ADHD: Geniuses, Millionaires, and Presidents

We may whine and complain about ADHD. Wish our kids didn't have it. And look for ways to get over it.

But, a lot of ADHD folks have been fabulously successful. The most famous is Einstein himself!


Then we've got other geniuses like Mozart and Leonardo da Vinci.

How about millionaires? Bill Gates has ADHD and so did John D. Rockefeller.

Five U.S. presidents, including John F. Kenney and Abraham Lincoln, got elected and governed well despite ADHD.

Some football players, basketball players and baseball players played ball extraordinarily well with ADHD: Terry Bradshaw, Magic Johnson, and even Babe Ruth join the list.

Tom Cruise, Walt Disney, Danny Glover, Steven Spielberg and Robin Williams in Hollywood all have ADHD.

Telephones, airplanes, and light bulbs were all invented by ADHDers.

And some famous guys had ADHD so badly they did poorly in school (or at least got bored with it). Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard. Thomas Edison's teachers told him he was too stupid to learn anything. Einstein couldn't talk until he was four. Werner von Braun, the famous rocket scientist, flunked 9th grade algebra.

Lots more successful folks appear on the famous ADHDers list.

And what ADD qualitities did these ADHDers take advantage of? Creativity, outside the box thinking, persistence, ability to hyperfocus on a passion, intuition, and thriving on chaos.

So the next time you're feeling blue about ADHD or a kid in your class is driving you crazy or your child's having trouble in school, just remember that ADHD isn't all bad!

MaryJo

P.S. And speaking of ADHD, the ADHD TeleChat with oodles of strategies for helping at home and in school is still available. Even includes some Brain Gym for taming ADHD. If you've missed the first couple calls, you can listen to the audio recordings on the web and pick up the rest on the phone.