Not Winning Pride of Britain Helped Me Move Beyond the “Inspirational Neurodivergent” Box
- Divergent Thinking
- Apr 23
- 7 min read
In 2016, I was named a finalist for the Pride of Britain Prince’s Trust Young Achiever award.
At the time, it felt enormous. I was in a room with some of the most extraordinary people in the country, and on paper my story fit the kind of arc these awards often celebrate: a young person who had experienced adversity, overcome barriers, and emerged into visibility.
I had gone from being a “bottom set” student, from being too anxious to leave my room, to speaking up for neurodivergent young people on a national stage.
And then I did not win.
At the time, of course, there was a sting. That is human. But looking back now, I can honestly say that not winning was one of the best things that happened to me — especially in terms of how I understand neurodiversity, and how I wanted to build my life and work around it.
Because if I had won, I think it would have been much easier to stay trapped inside a story that neurodivergent people are too often pushed into: the story of being inspirational because we survived.
Not winning forced me to move beyond that.
The neurodivergent person as “inspiration” is still a very limited role
There is a very particular way neurodivergent people are often welcomed into public conversation.
We are celebrated when our story is:
painful enough to move people
tidy enough to make sense
hopeful enough to reassure others
personal enough to avoid challenging systems too directly
In other words, we are often most visible when we can be framed as individuals who have “overcome” our own difference.
That sounds positive on the surface. But it can become a trap.
Because it keeps the focus on the neurodivergent person as the site of the problem and the site of the solution. We become the individual who battled our autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, anxiety or exclusion — and somehow came out the other side in a form the world now finds inspiring.
But that story is too small.
It leaves out the most important question:
why were the systems around us so hard to survive in the first place?
That is the question that matters to me most now as the founder of Divergent Thinking.
Back then, I was still being rewarded for survival
By 2016, I had already lived through a lot.
I had grown up autistic, dyslexic and dyspraxic in systems that were far better at naming what I struggled with than what I might bring. I had lived with intense social anxiety. I had been underestimated in school, placed in the bottom sets, and made to feel that the shape of my mind was a problem to solve.
So when I became a finalist for a national award, it felt like recognition.
And it was recognition.
But the recognition was still tied to a particular version of me:
the one who had struggled,
the one who had survived,
the one who had turned pain into something people could admire.
Again, there is nothing wrong with celebrating resilience. But if that is the only version of neurodivergence that gets visibility, then we are still being framed through hardship first and value second.
That matters, because neurodivergent people do not exist only as examples of endurance. We are not here simply to prove that adversity can be overcome. We are also thinkers, builders, founders, strategists, creators and people with specific cognitive strengths that the world still too often fails to recognise.
Not winning forced me to ask a deeper question
If I had won, I think there is a real chance I might have stayed longer inside the “inspirational young neurodivergent person” identity.
That identity can feel good at first, especially if you have spent years feeling unseen or “less than”. But it can also quietly limit you. It encourages you to keep telling the same story in the same way. It rewards pain when it is packaged accessibly. It can make other people feel moved without ever requiring them to rethink the systems that created the struggle in the first place.
Not winning forced me to confront something more useful:
Did I want to be recognised mainly for surviving a world that misunderstood neurodiversity?
Or did I want to help build a world that understood neurodiversity differently?
That shift changed everything.
It moved me away from wanting to be the person who represented resilience and toward wanting to become someone who could change the conversation itself.
Neurodiversity is not a tragedy with a happy ending
This is probably the biggest point I would make now.
Too often, neurodivergent lives are still narrated like this:
first, the struggle
then, the diagnosis
then, the hardship
then, the eventual success
and finally, the uplifting lesson
But real neurodiversity is not a neat before-and-after story.
It is not:
“I was broken, then I fixed myself.”
It is not:
“I had these tragic difficulties, but luckily I was strong enough to rise above them.”
What I understand much more clearly now is that my neurodivergence was never just the thing I had to overcome.
It shaped:
how I think
how I notice patterns
how I process systems
how I communicate
how I create
how I understand exclusion
and ultimately, why I built the work I do now
My autism, dyslexia and dyspraxia were not side notes in the story. They were part of the architecture of it.
That is a very different frame from the old “inspirational adversity” narrative.
The danger of external validation is even sharper when you are neurodivergent
Another reason not winning helped me is that it disrupted my relationship with validation.
I think a lot of neurodivergent people grow up hyper-aware of whether we are acceptable. We become skilled at scanning for signs:
Did I say the right thing?
Did I look normal enough?
Am I being too much?
Am I still liked?
Have I finally done enough to be taken seriously?
That can make external recognition feel incredibly powerful.
An award is not just an award in that context. It can feel like proof that you are finally enough.
So when I did not win, I had to sit with something difficult but freeing:
my worth had not changed.
My neurodivergence had not become less valid.
My ideas had not become less useful.
The need for better neuroinclusion had not disappeared.
The work still mattered.
That lesson was essential.
Because if your identity as a neurodivergent person is built entirely around being publicly validated for surviving, then the moment the applause stops, your foundation becomes shaky.
Not winning forced me to build a different foundation.
It pushed me from personal story to structural change
This is where I think the biggest long-term value sits.
The version of me who might have won Pride of Britain in 2016 could very easily have been encouraged to remain a symbol:
a promising, inspiring, articulate example of what a neurodivergent person can achieve.
Instead, not winning left me restless.
It kept me hungry.
It made me think more structurally.
It pushed me toward study, deeper thinking, sharper frameworks and eventually toward building Divergent Thinking.
That shift matters because neurodiversity does not need more stories that end at inspiration.
It needs:
better design
better systems
better leadership
better recruitment
better support
better understanding of spiky profiles
better environments where different minds can thrive
That is the work that matters to me now.
Not just telling people I survived.
But asking why neurodivergent people have to survive so much in the first place.
I no longer want to be admired for coping with exclusion
This is something I feel very strongly now.
I do not want neurodivergent people to be endlessly admired for how gracefully we cope with systems that exclude us.
I do not want us to be rewarded mainly when we can turn our pain into something palatable.
I want the systems to change.
I want schools to stop treating spiky profiles as failure.
I want workplaces to stop confusing neurotypical presentation with competence.
I want managers to stop seeing support as special treatment.
I want recruitment to stop screening out brilliant people because they do not perform normality in the expected way.
That is why things like workplace needs assessments, training and strategy work matter so much. The real goal is not more applause for neurodivergent people who made it through. It is fewer environments that require such brutal adaptation in the first place.
The real win was moving beyond the trophy model
Looking back, I can see that not winning Pride of Britain protected me from something.
It protected me from mistaking a moment of recognition for the destination.
It protected me from staying in a story that was ultimately too small.
It protected me from becoming comfortable being seen as “the inspiring one” instead of becoming useful in a deeper way.
That is why I can now say the loss was a gift.
It made me move from:
“Look what I survived” to
“Look what needs to change”
And that, to me, is the more powerful neurodiversity story.
Final reflection
I am still grateful I was a finalist. That platform mattered. The visibility mattered. The people I met mattered.
But not winning did something winning may not have done.
It forced me to move beyond the role of the inspirational neurodivergent young person and into the work of building a different future.
A future where neurodivergent people are not only celebrated when we overcome adversity, but valued for our thinking, our insight, our pattern recognition, our creativity, our systems awareness and our leadership.
A future where the point is not just that we survived.
But that the world finally learned how to work with our minds, not against them.
To explore more visit the blog or learn more about workplace needs assessments.
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