Discipline Is My Superpower. The Story of an Autistic Trait.
Every morning at 5:30 AM, the alarm goes off. Precisely one hour later, my wife and my best friend ride into the gym under my wings. They often joke in the parking lot on our way in, “We’re riding in under David’s superpower!” My best friend and wife joke about this so often that it has become a truism: “Discipline is David’s superpower!” They joke that they are my trainees, and I am their coach.
Before each of our workouts, the night before, I send to each of them a carefully curated and choreographed list of the exercises, the reps, and the expectations for the next morning. Clearly, weightlifting/bodybuilding is one of my intense interests (an autistic trait or characteristic). If I had not become a psychologist, I may have become a gym owner/trainer. I spend hours each week watching YouTube videos on weightlifting, trying to learn how to perfect my form with certain movements, and learning everything I can to continue improving in the gym. I'm not disciplined about everything, but when it comes to weightlifting I'm consistently in the gym five days a week.
It’s true that in social systems, one variable affects the whole. I do see that if it weren’t for me, that my best friend and my wife may not be in the gym on the machine-supported chest press, or at the Smith Machine at 6:31 in the morning doing Bulgarian Split Squats and Romanian Deadlifts.
When we’re finished, after 60-75 minutes, my best friend and my wife thank me, we all go about our days high on the natural endorphins of exercise, and I can’t help but see how my autistic traits impact them in a positive way, and that makes me happy.
As a strengths-based psychologist, I think about what this means a lot: to deliver a diagnosis of autism to my clients, and how they might further identify their strengths and live into those strengths, to not only affect their own lives, but the lives of those around them in a positive manner.
What are your passions? And how might your autistic strengths, traits, and characteristics cultivate and deepen those passions in your life and in the lives of others around you?