Walking Your Path, One Step At A Time
We often want to rush ahead to the end of the story, to know what happens, to be certain it all works out.
To dream up the ideal job and race toward it.
To find the perfect partner and close the book on happily ever after.
To hold onto friends so tightly they never drift away.
As someone with ADHD, or walking alongside those who do, I understand how deeply wired we are to seek safety, to find the ending, to believe certainty will make us secure.
But life and ADHD do not work like this.
Why ADHD Makes Staying Present So Challenging
When we fixate on the entire staircase, on the whole journey at once, when we hold in our minds some perfect place we need to reach to feel happy, successful, free, we forget the most important thing: the journey itself.
ADHD minds are naturally drawn to new, exciting ideas and possibilities. Our thoughts can jump ahead to the future, leaping over the small steps that actually build our path. The need for stimulation makes it tempting to want instant answers, instant success.
But this rush only adds pressure and overwhelm. Seeing the whole staircase at once feels impossible—too many steps, too much uncertainty. It’s easy to get stuck in cycles of frustration or distraction.
Breaking it down, focusing only on the step you’re standing on, and then the one just ahead, releases that pressure. It allows you to see the beauty in this moment, not just what’s waiting beyond.
Embracing Uncertainty as an ADHD Superpower
This is hard to do. We want to see the full journey, to picture the whole staircase, to cling to it as a kind of safety. But often, this is just an illusion, a way to quiet the anxiety and overwhelm that ADHD can amplify.
Life is uncertain. You may plan for it to go one way and find it turns out completely differently. Sometimes worse than you hoped, sometimes better than you imagined.
We don’t have as much control over the future as we’d like to believe. We don’t know what will happen. But we do know this: we have the present.
This truth is often difficult for those of us with ADHD, who are wired for quick thinking and rapid movement. But if you begin to live it, to stop grasping for the end, and instead tend to this very moment, things can shift.
How to Walk Your ADHD Path with Intention
It means focusing on how you’re moving now, not on how you hope to appear at the finish.
It means showing up for the life you’re already living, not the relationship you think you need, not the career you believe will bring happiness.
It means showing up each day, consistently, patiently, trusting that these small steps will become the whole.
Break your goals into pieces you can actually hold. Don’t rush or try to leap ahead because with ADHD, small, steady steps help quiet the overwhelm and build lasting momentum.
We want to know the ending so we can avoid the work, the steady, often unglamorous effort that actually creates what we want. We want a shortcut, a quick fix. But this is not how growth or change happens for ADHD brains.
We build it step by step, in the humble rhythm of daily habits, by showing up. And as we do, we find quiet happiness in the moment itself, free from the hunger for what we lack.
A Gentle ADHD Coach’s Reminder
Dream big.
Set goals.
Know where you want to go.
But don’t make those goals the price of your happiness.
Break it down.
Live day by day, hour by hour.
Have a plan, but release the pressure.
Just live.
