In this episode, we are sitting down with Brian King.
Brian King is discussing how he transformed his challenges into a full-time entrepreneurship healing parents and kids.
In this episode, we are sitting down with Brian King.
Brian King is discussing how he transformed his challenges into a full-time entrepreneurship healing parents and kids.
Yesterday was one of those days when things just weren’t working. Watch to learn what I did to turn things around.
Video Notes:
Raising teenagers is hard enough. I have the privilege of raising boys on the autism spectrum. Even if this doesn’t apply to you stay with me.
It’s difficult for my boys to consider ideas that aren’t their own. I hear ya, I too know many adults with this challenge who AREN’T on the autism spectrum.
Being stuck in your own head is like living life with a mental straightjacket. You want to break free but the more you struggle the tighter the jacket gets.
What’s the solution? Realize there is no jacket, other than the one you create.
Case in point. My 16-year-old overdoes it with the video games (DUH! What teenager doesn’t?) So I decided to establish a criterion requiring him to balance his video game play with personal development.
I started him with one of my favorites, Mindset by Carol Dweck.
He shared the revelation he read that it’s possible to see experiences as obstacles (fixed) or opportunities (growth). Of course you already know this, as do I. I’ve been explaining this to him and his brothers for years.
For some reason, it clicked when he began reading this book.
As much as you may fancy yourself the primary purveyor of wisdom for those you wish to influence. You may consider that desire as a form of limited thinking and a challenge with getting outside a bias toward your own thinking.
I’m guilty of this on occasion as well.
If you have a similar lust for learning and seek new ideas through books, podcasts, blog posts etc. It may make sharing your thoughts more effective if you direct your child, friend or colleague to the same source you discovered.
That third party validation is often more convincing than hearing it from you all the time. But don’t trust me, I’m just the messenger 😉
Routine is one of the foundations of your daily life. Habits (the things you repeatedly do with little or no variation) can become a mindless way of moving through life. You’re not a robot, are you?
Then a moment of insight leads you to the realization you no longer find value in what you’ve always done. You decide you want a new way to do things with better results.
What better means is up to you. Once you decide what it is then you must take new action to start a new habit to create change. Waiting, procrastinating only keeps things the same.
Here are some steps to give you a framework for getting things moving.
1. DECIDE you must start the new behavior.
2. SCHEDULE it so nothing else can get in the way
3. You don’t need to FEEL like doing it every day in order to do it.
4. RECORD your progress to remind you you’re moving forward.
5. ACKNOWLEDGE your effort as well as your wins. Showing up every day is 90% of the process.
These steps can make your efforts more deliberate and purposeful. Recording your results is a daily reminder you’re moving forward in life.
A mind that makes progress is aware of the change it can create in the world.
I was asked, “My son with Asperger’s has an extremely hard time staying on task. To the point where he thinks we are trying to be mean to him by telling him to do the same thing over and over again. When really we just want his help around the house and to teach him responsibility. So when it comes to cleaning up his own messes, his toys all over the house, what is a tool I could implement to help bring his attention back?”
Below is my response to help point things in a better direction.
To truly champion the strengths that will allow you to succeed while living with an LD diagnosis, you must first free yourself of all resistance to the diagnosis.
Facing the diagnosis of a learning disability such as dyslexia, ADHD, autism, and many other conditions, can be one of the most harrowing events of parenthood. Parents who must endure this difficult revelation must, therefore, be treated with the utmost compassion and patience as they process the information and begin to plan for the lifelong ramifications of their child’s condition. However, even parents who have the full support and empathy of their immediate families, as well as the guidance of the social and educational communities, sometimes struggle to cope effectively with their child’s reality and engage in recalcitrant behavior with respect to the diagnosis.
This parental resistance can emanate from multiple sources, but the principal influences causing parents’ discomfort with active management and intervention are:
1) fear of social isolation of both the LD individual,
2) fear of stigmatization of the LD individual’s family in their social and professional communities,
3) pride in the parents’ own academic achievements and abilities and resulting disbelief in the birth of a child unlikely to replicate those feats,
4) financial implications of addressing a learning disability, and
5) unwillingness to devote the additional time required to cooperate with the external sources of support. In these unfortunate scenarios, the learning disabled child or young adult is greatly imperiled as he or she is endangered of progressing through education and life without the single most crucial support structure necessary to develop into a functional adult.
Learning disabled individuals who do not have the backing of their own homes are very unlikely to compensate even with expert support from his or her social and school environments, rendering these other secondary support structures largely ineffectual.
It is therefore of great importance that learning disabled individuals and the community of stakeholders around them develop methods and protocols to engage recalcitrant parents in addressing special educational needs in non-stigmatizing ways that reassure the parents that LD management techniques are trustworthy and beneficial to the child or young adult’s long-term prosperity.
Topics we cover in this episode include:
1) How LD individuals, especially those of adult or near adult age, can be effective self-advocates in the face of denial, gaslighting, and invalidation relating to the diagnosis and its implications, and how we can instill a sense of pride in these individuals,
2) How recalcitrant parents can be taught the numerous upsides not only of effective intervention but of the disability itself, namely, that attending their child’s learning differences are highly useful attributes in school and business (which are also highly regarded in the social circles that may be the chief factor fueling their resistance to acknowledgement) and that the differences are things of which the parents themselves can be proud,
3) How we can impress upon parents the benefits of proper management, up to and including financial and social benefits resulting from greater prospects for the child with intervention as proactive as possible, and
4) How we need a compassionate but firm approach that teaches parents and other caregivers that being true to oneself and to their loved one with an LD is a path to prosperity while playing a contrived role is one destined for frustration for both them and the LD individual.
Contact Benjamin Bodner through
I’m just not motivated enough?
I’ve lost my motivation?
What the hell is motivation anyway?
One definition of motivation refers to factors that activate, direct, and sustain goal-directed behavior.
Motivation is a drive to act in a focused way until you achieve a desired result.
But before you can act you must first believe that YOUR actions can influence the outcome you want.
It begins with the realization or decision that NOT having what you want is so unacceptable that the mere idea of not taking action is unacceptable to you.
Next, you must believe that your present situation CAN change, that YOU can change it and that you MUST change it.
With those beliefs in place, your next step is to take your first, focused, goal-directed action. Then keep doing it until you get what you want.
But what do you do when you, “Just aren’t motivated enough” or “Have lost your motivation?”
Neither of those problems really exist. What they mean is, you don’t believe things MUST change. Your current situation isn’t uncomfortable enough for you to act.
Secondly, a loss of motivation is the result of a shitty feedback loop. You’ve lost touch with the belief that you CAN change it. Likely because you’re beginning to lose patience, become discouraged and have allowed doubt to set in.
How do you get your motivation mojo back?
Review your motivation recipe to see what’s out of place:
Pretty straightforward huh? Pretty basic, right? Right, because you have to start somewhere, get the ball rolling.
Begin with this, ask me questions. Tomorrow will keep moving forward.
Thanks for being you,
Brian
P.S. I’ll be adding this series of articles and videos (from Facebook) to the FREE section of http://ResilienceWarriors.solutions for your convenience. It will save you a lot of time when reviewing this information.
A reason, a season or a lifetime, the length of time a person who impacts your life stays until their purpose is fulfilled.