In So Many Words

It was recently suggested to me that I make a lot of my decisions out of fear, so this quote from Norman Vincent Peale caught my eye when I saw it the other day:

Fear can infect us early in life until eventually it cuts a deep groove of apprehension in all of our thinking. To counteract it, let faith, hope, and courage enter your thinking. Fear is strong, but faith is stronger yet.

One of my biggest motivators has probably been the fear of looking stupid. Ironic, because I am actually fairly intelligent. I remember my mother telling me, “For someone so smart, you sure are dumb!” when I couldn’t find something she sent me to look for in her bedroom. I think a lot of my unrealistic expectations for myself and others come out of the lack of guidance in my childhood.

For instance, if something doesn’t come easily to me, I can get very embarrassed or upset and will often avoid that activity. This come partly from the fear of looking dumb, but also from believing that I *should* be able to catch onto things quickly. That feeling of “it shouldn’t be this difficult” also leaves me wide open for getting easily frustrated with others when they aren’t able to do something or don’t respond the way I think they should.

I am learning that it is best to be straightforward about what you know and don’t know, what you can do and can’t do (yet), and that to just view that as looking at the facts, rather than as being a shameful thing. Even as I write this, I am thinking to myself, “Why even bother saying this? I’m sure everyone else already knows this and you are the only one who doesn’t get it.” But I’m saying it anyway because then I can hopefully move on from here to a better place in my thinking.

Although I have been using Blogger since the end of January and spent a lot of time playing around with various layouts and widgets, WordPress is definitely a challenge to learn.

I am hoping to spend some quality time on it this weekend, even though I have to work on Saturday to make up the hours I will lose due to the Labor Day holiday on Monday.

Some other things I have to do:

• Find out if the van is picking Michael up from school today or if I have to take off work to go get him
• Call my husband’s cousin to see if her mother would like a visit tomorrow
• Keep doing the mountain of laundry I started this morning
• Finish the revisions to the parent booklet for the non-profit group I am involved with
• Write blog posts for the weekend

For now, I will leave you with this quote from Charlotte Bronte:

Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state of things without and around us.”

Have a wonderful weekend!

The title of this post is just one of the powerful statements made by Eustacia Cutler at her sessions at the autism conference this week. I shared more about her wisdom this week over at 5 Minutes for Special Needs.

I really want to thank everyone who has been participating in the Try This Tuesday meme on 5 Minutes for Special Needs. I have learned so much already! My hope is that people will feel comfortable to share anything that has helped them, even if they think it is not some amazing revelation – as some people have commented, sometimes simple is best!

I was especially touched this week by Julie @ A Celebration of Our Journey, who asked for ideas to try with her son who is not wanting to look at books with her. If you have any suggestions for her, please take a moment to comment on her post.

Today was a great day of learning for me, and I still need to process it all.  But I wanted to share my favorite soundbite of the day – from Dr. Peter Gerhardt of the Organization for Autism Research:

“The power of positive reinforcement is the most under-utilized tool we have.”

Just because I can’t resist putting this in bloggy terms, think of how you feel when you see a new comment on one of your posts or a new blog search alert with your URL.  Pretty powerful stuff!

Photo courtesy of The Rat Bat’s photostream.