In coaching sessions, it’s usually important to establish with my clients how they will know they have successfully explored their chosen topic. How they measure this is entirely up to them, which is one of the reasons I love the coaching format.

But when talking about measuring success, and being successful, I’m not talking about Einstein in this post. Not Branson, not… well I would talk about Dave Grohl anywhere, any time, but I’m trying not to get distracted. I could talk about many entrepreneurs or changemakers who have been successful, and also ADHD (though we probably can’t ask Einstein properly), and try to use these examples to say how you should measure success too.

But building a rocket to space isn’t the only way to talk about success. And anyway, I am afraid of heights.

Having a measure for success in a coaching session can feel fairly straight forward – you can often feel that measure in your hands, and have clear steps forward.

But talking about the idea of success is tricky. It’s something us ADHDers have trouble recognising when it happens, let alone celebrating it (I’ll be writing more on celebrating another time).

One of the reasons I think this is, is that we can be told that success as an idea is objective and external – money, being a CEO, being universally adored – external things that not everyone wants, or if they get it, doesn’t make them feel successful.

Your own success can be better recognised look at how you feel within. And as we have learned as ADHDers, things can feel different ways to different people. I spent years doing things that I believed would bring me success, but often that feeling of achievement never came. Instead of wondering if my feeling of success was different to others, I thought this inability to be happy with my achievements could be added to what I saw as my list of defects.

When I started understanding my ADHD more, I started being able to work on three things:

1. Recognising the feeling in me when I felt a sense of achievement, and bookmarking that feeling for later

2. Understanding that satisfaction with my process is critical to feeling a sense of achievement when I reach a goal

3. Exploring how I defined my own success, and recognising the times I define it uniquely to myself

I’m going to unpack these three over three posts, as I don’t want this post to be too long, and it’s good to consider each part on its own.

Recognising the feeling in me when I felt a sense of achievement, and bookmarking that feeling for later.

Success, achievement: Over time, rather than try and describe it as an intellectual idea, I have tried to recognise these as feelings inside of me when they happen.

But to put into words, my feeling of success is when a stage, a project, a connection, has happened, and I feel pleasure, satisfaction, a sense of completion. Part of this feeling of completion has come from putting my emotional energy somewhere: putting it towards something, or someone, that is important to me.

This could look like a good conversation with a friend (or the postman), or doing an hour’s work on that short story idea, unsure if you’re going to re-visit it, or when you finally find a permanent spot for that thing that has been floating around your house.

It can be clicking ‘submit’ on that job application, grant application, tax return, or query to see a podiatrist about that weird thing on your foot.

Recognising that feeling, and welcoming it like a familiar friend, is a practice worth cultivating. It means that the next time it happens, you will be confident, welcoming it back to you, rather than being unsure if you are having the ‘right’ feeling, or looking for reassurance from others. It sometimes takes time to cultivate this feeling, but you can get there.

Part two coming soon