Category: Blog Posts

What makes more sense than waiting for outright failure is to learn to pay attention to those subtle wake-up calls that speak to you each day. Let’s consider some of these warning signs:

Boredom
One such wake-up call is boredom. A common way to deal with boredom is to come up with distractions to keep yourself entertained. However, the answers to boredom cannot be found outside yourself, through a new hobby or some other diversion. What you need to do is search within yourself to discover just what the boredom means. Only then can you make a real, meaningful change to bring a spark back to your life.

Therefore, it’s very important to assess your habits. You’ve developed habits because they’re convenient mechanisms for getting things done without having to give them much thought. However, when the habit really doesn’t serve the purpose anymore, stop doing it! It’s better to do nothing than to continue pursuing a habit that may have even become counterproductive.

Turning Points
Life’s major turning points are another time for important changes. The natural turning points in life, which we’ve come to expect and accept anyway, are also a time to reevaluate our goals and values. Graduating from high school or college, getting married, giving birth to your first child, receiving a job promotion, turning fifty, and losing a parent, are all such turning points. Because of acquiring wealth and the leisure time that goes along with it, entrepreneurs are often able to take advantage of turning points to enhance their lives personally and professionally.

Since these turning points are bound to happen anyway, it seems foolish to deny them. Why not plan ahead? Change is inevitable with each step along the developing progressions of life. Even though you can’t know for certain what each turning point will bring you, you can at least recognize that change is happening and be alert to the phenomenon.

Communication – this is a topic addressed over and over again when I counsel family members who have “Asperger Syndrome” (“Aspies”) and is frequently the topic of discussion at our Meetup (Asperger Syndrome: Partners and Family of Adults with ASD). Having raised a daughter with “Asperger’s,” I understand the frustration many of you feel when you try to understand what exactly your loved one on the Spectrum is trying to say. If any of you are familiar with Star Trek, you might envy the Universal Translator on board the ship that automatically translates every language and sends the translations directly to the chip implanted in the brain of every officer on the Enterprise. Wouldn’t that be helpful!

While a Universal Translator doesn’t exist, we do have another option: Always speak to the good intention, whatever it is, even if you are not sure. When you get a confusing message from your ASD partner or child, always assume it makes sense somehow, someway. Trust that there is a good intention behind the message even if is speaking “Aspie.”

By maintaining a neutral position, you are better able to answer the question, “Why is he/she telling me this?”

When I get stumped by a confusing message from a person on the Spectrum, I use the phrase, “That’s right,” in order to bring me to neutral. The phrase reminds me that the other person is “right” in that they have a good intention, which has meaning to them. “That’s right,” also helps me know that I am “right,” in that I am capable of good intentions. You may not always be able to get the message translated, but at least being in neutral puts you in a much better frame of mind for the attempt.

Here’s a simple example. When my daughter Bianca was 8, she wrote me a note about the trouble she was having at lunch at school. She grew up around my home office, so she observed that my office manager and I often exchanged written notes (even with the advent of e-mail). If I was with a client, Bianca would leave me a note, so that I would be sure to answer her when I had a break from appointments.

Notes became Bianca’s version of the Universal Translator. Her penchant for writing as opposed to talking with me should be noted. It is a typical ASD trait to find comfort in the written word—because face-to-face communication requires empathy and the interpretation of confusing non-verbal messages.

So the next time you feel stumped by your ASD loved ones, put yourself in neutral and then ask yourself these questions:

• What do I know about this person?
• What is important to him or her?
• What are their interests, beliefs, and opinions?

Then do your best to speak to those things, instead of relying only on your interpretation of reality. If you want to delve deeper into understanding how to communicate with your “Aspie” check out my book, “Out of Mind – Out of Sight: Parenting with a Partner with “Asperger Syndrome (ASD)”“, you can download the first chapter for free. If you have questions about what you read I’m available for an online Q & A session.

In situations of extreme dysfunction it’s not surprising that money problems surface along with addictions and domestic violence. As I have said several times, once one ethical boundary is crossed, it becomes easier to cross others.

Yet it’s equally true that not all problems in an entrepreneurial relationship eventually cause money problems. Some couples retain their financial wealth in spite of problems in other areas of their business and life. Still other couples are able to keep a problem isolated long enough to work it out so that the balance is restored before the consequences affect the pocketbook. In the case of dual entrepreneurs, money trouble may trigger events that upset the balance of their lives and business.

There isn’t an entrepreneur that hasn’t experienced financial problems. Perhaps your first venture fizzled out. Perhaps a change in the industry forced you to seek diversification. You may have had to borrow money to make payroll on at least one occasion. You may even have faced bankruptcy.

The American Dream is not as easy to achieve as the naive may think. It takes hard work and resilience—often a lot of resilience to fight back when the cash flow has dried up. When you have life and business plans, and when you’ve been attending to your stress level and keeping your developing progressions in a healthy balance, you can face money troubles with determination and creativity. Unpleasant as the task may be, healthy people do what they need to do. Still, you never know just exactly how you will survive a financial disaster until you face one.

Even though your life may not be as out of control as the lives of some, you still may be alarmed by the stories you hear and these may alert you to changes you need to make in your own life. My book, Entrepreneurial Couples: Making It Work at Work and Home provides many Self-Assessment Exercises that can guide you as you build your own personal and couple power plan for total mental, physical, and spiritual health and well-being. If you have questions about what you read, I’m available for an online Q & A session.

We’ve known for some time that staying physically active is crucial to mental wellbeing. Interestingly, a New York Times article recently reported on how you can intensify the effect of exercise by adding yoga and meditation to your weekly routine.

In one study, people suffering from depression were asked to meditate before they went for a run. In an amazingly short period of time, they showed greater improvements in their mood than those who did either running or meditation alone.

Another study, published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, showed that all participants performed significantly better on their cognitive-thinking tests after increasing their exercise. However, only after adding yoga to the 12-week exercise routine, did the mood of the participants significantly improve. Exercise alone was not as affective in altering moods.

They also did brain scans on both groups (only exercise v. exercise plus yoga), which showed improved communication between the brains areas involved in memory and language skills. People who practiced yoga had developed more communication between parts of the brain that control attention, suggesting a greater ability to focus.

Dr. Helen Lavretsky, a professor of psychiatry at U.C.L.A. who oversaw the study noted that the reduction in stress hormones and anxiety likely played a substantial role in the improvement, as well as, an increased level of biochemicals in the muscles. I encourage you to read the entire article here.

If you have severe depression or trauma-induced depression, yoga in conjunction with working with a professional who has special trauma therapy training might be a better treatment for you. Sometimes yoga brings up too much painful stuff to be handled without therapy. If you’re ready to try this treatment and you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment.

Over the years, our Asperger Syndrome: Partners and Family of Adults with ASD Meetup group has had had many discussions about these mind numbing relationships and how to care for yourself emotionally in relation to a spouse or adult on the Autism Spectrum. In the July teleconference we’ll discuss how to care for yourself as aging moves to the forefront. Disability, health problems, financial security, housing and so much more confront us as we age, but the issues are dramatically compounded when living with an Aspie.

Even if you are young or middle aged, I’m sure you have had fears about what will happen to you or your children if your aging Aspie should deteriorate further . . .or worse if they have to take care of you!

Please, join us in this discussion of how to prepare for this stage of life. You are not alone, even if you think you are. The teleconference, Aging with your Aspie, will be held on Thursday, July 14th at 2:30 PM. Click here to register. You must be a member of the Asperger Syndrome: Partners and Family of Adults with ASD to attend this free, international teleconference.

Read more on my website: Asperger Syndrome FAQ’s.

Earlier I wrote about two truths when it comes to communication: 1) the explanation used to describe a person or situation is not the person and 2) people do not operate out of sensory experience, but rather out of their interpretation or map of reality.

Today we’ll explore two more advanced truths that foster healthy communication:

#3 All people mean well or have good intentions.

This advanced truth is often hard for people to swallow. It’s that all people mean well or have good intentions. Remember that these are useful presuppositions, not absolute truths. It’s useful to believe that at any given moment your partner is doing the best he or she knows how. If you at least credit your partner for operating out of his or her map of reality to accomplish desirable goals, then chances are the person will feel respected. From respect comes trust, followed by the desire to communicate with you to reach a mutually satisfying agreement.

#4 The person with the most flexibility has control of the system.

The fourth advanced truth is that the person with the most flexibility has control of the system. For example, when your child is screaming in the supermarket, it’s likely that you will not be able to get her under control by asking politely. Just at that moment when you are begging her to cooperate, she throws herself on the floor or knocks several items off the shelf as you push the cart by. If you become embarrassed by her display, you may be tempted to punish or bribe her. You may also try to leave the store as soon as possible, making apologies as you fly out the door. If you take any of these alternatives, you have allowed yourself to operate according to your child’s terms. Therefore, she has become the person with the most flexibility, and she is in control. In other words, whatever she does will get a response from you.

On the other hand, if you ignore the tantrum, continue your shopping, or leave the store immediately without giving your daughter what she is demanding, you are the controlling element in the system. You have remained in your reality and have exercised more flexible options than she has. Similarly, when you have a conflict with your partner about business or home life, you are at an advantage by remaining flexible.

By embracing the basic and advanced truths of healthy communication, you have many more options available to you to listen to and understand your partner, and to move both of you toward a mutually agreeable solution.

If you…

• make time to communicate,
• refuse to stray off the topic,
• listen to the well-intended meaning behind your partner’s words and actions,
• remain open to the prospect that you could be wrong,
• recognize that your partner is so unique that she or he will surprise you daily,
• are willing to change even though you have always done things a certain way in the past,
• and refuse to compromise but press for a win-win solution,

then you will be better able to guide yourself and your spouse away from conflict and toward appropriate solutions.

If you’re having trouble communicating with your partner, and you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment.

If you live elsewhere, we can also discuss best communication practices for entrepreneurial couples via a secure video Q & A session. Learn more by visiting Entrepreneurial Couples Remote Education.