Episode Description

You know exactly what to do…
So why can’t you get yourself to do it?

In this episode of Focus in 3D: Mind, Body, Spirit, I break down the real reason follow-through feels so hard even when you have a clear plan, strong intentions, and the desire to move forward.

If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in the loop of starting, stopping, overthinking, and avoiding… this isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a self-regulation pattern, and once you have the skills to recognize and move through the emotional blocks, everything starts to make more sense.

Using a simple but powerful Mind, Body, Spirit framework, this episode helps you identify what’s actually getting in the way of action and how to move forward without pressure, shame, or burnout.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Why procrastination is a self-regulation issue, not a discipline failure

• How temporal discounting keeps you stuck in the start–stop cycle

• What executive dysfunction looks like in real life

• The 3 hidden barriers to follow-through: clarity, regulation, and alignment

• A simple, practical way to start (even when it feels heavy)

Key Takeaway

Follow-through becomes easier when you stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?”
…and start asking, “What’s actually getting in the way right now?”

Try This

The next time you feel stuck, pause and ask:

• Is this unclear? (Mind)

• Am I overwhelmed or depleted? (Body)

• Does this feel aligned with me? (Spirit)

Then lower the bar:
Just start for 5 minutes. Momentum will meet you there.

If you’d like to learn more about how to work with me, please shoot me an email at veronica@focusedmindcoach.com. I’d love to hear from you!

But for those of us with ADHD, it’s not that simple. It’s more about lacking the emotional regulation to take action. It’s more about letting our mood or circumstances take control of our time rather than taking control of our energy, focus, and actions. We allow ourselves to get sucked into the subconscious energy of reactivity vs being proactive and practicing agency over our lives.

Deciding you want to make changes in your behavioral patterns is the first step. But don’t misunderstand me here, you can’t make the conscious decision about whether or not you have (or want to have) ADHD. You can, however, decide to make changes in how you live. That’s your lifestyle. And a lifestyle can be intentionally curated no matter what you’re dealing with, regardless of your medical and mental health diagnosis. Of course there may be some limits, and not everyone’s lifestyle will look identical. We all have different triggers, different thresholds, and different circumstances. But you do get to decide how you want to cope with them or use them to your advantage.

Supporting professionals in curating a calmer lifestyle which builds Focus Resilience is the foundation for better focus and emotional regulation. Emotional regulation must be practiced in order for your nervous system to feel safe and not live in the adrenaline based “fight or flight” response all the time. That adrenaline based energy feeds off chaos, disorganization, confusion, and survival. And in that energy, it’s REALLY hard to move forward and think clearly enough to be able to prioritize and plan. When we’ve been able to prioritize and plan, we can more easily take action on our goals. We can even learn to practice consistency.

In this episode of of the Focus in 3D Podcast, I give you 5 simple steps for curating a calmer, more focused lifestyle. I even created a free PDF resource that outlines the 5 steps and will help you get started.

Please click the button below to get your free PDF checklist.

Get my free PDF

If you’re interested in learning how to work with me, please send me an inquiry email at: veronica@focusedmindcoach.com.

When I set out to develop my style of ADHD coaching, it was important to me to practice what I preach. My proprietary 3D Method is unique because, unlike other “productivity” approaches that teach you to set timers, color‑code spreadsheets, or live and die by a calendar, the Foc…

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🎙 Focus in 3D: Mind, Body, Spirit

Episode 5

Restarting Without Shame: What the Last 6 Months Taught Me About Focus

Hi everyone… and welcome back to Focus in 3D: Mind, Body, Spirit, the podcast all about how to create a healthy lifestyle that supports and nurtures your ADHD brain. In this podcast, I talk about how to not only live with ADHD as a professional, a mom, a partner, and an business owner, but how to thrive and be happy!

It has been six months since I last recorded an episode of Focus in 3D, and I want to begin by sharing why, not with an apology and not with an explanation rooted in pressure but with truth and transparency, because at the heart of it, it’s an perfect example of what I teach as the skill of “focus resilience.”

Over the last six months, two significant things happened in my life that interrupted my work on this podcast. The first one is simple and sacred.

My daughter entered her senior year of high school and her final indoor volleyball season. And when you know something is the “last,” you feel it differently, especially when it comes to your children or loved ones.

I know I will have this podcast for the next decade… maybe two.
I know my work as an ADHD coach, healer, and educator will continue evolving.
But there were only two and a half months of her final season: two and a half months of last games, last bus rides, last team dinners, last moments in the stands cheering her on.

I was faced with the hard truth that I only had so much mental and emotional energy for all the things I was doing in my life, and I made a conscious decision.

I was not going to experience those two and a half months of “last volleyball season” distracted, half-present, or internally calculating what I “should” be producing.

Instead, I chose to be a fully present and proud volleyball mom. Just writing that, makes my heart jump with joy!

I don’t regret my decision for one second.

The second interruption in my work came later was more internal.

After releasing the first four episodes of Focus in 3D something interesting happened. Momentum started building, engagement increased, the vision felt bigger.

Internally, I froze, not because I doubted the work.
But because I subconsciously started to feel the weight of what success might require.

More visibility, requires more consistency, which requires more responsibility to show up every single week as a creator, thought leader, expert.

And if I’m honest, there was a part of me that feared that level of expansion.

So I stalled. I didn’t make it a dramatic stop, nor was I obvious about it. I just quietly stopped working with no announcement or warning to my audience.

What’s been transformative through this process is that I received incredible coaching during this season of life from my own business coach. She’s someone who specializes in helping entrepreneurs heal trauma patterns as they step into new levels of identity and leadership.

What I realized is that sometimes we don’t avoid failure. We avoid the responsibility of success.

And that realization changed how I understand focus. You see, focus isn’t just about managing distraction. It’s about managing identity expansion while managing all the emotions that come with that. It’s about recognizing nervous system capacity as we grow. It’s about who we believe we’re allowed to become.

So today, I share what stepping away both intentionally and subconsciously taught me about sustainable focus.

If you’ve ever paused something important, if you’ve ever chosen your family over productivity, or if you’ve ever felt yourself freeze right as things started working, you’re not broken. You just may be expanding. The best part is, there is a way to return to your passion project without shame.

Here are the three biggest lessons these last six months taught me.

Lesson 1: Focus Requires Regulation, Not Just Discipline

When I chose to fully show up for my daughter’s final volleyball season, I was regulating the emotions around recognizing and choosing my priorities. I had to keep reminding myself, I wasn’t “dropping the ball;” but rather, I was intentionally reallocating my energy.

High-achievers often override their nervous systems in the name of consistency, but if you struggle with ADHD like I do, then you know that real focus isn’t possible by forcing output. Real focus, through emotional regulation, allows you to honor your nervous system’s capacity for energy and flow.

When your nervous system is overwhelmed, distracted, stretched too thin, you don’t necessarily need more discipline. In fact, you’re likely to avoid action and discipline like the plague!

What you do need is conscious conduit to channel and practice emotional regulation as a skill. Let me tell you, I’m 53, and I’m still learning the art of mastering my emotions. Now when I say, “mastering” I certainly don’t mean to imply that any human being ever truly masters their emotions the way they master learning to drive a car. I’m referring more to the art of becoming comfortable with my emotions, even when they feel hard. Emotional regulation is a skill that I truly believe is evolving within us from birth, until the day we die. A coach’s job is to hold space for you to find your emotional conduit.

Emotional regulation may look like stepping back for a time, so you can return stronger, happier, and more deeply focused than before.

Lesson 2: Fear of Success Is an Identity Expansion Issue

Once the first four episodes of Focus in 3D were out, the podcast suddenly morphed from an idea into reality. The momentum felt real, and it felt fast, maybe even too fast for my slow moving soul. My break from writing, recording, and publishing felt like a necessity. I couldn’t just jump back on the wagon after volleyball season was over. But the longer the pause, the scarier it felt to think of getting restarted. And with that resistance came a subtle internal tension: How would I go about restarting without shame?

If this continues to grow, can I hold it?
If I’m consistent, what will be expected of me?
If I step fully into this identity, who do I have to become to carry the load?

The obvious answer looking back, is that I do have the capacity to expand my energy.

Here’s what I now understand as the Expansion Cycle:

Stage 1: Visibility Increases
You launch. You post. You speak. People respond.

Stage 2: Identity Pressure Rises
Your brain asks: “Is this safe? Can we sustain this? What if expectations increase?”

Stage 3: Nervous System Threat Response
Freeze. Procrastinate. Delay. Get busy with other things.

Freeze and delay, or procrastination on taking action happens all too often in those of us with ADHD, but not because we’re lazy. It’s the default because expansion feels unsafe to the part of you that learned visibility equals pressure, consistency, and responsibility.

Through coaching, I realized that I didn’t fear success, and I wasn’t lazy. I feared the responsibility attached to sustained visibility. Whew! Breakthrough! Once I named that, the freeze started to soften.

If you’ve ever stalled right when things were working well, nothing is wrong with you. You’re not a failure. You’re not lazy. You’re not self-sabotaging.

You’re navigating identity expansion without the proper support. And that, my friend requires compassion mixed with the right amount of challenge, from someone who opens the door for you and holds space for your self-discovery.

Lesson 3: Sustainable Focus Is Built on Self-Trust

When I chose my daughter’s final volleyball season, I trusted that this podcast would still be here waiting for me. I didn’t imagine it would take six months to get back to work, and when I paused to do deeper identity work, I trusted that expansion doesn’t require urgency. It’s not easily mapped out on a timeline or scheduled in a calendar.

Identify expansion yields self-trust which in the long run, allows you to pause without quitting. Self-trust allows you to recalibrate without spiraling into the depths of fear and despair.

Self-trust allows me to return to my podcast without shame.

And that’s the kind of focus I want to model here. I call it Focus Resilience.

It’s a not adrenaline-based focus, and it’s not pressure-based productivity.
It’s integrated focus that is born from the energy of mind, body, and spirit alignment.

If you’re reading this today and you’re in a pause…

If you’ve stepped away from something important…

If you feel frozen right as you were gaining traction…

I want you to know this; you are not behind; you may just be expanding, and expansion requires clarity.

To support you with that, I’ve attached my Clarity Worksheet in the show notes of this podcast episode.

I invite you to take 20 quiet minutes with it.

Let it help you assess where your focus is aligned, where your nervous system may need regulation, and where identity expansion might be creating resistance.

And if, as you’re working through it, you realize you’d like support navigating this season, please reach out to me for a complimentary Focus Call. If you’re interested, simply send an inquiry email to veronica@focusedmindcoach.com.

We’ll schedule a time for you to find clarity and direction on what may be holding you back. Sustainable focus isn’t something you muscle through alone. I believe it’s built through intention, guidance, and compassion and patience.

I’m so grateful to be back here with you. The Focus in 3D podcast will now return on a bi-weekly rhythm, steady, aligned, sustainable.

And I can’t wait to continue this journey with you.

Until next time… stay focused in three dimensions — mind, body, and spirit.

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For a help with getting started on your own clarity path, I’ve created this free PDF worksheet. It’s a simple, 3 step guide to spring you into action.

Clarity First Worksheet PDF

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Back in 2015 I finally woke up to the fact that I had been stuck in a cycle of perpetual: “I’m so unhappy.” “Something has to change.” “I don’t know who I am anymore or what I want.” “Am I a bad and selfish person for wanting more?” “I can’t see a way out.” The weight of the world seemed too heavy to bear. I had tried and failed MANY times to reach goals outside of my daily, survival live and work-life, and always fell off track. I felt like I was never able to accomplish anything bigger, more meaningful, more fulfilling, or more creative than my daily 9-5 grind and mommy duties.

I was 43. Married and mother of a 10 yr old boy and an 8 yr old girl.

I felt stuck working in a medical practice that I HAD felt passionate about since day 1 of my then 15 year Medical Career, but I was starting to feel burned out, bored, and that I lacked potential for growth. I had no creative outlet. Every day was “copy and paste.” Every one of my patient encounters seemed to suck the life out of me. If that wasn’t bad enough, I couldn’t stand how happy and “on the ball” my coworkers always seemed.

In my relationship with my then - husband I felt distant, disconnected, unseen, unheard, insignificant.

In my parenting, I felt inadequate, exhausted, and insecure. We were chronically late everywhere we went. I felt scattered and life felt so chaotic. How do all those other moms manage to get their kids to school on time every day with a smile? What am I doing wrong? What is their secret?

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t speak. I felt lost and confused.

Why hadn’t the last 15 years of therapy done its magic and changed my life? After all, I’d been going to therapy since the year before I got married and continued it off and on for several years. Alone. With my husband. Alone again. With my husband again.

Finally, out of love and respect, a dear friend (who was likely exhausted from my same old rants about my misery) said to me, “Veronica, what you need is a life coach.”

The AHA Moment

A life coach? What the heck is a life coach? That sounds gimmicky. If all the therapy in the world hasn’t changed my life, what more can a life coach possibly do?

Fast forward a year. During 2016, several life changing events happened. My husband and I decided to go separate ways. I had to find a place to live on my own, as we were renting the house where we lived at the time, and I wouldn’t be able to afford that rent on my own.

I had only lived on my own for a short year after I graduated from PA school in 2000. And even that had been with the input and assistance of my ex.

I had never managed a household budget. I had never set up utility accounts on my own, I hadn’t even planned meals or grocery shopped on my own (my ex had taken care of those things). I had never made serious, big decisions on my own: “what TV should I buy?” “where do I take my car if it breaks down?” “what friend can I call on for help?” - I had allowed myself to exist through the presence of my ex. All my friends were people I’d met through him. The mechanic, the cleaning lady, the family get togethers. They were all from his circles. My family lived 1200 miles away in a different state.

I was all alone.

So I looked up Life Coach, and found several great podcasts, subscribed to several newsletters, read several good books on building a life I love, even found the moxie to get on dating apps in order to start learning more about what I did and didn’t want out of life. I learned simple, actionable steps I could take to improve my productivity, develop healthy habits for my mental and emotional health. Learned that I could build my version of Happiness and Success. I journaled. I meditated. I exercised. I took a deep dive into self -improvement and personal development.

AND I LOVED IT!

The Results

I began to thrive in my new life. Through coaching, I learned actionable and practical advice in the form of simple, do-able steps I could take to make small changes, build my decision making muscle, and realize who I was while growing into who I wanted to be.

Life Coaching turned out to be quite transformational. I learned how to make decisions in the face of fear and uncertainty. I got to know myself and started practicing self awareness. I began to create my own sense of calm and happy.

I began setting intentions and showing up for myself by following through on my intentions. I learned to let go detach from outcomes so that I could live more freely and happily in the present moment.

I began to forgive. I began to heal. I began to love - even myself. I slowly became a more present and loving parent. I became more personable and interactive at work w/ my colleagues. People noticed I carried myself differently.

Life coaching indeed helped me change my life!

Through the self-development phase of my life I had come to learn that autonomy, freedom to call the shots in my own life, was the one thing I valued more than all other values except for love.

A New Path Forward

Fast forward to the COVID pandemic of 2020. The world shut down. Our health care jobs shifted from in-person constant interactions under fluorescent lights to practicing Telehealth from the coziness and intimacy of my home office. I didn’t have to commute. I didn’t have to see or hear anyone outside my beloved family circle.

Through telehealth, I was able to meet my patients in their own homes. I could see their backgrounds. I was literally a face in their living rooms. I may not have been able to touch them, but I was transported into their spaces. Into their families. Telehealth created a different level of honesty and vulnerability that had not existed before.

Furthermore, I only had to interact with my supervising physician once or twice a day to review cases.

Autonomy! Kind of…

And as many people did during that time, I shifted. Something in my brain started churning out ideas. A creative energy was sparked and lit up inside of me.

“What could I do with my knowledge: clinical, personal, and life experience - that would allow me to serve others, but in a capacity where I wasn’t dependent on a boss, supervising physician or medical-corporate institution?”

At that point, I had 18 years of experience in ADHD clinical expertise; I had been part of the first ADHD clinic at the hospital I was affiliated with, and I had been counseling, diagnosing and treating ADHD, for 18 years!

Now a glimpse into my personal life: I am mother of 2 beautiful rambunctions, intelligent ADHD teens who being boy and girl, display it very differently.

And through my career of learning and understanding what the diagnostic criteria are for ADHD and how it affects students and adults, I had realized I’d been a high functioning ADHD woman my whole life!

You see, I had never finished required reading novels for school from cover to cover. I’d use Cliff Notes to get by. I’d write long papers the night before they were due and crammed for semester end finals the night before the tests, in perfect procrastinator ADHD fashion. I just couldn’t pay attention long enough to do really hard things for an extended period of time. I was semi-lucky I guess that I had always been able to compensate with my level of intelligence, and my defense mechanisms such as OCD in some areas of my life. But at the end of the day, ADHD is the reason I could never sit and study for standardized tests. It’s why I didn’t get in to Medical School. I could never make myself practice and memorize all the things to succeed at the MCAT. I could never balance a budget. I couldn’t track things like spending, calories, or even good habits like exercise and sleep. And god forbid you make me look at a spreadsheet! ADHD HELL!

Well, with all that life experience: learning, diagnosing, prescribing, counseling, parenting and sheer living, I decided to put my skills to use by becoming an ADHD life coach.

In December of 2021, I graduated from the Jay Shetty Coaching School. In 2022, I opened FOCUSED MIND COACHING.

My clients are not all formally diagnosed with ADHD. But they do all have the desire and need for better mental focus in all areas of their lives.

My clients are professionals from all walks of life, some are parents of kids w/ ADHD, teachers, business owners, attorneys, medical professionals. Some are adult professional students from the fields of law, medicine, business and health care.

One thing my clients all have in common, they are struggling daily to stay focused on the actions that will get them closer to realizing their goals.

With Focused Mind Coaching, my clients gain clarity, confidence, peace of mind and reach new level of calm in their lives that comes from improved whole brain and body health.

In 1:1 coaching sessions, my clients feel heard, they create unique plans of action that fit their lives. They create healthier lifestyles and gain a layer of accountability by staying committed to our 1:1 coaching sessions together.

That’s FOCUSED MIND COACHING. It’s 100% client customized, focusing on what is best for each individual.

That’s my story. Thank you for staying to the end.

In this episode of Focus in 3D: Mind, Body, Spirit, host Veronica delves into the concept of Focus Resilience—the art of returning to your goals after setbacks and the power of consistency when life and emotions try to throw you off course.

Veronica, founder of Focused Mind Coaching, shares personal insights and practical tools to help you build mental resilience, overcome emotional hurdles, and stay on track toward your goals. Whether you're facing burnout, distractions, or self-doubt, this episode offers strategies to help you regain focus and momentum.

Tune in to learn how to reframe consistency, identify patterns that derail your progress, and create a recovery ritual that aligns your mind, body, and spirit. If you're ready to transform setbacks into comebacks, this episode is for you.

Don't miss out—subscribe now and start building your Focus Resilience today.

In this powerful first episode of Focus in 3D: Mind, Body, Spirit, host Veronica, founder of Focused Mind Coaching, shares her raw and inspiring journey from overwhelmed professional and struggling mom to thriving ADHD life coach and entrepreneur. If you’ve ever felt stuck, scattered, or secretly wondered “What’s wrong with me?”, this episode is for you.

You’ll hear how Veronica discovered she had high-functioning ADHD, why traditional therapy wasn’t enough, and how coaching transformed her life — personally and professionally. Whether you're an ambitious woman with ADHD, a parent, or a professional seeking clarity, calm, and focus, this episode offers relatable insight, hope, and actionable inspiration.

Keywords: ADHD in women, ADHD coaching, personal growth, burnout recovery, mindset shift, life after divorce, working moms, high-functioning ADHD, self-discovery, clarity and focus