How You Outgrow ADHD: 3 Proven Ways

This is why and how I outgrew ADHD

You probably know someone (maybe even yourself) with ADHD, either diagnosed or not. What you might not know, however, is that this diagnosis might be the exact reason that is stopping you from outgrowing ADHD.

Every year thousands upon thousands of people get diagnosed with this ‘mental disorder’, mostly at a young age. An overwhelming 9.4% of U.S. children of age 2–17 have ever received an ADHD diagnosis, according to this study.

Getting diagnosed with ADHD might be helpful for understanding your condition as well as for getting treatment. What this is also doing, however, is making you a victim. Yes, you heard that right:

Your ADHD diagnosis is making you a victim

By becoming diagnosed with this ‘disorder’, you are effectively letting yourself off the hook. You are no longer the person that is responsible for your behavior, at least to some extent.

Normally when you are having a hard time concentrating it’s a good idea to take a little break. Go for a walk, do meditation, or do something else that helps you focus when you get back to work.

When you are diagnosed with ADHD all of a sudden it becomes easy to blame your inability to focus on ADHD. As it is a mental illness according to your diagnosis, it becomes easy to avoid the responsibility for doing something about it.

The problem with ADHD is the way people look at it

ADHD is not a sickness like most people think about it, but rather a set of traits. Among these traits are inattention, hyper-fixation, excessive energy, and impulsivity.

However, these traits are also signs of an untrained mind. Not being able to focus and unfocus on command tells a lot about the degree to which the mind is disciplined. Let’s take the example of a dog:

When a young puppy is untrained it will run after every butterfly it sees. Sitting still for only a second is a big challenge, let alone when there are distractions around.

Now if this dog will never get the proper training, it will find it very hard to sit still with distractions around, even at a higher age.

Now let's take a look at a trained dog, doing exactly what its owner commands it to do. It is not letting itself get drawn away by irrelevant stimuli. This discipline not only gives peace to the dog but also enables it to listen and thrive.

The human mind is not so different from the dog's mind.

Instead of hiding behind this diagnosis, we can also start to take responsibility for our untrained minds. When we commit ourselves to resolve the symptoms we feel that hold us back, we are in a powerful position.

Decide to take the responsibility to train yourself

Now we have given ourselves the power over our situation, it’s time to start to grow out of it. There are plenty of ways to discipline the mind, to make it focus on command.

For anyone that is not interested in using ADHD medication, or looking to get off of them, there are plenty of alternatives that can work even better.

According to my own experience, these 3 proven ways work the best:

1. Having a daily meditation or mindfulness practice

There is an overwhelming amount of research done on the effects of meditation and mindfulness. This research shows that having daily practice improves focus among other skills.

This study on 32 people diagnosed with ADHD reported not only high satisfaction with the training they received on mindfulness. Also, did they improve on their ADHD symptoms, and they even scored better on tests measuring attention and cognitive inhibition (the ability to tune out to irrelevant stimuli).

Meditation and mindfulness train your brain to focus, and also do they train your brain to ignore irrelevant stimuli. In other words, this is the way to discipline your mind like in the dog’s example above.

2. Reading for 10 minutes a day

Reading is very different from other entertainment, as it requires you to focus actively. Different than with watching a video, with reading you have to consciously put in the effort to get the information from the text you are reading.

Consciously putting in effort trains your brain to focus. The ability to focus is just like a muscle. The muscle grows by training it regularly, with a high enough intensity. By lifting paper clips your biceps won’t grow, and by watching funny videos similarly, your focus will not grow.

By reading every day for just 10 minutes you teach your brain how to actively focus and how not to give in to distractions.

3. Daily physical activity

There are lots of ways to do this effectively, but just going for a walk can already be enough. Other activities I find very helpful are working out, running and yoga.

The way to go, however, is not to just (for example) walk. Do not listen to music or enjoy yourself thinking about other things. For physical activity to contribute to training your mind to focus, it is important for you to pay full attention to what you are doing.

When you are walking, even if it’s for just 5 minutes, focus solely on the sensations you feel in your body. Feel your steps. Focus on the sensations at the bottom of your feet. Feel your legs moving, your knees bending and your feet touching the ground. Try to be as curious as you possibly can be.

Maybe this feels a bit odd or even boring in the beginning. With some regular practice, however, it will become enjoyable. You will notice that after some time it gets easier to focus on the sensations and it will take longer until you get distracted.

Being fully aware of the sensations in your body is the same as being focused.

People with ADHD often have trouble with planning. If this is also the case for you, this article will help you.

If there is one thing to take away from this article, it is that if you change the way you look at ADHD, you can change your life. When you take the responsibility to discipline your brain, your focus muscle becomes stronger and you will get confident in your ability to do what is demanded.

Thank you for reading my article, and good luck with the exercises. For questions about this article, please leave a comment and I will get back to you.

If you would also like to receive my best insights, then click here to subscribe to my newsletter.