Re: It may be too late for me

[Rick Green – Founder of TotallyADD]

I found it very empowering when I realized that there is actually no cutoff age for dealing with my ADHD. And there’s no timetable, schedule, set way of doing it, order in which it has to be done, areas you absolutely have to deal with, or even any kind of finish line or final goal.

Mental health and having strength, power and mastery of your mind is pretty much the same as physical health. In fact, the brain is an organ, right? It’s allowed to have problems like any other body part. Considering the complexity of the brain and the fact that the universe itself only exists because our brains make sense of it, I’m shocked everyone doesn’t have a dozen issues!

If you think of your brain as a muscle that you can train and build, like any other muscle well, hey there are 60 and 70 year olds who ran their first marathon this year. They did it by building their muscle. And there’s no set finish. Not every senior citizen has to work themselves up to a level of fitness to run a marathon, to be able to benefit from exercise.

It’s all good.

I have to remind myself that this is an ongoing process. Just like my physical health. If I stop exercising, I lose muscle, fitness, energy, stamina… I backslide. (Oh, I am so back-slidden right now! I started walking to work about three weeks ago.)

In terms of physical health you can start an exercise program and keep building muscle as long as you want. You could even target the muscles they want to build depending on whether you’re interested in a marathon, swimming a lake, lifting weights or playing tennis.

Same with your brain. The big difference I suppose with internal organs like the brain, compared to muscles, is that it’s not easy to see the improvement. When I got in shape for that bike rally, I could see the difference in my legs. I lost 25 pounds of fat and put on at least 15 of muscle. My loose clothing and droopy pants were a constant reminder that I was making progress every week.

With ADHD the improvement is often hard to spot. So I find keeping a journal, and taking some of the ADHD tests again every month or two, will help track progress. If you take the tests again and again you may notice that under a symptom like, “I have trouble finishing complex tasks” that your answer has gone from VERY OFTEN to OFTEN. And then to SOMETIMES.

I know how often I think I’m stuck and it’s only in looking back, or in talking with my wife, that I see how far I’ve come.

So take the pressure off, give yourself time, and do what you want. It’s your life.

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