In this post I am going to try to help you archive the impossible - to change yourself. I am going to help you with the identification of a problem in your personality, (be it an autistic trait or not) and then explain the way I deal with such a problem.
How to choose the piece to focus on:
Trust me when I say that there will always be somebody who does not like a part/parts of your personality. Trust me when I say that there will always be somebody who will point your "flaw" out to you. Trust me when I say that you can never change enough to make them happy with you.
Trust me when I say that trying is a waste of time.
Friends, family, schoolmates and enemies will see things in you that they think you should change. Listen to them. Absorb what they say, then ask yourself three key questions:
- Has the person had a bad day and are picking out your flaws to make them feel better? (even the best of people are prone to this)
- Do you think that they are worth changing for?
- Do you think that you even want to change that piece of your personality?
In answer of the first question, everybody has rubbish days. It makes us feel sadistically better to point out others' flaws - in the short term - as it makes our day seem better as we can see that we are not the only flawed ones. On days like this, the best course of action is to remove yourself from humanity in general. If somebody else has one of those days and chooses you as their scapegoat, listen, absorb, consider, then later (the next day's a good time) question them as to whether they meant what they said, and if they still want you to change the thing. This is a good way to keep friends as they feel they have been able to avert your anger/sadness and help you improve yourself.
The second question is easy to answer. Change for the family you love. Change for the friends you will carry for the rest of your life/for many years. Ignore the classmates you neither like nor dislike. Ignore the temporary friends that are convenient (we all have them). Ignore the bullies and the enemies who wouldn't like you even if you were a saint. Sometimes, it pays to be careful of taking the advice of even the closest of friends because they really want you to be the best you can be, even if you sometimes don't want to go in the direction they want you to. Overall, do they matter enough to you to put a whole lot of energy into making them happy with you?
The third question is the most important by a huge margin, but it is the most difficult to answer. This is because it is two-fold in nature - its all very well deciding for yourself what you want to change to make yourself happy, but a huge part in happiness is the others in your life. Also remember, we may be highly dependant on others for joys in life, but we cannot be happy with others until we are happy with ourselves - its a bit of a vicious circle. My advice in this situation is listen to your heart. Your heart can tell you if you are happy. Always remember that even if your current friends do not appreciate you, there are others out there who will.
Beginning a change:
It never happens overnight. It takes time, perseverance, patience from you and your friends and family. To take an example, I was once accused of having a very poor sense of humour - even nasty. Friends told me this, I considered it, then I acted. The way I did so was to split the problem up into little pieces, then tackle them one after another.
The first piece was my tendency to latch on to one person and make jokes about/concerning them for an hour. I did not even realise I was doing so, until I looked into the matter. When I did notice that, I began a system - I would joke about one person, then move on to another, then the next, etc. I was very careful not to make fun of one person too heavily.
Once that was dealt with, my next bitesize piece was to reduce the overall number of jokes. I did this by saying one in three of the jokes I would see. This meant that other people in my group of friends would have more of a chance to make their own jokes, levelling the playing field.
The last thing I did was to diversify my jokes. Before, I made sarcastic jokes or classic teenage boy sexual innuendos. Now, I recite written jokes, dabble in irony and use jokes based on over-exaggeration. I even bridge into surreal humour, as I never have before. Even as I write this, the alien on my shoulder squibbles his appreciation!
The most important thing about starting a change is to plan the change. I changed my humour through a check-list, if that works, great. If it doesn't, mind-map what you want to do, spider diagram or even bullet-point the changes you want to implement.
Keep at It:
At times, it will feel impossible, implausible, insane. The thing that separates the best people from the worst is a dogged determination to make ourselves the best we can be. To make us happy with ourselves. Lesser people simply shrug things off when the going gets tough, or neglect to try at all. Others simply retreat within themselves and become shadows of their potential. It does not have to be that way. Everyone has something about themselves that they don't like. Change it. Step by step. Let me help you, together we can achieve the impossible - we can be happy with ourselves.
If you have decided to change a bit of yourself but you don't know how, ask me for help in the comments box or contact me on Google or private message me. Also feel free to question me about autism or other things in the comments box. If you would prefer anonymity or not to appear on the blog at all but still want me to answer questions, use one of the above methods to get in touch. Thanks a lot for reading this, hope it has helped!
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