ADD/ADHD Making You Feel like a Failure?

People need to learn how to manage failure so it's informational and not demoralizing.

—Stanford psychology professor Albert Bandura

I've failed at plenty of things in my life. I failed a class on animal behavior in college. I failed to put up the produce fast enough at an organic grocery where I once worked. I've failed at two marriages. And I've failed at times to remain calm when my daughter rolls her eyes at me. If you or your child has ADD/ADHD, chances are you've bumped up against failure at some point as well. 

Turns out we're not alone. Think Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, and Walt Disney. Socrates, Elivs, and Tolstoy. I got those names from this nifty and inspiring list of people who failed. It's worth perusing.

What helps a person who fails succeed in the end? Those of us with ADD might need a little extra help. But check out the title of the list: "They Did Not Give Up." We don't need to, either!

Still think you're nothing but a failure? Check out this Wall Street Journal article on failure, self-efficacy, and success: "If at First You Don't Succeed, You're in Excellent Company."

Comments

[Melanie Mulhall]

Kathleen,

Thanks for the reminder that wildly successful and creative people have experience with failure. I am reminded of an article in Harvard Business Review, many years ago (May-June, 1991). The article, by Chris Argris, was titled "Teaching Smart People How to Learn." While I am going to summarize and generalize in a rather cavalier way here, at least a part of what Mr. Argris had to say was that some successful people haven't had enough experience with failure to have developed their adaptive muscles to it and the feelings that come with it. So they develop a fear of failure and they also develop a kind of defensiveness that makes them brittle. It's an article worth checking out.

Melanie Mulhall

[Kathleen Christensen]

Thanks, Melanie! The article sounds really interesting (and probably pertinent for me)--am going to check it out.