You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!: The Classic Self-Help Book for Adults With Attention Deficit Disorder Read Free

order to grow. You may be less likely than your more placid friends to stay in the same routine jobs, relationships and behavior patterns.
3. Hyperactivity:
This can be channeled into focused energy. There is nothing wrong with a high activity level per se. Rushing madly in all directions at once is the real problem. We can learn to make high energy work for us, not against us.
    We are much more than our ADD. Each of us has a unique profile of strengths thatcan be used to design and implement a lifestyle that is a good fit for us as individuals. There are many examples of successful ADDers, both historically and in the present. While it is not possible to make a posthumous diagnosis of ADD, what we know about the lives of Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill and Benjamin Franklin, for example, makes us more than a little bit suspicious about their “diagnosability.”The CEO of JetBlue Airways, Dustin Hoffman, and Dr. Ned Hallowell are among the many successful people who have come out of the closet about their ADD. And of course, we all wonder about most of the people who do comedy for a living. For every ADD celebrity, there are multitudes of less visible folks who have found a niche for the weird and wonderful brain style known as ADD. Below isa partial list of vocations that can benefit from “diversified thinking”: sales entrepreneurship comedy acting writing teaching parenting science design
    Actually, anything humans do is enhanced by the capacity to think outside the box. As ADDers, we tend to excel at that kind of thinking. Our task is to tame the chaos and the paper piles enough so that they don’t choke the life out of living.We want “good enough” structure and organization, not a strait-jacket.
    ADD Is a What?
    KK: “In the past week, I got a puzzling e-mail from my dad. We had been going back and forth about which political candidate he was supporting. The final e-mail in this particular thread seemed to be a duplicate of the last one I sent him. I chalked it up as an ‘oops’ and went about my business, keeping thee-mail on the desktop. Some time later, my partner, Paul, drew my attention to the new signature that appeared on the bottom of the e-mail. This was one I had just added after a signature-less couple of months due to a new computer system learning curve. In a pretty font and yummy colors, it read:
    Kate Kelly
ADDed Dimension Coaching
addcoaching.com
“ADD—it’s not just a disorder, it’s an ADDed Dimension”
    “Only my dad’s version was slightly different. I don’t know how he expected my ADD self to pick up on it, but perhaps it was one of those brain teasing tests he delights in administering to the poor unsuspecting soul who is already convinced they are indeed lazy, stupid and crazy. Actually, I think it is just his particularbrand of humor, his way of having fun. OK … are you readyfor my dad’s version of the signature? His edited response was:
    Kate Kelly
ADDed Dimension Coaching
addcoaching.com
“ADD—it’s not just a disorder, it’s a bullcrap copout”
    “Well! Can you believe he wrote that? In the early days of my own ADD journey I would have shriveled up, curled myself into a little ball on hearing or reading those words. This week I just laughed my head off and sent a messageto my dad that publication is the best revenge. I also thanked him for providing the inspiration for part of this introduction.”
    While these words may seem rude or downright cruel to the ADDer who is struggling to make sense of his or her life, they are just an in-your-face version of the attitudes we deal with on the journey to self-acceptance. We encounter versions of this kind of thinkingon talk radio, in books and even in the bosoms of our families. The idea that the kinds of behaviors seen in ADD are the result of a character defect is ingrained in our collective consciousness. Even those of us who have spent our lives slaving to try to control our ADD symptoms without success