I bang on a lot about the fact that the brain is built for safety, not happiness, not fulfilment, but survival, and in order to do that it’s in constant environment-scanning mode. That’s not a neurodivergent quirk, it’s just what brains do. They run this almost subliminal sequence of internal flashcards, matching what we’re seeing against what we’ve seen before, trying to work out whether something is relevant, dangerous, familiar, ignorable, friend, foe, worth attention. It happens so fast that we’re barely aware we’re doing it.

If I’m walking down the street and I see something ahead of me on the pavement, a slightly indistinct dark shape in the distance, my brain will have made a decision before I consciously register it. Mine, being wired as it is, tends to decide that what I’m seeing is a cat, which in my internal coding system means safe, delightful, please continue in this direction. About 90% of the time it’s a bag of rubbish. About 10% of the time it is actually a cat, and I can delight in my intuition and the feline encounter to come, although that’s possibly beside the point. The actual point is that the identification process was instant and unconscious, based on stored templates rather than fresh investigation.

That same mechanism is alive and kicking everywhere else in our lives.

When something happens at work, when someone sends a certain kind of email, when a new opportunity presents itself, the brain doesn’t start from neutral. It scans for a recognisable pattern. Somewhere beneath awareness it asks, have I seen this shape before, and how did that go?

A lot of what we call limiting beliefs are simply patterns that have been applied quickly and efficiently. They don’t usually sound dramatic. They sound reasonable, even responsible. If a particular task felt overwhelming once, the brain might logically deduce that this is not a task for me. From the inside, that feels like evidence. The brain is connecting dots. It’s doing exactly what it evolved to do, which is to reduce uncertainty by mapping experience and predicting what comes next.

The difficulty is when the terrain shifts and the map doesn’t automatically redraw itself. And the truth is, the map is constantly shifting. Because, you know, life. If there is one certainty, it’s that everything is in motion, in micro and macro ways.

A common example of this shows up around ADHD and leadership. So many ADHDers feel that because they are struggling to perform as well as they think they should in their current role, often one heavy on admin and maintenance work rather than problem-solving and ideation, there is no way they could work at a higher level or consider leadership. ADHD becomes synonymous with chaos, disorganisation and impulsive decision-making, and there is usually plenty of evidence from the current job framework to back that up. On the surface, equating those struggles with potential disaster feels wise.

But it’s not the full picture.

ADHD brains absolutely love logic, efficiency and clarity. What they can’t do is operate inside systems that don’t match their internal sense of what logic, efficiency and clarity should look like. And the good little canaries in the mine that we are, if something smells off, we don’t proceed easily. We get dysregulated. A dysregulated ADHD brain is where the chaos and impulsivity show up. A job that doesn’t challenge us can feel deeply inefficient, even painful, and we lose the will to try, bogged down by lack of stimulation. Not exactly the definition of lazy.

When stimulated by problem-solving, challenge, new sparks, an ADHD brain in full form is something to behold. We move fluidly between strategic vision and granular detail. We think fast, deep and wide. That capacity is a strength at senior levels, not a liability. The real issue is rarely raw capability. It’s scaffolding, support, knowing how to build structure around yourself instead of assuming the absence of it is fixed.

it’s a good reminder that support for disability isn’t about making someone function like a so-called ‘normal’ person, it’s about enabling them to reach their own potential, and there is potential aplenty in ND brains, often above and beyond conventional expectations.

The original pattern wasn’t foolish. It was protective. It was the brain looking at an outline and deciding it knew what it was.

Another common pattern in ADHD circles is around focus. The assumption goes that I can concentrate now because everything is new, and once it stops being new I’ll lose interest. That makes sense if novelty has historically been the thing that cuts through noise. But when we look more closely, what changes isn’t just shininess. When we start something fresh, it often comes unencumbered by internal politics, previous project details, knowledge about who thinks what about whom. There is simply more space. Fewer competing demands. Less background urgency. More room for deep work without constant interruption.

What that shows is that it’s not just novelty we crave, it’s bandwidth.

When we treat the first pattern the brain offers as fixed truth, we can end up organising our lives around conclusions that were drawn in very specific circumstances. If we bring those patterns into awareness, if we walk a little closer to the shape on the pavement instead of assuming we know what it is, we get more choice. The map can be updated. The pattern can be refined. What was once a protective rule can become a flexible tool.

When we move the process from unconscious to conscious, pattern spotting becomes a brilliant decision-making ally.

If a pattern is serving us, reliable and efficient, then we keep it, ta you very much.

If a pattern is limiting us, keeping us stuck, making us feel small, we get curious about what’s behind it and whether it still belongs.

None of this is about distrusting the brain. Pattern recognition is one of its greatest strengths. It allows us to move through a complicated world without paralysis. It simply helps to remember that sometimes a bag of rubbish will look convincingly like a cat from a distance, and that getting a little closer before deciding can change how we move next.

And yes, occasionally it really is a cat, and you’ll find me trying to contain my joy as I attempt a careful approach for some unlimited pets and cooing.