You are not broken.
You are wired
differently.

Let me take you back. Shy boy. Back of the classroom. Praying — genuinely praying — that the teacher would not call my name. My lips would move like I was reading. I was not reading. I had absolutely no idea what was happening. I just got very, very good at nodding along.

I grew up in a warm, loving home. My father from Kenya, my mother from Pakistan. First generation born in the UK. A family so full of love that my mother and father fostered children who had nowhere else to go — five kids of her own, and she still opened the door.

But the classroom? The classroom was its own kind of war. Words moved. Sentences dissolved. I watched my peers write pages. I managed a paragraph — if I was lucky. And I told myself every single day: they are smarter than me. They are better than me. I just have to work harder and nobody will notice.

My father proofread everything. My dad sat with me, annotated my notes, helped me study. Not everyone gets that. Most people do not get that. All the credit — every single bit of it — goes to my parents.

Somehow..somehow — I made it onto a prestigious GE graduate leadership programme. They flew me to the United States. To China. I lived in France. Somehow.. I landed a job at Shell on the trading floor — surrounded by traders, gas and power operators — a world that moves fast and waits for nobody. Then the Bank of England. Project manager. The suits. The boardrooms. The prestige.I had made it.

And still. Something wasn't right. I just didn't know what it was yet. So I did what I had always done — I ploughed through. Up at 5am. Reread my notes. Prep for meetings. Start earlier than everyone. Stay later than everyone. Go home. Start again. Rinse and repeat. Every single day. Not because I loved it. Because I had to. I had a family to provide for now, three beautiful daughters. Stopping was not an option.

Whilst my colleagues went home and switched off, I was working weekends just to retain what they'd absorbed in a meeting. I compared myself to everyone. And I always lost. The career looked impressive from the outside. From the inside, it felt like a performance I was terrified of getting wrong.

And the shame? The shame was its own full-time job. In our community, you do not talk about these things. You do not say the words out loud. You especially do not say them at a wedding, where your aunties are standing in a corner — biryani in one hand, judgement in the other — whispering about who got what job and whose kid is doing medicine.

The thought of them finding out I was dyslexic? That I had ADHD? I would have become the main topic at every family function for the next ten years. I wasn't ready for that kind of fame.

Dyslexia diagnosed at 27. ADHD diagnosed at 42. Over four decades without the full picture of my own brain. The relentless stress took a real physical toll. I now live with Type 1 diabetes. My body paid the price for what my mind was never allowed to name.

He was right. I wasn't broken. I was in the wrong environment. The moment I finally understood how my brain actually worked — everything changed. I stopped apologising for who I was. I started building from it.

Now I watch some of my daughters show the same signs I showed at their age. The same quiet battles. The same look. I will not let them wait forty years for an answer.

I built Wired To Thrive because no child, no adult, no family should have to wait as long as I did. I am now the coach and advocate I needed at age 10. I speak in schools, work with corporations, and coach individuals — specialising in the communities where this is still never spoken about. Where the silence is a wall and the shame runs deep.