How ADHD Pulled This Entrepreneur Out Of $600k Debt (with Galel Fajardo)

Yeah.

So like many adults, I did not know I was ADHD.

I thought-- quite frankly, I thought, "Oh my gosh, there's something wrong with me," like I've got a brain tumor or something.

Like, I was literally going to the doctor saying, "I'm having trouble." Like, all these things in my business came to a head where I was losing things, and I was ruining relationships with clients because I was forgetting things, and the systems that I had as a teenager and in my 20s were completely failing me in my 30s, which just happens with age, right? Your short-term memory.

I remember my schedule was all in my head as a teenager, so I...

And again, you have less things going on.

And then as I got into my 20s and 30s, I started realizing like, what I-- what's gotten me here is not gonna get me to where I need to go, and just things started falling apart in my business life.

And a friend of mine said, "You know, you should probably get checked out for ADHD." And so I went to the doctor, and sh- the, the psychologist took me through a battery of tests and said, "Yeah, you're off-the-charts ADHD, specifically with impulsivity." And I took it to my mom, who's a physician, and I said, "Mom, did you know I was ADHD?" She goes, "Of course we knew.

We've known forever." And I went, "This would've been really helpful information for me to have as a kid," you know, and, and growing up.

And so that diagnosis led to a journey of self-discovery, and as I tell my coaching clients, the human beings that are most self-aware are those people that success will come faster.

Because when you can realize where your weaknesses are and what you're struggling with and get help for those things, that really starts to open up doors very quickly.

Yeah.

No, 100%, and it's great when you have those people who can just show you the path.

So describe to me that feeling of realizing you had ADHD and then looking back at your life and having to remap everything based on that.

How did that feel for you?

The first feeling was shameful.

I felt a lot of shame associated with just the way that I had burned certain relationships, ways that I had burned work relationships.

Because ADHD people, because we lack dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, we're-- we-- one of the, the downsides that I've recognized is that we seek conflict sometimes.

And so I look at places where I was working, and I would seek conflict subconsciously to create some kind of rush, and I'm like, a lot of those things were just made up in my head.

And so my brain would kind of put these connections together.

I would dislike somebody, and then that would lead to me losing a job.

And so there was a, a phase when I had lost my business and was working and had, had to work to support my family that I felt like I couldn't keep a job because I was always eventually, like, getting bored and then starting conflict.

And so there was a lot of shame when I finally went back to look back at all those issues, that I'd created these problems in my career that could've been avoided had I had the self-awareness, the knowledge, and just the coping mechanisms for that.

Yeah, it is crazy looking back, and I, and I ask you that 'cause I think everybody has that experience of remapping and being like, "Oh, that wasn't 'cause they sucked," or, "That wasn't because I just hadn't found the perfect thing for me yet," or, "This wasn't, you know, the right..." Like, the- these things were the, you know, the fact that my brain was just being like, "Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on" [chuckles] in the background the whole time.

Yeah.