Always a Little Bit “Other”: ADHD Brains and the People Who Change the World

For the Visionaries, Misfits and Leaders Who Never Fit the Mould

If you zoom out and look through history, every community has had its outliers… the seers, the creators, the innovators…those of us who never quite fit the mould.

We didn’t have the language for it then.
No “ADHD” No “autism spectrum”. No “neurodivergent”.

We just knew there were people who didn’t fit the neat boxes. The ones who saw patterns others missed. Who were always asking “why” and “what if”. Who were impossibly bad at some everyday things… and breathtakingly brilliant at others.

Now we have the science and awareness to understand what many of us have always felt: we are not all built the same. Our brains are as unique as our fingerprints.

Some of us are, quite literally, wired differently.

The quiet revolution of naming how you’re wired

In recent years, there’s been a wave of adults receiving diagnoses that sit under the neurodivergent umbrella. For many, that moment isn’t about putting you in a box; it’s about finally understanding why the boxes around you never felt like home.

Whether you’re formally diagnosed, strongly suspect it, or just know “neurotypical” has never felt like your category …finally having language for your wiring can be a relief. It gives meaning to something you’ve felt for a long time. Maybe you’ve already had that moment, or maybe, like many of my clients, you’re still in the “I’m not diagnosed, but wow… this is suspiciously familiar” phase.

Either way, this is the territory I live and work in. Looking back over the years, I realised something striking: if I go through my client list, roughly 80% of the people I coach either now know they are ADHD or strongly suspect they are.

It took me a while to see the pattern. But of course it makes sense.

Because I work with the outliers.

The creatives. The game-changers. The system disruptors. The entrepreneurs who can hold a vision for an entirely new world in their heads and feel it in their bones.

And I come from a long line of entrepreneurs and neurodiverse humans myself. I didn’t have the words for it growing up. I just knew the people around me were intense, brilliant, messy, big-hearted, highly sensitive, easily bored, deeply driven, and allergic to doing life the “normal” way.

Through a long-standing client’s ADHD diagnosis, backed by my own professional development and research, I started to connect the dots. I learned how to recognise the patterns, behaviours, strengths and challenges that often come with a non-neurotypical brain.

And I also learned this: you are exactly the kind of mind the future needs.

ADHD, leadership & the engine of innovation

There’s an interesting overlap between ADHD, entrepreneurship and systems change.

Many founders and leaders show classic ADHD traits: rapid idea generation, high energy, risk tolerance, hyperfocus on what lights them up, an almost stubborn refusal to accept “that’s just how it’s done”.

Those same traits that made school hard are the ones that drive innovation.

You:

• See connections other people miss.

• Can hold big-picture complexity in your head.

• Feel possibilities in your body long before they’re obvious on a spreadsheet.

• Have an inner motor that simply won’t let you settle for “good enough” when you know great, or transformed, is possible.

This is the engine room of world-changing work.

But let’s be honest: an ADHD or otherwise neurodivergent brain doesn’t come as a tidy “superpower only” package. It comes with real challenges too.

Time blindness. Executive function struggles. Difficulty following through on boring-but-essential things. Overwhelm. Sensitivity to rejection or criticism. Nervous systems that can go from zero to “I need to burn my whole life down” in seconds when overstretched.

That’s where an integrative approach to personal and professional development is key.

You don’t need fixing. You structures that work for you.

Neurodiversity isn’t a trend; it’s simply naming what has always been true: human minds were never one-size-fits-all. The difference now is that we have language, community, and tools that help you translate your wild, beautiful inner world into tangible change “out here”.

The way I work with clients like you is not about making you more “normal”.

You don’t need to become more palatable, less intense, less “too much”. The world doesn’t need a dimmed-down version of you.

What you do need is:

• Structures that support your brain instead of fighting it

• Habits that nurture your focus and energy

• Clarity on where your real genius lies

• Permission to stop saying yes to everything you’re objectively terrible at

In practice, that looks like:

1. Naming your wiring – without shame

2. Building frameworks and blueprints for your genius

3. Putting people and processes around your blind spots

4. Learning what to say no to (and yes to).

A little permission slip for your neurodivergent self

If any of this feels like someone has been reading your internal diary, this is for you:

You are not broken. You are wired for something magnificent.

Your work is to:

• Understand how you operate

• Honour it

• Build a life and career with it, not against it

• Surround yourself with people and structures that let your genius lead

When you do that, life and work start to feel far less like swimming upstream.

If you’d like support with mapping your big vision and creating a business or project that actually works for who you are, that’s the work I love most.

Because helping outliers like you do something magnificent with your one brief, blazing life? That has been the privilege of mine.

Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash