Stop trying to be so dang consistent.

Consistency.
Consistency.
Consistency.

When you read those words, what happens to you? Did your shoulders just inch up a bit? Did your breathing get a little more shallow? I tend to feel a little zing in my chest. A little constriction. A little shame, knowing I have consistently fallen short of what I thought this idea was supposed to mean, for as long as I can remember.

The word consistency was instilled in me to mean a kind of mechanical expectation of daily performance. I thought consistency meant that I should be able to do things the same way, every day, no matter the circumstances. Consistency felt a lot like expecting perfection. And every time I fell short, it took a long, long time to feel worthy of being thought of as consistent again.

As a woman with ADHD, I have inconsistent access to the neurotransmitters that help me to take action. As hard as I may try to be consistent, I am just…not. My physical, human biology brings with it natural fluctuation—natural inconsistency. And, for humans navigating a lot of estrogen, that inconsistency gets even more exacerbated.

Did you know, estrogen and dopamine rise and fall together like the two front seats of a roller coaster? I imagine estrogen grabbing dopamine by the wrist, “Come on, it’ll be fun”, she says. Dopamine goes along with it, but starts to second-guess when the padded bars come down, pushing against her shoulders and stomach. Estrogen rises and falls throughout a woman’s cycle, and dopamine is locked in for the ride. Dopamine isn’t just managing reward. It helps you access motivation, and action. In other words, when it feels next to impossible to get yourself to do the things you want to do, you are NOT making it up. Our access to dopamine can swing wildly. Some days you have the rush of wind and can’t believe your speed, some days you are upside-down, and some days you are just sitting still waiting for someone to let you off the ride.

Expecting yourself to be able to implement consistent action the same way every day would be like expecting your own stomach not to rise to your throat when the roller coaster takes that first drop. That sounds a little nuts right?

So, what do we do with our inconsistent selves?

We are not powerless. Movement, self-compassion, sleep, nutrition, managing screen time, and how we structure our days can all level out the roller coaster tracks a bit. We do have agency. But our agency must be built upon acceptance that our reality DOES come with some natural highs, lows, and loopty-loops. Sometimes we lose access to the neurotransmitters that give us agency in the first place. So, instead of denying that reality, we can start to plan for it.

The question isn’t “How can I do more?” on the days when your rollercoaster is upside-down. It’s “How can I acknowledge and work with this reality, not against it?”

For those of us teaching or parenting humans with ADHD, when our questions start to shift from “how can I get them to just do the thing” to “How can I show up with enough curiosity and compassion to help them foster their own self-awareness and learn what helps them when everything feels upside-down?”

Building your systems for the full range of who you are — not just your powerhouse days, is incredibly important for humans with ADHD. High-energy days, middle-of-the-road days, low-energy days. All of the versions of you (or your students) deserve care and planning.

This takes time. It’s a practice. Some of the questions you might want to try on for you, your kids, or your students could be:

Tell me about your last really good day. How did that day begin?
What’s one experiment you might try with doing more of that?

What tends to get in the way of a good day?

What’s the story I’m believing about myself right now?

What is ALSO true that I’m ignoring?

I now understand that the idea of consistency would have always been best paired with the flexibility required to make it humanly possible.

“The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits

And, even with that understanding, the word that soothes my soul and keeps me moving forward isn’t consistency.

It’s persistence.

That word sparks energy in me.

I get access to fresh persistence every moment of every day. I can’t run out of it. When I shift my focus from never failing to “How quickly can I get back up again?”, my shame drops. I’m no longer beating myself up that I’m upside-down. I’m raising my hands in the air and figuring out how to keep going, and enjoy this part of the ride.

It’s so important to remember, especially those of us with ADHD, that it’s not perfectionistic consistency that will get us where we want to go. The unspoken expectation of perfection often causes us to freeze, and shut down. It might even stop us from trying at all. We make more progress when we stop expecting perfection, and start celebrating small, imperfect, and yes, even inconsistent movements forward.