Over 20 years ago, I heard Thomas Brown (Yale University professor and author of Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults) speak about adults with ADHD. He said one of the biggest and most understated problems for adults with ADHD is “activation.” Chapter Two frames the activation problem as a neurological feature and presents specific strategies for activating (starting) and sustaining effort (finishing). The metaphor of washing one dish at a time—versus cleaning the kitchen—illustrates a way you can circumvent negative mental activity and transcend the tendency to procrastinate. The chapter focuses on prevention of becoming overwhelmed and sidetracked.

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Chapter Three challenges the notion that you are incapable of listening attentively to others, or speaking with mindful consideration of the listener. You may have problems listening attentively and being considerate in speech because you have formed maladaptive habits around your neurological differences. While those differences contribute to tendencies, tendencies do not have to become actualized. Old habits can be supplanted by new, competing habits. Chapter Three addresses how to cultivate and demonstrate mindful consideration of others.

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Chapter Four illustrates special challenges to couples affected by ADHD in the relationship. It proposes that couple therapy is likely to fail without addressing the impact of the disorder on the partnership. Chapter Four challenges you to step up and share leadership with your relationship partner rather than react as if your partner is a parent. It highlights the need to understand specific effects of ADHD on your partner and how to rise above defensiveness and resignation in the interest of sharing power and influence.

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Are you unfocused or too focused? Chapter Five highlights the difficulty you probably have shifting between two types of attention: selective attention and open awareness. Plugging your attention into one focused activity requires unplugging your attention from another. This shift is difficult for your brain and represents the common problem of attention management. Your brain can be too focused, as it is when lost in a daydream, or brainlocked in an activity that is stimulating or urgent, but unimportant. Chapter Five presents strategies for shifting your attention. It addresses habitual mindlessness, time-wasters, destructive indulgences, and excuses.

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Your brain may be wired for creativity, but the neurological differences will not guarantee realizing your creative potential. I challenge a belief that you might hold: that you are not creative. Because you have difficulty activating and sustaining your effort, you may doubt your potential for creating. You may not have fully experienced the rewards of sustained effort. Chapter Six highlights how habitual, negative self-talk (“You’re not creative…you’re a fraud…you never finish anything!”) inhibits creativity. It cites evidence of exceptional potential in the brains of individuals with ADHD and encourages experimentation.

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Jokes about ADHD abound. Many of them are harmless and even repeated by individuals with the disorder. But some are demeaning and offensive. You may laugh at yourself and joke with other likeminded individuals and family members. But some jokes imply a lack of intelligence or common sense. Chapter Seven relates your past experiences to current experiences of feeling misunderstood and devalued. In your past, you may have experienced victimization by bullies, alienation from peers, and punishment by parents and teachers. Jokes can trigger emotional memories associated with rejection. This chapter addresses how to relate to that history so it does not lend to rejecting yourself.

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Chapter Eight highlights extraordinary successes of ordinary individuals like you. These particular adults with ADHD are people I know personally. Other books on ADHD typically identify successful, well-known individuals in history whose biographies suggest that they might have had the disorder—like Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and Winston Churchill. In this book, I describe the experiences of individuals who overachieved relative to the expectations of their families, peers, and teachers. These examples provide inspiring models.

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Emotion regulation is an understated challenge for many individuals with ADHD. Chapter nine reflects my interest in recent knowledge about neuroplasticity and the benefits of meditation. The brain concurrently perceives an external world and its own internal activity. The internal activity includes thoughts and emotions, imagined future events, and anticipated feelings (e.g., fearing the feeling of fear). We can easily confuse thoughts about experience with actual experience. The practice of observing external events (activity outside the brain) and internal events (activity of the brain) are themes of chapter nine. It illustrates the brain’s remarkable capacity to change itself and how that capacity can serve you.

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Chapter Ten describes the tools for living well with ADHD and encourages you to get started using them. Its aim is to move you beyond attention to obstacles, negative thinking, and even the tools themselves—toward possibilities and opportunities instead. It prescribes effort and practice. Its message is an alternative to changing your brain to change your life, focusing instead on accepting your brain to skillfully manage your life (which will change your brain). It assumes that your Zen mind is not to be left on the cushion, but to be used as a tool for living well in your daily life. This chapter includes a perspective on medicine as a tool.

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