How a Neuroscience Degree Made Graham Lutz Understand the Brain Better and Embrace His ADHD Diagnosis

Understanding yourself better can change your life and help you overcome your limiting beliefs.

The same goes for our willingness to be wrong.

“Learning that everyone is wrong about something can help us shift from a place of being judgemental to a place of curiosity and openness.” Graham Lutz, Author, mentor, and educator

Long before he was officially diagnosed with ADHD, Graham Lutz wrongly thought of himself as a screw up. He blamed his failures in life for who he was—someone who couldn’t finish what he started. 

This was the limiting belief he put for himself— Affirming what he had been told as a kid, that he could start things, but he didn’t have the power to finish them.

Interestingly, even as a kid, he was a bit different in how he handled things in school. But, his parents thought it was just how 10-year-olds struggled to fit in their classrooms. Luckily, Graham Lutz was bright and stayed on top of his grades. Because ADHD was not detrimental to his education, it wasn’t caught in childhood.

New Light and Mindset Change

After many starts and stops in his life—business failures, divorce, radical career changes—he still couldn’t understand why he couldn’t handle some of the things he willed and why he left many things pending. However, some light was about to be shed on him from quite an unexpected source.

During a business trip in May 2022 with a Fortune 500 company he was working with, an engineering colleague commended Graham Lutz for putting systems in place to handle his ADHD! The compliment was a shocker as he had no idea he was living with the condition (teachers at school had suggested it but he never thought much of it). 

He had adopted systems that coaches were teaching others living with ADHD without even knowing, so he could get things done. Being the scientist he is, he wouldn’t let new knowledge rest without further probing it.

He dug deeper into all information he could get about ADHD science and different perspectives from experts and medical literature. Later, he booked for an evaluation by a psychiatrist who diagnosed him officially. 

This revelation was beginning to bring light to many things and put his past ‘failures’ into perspective. They were just symptoms of a brain that was working differently than the expectation of others.

Through neuroscience and a deeper understanding of the brain, Graham understood that people with ADHD are physiologically different. Among some of the mechanisms of ADHD, the main issue is dopamine reuptake.

Without dopamine, one lacks control over something they want to do. Even with the willpower or intellect to do it, there is a physiological issue that prevents them from doing it.

It is this understanding of ADHD and how it influences the brain’s behavior that helped Graham Lutz to develop a mindset shift to understand himself better. It led him to comprehend that there were things he did not have control over. 

Instead of seeing ADHD from a victim’s perspective, he has learned to embrace it and know that he has control over his response and how he wraps his beliefs around it. Now, Graham Lutz focuses on reframing his mindset and reevaluating his limiting beliefs about himself and his capabilities.