To encourage is to feel and be encouraged. For those who welcome being encouraged, the encouragement they receive will never go unnoticed, contrary to what that person feels. When we're not feeling encouraged, it's easy to lose sight of what others do.

It is only when we look back that we see it. But being encouraged helps builds self-esteem and self-belief, encouragement makes us more determined, encouraged to do and give of our best. Encouragement with motivation encourages us to try when we fail, to dig deeper and to continue to strive.

With encouragement, we are empowered. Empowered to take action and be productive, positive for us in our endeavours to have and achieve success. But it doesn’t always follow that those who set out to encourage, have been encouraged themselves.

Often, those who go on to encourage, have had difficult lives and therefore come to know the importance of what it means to be encouraged and encourage.

No matter the life, those who manage to encourage, know the importance of care and because they care, they are able to encourage.

Having significant neurological impairments where my emotions are mainly affected, means I can be immature. My neurological emotional impairments having stunted my emotional growth.

Where our milestones help us understand and adapt to the next stage of our lives, I missed out on all mine. As a result, I haven't been able to equate or understand each phase I've lived through.

But having Asperger’s has helped me acquire a knowledge of the world around me, using my heightened senses to the exclusion of everything else. I couldn't write and run my site in the way I do without it. Bringing understanding and clarity into the equation is more important for me because it takes away the fear, anxiety and panic I have to deal with.

Generally, we grow into adulthood through the other side of adolescence. I know that my ability to hone in on my intuition, using that as my base line allows me to understand what it is to be the adult. Not everyone will understand how that works. I am only beginning to understand it myself.

I become irritated when through years of being judged on the way I am, others still think they know me, but they simply can’t because I’m only just working me out.

Something inspirational:

"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose."

BILL GATES

Courgette and Ricotta Lasagne

'This recipe can also be made with low fat ingredients'

Ingredients:

250g ricotta cheese

2 cups of ground almonds

1 egg

30 g fresh basil

2 tsp dried oregano

Juice of 1 lemon

sea salt + freshly ground black pepper

100g parmesan cheese

1 jar tomato Passata sauce

3 courgettes, thinly sliced

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C

Add the egg, almonds, fresh basil, oregano, lemon juice

and ricotta cheese to a food processor and blend to a smooth paste.

Season with salt and pepper to taste

Line an 8-10” over proof dish with a small amount of the Passata sauce and add a layer of the thinly sliced courgette

Scoop small spoonful amounts of the ricotta mixture over the courgettes and gently spread into a thin layer

Continue to layer until all the sauce, courgettes and ricotta mixture is used up.

The top layer should be the ricotta

Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and then bake covered for 45 minutes, then remove foil and bake for 15 minutes more until the top is golden

Let it cool for 10-15 minutes before serving

As parents, it’s our job to protect our children and for the majority of us, we get that right. But where some parents serve to protect themselves out of selfishness, it is the children that become the victims. Sadly, the recent sad story about Sherin Mathews reinforces that view. Beautiful angel.

My writing allows me to reflect on my own childhood experiences on what I had to deal with. My thoughts right a wrong. My blogs are a reflection tool, not so others will justify themselves, but so they can look and understand at where they could have done things differently.

No child should have to deal with abuse. Children are just children; we were all once children. What we must all take from our childhood, is that it’s up to us to change the way we perceive our lives, post childhood. We cannot change what happened to us, but as parents we can change our future and become stronger for our children.

However, our life plays out, others who are responsible and accountable for their part, still very much remain responsible and accountable.

Watching George Michael’s ‘Freedom’ documentary drew me straight to my own set of circumstances and how I felt growing up without knowing about my disability and having to continually struggle.

In one part of the documentary George talks about how hiding his sexuality made him feel fraudulent. My not knowing about the condition until 46, made me feel the same way, that everything I did was a lie up the point of me finding out.

Without a diagnosis, everything I felt and everything I thought was me, wasn't. It also wasn’t how I would have chosen to live. How you’re told to live not only has a knock effect on how you relate to yourself, but to others too and you just have to be okay with it. It matters that you don’t know. It makes you feel incomplete.

It was like a part of me was missing. It matters that you can't be comfortable with yourself, or who you're supposed to be. We must be true to ourselves, but we can’t be true to ourselves when we don't know, or in George Michael’s case knowing and not being able to say.

For me, knowing meant I could fit the last piece of the jigsaw in terms of knowing I had a disability and what that was. I would then have to piece my symptoms together.

*My blog today is dedicated to George Michael.*

Something inspirational:

"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate."

CARL JUNG

Although I have previously blogged one or two simple aerobic exercises which can help with aerobic fitness, I thought it helpful to put together a summary of those, together with some new aerobic exercises.

Walking

Walking can improve our health through better cardiovascular fitness, lowers blood pressure, lowers risk of heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis and increased muscle strength. It’s also a safe, low-impact exercise that most people can do and it’s especially good if you’re overweight, unused to physical activity or pregnant.

Walking for 30 minutes a day at moderate intensity is excellent and walking for a longer period of time is even better. As you get fitter, you should be able to walk more briskly. Walking up and down hills should also help increase stamina and leg strength. You’ll get even more benefit from a walk, if you swing your arms, as this helps you walk faster and burn up to 10% more energy.

Running

Like walking, running is an inexpensive exercise that can be done anywhere and at any time. It is beneficial in helping to improve heart and bone health. Its advantage over walking, is that it improves heart fitness and burns energy at a greater rate. It roughly burns double the energy compared to walking.

Jogging is running at a slower pace and is still a great aerobic exercise. Like walking, running or jogging is a social activity that you can do with a friend, or in a group.

Swimming

If the weather isn’t good enough for walking or going for a run, you could try swimming. It’s a low-cost workout for the whole body, especially the muscles of the back, shoulder and arms and improves flexibility as well. It is a particularly good way to exercise if you’re overweight, pregnant or have joint problems, as the water helps support your weight and should also reduce the pressure on your joints. The risk of injury to muscles, ligaments or joints is very low.

Cycling

Cycling doubles up as an aerobic workout as well as being a low-cost, eco-friendly form of transport. It is a good exercise for improving leg strength and toning leg and buttock muscles, but with less stress on joints compared to running or walking. If you’d rather not ride outdoors, exercise bikes at home or in a gym, are a good alternative.

Spinning classes which are available at some fitness centres, are another indoor cycling option. These involve simulating different biking activities on a stationary bike, for example, cycling uphill or sprints and are choreographed to music.

Aerobic or cardio classes

Available in most gyms and community centres, these classes keep you moving to music, using a variety of different exercises that raise your heart rate.

Dancing

Dancing can provide an aerobic workout and improve flexibility and bone strength as well as being a lot of fun. It’s also an indoor activity you can do in all weathers. Dancing classes are available in many community centres, gyms and dance schools.

We must allow ourselves to identify and make peace with ourselves, our past and with our present lives.

By learning to identify with our experiences, deal with and come to terms with parts of those experiences that come from our past, we will begin to open our minds to life in its present form and all of its future possibilities.

We identify and learn more through understanding past and present issues and then how best we can make the necessary changes. It is important we learn to understand what it is that's bothering us. Not to, will interfere with our physical and emotional health.

As I continue to write for the site, each blog identifies the key areas of my life that I feel I need to write about. Although our lives will exist without us always having to identify our issues, depending on the issues, those issues may resurface.

If we have issues we're holding on to that we don't deal with, we run the risk of inviting illness in. It is important we identify and talk about our issues.

Because I deal with neurological impairments, all new circumstances are difficult, some of which I shy away from, some of which I go into with trepidation, anxiety and uncertainty, primarily because I have no choice.

If my new circumstances don’t visually look or feel right, it's easy for me to panic and feel anxious. Sadly, as a child my parents taking responsibility for me didn’t take away new circumstances, or less familiar settings, I struggled with all of those.

I also remember continually having to deal with obsessions centred around getting ill, which I still have today; continually having to talk myself out of it. Now having watched Chris Packham's documentary on Asperger’s and having had Asperger’s confirmed myself, there is a lot of comparisons I can draw with him on what I deal with, particularly around obsessions; fear and anxiety.

The sad reality is that having Asperger’s, meant we continually had to try to adapt into our lives as children, not fully knowing why we felt as we did, with our view and take on the world being completely different to those  with a normal view and thinking and still being judged for how others perceived us.

With Asperger’s (AS) we’re forced to adapt, because society expects us to fit in, rather than others working with and around us to help us fit into our own routines. As a little girl, in certain situations it was obvious I didn’t fit in. I would spend hours talking and working through things on my own, but didn’t know why, constantly having to talk myself out of things, brought about through bad thoughts and feelings.

For those of us with Asperger’s, we must find our own coping strategies, for others to allow us to be who we are. How we cope initially starts in childhood and very much depends on the support mechanism in place. As Chris mentioned, with anxiety it’s easy ‘to go off on one,’ with multiple thoughts whirring around in our heads, but ultimately it's important others understand the bigger picture on what we have to deal with.

Like Chris has been successful at his job with the BBC, (and where he admits he couldn’t do it without his Asperger’s) I also believe the same with my site. I am successful with my site because of my neurological impairments. Being able to see things with a greater clarity and being able to see the world in a more visual way, allows me to write in a more visual way.

Asperger’s isn’t curable but with the right parental input, a child can be taught to consciously adjust into their lives better. The more parents work with their children, the more independent their children will become.

Something inspirational:

“The only thing standing between you and your goal is the story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it.”

JORDAN BELFORT

It’s dangerous to assume or make assumptions about anyone. The fact that we take for granted or presuppose something about someone means we’ve already decided those things are true, before we have thought the situation through again.

How do assumptions work?

Assumptions are part of a belief system we believe are true. Those assumptions are then used by us to interpret the world around us. We justify our reasoning behind the assumptions we make and then continue to reinforce those assumptions through justifications that aren’t always right.

Just because assumptions are based on what we already assume, it doesn’t mean those things aren’t subject to change further. They're subject to change because circumstances change. Beliefs never stay the same.

But as we continue to make assumptions, it’s important we recognise and question our assumptions, stopping to think about them; rather than just assume and move on to the next thought process, whilst making more assumptions.

It’s only when we come to use critical analysis to question our beliefs and our assumptions, that we begin to notice our inferences and those of others. It is easy to see then what we and others are taking for granted.

Sadly, when we take our beliefs from something we’ve previously learned and don’t stop to question those beliefs that’s when assumptions become dangerous.

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