103: Who Labeled You and What Did You Decide That Meant

Welcome to Fit for your Mind Friday where I share an insight from me to you. Who labeled you and what did you decide about that label? The other day my daughter, she asked me, mom, what's adhd? What does that mean? And she wanted to know if she had it because she said that someone told her that she did and that she heard you need a pill to fix it. Gosh, a flood of past memories just like completely hit me. I remember being in school hearing, pay attention, Natalie. You'd be so smart if you would just apply yourself or stop daydreaming. Pay attention, sit still, stop fidgeting, slow down. You talk too fast. Gosh, that was a theme of a childhood for me. My whole youth. My whole childhood, all through junior high. Those are the comments. I pull out report cards now from elementary school and I see those comments on there I was labeled as add, adhd, OCD even. I was even called learning disabled. I was always being put in a box and labeled by teachers, guidance counselors, as if I needed to be defined and fixed so I could be put in a normal box or something. My grades, let's just say if I was interested in a subject, I got an A and I wouldn't even have to study for that. Or if I wasn't interested, I got a D. I was that kind of student. But you see, there was a theme. I would over succeed and thrive when I was interested or I would tune out and daydream if I was not. Now I'm lucky. I'm grateful. I had those parents that didn't ever judge me around it. They didn't try to fix me because of my grades. In fact, I remember one time I was like 15 years old and I said to my mom and dad, I want to get a job because I want to make money. And my mom said I don't want you to get a job because I want you to study. And my dad interrupted her and said she's not going to study anyway. She might as well make money. God, he knew me so well. You see, to me ADHD is a gift. It allowed me to be creative beyond thrive and actual interests. And it taught me how to enroll others in vision, creativity, passions. It taught me how to thrive despite others opinions on how to continually think outside the box and dismiss and ignore judgment. It taught me to find creative solutions. Always what I want to know is who decided that it's a disorder and why did they get to dictate and decide this to so many people? I mean, maybe they have a disorder, maybe not creating, not daydreaming, not expressing yourself, not wanting to move. Maybe that's the disorder. Because to me, adhd, it's a gift. And to me, your label, whatever label you've been told you have, that's also a gift. And you get to decide the story that you make up about that label and its meaning. Because you're not flawed. You are not your diagnosis, you are not someone's opinion of you, and you are not the meaning you've associated to that label. Your perfection and exactly who you are, your grades, your income, opinions of others, the judgments, those are not what define you. So I'm going to ask you who labeled you and what did you make up and decide about that label and how's that affected you? And what if you could rewrite the meaning of it? What if you could rewrite that story and create a new meaning on that label.