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Hello, and welcome to the autism in real life podcast. In each episode, you'll get practical strategies by taking a journey into the joys and challenges of life with autism. I'm your host, Ilia Walsh, and I'm an educator and the parent of two young adults, one of which is on the autism spectrum. Join me as I share my experience and the experiences of others. So that we may see the unique gifts and talents of individuals on the autism spectrum, fully recognized. Hello, everyone, and welcome. This is Ilia. And I wanted to talk a little bit today about continuous growth. And, you know, I've had a realization about continuous growth. And I'm someone who loves knowledge, like I love learning, I loved going to school for my my grad classes, particularly my education classes, I loved just learning more and reading more I've had over the years tons and tons of books, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters. And I just constantly love to learn about different things in all different genres, from all different places. And I think that that's a wonderful thing. I know a lot of people are like that I have many friends who just love to read and love to learn and love to take classes. And so we kind of all support each other in that effort. But it occurred to me that sometimes I will sign up for a class or I'll get a book on a topic or you know, again, I'll subscribe to a newsletter or something. And I realized, once I'm in the class, that I've learned this information already.

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And, you know, maybe it's kind of delivered in a little bit different way or with a little different spin. And so I learned a little bit of something, I always take away something. But most recently, sort of the, the spark of newness of learning something kind of diminishes sometimes. And I realize it's because I've learned a lot of things, and I keep kind of wanting to relearn similar topics. But sometimes I don't put into practice what I've already learned. So I might want to get the next book on yoga, or I might want to take, you know, a bunch of teacher training. So that would be my, my most recent thing is learning, you know, figuring out new teacher trainings, yoga teacher trainings. And as I do that, I realize, okay, well, what do I want to get out of this. And I want the inspiration to kind of keep moving with my practice, or I want inspiration to learn something new and go deeper into philosophy. And so those things make sense to me. But sometimes, when I get there, I kind of already know maybe what the person's talking about. Or I realized that part of what I've missing is the practice piece. And it's kind of super easy to pick yoga for this one, because it is about practice. And it might not necessarily be about asana practice, right? The physical postures, it could be some other piece of yoga that needs to get practiced. But I realized that maybe I'm not putting into practice some of the things that I've learned. And so then I kind of think about, oh, yeah, that might be the missing piece. It's not acquiring another book. It's not taking another class, it's not getting another certification. It's not, you know, getting another degree, though, I've collected some of those as well. It's really more about now taking what I know, and sort of integrating it and putting it all together. And then executing on it is so I talk a lot about tools and strategies during this podcast and during classes. And right, we can collect all the things, but we actually need to be able to use them as well. And some of the time I think that I might not, you know, kind of enlist the right tool or maybe practice as much because I still believe so there's this is a limiting belief that I might have, let's say about yoga. Is that Maybe I don't know as much as I think I do. And so I still feel like I'm always a student. And I still feel like I never know enough. And, you know, again, I'm gonna kind of step into here with maybe I'm not good enough, I'll put that in quotes, to do what I think I need to do or to do, you know, the practice the way I think it should be done, or what is being projected to me as the way it should be done. And so I've sort of called myself out on that and said, you know, what, I think I'm talking to myself now, I think you do know enough. And I think you are enough. And I think you can actually practice and you can put one foot in front of the other, and you can do those things. And you don't need, you don't need to acquire more stuff. You know, another example was, when I started doing watercolor, I used to be really afraid of watercolor. And I used to think it was unforgiving. And I ended up in an art class, taking watercolor, with his really great teacher who was very flowy and very inspiring. And she said, You know what, it's not about what you actually make. It's more about just making marks on paper. And it really resonated with me, because sometimes if you don't even make that first mark and that first line, then you feel kind of stuck, and you hold yourself back. And sometimes you just need to actually just make that slight little bit of effort. And I know, in a previous podcast, we talked about making those micro baby steps. The same is true here, I think it's sort of like just put marks on paper, just show up. Just try that one little thing. And you might actually surprised yourself as you know more than you're giving yourself credit for. And so that is part of I know, we talked about setting intentions, I think that is part of my intention setting for this year is to recognize that I do know some things and that I can put what I know into practice. So whether that's putting marks on paper, or whether that's doing a yoga practice, or doing a meditation, or teaching a class or working with a client, I think I need to just be comfortable in the fact that I do know some things. And I can go with the flow. And I can trust my gut that I will be able to use the knowledge I already have in the best way that I can. And if I still don't know something that I

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maybe think I need to pull in or enlist in my practice or enlist in my work, that I can look it up, I can find it. And I can probably find people that know something about that, especially in this information age that we're in. So for today, I think that's what I will leave you with is think about continuous growth, not just from what is external to you, but what is internal already and what you already know. And sort of putting that into practice. So just make marks on paper. Okay, with that, take care, and I'll talk to you soon.

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Thanks for listening to autism in real life. This is Ilia Walsh and if you like the show, please hit subscribe so you can get notified each time a new episode is released. I also offer training, consultations and parent coaching and would love to help you in any way that I can. You can check out my offerings at the spectrum strategy calm and when you join my email list. You can get a code to receive a discount off have an online class or a coaching session. Looking forward to hearing from you. Take care and see you next time.

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