I’m Alan Stracey. ADHD Coach and founder of WhereFocusGoes.
I started coaching after a 20-year career in the creative industries, starting out as a professional guitarist and eventually becoming Managing Director of a creative video production studio.
I worked with the world’s biggest brands, was trusted with huge budgets and managed multiple simultaneous, complex projects. My life revolved around delivering the impossible against a tight deadline. That experience taught me I could thrive under pressure, and keep the plates spinning when the stakes are high.
So when I was diagnosed with ADHD at 40, it felt like the missing piece – explaining why I could handle chaos and complexity with ease but struggled with the basics others found effortless. Why, despite the outward success, life often felt so mentally exhausting. It was like being handed the operating manual for my brain. It felt like I’d found myself. But that new awareness couldn’t stop the burnout and mental health breakdown that came just a few months later.
Once I’d taken a step back from the abyss I made myself a promise: If you’re going to live, do it right. Live the best life I could because I’d realised that the thing that scared me most wasn’t failure – it was mediocrity. To live the rest of my days without pushing myself forward felt pointless.
But recovery from burnout is hard… Especially for brains that are wired differently.
Over time my ADHD stopped feeling like a flaw and became my lifeline. Understanding how my brain actually worked allowed me to assemble the tools, insights, and resilience I needed to build a better life: one that was going to work for me.
Quite honestly, it’s been a lot of work. Have I enjoyed it all though?
No.
Has it made me the perfect coach, father, and friend?
Also no.
But I keep going because ‘the work’ is the journey we all have to do if we want to make a difference in our own lives.
For me it looks like: structure, routine, exercise, sobriety.
Yours will be different, but it’s up to you to work out what it looks like.
I spent 40 years of my life feeling like I was simultaneously too much and not enough. Most of us ADHDers can tell a similar story. Now I know how to make the most of my life with ADHD, I’m determined to show others how they can do the same, and I’m setting out to change the world, one Big Brilliant Brain at a time.
If anything you’ve read here has hit a chord, let me know. Send me a message or book a discovery call and let’s talk about how coaching could change your ADHD life.