In this episode, I describe many strengths of autism, including: - around a 40% increased auditory intensity particularly in music - pattern recognition / algorithm development strengths - improved happiness by not conforming to a social norm - ability of autistics to be / discover their true selves without concern for social judgements - a conscious effort to be who we are & help others feel comfortable with who they are
Being autistic has so many strengths, we have a unique ability to be ourselves unequivocally without conforming to a social norm.
Who you are is a beautiful person! You ARE worthy of love and all the joy in the world.
One act of kindness can go such a long way.
Being autistic in itself comes with a sense of freedom - freedom of expression without concern of judgements. And anyone can experience this freedom if they choose to align with themselves instead of doing what everyone else does out of fear.
"The world is a beautiful place! The more you can recognize the beautiful aspects of your world, the more of them you attract into your life.... and I firmly believe these patterns underlying everything reveal to us a reality none of us can fully perceive"
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So I've talked a lot in previous videos about some of the difficulties of being autistic, but today I'd like to talk about some of the strengths.
Picture this: you are listening to music, and you can hear every single detail all at once. Not only that, but it almost feels like waves of excitement or relaxation—depending on the genre you're listening to—where it feels so real to you. It feels like your entire world in that moment is revolving around that music that you're listening to. It's really powerful!
I think maybe the only thing that can kind of compare to that feeling is maybe when neurotypicals smoke weed or something—pretty close to that! But that's exactly what it feels like: this absolutely all-encompassing, incredible feeling of just being captivated by the moment.
And that's one hallmark of autism I wouldn't trade for the world. Straight up, if someone said, "Okay, you can become neurotypical with a snap of the fingers," I would say hell no! I simply wouldn't do it, because I believe that there is significant value in living life this way. Not only that, but it's incredibly enjoyable to be able to hear details in music that literally no one else hears. It's really special.
It's special to be able to recognize patterns. Like for me, in my daily world, everything is a pattern, everything is an algorithm.
Yoga poses become like little architectural triangles of patterns and algorithms.
Software, of course, is algorithms.
But not just the things that you might think of when you think of algorithms: music is algorithms, colors are algorithms. Ultimately, everything is!
And it's still amazing to me that other people don't see life this way. I never understood it for a long time until discovering I'm autistic. And that's one huge strength that autistics really excel at: not only do we notice details, but we find it impossible not to notice patterns and the underlying algorithms behind them, which is probably how the math stereotypes originally came up.
Not only that, but because we don't see a lot of the social information, autistics have this added advantage for being able to pursue what we want to do in life. We don't create a fake persona—not really. It's not like most people, where you do and say things to try to fit in with the social majority.
Instead, it's like you have no reason not to be yourself. You have no reason not to, so you live life unequivocally being who you are, with no regrets. And it's an amazing way to live life, it's incredible! I wouldn't change that for the world.
Peer pressure doesn't really affect us as much, most of the time, because well, we don't really care if other people are doing something. If you're going to do something else, cool, do it! You know, there's not a whole lot of pressure to conform when it comes to our actions and our daily lives. If someone comes up to me and says, "I don't like what you're wearing," I'd tell them, "Okay, sorry, you know, it's not my problem, that's your problem!"
So it kind of gives a freedom—a freedom that I feel that most neurotypical people don't have. Because so many neurotypical people are absolutely obsessed with this idea of fitting in. Because fitting in—I get it, fitting in has a pretty significant evolutionary advantage. People like you, and when you fit in with people you're better treated, statistically you make more money (fun fact!), and it has a lot of benefits to it.
Here's the problem: people become so obsessed with fitting in that they give up on themselves. They forget who they are; they completely forget who they are! Instead, they make up a fake online profile, and they do all of this with the purpose of gathering attention. But to what end? Why would you want to share a false image of who you are online? I have never understood that, and I think my autism is a huge part of the reason I am the way that I am. Because if I wasn't autistic, I probably would care about social norms like a lot of people do. I don't know, it's really hard to say, you know? It's like asking yourself, "What if I was born colorblind?" It's very difficult to even quantify and imagine that.
For me, what being autistic means is having the freedom to be yourself and to live your life the way you want to live it, without worrying about the judgments or negative social feedback from other people.
My total inability to tell the difference between a real smile and a fake smile up until about six weeks ago—I honestly believe that's why I'm so happy. That's why I'm so happy all the time! Because why wouldn't I be happy? You know, if you don't see all of the negative social baggage that everyone else is carrying around all the time, if you can't see any of that, of course you'd be happy, because the world is a beautiful place!
The world is a beautiful place, and the more people can learn to recognize that and see that—both autistic people and neurotypical people alike, and throw in some ADHDers in there too—the more you can start recognizing the beautiful aspects in your world, the more of them you attract into your life.
A lot of people are held back by their own fears of being different, of being judged, because they're so terrified to even slightly deviate outside of the social norm. And let me tell you, it's worth it! It's worth it, not only is it worth it, it might be the most worth-it thing in the whole world, because you're free. You're free to be who you are. You don't have to worry if this random person on the street doesn't like what you're doing; you just do it anyway. Why? Because it doesn't matter what he thinks!
You develop this raw confidence and raw focus that moves you through life unlike any other experience. And I don't know—I really don't know if I would be like that if I wasn't autistic. If I grew up from such an early age seeing all that negative social baggage, I could easily have been an entirely different person, probably a lot more pessimistic to be honest.
It would be like a blind man in a world of beautiful sounds and terrible sights. And because he's blind he can't see any of the terrible sights, but everything sounds so peaceful and nice, so he lives an entire life thinking that the world is absolutely beautiful and seeing no flaws in that.
Here's the really interesting part of all of this: what you focus on is what you attract more of. Where focus goes, energy flows! My mom texted me that the other day—I was so unbelievably proud! I was like kind of in a Cloud 9 moment, like, "Oh yes, she gets it!" And it was so, so great to hear that.
So when you focus on something, you see more of it. When you're focused on opportunities, you see more of them. Not only do you see more of them because of a large amount of cognitive biases associated with all of that—I'm sure all of you science people out there are going to say this now: "Oh, it's this bias and that bias!" Yes, these biases do exist, that is true. However, there is something underlying all of this. I absolutely believe there's something underlying everything, and being able to pick up on patterns that other people can't has really changed my life for the better, because I'm able to see and appreciate all those small synchronicities, all of those tiny little things that people walk past every single day and never even notice.
Like, I met more than seven people with the same name as my last name in the span of about one week! It was freaking me out. I was like, "What is happening? Have I crossed the line into the Matrix? Am I outside of reality now?" You know, like, it was wild, totally wild! I walked into a bookstore once in a section of a book I don't even like, because I was with a friend shopping with him, and I pick up a book intuitively—like I don't even know why I picked it up—but the main character was my first and last name, and other people in the book were members of my family's names. These are all the sorts of patterns that happen to me on a daily basis. If I wasn't autistic, I would probably never see this; I would never know, not any of this.
Honestly, if I wasn't autistic, my life would be a hell of a lot more boring. It really would!
I think that a lot of people are so afraid of what other people are going to think of what they're doing that they restrict themselves. They don't allow themselves to become passionate, they don't allow themselves to become excited, because from such an early age they realized, "Oh, when you're passionate or excited about something, other people, your peers, are going to judge you for it."
And so a lot of times they don't even realize this, you know? We're all adults here (I'm assuming if you're listening to this, high likelihood you're an adult; if you're not an adult, welcome to my podcast, hope you enjoy it!). But that aside, the point is that when we're kids, our brains are still growing—granted, autistic brains are growing differently than neurotypical brains, but they're also still growing nonetheless. And so kids will say these terribly mean things because their brains are still growing, and because they're trying to make sense of their social status in the world, and because they're learning how to interact for the first time.
And so a lot of fully grown adults are held back by their childhood wounds. A lot of them won't even get to the point of ever even questioning it; they just simply won't. It's so buried deep in the subconscious that they can't recognize it, they can't break out of that 3D box.
But I believe that everyone could if they really wanted to, if they were willing to put in the effort that it takes—not really just effort, but rather allowance. If you're willing to allow yourself to explore your consciousness at a deeper level, you can find out everything about you. And I think that's one of the most worthy pursuits in life: knowing who you are. Knowing that you're not just some isolated individual having an isolated experience—you're part of one collective whole. Everyone and everything, it's all connected to you. You are the source of your experience.
And I think that being autistic has made it really easy for me to see this. When I meet people—even though I can't read all of the social information intuitively—that forces me to come up with some sort of framework to analyze it outside of what most people would intuitively see.
So when I meet someone, I don't just see their emotional state; it's not subconscious for me, it's absolute, conscious. So when I meet someone, I can tell immediately if they have a rejection wound, or if they have an abandonment wound, or humiliation, or betrayal, or especially injustice. I can see this, especially by identifying their language patterns and analyzing the way that they interact and the words that they use. People give themselves away a lot by the words that they use!
The point is not to just become some mind reader to try to know exactly what everyone is saying and thinking at all points in time—if you could do that, it would probably be a pretty boring lifestyle because no one could surprise you anymore, really! That doesn't sound like the kind of life I'd want to live anyway. But when you can start talking to people and understanding that they're like your reflection, and they're helping you learn who you are, helping you improve yourself—when you can come up with this fundamental appreciation for everyone you talk to, everyone you interact with in life, I can tell you: you'll never be happier! You'll never be happier, because why would you ever be unhappy if everyone you talk to was your reflection? If you could see the underlying harmony behind all situations?
It's just pure, pure wonderful. It's pure joy, it's pure positive energy!
I think that everyone has that capability. Everyone has the capability to unmask their own wounds, because masking doesn't just apply to autism—it applies to every person. Everyone gets wounded at some point, and the important thing is not to focus on the wound, but to integrate it. To walk through the shadow and say, "I lived through this, I know that if worst comes to worst, I'm still me. I'm still the source of my experience, I am the constant, and I'm living this beautiful life."
And having that underlying appreciation for everything—I'd say that's a huge strength of autism. And you know what? I bet people that are non-verbal understand that even more than all of us who can verbalize it. Because ultimately, it's pure love: love of self, love of life, love of others (which is also ultimately love of self), and love for everything. That type of positive energy is powerful and can change the world.
I invite you to become a part of it by asking yourself:
How are these situations that maybe you would have called negative or bad in the past—how are these serving you in your daily life?
What are these situations telling you?
What recurring patterns have you noticed in your life that you can break out of?
What are the destructive patterns in your life that are no longer serving you?
You can get ahead of it. You can get out ahead of it by recognizing those patterns, and that's exactly where autism plays such a huge role. Because if you're autistic, you're excellent at pattern recognition, and that means you have a huge advantage to be able to change your life in any way that you want.
You change your habits, and then everything else falls into place. And that's how you change the world: you start with yourself first.