Every now and then I will come across the strangest suggestions and the oddest questions. I am sure you have too. One of the strangest suggestions I came across recently is that people, especially children, with ADHD should not look up to, aspire to be or admire successful people with ADHD. I suppose there may be several potential reasons for this idea: Having goals that are too high, fear they will suffer great disappointment aspiring to such greatness or be hurt if they discover that they can’t necessarily be exactly like their heroes.
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I guess we could call those reasonable reasons, but what I am getting from this are a few things that come directly to mind:

• People with ADHD should not be inspired or motivated by people with ADHD who have gone before them and especially not those who have succeeded.

When I sit down to write an article or when I answer a question posed to me about ADHD, I pull from my experiences. And from my experiences, I would like to make one thing absolutely, positively clear:

You have got to have something to believe in, even if you have ADHD!

I have ADHD inside and out, from the right side of my brain to the left side and right down the middle! ADHD is not separate from who I am, it is not something which has divided a line down the middle of my brain and said this is my portion and this is where I stay. No, ADHD is part of everything I do, say and feel, act and contemplate. It is all encompassing. If I do something positive, ADHD is involved. If I do something negative, ADHD is involved. If I do something neutral, mysteriously enough, ADHD is involved. And by the way, yes, thanks to ADHD I can do some things better than other people can, because, they don’t have what I have. We are all unique individuals. ADHD is me!