3 ADHD Struggles with Change and How to Overcome Them

How often have you found yourself going all in to make a big change—something you really wanted—only to find yourself slipping right back into old patterns?

Here’s an example…

That moment when you decided to start going to bed earlier and waking up earlier.

You make a plan, map out your day. You’re really excited for the new possibility and maybe even stick with the plan for a day or two.

But before you know it, you’re really fighting to wake up and find yourself hitting the snooze button over and over, and you feel super groggy.

What happened?! Why is this so easy to do? Well, my dear ADHD brains—it’s a version of homeostasis at work.

Your brain and body are wired to pull you back to what’s familiar – in this example, your circadian rhythm is not quite on board with the plan of waking up earlier – even though it’s something you want to do.

On episode 298 of the I’m Busy Being Awesome podcast, we’re talking about why that happens and, more importantly, how we can break the cycle.

Listen to the episode above or stream it on your favorite podcasting app. Prefer to read? No problem! Keep scrolling for a summary of the key takeaways.

In Episode 298 You Will Discover:

• Why your ADHD brain resists change—even when you want it
• 3 reasons change feels hard with ADHDers
• 2 Simple strategies to gently rewire your habits and make lasting change (these really help!)

The Struggle with Change – Starts with Homeostasis

Homeostasis is our body and brain’s way of maintaining stability.

Think of it like an internal thermostat—constantly adjusting things behind the scenes to keep us in balance. Whether it’s regulating body temperature, managing energy levels, or keeping our thought patterns consistent, homeostasis is always at work. And that’s the fascinating part.

We don’t really have to think about it. Homeostasis constantly makes tiny adjustments to keep us comfortable and functioning in the way the brain thinks is “right.” And in most situations, this is incredible; I’m SO glad it works this way.

How Does Homeostasis Keep the Body in Balance?

Temperature Regulation

If you step outside when it’s cold, you start shivering—it’s your body’s way of generating heat. If you’re in the heat for too long, you sweat to cool down. Your body is always trying to keep you at that perfect 98.6°F (37°C) range.

Blood Sugar & Energy Levels

If you think about those times when you slip into hyperfocus and forget to eat, and when you finally come out of it, maybe you’re cranky or even a little light-headed.

That’s your body signaling low blood sugar, triggering hunger cues to get you to refuel. Eat too much sugar? Your body releases insulin to bring levels back down.

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These are automatic processes. Your body doesn’t ask if you want to start sweating or crave a snack—it just does it to maintain balance.

Homeostasis: The Habit Caretaker

Here’s where it gets interesting—we can see a similar version of this stability-seeking when we’re trying to adopt new habits or routines.

Your brain craves the familiar

If you’ve been hitting snooze for years, your brain expects that pattern to continue. If you’ve always scrolled your phone in bed before going to sleep, your brain assumes that’s the “normal” way to do things.

Change = Discomfort

Just like sweating or shivering, there is a resistance to these behavioral shifts, too.

Trying to wake up earlier? You’ll probably feel that nudge back to the comfort of sleeping in.

Trying to leave your phone in the bathroom at night rather than scrolling for hour before bed? There may be a resistance, and your brain may even throw in some compelling thoughts like, “But I need my alarm! (Despite knowing you could absolutely use a regular alarm clock.) Or express simply doubt like, “What’s the point? This isn’t going to work.”

This is your brain doing what it thinks is best

It doesn’t really care if the old pattern or old behavior isn’t helping you—it just cares that it’s predictable. It wants to focus on the familiar.

Why This Matters: The Connection with Change

Just like our body maintains physical stability, our brain loves to keep thoughts and behaviors in their comfortable, familiar baseline.

Whether it’s your sleep schedule, daily routines, or even your self-identity (“I’m just not a morning person” “I’m just someone who can’t follow a schedule.”), we have a version of homeostasis working to keep things the same—even if we actively want change.

This is why breaking habits—or adopting new ones—often feels like pushing against an invisible force. Because… we kind of are.

Why Do Our Brains Resist Change?

Let’s talk about this more specifically because at first, it seems counterintuitive. If you want to make the change, why does it feel ridiculously challenging to do?

1. Our Evolutionary Instincts Make Change Even Harder

The first thing to understand is that we’re working against millions of years of evolution.

Humans are biologically wired to:

1. Seek pleasure (because pleasure = survival)
2. Avoid pain (because pain = danger or death)
3. Conserve energy (because effort = risk of depletion)

Every time we try to change, we are challenging at least two—if not all three—of these survival instincts:

• New habits require effort → which breaks the “conserve energy” rule.
• New habits are often also quite uncomfortable → which triggers the “avoid pain” response.
• Letting go of old coping strategies often removes dopamine rewards → which challenges the “seek pleasure” drive.

2. Our Brain Loves the Familiar

So, if the brain’s primary job is to keep us safe, one of the ways it does this is by sticking with what it knows.

The neural pathways we’ve used for years—our habits, beliefs, and routines—are deeply ingrained, like well-worn trails in a forest or a well-packed path in deep snow.

Any attempt to stray from those familiar trails requires so much effort and often feels really uncertain, which sets off mental alarms—even if the change is good.

Just think about it, stepping off a well-packed snowy path to knee-deep snow is a huge shift. It takes so much work to walk through that fresh snow. The same is true when we’re trying something new.

This is one of the reasons why the brain feels resistance and offers thoughts like (“This is too hard”) or quickly reverts back to old patterns (“I’ll just start again Monday”)—our brain is simply defaulting to what’s known and easy.

So when you think about creating a new habit, you have to create that new path – or stamp down the deep snow.

Let’s look at another analogy…

Think of your brain as a dense forest of pathways.

• The trails you’ve walked the most (your habits) are clear and easy.
• The ones you want to create? They’re overgrown, messy, and difficult to navigate.

Every time you repeat a new habit, you strengthen that pathway. But at first? It’s tiring.

Your brain has to consciously work harder to make choices that used to be automatic. And because the brain prioritizes efficiency, it’s always trying to pull you back to the well-worn paths you’ve already traveled.

This is why change feels exhausting initially—but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

3. Normalizing Resistance: It’s Not You, It’s Biology

For many of us—certainly when I first started to seriously set goals and try to adopt new routines—any time I hit resistance and skipped a day or fell back into old patterns, my brain immediately went to, “well, you failed again. Obviously. What did you expect? This is what always happens.”

Once I realized what I was working with, it helped me understand that…

1. Discomfort doesn’t mean we’re necessarily doing something wrong. It means your brain is doing its job.
2. Resistance isn’t failure—it’s instead confirmation that you’re stepping outside of your comfort zone.
3. Your brain isn’t fighting you because you’re not “good enough” at change. It’s simply protecting what’s familiar.

Instead of seeing resistance as a stop sign, think of it as a checkpoint—a moment to make sure you DO, indeed, want to make these changes. And if so, remind yourself nothing’s gone wrong here. Instead, this resistance is a sign that you’re actively rewiring old patterns.

So the next time you feel yourself slipping back into the familiar, remind yourself:

“My brain isn’t working against me—it’s just trying to keep things stable. And that means I’m in the process of changing.”

Because the more you keep walking that new path, the easier it gets. And eventually? That new habit, belief, or routine becomes the default.

Gay Hendricks’s Thermostat Analogy (The Big Leap)

At this point, we understand that our brain resists change because it craves familiarity and stability. And I want to share one more analogy from Gay Hendricks that I think really puts this concept into focus.

He shares it in his book The Big Leap, where he explains how our resistance to change is a bit like having an internal thermostat for things like success, happiness, productivity, and personal growth.

Imagine you have a thermostat in your home set to 70 degrees. If the temperature rises above that—let’s say the sun streams in through the windows or the oven’s been on for a while—the thermostat kicks in to cool things down. If it drops too low, maybe from a cold draft, the heat turns on to warm things back up.

Now, apply that to your comfort zone:

• We all have an internal “set point”—that level of comfort—for how much success, happiness, or achievement we allow ourselves to experience.
• When we push beyond that set point—whether through personal growth, financial success, or even feeling too good in our lives—our brain subconsciously finds ways to bring us back down to our familiar baseline.

Gay Hendricks describes this as self-sabotage, where we procrastinate, create distractions, or suddenly feel “too busy” to keep up with the new habit or opportunity.

But I see it a little differently. I don’t believe in self-sabotage in the way it’s often described. Instead, I believe the brain is genuinely trying to help.

It’s not trying to ruin things—it’s just confused. It misunderstands that stepping outside of our comfort zone is actually safe.

When we start to expand beyond our familiar limits, the brain assumes something must be off, so it gently (or sometimes dramatically) nudges us back to what feels stable.

This is why you might:

• Hit a streak of productivity, feel on fire with momentum, and then suddenly find yourself prioritizing everyone else’s projects instead of your own.
• Start seeing real progress on a goal—things are moving forward, and success feels within reach—when suddenly, doubts creep in: Who am I to do this? Am I really capable of following through?

It’s not sabotage—it’s your brain thinking it’s protecting you to get you back to your comfort zone—your set point. The brain is running an outdated safety protocol that tells us, Hey, this is different. Should we really be doing this?

And that’s where we step in. Rather than fighting against it or seeing it as a failure, we can gently remind the brain that it’s okay to adjust the thermostat.

How To Shift Your ‘Thermostat’ To Create Lasting Change

So, how do we adjust that internal set point and create lasting change without triggering resistance that pulls us back?

1. Start Small—Ridiculously Small

If the brain senses too much change too fast, it panics.

The solution? It will come as no surprise when I say to start small. Make sure the shifts are so tiny that they fly under the radar of your internal thermostat.

• Want to start exercising? Instead of committing to a full 45-minute workout, start with 30 seconds of stretching before bed.
• Trying to read more? Open a book and read one minute. That’s it.
• Building a new morning routine? Pour your coffee and take one deep breath before moving on with your day.

We talked about this in last week’s episode when we explored the concept of habit stacking. These small behaviors often sound almost too small to matter—but that’s the point. When change feels nearly effortless, the thermostat doesn’t react.

2. Normalize Discomfort as Evidence of Change

If you’re feeling resistance, doubt, or frustration, it’s not a sign that you’re failing—it’s actually a signal that you’re pushing past your old set point.

• If you’re starting to put yourself out there more—whether in work, relationships, or personal goals—and suddenly feel exposed or like you want to retreat, that’s your thermostat at work.
• If you’re growing into a new version of yourself and your brain starts throwing out thoughts like “Who do you think you are?”—that’s proof you’re stretching past your baseline.
• Of course, we don’t want to push ourselves all the way out. As I mentioned, we want to do this gently. I think about stretching a rubber band. We want to stay in the stretchy Zone, we don’t want to snap said rubber band.

But if we stay within that safe and healthy stretch, then instead of seeing discomfort as a red flag, we can check in. If this is something that you genuinely want to do and feels values aligned, try reframing it: “Ah, this feeling means I’m expanding my set point.”

Final Thoughts

In other words, instead of fighting against our internal thermostat, we can work with it.

• We can ease into change rather than forcing massive overhauls.
• We recognize resistance for what it is—a signal that we’re growing, not a stop sign.
• We gradually shift our set point until what once seemed impossible now feels like second nature.

So if you’ve ever found yourself on the verge of a big change, only to suddenly hit resistance, I encourage you to pause and ask yourself:

“What if this isn’t a sign to stop? What if this is proof that I’m expanding my set point?”

Because with time, intention, and practicing the tiny shifts, you can reset your thermostat to match the life you’re working to create.

This Week’s Homework. Ask Yourself:

“Where do I feel that internal thermostat kicking in?”

Maybe it’s around a goal you’ve been working toward, a new habit you’re building, or even allowing yourself to experience more success or happiness than usual.

Rather than seeing that resistance as a stop sign, I invite you to see it as a gentle checkpoint. A moment to pause, check in, and remind your brain: I’m working toward something I want, and this is a sign that I’m growing. I’m leaning into that growth edge. I’m busy being awesome.

👉 Want to take these concepts further and apply them to your life? Learn more about how we can work together with my small group coaching program, “We’re Busy Being Awesome,” and one-on-one coaching.

✨ Learn my simple step-by-step approach to locking in a routine and making it stick, be sure to check out my free course, the ADHD Routine Revamp.

Until next time, keep being awesome. I’ll talk with you soon.

Links From The Podcast

• Learn more about private coaching here
• Learn more about We’re Busy Being Awesome here
• Get the top 10 tips to work with your ADHD brain (free ebook!)
• Discover my favorite ADHD resources
• Get the I’m Busy Being Awesome Planning System
• Get the I’m Busy Being Awesome Podcast Roadmap
• Take my free course, ADHD Routine Revamp
• Check out Gay Hendrick’s The Big Leap

Some of the links included are affiliate links, which means I will earn a commission if you purchase through them. I only recommend resources and products that I personally use and love. Thanks for your support!

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Listen to the episode above or stream it on your favorite podcasting app. Prefer to read? No problem! Keep scrolling for a summary of the key takeaways.