When I was a kid they told me, “If you care about something and work hard you’ll succeed.” I failed, a lot, and so I figured, “I must be lazy and apathetic.”

Eventually I found my ikigai and success. I thought, “now I care and now I’m working hard, I’m a different person, this is why I’m successful now.”

I always knew I had ADHD, but strangely nobody seemed to acknowledge it outright. My parents just laughed when the neighbor called me space-cadet. I was diagnosed with dysgraphia, which was all my mom wanted to talk about.

Recently I’ve been reading about ADHD and I came to a realization. I was never lazy or apathetic. I’m not a different person now, I just found something where the bulk of my work provides me the dopamine I need to stay engaged. I’ve also got some masking strategies, which took me 30 years to develop because I had to do it on my own.

Nobody looks at a paraplegic and says, “boy are you lazy.”

Please don’t let other people define you. Don’t mistake your ADHD for a character flaw. Find your ikigai. It won’t fix your ADHD, but it will make you a whole lot happier.

Ikigai:

A motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living. The feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment that follows when people pursue their passions. Activities that generate the feeling of ikigai are not forced on an individual; they are perceived as being spontaneous and undertaken willingly, and thus are personal and depend on a person’s inner self.