Too often, those of us with ADHD (and, honestly, just about anyone striving for success) fall into the “check the box and move on” mentality, downplaying our achievements and racing toward the next goal. Sound familiar?

In this episode, host Diann Wingert and returning guest Risa Williams, LMFT, challenge listeners to radically rethink what counts as a win. What if making a sandwich, sending a tough email, or—even better—taking a moment for self-care, can be celebrated as much as those big, flashy milestones?

If you’ve ever felt like your wins don’t "count," or you’re stuck on the productivity treadmill, this episode is your sign to embrace a kinder, more sustainable approach.

3 key takeaways from our conversation:

• Redefine Productivity: Success isn’t just about big goals—it’s about acknowledging every step, even the small ones. Practicing this daily fosters confidence and decreases imposter syndrome and chronic dissatisfaction.
• Combat Dismissiveness: Many of us grew up being dismissed or dismissing ourselves. Start catching that dismissive inner voice. Replace it with gentle validation—give yourself credit the way you’d celebrate a friend’s progress.
• Track and Celebrate Progress: Write down 3–5 tiny accomplishments every day. Over time, this simple act retrains your brain to notice and remember your efforts, fueling motivation and staving off burnout.

Mic Drop Moment:

Many high achievers with ADHD also battle imposter syndrome. Why? Because they literally cannot remember the many incremental steps it took to get results. If you don’t witness your own progress, you can’t internalize your success. The result: even evidence-based accomplishments don’t “count,” fueling the endless treadmill of “not good enough.”

About Risa Williams, LMFT

Risa Williams is a licensed therapist, a time management expert, and an award-winning book author of six self-help books. She's also the host of The Motivation Mindset Podcast (Apple, Spotify). Risa has been featured as an expert in Forbes Magazine, Wondermind, Wired, Bustle, Psychology Today, and Business Insider. She's also a busy mom of two and a university professor.

Connect with Risa:

Website - Instagram - Motivation Mindset Podcast

Ready to put it into practice?

Ultimately, reframing tiny wins is an act of reclaiming joy and validation from a world conditioned to withhold or diminish them. The results are worth it—greater momentum, resilience, and happiness. So, what tiny win will you celebrate today?

Risa Williams’ Tiny Wins Journal - Tiny Wins digital mini-course

Rick Hanson’s Book Buddha’s Brain

If You Take Just One Step

The act of writing down tiny wins and then reviewing them is what rewires the narrative in your brain. Do it out of skepticism, if that works. Gamify it, make it defiant, or treat it as an experiment. And because we know accountability makes it real, DM me on LinkedIn, email me, or leave a voice message on my website.

Your ADHD-ish host, Diann Wingert

Diann Wingert has decades of experience as a psychotherapist and serial business owner, and is now a sought-after coach to entrepreneurs with ADHD traits. Her style is direct, strategic, and always honest—peppered with the insight of someone who lives and breathes the ADHD experience.

Sharing is Caring

Know a fellow business owner who is on the productivity dreadmill, always moving on to the next project without celebrating their success? They might need this wake-up call, too, so be a pal and share the episode. Here is a link to make it easy.

© 2026 ADHD-ish Podcast. Intro music by Ishan Dincer / Melody Loops / Outro music by Vladimir / Bobi Music / All rights reserved.

H: Risa, one of the many things we have in common is the way we feel about the importance of celebrating. We've talked about this a number of times, how driven people, ambitious people, successful people and neurodivergent people have a tendency to just check the box, check the box, check the box and move on to the next thing. And I think this is one of the major contributors to the fact that many of us experience burnout. So we are here today to talk about why it's so important to redefine productivity and celebrate everything. So where should we start in unpacking tiny wins.

G: So in so much of the work I do with people, it's about getting to the feeling place, right? It's not so much about attaining the thing, you know, like getting to the top of the mountain is great, but like, how do you want to feel when you get to the top of the mountain? Can you actually let yourself practice that feeling of what is it you want to feel when you're standing there looking at the vista, thinking, I got to the top of this mountain, what did I want to feel when I get here? You know, and can I feel it now? Can I allow myself to feel it? So part of this whole tiny wins practice, I call it, is we need to practice the feelings we want to feel in little blips so that when we get to the big things, our brain knows how to feel those things in big amounts. We cannot feel them in big amounts if we haven't practiced the feeling along the way. I know that sounds so simple and common sense-y but people don't do this at all. They don't do it.

H: I have so many thoughts about this and some feels too, because in my experience working with neurodivergent business owners and as a therapist prior to that, I think people are very familiar with negative feelings.

G: Oh, exactly. They're practicing the other part of that.

H: Exactly.

G: Yeah.

H: So it's that and we understand that the brain's negativity bias, where it is said that we experience, acknowledge and remember negative experiences and the negative feelings that go along with them because it's an evolutionary bias that keeps us safe. You know, if you have a horrible experience, you don't want to repeat that your brain needs you to remember that needs you to pass it on through your genes to future generations. But positive experiences, they don't contribute to survival so it's almost like the odds are stacked against us neurologically and evolutionarily. But also, I think folks with adhd, many of us, most of us, maybe all of us, have experienced a lot of negative feedback throughout our growing up years.

Even if we are successful, we'll get why did you do it that way? What made you say that? Why can't you just, you know, and why can't you just whatever or why didn't you do it that way? Or why didn't you do this? Or how did you figure that out? It always sounds like an attack and we tend to be sensitive to criticism and rejection. So I'm wondering, like, how do we convert people from being so attuned to negative feedback and negative thoughts about themselves and begin to seduce them, if you will, into thinking there's a good reason for you to learn this skill and it's not indulgent, which I'm going to guess most people think it is.

G: Yeah. Or they think it's conceited or they think, like, I think there's a lot of dismissiveness. And that's what I want to address because dismissiveness can be really poisonous to our brains right. We don't like the feeling of being dismissed by other people. And often when what I'm hearing you describe a lot of us who grew up neurodiverse, there was a lot of dismissiveness.

H: Yes.

G: There was not a lot of validation like, oh, you did this differently, good job, wow, you're so clever you figured out a new way to do that. It was more like, well, that's not the way you're supposed to do it, you know, and that's very dismissive. So I think a good starting place would be, are you dismissing yourself on a daily basis? Are you going through your day and the voice in your head is very dismissive? And this is what I'd like to point out, especially with my super intelligent, highly functional high achievers, you may be very dismissive to yourself. You may have set the bar so high. Like, you have to do so many things at such a grandiose level to even give yourself a compliment, you know, or even give yourself a pat on the back.

And that's created this kind of like, toxic dismissiveness inside of ourselves where we cannot give ourselves credit for making a sandwich. We cannot give ourselves credit for taking a daily walk because we set the bar so high in order to get a compliment, even for ourselves. It has to be like, I have to run a marathon to give myself a compliment. That is the piece that if you start changing it will up your happiness, it will up the way you feel about yourself. It will suddenly make you feel a whole lot more confident. Suddenly making a sandwich, depending on the way you're talking to yourself, may give you more of that dopamine hit and sense of pride than even running the marathon even though that's completely, like, bananas when you hear me say that right?

But it's counterintuitive because it's the way you are treating yourself and acknowledging yourself and being a witness to yourself, a kind witness, and saying, wow, you did that, good job figuring that out right? Good job moving forward a little bit. And we often are very good at doing this with other people or kids around us. And the voice that we use to ourselves is like a completely different person who's like, so harsh, so mean, so demanding and dismissive. I guess that's the word I'd want you to kind of like, ruminate on this week like, do I dismiss myself a lot? Do I get to the end of my goal and completely dismiss that I did any of it? And I know I suffered from this for years, and it turned into what I would call imposter syndrome.

And I think a lot of us suffer from different levels of imposter syndrome. But you'll see this a lot with high achieving people is that they kind of don't believe that they did the thing they did. You know, they kind of don't believe even looking at their own resume or someone will bring up in a meeting, you won that award, that's amazing or whatever. And there's a part of them that never really believes it. And it's my belief that we have to practice that feeling of believing we did it and believing, hey, you know, that took 2,000 steps to do. That was me doing every single little step. That was not another person, that was not magic. I actually did a bazillion little steps to do this thing. And so now I'm going to acknowledge it, yeah, you know what that did take 2,000 steps. I was there the whole time and I did each one of them despite not wanting to do a lot of them.

H: It reminds me of a joke that I have sometimes, and I say it very tongue in cheek and I say it with my you know, sarcasm, but I will sometimes say, yeah, as a matter of fact, I am a big deal. And I'm saying it in kind of a silly way, but I'm wanting to move closer towards recognizing that some of the things I do are pretty frigging amazing and actually impressive. But it's so interesting when you think about, and I think the more intelligent you are, especially for folks that are gifted. A lot of people I have worked with and work with are twice exceptional so they're gifted and ADHD. And it's like if you have always been able to do things that are hard, maybe not even possible for many other people, that's kind of your baseline.

That doesn't seem like a big deal to you because that's the level you function at. You know, we don't think I function at a very high level. So that means I do a lot of things worth celebrating. It's the only thing we know. And I think most people tend to take whatever they do, whatever they have done, whatever they're able to do. Most people seem to have the bias that it's not a big deal because anybody can do it. I have seen this with so many gifted folks, Risa, where I say, I don't think you really have any idea how exceptional you are and they kind of bristle at that. It's almost like it makes them feel self conscious. It makes them feel…

G: It makes them feel weird and uncomfortable.

H: But the thing is, is that being exceptional doesn't mean you're a weirdo, doesn't mean you're an outcast, doesn't mean, you know, nobody can relate to you. It means that you have abilities and skills that are an exception rather than the norm. And if you don't recognize that, you just keep ratcheting up the expectations so that nothing's ever worth celebrating. And I believe the number of people who've said to me, well, I mean, it's not like why would I make a big deal out of that?

That doesn't even count. That's nothing and it's like, well, how's that working for you? I mean, honestly, you can think however you want about your accomplishments, but how do you think it's affecting you to invalidate or dismiss all of your accomplishments? Does that make you feel motivated and energized and excited about doing more, or are you just hooked onto the dreadmill where you never get to get off, but you're not enjoying the dreadmill.

G: I like that phrase, but it's true. It's like we're talking about the feeling place, right? So ideally, we're accomplishing things because they make us feel better. Like, we want to do fun things or exciting things with our lives because we want to feel those fun, exciting feelings. And I think the dreadmill you're talking about is people just keep raising the bar, cranking up the stress, feeling stressed out, getting to the end, feeling stressed out about that, dismissing it, and then adding more stress. Because now we're taking on another goal, and what's going to happen over time, this leads us to burnout. Usually it leads us to a big crash because our brains can only handle so much of this. There's no reward in sight.

There's no feeling reward in sight. And so, yes, you can get your brain to get you through two or three of these, but at a certain point, your brain will say, wait a minute, I signed up for this because I thought there was a reward. I thought there was, like a feeling reward, you know, that’s gonna happen and that's sort of the feeling of burnout that starts to happen. And it can build and build and build until your brain and body are like, kind of putting the brakes on everything and saying, no more. Why are we doing this to ourselves? You're only beating me up more when I get to the end, so why should I keep going?

And I also want to point out a different thing. We can be exceptional at lots of things, but there's always a cost, right? Which means, like, we're struggling sometimes with sometimes things that are very quote, unquote easy or simple for other people, right? Like the example I always give is you can go, you know, write a novel and be amazing at that and publish a novel or novel after novel. But then at home, maybe you're not able to do the dishes or you're not able to finish grocery shopping or stuff is piling up, or you're not even sending that email back to someone you really care about because everything has a cost, right?

And I think what happens is we're putting all our energy into these big things, thinking we're going to get the big feeling reward and we're not able to motivate ourselves to even do the upkeep of the everyday stuff. So what does all this mean? Well, my idea of tiny wins is we need to redefine what a tiny win is. Because I don't think people are thinking tiny enough. It's like the I want to push people to take away the idea of giant wins are the only way you can get any kind of good feelings and make it so. What if tiny wins were so ridiculously tiny that we started to give ourselves credit for almost anything we're doing? And this is where people bristle, especially people who have the built in belief that I only have worth if I produce something super huge and amazing.

This is where I really challenge them to look at that underlying belief. And then we're going to make it so easy for you to get a win. And that's where people really want to push back and say, well, that's nothing. That's when that dismissive voice will start to emerge and maybe this is a good lithmus test for anyone listening, right? So what would you count as a tiny win? What would you count as a tiny win? Let's say in the morning time, maybe it's like you get out of bed instead of rushing around, you take a minute and you think, oh, I'm not rushing today, that's a tiny win. I'm going to count that. Or oh, look at me, I left enough time and I'm getting the kids to school on time. Maybe that's your tiny win. I want you to go really tiny and start thinking about what are these little things that are usually hard for me that are like everyday things where I could be giving myself a whole lot more praise and a whole lot more soothing and kindness for just getting through it.

And the way I started to counter my own imposter syndrome, which was like a chronic history of doing a lot of things in a lot of different fields and never acknowledging any of it and burning Out a lot, which was every day I'd start writing down three to five, like a bullet list of anything I did, even on a really, really slow day. And on slow days, it's sometimes the biggest challenge to write something down, especially if you're a very goal oriented person, because that's when you really don't want to give yourself credit. But it'll be something like, I sent off that email I've been avoiding. I remembered to, you know, look, update my income or whatever. I spend a minute and talk to my kids. It can literally be anything.

And I started forcing myself to write down any step I was doing in any category in my life that I wanted to monitor. And what happens is when you do this, over time, you start to see that little things are adding up. And you also start to see that on the weeks you felt were really slow or the months you felt were terrible months, like, I didn't do anything that month. What a waste of a month. You go back and you read each day to yourself in your own brain to show yourself proof of what you actually did. I know this sounds kind of tedious to a lot of people, but it has this big, profound effect on you.

Even within a month of doing this, people will say, oh, my God, I had no idea, my brain just erased. I did all that stuff because I wasn't counting it, because it wasn't a big giant thing. But on weeks that are even slow to you, you may have the flu, you may still make meals for everyone, do the laundry, do your job, get yourself from point A to point B. And can you let yourself give yourself a little praise and give yourself a little credit by each week taking stock of what you've just done and noticing? Like, just notice and acknowledge it in your own mind? It's kind of revolutionary. It kind of changes the way you relate to yourself over time.

H: Well, something I hear a lot of folks talking about in both the ADHD community and also in the trauma community, folks that work with individuals with trauma history is this concept about self abandonment. Folks who deal with individuals who have come out of narcissistic abuse situations, domestic violence. So a lot of self abandonment and what I'm recognizing as you have been sharing, Risa, is that it's not just like shrinking down the size of what we consider a win, so that the tiniest possible thing still counts, but it's actually redefining what a win is, period. Big or small.

G: Exactly.

H: What you're sharing is that sometimes the win is something you're doing but you're dismissing it, you're not acknowledging it. Sometimes the win is something you ordinarily do but you are choosing not to do as an act of self care.

G: Yeah.

H: And sometimes it's shifting the way you think about something that's a win. So how do you which all falls in line with we need to be more of a human being and less of a human doing.

G: Exactly.

H: Does it include things that you're doing that you wouldn't give yourself credit for and things that you are not doing because they're just a habit that doesn't really help you as well as mindset shifts or is it only related things that are tasks?

G: It can be any category and I always encourage people to have categories that are about feelings right, about how you felt because of the thing. So it could be I stopped myself from overworking today because I was getting stressed out. That's often one of my tiny wins, especially on rough weeks like I took a minute and just sat still for 10 seconds. It's about not doing. In that case, my tiny one is about not doing. It's about feeling. It's about taking care of myself so on. In all my books I talk about how one of our main goals has to be self care and what that means to me is lowering our stress intentionally, like actively.

So a lot of my tiny wins are related to just stress management, just self care and checking in with myself. And then some of my wins are about doing things, but they're about doing kind of ordinary things that I dismiss a lot that I think everybody should be doing that. You know, I have these thoughts and I think in having to write three to five things every day, it challenges you because you are not always going to be doing giant amazing things if you have to do this every day. If someone said this is a rule, what you're gonna find is you get a little creative about the stuff you're putting down and then you get a little creative about seeing that as a win.

And over time this builds a sort of self kindness and compassion and understanding of who you are and everything you're doing to walk yourself forward, not just goal related. We get a little mono focused on, well, I'm not making X amount of dollars and I haven't bought the house yet and I haven't become a Pulitzer Prize winner or whatever. Whatever the thing you're mono focused on that is spelling to you, I'm a success. There are so many things you're doing. You are such a multidimensional, complicated person who is trying to balance so many areas of self development, learning, taking care of people, taking care of yourself. And you're probably not witnessing this actively.

So I'm encouraging people to become a more active witness to themselves. Like, this is your life, you're living it. Almost adopt a scientific mindset towards that. You know, scientists track things when they're doing an experiment right. So Charles Darwin is a good example. People always use of this kind of daily logging because he was so into logging everything he did, walks, thoughts he had, who he talked to, he made this kind of bulletless log every day. But I think it's kind of getting into a more scientific observer of your own life. And what happens is you get curious and you think, you know that email I sent to somebody about this job?

I wonder where that's going to end up. I wonder when I flip through my journal at the end of the year, what month that's going to turn up or what that's going to lead to or this event I'm doing. I wonder what that's going to lead to next. It's this, like, lighter, kind of curious voice that kicks in. That's this gentle observer, right, like, look at you doing that, look at you. Where does this path go? Where does this step lead? Are we going to keep doing this in October? I don't know, let's see where I get to. And that is a very interesting thing that starts developing inside of you. That's an antidote maybe to that other voice which is dismissive and harsh and like, you can't count any of that.

None of it matters. It's more like, I wonder where this is going to go. I wonder what I'm capable of. I wonder where this tiny step is going to lead me. I wonder how many tiny wins I can get this week and you kind of feel the difference inside. Maybe even as I'm saying these things, maybe you're starting to feel, ooh, that's a little bit of a shift to a gentler, kind of nicer way to talk to myself.

H: I'm even thinking that making it kind of gaming it because you're right. It reminded me of, I did a gratitude practice for a long time and had the gratitude journal. And you had to write down, I think it was three things every morning and three things every evening and what I'm grateful for. And I challenge myself to come up with new things every day because you very quickly realize, okay, friends, family, my health, I can't keep saying that. So you start becoming more and I know because you, you study and you write about and you teach about mindfulness.

And I've been practicing Buddhism for many, many years and mindfulness is so simple. It's being open to what actually is, it is being curious about what is, and it's being non judgmental about what is. And so you're talking about really paying attention to ourselves in a mindful way where we are observing ourselves almost like a research subject or just, I mean, we would probably be kinder to any other, just any rando. Like, we would probably more charitable, we would be more compassionate, we would be more forgiving, we would be more accepting. It's just we don't apply that to ourselves. So just, oh, look at this human being going about her day. And she's, you know, whenever she makes something in the kitchen, she always immediately cleans up after herself.

G: Yeah, just having that nice narration going on in your head instead of the harsh narration, like, why can't you do the dishes oh, you haven't even done this and you haven't done that. That's sort of where our brains, a lot of us are at every day, whether we're aware of it or not but that's like the running dialogue and so shifting. I like to liken it to the hero's journey, which is this archetype of like with every goal we take on or every project we take on, we're the hero and we're going on a quest. You know when we're gonna hit roadblocks? Like every hero hits roadblocks. Every hero hits hard points where they want to give up and they're like, why am I doing this thing? I mean, you could even say that about doing the dishes or you could say that about writing your blog or whatever.

H: Laundry is a bugaboo for a lot of people with adhd.

G: Yeah, we hit that heroic, you know, moment where we're like, I give up, I don't want to do this, this is too hard. So usually in a story, there's a mentor figure that comes in right when you're at that breaking point and says, you've got this, you can do this, you've done this before, look at this. We're going to do it this way and you're going to get through it. We need to become our own mentor. And the only way I've successfully done this for myself over time is by showing myself written proof on paper and then by making myself reread all those steps over and over again till I almost become that character.

Watching me on the path saying, wait a minute, I remember last year we got really down and depressed at this point of writing a book. But here's what you did, and you got around it this way and I think the path ahead is going to be here, and you just got to go here. It's like most of us in adulthood don't really have that mentor in real life, so we have to kind of invent that character and internalize it so it's following us. And the easiest way to do this is start tracking actually what you're doing on paper and then reread it. Give yourself credit, and like every month, force yourself to read every single page so that you're training your brain to remember, oh, I did that, ooh, look, I did that.

Oh, I remember that day, I did that. And you know, with adhd, a lot of us, our memory, we struggle. We struggle just generally with remembering what we did yesterday, let alone what we did last month to set us up. Why we're here now is because of stuff we did last month and the month before that and the month before that. I know with my brain, I struggle. And if you ask me to recount all the steps it took to get here where I am, if I haven't written that down somewhere and tracked it, I will just mush all those steps together into like, one messy account of something. And this is what I find is true of my clients, too.

If I say, what did you do last year? How did you get to the end of your goal? They just mush everything together. And it's usually like a messy mix of negative, stressful stuff and not a lot of acknowledgement of every day I did 10 minutes of this, and every day I move myself forward. And on that hard week when I had the flu, I still did this and this and this and this. Because we need to tell ourselves that story by writing it down and showing ourselves the story so that we can see ourselves from that outside perspective.

H: You know, you just helped me connect two things that I've never actually thought about in this way before, Risa. And that is a lot of folks have who are neurodivergent like you and I have imposter syndrome.

G: Yes.

H: You talk about it a lot, I talk about it a lot. And we also have oftentimes poor short term memory and poor working memory. I'm just now realizing that one of the reasons I talked about the trauma and the negative feedback that so many of us have been given over our lifetime so that we don't feel that we deserve to celebrate things because we don't think we're doing anything spectacular. We're just focusing on all of our fuck ups and failures. But it's of course you would have imposter syndrome if you cannot remember.

G: Yes.

H: The things that you've done and without tracking them and without acknowledging them and without celebrating them with or without adhd, you most definitely will forget them. So that is a huge. I'm just really realizing, it's like a light bulb moment. It's like a huge contributor to imposter syndrome, is that it's not because some people say, oh, it's just you don't think you deserve it if you can't even remember it and you didn't acknowledge it and you didn't celebrate it. You do not have an accumulating body of evidence that you do in fact know what the hell you're doing.

G: Exactly. And that's exactly what I'm saying about witnessing and showing yourself proof, showing yourself written evidence in a scientific way that your brain can't refute. Because as you flip through those pages, you actually lived through those days and took those steps. And like you're saying there is this weird kind of progress. Erasure, memory, erasure. Our brains do. Which yeah, of course would lead us to feel like imposters because we don't remember. We took 10,000 steps to get to where we are on top of it.

G: Let's circle back to what we said originally about people dismissing us too. So even when we get to the end of the goal, here we are, we haven't remembered everything we did. We sort of have this foggy memory of like a lot of hard stuff that feels negative on top of it. Instead of getting praise and someone giving you a pat on the back, they're like, wow, okay, you did that, but why did you do it this way? And now we can't even remember why we did it that way. Because if we don't begin with so that only reinforces what you're saying. And now I'm like connecting a lot of dots here. You know, in so many studies they've done about trauma, about adhd.

H: Yes.

G: Even about anxiety they're saying like memory and, you know, executive functioning, all that stuff is tied together right. And then I'm thinking there are so many studies about how writing stuff down helps our memory right because it taps into the executive functioning. So I'm thinking maybe this is why possibly it works so well for me, is that I'm practicing that one skill that's activating that part of my brain that naturally is not turning on right. So maybe it's even more crucial for people with executive functioning disorders to learn to write each day, even though we resist it because we really don't like doing it. A lot of us have sloppy handwriting, we don't like reading our own handwriting. But maybe this is the one skill we're avoiding strengthening that will actually help us and give us the boost we need to get through our days and to give ourselves a pat on the back more regularly.

H: You've made it possible to not just go from passively listening to this conversation and having a few light bulb moments and connecting a few dots and saying, yes, son of a gun as much as I hate to admit it, she's right. And I should probably do this because you have created a course that is very ADHD friendly and a book, a planner, so that, I mean, because it would be so easy for someone listening to this think, okay, well, yeah, I think that's probably a good idea. I should probably do that and then either forget all about it or think, oh, yeah, but then what. How do I write it down? What do I write it down on? Should it, could I do that on a digital thing and then go off in search of the perfect notebook and the perfect pen?

G: We've all been there before.

H: Oh, yes. That's why we're giggling because it's so relatable. But you, that's one of the things I really appreciate so much about you, Risa, is that you create things that help you and help others in very tangible, strategic, and practical ways. Like if it doesn't go from idea to how do I implement this and how do I make this fun and easy that I can always count on you for that. So we now have the tiny wins course and planner, right?

G: Yeah. And the manifestation of that happened exactly like you said. I kept telling people, hey, this really solved a lot of problems for me. I'm really excited about it and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah write three things down and nobody did it. And then I'm like, okay, but I have this system where I write in these little squares. So basically the planner looks like little squares for each day so that you're limited by the space because I don't…

H: Like, no constraint folks.

G: Exactly. Exactly what Diann is always teaching. Right parameters, like, narrow it down, no free writing. This isn't a journal where I'm like, I feel so bad about this, and I don't want. We don't want any of that points. It's literally a dot and I'll write something like sent email. That's it, it's like two words. It takes me five seconds to do this every night and I put it in a little tiny square. And so I made the planner because I'm like, okay, just follow this. Because all you do is fill out the square each day, and at the bottom it says wins of the week. And I kind of put the most exciting one and then at the end of the month, it says, reread this back to yourself and tell yourself which ones you're proud of.

So it's like actively reviewing but even this, Diann, I made the planner, and, like, I gave it to a lot of people to try it out. Even my clients who were doing this with me in session were still not writing in the planner and I'd say, what's your tiny win? Oh, I'm like, but did you write it down? They're like, no, I'm just telling you. I'm like, yeah, but we're gonna take a second and, like, write it down together. Because it's the writing part that I'm trying to explain is the part that's helping you. Even that was not going so well so then I'm like, I'm going to make an online course.

And you click a video and you write, it's very relaxing. You know, I'm giving you easy prompts, and you're filling it out with me together. And it goes like filling out your planner while you're watching me and I'm explaining, here's what you do in very easy way. And it has nice, relaxing music. So you're kind of in this hypnotic state of like, I can do this. I'm going to count this as a win. And then so you start the video on Monday, and then there's another video on Friday where the end of the week video, you go back and you say, which of these things am I proud of? And that's kind of working because now people are watching the videos and actually doing it, and they get it now.

So the videos walk you through a month of doing it, because I'm hoping after a month, I've sold you on the idea of doing this for yourself, to build that witness voice. Because if you just do it once or twice, it's not really going to kick in that voice throughout your day. A lot of people are counting stuff like daily walks or making themselves lunch and sitting down and eating it. That is a tiny win. I want you to start giving yourself credit for all the ways you're taking care of yourself so that we reinforce it.

Because neuroscience studies show that our brain is always wanting that feeling of reward. And especially if you have adhd, we're very prone to that. And we don't get it as much as neurotypical people sometimes do. I mean, I think that's the difference, is that neurotypical people will tell me, well, you know, you don't, give yourself a little pat, like, I folded the laundry. I'm like, no, I don't think that's the future and we need in my brain, how perverse is that?

H: They do it and they don't need it and we don't do it and we need it like, that makes no sense.

G: Yeah and it was hard for us to do. So we needed even more because we didn't want to do it at all so we fought that inertia. We got over the hump. We did it. Now we need to at least write it down in the journal and say, at least I am writing this, I did the laundry today, I get a gold star. So give yourself a gold star more often. Don't dismiss this. Don't dismiss this whole idea. Try to, like, sit with it and think, you know, maybe there's some merit here of letting myself feel the good feelings on a daily basis rather than storing that feeling up for big things and then forgetting to feel it later.

H: Just challenge yourself to do it and you maybe even if you're the oppositional type, I see you. Maybe you do it to prove her wrong.

G: Yeah, go ahead.

H: You know what it's like whatever gets you going. We'll make sure you know how to reach out and let Risa know.

G: Because you can write down your tiny wins in an angry way. I'm doing this, but I don't like it.

H: It's like, whatever it takes. And also, you know, can I also say before we go that I really love that when you create something and you test it out, and if people aren't seeing the benefit right away, you don't get butthurt. You don't think, oh, if only they cared enough. You think, okay, how can I make this easier? How can I reduce any resistance, any friction? How can I make it possible? Because they need to experience the benefits of this. So that has led to so much innovation in your business and frankly, to probably many of your books as well.

G: I know this works.

H: Yeah, you're like, I know this works. How do I make it ridiculously easy so that I'll give it a try? Because once they will, I know it'll work for them, too. And I mean, that is the creativity and also the drive of being an entrepreneur. It's like, I know this works. How do I make it ridiculously easy so that they can discover that for themselves?

G: I love that. I feel so seen, Diann, like, thank you. Thank you for that and I think we're both on that mission. Like, if people aren't if it isn't working, it's just going to lead us to the next project where we figure out how it works for them, and then we figure out how it works for that other group of people, you know, and we just keep going until the toolbox is so big. There's got to be something that's working for somebody in there, is my theory. Eventually, it might be a lifelong mission.

H: Well, I have a feeling you're going to keep creating things. You're going to keep writing books, and you're going to keep finding ways to help people just like us and I'm here for it.

G: And I also want to wish you a happy birthday. That is a very big win, and I'm glad to be celebrating it with you today.

H: Thank you, friend.

G: Thank you.