ADHDifference

S2E5: ADHD, Workplace Wellbeing & Hope + guest Sam Gibson-Massey

• Julie Legg • Season 2 • Episode 5

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Julie Legg sits down with Sam Gibson-Massey, founder and CEO of Hope, a workplace well-being platform on a mission to transform how organizations support their people, especially those navigating burnout, mental health challenges, and neurodivergence. 

With a personal ADHD diagnosis discovered later in life, Sam shares his journey through shame, anxiety, and the moment of clarity that helped him reframe his brain not as a problem, but as a difference. From there, he’s built a mission-driven business that merges data science with personalized care to support real humans in real workplaces. 

Key Points from the Episode: 

  • Sam’s personal ADHD discovery at age 43 was sparked by a casual conversation and followed by a deep emotional journey 
  • How Sam’s ADHD diagnosis clarified years of internal struggle 
  • The power of naming the experience, moving from shame to self-compassion and eventually, public advocacy
  • Hope’s mission to bring evidence-based, real-time, and personalized workplace support through data-driven tools 
  • Transcendental meditation (TM) as a tool to manage mental overload and give the ADHD brain space to breathe 
  • The concept of “Lamborghini engine, bicycle brakes”, how ADHD can feel like racing through life without the tools to stop 
  • Understanding rejection sensitivity, emotional spirals, and the importance of building in mental recovery time 
  • A call to action for anyone suspecting ADHD: You're not alone, and your difference is not a disorder, it’s just different 

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JULIE: Welcome to Season 2 of ADHDifference. I'm your host, Julie Legg, ADHD advocate, author of The Missing Piece: A Woman's Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing, and Living with ADHD, and an unapologetic doer of many things. This season, we're turning up the volume with a global line-up of brilliant guests bringing their lived experiences, insights, research, strategies, and resources. And of course, along with a healthy dose of humour and humility. Whether you're neurodivergent yourself or just curious, there's something here for every curious brain. Let's dive in. Meet Sam Gibson-Massey, the founder and CEO of Hope, a workplace well-being platform redefining how organizations care for their people. Drawing on more than a decade of experience in enterprise software, HR and leadership, Sam brings both lived experience of burnout and ADHD, and a data-driven approach to building healthier, more productive workplaces. Today, Hope combines evidence-based well-being frameworks, personalized care, and advanced analytics to help companies boost performance while protecting their people. Sam, welcome to the show. [Thank you so much, Julie. It's such a pleasure to be here.] Yay. Look, you've shared so openly about the moment that you realized ADHD might be part of your story and the relief and the clarity that came with your diagnosis. Can you take us back to that time and what shifted for you, and when you learned that it wasn't something wrong with you, but that your brain was simply different? 

SAM: Yeah. Yeah, great question. So, I suppose to give you some context, maybe that would help as well because then that sets the scene for how things felt during that realization and then post. I'd spent, you know, most of my life I've always felt something was slightly different. I don't know. I couldn't really pinpoint what it was. And the only reason why I knew that was because things were happening to me. So I would get anxious or I would have you know, what was essentially a panic attack and I wouldn't know how to sort of get through that moment. And I went to therapy a number of times. Behaviourally I was still struggling and I couldn't work out is this... is it a genetics thing, because you know, depression runs through my family. So it wasn't new to me. It wasn't like a big surprise that okay something feels a bit different. But my problem was but it keeps happening, so what what's going on? And it wasn't until I mean really recently, we're talking like not even 12 months ago, that I was speaking to my accountant. And we got on a call you know, similar to this one, and he was using a notetaker. And I don't know if you've ever used one of these notetakers before but they're really great. They kind of listen into the call and they do all the work for you basically, taking notes. I was like, oh, what's that? "So I use it. I'm not very good at taking notes. It's part of my ADHD." And he kind of just said it very sort of, just sort of matter-of-factly. Like.. what do you mean? And he went into a bit more detail about it. And then as he started talking to me about things that he struggles with. I started going "Well, I struggle with that. What does that... mean? I've got ADHD?" And of course, at the time, I wasn't really sure. So, I kind of left it. I didn't really think about it, but it really it stuck with me, you know. It really stuck with me because the things he was saying felt so true. And so, I took a test and then, you know, results always read, you know, what they read and I was like, "Oh, okay. That's kind of interesting." And again, I left it. You know, I didn't do anything with it because I just couldn't. It was almost like I was afraid to say that was the truth because I wasn't sure if I would then be labelling it as something and I would be using it. This is... I'm sure people who have this understand what I mean by this. I was almost like putting a label on it of like is that an excuse or, I don't know. I've always had mixed feelings about myself, right? We've all gone through something and part of my issue was shame. I've always had a struggle with that. And you know your... the inner dialogues that you tell yourself and you know, imposter syndrome and things like that. And so I thought I just don't want to tell anyone about that because I feel like it'll be an excuse of why these things are happening to me. So I did another test, same thing happened back and you know, like a typical ADHD I didn't... did like 10 tests you know. And of course it just kept saying you know, the results were coming back the same, which is yeah, you've got a strong inclination that you've got ADHD. And then because I was struggling at that particular moment and I was, I'd already been running Hope, that's my business, for a couple of years and I'm just going through a dip you know personal dip, as we all do. And it's extremely exhausting running a startup. It's, you know, you're on all the time, as it were. There's never really a day off. And I reached out to or I found an ADHD therapist and coach who when I read his profile, it read very much like me. And I thought, well, the least I'm going to get is maybe an answer and he'll be able to help me a little bit. And that was the beginning of that journey. And that for me, once I got to that point, it was actually a relief. It was a huge relief because he helped me move through that shame. Said it's not an excuse like what are you talking about? It's just who you are. That's a brilliant thing. It's a beautiful thing. You know, you got this wonderful mind and it works differently. And so I became really confident, more confident with it. And I wasn't afraid to talk to my family about it and my friends about it. And then I started talking about it more publicly on social media. And then I got this sort of outpouring actually of like love and support. And then also other people saying to me, I'm so glad you said this because it feels like I've been stuck. And you saying this has helped me realize that maybe... and I think it's just something that I was thinking about it this morning. I went for a walk this morning and I was thinking there's nothing exceptional about it. There isn't anything exceptional about being neurodiverse. It's  totally normal, and we're all different, and we're all exceptional in that sense. So we're actually, we by putting a label on it sometimes it feels like we're different and we're actually not. It's just we maybe think differently to someone else and that person thinks differently to us and they're brilliant and wonderful and beautiful too. And I think as long as we think of it like that. I'm always wary of using the word disorder. Like it's written in the title and I think it's... I don't think it is a disorder of any sort. I think it's just you're just different and your brain works slightly differently. And so that journey's been really fantastic and I'm still exploring it. I'm still discovering myself. You know, I'm 43, I think. Yeah, 43. I've discovered it really late, but I've always been very aware of my mental health. I've always been aware of my mental health state, and I've always known what was going on. And since that discovery, things have become a lot easier. I've learned, you know, we'll talk about that. I've learned, you know, coping mechanisms or ways to actually work through things. And I have good days and bad days. I had difficult day yesterday, but I worked through it. And, you know, I would used to spiral. And that was the challenge... was the spiralling feeling is really crippling sometimes if you've got any type of mental health issue. And I think it's just learning how your brain works and what you can do to help yourself to make sure that you just don't go down the wrong road. You know, sometimes you just walk down the wrong road and you get a bit stuck and it's how you can quickly unstick yourself from those difficult situations. So long long story really to how that was, how that's been. And I think for anyone who's going through something similar, wherever you are in your journey, and if you believe that you might have, you know, you might be different like us, just take a test. And it's like... it feels good. It felt so good to do it. I felt this emotional weight lift because then it was like the jigsaw puzzle all just came together and all of these things that I maybe felt ashamed about or didn't quite understand. And again, I worked through this in therapy. So, you know, I wasn't working out on my own. I had a good... I had a very strong helper with me to help me realize like, no, no, there's reason for this and it's all good. Don't 't worry. You're going to be okay, sort of thing. And that was yeah, it's been a beautiful thing and I'm so grateful that I got through it and you know, it's  a challenge. You know, we all have different challenges and this was mine. So I just... I'm happy to talk about it and help anyone else. And I'm sure I've still got a lot of discovery to do as well at the same time. 

JULIE: I'm so glad. Thank you so much for sharing that. I've written a few notes and one is you're right, that sense of we're not alone. We're not alone. it's a growing community, or if you want to call it that, but everyone goes through their quiet struggles I think. But when they realize that it's not so isolating, that there are others going through the same thing, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are others that have been through it that we can learn from is fantastic. You talked about a jigsaw puzzle.  My book was called The Missing Piece and it was exactly the same thing. I just felt that was the piece that then helped explain my life to date. I love the fact that you talked about disorder versus difference. Hence this podcast is ADHDifference because I... disorder schmorder, you know, let go of the disorder. But we are different and wired differently. And also to... just the diagnosis is just the beginning. It's not the end game. It's just the beginning which is wonderful. Which leads me on to my next question Sam and that you know, today you're leading Hope, a company redefining workplace well-being through personalized and holistic solutions. So, I'd love you to tell me more about your work and what's exciting you most about it right now. 

SAM: Yeah. So I founded Hope back in 2022 and having gone through, you know, an episode as such of struggling, struggle. I was working in a corporate environment. I worked for a great company, you know, I had great benefits, but what I struggled with was the type of care that I think was needed for me. And I think because we're all different, that's the challenge, right? It's what can you give someone that feels like they're going to get to where they need to get to. Whether or not that's neurodiversity, or anxiety, or depression, or maybe some kind of other health issue, right? And I was always just really surprised that what was available to me as a salaried employee and a really good job. And you know, I'd worked my way up to you know sort of a leadership role. It was just really not great. It wasn't fantastic and there are so many other choices that we have in life when it comes to digital healthcare but just a choice. Like we have lots of choice available to us now. I think that's fantastic. So I started Hope kind of out of my own frustration and my own struggle and it's... the company's gone through a journey itself, has gone through several you know life cycles as such, It's very very typical in a startup. If you, if anyone runs a startup, they'll know this, that you go through many changes and it was necessary for us to do that. And at the beginning of last year, I recognized that what I really wanted to do was go back to the problem and find a way to help people at work because that's how I came to this. And so the journey that we've gone on has gone from where it was, which was essentially a very sort of straightforward B-to-C therapy matching platform to now being more of something that I think is absolutely necessary in the workplace. So we help people in different ways and we want to do that in several ways too. So we... the first hand you want to help the employee like what do they need, right then and there in the real time so you're not delaying help in any way whatsoever. It doesn't have to be anything to do with mental health either. It's more to do with where are you at? Like, how you feeling? Are you performing at your best? Do you feel exhausted? Are you stressed about something? Is there a part of your life that doesn't feel quite on track and how do we get you back onto that? And then for the businesses, it's all kind of rooted in data and data science. What we essentially do is upfront a very straightforward health assessment or well-being assessment which we've designed ourselves. It's anonymous. So the individual doesn't... you know, their data is not being used in a way to... in any way to sort of help them with their career at that particular part in their job. It's actually used in a way to help the individual. And then for the company-wide, we look at the aggregated anonymized data and say, "Okay, we think there's a burnout issue arising over here. We should probably do something about that." And then we're able to... the way that the platform is built, was being built, is that we will be able to look at certain risk factors and we'll be able to help businesses, you know, retain people. We'll be able to hopefully help them with their bottom line because a lot of the issues that we face at work have a massive knock-on effect on the business itself. And we all kind of, we all need to work. We all need to turn up and do something we enjoy and love. And we all want to go work at places that we love, to turn up and do things that we love too. So we want to work with those companies that really care about their employees, that want to put something in front of them that feels special and personal. And that's what we're building. That's what we want to put in place for people. And the type of care that you can get out the back of that shouldn't be limited. It should be a full range. It should be human centered. It should feel personal.  But the use of technology is paramount. We can use technology for good. You know, it's about that. So how do we use technology to positive effect and make people feel well, be well, turn up, feel productive, perform well? It shouldn't be too much to ask. Yet for some reason it hasn't been like that way. It hasn't been that way. And so I'm here to make that difference. I want to do that. I want to work with people and find people who want to work with us in that same way, and give people, you know, what they need, when they need it basically. 

JULIE: That's brilliant. And the ROI on retaining valued employees is priceless. And when we think about neurodiverse employees, myself being one over time, and potentially the likes of boredom kicking in, the yearning for projects and deadlines that drive us, using our creativity and problem solving. If that's underutilized in the workplace and there isn't a space for us to move or to you know exercise that, we'll be off. And so I think we've got a lot of value to give. That sounds very very exciting that the employers get the inside knowledge of how that works and how to get the best out of us because we've got a lot to offer. But yeah, it's almost mining the best out of us. You've spoken about turning what felt like chaos into a kind of a superpower. Tell me about a daily practice or a shift that you've lent on recently that helps you stay grounded for you. 

SAM: Yeah. So through that discovery phase which was middle of end of last year, I've always tried to keep myself fit and healthy. You know, I try to exercise, eat well. No one's perfect, right? So you do your best. But I'd always struggled with I think you'll probably understand this and anyone else maybe listening would understand, or watching would understand, is that the part of your brain sometimes I can feel extremely calm doing something very complex. Don't know if you get that, but I feel like I can be in a very intense, what could be perceived as intense working environment on a task for example, or doing maybe five things all at once. I can have, it's hilarious, on my laptop I've always got like 20 tabs open and sometimes someone might come into my office and go, "How do you know where everything is?" I'm like, I just do. It's just it's all there and I can know where everything is by the way. It's all good. And but the challenge is, you mentioned it before actually, it's true that boredom kills my energy more than anything. I find it really really hard to sit and just be still. I find that very difficult. But what I've learned is that sometimes that's actually a really great way to just turn the engine down a little bit. And my therapist used, it's probably not a new term, but he says you've got like a Lamborghini engine and bicycle brakes. So, you've got this ability to go really, really fast, really quick on a task or whatever that thing might be, and you'll go be going like 200 miles an hour and then putting the brakes on, they don't work. So, you could be stuck in a task or you could be stuck in a state of mind. So you could be in a really positive state of mind and have these huge highs but equally you can... if you spiral quickly, and I think ADHDers probably get this, is that you can spiral quickly and you can feel really low very quickly too because your brain's able to make very fast connections. This is the thing I learned about ADHD is that we're able to think almost in sort of a 3D mode. We can we can go from this point here and we can go oh I know how to get to Mars, you know, in a split second. I know how to do the journey. And what we also need to remember is that that can exhaust you. It's very exhausting. And so what was happening with me was I was getting to maybe like a Friday afternoon, Friday evening, going to pick the kids up from school and feeling absolutely drained of energy because I'd suddenly just gone, okay, just turn the engine off now. And you going and you just, I would be left with kind of exhaustion or burn... basically burnout. And because I'm running a business, you know, like I said, you're kind of always on. So, you need to know when to ease off on the gas. And so, I when I was going through therapy, my therapist introduced me to loads of different techniques. Like any one of these can work or not work. It's up to you, like got to just cherry pick a little bit. And I started a form of meditation at the beginning of the year called transcendental meditation or TM, which sounds woohoo if you're into that, but it's not at all actually. It's the simple practice of sitting for twice a day for 20 minutes in complete silence with your eyes closed. That's it. There's no expectations. There's no, there's no music. There's no... that's it. You just have to sit quietly and bring your brain wave state low. You know, to bring your brain waves down to very very low state is essentially what you do in yoga. You like yoga nidra, it's just that kind of practice, and you're making a structured effort to do that. And so you're giving your brain time to turn the gas down, ease off the accelerator a little bit, go through your thoughts if you need to go through them. But by doing that, it then stops me sometimes from running away with a task or going straight to the thing that I've been obsessing over, you know, my morning workout and I have to get to it because that's what I need to do. I need to get it done now. My our brains want to just do it, you know. And so by doing that, what it does for me is it just allows the engine to recharge a little bit. And it is like plugging your phone in if we're always on 10%. We're always running to the red line. You can't really expect it to turn up healthy and happy and be present. And, what it's done is it's given me more energy, it's made me feel healthier. There's a whole journey with that that I've gone on where you suddenly start to listen more to yourself. You start to understand yourself better. It's kind of given me room to have more of a sense of gratitude, be way more positive in my thinking process about who I am, why I'm here. So not spiritual because I'm not that really way inclined. It's more just a tool that I use to give my ADHD brain a little bit of a rest. And I'm not perfect at it, by the way. Like, it sounds like I do it. I don't, I'm not always doing it twice a day, 20 minutes a day. I sometimes... it doesn't always happen, and I notice when it doesn't happen. So I had a spell recently where going through kind of a very intense work period, working long days basically and just missing the odd meditation moment and then going I'm exhausted. Oh yeah, I've forgotten, I forget or it's you know it's gone away for a week or two. So coming back into it, you know, trying to build those healthy habits and exercise is a great one for me. I find that really calms my mind. It gives me space to think and breathe and, you know, just give yourself some room where you're not intensely working on one thing, which is what we're really good at sometimes. And that can just be exhausting. I just think we have to be aware of it. I have to be aware of it. I've gone through different health issues in the last few years, probably because I wasn't aware of my ADHD. And stress is very common, I think, with people with ADHD because we tend to, like I said, we can go there very very quickly. So, if the thought is really happy and joyous, we'll probably go there very, very quickly and someone will say, "Wow, you're super energized." Yay, of course. And then on the flip side of things, I didn't know anything about rejection sensitivity dysphoria either, which that's been a huge journey too, like understanding like no, that's a thing, you know. It's a chemical thing. It's not... it's almost like you haven't got control over it. It's all... and the pain that you feel is real. It's not pretend. It's not just in your brain, it's in your heart. It's in your body. You feel everything. So just being aware of those things and like I said, meditation's a good one for me. It's been a real good one and I can send you if you want to include the link, but I'll include the link to some of these things if it would help people. It's a great great med. There's loads of different meditation practices, but this one works for me because 20 minutes a day for anyone feels like a long time, but for someone with ADHD, it feels like an hour. You know I can look at my watch, one minute, and think, "God, it's been... it must have been 20 minutes." And you look down, you go, "Oh, it's been like five minutes." You know, because you... the way your brain's going through all these thoughts. So, it's a good practice and I enjoy it. That'll be great. And I look forward to those links and I'll put them in the show notes for sure. A couple of points on meditation. I think I struggle with the concept of meditation because I think I'm not used to being still for a certain amount of time or maybe being a bit anxious about what will it feel like with a quiet mind, you know, because we're so used to it being so busy. And I think where we get unstuck is that our perfectionism kicks in, that we must do it like everyone said it should be done. But I think practice and just as you said, that element, that time and space to be still is enough to slow our Lamborghini thoughts down. And also I think, yeah, what helped me as well is that the purpose of this type of meditation is to have no expectation. So if you need to think for 20 minutes and have racing thoughts, then that's what you're going to do today, that you're going to have to sit and have racing thoughts. Or if it's I'm going to sit and fidget for 20 minutes, okay, then then just do that. But I think with... I'm a fidgeter as well. I don't sit still, you know, I just don't. I you know, I fidget. So I'm aware of I've got a lot of energy, but what, the reason why I do it is, and it doesn't necessarily means this is going to work for you or anyone else, by the way, it's more that the pain was so much that I needed to find a way to work through something because that's what it was for me. It was, I was, I can get anxious quite quickly. I can feel overwhelmed quite quickly because of you know the a lot of racing thoughts and not being able to bring you know, it's an executive functioning thing really. Essentially like that front that you know, front whatever it is, the front part of your brain which does all the executive functioning, it's just not quite fired. It's not firing like the rest of that creative part of our brain, right? It doesn't... the decision-making process bit doesn't come in. But when I meditate, what I'm able to do is activate that executive functioning piece of my brain, which I never really do. I never really do that. And so it's like the adult takes over for a bit and goes, I'll take the wheel. Don't worry, I've got it. You just you go off and play over there and have these thoughts and go run around in the sand pit. I'll drive the car for a bit for you. And then afterwards, you can get back in the car and you can go off racing around like, you know, do what you want. So it is hard. It is hard at the beginning. But the thing that happened to me, and again I don't want this to sound too... I don't, if people are listening going oh this sounds like some crazy hippie thing which okay you can if you want to say that, you can. Doesn't really matter. There's nothing wrong with that either. But when I did it what happened the first time I did it, so you essentially go through a training to do it. It's quite strict and structured actually. Requires you to turn up physically somewhere and learn it basically, learn the process, learn the practice. I had this moment where at the end of the first session or two of doing it, the person teaching me was like, "What did you feel? What did you think?" Because I don't know if you've ever done this, have you ever sat down for 20 minutes and not had anything going on and just sat still? Ask yourself that question. And I think the answer to that question is probably very unlikely or possibly no because we're sort of so afraid to sit in our thoughts for that amount of time. It's very difficult to sit still for 20 minutes and just in silence. By the way you don't have to sit still like rigidly like some robot but it, your thoughts go through you and what's happening during that practice is you are bringing your brain waves to a slower state to almost a true consciousness state. And at the end of the first time of doing it I had this sort of like wow and you know, she said "What did you notice?" I said I don't know, I've never had this before but I just told myself that I am happy underneath all this. I am a happy person. She said, "Okay, you know, what does that mean?" I was like, I don't think I've ever told myself that. So, it was almost like giving yourself room to just, who are you? Who are you underneath all this? And again, I'd gone through a very pivotal therapy session not dissimilar to that where you're peeling back layers and you're coming to understand yourself a bit more. And to use that term to know thyself, it's kind of true. It's like, who are you? Why are you here? What's your purpose? What's going on with you? I feel much much more... the ADHD diagnosis allowed me to feel at peace with myself. That what happened. It kind of gave me that... the meaning basically like, ah it all makes sense. It all makes, making sense to me. And now I go okay now you know, how do we harness it? How do we get the reins on? Because it can be like, you can feel like you're on some kind of wild horse that's running free and sometimes a bit too wild that you can't you know, you can't get control of it. And it feels... can feel horrible actually sometimes. I'm sure you're, you must know what that feels like, and so I just wanted a bit of that. I just wanted to like okay, it'd be great if I didn't go through these spells of anxiety and depression or extreme you know, like living in your shadow sometimes is how it felt. You're walking in your own shadow. It can feel good. It's like it'd be good if I could just get peace with myself and have a nice conversation with my inner self. And that meditation time gives me that sort of moment to talk to myself and say, "What's going on with you today?" And you know, "How can I help me out today?" 

JULIE: Great words of wisdom that it's not about following someone else's textbook as to what meditation should be, but just to slow yourself down. Allow yourself the chance for your brain to recover because it's so busy all the time. And we owe that to ourselves. And another lovely thing that you said is to start to know yourself. Now we are we, and we've been ourselves all our life. But to know us through a new lens is completely different. And if you do one thing in your life, to know who you truly are, is such an amazing blessing and will set you up for the days, weeks, years, decades ahead. 

SAM: Try an exercise at home when you've got five minutes, is to write down... this is a... I'm not a therapist, just be very clear about this. If you've never done this before, write down an exercise. This is a very simple exercise you can do where you say, "I am." So, I am Julie. I am a podcast host. I am a... and then just keep going through a list of all of the roles that you think you play in your life. Like we've got social media profile, we've got job profile, we've got a LinkedIn profile, we've got all of these names that we call ourselves, right? And then ask yourself again and say, have I always, always been a podcast host? No. Have I always been this? Have I always been this? And what essentially you do, you're peeling back the layers. And when you get to the end of this exercise, which can take quite some time, and do it in a safe environment, probably with a counsellor or therapist by the way, you come to that sort of realization like, who am I? So who am I? Like why am I here? And you should do, I think it's a healthy thing to do this is to sort of spend some time with yourself asking yourself that question in quiet moments, not when you're busy doing all the things, all those things you've written down, right, that define you define you, right? And then to have a real conversation with yourself about why you show up every day. What is that reason? What's your reason for being here? And what's your purpose? Because I think we all need some kind of drive and purpose to get up every day and feel good about ourselves and to show up for people and whatever that thing is, you'll find it. But I think it's interesting that we label ourselves or we've been given labels and then we assume those labels, and sometimes we lose.. I lost track of myself a little bit throughout that, like using a label to define who I am. And actually like no, I'm not though, I am those things. That's a good public facing image that I've created for myself and that helps me through the day. But simply, I'm just here to help people. That's it. I'm here to maybe help someone on their journey and that's it. That's my reason for getting up every day. And once you realize that it's so liberating. It's so much more. You feel more at peace with yourself. And that happened through that period of discovery of my ADHD, going to therapy and starting therapy. 

JULIE: Wow. And it's that sense of knowing the whole of you. Yeah. Which is, you know, multifaceted. There's lots of bits of you. I'm a musician and we'd written a track called Iceberg. And it's almost you'll only see 10% of me at any one time because the rest of me is just not in your vision right now. But there's way more to me than the little bit that you see on top. And again, it's just acknowledging that there's more than feedback, you know. Some people say you're a wonderful CEO, you're a great speaker, you're a great visionary, whatever it may be. But there's more to you than even that, you know, what I mean? So, it's being able to accept all of those things. Sam, [absolutely], I've got another last question for you and that is a parting insight to share with our listeners. So for someone who's just been diagnosed or still suspects they might have ADHD but hasn't really sought that clarity yet, what would you like them to know? 

SAM: You need I suppose to know yourself is really hard. It's a really, really hard thing. And I had suspicions for a long, long, long time about like what's going on inside me. There's something wrong with me. That's how I labelled it. I was like, "Something wrong with me?" And yeah, going to therapy was helpful because essentially it gave me that... the door opened. And I've been to therapy multiple times before, by the way. Like I've been to therapy at different times in my life, but it never got me to where I wanted to get to because it wasn't it wasn't really dealing with the root, the core of who I am, which is this wonderful thing about our brains that we've given a label to, but it's just like this is how your brain is. But like this is why you go ah I think you're not alone. I think a lot of people deal with this. I think a lot of... we have a sort of a loneliness epidemic thing going on at the moment which is kind of sad, younger generations, men specifically as well. We see a lot depression and suicide. And I that's... I know people that's happened to. It's deeply upsetting and sad. And when I think about those people, I'm like I'm pretty sure there was something going on with them where they would definitely felt alone. And I think when you're slightly feel different and you feel like there's something that's not quite clicking, we give ourselves a really hard time about that. I think we all do. I think it's just sort of it's a part of our... not everyone, some people are super positive and I love them. But when you're going through something with your mental health, it's really it can be feel really scary. That's how it felt for me or how it felt in different times of my life. And it does still. Like I had a day yesterday for example where I had a sense of overwhelm. That's the word that was lingering in mind. I was like, why do I feel overwhelmed? I feel really you know, and it's because of all the things I've been talking about. I wasn't taking my foot off the gas. I wasn't giving myself a bit of room to breathe, you know, my body a bit of space to breathe. And I think if you're at the beginning of that journey or you're trying to discover what's going on with you or you're maybe taking an ADHD test or you're curious about taking one, just take it. Like nothing bad's going to happen. It can be... the journey isn't perfect, right, for anyone. No one lives a perfect life. Anyone who tells you that they do, or you see or you think that they do, you're looking at their social media profile, it's just not true. It's just we're not, it's not who we are. But we're not. I think we're meant to struggle a little bit, work our way through things, figure things out, and then get to the other side of that. I would just say you're not alone and there's always someone you can talk to. You should never feel that you could never talk to anyone. And if anyone ever wants to talk to me, just send me a message, send me a DM. I don't care. I'll put my LinkedIn profile in the show notes as well for anyone who wants to reach out to me. I feel really strongly about that because there's nothing worse than feeling alone in your thoughts.  Solitude is one thing. I love being in solitude whether or not that's in meditation or it's in exercise or was going for a walk or something like that. I'm good with that. But for a long, long period of my life, I felt really alone in my own thoughts because I didn't know what was going on. I couldn't talk about some things that I felt shameful about. I was going down, you know, it's quite common for people with ADHD because we have dopamine deficiencies to go seek out those dopamine hits and that can come in all different forms and it did for me, and it's destructive. It's not a really constructive positive thing. It's it normally leads to some kind of negative outcome, but I didn't know why. I didn't know why that was happening. And so then I had shame about that thing or I would repetitively keep going down that road going, but why do I keep wanting to seek out, you know, the danger of something? Or I'm not afraid of the risk of something going wrong. And it's because my brain was wanting something. It needed a fix, right? It needed a hit as it were to lift it up again. I didn't know any of that stuff, you know. I did none of those things. I didn't know anything about why, the why basically. And the sooner that you find out the why, the sooner that you can start putting in place some routines maybe or some things that might help you speaking to people. What happened with me was I posted a message, or I posted... I did a post on LinkedIn. And I procrastinated about it for a while thinking what do I say this, what people going to think about me? You know all of the things that you probably would do before publicly talking about something and then realizing actually, no, this is probably a really good thing. And I've got this outpouring of love and outpouring of support and so and then it connected me to different people. You know, I've recently met you. I've met so many more people. The positive outcome of that has been enormous. Has been life affirming. You don't feel alone anymore. Basically, you go, "Okay, I'm different and here are all these other different people, and isn't it great that we're all different? Isn't it wonderful?" And you know, I still have my struggles and ups and downs, but they're just not so big. You know, the struggles aren't so enormous. And they used to feel like that. I used to feel, the first time it ever happened to me, if you ever had an anxiety attack, it's the most horrible thing. You feel like the ground is caving in. Basically, you feel like in the worst case, you feel like, am I going to die? I feel like I'm going to die here. What's going to happen? And I didn't know how to cope with that. It was really, really hard. And I was afraid of myself. That's basically what happened. And that's a really horrible place to be in when you're afraid of where you're going inside your mind. And I know a lot of people go through this, you know, it's common. It's not that uncommon. But I just thought, okay, then how can... I'm going to get through this. Ultimately, it led me to this, to this point that that's where it got me to. I wish I could have discovered it earlier. And that's all I would say to someone. If you're not 43, maybe a bit younger, and you're not sure, just learn. Learning about yourself, it's all good. You're going to be okay. It's there's lots of help out there. There's lots of resources, lots of free resources. you know, lot lots of amazing counsellors and therapists and psychologists who understand this stuff better than me and can help. So yeah, very long winded answer to your question, Julie, because I think it's really important to talk about lots of different things that can help people. But the main one is, you know, you're not alone and you can be okay as well. It's all good. 

JULIE: Sam, that's awesome. Great words. Absolutely. And on that note, I'd just like to say thank you so much for spending time on the show today and I really appreciated to hear all about your journey and your strategies and insight. It's been wonderful. So, thank you. 

SAM: Thanks so much, Julie. Thank you.

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Julie Legg

Host
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Jel Legg

Co-host
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Sam Gibson-Massey

Guest