- Hi everyone, welcome back to Aspergers From The Inside,
you're here with Paul. So, I don't know if you've
had this experience, where you have an amazing incredible idea and you share it with a group and then, nothing happens. They don't act on it,
they don't acknowledge it, it feels like they hardly even consider the idea at all and
then maybe another time maybe a little bit later, someone else suggests
exactly the same idea and all of a sudden people are like, "yeah, that's great lets do that". So, the quintessential example of this for me goes back, goes back to primary school. And it might be something like, "hey guys, why don't we
have a game of basketball?" And everyone just sort of,
doesn't really respond, sort of looks around, looks at each other. And what they're doing is because I'm not the leader, they're looking towards
the natural leader, they're looking towards
their peers to see, does everyone else think
this is a good idea or not. The weird kid over there
has suggested something and I don't want to
put my hand up and say, "yes, that's a good idea" until I'm sure that everyone else also thinks that's a good idea. Conversely, when what I
would call the natural leader of the group mentions something, people know that if that person says something's a good idea, it's likely that everyone
else is also gonna agree so it's safe to say, "yes I agree, that's a good idea". And so, in that sense being, there's a good reason why, being autistic means you're probably not a natural born leader. And this is because very often the things that I do are
not the kind of things that other people want to do or even more specifically, it's not the kind of things that other people want to follow. So, for example if we're
all sitting down in a group, sometimes I might get up and walk around or do my own thing. You don't want to follow the guy who's doing his own thing, right. Because, why would you do that? You wanna, most people want to follow what is safe to do in the group, what is everyone else doing. Whereas, the leader of the group is likely to do something that other people are also going to want to do. which means if the leader does something new and different, you're like, "oh wow, why don't I do that too?" I'll be one of the first followers, people will then come and
do the same thing as well and I'll be cool and I'll
be popular and whatever everyone, everyone's happy. I know this is a very, I'm getting a little bit into my special and just over emotional
intelligence and behavior here. And clearly I've been studying this for a very very long time, both professionally and just
in my own, in my own life. And, this insight really
helped me understand, like, because I used to
think it wasn't fair, I used to think that
the quality of the idea was all that mattered
and it was really unfair that when I came up with a good idea, no one listened and when someone else suggested the same idea,
it actually happened. Whereas, I find now
having an understanding of what the difference is and why people don't naturally follow me, helps me to not be quite so angry at the world for that, because it felt like a massive injustice. Because I was having these good ideas and no one was doing anything about it. So, that's interesting. There's actually another way, so, if we're not natural born leaders what are we? And another explanation is that, our ideas are often so ahead of their time that people, the people around us just don't get them yet. I had the privilege of having a chat to Judy Singer just recently. And she was talking about
neurodiversity in 1990. I saw a meme on Facebook the other day, the year 2050 is as far
away as 1990, right. That was 30 years ago now, and you'd think we'd come
a long way since then and we have, nowadays we talk about
neurodiversity a lot, but 30 years ago she was
well ahead of her time, probably 30 years ahead of her time and if you took out that this is now and started reading it you go, "oh yip yip, that's a good explanation "of what neurodiversity is." However, people who are decades or even more ahead of their time, have a lot of trouble finding other people around them who understand
their idea enough and understand the
implications of the idea and how good is this idea enough, to actually want to follow. There's something called a
like an innovation curve, which many, many of you have seen, I wonder if you can see
this, it's almost like, I'm so far out here, that I've got this idea before anyone else like decades before anyone else and of course no one else
thinks it's a good idea yet 'cause they don't know what it is and then eventually more
and more people catch on and then eventually it becomes mainstream and then all of a sudden
everyone's doing it and it's a trend. And then, you know. So, if we are not leaders, and I don't want to generalize right, maybe some of you are, maybe some of us are. If we're not leaders, what a lot of autistic people are, are innovators. So, this is something good to remember because we're not all born to be leaders but if you are an innovator, you have something very valuable to give to the world. And you're the kind of person that people will look back and eventually realize
how good your idea was, when it gets going and
when people can finally see the result of your innovation. So, that's why people and companies and any one that invests
for lack of a better word, in cultivating autistic people, in making sure that we're
included in society. That's why it's a good idea to make the world more autism-friendly so that we can give our
contribution to society. Because, as I mentioned
we're not gonna be, we're unlikely to be
the ones out the front, leading the charge of
masses of people right, that requires popularity, that requires understanding exactly what the majority
of people think and feel and the majority of people
think and feel things that ae significantly different
to what I think and feel. So if I assume someone else is gonna react the same as me I'm probably, I'm probably gonna be wrong and on a big scale that's often the case. So, I found this insight
for myself really helpful that I'm not trying to do that, instead my ideas are innovative, my ideas are going to resonate with a small group of people and we're gonna start slowly attracting more and more attention and the world is gonna change, eventually. We're not bashing our head
against the brick wall we're just at the very
very very very start, of this exponential curve that will, that will take off later. Does that make sense? Hopefully it does. Anyway, if not, bad luck you've already watched the video. Okay, hope you've enjoyed this and I'll see you again another time, bye.
