I’ve been hacking old clichés for a few blogs now, and I’m wrapping it up in Game Show fashion with “The Lightning Round”, or old saws resharpened while you wait. I hope you enjoy them (nobody said ADHD couldn’t be fun). Feel free to send me any you come up with.
- A picture is worth a thousand words (especially if you’re a strong visual processor and your writing skills need work).
- A watched pot never boils (because our perception of time is waaaay more fluid than others).
- When the going gets tough, the tough get going (but just working longer and harder is NOT always our best strategy).
- Good things come to those who wait (but I HATE waiting- besides, what does WAIT mean? Aren’t good things like a train? They arrive- we get on?).
- Patience is a virtue (in our case, a hard-learned and well-earned skill).
- Wake up and smell the coffee (but don’t drink a ton if you’re on ADHD meds- coffee creates an acidic environment in your gut, which negatively affects the absorption rate of stimulant meds).
- Stop and smell the roses (but not for 4 hours- you need to go back to work!).
- You can’t judge a book by its cover (are you acting like you think the “normal” expect you to act?)
- Laughter is the best medicine (closely followed by Adderal, Concerta, Wellbutrin, and Vivance). We gotta laugh at some of the things we say and do sometimes, which is preferable to beating ourselves up. To quote another old saw, “Don’t take life too seriously- you’ll never get out of it alive”.
I hope you enjoyed these verbal hacks- hopefully in some small way they'll help you remember that you can be serious about dealing with ADHD challenges, and have a bit of fun with it along the way.