If you've ever wondered why you keep having the same thoughts, the same conversations with yourself, the same worries on a loop — and why nothing seems to change even when you want it to — there's a neurological answer, and it's hardwired more deeply than most people realize.
"You can either be right or happy." — Gerald G. Jampolsky
What if you had patience and enthusiasm to get what you want, instead of it feeling so bad that you don't have it yet?
This has been the journey, arguably, of my life — and one I'm pleased to say I've resolved.
You want different results. But how?
Most people, especially those with ADHDish brains, don't realize how much they forecast negatively, or how to stop. But this shift is everything. From how you feel day-to-day to what results you're actually getting, it depends a lot more on you and your attitude than you'd probably like to admit.
Here's the data that changed how I think about this:
You think around 60,000 thoughts per day, and 90% of them are the exact same thoughts you had yesterday.
Read that again.
You want different results — but you're repeating the results you already have, through a combination of Expectancy Theory, no new action, and the same recycled thoughts running through the same neural pathways they've been carving for years.
For ADHD brains, this loop can run even tighter. The same hyperfocus that helps you go deep on a problem also locks you onto the same worries, the same self-criticism, the same forecasts of failure. Your brain doesn't know the difference between focusing on something productive and focusing on something that's quietly destroying you. It just focuses.
If 90% of your thoughts today are the same as yesterday's, then "think positive" is asking your brain to override 54,000 grooved-in thoughts with sheer willpower. It doesn't work. Not because you're not trying hard enough, but because that's not how the brain changes.
The neural pathways you've been running for years are physical structures. They have momentum. Asking your brain to suddenly think differently is like asking a river to suddenly flow uphill — you can splash a few drops in the new direction, but the river keeps going where it always has.
What works is something smaller and more specific: building one new pathway at a time, deliberately, with enough repetition that it starts running on its own.
There are so many possibilities at any given moment. Your ingrained way of thinking makes you choose and create the same — over and over. The good news is there are lots of more interesting alternatives, and it's just a matter of building the habit to use them.
Not all of them. Just one. Pick a recurring thought you've noticed yourself thinking — "I'm so behind," "I never finish anything," "this client is going to flake" — and ask: is this actually true, or is this just a thought I've thought before? Most of the time it's the second one. Naming the thought as a repeat instead of a fact is what starts breaking the loop.
ADHD brains forecast negatively as a survival strategy — anticipate the bad thing, brace for it, maybe avoid it. The problem is that bracing creates the bad outcome about as often as it prevents it. The practice: once a day, when you catch yourself forecasting a negative outcome, ask, "What if the opposite happened?" You don't have to believe the opposite. You just have to introduce the thought, so the brain registers that an alternative exists.
This is the part nobody likes because it's not glamorous. The brain doesn't change because you had a great insight in a journaling session. It changes because you ran the new thought through the new pathway more times than the old thought ran through the old one. That's it. Repetition is the whole mechanism.
This is the kind of slow, structural mindset work we build into House of Done — not as therapy, but as the practical foundation under everything else, because you can't follow through on the work that matters when your brain is running the same loops it ran yesterday.
Different thoughts. Different results. It's slower than anyone wants it to be, and it's the only thing that actually works.
❤️ Leah
Leah Fisch is the Founder of CEO Rise and philanthropist co-founder of Cultivar Cartagena — otherwise known as the Jewish Mother Dominatrix.
A self-described messy kid with "lots of potential" she never seemed to live up to, Leah spent her first decade in business as a Professional Organizer specializing in hoarders threatened with eviction in New York City. She learned, very tangibly, how to help people cut what they don't need, get clear on what they do, and make change that actually lasts — even for the people everyone else had given up on.
Today she brings that same framework to ADHDish entrepreneurs — helping them build businesses that work in their weird and wild way.
.svg)
Helping ADHDish entrepreneurs & creatives declutter, focus and grow.
.svg)