I grew up as a young boy never believing that any of my wants and desires could be possible. Everything I dreamed of always fell apart. I remember being very young and having great hope within my heart. The world was fresh and it seemed the world revolved around me, but already at the tender age of 6 all of that hope was flushed away and a life of mental misery would ensue. Nobody died and nothing of obvious tragedy happened. All that happened is that I entered the school system and my world changed—everything changed. I went from being dotted over to being complained about and punished so quick I didn’t even know what was happening–much less why it was happening. I was a young boy with undiagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder and another 31 years, from the day I started school, would pass before I would be officially diagnosed.
No matter how much my elders punished and chastised me for my seemingly careless behaviors, nothing pained me more than the punishment I put myself through. I wanted to do things, I wanted to believe in myself and I wanted to be a good kid, but, I just couldn’t no matter how hard I tried. Even as a young boy my mind was always racing with thoughts of doing things, many things–awesome things and yet failure after failure due to forgetfulness, daydreaming and even boredom led me to a decision I made which I used as a protective measure against constant heart break. Already at 11 years old whenever I started thinking of something I wanted I would tell myself it would never happen. Somehow I mistakenly thought that if I told myself it wouldn’t happen I would not get my hopes up to be crushed and maybe, just maybe better things would happen for me. Well, that didn’t work. It got worse. It got to the point that I crushed my own dreams as ridiculous before they could ever develop into desire and hope. I did this to protect myself, not realizing I was really just hurting myself more. How was I supposed to know that at 11 years of age? Nobody knew what was wrong with me, so how was I supposed to know? I punished myself more and more just to be better, but as a young child if you don’t know what’s wrong and the elders around you don’t know what’s wrong—what hope is there? That’s how I felt about it.
Years later I would start making it in life after the school system and living on my own. The same reason I had so many problems was also the same reason I eventually became successful. People with Attention Deficit Disorder are well known for their creativity and inventive ideas. Those traits helped me survive, but only so much. Even after leaving home and living on my own I still held myself back. I did just enough to take care of myself, but never enough to risk creating hope and desire within myself. I was like a car driving around with the handbrake on and I held myself back whenever a whisper of desire and hope entered my thoughts.
Eventually a friend came along and recognized my self-destructive nature for part of what it really was. I don’t know how many times I was told that I move myself 5 feet forward only to, in turn, move myself back 6 feet. This friend presented me with a book and asked me to read it. It was a book by Norman Vincent Peale and it was called The Power of Positive Thinking. It was so refreshing to read and through it I learned a new way in which to think. A Quote from it stuck in my mind and I started to use it daily, even hourly: “Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop this picture. Never think of yourself as failing: Never doubt the reality of the mental image. That is most dangerous, for the mind always tries to complete what it pictures. So always picture “success” no matter how badly things seem to be going at the moment”.
I started to move forward and I started to allow myself, ever so slightly, to want, dream and hope. It started to work and things started to happen for me… but eventually I started sabotaging myself again and I couldn’t figure out why. I started to feel the pain again. I wanted to think positive and I tried to think positive but my mind was doing things out of my control. This time though, I did not go back to just not believing in myself. This time I pictured in my mind finding the answer to the way my brain works. I discovered I was different and not everyone suffered from my type of problems. I started to seek help and was often dismissed as perfectly healthy, but I didn’t give up. Then, thanks to Oprah, I learned about a new book called “The Secret” and in this book it repeated the words of N.V.P. and it explained more about vibrations. I used those vibrations to keep myself on track. Life was passing me by and I started to send signals, vibrations out into the Universe and finally after so many long years I found a Doctor who understood what was wrong with me by discovering I have Attention Deficit Disorder ADD. Help had arrived and suddenly a new world opened up for me. That to me was Magic! If you seek—you shall find. Maybe those books were not magic in the true sense of magic, but they did propel me to have hope and seek.
That’s an extremely abbreviated story of my life, but I wanted to let others know how powerful The Power of Positive Thinking and the Law of Attraction can be. My experiences in life have led me to want to help others avoid the troubles I lived through, the frustrations and the heartbreaks of undiagnosed ADD. I put my mind to thinking of ways to do that and for someone who hardly ever followed through on his own dreams I found myself following through at last. I decided to write a book describing my struggles and my observations of hindsight. It is a book that I know will help parents, teachers, guardians of Adders and Adults with ADD, but, it doesn’t stop there I know it will also help anyone who has lived or is living a life of struggle by understanding and knowing one can find their way, a person can overcome and live a fulfilling life. But there is more, I started to search the internet for all the information about ADD and ADHD and that took forever sifting through search engines and sites that referenced certain links and therefore I decided I would create a site that would reference such links by specific category and be comprehensive unlike any site I could find. I visualized creating such a site and I have started it at www.adderworld.com ! For someone who could never achieve, I have found a way and you can too!
Life is such a wonderful thing to have and we should live it to our fullest potential and we can. Believe in yourself, trust in yourself and never, no, never give up.
(To learn more about my book click on the ‘What about Bryan’ page)
~Bryan
