Michael Jordan Beat ADHD
Michael Jordan had ADHD. But that didn't stop him from becoming the greatest basketball player of all time. Learn about MJ's upbringing, how he became unstoppable, and the pros and cons of ADHD. Most importantly, learn about how you can leverage your ADHD to become an unstoppable force.
MJ's Early Years
Jordan was instilled work ethic at an early age from parents who worked hard
to support him and 4 siblings. Through this process of work ethic and striving
to excel, Jordan became the person he is today.
But not without setbacks. When Jordan failed to make his sophomore varsity
high school team, he used it as fuel to keep practicing and honing his game.
He would do the normal team drills but continue practicing off the court long
after everyone went home. He would practice at home as well. In every waking
moment, he only thought about basketball.
This wasn't always the case. He was a multi-talented individual who excelled
in Football and Baseball, so he had to make a choice. Luckily, he homed in on
basketball and eventually became the greatest player alive. This was one of
his earliest distractions. If he had spread himself too thin, he would have
become a good player in all three sports, but never a GOAT (Greatest of All
Time).
He became unstoppable in basketball because it consumed him. He used failures,
rivalries, and setbacks as a gauge to determine where his game was currently
and what he could do to triumph and become even better. He kept practicing on
and off the court to develop legendary fundamentals so that, should he ever be
stuck, his fundamentals would trigger on autopilot to allow him to thrive.
ADHD's Challenges:
The challenges of ADHD are many. And a lot of it stems from the neurodivergent
ways that the ADHD brain is structured (or unstructured).
The affected parts of the brain include the:
- Frontal Lobe
- Basal Ganglia
- Limbic System
- Corpus Callosum
- Default Mode Network (DMN)
All of these interact in ways that lead to poor executive functioning:
interruptive planning, memory, and multitasking. It leads to poorer
emotional regulation, increased daydreaming, and disruption in interfacing
between left and right hemispheres of the brain.
Science indicates that in ADHD people, there may be increased dopamine
transporters that lead to lower levels of dopamine. This leads to lower levels
of satisfaction from doing normal tasks that others normally have.
Lower levels of dopamine lead to lower levels of norepinephrine, otherwise
known as noradrenaline. Dopamine is used to create noradrenaline which helps
manage stress, attention, mood and memory.
ADHD's Strengths:
The few strengths of ADHD can be overpowered, but it must be wisely contained.
It's said that people with ADHD have a superpower of hyperfocus on things that
excite them. When they embark on these high-dopamine activities, they get into
a flow state. This is only interrupted when they find something else that
seems more exciting to them, but with the right processes, one with ADHD can
develop resilience to outward distractions.
Using bursts of energy alongside developing systematic processes of consistent
improvements on only a few tasks, one with ADHD can become a monster just like
Michael Jordan.
The Power Within (Leverage ADHD)
You must learn how to harness the power within. You must weaponize the
strengths of ADHD in order to limit its drawbacks.
People with ADHD constantly feel as if they aren't doing enough. They feel as
if they need to be doing more leading to a low-dopamine hamster wheel of
daydreaming, negative self-talk, procrastination, and constant goal-switching.
Instead, what you must do is make a decision on what you truly want and
protect that decision at all costs. Find what your true passions are that also
merge your talents and make simple goals to scale it along the way.
Second, use NLP to visualize only the positives. Reinforce positivity and
incremental progress. Do not focus on the negatives, but instead, develop
hyperfocus on incremental gains. You do this by embracing failure and
increasing your output.
For instance, if your goal is to become the greatest basketball player, you
must practice the fundamentals and play against the best players in your
locale, region, and globally. Naturally, when you face off against the best
players in the world, you will lose more than you win. But over time, you
focus on troubleshooting what went wrong to get even better. You use this as
fuel for your desires. Over time, you chip away at those weaknesses with
incremental improvement.
Biohacking ADHD
The trifecta for reverse-engineering ADHD is increase dopamine, focus, and
self-esteem. This is because people with ADHD daydream a lot, and the root
cause of it is due to feeling inept, not feeling good enough at what they are
accomplishing now. These two are reinforced by low levels of dopamine. In
order to combat this, you must manage the symptoms by increasing dopamine,
reframing the focus into one or two goals (max), and developing a high level
of self-esteem on the personal journey.
The first focus is on the mental aspect of performance. You must use Neuro
Linguistic Programming (NLP) to reorient your mind and use the good attributes
of ADHD, like hyperfocus, by getting into that state on the tasks that you
need to do.
The second focus should be on biohacking the mind and body using nootropics
and other legal smart compounds to boost performance and effectiveness.
None of these things are guaranteed, but I recommend that you focus on a few
things at a time (like 1 or 2 NLP strategies or 1 or 2 compounds to test).
Never compare yourself to others but retain your hyperfocus on the personal
journey.
Check the Substack for Biohacking tips and to watch the video:
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