Life Happens

Life happens… and sometimes it’s awesome 😀

In the past couple months I have had a lot of really amazing things happen. First, my niece was born on my birthday. Next, this blog started taking off and gaining followers. Then, another niece was born. And now, I have gotten a job doing the same thing I have been doing as a volunteer (missionary) for the past 7 months.

I start work on Monday and I am so excited.

What does this have to do with autism? Nothing. And yet… everything…

During my interview for this job, they asked what my eventual occupation goal is. I told them that I want to be a motivational speaker. So they asked what I would talk about as a motivational speaker. I responded that I have been through a lot of challenges in my life and have worked to overcome those challenges and want to tell others about that and inspire them to work through their own challenges. The manager then asked the seemingly inevitable question about what those challenges were and what I have learned from them.

Well, I took a deep breath and then explained that I have autism. I told him about how I struggled with communicating and learning how to read other people’s social cues and making eye contact. Then I told him how I have learned to communicate better and to respond appropriately to others. I ended by saying that through my experiences I have learned that our greatest limitations are the ones we put on ourselves. Sometimes we convince ourselves that we can’t do something and our thoughts make it so. The reality though is that we are often more capable than we give ourselves credit for and if we only try, we may find that we can do things we thought to be impossible.

Anyway, the manager was pretty impressed with my response and asked if I could talk to his daughter because she needed to hear that. He also complimented my communication skills and eye contact. And I guess it must have worked because I have the job now. 🙂

So even though this job doesn’t really have anything to do with autism, it has everything to do with autism because autism has made me who I am. I am a better person because of autism and I’m grateful for this opportunity so that I can become an even better person than I am now.

8 thoughts on “Life Happens”

  4. I love this…. “that through my experiences I have learned that our greatest limitations are the ones we put on ourselves. Sometimes we convince ourselves that we can’t do something and our thoughts make it so. The reality though is that we are often more capable than we give ourselves credit for and if we only try, we may find that we can do things we thought to be impossible.” It really is about finding away to enable ourselves and build self confidence. It something I try to remind myself of how frustrating it is for my son when things like holding a pencil and printing or communicating are challenging when he sees his peers doing it easily. So many well meaning people that are helping him but at the same time not realizing that they need to build him up so he can enjoy every little success so he’s motivated to try again even if it feels hard. One of the things that made him feel better was when he went ice skating with his class last year. All of his peers were falling down and crashing just like him…suddenly he felt like he was on the same level field as them and was learning “with them at the same pace.” He showed everyone that his determination was stronger then all of his peers who were complaining about how cold it was or how hard skating was…he just smiled and kept trying. Thank for the great post and CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

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