We often hear familiar sayings about learning from mistakes, failures, and hardships. I believe those ideas are largely true, and I have seen their value over time.
My concern is not with the sayings themselves, but with how narrowly people tend to apply them. Most think of growth through struggle in terms of careers, sports, or other performance-based pursuits. Far fewer recognize that the same principle applies to life more broadly, especially to the ongoing internal and external challenges that shape us over time.
A Framing Excerpt
The following excerpt from My Tattooed Soul captures the heart of that idea:
Not all unexpected strengths come from mental health issues like mine, but they are usually born of some sort of ongoing challenges—mental, developmental, physical, or socially imposed. Someone with a physical challenge, such as paraplegia or missing limbs, is likely to develop very creative ways to work around that challenge and lead a more or less “normal” life. Think My Left Foot; I have seen a number of pieces of art made by artists with no arms.
Most of my friends in the LGBTQAI2S+ and POC communities have developed “thick skins” that allow them to function in the face of verbal and emotional abuse and “micro-aggressions” (a term that I hate because they are only micro to those not being confronted by them). They may also develop heightened awareness of their surroundings, increased ability to “read” a person, and empathy for others who are marginalized.
One of my closest friends from law school overcame tremendous prejudice and self-doubt to progress from a child brought into the country through non-traditional means to a legal powerhouse who was the speaker at our graduation and has written amendments to state laws within a few years of graduation.
In my case, my unexpected strengths or “superpowers” have grown from controlling my OCD, ADHD, and bipolar disorder.
OCD
In the case of my OCD, it started so early in life that it is a chicken-and-egg question between this and my Ideation and Restorative strengths. The obsession with even numbers has not been particularly helpful. Far more helpful was the fixation on patterns and code-breaking, not to mention the math skills that come with such a fixation.
I have used that superpower in many roles, none more than in my current position as a Medicaid specialist. I hear dozens of different stories; no two are ever quite the same. However, there are trigger words that allow me to instantly start sorting situations into a variety of categories that have similar patterns of solutions. From that point, it is much easier to determine exactly what information I need to collect and mentally calculate potential tax issues, periods of ineligibility, and splits for moving assets to various places.
After giving a mental estimate in seconds, I can pull out my calculator and spend twice as long verifying how close I was, and it is always very close. None of my official strengths can account for this ability or how early in life it began. This is something that I have had roughly 45 years of constant practice with. At a conservative four hours per day for 45 years, that is 65,745 hours of practice. Realistically, it is likely closer to 100,000 hours. If it takes 10–20,000 hours to master a skill, I am virtually a yogi on the mountaintop.
Identification of those trigger words and high-level comprehension of the tangled web of Medicaid regulations are really a matter of cracking the code. I determine the best way to search for specific topics using the vocabulary of the regulations rather than regular English, translate the regulations from gibberish to plain English, and then apply that key code to the situation at hand. It is one big cryptogram.
ADHD
My ADHD has led to some of my most critical superpowers for everyday life. Earlier, I described my bar exam preparations and my chess club experience. The exam preparations are the example that most people point to as a superpower, but that was a one-off situation. ADHD superpowers are a daily tool for many aspects of my life.
I listen to audiobooks and podcasts at 2–3x regular speed with no difficulty, allowing me to take in far more information in the same amount of time spent by others. Unless I am in a state of hyperfocus, I can simultaneously watch TV, play a mobile game, and follow conversations with my wife and children. However, for the sake of my marriage, I typically choose to pause the electronics.
As a special education teacher, I could physically deal with 1 or 2 children acting out violently, direct the attention of my paraeducator to a medically fragile child in distress, and get one of my “feces flingers” to stop throwing poop all over the room. I could read a story to the class with multiple voices and accents and still redirect students in my “teacher voice” without breaking the flow of the story.
At the law firm, I am often working on one file, emailing about a second, and thinking about the next one all at once. I am also able to put myself into a state of hyperfocus for urgent files or complex situations. I process information at 2–4x normal speed, which makes my slow hunt-and-peck typing suffer, but keeps my ability to absorb and store information much more efficient.
When necessary, I can also allow myself to become globally focused, with my attention constantly shifting. In my taekwondo classes, I am learning new skills while noticing where everyone else in the room is so that I do not crash into smaller bodies, and I can anticipate the moves of sparring partners. This might not seem to be the case since I am constantly being hit; however, anticipating a move and being physically fast enough to block it are two very different things.
Even when traversing a dangerous neighborhood or driving on the same road as poor drivers, I can see the people or vehicles around me and notice details that are clues to what their intentions or next move might be.
I have avoided many confrontations with direct eye contact or a deliberate shift in my posture to showcase my size to would-be assailants, and I have avoided more than a few accidents when I knew I was about to be cut off or have someone make a right turn in front of me from the left-turn lane.
Finally, it has granted me a great alternative to sleeping pills or losing my mind to stress. As with many people who have ADHD, stimulants mellow me out rather than hyping me up. In college, I averaged well under two hours of sleep most nights, and even less when manic. When the insomnia became too much, I took 7–8 NoDoz pills and a 20-oz Jolt Cola and fell asleep within hours, for at least my typical 1–2 hours.
Post-college, I have had many employers, employees, and coworkers who stressed me to the point of nearly losing control of my bipolar episodes. A large, strong cup of coffee or a cola takes the edge off and tastes great. I have avoided many conflicts by self-medicating with caffeine, though this can cause issues of its own. I am down to 12–20 oz of coffee per day on doctor’s orders to avoid ulcers. At one point, when I was having daily issues with my boss over differences of opinion regarding how to do my job, I was up to more than a gallon of black coffee per workday, and usually a cola or two after I got home. Who knew that something so tasty might be bad for me?
Given the pace of my law practice and my former work in early childhood, I cannot imagine how I could keep my sanity or my job without these ADHD powers.
BIPOLAR
If ADHD has provided the most critical powers for everyday life, then bipolar has provided the most critical powers for the times of greatest need. I could not have been successful as a college security guard, special needs preschool teacher, or elder law attorney without the abilities that I learned from hiding and eventually controlling my bipolar disorder.
I was fortunate, or cursed, enough to have the ability to mask much of my bipolar symptoms from an early age and to keep them mostly controlled by my mid- to late 30s, all without medication. PLEASE do not take that as an assertion that everyone with mental health issues like bipolar can do this, nor that they should attempt it. From what I have learned since starting therapy and medication, it is uncommon at best to achieve the level of control that I had or have without intervention.
As I said, I was fortunate to have avoided losing too many friends, jobs, money, physical health, freedom, or even my life. However, I was cursed to live in a hellish prison within my own mind, struggle daily to maintain outward appearances, feel nearly constant physical pain from one source or another, and believe that I did not need the help that I so desperately did. Seeking help, despite my apparent control, is the best decision I have ever made regarding these issues.
When I was in a low or depressed state, I wanted to sleep much more. For me, that meant 3–5 hours in a night, except for the 1 or 2 times per month that I would hibernate for 10–16 hours to recharge for the next long period without sleep. When I was in a high or manic state, I often functioned on one to two 30-minute naps and, on at least one occasion, was awake from Monday morning until Friday evening with no sleep at all.
Schools of any level do not care if I want to be asleep or have not slept; class goes on. If I am not there and participating, or at least taking notes, then I am not maintaining the image of a good student. When friends or family need to see me being a normal person, I cannot miss meals or planned events because I crashed at noon or because I am hallucinating and do not want to drive. Learning to function while tired and to find ways to stay alert and attentive has been a huge bonus later in life.
There are many days as a partner in a law firm that I am exhausted after 10–12 hours without breaks. When I get home, my wife and children still need me to function as a part of the family: preparing dinner, helping with chores and homework, and participating in family time. There are days when I can hardly keep my eyes open by 5:30 at night, but I am committed to spending an hour or two at taekwondo training and then picking up one of my daughters from a late school activity. Skipping the class or forgetting to pick her up are not acceptable outcomes—especially forgetting her.
By the time I started law school in my 40s, I was up to 5–6 hours of sleep most nights and 7–8 hours periodically. Driving 20 miles to work 6–8 hours as a paralegal, then driving 20-plus miles to school for classes that often ended at 9:00 or later, then driving 40-plus miles home, helping with chores, and studying or doing homework had me back to 2–3 hours many nights during the week.
By the weekend, I just wanted to sleep, but I had two young daughters who, for some semesters, I tucked in on Sunday night and then did not see them awake again until dinnertime on Friday. At 5 and 9 years old, they were not going to accept being ignored in favor of sleep when they only had two days to spend with me. My wife also needed attention, help with the housework that I was never around for, and respite from being a working single mother all week.
I needed to have skills that would allow me to wake up instantly, maintain some level of alertness, and fall asleep very quickly when the opportunity presented itself. Those skills were learned out of necessity through years of public and college education.
Even more important than being awake and functional, I could not let my family, school staff, or even most of the classmates who interacted with me daily see the emotional instability, the constant internal conflict, or the self-harm. When depressed, my instinct was to weep at nearly everything, especially cheesy commercials like the AT&T ad with a daughter growing up and dancing on her father’s shoes from childhood through her wedding.
Anything with a cute dog or cat set me off. Spilling milk while fixing my cereal set me off. I am pretty sure that seeing me have those breakdowns would have alerted people around me that there was an issue, so I learned to force down the tears, regulate my breathing, and smile when I wanted to cry.
When manic, I found the most inappropriate things funny or started to say terrible things before realizing who might hear me. I could watch a horror movie and laugh or clap during the goriest scenes, or start to observe out loud—luckily quietly or caught quickly—about how pretty a wall would be with blood splatters, or wondering if I could get the jerk in the next seat’s head to turn a full 180 degrees. These behaviors required a similar ability to stay acutely attuned to what I was thinking and feeling and to put a damper on physical expressions of emotion, as well as a “kill switch” between my brain and my mouth for the times when the filter was not enough.
I now consciously try to express my emotions when they are appropriate. For many years, I had to fake emotions that I thought others expected or that seemed to fit a situation. My default mode is stoicism. Without effort or deception, it is hard for me to show any emotional reaction to a situation that does not trigger extreme or unexpected feelings.
This is improving over time, but it is a side effect of a tremendous superpower. In order to hide the inappropriate emotions and exhaustion, I developed the ability to temporarily force myself into a false neutral state. When I was depressed, I could force myself to shift toward mania, and vice versa.
This was not as necessary when around my family or close friends because my superhero/vigilante complex kicked in and I had to protect them; around others, it may have been the only thing that prevented more suicide attempts or more extreme acts of violence against others. I developed several meditation techniques and practiced them until I could move from using them in isolation to using them in public without being noticed. Within a few years of my rooftop conversion, I had reached a point where I would notice myself using the techniques without having to consciously choose to use them. I needed to concentrate on other factors to determine if I was depressed or manic, and my wife was the only other person who seemed able to tell when I was altering my mood. She could notice the small changes in sleep and appetite, but was also remarkably in tune physically. She once described the physical sensation: holding my hand while I suppressed depression felt like holding a dead fish, whereas suppressing mania made me vibrate like a live wire.
Throughout my various jobs—working for campus security and dealing with volatile situations between drunk fraternities or talking to suicidal students through locked doors, teaching a chaotic group of children, or talking to families during the most difficult times of their lives—this ability has been in constant demand. There are situations that require calm and comfort, and others that require intensity and presence. I can walk into a tense standoff or a room of sobbing family members and force myself to remain calm and de-escalate the situation. I have entered mediation situations with all sides wanting lawsuits and screaming at each other and turned them into conversations with everyone at a table, sipping a drink, and finding some level of common ground. I can also enter a situation, such as an aggressor who needs to be stopped immediately or a suicidal person who needs to become engaged more than calmed, and bring my energy level from zero to sixty in a split second when needed.
I have frightened drunk football players through sheer intensity and presence to the point that they stopped fighting, but I have also kept injured people awake and alert until EMS arrived through loud jokes, dancing, or even singing—and my singing will make anyone alert enough to flee the area.
I often work 60–70-hour weeks, even now that I am cutting back. Most of those hours are worked without breaks, eating at my desk and either slogging through emails and file reviews or interacting with incredibly difficult situations. If I could not function while exhausted and regulate my emotional output, I could not function in this job.
There is a reason that attorneys, doctors, and entrepreneurs have some of the highest rates of stress-related mental illness, addiction, and suicide. I could easily be a statistic. Instead, I am an inspiration. -Aaron D. Paker, My Tattooed Soul (2026).
The truth is that everyone faces challenges, and those challenges often help us develop new skills and unexpected strengths or “superpowers.”
The key is to recognize those strengths and use them intentionally. When you do, setbacks can become opportunities for growth in every area of life.
- Challenges can build resilience, insight, and practical ability.
- Growth begins when you identify the strengths that hardship has helped you develop.
- If you reflect on what difficulty has taught you, falling down can become part of rising higher.