Life's hidden success ingredient - FOCUS

M70 here. Looking back on my life, I am struck by the remarkable lack of success as I would have had it. I lived my life as I wanted to and I consider that a success. I need a lot of stupid mistakes but I survived them and I consider that a success. But it seems to me that there is one hidden ingredient to success in life that you don't realize until you look back on it. Having been diagnosed at age 45 with ADHD, It makes sense but it is still frustrating to know that I had a lot of potential but just couldn't put it to work for me. Why? I'm calling the trait focus.

I'm a pretty intelligent guy who did well in school although never well enough to excel. Call me a B student. I'm intelligent with an IQ of 145 or so so I always have a lot of big ideas - good ideas, I think. But they never happened. I lived my life with things flying through my head that I could never grasp and never turn into reality. As with most ADHDers, I I developed a reputation for not following through. While I always worked well independently as a salesman, I never quite got the knack of organizing my ideas into a plan and pursuing that plan in a stepwise fashion to build something worthwhile. That is disappointing. And I chalk it all up to focus. Having that ability to remember from one moment to the next what you were doing and how it relates to what you want to do is a talent in itself. I have always struggled to hold my attention on a task and I learned to do it through school but as I hit my adult years, the ability fell apart. It seems I always needed a set of rails to run on and if those weren't given to me or if I couldn't find them in the work itself, I was destined to wander off into the sunset. Can anyone else identify?

So here I sit in my retirement years, evaluating my successes and failures and looking at them all like Legos strewn out across the living room floor with the memories of half built projects scattered throughout. So it goes. That's life. But I want to offer to anyone who can hear but if you find yourself with a head full of stuff and very poor organizational skills or lack of follow-through on your life projects, go talk to a psychologist about ADHD. And then establish yourself a treatment plan. It's not an easy thing to do, especially when you lack focus. But it's worth trying to give yourself the best chance at success.