Driven or a diagnosis?

Why is ambition such a dirty word?

When I started franchising Haus of Vitality, I had two locations operating and had just announced the third. I was still working at the shop myself and juggling being a mum, doing treatments on clients, managing staff and expanding and scaling a franchise— a regular client arrived as I was settling her into the massage chair. "A third location," she said, "how will you handle that?" I was slightly shocked, not because I was surprised that's what people would think, but because there was no praise or best wishes— just a sheer "you can't handle this" vibe. My response probably shocked her more. "I'll handle it like I handle everything else. Like a boss." Slightly sarcastic and egotistical, yes. But who are you, Karen, to tell me I can't handle my own business?

I've always been incredibly driven — always starting a new business, studying, juggling more things than most people would take on at once, and hyper-focused when I'm working. I never thought anything of it. It's just how I am. I'm a creative, I like a challenge, I get bored easily, and I'm high-functioning under pressure.

It was a Saturday afternoon and I was catching up with a close girlfriend of mine, we were sitting outside, as the kids run around having a few wines, and I'd started telling her about the business and the plans too expand. “Have you been diagnosed with ADHD? I think you need to be medicated” her diagnosis was in. I was slightly taken aback, but it got me thinking. She has a dry sense of humour like me, so it came out blunt and to the point. Later that afternoon, I called my mum — an honest critic if ever there was one. "Mum, do I have ADHD?" "Why do you ask?" I told her what my friend had said. "Don't be ridiculous. You're just very driven." Considering my mum's a nurse, I took her advice as sound.

But it stuck with me anyway. Why is it that if we're ambitious, we must have something wrong with us? If we want more, we're ungrateful? If we fail once, we should give up?

I never did chase a diagnosis. What I did instead was start paying attention — not to what was wrong with me, but to how I actually operate. And once I did, the pattern was obvious.

I work best when I'm juggling multiple things at once — the second life goes quiet, I start procrastinating. I'm hyper-focused first thing in the morning, but I lose traction by about 1pm and stay lost for the rest of the day. Then Angus goes to bed, I switch back on — I could sit up at night working for hours, especially with a glass of red beside me. I meditate to calm my mind, and I know when to switch off, even if it's just a lunchtime walk to grab a coffee or a sauna to reset. When I still worked at the shop. I would often check out at lunchtime, jumping in the sauna to reset. My staff and myself always knew I’d come out a different person after a sauna.

This is exactly why I've never worked well for other people. It's not that I can't follow rules or show up — it's that a nine-to-five has zero interest in whether you're actually switched on at 10am or 2pm, it just wants a body in the chair. Nobody else is built to accommodate the shape of how I actually work.

And it's also exactly why I've been able to achieve as much as I have. Not because I grind through every hour equally, but because I know precisely when I'm productive and when I'm wasting my own time — and I've built the discipline to lean into the good windows instead of forcing output when my heads not in the game. I don't fight my own rhythm anymore. I just work with it.

Turns out that was never a disorder. It was just self-awareness most people would never turn inwards to see.