My guest today is a clinical psychologist, nationally recognized keynote speaker, and a proudly autistic advocate for neurodiversity. He is a bestselling author, most recently of “Neurodiversity and the Myth of Normal” and his TEDx talks about his life with autism have been viewed over 750,000 times. He consults on autism and neurodiversity for leading organizations including Google, Harvard, and Blizzard Entertainment, and his expertise has been featured by Bloomberg Magazine, the American Psychological Association, and the Great Place to Work Summit. He holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from George Fox University and works as a clinical psychologist specializing in autism, neurodiversity, and social relationships. Dr. Daniel Wendler!

Excerpt from a recent substack he wrote:

“A goal can be a threshold or a spectrum. A threshold either happens or it doesn’t. Nothing else matters.

• If a sports team loses, it doesn’t matter if they lost by 1 point or 100.• If you’re late for a flight, it doesn’t matter if you miss it by 5 minutes or 5 hours.

• And, if that plane crashes, it doesn’t matter if it crashed on takeoff or flew 1000 miles before going splat.

A spectrum, conversely, is an infinite line. You can move up and down the line, but you never reach the end.

• If I go on a walk for 10 minutes, I become a little healthier.

• If I spend 10 dollars at Taco Bell, I become a little less healthy

The deepest lie of “not good enough” is that it trains us to view spectrums as

thresholds. Your 10 minute walk wasn’t good enough, because it wasn’t a 10 mile run. Your talk wasn’t good enough, because it didn’t get a standing ovation. Your writing wasn’t good enough, because it didn’t turn out exactly the way you wanted.

This is a trap.

A spectrum stretches on forever, so there will always be more that you could do. When you compare what you could have accomplished with what you actually accomplished, you’ll never feel like you did “good enough.”

But what matters is not what you could have done. What matters is what you actually did.

You created a good thing where nothing existed before. You moved the spectrum of the world closer to goodness.

Maybe you could have created a better thing. So what? The thing you made is still good, and imagining a hypothetical better thing doesn’t change that. Maybe the thing you created is small and imperfect.

So what? Kittens are small and imperfect, and the world is much better because they’re here.

And, no great thing ever starts as a great thing anyway. We build mountains by stacking a lifetime of imperfect pebbles. The internal critic only judges your pebble because it doesn’t recognize the seed of a mountain.”

Special thanks to:

Thank John Ewing and Charlie Carignan for the music

Also thank you to the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for helping start this

program.

Wendler Links

Videos:

Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SocialSkillsVideos

What being autistic taught me about being human | Daniel Wendler |

TEDxBend: https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_wendler_what_being_autistic_taught_me_about_being_human?

utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

My Life with Asperger’s: Daniel Wendler at TEDxUniversityofArizona:

https://youtu.be/B-xgdqNtcDI

Websites:

https://www.danielwendler.com

https://www.improveyoursocialskills.com

Writing:

Substack: https://writing.danielwendler.com

Audible: “Neurodiversity and the Myth of Normal” –  https://www.audible.com/pd/Neurodiversity-and-the-Myth-of-Normal-Audiobook/B0CVBKYHQD

Level Up Your Social Life: The Gamer’s Guide To Social Success: https://www.amazon.com/Level-Up-Your-Social-Life-ebook/dp/B01BMVK43I?ref_=ast_author_dp

Improve Your Social Skills: – https://www.amazon.com/Improve-Social-Skills-Daniel-Wendler-ebook/dp/B00NJNQ3U6?ref_=ast_author_dp

Credits:

Music by John Ewing and Charlie Carignan

Supported by Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation For Autism

All hail King Flobberdeest!