[00:03] Jason: Welcome to the Autism and Neurodiversity podcast.

[00:06] Debbie: We’re here to bring you helpful information from leading experts and give you effective tools and support. I’m Jason Grygla, a licensed counselor and founder of Techie for Life, a specialized mentoring program for neurodiverse young adults.

[00:19] Jason: And I’m Debbie Grygla, a certified life coach. And maybe most importantly, we’re also parents to our own atypical Young Adults.

[00:30]

Friends, hello. Welcome. I’ve been prepping my Life Skill class for our young adult students at Techie for Life, our mentoring program for autistic and neurodivergent young adults. And I was looking over the goals because it’s for January, and we’re prepping for goals for the new year.  

I was looking over the goals that our students had made in last year of January of 2022. And it was so cool because I realized that every single one of our students that was there for that class and had told me what their goal was and I wrote it down. Every single one of them achieved their goal. I mean, this is remarkable. Some of these things are the goals that they had, everything from getting their driver’s license to getting a girlfriend to taking classes and getting good grades in their classes.

Anyway, it was just really neat to see that. And that’s what I want for you and for your loved ones. I want you to be able to be successful with the goals that you set, and I want you to be able to achieve them easier. Let’s not make this so hard. Most people, when they set goals, you have a tendency to over rely on willpower to be successful. And willpower can be useful. It has a place, but I think we overuse it. 

And especially for our autistic and our neurodivergent young people, they tend to have lower amounts of willpower or they struggle being resilient. A lot of our students, there’s just so much going on being autistic or being neurodivergent just to get through the day. And then when they’re trying to do new things and grow and develop and and do adult things to be more independent, their mental and emotional energy gets spent a lot earlier in the day. They might be spinning in comparison fatigue. And by 10:00 A.m., they’re emotionally spent, and they don’t have anything left for the day. It’s actually one of the things that we mentor them on and work with them on. And we can’t use willpower. We can’t just say, you got to do it and tough it out. That puts them into a very stressed state, which even actually will overwhelm them more and SAP their emotional energy even quicker. 

So if the only tool you have is willpower, you’re just not going to be successful at things. And one of the reasons why is when we are relying on willpower, we’re actually in a power struggle with ourselves, and then we’re the one that loses. So when willpower is there, it means that you’re trying to force yourself to do something that you deep down don’t really want to do. 

It’s kind of like an example would be if you had a goal to not eat sugar anymore, cut out sugar from your diet because you want to lose weight, for example, but you really like sugar and you want to eat the sugar, but you’re trying to make yourself not eat it. That’s a power struggle. And you might win for a little bit, but then eventually you’re probably going to give in and eat the sugar. 

Versus if you’re like, really in a head space of like, I don’t want to eat sugar anymore. I’m done with it. I don’t need it. I have other foods I like to eat. And you actually just become a person that finds other foods to eat and is really okay letting go of sugar. Now, you’re not using Willpower, right? You’re creating strategies. Well, here’s what I am going to eat, and this is what I want to do. So I want to encourage you when you’re looking at your parenting goals or when you’re mentoring an autistic or neurodivergent young person to not rely on willpower and this determination to do it, but to create a plan that’s going to be more likely to set you up for success and create a plan that’s going to make it easier for you or for the person you’re mentoring to be successful. 

The benefits of having a plan are that you now are like looking at how can I support myself in the school? How can I address my needs? And you’re also looking at how can we make this funner, right? And you’re just so much more likely to have long term success with your goals. 

But when we don’t set ourselves up for success, we’re just so much more likely to fail because we burn out. We give up. We’re fighting against ourselves, and we’re just trying to, just by sheer determination and willpower to do it. And if you’ve got a child, teen or young adult, that’s neuro divergent, I guarantee you that’s a recipe for disaster. Not only are they not going to be able to be successful in their goals, but you’re actually going to perpetuate. You’re going to perpetuate that idea that they can’t that you’re going to build evidence for. Why try because you haven’t figured out a plan to set them up to be successful. Okay? So it’s just not going to work unless you have some kind of a plan. 

So let’s get you set up for success in your parenting and your mentoring in your goals so that you can have more wins and you can have more fun working on your goals. So there’s a few things I want you to be aware of when you are creating a plan. Number one, you’ve got to get aware of what are the obstacles getting in the way. So what things do you have to overcome? What things are keeping you from this goal or might keep you from your goal. If there weren’t obstacles, you would already have the goal. You’d already be doing it. So we got to take a look at what are those obstacles. 

When you’re working with an autistic or neurodivergent young person who has real disabilities, what parts of their disability are going to create challenges, what things do we want to look at that we’re going to need to address for them to be successful? So, one, you look at those obstacles, two, that’s when you create strategies to overcome those obstacles, right? 

So we’re going to create some strategies, and we don’t know which strategies are necessarily going to work, but we got to come up with some and start trying them and implementing them. So most people make really unrealistic idealized kinds of strategies, and I want you to approach it not from a place of like, what should we do or what should this look like or this is what everybody else does. 

I want you to actually go in and look at how can we make this as easy as possible for there to be success? How can we make this as easy as possible to overcome the challenges, given what you know either about yourself, if it’s a goal for yourself, or what you know about your young person and what they typically struggle with and where they’re at developmentally. 

Most people try to skip, developmental steps. They try to skip and just jump to where we want to be. And we have to look at where we at and what’s going to be the baby step. What’s the next baby step forward to be successful with our goal and let go of some of that rigidity around how it should look and let’s look at what might actually be helpful in front. 

Now, there’s some strategies that can really help you be successful when you’re looking at what kind of strategies to use. I think routines are really awesome. Anything that you can build into your routine or make a routine around sets you up for success. 

For example, several years ago just really had so busy with work and renting a household and all the different things that I have going on in my life, and I was feeling a little bit disconnected from our girls. And so I made a goal to connect with them more, to find a way to consistently connect with them. And so my brain went to work on that, and what ended up being the thing that works and what I still do that’s been amazing is I built in that connection time into our routine. 

So my girls are in dance, and we’re in the car driving to dance a lot, and so that’s the perfect time to connect and talk. And so that’s, like, my time with them. I think that’s valuable time. It’s not, oh, I got to drive them to dance. Drudgery. Now it’s like, oh, I get to drive my girls to dance and connect with them. And that’s our special time. And my daughters love it and I love it and we connect consistently. We know we’re going to have that time to talk and we use that time to talk and it’s just part of it process is just what we do now. That’s our special time. 

So anything you can do to create routines are going to support you or processes, right? Like two things I’m going to do anytime I’m feeling angry and you have like a set thing that you do or maybe it’s just building it into habits. Every time you brush your teeth you’re going to do the thing. Or creating a habit really. Habits, routines, it’s all that kind of the same thing. 

But anything you do to build it into your lifestyle and then making things really bite size. So for example, for me to show up as a good parent and to show up as my best self in all of my work and all the different things that I do, I really benefit from consistent exercise. And it took me a while to figure that out. 

But finally I’ve got a routine and a habit and I made it bite size. I consistently get up in the morning and to do that I put my phone away. Like I have a phone and alarm, but I push it. Like I put it on the floor and I have to get out of bed and go to it to turn it off. And that little step, that little bite size support like gets me out of bed and then it’s a little hard, but I get out of bed and then I go get dressed and I go exercise. And I make it simple. I do a physical 15 minutes trampoline routine and I enjoy it. And it’s my meditation time and it’s doable. I can do it consistently no matter what the weather is. That’s my thing. Now I have other outlets for exercise too, mountain biking and different things that I do. But I have that doable bare minimum built into my life that I enjoy, that’s fun, and it gives me that exercise that I need. 

So what are strategies that can you create to make it fun and bite size and part of your routine? And then the third one that’s a big one that you want to be aware of is you’ve got to have a strategy and a plan and a focus on managing your mental and emotional awareness, okay? Your expenditures. You’re not going to be successful in your goals if you’re exhausted. That means not just physically, but mentally, right? So we’ve got to be able to manage our mental emotional expenditures. And there’s got to be a plan in that and an awareness of what is exhausting to you and what energizes you and how can you support yourself in having energy. And sometimes that looks like things like where can you constrain? Where can you cut down? Where can you say no so that you can say yes to your goal? And that’s kind of an uncomfortable thing. 

But as you get in the habit and being aware and that you have, if you want to be successful with your goal, you’re going to have to manage your emotional, your mental and emotional expenditures. That’s going to be a big piece of that. So when you’re doing strategies, you want to be aware of that also. What’s going to support you in that? What do you know? Is something that takes your mental emotional energy away. 

Okay, now when you go to do this, when you make your plan, you’re going to want to write it down, right? You want to write down what are the obstacles and then create some strategies and take some guesses on what you think might work. And then it’s just experimenting with them, right? You’re going to make a plan to address the challenges. You’re going to experiment with it, and you’re probably going to fail. Your first plan or your first iteration of your plan is probably not going to be the one that sticks or makes you successful. You’re going to have to experiment with it, right? So you’re going to fail. And then you kind of evaluate, well, what kind of worked there, what didn’t work there, and then you’re going to try again. 

That is how you set yourself up to be successful and to not just use willpower, but actually start working to build in strategies that will support you. But the key in all of this, if you really want to be successful, probably your biggest strategy and key to anything you’re going to do is to love yourself through the process, which means being a jerk to yourself, right? If you fail, if you experiment and you fail and you beat yourself up, you’re not going to be as likely to get back up again. 

So we have to be willing to love ourselves through it. Okay? Yeah, I tried that. That did not go like I thought or, oh, I was going to do that thing and I didn’t. Let’s not beat ourselves up, okay? We tried that. Didn’t work. Let’s try again. We can start again and be yourself through the process. That’s where it goes beyond willpower. I’m just like powering through, but it’s like I’m loving myself through it. How can I support myself? I guess I need a little more support in that area. What can I do to help support myself to be successful? Because I love myself. 

So that’s what I’ve got for you. It’s that process of being aware of, one, what the obstacles are, what might get in the way of your success, and then two, to create strategies to address those obstacles, those challenges that come up. And I encourage you to make to use things like routines and habits, how can you make it fun? You’re going to be much more likely to be successful with it. 

And then three, be aware of your mental emotional expenditures and managing that as part of your plan, right? And then get that plan written down and then experiment and you’re totally going to fail. You’d start you know you’re going to fail, and then you’re going to evaluate again and you’re going to make tweaks and adjustments, and then you’re going to try again and you’re going to keep that process going and be loving and kind yourself through it. 

And whether you’re working on yourself as a parent or you’re working to support your neuro divergent loved one, you being loving and kind through that is actually modeling for them. One of the biggest challenges with the young people that we get is they have so much shame. They have just taken on beliefs that they’re not good enough, that they’re broken, that something’s wrong with them, and it really keeps them from being able to grow and progress. 

So even if you don’t reach the goal, if we can practice being loving and kind and just practice the skill of problem solving, that is a ginormous win in and of itself. Now, if you need help with this and you’re struggling, I encourage you to go get help. Meet with a therapist, hire a coach, find a mentor, get involved with a supportive community. 

Keep listening here, get on our email list and we’ve got things in the works to really help you with your parenting goals. And I encourage you to find things that will help support you in it and not just beat yourself up. When willpowered doesn’t work, I’m going to tell you right now, it’s not going to work. Just don’t go that route. It’s not helpful. Sometimes you can use a little bit of it, but there’s only so much, right, and you just burn yourself out. 

So figure out a way to support yourself. And that is really the approach we want to be taking. When you’re looking at supporting a young person, too, is how can we create strategies that help support and make it so much easier to have success given what we know about them. So I hope you have an amazing week and I encourage you to take some time to write down some plans and strategies and then to start the process. Have some fun with failing and evaluating and trying again and practice loving yourself in it. I’m excited for you to have success in your goals. Take care.

[13:07] Debbie: Thanks for joining us on this episode of Autism and Neurodiversity with Jason and Debbie. If you want to learn more about our work, come visit us at jasondebbie.com.