modicum of self-awareness

          Normal is everyone.

          NEFND is actively not recruiting.

          Consider yourself a nonmember of the nonexistent fellowship of the neurodiverse?  Then, I have your nonmembership card.  Tell me where to send it.

           When you pushed the button to power the object, which you are currently looking at, you were thinking concretely.  This is me—as writer—drawing attention to the fact that you—as reader—are touching tangible objects (even if you are floating in space's micro-gravity, without clothing, listening to a galactic podcast of these words, your entire body is touching the nitrogen-oxygen compound, which you are breathing in).  The objects you are touching exist.  Time is passing as you read.  All this is your individual empirical reality.

          (Even if someone ink-on-paper-ized this essay for an unfortunate someone with no electric-power)—everyone's brain gathers information from their senses.  All empirical knowledge is gained from our senses.  Time may pass at different speeds for different people (a scientific fact for the hypothetical person in space compared to the hypothetical person reading by candlelight) but that fact is not empirical.  That fact is an abstract concept.

          If you can think abstractly, when you were reading the two previous parenthetical phrases (which both began with the word even) you briefly pictured—in your mind’s eye—a naked person floating in space, breathing Nitrox, and a person on earth reading by candlelight.

          If your mind’s eye did not engage—there may be another way to determine if you are capable of abstract thought. 

          Think about what makes up the person who is you.  Consider your past thoughts and actions as well as your plans for your future self.  If what you visibly 'look like' to others / in a mirror / on social media, intrudes into your thoughts, push those images into the background.  Where do "you fit" into the following characteristics:

• What are some of your personal values?  How important are they?  List five in order of importance. 
• Specifically:  If you value honesty in yourself (and others) how often do you catch yourself being dishonest?  Do you force yourself to tell hard truths or do you slip into easy white lies?  Do you apologize when you have been untruthful or do you find excuses for continuing to be dishonest? 
• Some examples of values:  trustworthiness, work ethic, punctuality, empathy, spacial-awareness, quality of your listening and observing, health awareness, spend-thriftiness, forthrightness, selfishness vs selflessness, mettle. 

• Think about a few pass-times or hobbies which are important to you.  Do you set time aside for yourself and the mental/physical endeavors you enjoy or are you a "people pleaser" who prefers to participate in the pass-times of others?  Are there any changes you might prefer to make when considering your current dynamic? 

• Are you happy?  Content?  What is your well-being most connected to or influenced by? (e.g. wealth, education, love, creativity, career, self-awareness, geographic location)
• What is it about yourself that most pleases you?
• When / where / with whom are you most content? 
• What (within your control) could you change to improve your situation?

• Future planning plays how important a role to your present self?
• How often have you accomplished previous plans you made?
• If you think planning for your future is important, but rarely accomplished previous plans, are you Ok with this conflict between desire and outcome?  Is there something you could do to alter this pattern of behavior? 

• What habit(s) or routine(s) do you least admire in yourself?
• Examples:  procrastination, addiction, ability/inability to "say no", ability/inability to confront or accept confrontation, openness to praise and criticism, laziness, gluttony. 

          Imagine each of your answers as fitting into their own circle.  Each circle will have a different size depending on how important they are to you (someone who mountain bikes and skis and reads books and loves foreign films and enjoys to travel will have a much larger circle for their pass-time characteristic than someone who watches TV after work and sleeps late on weekends [both may be equally content]).  Imagine all the circles on top of each other—a Venn-diagram of "who you are in your own mind."  Add more circles (I only listed five characteristics . . . there could be dozens).  

          In my previous article on Asperger's I stated, '...NEFND only requests its nonmembers strive to possess a modicum of self-awareness...',  By considering the above characteristics you have not only thought abstractly about yourself, you began the process of becoming self-aware.  The next step involves focusing on details.

          Everyone's characteristics (like in my analogy of a Venn-diagram) change when they are viewed as a whole—one on top of the other.  Some characteristics are completely covered by others (e.g. nobody knows your flavor of sexual fetish unless you share it).  Other characteristics are at-times hidden and other-times not-hidden because of timing and opportunity (the only people who know you suck at Karaoke are the other bar patrons).

          Your examination of the gestalt that is you requires a willingness to determine what part(s) of your behavior(s) could be causing friction with people around you (or, within yourself).  Improving your own well-being is not simple.  But the first step is becoming aware that you have the power to improve you.

          Have you decided that this is not something you need to do?  Then—two things—I am amazed you read this far, and ask you to consider this last question:  When someone says, “How're you?”  Do you think they want to hear what's going on in your head at that moment?  That they want to know about your headache?  They are really asking for you to talk about the strange dream you had this morning?  Or are you capable of realizing they are just doing that everyday-'merican-faux-polite thing and savvy enough to just answer with the expected: "Fine. How bout you?"

          Final point:  When a human resources employer asks you to, "Tell them a recent challenge that you have overcome," they do not want to hear another applicant explain their struggles with being a perfectionist; they are just trying to determine if you are self-aware.  They want to hire people who are open to criticism, can apologize when they make a mistake, and are capable of empathizing with co-workers.  Become self-aware.  Then your answer to that question can be a brief explanation on how you overcame that challenge.

more values and abstract thought observations:

personal values in a poetic vocabulary lesson 

Tingle Power - Memory Tool

 Hypocrisy — An Invaluable Discriminator