E47 - Overcoming Adversity + guest Michael W Allison

Julie Legg interviews Michael W. Allison—CEO of The Adversity Academy, U.S. Marine combat veteran, Purple Heart recipient, and resilience expert—about his ADHD journey and how overcoming adversity shaped his purpose.

Michael explains how he navigates life with ADHD through the lens of adversity, identity, and personal growth. From his early experiences of being misunderstood to discovering how structure, self-awareness, and purposeful systems can transform challenges into strengths, he shares powerful insights on reframing ADHD as a source of clarity, adaptability, and leadership.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

ADHD Traits: Michael reframes commonly misunderstood ADHD characteristics—such as high energy, impulsivity, hyperfocus, and rapid decision-making—as potential strengths. He notes that while these traits posed challenges in traditional academic settings and early social environments, they later became key tools in environments that value agility and decisiveness, such as the military and entrepreneurial leadership.
Self-Awareness: A pivotal theme in Michael’s journey is the transformation that came with increased self-awareness which has helped him challenge the idea that ADHD was purely a limitation, instead seeing it as part of a broader identity with valuable capabilities.
Adversity: Rather than being defined by hardship, Michael chose to use adversity as a forge—an opportunity to discover who he truly was and what he stood for. It’s not the adversity itself, he suggests, but our response to it that defines us.
Structure – A support, not a constraint: Though naturally resistant to overly rigid systems in school, Michael came to appreciate the value of structure through his experience in the Marine Corps. The discipline, clarity, and operational frameworks of military life helped him channel his energy and focus more effectively.
Owning your story: One of Michael’s core messages is the power of embracing your story fully, your authenticity. By understanding, articulating, and reframing your lived experience, he encourages others to rewrite their internal narratives and step into leadership with confidence.

LINKS

TRANSCRIPT

JULIE: I’m Julie Legg, author of The Missing Piece and diagnosed with ADHD at 52. Welcome to ADHDifference. In this episode I chat with Michael W Allison from Florida. He is the founder and CEO of The Adversity Academy. He’s a Purple Heart US Marine combat veteran, keynote speaker, bestselling author, and resilience expert. We talk about his incredible journey overcoming adversity, ADHD, and breaking the bottle to unleash our authentic self. Michael thank you so much for joining us today.

MICHAEL: Hey Julie thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

JULIE: Fabulous. We’ve got a lot to cover today so let’s start at, could you share when you first noticed those certain traits or challenges that shaped the way navigate life?

MICHAEL: Absolutely. Most definitely I think growing up for me in Jamaica, and then later moving to the United States, I faced multiple different adversities for myself. I think I had many challenges. So some of them were the language barrier coming to America, and then had… I was bullied because I could not adjust very well or get acclimated to what the American kids were doing, so I had to adjust to that culture. So that’s initially when some things started for me. Like early in my life, I started exhibiting some of those traits where I had like a lot of high energy. And then I was exhibiting some things around like quick decision making. And for me I realized that I was a very hyperfocused person. And that also like helped me started to like gauge and get a little much more self-awareness about myself. But I found that I was kind of like misunderstood, so kind of like an outcast, someone that stood out when it came to like my peers once I started like finding myself and coming into my own. So I struggled in school a little bit when if when you think about some of those things when things are structured as I’m someone that kind of like, is kind of like a push back when it comes to structure. So that’s one of some of those things that I struggled with initially. But once I started getting that better self-awareness then I was able to understand that ADHD, or having any of those signs or symptoms, is not necessarily a deficit or anything like that. But it’s a… when you kind of like could create a process and create a system, and put some of those things in place, it helps you actually get much more aligned with like your purpose and just become much more engaging too as well.

JULIE: Absolutely. So were their particular environments, such as school or the military, where these traits presented unique challenges or opportunities as well?

MICHAEL: Yeah most definitely. For me definitely school was one of them. I struggled with sitting still and I’m someone that likes to move around. My wife now says that I’m a very fidgety person. I can’t sit still. So school structure was one of those challenges for me. I will say that the Marine Corps actually help instil some of those discipline inside of you, instil some of those things in regards to it, because you know that the military is kind of like rigid, kind of structured, go by order. So I think that kind of helped put some things in place for me which was a blessing as well. It was challenging but a blessing too as well. But it helped me develop and get much more focused when it comes to being hyperfocused because decision-making and adaptability is one of those keen things you need in the military. And it also helped me when it came to the combat situations because in combat situations you got to be able to think on the fast, think on the go. So I think being able to be focused and being able to adapt to things very fast was one of the great things about some of the challenges that I face, but looking at it from a positive standpoint.

JULIE: Absolutely, and as a Purple Heart recipient how did your experience in combat, with your natural tendencies, with your impulsivity and focus and hyper awareness, how did that help in critical situations?

MICHAEL: Yeah definitely I think you know being a Purple Heart veteran is one part of it but I know I would be remiss if I don’t acknowledge like the guys that I actually served with and actually truly lost their lives on that day. You know, I was delivering supplies and we was going counterclockwise with me and my crew on our tank and as we’re going counter clockwise we give them their supplies and 7 seconds from pulling off I hear the loudest bomb and the loudest explosion. And shrapnel from the car bomb gashed me above the eye, injured my shoulder, knocked me out, knocked me inside of my tank. And my assistant Casinelli, he comes and grab me, checks on me. “Sorry Allison, sorry Allison, are you okay?” and I get… wakes me back up. And we go out and we look and see what just took place. It was a 500 lb car bomb and from this car bomb injured my Gunnery Sergeant has blood coming out of his ears, our doctor lost his leg, our Gunner on the Humvee, half of his face is gone and my best friend Solto died on that day. And we had to put him in a body bag. And when I think about those guys, I miss those guys to this day. Every time I get a chance to talk about them or get a chance to honor them. But in regards to your question and around being hyperaware and just critical situations, I think combat really does heighten your ability to stay hyperaware especially when your surroundings could anything is could happen. Then also I think when it comes to like the impulsivity around things like that, you… it could be dangerous, right. So the military helps refine some of your decision-making process especially when it comes to your preparation. So I think that’s one of those things that you always have to like be prepared for. And then I think the hyperfocus is important too as well because when you’re like that you’re scanning and you’re looking for things and you’re just checking and making sure things are accurate, things are on point. Because I think if you’re not focused and if you… one of the biggest things that we learned in combat is complacency kills. So you cannot be complacent with what you’re doing so always having your head on a swivel is one of those important things that I took away from that situation.

JULIE: Wow. And as a marine veteran what led you to create The Adversity Academy?

MICHAEL: Oh wow. So The Adversity Academy came about several years ago. So I’ve always had the entrepreneur spirit. I’ve seen that in my grandfather. I’ve seen that in my dad. They’ve always had their own business back in Jamaica and growing up I always wanted to either… first I wanted to be a karate movie star and then I said I want to get into cooking so I wanted to open up my own restaurant. And then as my career progressed and I served in the military, I was in a leadership position and I was always an instructor in teaching. And then from there I went on to go work on the railroad where I was also teaching as well too, working with my employees and my staff, teaching different programs. I eventually went to go work for the government where I became IT project manager. But also as a project manager I was creating programs and curriculums for senior executives and I saw the benefit of creating programs and how we could instil programs of all of these different personal professional development skills we all need as leaders. So with that being said, when I decided to start my company I was running a franchise and, I’ll be honest with you, I was not really happy in running the franchise and running that business. And I’m a person of faith and I felt like God was calling me to do something else. And in that moment I sold the franchise after I paid all that money for it, and started the business, and running the business and after doing that I said what is it that you want me to do. And from there I wrote my book Overcoming Adversity: Getting Your Life Back on Track. And after I wrote my book, I got invited to go do a TED Talk. And from doing the TED Talk I got an opportunity to go do some leadership training, personal development training programs. And from there people were asking me, hey do you have a program for this? Do you have some coaching or anything like that? And once I started doing some coaching and doing some programming with different companies and different organizations I said let me take this to a next level as I see that there’s so many different people wanting our services. And that’s where The Adversity Academy was birthed. So now I took all of that skill that I learned from those different companies, organization, and now we create a senior executive leadership development program, middle management, executive leadership programs, and then we have front-line supervisors management programs. And then we also have online programs too as well to serve multi-different faceted area of life on business but make sure that we’re trying to cover all bases to be much more holistic.

JULIE: Wow. And you mentioned your book Overcoming Adversity, you also wrote Break The Bottle. So what inspired you to write your books and who would benefit from reading those?

MICHAEL: Definitely. So the book Overcoming Adversity was written for anyone that’s facing setback or anyone that’s having some leadership challenge or business challenges in their personal life. Because personally for me I believe that your personal life actually kind of does tie into your professional life too as well. If you’re having issues with your wife at home, issues with your kids, somehow some way it trickles into your career. You may show up late to work. You may get frustrated. You may get agitated with something. So somehow some way it pours into your professional life. So I don’t believe that you could separate one or the other. So this book actually talks about my life and some of the things that I’ve been through personally but I give you actionable steps that you could actually take away from every single chapter that you could apply to your life or towards your business as well too. And then my book Break the Bottle, which is coming out here in the next two months, we’re getting ready to release the book. I’m so happy for that to be coming out. And the book actually now addresses a lot. Goes a lot more deeper with the research that I’ve been doing for the past 20 years, the interviews that I’ve conducted. And what I found that is there’s a difference when it comes to people being successful. And I when I say successful, I’m not just talking about monetary success. I’m just talking about success in life and things that people… brings people their purpose, their joy, their happiness. Those types of things. And it’s people that choose to be solutions focused. And when I say solutions focused is all of us bottle in so many things, and some of us keep so many things in that we bottle in. And we could bottle in our anxiety, our grief, our guilt, our depression, all of those things that we bottle in. But on the flip side of that from some of the interviews that I’ve done and what I’ve realized is we bottle in our happiness, our joy, our love, our peace of mind. We bottle in so many of these great things so we don’t get to express it. So the concept of breaking a bottle is actually asking the right questions and how we could get solutions focused to break the bottle. And we talk about that. We dive deep into that throughout the 12 chapters as well too.

JULIE: Fabulous and that’s coming out in a couple of months. Wow. [Yes ma’am.] Great. Yeah. And your work involves empowering others through adversity. What advice would you give to people who really struggle with self-doubt and anxiety?

MICHAEL: The number one advice that I would give someone is learn how to reframe the narrative. I think self-doubt is often distorted perception and it’s not your reality. And when you get a chance to reframe things and look at things from a different perspective it really makes you have much more of awareness when you start looking at things. Number two I would say is develop micro wins. I think people always talk about go big, go big, go big. But if you kind of look at it your confidence isn’t just built overnight. You just got to start with some of those small wins, and creating habits, and just be consistent when doing that. The third thing I would say is create systems. Put those things in place, not just goals. I recall when I was in the military, we always talked about proper planning prevents piss poor performance. And if you put plans and procedures and SOPs, and put different things in place, the outcome will be so much better because it gives you so much alignment. It gives you so much clarity. It gives you a blueprint. It gives you a plan, something that you can strategically follow and actually execute. So that’s what I would say. Create systems not just goals. I think that’s important when it comes to accountability too as well. And the last thing that I would share is surround yourself with people that are right for you. I had a conversation with my son literally about an hour ago about this conversation, about this. About making sure you’re surrounding yourself with the right people that’s going to mentor you, that’s going to coach you, that’s going to build you up, that’s going to actually hold you accountable where, whenever, anything goes awry. Because I found that many times when I was speaking with him is that we say yes to lot of things but we don’t have… some of us find it hard for us to say no to a lot of things. And when you have people that’s around you and you could surround yourself with the right people, you have so much more accountability and responsibility tied to that too as well.

JULIE: I think that’s great advice and I resonate with that myself with ADHD, and those systems are really important. And as you said, you know, really embracing the small wins and acknowledging that. And that this self-narrative which feeds our self-doubt, to combat that.

MICHAEL: I agree. I agree with you. I agree with you. You know, when I was thinking about it for myself you know, when I got out of the military I struggled with anxiety and self-doubt. And I think some of these things are like the by-product of just not having systems in place for yourself. And when you give your brain systems to follow then it reduces some of the chaos and it increases the clarity. Which is why I like that.

JULIE: Absolutely and surrounding yourself with people that enable the positive you as well. [Absolutely. Absolutely.] Rather than sort of falling into… yeah falling into maybe a network of folk that aren’t so healthy in many ways. You’ve mentioned also about fostering innovation and leading with confidence, so how do you… how can leaders harness the unique traits to inspire others? I mean that’s something that you’re doing, how would you suggest other others do the same?

MICHAEL: Yeah I would suggest that you leverage neurodiversity and what I mean by that, instead of suppressing your ADHD traits or anything of that magnitude, then you find ways to use them strategically. So use them as a way to benefit you and put those things in place. That’s how I looked at it for me. So if I’m someone that is always fidgety and I need to get much more hyperfocused, put myself in circumstances and situations in the training where I could utilize that strength. I know sometimes people talk about what are your weaknesses and things like that. So me, I focus on my strength. What am I really, really good at? Especially as a business owner and the things that I’m not good at then I supplement those things to people that are strong in those areas and those suits to as well. So that’s what I mean by that. The next thing I would say is authenticity over perfection. My wife grew up a perfectionist and it was hard for her to make decisions because she was very indecisive. So just focus on just being authentic. People connect more with the leaders who are real and not perfect. And I think that’s important for us just to be ourselves and just be human. Don’t try to put ourself in comparison bucket or anything like that. I was talking to a friend of mine and I told him to put his hand on the steering wheel. And I said when you’re putting your hands out man, what are you? A 10 or are you a two? Because you’re always going to be comparing yourself. So, whenever you’re holding your hands out, you’re driving and you feeling like you’re in a comparison bucket, man just go to a 10! Just turn yourself to a 10. [Excellent.] The next thing I would say is I would recommend is create environments of growth. So I think leadership isn’t just about being the best, it’s about elevating others. So as a leader it’s incumbent upon us to inspire people, empower people and embolden them and put them in circumstances and situations where they gain their confidence. And I think that’s the true meaning of a great leader as well.

JULIE: Absolutely. And what message would you give, or would you like to share with people who are just learning to embrace their differences? You know, if I can put it into perspective, for example someone with a new ADHD diagnosis. After having been undiagnosed all their life and you know, it is quite a mind shift. So what message would you like to share with people embracing differences of all kinds?

MICHAEL: What I would love to share with people is ask yourself this question, when it comes to differences, what difference would it make? And I’ve always asked people to think about… when you’re thinking about yourself, and your decision making, your process making, and you’re trying to identify your goals and trying to identify things you’re trying to do in life, ask what difference it is going to make. And when you’re difference led, it just gets you so much focus and gets you so much clear in regards to processing things. And I say that because your difference is your superpower. Your difference is what actually is going to make a difference. So when you can actually focus and harness on what makes you different, what’s makes you so unique, that’s actually going to be your superpower. So that’s exactly what I would say to you. The words the world doesn’t need more people that are just going to conform. It needs people that are going to stand up, people that are going to like be their own, people that are going to be authentic. Especially people that are unique in their ways of thinking and leading and processing. If you ever look at the examples of people like Einstein, Edison, Jobs. They didn’t conform to just whatever status quo is. They did something that went against the norm. Kind of like when I talk about the unleadership, do things that are not traditional. Do things that are different that stand out, that makes you so unique about yourself which people will actually love and embrace, and join you, and want to be a part of what you’re doing too as well.

JULIE: Great advice. And tell me, what do you love most about your job? Wooo! What do I love most about my job? So I love seeing people break through barriers and step into their potential. And it’s fascinating or interesting to think that sometimes we, inside of our heads, have these thoughts that are just our limiting beliefs, our self-imposed imposter syndrome, all of these things that tie us down. And when we actually realize that we have so much infinite abundance with so many things that we could actually do and conquer and create, and we just need to be in the right environment. I think sometimes we’re in the wrong environment and we actually don’t see what’s actually inside of us of what we could actually potentially do and build. And I think the great thing about that for me, when I went on my own self-discovery path, was I had my own situations in the past but once I got a coach, once I got a mentor, once I got accountability partners, once I started working with different groups, I saw so much more potential in myself that I did not even see in myself that people were seeing inside of me. So that’s the thing that is very unique in regards to seeing the difference with people. So now when I see that and people have that aha moment like, oh really I didn’t know I could do that. You know, that type of stuff. I think it’s some of the amazing things like I just we just literally saw the SpaceX guys come back last night when I was here watching it. And I told my family like, let’s watch this. Let’s watch this. Let’s watch this. And as we’re watching it we’re saying people thought this would not even be possible but look at what they’ve accomplished. Look what they’ve done. And it’s so amazing to think something like this nobody would even think about and it just shows all of the capability and capacity that we all could go out here and do. And you could do it just as well too.

JULIE: No, that was very remarkable. I enjoyed that too. Absolutely. So you’re a busy man. You’re a busy man. What hobby or passion consistently recharges your energy?

MICHAEL: So to be honest with you Julie, I love, love, love, love to work out, and I love to read. So I grew up a very chubby fat kid. So just to be… just to be honest, I was the guy that was always eating ice cream. Whenever my mom was baking cakes, whenever she was finished with the cake batter, I would like swipe my hand in the bowl and like lick the bowl and eat it out because I just love to eat. And that was my weakness. And to be honest, besides the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps obviously kept me in shape, but when I got out of the military over a span of 10 years I put on close to over 110 pounds. And it was not until several years ago I was on an interview and a guy just pulled me to the side and said “Hey man I see my brother inside of you, and it was on my heart just to tell you man you need to get healthy. You need to lose weight.” And no one has ever said anything like that to me in my life besides a drill instructor in the military. And it really was like a gut punch but it was a really eye-opening moment for me to actually face my own reality of I need to be much more healthier. And ever since then I’ve been on the path and my own journey of getting much more healthier. And I’ve been in the… I have not missed the gym at all this year in 2025. So I’m in the gym every single day in 2025. And last year in 2024 I’ve worked out so much. I started fasting. I changed my wellness routine. I started getting into meditating. I started getting to… just have, just working out and just being physically fit. And I’m happy to tell you that I’ve lost over 130 pounds over the past year and a half. [Wow.] So that’s one of the biggest hobbies that I’ve become super passionate about. And I’m an avid reader, you know. So for me whenever I was growing up I’ve always gravitated more towards the arts and I’ve because I’m always a visionary thinker but I’m always one that always wanted to be inquisitive about what’s inside of books. So I’m always reading two or three books a month just to get much more knowledge, just to understand more things and become much more inquisitive. There’s three things that I look at when it comes to like reading a book. Can this inspire purpose? Can this inspire profit? Or can this book inspire prosperity? And I’m always looking at those three things when it comes to reading books.

JULIE: Congratulations on your weight loss too. That is amazing and good on you. [Thank you. Thank you.] This last question might be a little bit tricky, but do you have a piece of advice that you wish someone had given you early in your life about embracing your strengths and your challenges?

MICHAEL: Most definitely. Great question. So when I was… I faced a good bit of adversity throughout my life Julie. So coming from Jamaica we experienced a flood left us homeless, experienced a hurricane left us homeless again. I came to America, had an incident with a family member, had another incident in the Boy Scouts you know, then I had opportunity to play high school football. Tore my ACL, MCL, back-to-back. College opportunity was taken away. I joined the military experienced 911, find myself in Iraq getting blown up by the car bomb. Getting out of the military you know, my transition was not the greatest. So when I transitioned out of the military I went through two divorces. I actually got arrested. Got a DUI and tried to commit suicide several years ago. I got to being on 13 different medications and after being on 13 different medications you know, I was ready to call it quits. And throughout all those different adversities, all of those different challenges that I faced throughout my life, it was always a silver lining moment where there was something that always saying, you could do better. You could have, you have greatness inside of you. There’s a… there’s something on the other side of this coin where you could actually strive. And initially whenever adversity hit me, I used to feel like it’s the end of the world. And I remember when I was younger my mom had wrote me a letter when I was in boot camp because boot camp was very hard for me. And she was telling me all of the things that her and my dad have been through and how they’ve made it. All the sacrifices that they’ve made. And then that resonated with me as I was going through that injury playing football and my coach came up to me and he said “You’re not broken. You’re just wired differently.” And that always stuck with me in regards to how I look at things because I’ve always thought that it was something wrong with me. And there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m magnificently and beautifully made and that makes me unique within myself. I just have to go through my own challenges, own adversity, and try to fix some of these things that I needed to work on for myself, on my own personal growth, on my own personal journey. But that’s what makes me unique. That’s what makes me different. That’s what makes me able to help people because there’s other people that have been through some of the same things that I’ve been through that makes me uniquely qualified to help them go through some of the same situations too as well. So when I looked at it from different… that standpoint and we talk about reframing, we talk about perspective and how we look at things, that’s how I kind of look at things and that’s the thing I would share with people. So instead of trying to like fix yourself and learning how to work with other things, just focus on you. Just focus on you. Break the bottle. Shed all of your limiting beliefs and just focus on you.

JULIE: You have such an incredible story and I am honored that you’re sharing that with our audience today. So really appreciate that, thank you Michael. You have many links and we are going to be putting them in the show notes, how to contact you and to hear more about your story. But I’d just like to say again, thank you so much and I wish you all the very, very best with the launch of your second book. [Thank you so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure.] Appreciate you. [Thank you.]