Disability Doesn’t Mean Inability to Communicate

Do you have a strategy you use when you find yourself out of your comfort zone? The more we use our strategies, the bigger our comfort zones grow. Familiarity breeds comfort.

Outside my disability imposed comfort zone of the hospital, rehab floors and therapy rooms, I felt as out out of place as a dirty, scruffy hobo trying to blend in at a refined baby shower. Being comfortable seemed unattainable.

Sometimes we can’t do something and we know that we can’t do it. Sometimes we have tried and failed. That is hardly the time to give up.

That is the time to start the process of better communication.

Anything worth doing involves a process. For example, if we’ve never learned to swim then we’d be foolish to try to swim across a lake without starting the process by taking swimming lessons first.

The same thing holds true for anything unfamiliar. Early in rehab, being comfortable with people outside of my comfort zone of the hospital and therapy rooms seemed impossible.

The Process

Fortunately, anyone can push past inexperience and lack of knowledge or skill. With enough effort, you can learn to swim across that lake. We just need the information and the perseverance to start learning and to keep practicing.

If you take swimming lessons, eventually, you will be swimming. Then it’s just a matter of practicing until you’re a strong enough swimmer to swim across the lake.

The process of becoming comfortable despite yours or their disability may require more than a passing interest. Interacting with others starts with you being comfortable and humble with the gifts and the disabilities you bring to the interaction.

Becoming comfortable with whomever your interacting is also a process. The key to being comfortable interacting with others starts with being comfortable with yourself.

Being comfortable with yourself means accepting that wherever you are is exactly where you are supposed to be right now.

The process of getting over the oddities caused by my crash and becoming comfortable with myself did not begin by focusing on myself and my issues. Successfully learning to interact with others started with my focusing on the blessings I still had and using those blessings to bless others.

The Process Defined

In my entertaining, informative and inspiring keynotes I explain the  exact steps under each letter and comfort with yourself and others is the inevitable result of following my simple A – B – C formula.

• Accept the book you’re given.
• Believe you can write a happy ending.
• Care about others.

(No matter who you are, smile, there’s always somebody who doesn’t have it as good as you do. How can you help them? Remember, how comfortable you are interacting with a person who has disabilities says more about you than it says about them.)

Contact Al the next time you need an inspirational or motivational speaker for an event.