Life is a lot like snowshoeing, you can only move forward ...

Those of us with ADHD, like everyone else, have something that is a part of life that we can leverage. We can use this commodity to our advantage, trade it for value, success, self esteem.

It doesn’t matter that in the past we’ve screwed up … okay, that may matter a little, we’re probably all standing well behind the starting line, but once we find out what we’re dealing with, we at least know what direction we’re supposed to be going.

The commodity I’m talking about is the future. Your future, my future, our future. If we’re going to stand still and whimper, it doesn’t matter where the starting line is, we aren’t going to reach the finish line … okay, that’s not true either.

Sorry, wrong analogy …

We’ll reach the finish line, we just won’t have done anything along the way but whimper.

But the fact is, this isn’t a race, it’s life. And one day it will be over for each of us. And yes, we maybe didn’t get a fair shake. We got saddled with poor executive function, synaptic static, impulsive behavior, frontal lobe inadequacies … I have to stop talking about this now, I’m bringing myself down.

Symptoms vs. Symptoms²

The point is, yes, that’s our lives, a list of symptoms that the rest of the world recognizes as occasional problems. A list of symptoms that we deal with, just like they do, but to the power of two, or more.

Please bring all returns directly to the service desk!

But whining won’t make those symptoms go away. Meds may help some of us deal with some of those symptoms, but not all of us, not always.

The reality is that many of these symptoms have a two-fold effect, they do their nasty job of distracting us or helping us make wrong decisions … and then they leave us to beat ourselves up over our foibles.

There’s no place to go to exchange them for good symptoms. They were on clearance, no exchanges, no refunds. And they’re not recyclable.

So, you have a life ahead of you, or what’s left of it. You may or may not have a diagnosis. You might have a prescription, you might not. You may have read everything you can get your hands on about your ADHD or you may be just starting to find out about it.

And you have the same symptoms you had yesterday and the day before, and the week before that and …

So what are you going to do about it?

What is there that you can do about it? To date, beating yourself up has not really made any improvement. In fact, as I mentioned, it’s the second negative effect that each symptom delivers to us, heavy blows to our self esteem.

What was that commodity I started talking about at the beginning?

At the top of the page I started telling you about the future. Well, pointing towards the future was more like what I was doing. And I still am, ’cause I have no other choice. Forward is the only direction we have, anything else is just standing still.

So, the plan for me is to leverage the future by approaching it without the baggage of guilt for the things I didn’t control well. I’m not saying I could have done better, and I’m certainly not saying I couldn’t have done better, I’m just saying I can’t change it now. I’m saying it’s a mistake to call guilt and self flagellation a lesson learned.

I’m saying there are better things to do in the future then to deflate my self esteem. And I do have better things to do!

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    Last reviewed: 3 Feb 2012