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Using Your ADHD Skills

Give yourself permission to use your ADHD skills

For decades, you've been told that there is something wrong with you.

You can't focus. You're too distracted. You're disorganised. You're impulsive. You're too much, or not enough, or both at the same time.

And if you're a woman who got diagnosed later in life? You've probably added a few of your own labels: scattered, emotional, flaky, unreliable.

Here's what nobody told you: Every single one of those "deficits" is a different skill in disguise.

Let me show you what you've really got.

Using Your ADHD Skills

Here's what changes everything: Stop trying to fix your ADHD traits and start positioning yourself where they're encouraged and valued.

Your hyperfocus?

Gold for entrepreneurship, research, creative work, and problem-solving.

Your rapid decision-making?

Invaluable in startups, emergency response, leadership, trading, and journalism.

Your environmental awareness?

Perfect for design, safety, investigation, counselling, and customer service.

Your emotional intelligence?

Powerful for leadership, negotiation, sales, therapy, and team building.

Your innovative thinking?

Essential for strategy, product development, process improvement, and consulting.

The skills are already there. They've always been there.

You've just been trying to use them in environments that didn't understand or value them.

The Real Problem

The real problem was never your ADHD traits.

The real problem was being forced into boxes designed for brains that work completely differently from yours.

School systems are built for linear, sequential learning when your brain learns in spirals and leaps.

Workplaces that value "consistency" over brilliance, "process" over results.

Relationships where you were told to "calm down" instead of being celebrated for your intensity.

For women especially, you got hit twice: once for having ADHD traits, and again for not performing femininity "correctly" -- not being quiet enough, organised enough, calm enough, predictable enough.

You don't follow the system because you instantly see 12 ways it could be improved. You're not being difficult -- you're being creative. Your brain automatically optimises, automatically finds shortcuts, automatically asks, "Why are we doing it this way?"

Every major innovation came from someone who couldn't just follow the existing system. That's you.

Different Is Not Defective

Every single person is different. Every brain works its own way.

The only reason ADHD got labelled a "disorder" is because the traits don't fit neatly into traditional school and office environments designed in the 1950s.

But we're not living in the 1950s anymore.

The modern world -- with its rapid change, information overload, need for creativity, and demand for emotional intelligence -- is practically built for ADHD brains.

You don't need to become someone else.

You need to become more fully yourself and position that self where your natural wiring creates value rather than friction.

Your Next Move

This week, try this:

Make a list of your "ADHD problems." All of them. Everything you've been told is wrong with you.

Then, next to each one, write the skill it is.

"Can't focus" → Selective, intense focus on high-interest tasks

"Too emotional" → High emotional intelligence and empathy

"Impulsive" → Rapid decision-making ability

"Disorganised" → Flexible, adaptive thinking

See what you've got? These aren't deficits. These are capabilities.

The work isn't to fix yourself.

The work is to position yourself.

And that work starts with seeing your ADHD traits for what they really are: skills that have been waiting for the right environment to shine.

Focus on what matters.

Jim

P.S. Different isn't defective. It's just different. And in your case, that difference is exactly what makes you capable of extraordinary things.

P.P.S. Wishing Everyone a Safe and Happy Christmas.

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Today’s Thought:

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