Published on 12, July, 2020
One year ago, I thought that "self improvement" was going to be a natural by-product of finally knowing how and why I "see" and "do" and "think" differently to most other people. Autism.
The relief of finding the explanation for my crafted life and inner thoughts - was overwhelmingly wonderful - especially in the early weeks. It still makes me smile to think of that feeling now.
I thought that, knowing the reason WHY I can be so dysfunctional, suboptimal and darn right frigging useless......would allow me to "hack myself" to improvement.
I thought that, knowing the reason WHY I can be unusually competent and impressive in some respects ... would allow me to "hack myself" to the zenith of my capabilities.
I rationalise and utilise knowledge and information every day to good effect.......so I presumed my self-knowledge would be profoundly powerful....allow me to 'get' or 'engineer' the right help.
I couple of important aspects of my life are much better now......but the majority of my nonsense.....remains nonsense.
I consider myself a lucky survivor, who has earned a magic key of understanding…I'm worried that I'm not using that key to best effect at the moment.
Often on these pages, people say "don't be too hard on yourself, give yourself time, relax, its not your fault etc"........but should we all also be saying, just as often, "keep striving to be better, improve yourself and the lives of those around you, keep challenging yourself etc" ?
I'm feeling some frustration - with myself - I want the next 12 months of my journey to be AT LEAST as constructive as the 12 months since that blinding flash of realisation.
Thoughts anyone?
Number said:Often on these pages, people say "don't be too hard on yourself, give yourself time, relax, its not your fault etc"........but should we all also be saying, just as often, "keep striving to be better, improve yourself and the lives of those around you, keep challenging yourself etc" ?
I don't see that these are contradictory.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "hacking yourself." I'm trying to work out how to avoid triggers and burnout and trying to let myself unmask a bit. But I'm not sure how much else is possible. We're always going to have our limitations.
FWIW, I do work hard on self-improvement, but on moral self-improvement. Being a better person. I'm not sure that it's really possible to be a better autistic beyond, as I say, trying to learn to avoid triggers and overload and to unmask a bit (which is hard enough). It's a hardware problem (how our brains are wired) not a software problem (how we think/act).
Luftmentsch said: do work hard on self-improvement, but on moral self-improvement. Being a better person.
Yes - me too.
But I also strive to be less rubbish at some things too. Just because I have natural (and as you rightly say, hard-wired difficulties,) doesn't mean that I'm hard-wired NOT to overcome them to some extent.
To give you a hypothetical example........if my autism prevented me from using power tools, but I only had an electric jack-hammer to break down a wall........should I just say "oh, I can't do that?" No, I would pick up that jack hammer and use it manually, smashing it against that wall till it fell.
If I don't have the perfect tool or don't have a professional capability, I will still try to use WHATEVER I have to hand to try and circumvent the problem......to get better.
That's all I'm trying to convey. A DRIVE to be better.