This week I gave a presentation at work. It was part of a series called Secrets of Success, in which each employee in the company gets a turn to give a presentation on what they have personally learned about success. I was quite nervous about mine, as it was very personal, but I was pleased that it was well-received.

I had a hard time deciding what I would say for a while. I didn't know what I could say that would be different from what others had already presented. So I started thinking about other people I knew who were successful, and what I've learned from them that I could share. Suddenly, one particular person popped into my mind, and that choice laid out everything I would say, including a rather unconventional opening.

What follows is a text version of the presentation.

UPDATE: On June 9, 2010, this article was featured on the official Facebook page for Autism Speaks. I am truly humbled and appreciative of the many positive comments I have received, both on this blog and on Facebook. However, there has also been a little bit of misunderstanding about the intent of the piece. It is not intended to tell you how to “fix” your autistic child. It is simply about what I have learned about success as I have gone through (and continue to go through) this experience with my daughter. Thanks again, and to those who have autism or love someone who does, “Never give up, never surrender!”

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Secrets of Success

by Robert J. Walker (with apologies to Theodor Geisel)

What is success? Can anyone say?
Is it something you put on your résumé?
Is it big money? Is it great fame?
Is it a building adorned with your name?
We're always chasing success in this biz,
But how do we know what success really is?
There are lots of people who have lots to say,
And it's hard to know whose idea to obey.
So I said to myself, “Self, who can you ask?
Whose success is most up-to-the-task?”
Then finally it hit me. I knew who to call,
The person who'd be my guide through it all,
My guru, my teacher, my insightful sage!
I never thought she'd be four years of age!

My daughter is the most successful person I know, even though by typical standards she has accomplished far less in her life than most children her age. In order to understand why, you need to know a little more about her.

She has autism.

Autism is a neural development disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted, repetitive and obsessive behavior. It affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize. Autism belongs to a wider group of conditions called autism spectrum disorders (or ASDs), which include similar afflictions such as Asperger syndrome. ASDs affect about 1 in 110 people.

Autists frequently have overstimulated senses. A standard fluorescent light can seem like a strobe. A digital watch alarm might sound like a fire truck. A lightly-scented deodorant could smell like someone bathed in perfume. A mild seasoning may taste as strong as garlic or curry. A sweater might feel like bugs crawling on your skin.

Since many autistic children are non-verbal, they can't tell you about what's bothering them or express their needs. Because of this, they tend to behave in ways that are considered inappropriate much more frequently than their peers: screaming, throwing temper tantrums, biting, gouging, scratching, banging their heads and throwing themselves around. Many don't respond to their own names.

Some have low IQs. Others are highly intelligent, yet this intelligence can go unnoticed when they lack an effective way of communicating. Many will rarely smile, laugh, or even make eye contact; and many have few or no friends. Only 4% of autists are eventually able to maintain employment, live independently and have a meaningful relationship.

There is no known cure.

My daughter initially seemed like most other autistic children. When she wasn't screaming incoherently, she was quiet and withdrawn. She wouldn't respond to her name or look you in the eye, and she rarely smiled. You could tell that there were thoughts and feelings locked up in that little mind of hers, but she couldn't share them. She was a lonely island of human consciousness, and that made her frustrated and unhappy.

Now, despite all the challenges of autism, she is beating the odds. While her verbal ability is still significantly behind that of her peers, she is able to communicate many of her needs, wants and feelings. She smiles. She laughs. She makes eye contact and usually responds to her name. She knows her letters, counts to twenty and is even starting to learn to read and make friends. She still has a long way to go, but given the bleak outlook for most autistic children, her teachers are astounded at how well she is progressing.

I'm going to share with you the attributes and behaviors that she demonstrates that have contributed to her advancement, along with some secrets of success that we as her parents have learned along the way. I'm still working on these things, but I've found that the better I follow them, the more successful I become.

Don't you dare give up!

Despair is the true enemy of success. Many parents, when they learn their child has autism, give up on their dreams for that child's future. The child picks up on this, and they give up too. They become two years old forever, firmly entrenched among that 96% who never overcome it. The 4% that make it get there partly because their parents didn't give up on them, and they didn't give up on themselves. When there's nothing to gain by giving up and everything to gain by continuing to strive, for heaven's sake, keep striving!

Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.

—Bruce Lee

Have the right perspective!

Nothing changes your perspective on life quite like having a child with a disability. I used to envy the parent who complained about how their kid just won't shut up. For a long time, we begged ours to say anything. So many seemed to take for granted all the simple things that their kids do that we would call little miracles in our daughter.

The right perspective helps you see what's really important and what's not. Perspective is vital to success, because how successful can we really say we are if we focus on all the wrong things? So sit back and take inventory of your work and your life, and ask yourself: What really matters? Why are you doing what you are doing?

Even if your priorities are straight, the right perspective will make your work and life better by giving you an appreciation of what you have. It is something that will buoy you up when things get tough.

Make it work!

Most kids with autism are very literal thinkers. They don't engage in pretend play and they often have trouble innovating or working around the problems they face.

One day, my wife saw my daughter pointing at the top of the refrigerator. Since she often likes people to name the things she points at, my wife looked up there and saw the kitchen timer, so she said “Clock.” She thought for a moment, then gave the word “red” in sign language. That's when my wife realized that she wanted some Doritos, which were in a bright red bag sitting on top of the refrigerator. Typical autistic children don't do this; when an attempt to communicate fails (if they try at all), they just melt down.

This is a simple example, but it has a really important lesson. When things don't work out the way we want, we sometimes “melt down.” We throw up our hands and start complaining instead of doing the productive thing, which is shutting up and figuring out how to make it work. Our minds are fascinating machines, with abilities that are still unmatched by technology. Put that mental horsepower to work on a solution instead of grousing about the problem!

Hunger for knowledge!

For some time, my daughter would frequently sit quietly in a corner with a toy (not so much playing with it as just holding it), seemingly oblivious to the world around her. Part of what helped break her out of this was our discovering her fascination with animals—not stuffed ones or animated ones; real ones. We took her to a park one day, and she saw someone walking their dog. Completely out of character for her, she ran up and wanted to pet the dog. She was completely entranced by the animal.

We took her to the zoo and she went bonkers over it. We took her to the aquarium and she went bonkers over that. We got her books with photographs of animals instead of drawings, and suddenly she was interested in books. This marked a turning point for her: she didn't sit passively anymore; she wanted to engage with the world and learn about it.

Our education shouldn't be restricted to our formal schooling. We should hunger after knowledge and be open to opportunities to learn and improve. Any day where you don't strive to learn is a day of wasted potential. Find an area where you want to improve, and get going!

Find a mentor!

My daughter would not have been able to make the progress that she has without our help, and we would not have known how to help her if we hadn't looked to others to guide us. Once you know how you want to improve, you can benefit from the guidance of another who is more experienced.

How do you choose a mentor? Think of the people you know who have the knowledge and experience that you're seeking. Accepting instruction and correction from someone else takes a bit of humility, so your mentor should be someone you trust and respect. Your mentor needs to be someone who cares about your advancement, someone who wants to see you succeed. Both you and your mentor must be willing to devote the time and effort that will be required for the mentoring process.

Once you've found someone who could be your mentor, ask! You might be nervous, but if they decline you're no worse off than you were before, and most people are flattered that someone wants to learn from their experience.

Success is not what you achieve. It is what you overcome.

It could be said that my daughter has not achieved much thus far in her four years of life. Most people can't understand what she says, she's still in diapers, and she still has a fair number of behavioral problems. But what she has overcome is more than many adults ever have.

Most of us aren't forced to face those kinds of challenges. We spend large parts of our lives without having to struggle against anything nearly so difficult. But if success is measured by what we overcome, that life of comparative ease may very well stand in our way of our success. Overcoming challenge causes us to grow in ways that just aren't possible when everything's easy. You can't coast towards excellence, you have to get out and push.

So if challenge isn't coming to you, you have to go seek it out. You'll sometimes have to do difficult things when you don't have to, things that are hard enough that failure is a real possibility. You'll work, you'll strain, you may even fall down and cry more than once, but you'll rise stronger, wiser and better than you were before.

My four-year-old daughter has shown me the way.
Success isn't something on your résumé.
It isn't big money. It isn't great fame.
It isn't a building adorned with your name.
Success isn't anything that you have done.
It's not what you achieve. It's what you overcome.

Blessings in Disguise

This post spoils the ending to the film Signs. If you've seen it already or don't mind having the story revealed, read on.

I like big, noisy popcorn flicks as much as the next guy, but I really enjoy the kind of film, book or game that causes me to reflect on my own life. Recently, I was thinking about the 2002 film Signs, and I pulled it out and watched it again. I enjoy it not only because it's a well-done thriller and an interesting story, but also because it's one of the few movies that deals intelligently and respectfully with a Christian character. Hollywood's disdain for Christianity is unsubtle: people of Christian faith in film are usually either wicked antagonists (the classic “wolf in the fold” formula), oddball cultists, or bigoted simpletons provided for comic relief. (You know the ones I mean: they politely assert through plastered-on smiles that everyone who does not believe as they do is going to burn for eternity... but have a nice day!)

Anyway, that isn't why I am bringing up the movie; I'm not writing a review nor a criticism of Hollywood in general. If you're not familiar with the plot, here are the relevant bits:

Graham Hess is a former Episcopal priest. With the help of his brother Merrill, he cares for his children, Morgan and Bo. Morgan suffers from asthma, and Bo has an unusual quirk: she is always leaving half-finished glasses of water around the house, claiming that she can't drink them because they taste funny or are contaminated. Merrill is a former minor league baseball player who always swung at every pitch. (He held minor league home run and strikeout records.) Graham himself had lost his faith in God ever since his wife was killed in a traffic accident caused by a neighbor who fell asleep at the wheel. (The man mentions that he had never fallen asleep while driving before and never has since.) He has recently been having repeated flashbacks of the incident. Her last words to him were to tell him to “see” and to “tell Merrill to swing away.”

Graham's feelings about God are brought into even sharper focus when his family is forced to barricade themselves inside their house to defend themselves against an extraterrestrial attack on Earth. Graham struggles with the problem of evil; he feels abandoned and is angry with God for permitting his family's suffering, particularly his wife's death and Morgan's asthma, and now the alien invasion.

At the end of the film, Morgan is taken hostage by one of the aliens, which threatens to kill him with poison gas. The fright causes Morgan to have an attack and fall unconscious, and Graham must act quickly to prevent his death from asphyxiation. He suddenly recalls his wife's last words, notes Merrill's baseball bat mounted on the wall, and tells Merrill to “swing away.”

Merrill moves in with the bat, and the alien gasses Morgan and drops him. In the ensuing fight, the alien is knocked backwards, causing one of Bo's glasses to fall over and dump water on it. The alien reacts with pain, and Merrill looks around and sees half-full glasses of water all over the room. He proceeds to knock them at the alien to defeat it, while Graham takes Morgan outside and administers an epinephrine injection. He realizes that the asthma attack was a blessing in disguise: it closed off Morgan's lungs and prevented him from inhaling the poison. Morgan revives, and the last shot shows Graham dressing in his priestly clothing once more.

While it was marketed as a movie about aliens, crop circles and such, Signs isn't really about any of that. It's not even so much about faith, as Graham doesn't really demonstrate it: he has to “see” to believe. He doesn't receive signs because of belief, but rather by grace, in spite of his unbelief. What it's really about is how we react to adversity. It's about how sometimes suffering has a purpose.

I've thought a lot about dealing with adversity recently, especially when I was preparing a Sunday school lesson about Joseph Smith's captivity in the ironically-named Liberty Jail. His situation was decidedly unpleasant: he was unjustly incarcerated in a cold, dark, unsanitary basement cell, the ceiling of which was not high enough to permit him to stand erect. He was given only a little food, and that which he was given was so unfit for consumption that he and his fellow prisoners ate only when driven to desperation by hunger. Sometimes the food was poisoned, making the prisoners violently ill. He also knew that while he sat in that dungeon, the people he lead were being persecuted and killed. In that kind of situation, it is understandable that one might feel some amount of self-pity. Yet Liberty Jail is often referred to as a “temple-prison,” a place and circumstance which permitted Joseph to receive important revelations.

I've mentioned before that I have to deal with adult attention-deficit disorder (inattentive type). It has always been a significant problem in my life, partly because it is an obstacle standing in the way of what I want to accomplish, but mostly because of how it affects others with whom I interact:

Individuals with ADHD essentially have problems with self-regulation and self-motivation, predominantly due to problems with distractibility, procrastination, organization, and prioritization. The learning potential and overall intelligence of an adult with ADHD, however, are no different from the potential and intelligence of adults who do not have the disorder. ADHD is a chronic condition, beginning in early childhood and persisting throughout a person's lifetime. It is estimated that up to 70% of children with ADHD will continue to have significant ADHD-related symptoms persisting into adulthood, resulting in a significant impact on education, employment, and interpersonal relationships....

Adults with ADHD are often perceived by others as chaotic and disorganized, with a tendency to require high stimulation in order to diminish distractibility and function effectively.... Often, the ADHD person will miss things that an adult of similar age and experience should catch onto or know. These lapses can lead others to label the individuals with ADHD as “lazy” or “stupid” or “inconsiderate.”

“Adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.” Wikipedia

I have to give Gorgeous Wife a lot of credit for dealing with my scatterbrained self. ADD is one of those things that, if you haven't experienced it yourself, you can't really know what it's like. It would be like someone talking about the view from the top of a mountain without ever having climbed one, or a man speculating on how much it hurts to give birth. From her perspective, it must be difficult to comprehend that a person could have so much trouble with tasks that seem so simple to her, which makes me all the more grateful for her understanding attitude towards the situation. What upsets me most is that she has to be so understanding in the first place.

I try to make things easier on her. Medication helps, though there isn't a “silver bullet” that makes all my symptoms go away. With the medication's recent decrease in effectiveness, I've been taking a closer look at my “coping strategies:” the artificial mechanisms that I employ to compensate for my natural deficiencies. I have to set alarms to remind me to do many things. (Have you ever set an alarm to remind yourself to do something in five minutes? I have.) I have to devise mnemonics or write notes to remember things that most people could confidently keep in their heads. I have to take steps to counter my mind's natural tendency to get distracted by other things or just go off into space. Part of me is annoyed that I have to take these artificial measures in order to function, while others seem to accomplish them so easily. For quite some time, I thought only negatively about my condition. Not to be melodramatic about it, but it was my curse.

Eventually, I discovered that there were some positive aspects to it. I learned that if I worked hard enough at corralling my wandering attention onto one activity, I could sometimes coax it to shift into a sort of hyper-focus, where I would lose awareness of everything but the task at hand and nothing short of a fire alarm could distract me from it. This does have its own set of problems. In this mode, I might have a conversation with someone, but my mind is still entirely on my task, and upon their leaving the room, I would not only have forgotten what they said, but that they were even in the room in the first place. But it is good for “buckling down” and getting something accomplished, even though it is tricky to get into that mode.

But probably the biggest revelation came a while back when I was speaking to my mother. We were talking about my daughter's progress in dealing with autism, and I mentioned how I felt that I could very much relate to her circumstances, to the frustration she must feel that she finds it so difficult to accomplish things that others are able to do with ease. My mother replied that perhaps that was why I have ADD, so she would have someone who understood her in a way that most people couldn't. I had thought of my better understanding of my daughter's condition as a result of my ADD; it had never occurred to me to that it might actually be a reason for it.

In Signs, nearly all of the characters have something happen in their life that ultimately contributes to their survival during the invasion. The neighbor fell asleep at the wheel that one time and accidentally killed Graham's wife, but the flashbacks of that incident showed Graham the way to help his family survive. Merrill got the home run record so that he would have his bat hanging on that one spot on the wall, right where he could get at it when he needed it. Bo left water around the house so that they would have an extremely potent weapon against the alien easily at hand. Morgan had asthma so that he would survive the poison gas. Could it be that my struggle with ADD was to prepare me to have a daughter with autism?

People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance.

I'm sure the people in group number two are looking at those fourteen lights [on the alien spacecraft] in a very suspicious way. For them, the situation is a fifty-fifty. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they're on their own. And that fills them with fear. Yeah, there are those people.

But there's a whole lot of people in group number one. When they see those fourteen lights, they're looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever's going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope.

So what you have to ask yourself is: what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?

Graham Hess, Signs

You Ruined Everything

So I know that I said I probably wouldn't post in the next couple of weeks, but I wanted to share a thought I had. Yesterday, we got a babysitter and went to my company's Christmas party. We don't get out much since having kids, even more so due to my daughter's autism. We found ourselves out to dinner, without the kids, but as is common with parents the world over, we ended up talking a lot with others about the kids.

The thought caused me to reflect back on life with Gorgeous Wife before the kids. We stayed up late on the couch to watch movies together. Or we went out to watch movies together, or dance, or eat out, or whatever. We had more energy and less stress, more time and fewer bills. Yet, like most parents, we'd have the kids all over again if we had the choice.

Ronnie Shakes once said that to know if you loved somebody, you simply had to ask yourself, “Would I mind being destroyed financially by this person?” Nerd musician Jonathan Coulton wrote a song about the subject with regards to kids, with a chorus that just about perfectly describes the sentiment: “You ruined everything/In the nicest way.” His background info on the song is a tongue-in-cheek description of that strange transition from living your own lives to being at the beck and call of a little diapered dictator, yet somehow being okay with it:

I was having a conversation with a friend who had recently become a parent, and she reminded me of something I had forgotten about since my daughter was born. She was describing this what-have-I-done feeling - I just got everything perfect in my life, and then I went and messed it all up by having a baby. I don't feel that way anymore, but the thought certainly crossed my mind a few times at the beginning. Eventually you just fall in love and forget about everything else, but it's not a very comfortable transition. I compare the process to becoming a vampire, your old self dies in a sad and painful way, but then you come out the other side with immortality, super strength and a taste for human blood. At least that's how it was for me. At any rate, it's complicated.

Keep ruining everything, kids. For some strange reason, your parents don't seem to mind.

Life is Good. Really.

Overall, this hasn't exactly been a red-letter year for our family. There's been a lot of stress and a lot of bad news. So I've had occasion to get a bit mopey at times. Now, I personally think that occasional self-pity wallowing isn't a horrible thing. It can even be somewhat therapeutic, particularly if accompanied by some comfort food and “me time.” But too much indulgence in the “why mes” is bad for you. Too much comfort food, for one. But mostly because you end up with this almost palpable black thundercloud hovering over your head wherever you go, and people start not wanting to hang around you. A friend's recent blog post reminded me of the need to manage my expectations in order to keep the storm clouds from gathering.

We recently moved. The new house is wonderful, but actually getting into the house proved to be a nightmare in all sorts of unexpected ways (mostly due to a lot of apathetic corporate foot-dragging). Gorgeous Wife and I earned a bunch of gray hairs from it the hassle and occasional, genuinely frightening oh-my-gosh-what-do-we-do moments.

During that time, it was easy to think “If I could just get A, B and C to happen, then I'd be happy.” The problem with this kind of thinking is that happiness doesn't come from what happens to you, it comes from deciding to be happy. Then A happens, and you don't feel happier, so you assume it must be because of D. And the cycle continues, where you forever push off the time when you will allow yourself to be happy into the future instead of waking up, looking around and being grateful for and happy with your situation now. C. S. Lewis summed it up pretty well in his book The Screwtape Letters. The following quote from the book is instruction on temptation from the devil Screwtape to his nephew:

We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.

When I really stop to think about it, life is good. I am married to a beautiful, wonderful woman. I have two amazing kids and a great new house. I have everything I need and a lot of what I want. Watch out for the “why mes” and “if onlys.” Decide to be happy now.

Balancing Life

My friend Camille posted in her blog about how she felt bad that she'd neglected some household duties to help a friend. She asked her readers how they take care of their responsibilities and help others. I'm no expert, but here are some thoughts:

• Accept that you won't get everything done. There's just far too much to do in life for the time we have. This is hard for some people to do; the thought of anything being left undone grates on them. Letting go of the fantasy of “doing it all” can be difficult, but if you don't it will drive you nuts.
• Accept that some of the things that won't get done are worthwhile. This is even harder. You might feel bad that you didn't get time to organize your sock drawer, but that pales in comparison to not being able to volunteer at the soup kitchen. There are so many worthwhile things to do that we can't do them all; we must pick the ones that mean the most to us and focus on them. Worthwhile causes will be better served by a few devoted individuals than a lot of people who are spread too thin over many different pursuits.
• Accept that balancing priorities is difficult. Even doing your best, you will inevitably neglect something that you shouldn't. Such is life. If balancing life was easy, Stephen R. Covey would not be a millionaire.
• Learn to say “no.” This is very hard for me. Of course, we want to be able to say “yes,” and we should when we can. But when we're asked to do something, and it just doesn't leave time to do that more important stuff on the priority list, we have to work up the gumption to say, “I'm sorry, but I just can't do that right now.”
• Don't let one aspect of life monopolize you. We all have facets of our lives that should get attention: God, family, self, serving others. We should prioritize them, of course, but no one aspect should go completely ignored forever. For example, we sometimes tend to put off having time for ourselves indefinitely because there are more important things to do and we don't feel we can justify putting them off for “selfish reasons.” But the longer we go without recharging ourselves, the less effective we become at doing those more important things. It can be hard to say, “You know, I'm not going to [insert worthwhile activity here] because I need to take a nap or read a nice book,” but sometimes it's just what you gotta do. Yes, work before play and all that, but not to the point that you never, ever play.

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