This post grew out of a conversation about famous people and ADHD so I Googled it and found a number of sites that listed people with ADHD. I have listed some of the names here just to give you a taste. My favorite list was on the ADHD Relief website. Now for the disclaimer, I have not used their products nor do I endorse them but I can say the list is one of the most comprehensive that I found. For the full list of names complete with links to biographies you can click on the link at the end of this list.
Alexander Graham Bell
George Burns
Prince Charles
Agatha Christie
Winston Churchill
Bill Cosby
Salvador Dali
Walt Disney
Kirk Douglas
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Henry Ford
Whoopi Goldberg
Ernest Hemingway
Dustin Hoffman
“Magic” Johnson
Michael Jordan
John F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
John Lennon
Steve McQueen
General George Patton
Pablo Picasso
John D. Rockefeller
Nelson Rockefeller
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
Babe Ruth
George C. Scott
Steven Spielberg
Jackie Stewart
James Stewart
Robin Williams
Henry Winkler
Stevie Wonder
Frank Lloyd Wright
These people have all made their mark in history. I have to ask myself what is holding back the rest of us? I don’t know yet but I intend to find out and when I do you will be the first to know. To see the full list with links to biographies click on the link below.
www.adhdrelief.com/famous.html
Why are these ADHD people successful and other ADHD people are not?
One thing they seem to have in common is their love for what they are doing. They are passionate about it, excited about it. They are living their dream, working at their dream job.
Over and over in interviews these people talk about how they love what they are doing, often saying they can’t believe someone is willing to pay them to do this kind of work. For someone like us if the activity is something we love the activity becomes easy and things don’t seem to go wrong.
Now think of a job you didn’t like. Was it hard work, stressful, exhausting? The harder you tried the more you seemed to mess up? Everyone does a better job if they like what they are doing but with ADHD it’s almost as if it magnifies the effect. It is harder for us and more energy draining to work at a job that does not interest us. But we can become highly successful if we are doing something that we really like.