Building Sustainable Habits in ADHD: Bridging the Gap Between Intention and Action

Explore how mindfulness creates more choice in everyday life by helping us notice habitual patterns, respond rather than react, and act with greater intention.

Many people with ADHD already know what supports their well-being: sleep, exercise, reminders, routines, and systems that make daily life more manageable. Yet knowing what helps does not always make follow-through easy.

As Dr. Mark Bertin explains, ADHD is often "not a disorder of not knowing what to do, it's a disorder of not doing what you know."

This is one reason change can feel so frustrating. The challenge is rarely a lack of information, insight, or even intention. More often, it is the difficulty of consistently translating those intentions into action.

Drawing on teachings from his course Managing ADHD with Mindfulness, Dr. Bertin offers a different way of understanding this gap. Rather than focusing solely on motivation or willpower, mindfulness helps us become more aware of the habits of thought, emotion, and reaction that shape our behavior. By recognizing these patterns with greater clarity, we can create space between intention and action—and reconnect more often with how we want to live.

Contents:

1. Understanding Habits of Mind
2. The Challenge of Autopilot
3. How Mindfulness Helps Bridge the Gap Between Intention and Action
4. Learn More:

Understanding Habits of Mind

One of Dr. Mark Bertin's central observations is that we are dealing with habits all the time. We have habitual ways of responding to stress, uncertainty, frustration, anger, disappointment, and even the way we talk to ourselves.

Some of these habits help us navigate life effectively. Others may have developed over time but no longer serve us well. Mindfulness is not about judging or eliminating these patterns. It is about becoming aware of them.

This is where non-judgmental awareness becomes important. Rather than reacting with immediate labels like good or bad, success or failure, mindfulness encourages us to see more clearly what is actually happening. As Bertin explains, mindfulness is not something we practice for the sake of meditating. Its broader purpose is to develop self-awareness so we can recognize these patterns and respond more intentionally.

When we can recognize our habits with greater objectivity, we become less likely to react automatically and more able to reconnect with our intentions.

The Challenge of Autopilot

One reason the gap between intention and action can feel so frustrating is that much of life happens on autopilot.

Something happens, we react, and the entire sequence unfolds so quickly that it feels like one event. This is how we respond to conflict, exercise, sleep, work, parenting, or everyday stress. The trigger happens, the thought appears, the story forms, and the behavior follows.

According to Dr. Bertin, mindfulness helps us recognize that these are actually separate experiences. There is the event itself. Then there are the physical sensations it triggers. Then come the emotions, followed by thoughts, assumptions, and stories.

The more clearly we can see these layers, the more space we create between what happens and how we respond.

How Mindfulness Helps Bridge the Gap Between Intention and Action

Separating Emotions from Reactions

One of the reasons this skill matters so much is that emotional reactivity is a foundational part of ADHD.

As Dr. Bertin explains, emotions themselves are not the problem. Emotions are signals. They tell us when something feels important, challenging, or out of balance. The difficulty arises when we automatically react to those emotions.

This has direct implications for the routines and habits that support well-being. Frustration, boredom, resistance, or overwhelm are all part of everyday life. When those emotions immediately drive behavior, it becomes easy to abandon intentions and fall back into familiar patterns.

Mindfulness helps us notice the emotion without immediately acting from it. The emotion is one thing; the reaction is another. Learning to recognize that distinction is the beginning of managing emotions more skillfully.

Recognizing Habitual Patterns of Thinking

Another important aspect of mindfulness is learning to recognize the habits of mind themselves.

Bertin compares thoughts to trains leaving a station. One thought leads to another. We travel into the future, replay the past, or circle around the same concern repeatedly.

These thought trains are inevitable. The goal is not to stop them. The goal is to notice when we've boarded one and return sooner.

Over time, we may begin to recognize familiar patterns:

"There's me ruminating again."

"There's me being hard on myself again."

"There's me getting caught in that same story."

Simply noticing these habits changes our relationship to them. Instead of becoming completely absorbed by the thought, we begin seeing it as a pattern.

Working with Thoughts Differently

One of the most common misconceptions about mindfulness is that success means eliminating thoughts.

Dr. Bertin repeatedly emphasizes that distracting thoughts are part of life. Meditation is not about achieving a perfectly still mind. It is about learning to work with thoughts differently.

He uses the image of a snow globe. Throughout the day, thoughts trigger emotions, and emotions trigger thoughts. Life continually shakes the globe.

Mindfulness is not about removing the snow. It is about allowing things to settle enough that we can see clearly.

The mind may remain busy. Thoughts may continue to arise. The practice is learning to meet those experiences with patience, awareness, and less reactivity.

Creating More Choice in Everyday Life

Throughout these teachings, Dr. Bertin returns to a simple but powerful idea: awareness creates the possibility of choice.

When we are caught in habitual patterns, the trigger, emotion, thought, and reaction can feel like one event. We become caught in autopilot, responding in the ways we always have. Mindfulness helps us recognize that these experiences are not the same thing. There is the situation itself, the emotions it triggers, the thoughts and stories that arise, and the reactions that follow.

Through practice, we become more aware of these patterns. We learn to pause. We become more aware of our habits of mind. We start recognizing when we are caught in familiar reactions or thought patterns.

According to Dr. Bertin, mindfulness is ultimately about reconnecting with our intentions—not perfectly, but more often. By creating a little space between experience and reaction, we become better able to respond in ways that align with how we want to live, even in the midst of life's challenges.

Learn More: Managing ADHD with Mindfulness Course

Interested in learning more? In Managing ADHD with Mindfulness, Dr. Mark Bertin explores how mindfulness can support attention, emotional regulation, resilience, and self-compassion in people with ADHD.

Through evidence-informed teaching, guided practices, and practical strategies, you'll learn how to help clients manage self-criticism, navigate challenges with greater flexibility, and build a more sustainable foundation for growth and well-being.

Learn More About the Course

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Dr. Mark Bertin is a developmental pediatrician and author of How Children Thrive, Mindful Parenting for ADHD, Mindfulness and Self-Compassion for Teen ADHD and The Family ADHD Solution, all of which integrate mindfulness into the rest pediatric care, and a contributing author for the book Teaching Mindfulness Skills to Kids and Teens.  Dr. Bertin is a faculty member at New York Medical College and the Windward Teacher Training Institute and has served on advisory boards for APSARD, Additude Magazine, Common Sense Media and Reach Out and Read.  His blog is available through Psychology Today and elsewhere.

Sarah Kraftchuk, MSc, RP (qualifying), is Head of Learning at the Mindful Institute. She is a licensed clinician, certified mindfulness facilitator, art therapist, and children’s book author. 

Michael Apollo, MHSc, RP, is a licensed clinician, mindfulness educator, and Founder of the Mindful Institute. With over 15 years of experience, he specializes in practical, evidence-based mindfulness training for helping professionals. Formerly Director of Mindfulness Programs at the University of Toronto, Michael has collaborated with organizations like the World Health Organization, the UK NHS, and the Canadian Parliament to support mental well-being and resilience in diverse settings.

Disclaimer

The content in our blog articles is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your health provider with any questions you may have regarding your mental health.