A couple of years ago, as I was growing, healing, setting boundaries, and beginning to recognize how intergenerational relational trauma had landed in my body, something interesting happened.
My body started craving mountain lakes.
Literally.
I wanted to throw myself into cold, clear mountain water.
So I noticed it. I listened. I honored it. And then, in true Think Time fashion, I NeuroPlanned it. I drew the dream. I piled eight people into a car. My husband at the time worked from a little Airbnb, and I took the kids on mountain hikes until I found the lakes my body kept asking for.
And it was healing.
In my classic ready-fire-aim method, I was already in motion before I fully understood why it was working.
So then I researched.
Turns out, for many people — not everyone — cold exposure may support:
❄️ alertness + energy
❄️ dopamine + norepinephrine
❄️ mood + stress resilience
❄️ reduced soreness for some
❄️ nervous system training
❄️ the embodied reminder: “I can do hard things”
For me, it’s not about being tough.
It’s about listening to my body, supporting my nervous system, and breathing steadily through discomfort.
Because high performance is not overriding your body.
It’s learning how to work with it.
Please consult your physician. I’m not giving medical, athletic, or psychological advice. Cold plunges are not for everyone, especially if you’re pregnant or have heart, blood pressure, circulation, Raynaud’s, seizure, or other medical concerns.
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ADHD Leaders • NeuroPlanning Membership
Helping Brilliant but Exhausted ADHD Visionaries Build Your Dream Without Burning Out
👇 Start here Welcome. 💛
About Christine Wilson, LPC — Founder of Think Time™
Hi, I’m Christine — a Licensed Professional Counselor (TX), mom of six, and the creator of Think Time™, the first whole-brain planning system designed for ADHD leaders, entrepreneurs, and creative high achievers. For years, I read every productivity book, tried every planner, and pushed myself harder… but nothing stuck. Not because I wasn’t mot
An older gentleman walked up to me as I got out of the pool today and said,
“How do you do it?”
It was SO cold.
So I thought I’d share. 😊
About six years ago, my first cold plunge was in Jackson Lake at the base of the Tetons. My friend Liza looked at me like I was hilarious.
I raised my arms from my postpartum body and called out to my homeschool-mom vacation buddy:
“This is supposed to enhance performance!!!”
She just giggled at me.
Then the idea resurfaced again two or three years ago after I moved to our log cabin in Tennessee. I had made a very active decision to take a more “body-up” approach to mental health. Not just thinking my way into healing. Not just journaling. Not just mindset.
But actually working with my nervous system through my body.
The only problem?
I was a total wimp when it came to cold. 😂
So I started with what I called cool plunges.
I filled my bathtub with cool water and tried to stay in for three minutes.
Then I progressed to grabbing kitchen containers, filling them with water, freezing them, and dropping those giant homemade ice cubes into the tub while I exercised downstairs.
My routine became: workout, shower, cold plunge.
And I would wear a swimsuit so my kids could get excited about it with me. They always had the most amazed faces—especially my little boy.
“It’s COLD!!” he would say with this huge, impressed smile.
He was genuinely wowed by my bravery.
Eventually, almost two years ago, I joined a gym. When the weather was cold, I would cycle through: hot tub, cold plunge, hot tub, cold plunge, sauna, steam room, and shower 2-3 times a week.
And now that it’s getting warm again, my gym officially transformed one of the hot tubs into a cold plunge.
So basically, I am stoked. 😍
In my next post, I’ll share why cold plunging has become so therapeutic and helpful for me—and why it is now a central part of my rejuvenating routines.
Not because I’m naturally brave.
But because I started small.
And kept showing up.
05/04/2026
When it comes to dreams and goals, everyone thinks it’s about time management.
But I have a different perspective.
I ask what if you had ample focus and energy?
You immediately know your answer.
You would do it twice as fast. 3× 4x 10x as fast.
That is why week by week members get guidance in our membership from me on exactly how to increase clarity that promotes focus and gentle shifts that promote energy.
This picture shows me at the gym in the yoga studio even with my healing sprained ankle.
For the last six weeks, I have had to modify my workouts, but I haven’t missed them.
It’s not because I’m disciplined.
It’s because I depend on them.
What is one thing you can insert in your week this week to improve your focus and energy?
.life
05/03/2026
When you look at something beautiful, your brain changes.
Not in a hyper way. In a real, human, neuroscience kind of way.
When I sit by a lake like this, I’m reminded that beauty is not a waste of time. Pausing is not doing nothing. Your brain is taking in the scene, your body is softening, and several beautiful things can begin to happen:
🌿 Dopamine — your brain says, “This matters. Pay attention.”
🍃 Serotonin — your system moves toward calm, contentment, and well-being.
🌊 Endorphins — your body gets that soft, soothing exhale you didn’t realize you needed.
✨ Oxytocin — you may feel more connected to the moment, to your life, to God, to others, or to something bigger than yourself.
This matters so much because we live in a world that seems to forever reward output, urgency, and pushed productivity.
But…
A stressed brain is not your best brain.
Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stop long enough to let beauty bring your brain back online— to “plug yourself in” and “charge your batteries” so you can re-energize.
This is one of the reasons I talk so much about creating space to think, notice, reflect, and remember who you are.
Clarity does not always come from more input. Sometimes it comes from sitting beside a lake and letting yourself exhale.
This is not just fluff.
These are high performance habits you build into your rhythms and your routines.
Not just pushing harder. Not just doing more. But learning how to restore, replenish, renew your brain so you can return to your work, your people, your purpose, and your next right step with more clarity, creativity, and capacity.
Don’t rush past beauty.
Pause.
Notice.
Let it restore you.
Let it help you perform from peace instead of pressure.
05/01/2026
Yesterday, I talked about how most people think of high performance as hitting KPIs, chiseling a six-pack, or closing the business deal.
And yes, sometimes it is.
But a lot of the time?
High performance looks a lot more like real life.
It looks like failing forward.
Not hitting the goal.
Not getting it perfect.
Not performing at the level you hoped you would.
And then learning from it without shaming yourself so you can move into the next day with more wisdom, more humility, and more strength.
Sometimes high performance is not having a six-pack.
Sometimes it is trying to gently weave back together a diastasis that is three to four inches apart after carrying six babies.
Speaking for a friend. 😉
Sometimes it is showing up twice a week, every week, to the same heated yoga with weights class, slowly rebuilding strength from the inside out.
Especially your core.
Not because you are trying to look perfect.
But because over Christmas break, when your four-year-old’s ice skates somehow got tangled up with yours and you fell backward so hard your head hit the ice, you got a wake-up call.
The kind that reminds you how quickly life can change.
The kind that makes you realize that core strength is not just about abs.
It is about stability.
Protection.
Longevity.
Being able to catch yourself.
Being able to keep showing up for the life you actually want to live.
And maybe that fall was harder than it needed to be because your core was not fully supporting you yet.
Again.
Speaking for a friend.
High performance is not always glamorous.
Sometimes it is healing your body.
Sometimes it is healing your soul.
Sometimes it is learning how to fall, recover, and rebuild.
And when it comes to business?
Sometimes high performance is not closing the deal.
Sometimes it is nurturing a dream no one else can fully see yet.
It is taking step one.
Then step two.
Then step three, four, and five.
It is building something when you do not even know if it will work yet.
It is continuing when people think you are unrealistic.
It is moving forward when the dream has lived in your heart for ten years and still has not let go.
That is high performance too.
Failing forward.
Healing what needs to be healed.
Nurturing the dreams that will not leave you alone.
That is the real work.
And that is what we practice inside Think Time.
Every year.
Every quarter.
Every month.
Every week.
We create space to notice what is working, what is not working, what needs to heal, what needs to grow, and what still matters enough to keep going.
If you are curious how Think Time can support you, we have a planner for the do-it-yourselfers, a membership for those who want guided group support, and custom options for those who need a solution shaped around their real life.
You can hop on a free call, and we will do our best to serve you.
04/30/2026
Most people, when they think about high performance, think about hitting KPIs, getting in shape, or closing the deal.
And yes—those things can matter.
But from my perspective, high performance is more than what you achieve.
It’s also about who you are becoming.
Especially when you have ADHD.
Because your emotional life matters. Deeply.
One emotional sucker punch can knock your focus off for three days in a row!
So it’s not just about managing your goals.
It’s about learning how to manage your inner world with more awareness, agency, and resilience.
It’s about building a life that aligns with who you are, who you want to become, and what actually matters to you.
It’s about weathering the storms when they come—and still being able to come back to yourself.
High performance isn’t just about results.
It’s about results, relationships, and resilience over the long haul.
For the next few weeks, Bekah and I are opening up time on our calendars to talk with ADHD high achievers and creative leaders about your dreams, your goals, your current life situation, and your next best steps.
Click the link in my bio to schedule a call.
04/29/2026
With Rory Vaden – I just made it onto Rory's weekly engagement list by being one of their top engagers 🎉 Woo-hoo!
A stressed brain is not your best brain.
Our brain has Go-To responses when stress hits the system.
Fight.
Flight.
Freeze.
Fawn.
Flock.
Each of these strategies works until they don’t.
None of these are the place from which you want to pursue your dreams and goals.
If you’re curious about how you can use your mind body connection to help you calm down the stress response so you can increase your opportunities to achieve your dreams & goals in a distracting world, comment “unfreeze”.
I’ll send you a link to get started for free.
As a licensed professional counselor turned coach, I bring a different lens into the space of productivity.
It’s not just about getting things done.
It’s about getting the right things done—
and sometimes, it’s about not getting things done at all.
In this post, I share from my experience working with patients recovering from traumatic brain injuries.
Because while we often say performance is driven by identity…
we don’t talk enough about what happens to our identity
when we can’t perform.
When life slows us down—
a season of maternity leave,
a broken leg,
a diagnosis like cancer,
or a brain injury—
who are you then?
We need a sense of self that can weather those seasons.
A grounded identity that isn’t dependent on output.
Because life will bring storms.
Not might. Will.
And when it does, your identity has to be able to hold you.
NeuroPlanning™ is more than productivity.
It’s not just about doing more.
It’s about going down, down, down—
into the core of who you are—
and aligning your life from that place.
Start there.
Two hours.
That’s what we invested this afternoon.
Two hours to step out of the noise…
look at the months behind us and the one ahead…
reconnect with what matters…
and get clarity for the next 720 hours of our lives.
This is what we do inside the Think Time membership.
Yearly.
Quarterly.
Monthly.
Weekly.
We keep bringing our long-term goals into short-term steps.
And honestly?
It has been beautiful to watch members show up for themselves again and again — almost every week, every month, every quarter — choosing to move their lives in the direction they actually intend.
Not perfectly.
Intentionally.
I’m cheering them on so deeply as they take these steps, and I’m genuinely grateful to walk alongside them in the process.
Because clarity doesn’t usually happen by accident.
Sometimes, it happens because you pause long enough to think.
If this sounds aligned with the type of planning you have in mind...you know where to find us: think-time.com. Just click "Become a Member."
One lesson I learned as a therapist working with patients recovering from traumatic brain injury is that there are a lot of different methods you can try to improve functioning.
Breathing.
Electrical stimulation.
Crawling.
Movement.
Repetition.
Environmental changes.
The list is a mile long.
And what worked for one person didn’t necessarily work the same way for another.
But the big idea stayed with me:
There are many things you can try.
There are ways to support the brain and body.
There are ways to expand your capacity and improve your functioning over time.
And I think this is a principle that applies to every human.
If you’ve been through trauma, which many people have…
If you have ADHD…
Or if you’re simply a high-performance person who wants to maximize your capacity…
There are strategies you can try, and some of these you will build into your rejuvenating routines.
That’s something we do at Think Time.
Members build their personalized performance strategy step by step.
Week by week.
Month by month.
Year by year.
Not all at once.
Not with some generic plan.
But by reviewing what’s working and what’s not working, mind making ideas to try, and learning what actually helps them function better, recover better, focus better, and live better.
If you walk away from this post with anything today, I want you to have a sense of hope.
Maybe how things are today isn’t how they always have to be.
Maybe there are things you can try.
Maybe your capacity can grow.
And maybe today you can begin building a life that supports the person you want to become.
performance
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