 Good day and welcome back to the Forty Autie Podcast with your host as always, Mr. Thomas Henley and today we're going to be talking about something that is very close to my heart. We're going to talk about the positives of autism, the strength of autistic people to push through negatives in life, achieve positive things, adapt our lives to a way that fits us best. And today I am joined by Nathan from the Physiobox which is a newly set up business venture that he's gone for. We basically got in contact through someone who I used to train with a lot, a guy called Jamie who is the son of the coach of my Taekwondo club, sort of asking for me to get in contact with Nathan. And we've had a few chats about sort of life as a podcast, a life as someone online and what you can expect. And along the way we've been chatting about our experiences as Taekwondo athletes, to which you will know if you have been listening to the podcast for a while. I used to be a Taekwondo athlete. I got a Commonwealth gold medal at the Commonwealth Championships, national gold medals as a junior heavyweight and as a minus 80 kilogram fighter. So I've been around and I've been abroad to do lots of international competitions. So I'm very, very, very happy to introduce you today to Nathan. How are you doing Nathan? I'm all right. How are you? Not too bad. I'm feeling uncharacteristically quite refreshed today. And basically I was feeling quite low mood last night. And one of the interesting things about being autistic is sometimes that you just, you know that you're not feeling good, but it's really hard to connect the reasons why like you can feel a certain emotion and then you sort of, you look back at your day and you we can think, Hey, what is there anything during these these days that could be contributing to this? Or is it just my brain? Or is there some kind of lifestyle changes that happen? And I think I was just tired yesterday. To be honest, sometimes it's the simplest answer. But I had a very good sleep. And it's like very long and woke up midday and, you know, feeling very chilled. So it's amazing what a good night sleep does for you, doesn't it? Yeah, definitely. Would you like to sort of tell everyone a little bit about yourself before we kick into sort of your improvement journey, and have a chat about perhaps some of the things that have helped you with your, your ventures in life? Yeah, I mean, I currently work as a physiotherapist. I'm a technically a physio and I've done a master's degree in strength conditioning as well. So I kind of combine those two areas. I work in private practice, I've got my own private practice in just on the outskirts of Manchester. And I work as like a contractor for different sporting organisations. So I worked a little bit for GB Taekwondo with USA Taekwondo. I've worked in rugby league, worked in football. I've even worked in the NHS. I've done everything really, which has all kind of brought me to this point that I'm at now. Well, obviously, this is like, you know, the 40-odd podcast, it's autism focused, mental focused. When did you sort of become introduced to the idea of autism and ADHD and what kind of spade you want to get? Sort of go for a diagnosis and go for sort of discovery journey around it? Yeah, so bit of an interesting story around it. It was when COVID had just started, I was working at Ashworth High Security Mental Health Hospital in Liverpool. Yeah, so it's a very, it's a very different environment. But I remember a manager I had at the time, she just turned to me one day and she's like, you know, you're a good clinician, she said, but you're a little bit different. I was like, yes, that's correct. And my son had already been diagnosed. And I told her and she's like, just come and have a conversation with somebody. So anyway, one thing led to another. And I was diagnosed with autism when I was like 36, something like that. But I mean, when I got a formal diagnosis, I wasn't really shocked because I guess it's common to all people with neurodiversity. You always kind of know. And she told me and then ADHD, it was one, it was one of my patients. He was a consultant psychiatrist who also used to work at Ashworth. And I was treating it one day and he just kind of turned around to me and he's like, you know, you've got ADHD there. Yeah. I was like, yeah, I know. And he said, why don't you come for an assessment? So I went for an assessment and then I got diagnosed with that as well. So and I think, I know I actually said to him, I said, one thing that confuses me is I don't know where autism starts and finishes or ADHD starts and finishes. And yeah, he said to me, do you need to? He says, I don't. He said, I just call it neurodiversity and people have different mixes and combinations of different traits and attributes. He said, you're an individual as most people with neurodiversity are. And he is a consultant psychiatrist who he actually runs a private company in Manchester called Sanctum Health and they do private assessments for people that want to go down that route. Sure, sure. I think that it's quite a common sort of feeling, especially for people who have like a dual diagnosis, call them odd HD as AAU, yeah, the HD. And I found it really interesting whenever I've I've talked to to anyone with with that sort of dual diagnosis because it's it they can be very contrary in their like signs of each. So like with ADHD, you have the aspect of sort of chasing that that sort of novelty and excitement and interest. And quite often that sometimes leads to being quite impulsive and wanting to make changes and wanting to continuously kind of adjust things. But then you've got like the the autism side, which is, you know, thrives in terms of mental health when we have like a stable routine, we know what we're going to be doing each day, each week, to some degree. So it's like, what point are you more autistic or ADHD kind of, you know, that sort of push and pull kind of dynamic. It's it's it's really quite complex, I think. I don't know what your experience was the tumble. I definitely felt like I'm more autistic than ADHD. So if you read through the diagnostic criteria, if you look at the DSM five, you can see that common traits, there's definitely some ADHD there. But I definitely felt like I'm more autistic. And by virtue of that fact, it was the benefits that came with autism that allowed me to attain the level I have in different areas that attention to detail and being able to consume, you know, like large amounts of information and get that deeper level of learning on a subject area. It was that autistic, those autistic traits that allowed me to excel. I feel anyway. I think it's it's it's it's hard, isn't it? Because I mean, obviously, I and many other people, when we do our advocacy, when we talk about experiences in generality, it's, you know, it's the thing is, is that you can't, you can't know exactly how each individual is and how they think and how they live the lives and everyone has their own sort of personal experiences. I had a podcast with Dr. Megan Neff, which I brought quite a few times just because it was such an insightful podcast for me. But she was talking about no divergent insights, if you want to look her up. But she was talking about the being ADHD or autism dominant in terms of sort of presentation. And I think for a lot of people, some some people might be put off by sort of, I guess, put putting levels of autism and ADHD kind of as a comparison. But I think it is quite useful in terms of understanding how you live your life, how you work. Because, as I said, like it's not, you know, autism is under ADHD, the psychological diagnosis is so they're based on outward science. And it's not always clear exactly, you know, from the scientific literature that there's these designated split categories and like biological markers for knowing if someone's autistic or ADHD, because we don't have that because it's not based on on that. It's just, you know, we do some people do studies, they look into the trends, the biological trends for someone with that diagnosis, but it's always from that sort of psychological basis. So it's I really enjoyed that podcast. I know the one you said you're talking about watched it. It was really good. What I can say is that having worked with a lot of kind of sort of psychiatrists is that when you're looking at human behavior, you're talking about shades of gray, and there is nothing that's clear caught. We're in order to objectify what they do. They had to have diagnostic criteria in order to be able to diagnose somebody with something. So in the ICD 10 or the DSM five, if you look at it, it will have these traits. But I remember one thing that somebody said to me, he said, all these things are labels. And when you strip the labels back, you're just looking at behaviors, traits, you know, common patterns. And really, when you give somebody that diagnosis, you're describing a certain sort of psychological likes the psychodynamics that underpins it. And that goes for a lot of mental health conditions. The label is probably less important. It's understanding the behaviors and why they do them. That is more important one for the clinician and two for the individual. So they know how best to manage the world that we live in. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think I think that another sort of gray area comes in when we when we think about the idea of sort of identity as well, because, you know, the medical system, as you said, it's it's set up to box you into different categories to label you and to provide systems of support or ways of improving on yourself that are applicable to that to that label. But when it comes to like things like identity, you know, it's it's something that's sort of very intrinsic for a lot of people. And it's it's not always the case that every person who has who could be considered to be autistic and ADHD are able or want to go for a diagnosis because it's always based on that sort of model of what's wrong. And how can we help? And if you don't see anything wrong, they're not going to really see the point in giving you a label and sort of helping you out unless it's to do is sort of validation of your like self identity, which is so it's an interesting sort of area. And just just thinking just as a, you know, to push things along a bit. I mean, you mentioned to me that that you used to be quite, you know, into into taekwondo used to be quite a professional taekwondo athlete. Can you talk about your experiences with that? And how that has sort of inspired your current work at the physio box? Yeah, I mean, anything like any answer I give you today, it's just based on my personal experience. And I think, as a first off, it's just, it's my truth, but it doesn't have to be anybody else's truth. And then for anybody listening, I encourage them to find their own path on what works for them. But with regards to my taekwondo, I did it since I was five. My dad. Oh, you're one of those people. I started when I was 14. So I had a lot of headway to catch up with when I started. Yeah. I mean, in some respects, starting later on is better because, you know, you know, you develop in other areas. But I was in retrospect, when I look back on things, I had ADHD when I was a kid and taekwondo was a way for me to kind of blow off steam and get that dopamine boost that, you know, so many of us are chasing. So I did it since I was five. And I think that one thing that we face a lot as neurodiverse people is a lot of rejection and a lot of being ostracized and martial arts was kind of the place where I found, you know, kind of acceptance. And I found my special interest and that special interest has very much followed me right through my life into adulthood. So I did taekwondo, like I said, since a young age. And then the funding from UK sports started to come through and it started to become more structured and organized in this country. So the first cohort was a love bro back in those days at Lovebury University. I wasn't the first I was the second cohort. And that was good because, you know, it gives you all the sort of support services, it gives you financial support and all you need to focus on is just training and getting better. So although, you know, I was working, you know, I was doing my special interest, which was martial arts, when I look back, although, you know, I was technically I told I was technically good, especially for a heavy weight, I used to get massive anxiety like when I used to compete. And now when I look back, I know, I know that was autism and ADHD. I know what it was. But at the time, I couldn't, I couldn't conceptualize it. I couldn't put a label on why I was feeling the way I was. I think as well, just with any sort of martial art culture, obviously, it's very different sort of coach to coach, club to club. But I think that, you know, that there is a very strong highlight on things like stoicism. And sometimes, I think that sort of push through it and, you know, accept it and sort of deal with it kind of attitude, sometimes can be quite hard for us because our experiences of the world, our experiences of competition and training are so much different. You know, one person might say, hey, look, you just have to worry about the fight. And, you know, obviously people get anxiety around it. It's a lot pressure, especially in a point scoring sport. But they don't they don't experience the fact that you've been in the venue for hours and hours, and you've had this sort of heightened sensory experience of being around loads of people. You know, sort of those strange interactions with with other athletes when you when you're trying to kind of establish yourself as a strong person. You know, the noise that the floodlights that you get with sports holes, the echoes, the smells even of the head gears and the body armor, the feeling of having a gum shield in your mouth. There's so many things that we have to do with and especially if you are, you know, like yourself, like quite an established athlete, and you're a man and you, you know, you've got that kind of stereotypical lens of what men should be like. If you go and say, oh, that I'm struggling with the lights, they'll be like, oh, suck it up. Like, you're about to go in for a fight. So, you know, for me, sort of going through my own journey, I think as I got older and an older sort of within the sport, I started to realize that no, actually, I don't need to deal with this environment. And I started a lot more to spend most of my time out of the competition halls. Whereas before I felt, I felt sort of, was it, I felt so bad about not being in the competition halls and sort of cheering people on and sort of being a part of the whole experience. And but I kind of needed to have that sort of quiet space. You know, I think of people like, you know, one of the sort of the big inspirations for me sort of taken a bit more of the reins of my own sort of mental wellness during the competition was thinking about people like Mike Tyson, you know, like very strong, strong guy, obviously suffered massively with anxiety before the fights, you know, you just watch documentaries of him and stuff. And he did, he did have that kind of emotional support. He did get himself out of that, that space and sort of have quite a time to kind of focus on himself. And, you know, I think that that sort of absolute beast of a person being, you know, subject to, to the experiences that I was having, it kind of validated that, you know, you know, despite everyone saying that fighters are just immune to all fear and hardships that actually, you know, were not, were humans. And you do need to think about your sort of mental health, especially when you're going in. So you're tired afterwards. I remember I used to compete because, you know, neurologically, and it like, it was such a, it was such a taxing process on like your adrenal system. I used to sleep for like two days, because I was just so worn out. And it wasn't that it wasn't that you were physically tired, it's the whole process of it, you know, being there, engaging with people. But as I got older and more experienced, I just began to switch off to it, which then brought its own challenge, because I think to a certain extent you need that, you need that arousal, because it keeps you sharp, it keeps you competitive. And then when I began to switch off to it, it wasn't there. And I didn't enjoy it the same. And I was like, Oh, I don't know why, you know, I'm really doing this anymore. And I think by the time I was 24 or 25, I'd finished the taekwondo, I came back a couple of times. I won the nationals like five years later when I was 29. But I think that, yeah, I think one thing that's really key is that work being a full time athlete and a centralized system, you're told, you know, you're going to train at this time, you're going to do this, you're going to do this. It never really worked for me. And when I, when I, because I've always enjoyed sort of learning and being autonomous and doing my own thing, when I stepped away and I left the program, I was much happier. And I won a lot more medals. And I was just, I did much better when I did things on my own terms when I was autonomous. I trained when I wanted, I got up when I wanted, I went to uni when I wanted. And that sort of independence and autonomy suited me a lot better than being in a full time program. I was really miserable when I was like in the program. But for some people, it really works that structure. I think for neurodiverse and, you know, neurodiverse people having control over what we do, I think it's more important and it leads to a lot more happiness and fulfillment in my view. I think that that really kind of sets us up for the sort of the town of the podcast. I mean, you know, I think a lot of autistic people think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves because, you know, we, I think, especially sort of during teenagehood, during those kind of early adulthood years, we can develop a lot of issues with self-esteem. And I know that from looking back on my experiences, I was, you know, people didn't really sort of pay attention to me at school. People didn't take me very seriously as a person just because of these these flaws that I had in terms of dealing with the stress and anxiety and overload of school. But Taekwondo was kind of my route out of that because I didn't I didn't need to talk to anyone or convince anyone that I was like, you know, a person worthy of being friends with or a person like that is skilled or good and, you know, things like that because I had that at Taekwondo. Like people knew how I was because of my fights and they knew that I was hard working because of they watched me train. So that that kind of I think it just kind of leveled the playing field for me because it wasn't so based on those social aspects. It was more based on kind of your character unlike how you deal with losses and how you how you deal when you win and and, you know, the other persons feeling quite sort of down about losing. I think though those situations where you can really sort of shine through what you're about in combat sports have been really helpful for me. I think it's really important what you said there because we live in a neurotypical world and whether you advance or not to a certain extent or to a large extent is dependent on how well you conform to societal norms, how well you fit in and how much you're accepted by your pay group. Combat sport is it's individualistic. It's it's an individual endeavour. And I think that by virtue of that fact it's quite merit based. Whether you're successful or not purely depends on how good you are as an athlete or a fighter. So it suits us because we don't have to achieve anything external. We just have to be the best we can be at that sport. So that's why it suits people like us. And yeah, it's really key that you say that because I think it's a common experience to a lot of people with autism or ADHD. You know, we like to just rely on ourselves because we're in control of that. You're in control of you and what you do. So I definitely relate to that. So where does the physio box come in? Because you know, I know that you mentioned about sort of the qualifications and the experiences that you picked up across the way. But in terms of like the future, what do you want the physio box to be about? Well, I think it all started back. I think, you know, Taekwondo and being involved in combat sport has kind of given me everything really, absolutely everything because from getting into physio, you know, to meeting, you know, my, you know, my son's mom, I met her through doing martial arts. So it's given me a lot. But I think it started really when I was an athlete because I got injured at a really early age. I did my ACL when I was like 19. And yeah, but I had a physio, Phil Waterworth, and he was he was he was straight, but he was very reassuring and he was calm. And I think he made an impact on me as a person. And I began to think, you know, maybe I could do a bit of that. Maybe that could be something I could pursue. And I think those experiences all support what I do now, whether it's in sports medicine or working as like an entrepreneur with my own little thing. They've all kind of contributed towards getting me to the point where I am now. And the physio box, you know, I've done this at many different sort of incarnations and ways like I've had commercial clinics. I've had people working with me. But you know, I've set up like kind of in my house now. And it allows me to do it in the way that I want to. It gives you autonomy over what you do. And that definitely works for me. So moving forward, I'd like to continue to develop this. And then I work with a whole, you know, quite a few different sporting teams as well. So I work with USA Taekwondo. I work with a few rugby clubs. I'm hoping to work with some other combat sports as well. So I think that what's important for, you know, autistic people or people with ADHD is that whatever you decide to pursue, it should mirror your passions and your interests. Yes, because if you have a natural enthusiasm for your subject area, I think success and money will follow. It follows naturally. It's not the same sort of life path, is it? Because it's kind of, you know, just from my experiences talking to people in adulthood that I used to go to school with. The majority of people that I came across, you know, they were always focused on like the moment they was focused on school and making friends and having a good time. None of them really had like something so strong, like like what I had with Taekwondo, like this sort of this passion, this kind of dream. I think it is in part due to my negative experiences in school. But you know, whenever I started something, you know, obviously I was bad at it. And over time, I sort of built up my skills and experiences with it. And I think that that journey from not being very good at it and being in a bad place, and knowing that putting the work in and doing the stuff, even though it doesn't sort of give you that instant reward or that like delayed gratification. It really taught me that, hey, actually, you know, although I may feel weak, down, depressed, you know, socially inept in this moment, why, why can I not work on that stuff? Why can I not work on the stuff that I did do with Taekwondo? I could, I could learn how to communicate with people better if I wanted to. I could understand people better if I wanted to. And you know that that that sort of, you know, fat in my head that was like, oh my God, like, I've made it to, you know, the nationals and I've got medals and I've gone abroad and I've thought, why can't I do anything else? It's like, it's just so much of a confidence boost, especially when you just feel so put down by society and sort of boxed into this sort of protected group where, you know, a lot of people are thinking that you won't achieve anything because of that. I think that sort of early experience of me succeeding and showing the importance of growing myself and working myself, that was so massively important for all of the endeavors that I've taken forward to in the future, even if it's not Taekwondo. Do you feel like your experiences with Taekwondo gave you a resilience that allowed you to address more challenging things like, you know, the social challenges that we face? I think to a certain extent, you know, when I was younger, I dealt with a lot of quite severe mental health conditions and I honestly didn't think that I would still be alive past 20. I pretty much had in my head that I was going to go out with a bang and it was just going to be this whole thing and then it was, you know, everything was going to be over and it's going to be, it's going to be okay for me and I don't have to experience all of this anymore. But I think, you know, learning that that resilience kind of motivated me into being like, you know, I do feel like this and I do win these competitions and I don't really feel much from from winning them. But I think for me, a common thread throughout all of my life is that I've had some kind of greater intrinsic motivation to it, like whether I wanted to teach people about my bad experiences, whether I wanted to show people how I did well, whether I wanted to help people. I always had some sort of goal in my head that kind of pulled me through whether I was happy, whether I was depressed, whether I was anxious. I always had that sort of thread that went through my life that sort of inspired me to, I guess, just try and see what happens and see if it does work. I don't know if you can see it behind me there, but there's a little sign just above the physio box. And it's Greek. It's, it's, it says Temetnosk. So people ask me what does it mean? And it's just, it's, it was from one of the temples at Apollo in Greece. And what it means is no thyself. And for me, it's foundational, especially for neurodiverse people, because we live in a neurotypical world with all these different influences trying to tell you who you are. But I always say to people, you have to know who you are. You have to know who you are and what you stand for. Or who you should be. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think when you've got a strong sense of that, it makes you resilient and it makes you, you don't need external validation. So people always say to me, you know, would you, would you trade your autism if you could get rid of it? And I'm like, no, because all the difficulties that I've faced because of it helped me develop into I am who I am. So for example, you touched on it when we're younger, we face a lot of rejection. And I was probably a little bit weird when I was younger. So it is good. Yeah. What I did when I had my assessment of the lady that did it, she said to me, it's remarkable because I've never seen it before. She said to present like a female would you mask. So she said, we couldn't even tell. So by because we, you know, because I was kind of ostracized a lot when I was younger. What I did was I learned to mask extremely well. So I fit in and not be rejected. So because of that, I feel like I'm able to communicate and build rapport with people really well, which I use every day on my job. You know, clinically, you do have to know what you're talking about. But really people buy into you as a person. And yeah, if you can't communicate and get them on board, they're not going to listen to what you say. So because of my autism, and because of those challenges, I adapted and it was really just a survival mechanism. And then as you described through that process of maturation, you get to the point where you really don't care whether you fit in it or not, you don't get validation anyway. So that's the point that you're at now. And what you do, you know, doing podcasts and getting up there and pointing content out that we talked about before, before we did this podcast, you're making yourself extremely vulnerable. And I think you have to have strength of courage and resilience to do what you do. And I think, you know, you can be proud of that. I believe anyway, we're not defective. We're just different. And the analogy I always use is that, you know, we run on Mac and everyone else is running on Windows. Yeah, it's no better or worse. It's just different. And because of that, we have we're better suited to certain things. We have, I usually find that, you know, people who have, you know, neuro divergent people, we have a very unequal skill set. There's things that were terrible like profile. Exactly. I can't do admin. And I've got no desire to do it either. I relate to you on that one. I've got no desire to do it, but I can build rapport with people, I can get them on side, and I can work with them in a way that enhances their life job done for me. I'm happy with that. So I think it's noticing your strengths and noticing your weaknesses. I think a common a common narrative I always hear is that, oh, yeah, you should work on your weaknesses. I personally think that's a load of rubbish and it doesn't apply to us, because it's your strengths that will help you stand out, go with those, go with what you're good at. Because that's what will help you develop as a person and become successful, in my opinion. Definitely. Well, I guess, you know, in line with the topic of the podcast, why do you think that sort of a positive or growth kind of mindset is important for us? I think because like I say, because I think we face a lot of social rejection, and you know, it typically is a social deficit. I think we can end up with a lot of anxiety, depression and poor mental health. People with ADHD and autism who are comorbid with, you know, depressive like symptoms and are often treated for depression when really, the depression is just a symptom of being rejected socially because of their autism. I think having a strong sense of identity, like I said, who you are, what you stand for is key. It's absolutely key. And I think once you have that, you can we were able to lean fully into who we are and not feeling like, like I say, you know, we live in a neurotypical world and trying to conform to that's like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, it just doesn't work. So we're able to like, you know, really embrace who we are and go with those strengths, because, you know, as they say, you know, you shouldn't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Well, there's certain trees we can't climb, like my son, for example, he's terrible at maths. Like it's like it really stresses him out. And I'm like, you know, conversations I've had. Yeah, as long as it can do the basics. But, you know, you could probably take apart a computer and put it back together again. I personally think the skill with IT is amazing. Why don't we focus on that? So I think knowing who you are is really important for autistic people and embracing it. Yeah, I think another aspect of it, you know, sort of more along the lines of the growth mindset is that I mean, I do see that in a lot of people that they kind of, you know, they feel stuck, you know, within within my my work, you know, I interact with a lot of sort of young people who sort of have different sort of educational special educational needs. I also talked to a lot of autistic people of adults within the community and it a lot of them either, you know, they feel like there's there's no way forward. But I think there's there's also a section of people which, you know, you could apply to anyone because we are as a society becoming so accepting and inclusive. Sometimes we don't put enough priority on growing as a person, you know, you just say, hey, this is how I am. And this is how I always be. Whereas from it for me, I've always had the the mindset of, right, this is how I am. Do I want to be like this? Or my life is the is there any way that I would want to change myself in a better way? And you know, obviously, that the merit of that change is very dependent. You know, you could say, well, I want to be better, better with girls. So I'm going to get loads of dates and stuff like that. I'm going to do everything to make sure that I can get to that point. Is it, you know, that's not always the best outcome for you as a person, just because of those kind of desires that you have. But I think it's also it's it's a balance, isn't it? Because there are some core characteristics to yourself, sort of based from your genetics and experience that are really kind of just neutral. And, you know, depending on the environment that you win that you're in, they can be seen as negative or positive. But at the same time, you know, I, I feel like it's it's always important to to be self reflective in that sense, because there is a lot that you can change about yourself if you, you know, if you feel like your internal world, your internal values, your character as a person is kind of suppressed from becoming realized for a long part of your life. It's going to be it's going to be hard to really realize that. And it's it's important to to know that you can do that you can act in a way over time, making you habits that put you in a place where you are that person that you feel inside. And I see with some people that they just they have that idealized person inside. And what they do is they fake it and they put on a facade and they don't actually make those changes, those small changes over a long period of time that will lead them to become fully realized as a human being, because they they have this kind of cognitive dissonance where they they think they're this person. So they display these these these ideals, but they're not that person. And they probably do, you know, everyone does even despite what age you are, there's always things that you can work on. There's always things that, you know, would make you a better person in your in your own eyes. And I think sometimes because we are so accepting of people as we have this kind of culture as I am who I am. And if you don't like it, you can screw off. You know, sometimes you might be right. And sometimes people might be arseholes and be giving you really bad advice. But it's always worth sort of hearing people out, especially if they have positive intentions with it. So it's finding that balance, isn't it? Because you don't want to be so narcissistic that you think you're something that you're not and you present yourself as something that you're not. And so it'll be delusional in that way. At the same time, you don't want to put yourself down so much that you're not this person that you feel like you're always inadequate. Yeah. And I like to think of it as a journey because I'm not at the place where I want to be now. But the facts that I'm on my way to be someone that I want to be and I can see those changes over the long long term. Yeah. It inspires me a lot and it keeps me sort of positive and sort of you know, satisfied that I'm able to have control over my life and who I want to be. Yeah. I really like Carl Jung. Like I've read a lot of his stuff and he describes the process that you're talking about as the individuation process. And I think sometimes you're diverse people. We have so many negative experiences throughout the course of our life. There's these layers of trauma that build up. So we end up becoming this person that's so far away removed from who you know, our authentic self is, is that we end up living almost alive. And I think the only way that you can individuate or really become, you know, the best version of yourself if you want is by stepping out of your comfort zone. Sometimes we retreat into what's comfortable, don't we? Because we don't want to face or we don't want to experience any sort of emotional hurt or any discomfort. But like you say, that process of growth involves stepping out and trying new things. Because otherwise you live a bit of a socially isolated life, don't you? And that can't be fulfilling on any level, whether you're neurodiverse or not. Yeah. I mean, I sorry. No, go on. I was going to give the the example of, you know, how I was when I was doing the site. You know, I, as you said, I kind of built myself up in Taekwondo. I built myself up in an in education and I kind of I had this feeling that people should be wanting to like me. And it just wasn't something that happened, you know, like people didn't come up to me and say, oh, that's really cool. And, you know, got involved. I actually had to to have the agency to interact with people and talk to them and communicate. I think. You know, up until that point, I thought that if I achieved certain things that things would just be handed to me. And I was very sort of. I guess resentful. You know, a lot of the experiences that I had with younger, they were mostly negative. People sort of you being a negative light. You know, I internalised that and I kind of wanted to fight against that and through a lot of sort of internal internal thinking, sort of, you know, looking at myself, how I am, how I act. I kind of picked up that, you know, actually, I'm probably just being a bit narcissistic in that way. Like, why why should they? What am I doing for them? Like just because I'm good at these certain things, does that mean that I'm deserving of everyone's time? And so I was I was I was thinking about that and I was like, you know, it looked like Tom, do you do you really need to have that that approach to people? And if people don't give you that, do you do you push them aside? Do you dismiss them or do you actually just, you know, have a look and actually just communicate with them and talk to them and see if you think I think I actually discuss this with somebody I used to work with because where I used to work in in high security mental health, you were dealing with what you call PDs, which are personality disorders. So they are clinically unwell, but there's not like there's not a psychiatric problem. They have what's called a personality disorder. So I think sometimes autistic people can come over with a certain degree of haughtiness. But I remember my colleague said to me, so in the DSM five narcissistic personality disorder, it's a clinical diagnosis that you can get. He said, but when you take, when you strip the label off it, what is it really? It's just somebody that was wounded as a child and never developed a healthy amount of sort of self love. So then they developed this almost persona that's really just to defend them from further hurt. That's all it is. So it's understandable that because I think when we are younger, we go through a lot of traumatic experiences and you do. I've seen it in many people that know they can't develop this haughtiness about them, which comes over as arrogance and conceits. Really, they probably just went through a few challenging situations as a child and they never fully recovered from it. Narcissism is just a wounded child. That's all it is. I think it's it's, you know, it's it's a really good point because, you know, I'll I think. You know, going through that kind of things, you either tend to go two ways, you either try to work on yourself and sort of understand exactly what that is. And, you know, whether it's something that's actually valid against against your person or whether it's something to discard and going through life sort of being dismissed because of the way that your brain is, the way that you operate and perceive things. You kind of get used to the fact that people are going to treat you negatively and it's you sort of build up this this wall. You you learn from you learn how to interact with people through these negative interactions. And I think a really important sort of step in my life was realizing that, hey, maybe this experience in teenagehood, this isn't representative of the entire human race, which sounds funny me saying this, but if you have been surrounded by these experiences and not really feeling that you fit in, you have this sort of warped view of what people are generally like. And so the first step to me, you know, realizing that I had these quite quite negative and defensive sort of personality traits was because I had a bias towards negative experiences, negative social experiences. And the point at which I was like, hmm, I don't know about this, but let me gather some more data. That's when I started to talk to more people. I started to actually like, yeah, exactly. They're going to approach it in the logical fashion. But I found I found some some assholes as as as I expected. Some people like people that I was with at school, but then also I found people like me. I also find the autistic community. I found people who were just genuinely nice, lovely people who wanted the drama free, happy kind of friendship, connection emotional connection that I really wanted. And if I wasn't able to look inside myself and notice that there was this bias, I wouldn't be able to do it. And people come up, you know, people say a lot like, I hate neurotypicals. Like, why? Why do you hate neurotypicals? And it's it's usually because of that bias that they have such a bias and they build up these walls and these walls protect them. And if they they act and they convince us that everyone is out to get us and that we're always a step away from having a hurtful comment or abuse or negative experiences. And really, we just need those. We need to balance out that bias with with reality. I tell you what, two of the biggest challenges I've faced in my life because of my autism. So the two that I would say were the first thing is, is that as neurodiverse people, we have this sort of obsession to justice and fairness and truth in particular. That thing, truth. And I think looking back, had I not held onto my principles as much and probably just let maybe some things go, I probably could have had an easier life. But it's I think it's an experience that's common to a lot of us. If something's not fair, like we will hold on to it forever until death. And I think the biggest problem, the biggest challenge I've ever had was that as neurodiverse people, we are driven by truth and facts and evidence, right? Neurotypicals are driven by emotions and perceptions. And those emotions might be totally detached from reality. But however, they're true for them. And that would frustrate me now and because I'm like, it's objectively true, like I can show you, it's right there and black and white. Why can't you see it? You can tell them the sky is blue and they'll still say it's green. And it was that theory of mind and just saying, OK, well, it might not be true in reality, but it's true for them. For example, in the work that I do, people come with all sorts of preconceptions and ideas on what they think has happened in whatever. And I think if you just if you use truth in an injurious way, you just kind of smash people with it. Yeah, you might win an argument, but you're not going to get them on side. You see this a lot in general media. So much like online spaces. It's like, why can't they understand that rule? Stupid. I'm not doing it. And I like, yeah, but you've got to get through the next five years of school. Maybe it might be worthwhile just taking that people used to say to me, oh, that's a kid. Take the path of least resistance. I could never understand what they mean, but now get it. So it's going to pick your battles. So, for example, people, you know, will come and they believe this is happening. And it's kind of it's an art form being able to give them some facts in a way that's digestible for them and doesn't. Yeah. Scar there doesn't hurt their feelings and they still be on side. They'll still trust you enough to follow the advice that you give them. And I think that really is if I if I was to say in my profession, that is the know that the master skill, I would say it's that being able to communicate and when people's trusts without yeah, totally demolishing them with facts and truth. I think that there's there's a really important point there because for most people going through life, you know, that their perceptions of that their behaviors can be easily translatable to other people. Like if they if they cry, they're feeling a certain way. If they raise their voice, they're feeling a certain way. If they change their tone, they're feeling a certain way. But when you when you different, when you when you have a neurodiversity, your perceptions, your thoughts, your feelings, they're different. And so in in in some ways, you know, when I was younger, if someone wronged me, you know, perhaps they weren't actually in tending to wrong me, they would they just had a different idea of what was going on. And I think a really constructive thing for me was kind of going past because most of the time, if someone if I felt someone was being disingenuous with me or they're being nasty, you know, and they were sort of stating things that just didn't make any sense. I would go, you know, you're just trying to be an asshole and you're just being bad and goodbye and closed doors and shut down. Whereas, you know, as as I'm getting older and understanding the differences between myself and someone who isn't autistic, it kind of kind of allowed me to to view the situation as just a crossed wires, like a situation where both people had good intentions, completely different conclusions were made just because of the differences that we have. And just just realizing the ways that, you know, I perhaps might have been biased and towards a certain feeling or thought in that situation, especially when it's an emotional issue and how they might be. And, you know, realizing the fact that, hey, actually, I didn't know much about their experience and what they were doing and how they were thinking. And likewise, they didn't as well. So it was kind of it was a really sort of transformative thing for me to kind of go for and go like, actually, hey, look, I'm actually getting this wrong. And, and, you know, bridges that I burned people that I shut down, people that I, you know, went away from. I got back in contact and some of them were, you know, rightfully so assholes. But other people, quite a large majority of people, they just got a different interpretation of the situation. They didn't understand how I sort of experienced life in terms of my emotions, my perceptions and my thoughts. And I didn't know how they did either. And understanding and unpicking those strands where where things sort of became miscommunicated as was was really important for me. You know, developing a sense that, you know, actually, actually, people aren't really much out to get me. I'm not. I'm not, you know, just inherently pushed the side and ignored. It's just I didn't really have any way of explaining my point in a way that they understood it. So you have that situation for a lot of people, especially if you don't have any autistic friends, autistic connections to kind of talk things through. And really sort of understand those situations. But, you know, bridging those gaps and understanding that life isn't the same for me as it is for them and trying to figure out the points of which that is, you know, the differences are and trying to find some way to relate to each other about that. That was so important. Because I went from viewing everyone as hating me and I was lonely and nobody understood me to understanding, hey, there's been some issues here, and it probably could have been addressed with a little bit more information from the people around me and also myself and sort of learning about it. And perhaps even them to understanding a bit more about how autistic people are and how they work. And one of the best things I've ever heard is that the map doesn't match the territory. I know they mean by that. Everybody has their own map, their own internal map of the world, the way that they think it is. And different different people's maps don't always match up and it's having the skills to be able to meet halfway and find common ground. And I think you're very introspective and I think that's unusual. A lot of people who I mean they, you know, they look at their behavior and they'll make some justification for it or they'll look at it in a way as that they were wrong and I was right. You know, I think you're honest and you look back at yourself and you look at what you could have done better and what you could have done worse. And life's a learning curve. It's important not to beat yourself up. You just did the best you could at that time. And now you're in a different point. And that's that's all right. It's just having that acceptance that we do the best we can. And I think also as well, I think it's important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater because some people do have malevolent intentions towards you. Yes, absolutely. It's absolutely true. And it's naive not to think so. We live in a free market society where individualism and selfishness is rewarded. I think, you know, I've worked all over the world and particularly last year I was working and you know, some of the norms and the way people treat each other. I wasn't quite prepared for it was different. And there's some of the things you come across. They are they can be rude and it can be a power game. So it's I think it's important to be able to decipher between instances where somebody may have done something unintentionally, which is 99 percent of the time. But then there are those instances where people do mean to it's a it's a power game. And I think for autistic people, in my experience, in those instances, it's best to check out because it will have a detrimental effect on your mental health. And, you know, it's not good for us, those kind of environments. So if you feel like you're in the presence of, you know, someone that means you, you know, hasn't got the best intentions towards you, just check out that. I think that's always better in my opinion. I'd agree with you. I went the opposite way as well. I thought that everyone was great and everyone had the best intentions. And that led me into some very precarious, long term damaging situations. So it's it's really, you know, I kind of had this the switch pool and I was like, OK, everything's not negative. Everyone's great. But also that was a really bad sort of mindset to have about it because I, you know, the best results that I've had with people with life is to approach things with the best intentions and make it very clear to people why, what intentions I have and how I am and be open with them. But then if they take advantage of something, I try and understand it better. And if they're not amenable to also trying to understand it better, you know, what can you really do about that? And if anything happens, multiple times and it keeps happening multiple times, that's not miscommunication. They understand you've explained yourself. So it's you are only responsible for your 50 percent, Thomas. And I think that you're only responsible for what you do and what you don't do. And if you've come to a situation with the best of intentions and you've been honest and you've not concealed anything, you've done your bit. I think one thing that I've noticed, it's previously myself, but some of my friends who are neurodiverse, there can be a social naivety inherent with us. And we think that everyone's our friend and I've seen that play out that dynamic whereby you know, I'm trying to explain to listen. So you get bullied. This, this, this and this is going on and you kind of can't see it and they still refuse to see that and that can be tragic, tragic sometimes. So I think it's just, you know, just approach everything with the best of intentions. But when you're in the presence of someone that might not have reciprocated those feelings towards you, it's just knowing when to check out to say, God, your own kind of mental health, I think it's all this is a lot of mileage in that. I think one common theme for for our talk is that everything's great. Yeah, we like to think that we can develop this way of being way of living that's going to be applicable to every situation. And really in a lot of cases, it's not and it's very individual and everyone's very different and it's it's just about as you said, doing your 50 percent and giving people giving people chances, but also knowing at what point. You know, the things are not going to change and it's still going to be like that and they're aware and if you've tried to explain multiple times and really it's just about, you know, as you said, stepping back. I realize that we've talked a lot about sort of that kind of positive and growth and sort of I guess talking about the situations where our you know, mindset shifts and why it's important to shift your kind of mindset, you know, trying to trying to have a forward thinking kind of mindset of reflecting on yourself now and again when a negative situation happens, you try and you analyze it, you don't jump to a conclusion of someone's good or someone's bad, but you just take it you take it easy and you take it slow and you try to understand the situation as best that you can. Sort of push forward, but I'm just really interested. I mean, you know, because obviously you've done you've had a lot of sort of success in your athletic and workplace endeavors. What what aspects do you think of autism or and or ADHD have helped you and which things do you think have harmed you? So I definitely think the areas that have helped have been being able to really focus on a subject area and because you know, we have these special interests being able to acquire a deeper level of knowledge on that subject area because like, I don't know about you, but like when I when I'm into something, I'll sit for like 10 hours on YouTube. Oh, yeah, you just have a plane in the background. There is to know about it. You're making a cup of tea. Yeah. Making some food. You just like crypto. Don't worry, I'll learn everything about it in a week. So I think there's that and I think the ADHD it's having that when when we are in a productive mode, like I'm able to produce large amounts of work very quickly. So yeah, like I say, most people, they're kind of good at a little bit good at everything, but we have a very unequal skill profile. So that really focus on an area of interest and going really deep into it. It's helped me because when I think one thing I always say is that we're built for specialisation over generalisation. And the good the the benefit of that is that, like I say, we're able to acquire vast amounts of specialist knowledge on one area. But what that lends itself well to is sort of autonomy, entrepreneurship, consultancy and being self-reliant. Yes. Because we live in a free market society, people will pay for real skills. And if you can acquire that deeper level of knowledge on something, it gives you freedom because the alternative to that as the potentially you're going to work in an organisation and you're going to have to conform to the to the group norms. You're going to have to conform to their working practices and you're going to have to conform to like their sort of values. And make it miserable. It made me as miserable as anything. And only through going through that process was I able to think, no, that's for me because you could by learning a lot about it, you can set yourself up as an independent as a specialist and people will pay a premium for that. The market decides how successful or not somebody is, because ultimately that's where people will put their money. Yeah. So I think that has been a benefit. It's hard, isn't it? Because I think a lot of people I've taught to they have these really intense interests, skills, brilliant proficiencies, even like very young ages. But it's it's translating that into how can I make the most out of this? How can I craft my life around it? And what are you doing now? You're doing it now? Yeah, well, it's it's, you know, I fill my life with things that I enjoy and I'm passionate about. But I think it's also, you know, worth paying attention to the fact that we really don't have the support systems in place that for everybody, you know, they may come from sort of more of a low income background. You know, I'm quite privileged in the fact that I've had the ability to explore my interests and ideals. You know, I didn't pay for my Mac. My parents bought it like quite a while ago for university. Now, everyone gets to have that. And some people really don't really have any options when it comes to employment. Sort of in the short term, they don't really see a way to to realise that. I think it's it's important because I mean. Just thinking about the way that we, you know, if we're sort of going into like employment rather than being self-employed, I think there is a very heavy emphasis on the deficit model when it comes to employment. And what are you bad at? What can we what can we what can even prove that you're bad at? And so they put all these adjustments in place and they're like, OK, so now it's tolerable. I can tolerate it. Great. That's that's that's not a brilliant way to live your life being tolerable of what you're doing. And I think one thing that the organisation that I work for has done exceptionally well with is not having that deficit mindset and actually thinking, hey, look, hey, Thomas is really good at making videos and Thomas is really good at speaking and presenting. Why are we not? Why are we not getting involved in the areas of work that involve speaking and presenting and making videos? And so I mean, it's really hard because, you know, you have these job descriptions, the employment sheets there, and you also have these governmental systems that are put in place that kind of guide workplaces. And when when you present something that could actually be beneficial for both you and the organisation, because it doesn't fit into that model, they kind of dismiss it. And I think, you know, I'm sure you've you've experienced things like that within employment and if you're on specialised, the only thing you have to trade is your labour. And when you're in that scenario, you are susceptible to the dictates and the whims of a corporation. Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is great because the free market decides whether you're good or you're not. And what was I going to say? I was going to say something. I got one second. So the free market decides who's good and who isn't and it rewards exceptionalism and merit. And I think it lends itself much better to us. Like I say, you know, you know, employers will make reasonable adjustments. But I take quite a conservative outlook on things. And I think that people can become the very best version of themselves if you remove the barriers out of the way. And, you know, neurodiverse people need to realise that you're not defective. There's nothing wrong with you. You have some exceptional skills. And just if you go with them and believe in yourself, you can achieve pretty much anything. I can't remember any time being totally honest when I've received when I've had any encouragement or support. Everything I've done has been off my own volition and my own and my own initiative. And I think it's all a mindset. If you if you think you can't, you won't. And if you think you can, you probably will. Yeah. And obviously, there's all sorts of, you know, personal sort of experiences and privileges and things that we can have in life that kind of give us a leg up and get us started. And I think a lot of people who don't have that opportunity and don't sort of have that sort of positive outlook on themselves and their skills, they can get into like the mid-20s and they can see everyone around them getting a job, moving out of their home. All of these societal expectations and they kind of mount up on you. They kind of they push you down and like they present this massive gap between what people are expecting you to do and what you're doing. And sometimes it's just about realising that a lot of the stuff out there, a lot of the advice, a lot of the support out there, it's not geared towards us. It's geared towards everyone else. And when someone says that you should, you should not live with your parents because you're supposed to be an adult, you should be able to 18 and you should be working a job five days a week, getting the money in to survive. Well, you're not. I mean, we have difficulties with disabled just by being autistic in a society that's not built for us. Do you know something though, Thomas? Like I'm gonna play devil's advocate with you on that point because it's something that's really important to me. And I've had this conversation a lot with people. I've received no privilege. I'm from Stoke-on-Trent. It's one of the poorest wards in the country. I left school with no GCSEs. I had an undiagnosed disability. I was in brushes with the law more than once when I was younger. So I had every disadvantage that I was male, I'd got every disadvantage against me. I'm not saying that I'm great or whatever, but I think if you've got a belief that you can do better and you're willing to put the work in, I don't think anything is unattainable. But like I said before, I'm only talking from my experience. It doesn't mean it's universally true. It's just what I have found true for me. That's all. Yeah, I agree with you. I think all of these privileges and things that we have, they shorten the timescale of things. Like, perhaps for me, I want to start a podcast. Right, okay, my parents bought me a Mac. I bought a microphone. Someone may not have that. They might have to work for a couple of years, get enough stable income to save enough, get a stable income to earn a Mac, and then get to a point. And so there were always kind of, everyone's on like a different timescale. You can see YouTubers, people, celebrities out there, age 21, age 18, pretty much at the height of their career. And you can be like, oh my God, I haven't even thought about which job I want to go for, or you know, or you might be the opposite and you might already have a plan set out and you might already be in motion and you might already have the resources that you need to do that. So I think there's just a really, really important thing of knowing that in the long term, if you work on it slowly and you chip away at what you want to do, you learn things, you reach out to the supports that you can make it, maybe not in the timescale that you want to, but your time will come with time just with that, that grit and the delayed gratification and being aware that you're not living on the same timescale as your neighbor. You know, that's important, there's loads of people who are like age 50 who start their career there and they didn't do anything up until that point and it's... I'm 40 this year and I can honestly tell you that only in like maybe the last three to four years have I really came into my most productive and successful period because what you said was absolutely spot on. It's about being consistent, doing the same things again over a long period of time. That's what I think equates to a big win and that's what I've found. It's been, I think in all in all, I was in education for like 12 years, just continually learning, learning, learning, learning and it's just about, like I say, just having an idea of roughly where you want to go, setting a plan in place and then executing on that plan. I mean, I work, it is physiotherapy but I do a lot of sort of like lifestyle coaching with people and I say to a lot of them, okay, what do you want? And okay, well, I want this, I wanna be happy and I go, okay, well, what does happiness look like to you? Can you be specific? And they're like, no, I think you have to have a very specific idea of what you want and then when you have that, the rest all kind of falls into place and you have to be consistent in the way you work towards it. That's what I have. You can't just trudge on through the wilderness with no direction. You need to know where you're going, where you are in order to make a, it doesn't need to be like a really highly specific, like a smart goal. You don't need to have this highly specific thing but you could have, at least a checklist like a few bullet points, where do I wanna be in the future and not sort of basing that off what other people expect you to do in that timeframe. It's not a race, what you said before, it's not a race, you're on your own timeframe and I think comparison can be the thief of joy sometimes because especially in this age of social media, we're always looking around what everybody else is doing and then reflecting that back to ourselves, you're on your own track and you're gonna achieve it in your own time and I think that can be really beneficial to a lot of people just to focus on yourself and what you're doing. Yeah. And I think it's hard, isn't it? Because people listen to this podcast, listen to me and you talking about the place that we're at now and the only people that we really see and the only person that we really hear are the people who have already made it to a certain point where they're happy with what they're doing and they've got things established. But just by the nature of that, you don't hear from the people who are in the works like there could be amazing people in the works right now. Nobody knows about them doing their thing, building themselves up over a long period of time and then they get to a point and then they're successful and then people hear from them and then people see the benefits of what they've sowed. Like you're not gonna go up to a random who's at Taekwondo that you don't know nothing about and say, wow, you're so great, even if they're not. But in the same vein, that person over time developing themselves, building, learning, they could be a world champion, they could be a national champion, they could be an international champion, they could be succeeding in these areas. But you never know and it's, we're only presented with those people who are kind of have everything at that point. And everyone, you know, this is a game with the time scales. Not everyone's there yet and that's okay. It's not expected for everyone to be at their peak because that's just not, it's not reasonable. Yeah, I tell you somebody that's had a large influence on me and that was my dad. He just got an MBE for his services to Taekwondo because of everything that he's done with GB. But I think people see the success over the last probably 10 years but they don't know the story that led up to that. They don't know he started off fixing radiators before we did this workshop in Stoke where we're from. And I think he had a profound influence on me when I was younger and I saw, he just wasn't smarter than anybody else, wasn't, you know, didn't have this that, but he was a relentlessly hard worker and he would just keep going and going and going and going. So now people see what he's done with GB and how successful they've become, but they don't see all the small challenges that he had over the years doing different jobs, going, you know, having to win this battle, win that battle. And I think it was that sustained effort over a period of time that has led him to have the success that he has. And I think probably subconsciously when I was younger, I watched that and I thought I'm gonna do that as well. And that was a key factor in me doing all the things that I've done. And you know, and have I been hugely successful? I don't know, but I think success is relative. And I look back at what I have done and I think, you know, I'm happy with it. It's okay. It's good enough for me. Yeah. I think I know of great analogy is you see, you see the world champions on the first place stage, you see that picture, that's all you see of them. You don't see them having really bad days, doing really badly at training, waking up at 5 a.m. and doing all these things and just putting in their whole heart and soul and having failures and feeling down in the dumps and feeling like they're not gonna get anywhere. You don't see that unless someone makes a movie about you. You just see that person. What, how are they doing in this competition, in this fight? Oh, they're doing well, right? So they must be just a really great person. Yeah. You don't see that all of the stuff before that. You just see the end result. And, you know, even for example, with this podcast, you hear us speaking, you hear me speaking, but you don't see the person that I was five years ago who couldn't talk just to one person who just was so shy. So lacking self-esteem that it just couldn't say anything because he didn't feel able to and didn't feel like he was competent enough to speak. You don't see that. And you don't see those small incremental changes that I made over the course of five years and the small breakthroughs and the failures. And, you know, you've gotta be aware that not everything is a glory moment and that life can be boring and life can be tough. And you just push through things. And as long as you're going in the right direction and you're making those incremental wins over time working on yourself. I know an MMA fighter from Manchester, Kiddu, I know. I know him pretty well. I've known him for a long time and he just won the PFL, just won a million dollars at a tournament in America. He lives in Thailand most of the time. But I remember him from 10, 12 years ago in the boxing, in Champs Camp boxing gym when he had holes in his shoes just training relentlessly hard. And now he's just achieving the result of all that hard work and he's getting the success. But I think that's the most glaring example I can think of someone that's continued to work no matter what over a long period of time and now is getting his just deserts. I think of people like that who I've known again through martial arts. It always comes back to the same thing. Yeah. And you've also, I mean, there's a flip side to that. And you know, I'm not prescribing everyone to be working every day of every week towards things. The fact that there is that sort of time scale doesn't mean that you have to do everything now but it does mean that you have to do some things now. Like, and it's not always this. It's great, it's great to work and it's great to be on the grind and to do things but it's also really important to kind of temp yourself and not get too excited because when you try to push yourself too far, when you try to push yourself too far too quickly, that's when you experience those feelings that nothing's ever gonna change because you're not looking at it on a long time scale. You're not being patient, you're not waiting for those small incremental changes over a long period of time to add up. And it's really important not to put that pressure on yourself just because you're not at a certain point that you want to be at this time and you're not putting every ounce of everything that you have every single day. You are taking a step back, you are thinking about yourself, you are taking care of yourself care and also making sure that you don't overwork yourself and burn out. Good day, viewers and listeners. Apologies for my very rude introduction to our regularly scheduled broadcast. I just wanna remind you that if you have enjoyed the podcast thus far, please make sure to rate, subscribe, like, comment and share. All of these actions are pretty much the lifeblood of a small independent creator like myself and it will help me get most of my work, more of my work to people who really need it. If you want to stay up to date with my life, get behind the scenes content, check out my daily blogs, head over to the Instagram at Thomas Henley UK. You'll find a link to that down in the description alongside my range of neurodiversity clothing just like this strong, powerful autistic hoodie. I love so much. And my website of course, where you can find a contact, email, to book me for one-to-one orders and coaching, interviews, workplace training and speaking. So thank you very much for listening to this very annoying self advert and I hope you enjoy the rest of the show. So I just wanna point out a little bit that from now on, oh my God, how do I even explain it? We have had just the absolute worst luck when it comes to podcasting. Everything that goes wrong with online video calling, podcasting has just all happened in this podcast. We had such an issue. We tried to set up like all our audios and mics and I didn't have my mic turned on and we couldn't sort out the mic that you have. The blinds leaving, the blinds wasn't it? Oh my God, yeah. So if you're noticing that it sort of the atmosphere, if you're watching on YouTube that it looks a bit darker than usual, that's because it is actually like an hour, an hour and a half later than we had our last sort of clip. So yeah, that's not a drill but we're back again and we're gonna finish off by giving the sort of the last talking point, last question and we're gonna try and wrap things up but yeah, just letting you have a little inside as sort of you on life as a podcaster especially on online platforms. Very sorry, Nathan. This is probably not the best experience of podcasting so far. Don't have to be sorry it was my fault. It came to a podcast with like no stuff set up. So let's note yourself. Well, okay, so I mean we ended up talking sort of in one of our rants kind of chatting about life and sort of the time scale and stuff like that. I guess what I wanna ask is with the focus on inspiring personal growth in over autistic people, looking back on your life, what changes in mindset or direction would have been beneficial to you during sort of your hard times, the times when things just weren't going well? I think it's easier to look back with the benefit of hindsight being nearly 40. I suppose if I could give some advice to my 18 year old, 20 year old self, it would be, I'd have a few things really but I think the main thing would be, although in the moment things can feel overwhelming and like there's nothing else that matters in the world, is to in that moment to take it, step back and give yourself some time to gain perspective. We often feel emotions intensely and can become overwhelmed by really intense emotions but just by not reacting straight away and taking a step back, it allows us to see the wood from the trees. So I think that's really useful. I mean, there's quite an often, there's a trap that I've got into a lot of times during my life where particularly when you have something that you're trying to do and it's just not working like with trying to sort out the wifi and the podcasts and stuff and you kind of feel that sense of time pressure and you kind of have in your head that we're gonna be doing this and it's gonna be finished then and then I'm gonna do this and this. And sometimes life doesn't go that way and life throws you some curve balls and I found myself in many situations where I've been trying to work on something perhaps I was editing my documentary that I was trying to do and then the program crash crashing. I kept like messing stuff up, not saving things just absolutely going crazy. I think it's important to think about like how anxiety works, how like adrenaline and cortisol works because it's quite like a primal mechanism that we have and it's really useful in situations that are not sort of modern day situations where you have to use your brain and figure things out and it's much more complex than running away from a lighting or something like that. But anxiety, cortisol and adrenaline it makes you focus in on something and a really big trap is just kind of lean into it a bit more and just keep focusing on trying to solve the situation but as you're saying, yeah, it's right because those times where it becomes overwhelming and you feel that sort of intense drive really what the best thing to do is kind of take a step back and try and regulate and relax before approaching it again. I still do it to be honest, if I'm to be honest, it's, you have like time pressures and you know, routines to kind of stick to that really regulate you and when something goes wrong you just, you feel this sort of rush that you have to get this done right now what everything's ruined like. I look back at some of the things that I think have really bothered me in the past and at the time it seemed like the world was ending but then I look back now and I think, I don't know what I was so bothered about it really wasn't important because, you know in 100, 200 years from now, none of us will be here and nobody will remember that thing. So perspective that I think that would be the first thing and it more of a reiteration of what I've said before because I feel like for people with autism ADHD it's almost like a cheat code and it's the really gain and understanding of yourself and who you are and focus on your strengths and specializing in those things because the world is constantly trying to get you to conform and just because the herd goes with something doesn't mean it's right. You find your own path and do and work in the way that suits you because eventually that's what will make you successful will lead to a life of freedom and autonomy where you're not beholden to the societal norms so that would be it and strive for self-reliance, strive for independence that's there were the things I would say if I could tell my younger self some things that would be it and really just take your time just chill there is no rush. Really important words. I think I really, really empathize with something that you said but my brains deleted it. Happens all the time, don't worry. And as soon as we got the point, you'll remember. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, a thing about like social norms obviously some things that you learn from other people they're useful, some things that they aren't and they're not really applicable to you. And I think it's hard, isn't it? Because especially if you have a support network around you people that sort of support you that they have your best intentions at heart they want you to do well they want to help you situations but they don't really sort of understand how you work, how you're wired. So it can be really hard sometimes to actually be like, hey, actually look I'm an adult, my brain works in this different way. I know you don't think this is a good idea but I do and I'm going to do this. That's a really hard thing to do especially if you're, you know if you struggle quite a lot with the ups and downs and lives of life and these people who support you are saying like this is a really bad idea this isn't going to work out. Even if they're not trying to put you down they're just trying to help you sort of not fall into a trap. I think, you know it's always worth taking on board what people say and try to like take your own lessons out of it but ultimately you are yourself and you know yourself and you have a different brain you work differently and sometimes the best thing is to actually just say, look, right this is how things are going to get done for me I'm going to do that, it's worked in the past and you know or I'm going to try this out see if this works for me and just seeing what happens really because we don't have a lot of role models out there I didn't when I was younger I didn't know any actually sort of openly autistic people that I could look up to to teach me about life and teach me about the ways of improving myself so because if you endeavor based on following your own intuition your own guiding sort of principles and you fail you've got no one to blame with yourself what's worse is listening to always listening to the advice and the whims of other people that may not be accurate it's based on their experience of the world which may or may not be accurate and then coming up short because you will feel hard done by whereas if you kind of weigh it up listen to your own intuitions and go with that then win, lose or draw you know that you acted in the way that you wanted to so that would be some advice I would give, listen to your own sort of inner guidance and ultimately like you say there isn't many strong role models for us out there so the people that are giving you advice are quite often neurotypicals and their experience of the world is totally different do you know what I mean so yeah that's I say to my students like when I used to I have a lot of students I used to say I'm going to show you my way the way I do it but it doesn't mean it's the other way ultimately you'll be a thousand pieces of a thousand different people at the end of your career and you have to find your own way put your own mosaic together and I think that's really important to do that I think it's worth saying that that is incredibly daunting and scary because you are you're the driver of it and you're also the person if it goes well you're responsible for it but also if it goes really badly you're responsible for it and I think that's the hardest part of it because quite often if you're if you're starting off that journey and you're trying to follow your own sort of independent thought you will come into hurdles and you know your dedication to following your own life journey is going to dictate whether you take that hurdle as confirmation that you're doing the wrong thing and sort of resort back to other people's opinions or whether you just kind of push through or modify it a bit or change it a little bit and see what happens you're absolutely right but conversely although it is worrying it's also hugely liberating because there's all these possibilities that you can do but I think you've made a really good point and you actually jog my memory I think one of the key things that I've learned and really important is that rejection, failure all these are just part of the human experience autistic or not and you are going to experience and no matter what you do and there's loads of cheap seats in the world of people that want to denigrate your efforts or put you down or whatever but that's the easiest job in the world to do that the credit-be-lots everyone can point out your flaws of course like you with your social media like we were talking you're the person putting yourself out there you're the person making yourself vulnerable so really those people you're not interested in their feedback they don't get saved because you're the one doing it and I think that's really important so that would be the advice I would give to my younger self stop brilliant brilliant and I suppose the last part of it is around sort of independence and self-reliance I think it's definitely a good it's good to go for and achieve those kind of things I am also aware that things like executive function definitely get in the way of achieving that kind of independence it's very hard to manage every single aspect of living as an adult independently on your own if I'm to be completely honest and vulnerable I haven't got it sorted out yet it's not something that I feel I've got sussed out there's areas in my life where I'm really good anything work, fitness sort of productivity related I've got down to a T but cooking making sure a tick keep on top of you know sort of different sort of life needs it's all works in progress and I think you know what you said about sort of following your own path is really important because if you if I was to say you know I don't cook so what I do is I try to find a healthy alternatives that I can use that that I can just shove in the microwave and use and people go why don't you just cook it it's cheaper it's like well I have needs and I can't always meet those needs and it's usually cases either that or I just don't eat so I think it's important to weigh things and not to focus generally on things you want to be specific about what you want to improve you know I've just started batch cooking trying to batch cook and you know I've been asking for support from my family members and they've been helping me trying to do that so there's little things like that that I think you know just just smaller segments of the bigger picture to focus on at time is really important and I try not to focus on improving things more than one or two things within a certain time frame because if you try to improve everything at once you're just going to do a poor job of all of them mate you're absolutely right I think I think I think it's about having an honest and really a brutally honest conversation with yourself I can think back to my own career and what led me to do what I do now and in terms of probably technical skill in terms of ability I could, I think I'm probably capable of doing most jobs in professional sport the reality is I don't have the capacity I don't have the bandwidth to do all the politics that comes with that and that was okay I just had to admit that to myself it's not a slur but I can't do that but I could do all this other stuff and then even in my own working in the physio box I noticed very early on that things like admin and managing multiple tasks I just can't do them so if I was ever going to expand my business I know I would need a business manager I've already identified that somebody will take up the slack and do all those menial tasks that I one aren't interested in doing and two don't have the capacity to do because you know what I mean and that's it's not good or bad it just is what it is and it's just being honest and identifying those things like the same as you like just on a smaller level I have a cleaner I'm not interested in cleaning my house but I know it needs to be cleaned so I'd rather pay somebody to do it than do it myself so yeah I totally agree with you about that I think there's a lot of societal pressures on many different fronts that to be considered a proper adult you have to have all these prerequisites and you have to do all of these things but we're living in a very sort of you know especially in the UK that's sort of the Western world we're living in a very sort of privileged time and you know we're not living in a cave we're not going out and surviving on our own and it's okay to lean on the systems that are in place and it's okay to make adjustments in your own life you know we talk a lot about workplace adjustments what about the adjustments that we make for ourselves like great one I heard from one of the advocates on the Instagram autistic column he gets a taxi every morning to work costs him probably about 10 times more than it would do to get a bus but the amount of energy and the amount of stress that he avoids you might have energy drain that he avoids from getting that taxi allows him to do so much better in the work environment which you know life is full of those kind of things and I think you know a lot of people would probably say to to call him in that situation just get a bus like just suck it up it'll be much cheaper in the long run just go and do it and this that and the other but as you know it helps him why not it's just not very conventional just you know doing the job that I do you meet people from all different walks of life and a couple of my clients are they're not overly religious but they're religious to some degree and they have a period of the week where from sundown on this day until sundown on this day no work happens and I said you know why do you do that and he said because that's time for family work and recharge so that we can come back on Sunday or Monday and we're ready to hit the ball you know hit the ground running and that's a life adjustment isn't it it's a life adjustment and I thought well we struggle with burnout so why can't I do that as an autistic person and now like Saturday night to a certain point or Sunday I don't interact it makes it difficult to manage relationships per se you know but I know I don't know about you but I really need that time to not work and just to just like recharge so then Monday I can go back and I'm okay making those adjustments and just recognizing that so that's you know advocating for your own needs and I think you will come up in situations where people put you down for things or make fun of you or just you know give you some comments about how you should be living your life but ultimately you are in control of it and it's completely reasonable and okay to take a little bit longer to develop certain skills but do really well in others rather than just have a sort of general you know all bases kind of covered mentality to it because it tends not to work that way for us and I think yeah it's very hard to advocate for yourself especially to people that you care about and love and they care about and love you is you know you can understand always do they like for example taking time out of the level and I want to talk and like we need that time to recharge and if we don't take that time we can't show up as our best selves in those relationships so it's having the balance like you said it's having the balance it's important the set point is very different person to person for different multi-vasted parts of our life so yeah definitely brilliant well thank you very much for those sort of points I think it's been a really really productive podcast and really thankful for everyone who's stood by and listened I know that you know feeling motivated and feel sort of pushed down by social norms and society can be very exhausting and I'm trying to advocate for why you are living your life a certain way can also be really hard but I feel like we've covered a lot within this podcast and I think there's a lot to take away in terms of feeling okay about where you are living by your own sort of timescale staying positive, trying to grow so many things and thank you thank you Nathan for kind of bringing these bringing these to the table I really enjoy it, thanks mate where can people find you? so I've got a recently set up YouTube channel I think it's at the PhysioboxLT I'm on Instagram, my website has got a lot of information on their regular blog posts etc etc that's www.thephysiobox.net and yeah I'm available for private consultations or online coaching whatever just make contact on any of those channels really cool, cool and I will put those links down in the description as per usual and yeah if you've got to this point you've found some use in it maybe it's inspired you maybe it's helped you feel a bit better in this very harsh society that we live in please make sure to give me a rate if you're on Spotify and Apple really does help out a lot even if it's just a star rating and also if you are listening on or watching on YouTube make sure to give a subscribe and a like and if you want to sort of further this message and help it get out to more people any shares, anything like that is absolutely like the lifeblood of a small independent creator like myself so much appreciated and of course if you want to get in contact if you want to stay up to date with my life you can follow my Instagram at Tons Henley UK got daily blogs, content on there that goes far beyond sort of the podcast in different ways I think, you know, I think there's a lot of information over there if you haven't already followed last thing is the coaching and the website if you want to head over to my website you can get in contact with me for things like one-to-one coaching which will hopefully be set up soon I'm trying to settle my business at the moment go for all the paperwork which is it's the less fun part of it but very much needed so that should be up at some point this year and if you want to book me for public speaking if you want to book me for a podcast if you just want to get in touch and say that you've enjoyed the episode and you found it useful follow the contact link on my website TonsHenley.co.uk and you will be able to find all the things that you need and with that Nathan, thank you for coming on the podcast have you enjoyed your 40-oughty experience over the technical issues? Yeah, we went off on a few tangents but that was expected yeah, I really enjoyed it and I always love listening to your podcasts I think, you're putting, yeah, no worries you're putting really useful information out there into the space to help people with ADHD and autism so thank you for doing that No worries I want to end up by giving a nod to the fact that I haven't done the song of the day for a long time now so Nathan, what is your song of the day? What's a song that really means something to you that you want to share with people? I'm going to go with Everlong by Foo Fighters because I like Foo Fighters and they were one of the first bands I ever saw in concert so that's my pick of the day Very cool, very cool So, I hope you have enjoyed this episode of the 40-oughty podcast like, share, comment, rate, do all that stuff and I'll see you in another episode Bye me, see you later guys Bye