This is the Eighteenth Lesson in “My 21 Lessons in 21 Years” Series

To celebrate 21 years in business, based on what I have learned from working with accountants, bookkeepers and tax advisors over 21 years I am sharing my journey and some of the lessons I learned along the way. I hope you join me on this journey and maybe learn something along the way too.

I was in a virtual breakout room at a Genius Network event.

Genius Network, is Joe Polish’s mastermind group for entrepreneurs. I met Joe through Dan Sullivan, and although I’m not in the Genius Network mastermind now, it’s something I’d love to go back to. It was a fascinating experience meeting people from such diverse backgrounds.

This particular day, I ended up in a breakout room with three other entrepreneurs.

Just another discussion. Another chance to share ideas and learn from others. Learning from other people on the same journey as me, getting different insights and perspectives

And then right at the end just as our time was ending and we were going back to the main room a man in the breakout room said something that changed everything.

“Have you ever considered the possibility you could be neurodivergent?”

I didn’t really know who this guy was. His zoom said his name was Dr Ned and in the 20 or 30 minutes we were together we he cam across as a really nice man who was clearly very intelligent and a serious operator.

He said to me. “I have only known you for 30 minutes but you are showing some indicators that you could be neurodivergent. Check out the book “Driven to Distraction” and then “ADHD 2.0”

I thanked him. I love a good book recommendation. We finished up that session and I though no more about it until the day after when I went to but the book.

The guy who suggested the book was the guy who wrote the book, who was the renowned global neurodivergence expert Dr. Ed Hallowell.

He’s one of the world’s leading authorities on ADHD. Written multiple books and someone who has spent decades understanding how the neurodivergent mind works.

It was a sliding doors moment.

One of those conversations that divides your life into before and after.

The books got delivered and suddenly, a whole lot of things in my life made sense.

This is another reason why people should be in mastermind groups. You just never know who you’re going to meet and who you’re going to be in the room with. You never know which conversation is going to change everything.

The rabbit hole went deeper.

That conversation sent me on a journey.

I discovered the works of Dr. Gabor Maté. I started connecting dots between my thought processes, my behaviours, the patterns in my life where I pushed boundaries too far, some of my addictive tendencies.

Suddenly my mental health journey since childhood began to make sense. It gave me an insight into what was happening and why. If was the answer to the question I had been asking for 40 years. I knew there was something different about my experience in life and business but I didn’t really know what it was and why.

This journey created the full loop I’d been trying to untie with my psychologist Tom Dalton—who I’ve worked with since 2016—for years.

We’d been circling around these patterns. Understanding the behaviours. Why I kept creating similar crisis situations and drama. Working through the thought processes.

But discovering ADHD and neurodivergence in the way that Dr Hallowell describes it and presents it gave me the missing piece. Tom knew the answer all along and had a slightly different take to me on it, but that was and is Ok.

It explained the why behind so many of the what and how questions we’d been exploring. I had found another piece of the Des O’Neill jigsaw

But here’s the critical thing about discovery:

Discovering you’re neurodivergent doesn’t make a difference unless you do something with it.

It’s not an excuse. It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card. A label doesn’t make a difference as to how you get up in the morning and what you do to regulate your energy and your hyper creative mind. Getting that label is not a reason to throw your hands up and say, “Well, that’s just how I am.”

It’s information.

Information you can use to optimise how you operate instead of constantly fighting against your own wiring.

It’s about having the awareness and the ability to exercise critical thinking and self-assessment to understand that you are not your mind.

But to also understand that your mind is running programs and has hardwired habits and behaviour’s that you may not have consciously installed and may not be in your best interest.

You have patterns running in the background that were installed by experiences, family, society, trauma, environment, genetics—all sorts of factors you didn’t choose.

The question is: what are you going to do about it?

To me, everybody should have a coach.

But everybody would also benefit from having a psychologist.

Here’s why I say that.

In their book “The Power of Full Engagement,” Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz introduced the concept of the corporate athlete. The idea is simple but powerful: if elite athletes need coaches, trainers, nutritionists, and mental performance experts to optimise their performance, why wouldn’t business leaders need the same?

Athletes don’t wing it. They don’t just show up and hope for the best. They systematically optimise every aspect of their performance.

So here’s the question: if we truly see ourselves as corporate athletes—which I do—are we amateur corporate athletes or professional corporate athletes?

If we are professional corporate athletes as businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and business owners, surely we should treat ourselves like the best Olympians.

The best Olympians don’t just have physical coaches to help them on the mechanics.

They optimise themselves physically, nutritionally, and mentally.

They strategise. They consciously seek external help and assistance optimising the natural talent and unique abilities that they have.

They understand that raw talent alone isn’t enough. You need systems, support, and expert guidance to perform at the highest level consistently.

They don’t view getting help as weakness. They view it as essential to excellence.

So why do so many business owners resist getting the same kind of support?

This journey of exploration into neurodivergence has had a significant domino effect.

I started seeing and understanding the people around me differently.

The people I work with. The patterns of neurodivergence and mental behaviours and habits in society that I’d never noticed before.

It led me to talk on stages at events like Accountex. For the last three years, I’ve led a Neurodiversity in the Profession Panel. Raising awareness of neurodivergence in the accounting profession.

Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

And accounting—like many professions—is full of neurodivergent minds. People who think differently, process information differently, have different strengths and challenges than the neurotypical world assumes everyone has. Understanding this is a huge opportunity.

But the biggest place it’s had an impact is in my own home.

Not just for me and my behaviours, patterns, and neural programs.

But for my kids.

My kids have a range of neurodivergent conditions. Dyslexia. Dysgraphia. Autism. ADHD. I tell them those words are only labels, but I am hoping that the self-awareness I am bringing to them will help them have easier and better lives.

My own neurodivergent journey heightened my awareness to that reality.

It helped me understand some of the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. Some of the challenges we have in our relationship. Why certain things that seem simple to me are incredibly difficult for them. Why their brains work the way they do.

I wish somebody had explained to me at 11 years of age what was happening in my mind.

It would have saved me decades of thinking there was something wrong with me. Of comparing myself to people whose brains work completely differently than mine. Of trying to force myself into systems and approaches that were never designed for how I actually think and process.

It is now my mission to help my kids understand some of their feelings, emotions, and thoughts because of my learnings.

To give them the gift I never had—understanding how their minds work so they can optimise for their strengths instead of constantly fighting against their wiring.

So how does this play in the context of 21 lessons for business owners?

In the first instance, it’s about the willingness to look in the mirror and see what’s really there.

Don’t hide from the faults, the failings, the cracks in the foundations.

Examine them closely. Learn from them.

It’s also a lesson in understanding our own behaviour’s, habits, and having an awareness in relation to our mental health as well as our physical health, financial health, and entrepreneurial health.

We’re really good at tracking our revenue numbers. We know exactly what our profit margins are. We can tell you our client retention rate down to the decimal point.

But how many of us are tracking our mental and emotional health with the same rigor?

How many of us understand the patterns and habits running in the background that are either helping or hindering our performance?

But what this really is, is a lesson in people.

And the lesson in people only begins when you understand yourself in the first instance.

Which makes it much easier to understand others.

The business application is massive.

When you understand your own patterns, you start seeing them in your team. In your clients. In your partners.

You stop expecting everyone to operate the way you do.

You stop wondering why some people need detailed systems and processes while others need freedom to create and explore.

You stop being frustrated when someone’s brain works differently than yours.

You build better teams because you understand that cognitive diversity is a strength, not a problem to fix.

You create better client experiences because you recognize that not everyone communicates or processes information the same way.

You make better hiring decisions because you’re looking for complementary strengths, not carbon copies of yourself.

You stop forcing square pegs into round holes and start building organizations where different types of minds can thrive.

And maybe most importantly:

You stop beating yourself up for not being someone you were never meant to be.

You stop trying to force yourself into productivity systems designed for neurotypical minds. You stop trying to force yourself into any system that’s designed for other people and not you.

You stop comparing your behind-the-scenes to everyone else’s highlight reel.

You start playing to your actual strengths instead of trying to fix your perceived weaknesses.

You start playing your own game. You start running your own race. You become the corporate athletes that you are capable of being.

This isn’t about making excuses.

It’s about making progress. It’s about realising your true potential.

It’s about understanding the operating system so you can optimize it instead of fighting against it.

It’s about getting the right support in place—the coaches, the psychologists, the systems, the environments—that allow you to perform at your highest level.

Just like a professional corporate athlete would.

Here’s what I know to be true:

Every single one of us has patterns running in the background.

Habits we didn’t consciously choose. Behaviours we picked up from our environment, our experiences, our wiring.

Some of those patterns serve us. Some don’t.

The question is whether we’re willing to examine them honestly and do something about the ones that aren’t serving us anymore.

Whether we’re willing to get the support we need to optimize our performance instead of just grinding harder with the same broken systems.

Whether we’re willing to treat ourselves like the professional corporate athletes we claim to be.

Your Turn:

When was the last time you looked in the mirror and really examined what’s driving your behaviours and patterns? The Why behind the What that you do.

Are you treating yourself like a professional corporate athlete, or are you winging it like an amateur and hoping for the best?

What would change in your business if you truly understood how your mind works—and how the minds of everyone around you work differently?

What support do you need that you’re not getting?

What patterns are you running that you didn’t consciously install?

And what would be possible if you stopped fighting against your wiring and started optimising for it instead?

Tomorrow: Lesson 19/21 – “Partnerships and People: When They Work and When They Don’t” – Uncomfortable Times