only way you know how to get going is to just fling yourself into something without any kind of plan or preparation, you might get pretty far with that.

Like, I was winging it for quite a few years and I actually accomplished a lot, but it still would have been better to have a plan even when I felt I was getting away with it, even when I felt like I was beating the system because other people would have these airtight plans. And I would just take a flying leap at it and do reasonably well. If you don't know how to do anything but that, you're gonna be in trouble sooner or later. And most of us have experienced multiple episodes of burnout before we are even willing to acknowledge, you know, you might need to think about another way. Even if you decide not to use it on a regular basis, just keep it in your pocket and recognize when you do need to use it.

G: Yeah, I do think that piece of understanding the role of impulsivity is so important. Like you said, we get to a certain spot because of that like, it feels good to just start that business. My very first business, I literally had the idea and announced it on Facebook. Immediately, it was a birth announcement graphic design business. I didn't know how to do graphic design. I didn't know how to build a website. I had no idea, I just had the idea. I figured out I could figure it out. And you know what I did, I figured it out for a couple of years. But by the time I was ready to scale and companies were coming after me asking for to purchase my designs, my designs were done really messy, like, they looked good on the surface.

They printed well, but I didn't really know how to use these design programs. So I was finding workarounds, and it was a tremendous amount of work to figure out how I could actually clean up those files. Because I didn't have a plan, I didn't get the skills I actually needed in place to be doing, I did it good enough to have some success, but I wasn't able to take the next step. And so I think that happens a lot with people with ADHD is like, we need to find that middle ground between like impulsively moving forward or overthinking and thinking like, no, I don't have enough, you know, information, I have tried this a million times, I'm not gonna be able to do it, we need to find our way into that middle road a little bit where we've got a system to pause and a system to evaluate. And like you said, we might not use it every time. But if we have these systems kind of already figured out that we know we need in our lives, when those ideas come, we have a better chance of figuring out what is worthy of our ambition and that time of our life.

H: I love that, that expression, Meredith. What is worthy of our ambition? It's almost like we need to vet our ideas. We need to vet our ambitions. We need to vet the things that we wanna chase because they aren't all equal. They don't all deserve to have our considerable energy and effort and focus and attention and brainpower and passion behind them. I mean, it's interesting to hear you say I didn't really know what I was doing, but I did it. And I did it well enough for a couple of years that other people wanted in on it. To me, that's a classic example, and this is often true of women combined type who were good enough students, who liked learning, who liked working, and had their struggles, but had their strengths too.

I mean, you're good at what you're good at, and you're good enough at it until you aren't. But the two year pattern is like, okay, I can just sort of leap into this and do pretty well with it. Maybe even do better than a lot of people with preparation. But you stall out at some point. And I wonder if you can think back to some of the businesses that you've run and thought, you know, right about that point, I needed to do something else. Was it always the same thing, Meredith, where you sort of reached your own personal limit, where just your drive, your ambition, your passion, your purpose, your energy, all of that was enough to get you that far but no further? Or was there also, like, fatigue and disinterest and a little bit of boredom where in order to break through that plateau, you would have to do things that were less interesting to you than just starting another business or getting a job or having another kid.

G: Yeah, the boredom piece, it wasn't a little bit of boredom. It was a lot of boredom. My intolerance of boredom is actually something I identified way before I knew I had ADHD. And I felt so much shame for that. Because I was like, why can't I, you know, just be happy with this? Why can't I be content enough with the day to day and what I've built and what I've accomplished? I think that boredom piece plays a huge role. And if we don't understand that we have an interest driven brain, and that's okay, and that there's other ways to meet our needs that don't necessarily look like abandoning a business or needing to move states all of the time.

That if we don't know that that isn't something we necessarily have to feel shame about and try to like strong-arm ourselves out of feeling if we can understand that that's going to play a role, and that we might need to think about how we're going to address that when it comes up if we truly desire to stick with a certain path for a longer period of time than we did before. I don't think we can ignore that. So there's so many things I think that are at play with us. There's the boredom, there's coming up against struggles that we don't know how to solve. You know, the executive function always plays a huge role. But seeing all of these things and understanding all of these things and kind of accepting them is, I think, important part to, like, kind of have to address, when we wanna follow those ambitions.

H: Do you ever find yourself doubling down on something? Or have you maybe in the past, you realize I'm really not loving this anymore. In fact, I'm pretty fed up and fatigued, and I don't really feel like doing it anymore. And plus, I'm good at the parts I'm good at, but I haven't figured the other parts out, and I don't really want to. Would you ever, like, double down on it and say, nope, sunk cost fallacy. I've spent this amount of money, this amount of time, this amount of energy. I cannot face my friends and family with yet another business idea. I'm gonna double down, and I'm gonna force myself to push through. And if you've done that, what was the result?

G: Yeah, the pushing through thing is definitely a pattern I've had my whole life and working really actively to change that. I had a business, several years ago now. It was I ran boot camps for moms that had had babies, they brought their babies in their stroller, we worked out in the park, we had this whole community element and it was really fantastic. And I actually really loved it and I was not facing the boredom that I felt in other ventures in the past, it was going really, really well for a while. But some things were shifting in the industry, people were wanting different things, there were more options becoming available for moms that wanted to figure out how to fit a workout in. And my life was changing to I didn't have a baby anymore after while.

So I wasn't connecting with the moms in the same way. And it was one of those things that I felt like, now in hindsight, I can look back at that and be like, it was time for that to end, right? Like that was a natural evolution of that business, it served a really important role in my life, I got so much out of it. Personally, I still get a lot out of it. When I see some of these moms still hanging out so many years later, I feel so much gratification from having done that. But because I'd had this pattern of shifting careers and changing things, I held on a little bit longer than I think I needed to I didn't want to be a quitter again. I was pushing through when, you know, like, yeah, there were some things I still really loved about it. But I knew it was time for it to be done long before I was able to say, okay, this is it, we're gonna move on.

Because that feeling of like, okay, everybody's right about me. Everybody, you know, and then the thing is, it's like, again, no one's ever said those words to me. It's those perceptions we assume people have, because of that, that conditioning. But I do think that we have to kind of like develop that self trust, too, because there are times when we are following the idea, and it's working for a while. And, you know, the industry changes and our values change, our areas of focus change. Like, I am at a point in my life where I still feel very ambitious.

There's still so much I wanna do but I don't want to sacrifice getting enough sleep. I don't want to sacrifice taking care of my biological needs in the way that I was willing to do before. I don't want to sacrifice taking vacations with my family that mean less client hours and less work I can take on. And I think that viewing those things as a choice, and understanding that it's not a failure that we're not saying, you know, yes to every single opportunity that's in front of us is really important.

H: I love the idea that there are seasons of life and especially for women, and a lot of it is biological and we ignore this at our peril. But, you know, we do go through different seasons of life, you know, with active duty parenting and eventually perimenopause and menopause. And as our body changes over time and our interests change over time and our capacity changes over time. And I think normalizing the fact that we grow into things and we grow out of them. And for us, that cycle is just quite a bit faster than it is for most people. But healthy people should be evolving. Healthy people should be doing things with their time, with their interest, with their talents, with their life that are in alignment with the person that they are now, not the person that they used to be so I think it's not and we are outliers, we know that.

But if you really think about, like, human existence, we're all evolving. And maybe just sort of getting better at identifying what are the signs that this is something that I may be ready to let go of versus something I need to you used the term a few minutes ago, stretch my capacity. So I wonder if you'd share your thoughts about, like, how do you if you have any specific tools or strategies or just your mindset around, you're doing something that just doesn't really seem to be as aligned. You're not getting as much enjoyment. Maybe it's not as, successful, or maybe it's successful by other people's terms, but not so much by yours. Like, what questions do you ask yourself? What assessments do you do to determine, do I need to begin letting this go, or do I need to stretch my capacity to match the demand?

G: Yeah. I think that there for me, a lot of time, it's coming back to, like, what are my core values, and looking to see if they've shifted, to see if perhaps something that always felt very important to me doesn't feel as important anymore. I think there are some exercises I think you can do that really can help with that. I think as people with ADHD, we're in that thinking space a lot, but sometimes we need like a concrete exercise to do. I think that stretching our capacity is something we can do sometimes, right? I think we can't constantly be trying to stretch our capacity to the max. So I think of like, doing some speaking engagements, I met you after speaking engagement recently. That is a big stretch for me, I struggle with a lot of anxiety around those types of things, a lot of overthinking, I enjoy it after it's done. Absolutely, it's totally worthwhile.

I had an event that I met you at I had one the next week. And that was a stretch to my capacity. So I had to look at what other areas of my life could I like take a little bit of a chunk out of to be able to stretch but not break, right. I looked at taking less clients, I looked at spending less time on different marketing efforts and allowing myself to take the foot off the gas and other areas so I could stretch over here. And I think that looking at the things you're committing to and the ideas you want to pursue, and instead of just saying yes to them, and looking at your calendar and thinking, okay, I have time for this, thinking of it as do I have capacity? And will this be a stretch? And if I'm going to stretch here, how can I stretch that without snapping the rubber band and breaking what needs to kind of give in another direction?

H: And it's interesting to hear you say that speaking, especially doing two speaking engagements, two weeks apart, which, of course, in involves travel. It involves, you know, staying in hotels. It involves being away from your family, away from your creature comforts. But your professional career was in training and development. So I would think that being on stage would be energizing for you and that it would be easy for you and fun for you and would light your brain up like a Christmas tree. But you're at a different stage of life, and you have a lot more moving parts to your life than you probably had then. And that's part of the capacity equation too right?

G: Right. And you know, and I can do all of those things that you mentioned. It does do all of those things for me, I do love it, but it also does have these other costs, right? And I am older now, perimenopause is a thing. So there is that like, am I gonna have brain fog the day I commit to this podcast? I'm talking more about my personal stories and more emotional topics now than when I was working in training and development, I was delivering the content that somebody else wrote most of the time and that felt a lot more comfortable. There also felt a lot less there were a lot less stakes right? If I had a group and I felt like I wasn't on, it wasn't my best day.

I kinda hated that and it sucked, but, like, I knew I wasn't gonna see this group of people again, it was okay. And so there is kind of just that weight of wanting to show up as your best self with the community of the people that you respect and you admire and the confidence that comes with that. So that is something that I've had to really like look at because for a long time, I was like, I like speaking, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to focus on. I like writing that also comes with a big stretch, right? So we can love those things and be good at them but they could still have that cost.

So being honest about what we're experiencing and what we might have to shift, so that we can continue pursuing those things so that we don't get so burnt out from not managing the emotional dysregulation that can come with that ignoring the RSD feelings that come with that, like and not taking that space for recovery around those big stretches. I think that's where we have to accept that to go after some of these things that are pulling us, there has to be a careful balance of allowing ourselves the space we need to recover, learn the lessons from that experience, and integrate them more in the future.

H: I love everything about what you've just said, and I really, really appreciate that you pointed out, you know, just because you love something and you're good at it, and maybe you've been doing it for a long time, doesn't mean it doesn't take an energetic toll. It doesn't consume your capacity. It does. I also really appreciate that you drew the distinction between the conditions of when you were speaking for corporate. It wasn't vulnerable. I mean, it was still your reputation. It was still, you know, people were evaluating whether you did a good job or not, but you were not as exposed. You were not talking about your personal life.

You were not talking about, you know, as you do now as a speaker, as a writer, as a leader of a membership community for people with ADHD. The emotional labor and the vulnerability just lands in a different way and you're more exposed. And so it's going to affect your capacity in a different way and probably be more taxing in many ways. Even if you weren't older, even if you went into this career at a much younger stage, just a lot of people avoid being vulnerable because they know this, the discomfort, right?

G: It's definitely uncomfortable. And I think it's important to you that that avoidance is that can be such a big thing as we wanna avoid that vulnerability that comes with pursuing things, we wanna avoid the vulnerability that, you know, even just like admitting we want something can bring on for us, right?

H: When other people see you as succeeding, they see you as crushing it. They see you as having a perfect life. They see you as doing all the things, having all the things, being all the things. And they're not wrong, but you either want more or different. And being able to give yourself permission to pursue whatever your next thing is when you know other people are going to be thinking, why isn't she happy enough? Like you mentioned the word contentment earlier. It's like, why can't she just be happy? I've certainly heard that many times, why can't you just be happy? It's like, I'm always happy, and I'm always growing. Because if I wasn't always growing, I wouldn't be happy. And what growing looks like for me is probably gonna be very different than what growing looks like for a lot of people. And it took me a really long time to understand that and to come to terms with it and to not be concerned about how other people thought about that and I know you've tread those same waters too.

G: Yes, still treading now and that's actually something I've been really exploring with myself lately, because of, you know, being in that position to have a following and to have people that want to hear what you're saying. Like, oftentimes, I'm not making the choices that other people think are the logical choices for my career. And again, it's really not going to make sense to a lot of people ao, yeah, we definitely we could talk for hours about that, I think.

H: Oh, I love that. But I'll tell you what, since we are almost out of time for this conversation, I would love if you would drop some nuggets, Meredith, about when we are in a moment where we're like, you know what, this is not toxic productivity. This is not hustle culture, I am not disrespecting my capacity, I just need to stretch it temporarily. What are the strategies that you rely on for that when you're like, I just I'm maybe over committed. I'm not as well rested. What are the things that we actually can do when we can't cut back or let go? And we really do need to try to stretch our capacity for a period of time. I think the first thing to do is really understand why this thing is stretching your capacity.

Is it just time? Is it the vulnerability piece? And identifying why it's stretching you is the first part like, for example, the speaking, and just really everything I've been doing over the last couple years with writing a book, I've had to take a step back for how I show up online, I used to show up online, very vulnerable all the time speaking in Instagram stories, talking to people doing lives. And I've had to cut some of that back so that I could be vulnerable in other areas. So oftentimes, I think we're looking at our calendars, and we're just looking at the time and we're not looking at like, kind of that true cost.

So instead of viewing it as how can I make more time on my calendar, thinking about like, what areas are really draining and kind of move things in that regard? I also think that it can be really helpful to think about, am I getting all the support I could be getting? That can be tricky, because different supports are available to different people. Sometimes support costs money, we all have different resources. But sometimes I think that we are denying ourselves support and shortcuts, because we can do those things. But just because we can do that thing on our own, and we've pushed through 100 times before, doesn't mean we need to do it this time.

G: So I think we need to look at those things and understand that if we're going to be stretching in this area, we've got to like, you know, cut a little tension somewhere else. I also think looking into the future is important as well. People with ADHD tend to be here and now. So we're looking at like our calendar, and we're like, we've got this really busy couple of weeks, couple of months and we fail to look at, like, what's coming after that. So we might be stretched and we might be managing that stretch. Okay like, we might be doing alright with it. But then if we keep putting, like, five more speaking engagements on our calendar following up right after that, without being like, I might need a little season here of cutting back and focusing on this part of my business that I've been neglecting.

Thinking about how you think this might play out down the road and accommodating your future self, I think is really important to when we are kind of stretching because people with ADHD, we can kind of operate at that higher level for a while. We are those sprinters but like, sometimes we think the sprint is just gonna keep going, we gotta understand that, like, we need to sit down and let somebody bring us some water for a little bit. So looking ahead to see, like, okay, what feels realistic with how long I can stretch right here? What am I gonna need to put in place so that I don't hit burnout because I'm stretching so much.

H: You have learned a great deal about ADHD, about your own ADHD, about how ADHD affects other women. And I knew this conversation was going to be rich and deep and nuanced and impactful. Remind us the name of your book and how you would like people to find you online.

G: My book is It All Makes Sense Now, Embrace Your ADHD Brain to Live a Creative and Colorful Life. And you can find me on Instagram at hummingbird_ADHD. And I also run a community for adults with ADHD called the Hummingbird Hive.

H: I saved this for last, but, that's one of my nicknames. I have been called throughout my life a hummingbird for the exact same reason that you have so thank you so much.

G: I love that. I found so many people that have that story.

H: Yes. Well, yeah and now I happen to live in a place where I get to see them on a regular basis so I'm like, hey, friends.

G: I love that. Me too. I see them in my backyard every day, and it's like a reminder of my why.

H: It's so perfect.