What I learned from working with people with disabilities

And how we might be doing life wrong

Working as a job coach has had it’s trials and tribulations, but it’s also been quite fruitful. When asked what I do, I often get weird looks. Not many people understand the role of a job coach. I don’t carry a clipboard and whistle, and I don’t get to yell at a referee.

In short, I am tasked with helping individuals with disabilities in becoming independent in their work place. The majority of my job is boring. There is something monotonous about sitting and watching someone else do a job, one I probably wouldn’t do, 8 hours a day.

But there are parts of my job that are inspiring, eye opening, and even humbling. Over the course of my career, I have been able to draw three main “lessons,” I’ll call them, from working with individuals with disabilities. I’m writing to share these lessons with you, so here goes…

Just be happy.

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it.

Working with my clients, I get to watch them work and help them along the way as needed. A lot of my clients are tasked with general cleaning duties, things most people wouldn’t enjoy. Think about working a morning job cleaning a gym or busing tables. Not a job you’d be happy about or even find the motivation to get out of bed, yet my clients wake up, make it to work, and find great joy in the ability to do just that… work.

Being able to support themselves and provide for their own needs makes them happier than brand new iPhones or expensive jewelry ever could. Simply being able to WORK gives them the greatest satisfaction.

One of my clients, working as a house person at a hotel, was so happy being able to do what he did, that every morning he would say to me, “I prayed for you last night.” It was, for certain, the highlight of my day.

Another client, working custodial duties at a 24 hour gym, would look forward to his breaks where he could play Pokemon Go with me near the parking lot of the super market next door.

Another client, who may have been my most grumpy and stubborn client to date, smiled ear to ear when he was allowed to cook his own mean after a long day of busing tables and rolling silverware (and he NAILED it saying, “I’m the best cook”).

One particular client had a hard time finding a job with us. Luckily, we were able to place him in a spot that would hire him. When we asked what he planned to do with his first check he said,

“I’m going to take my mom out to dinner.”

It is easier said than done, simply being happy. However, there are some things you can do to help promote happiness in your life.

• Take breaks from social media — It is hard not to compare yourself to what you see on social media. Constantly comparing yourself to others is not going to make you happy because everyone is different, everyone comes from different walks of live, and everyone has different access to things. On top of that, a lot of content on social media is negative in nature or can provoke negative emotions. A quick tip would be to filter who you follow. Go through the list of those you follow and get rid of the accounts you don’t interact with, don’t care for, don’t like seeing, or don’t promote positive emotions. Engaging in social media should be a fun thing, so do what is necessary to ensure that it is!
• Ditch negative thinking — Our self talk is one of the most powerful influences when it comes to our mental and emotional status. If you are constantly degrading to yourself and your image, you emotions will reflect this, followed by your quality of life. If you want to live happy, you need to tell yourself things that make you happy. A powerful example of this I saw recently in a Netflix show called Queer Eye. A man was very self-conscious about his weight and kept saying degrading things to himself, so he was told to look in a mirror and write on it positive traits he saw in himself. He came up with words like loved, father, funny, built, a fun guy, a husband, a good person, and the list goes on. If you struggle with negative thinking, especially towards yourself, I urge you to give this a try (use window marker so it can be washed off).
• Pay attention to the positive — Goes hand in hand with the previous. Make an intentional effort to find the good in things. It is too easy to fall into the trap of assuming the worst. As touched on in my last article, you become a better person when you focus on the good in people. It allows you to create and develop meaningful relationships which can improve your quality of life.
• Be mindful — This isn’t too difficult to do, but take a few minutes a day to sit and reflect on the day. Pay particular attention to your emotions and how your body feels. Scan from head to toe while breathing deep and steady. There are many mindfulness tools at your disposal. One I highly recommend is Headspace. I haven’t been as consistent as I would like with my own meditation, however, after my sessions I feel significantly better. It is a skill that needs practice! So be patient and don’t give up after a few sessions. Commit to a week and then see how you feel.
• Exercise — This is something everyone should do for your physical well being let alone your mental health. Even if you are a busy body with “little free time”, park further from your destination so you can walk a little bit, walk while on the phone instead of sit, take the stairs instead of the elevator, etc. There are so many easy ways to incorporate exercise into your day without ever going to a gym. Find what works; do it consistently.

These are just a few options, but there are MANY. The people I work with are inspiring, just happy, and living simple, which brings me to my next lesson.

Live simpler.

I have a client, by far my most unique client, who is tasked with cleaning garages and storage units at an apartment complex. She has a handful of sensory issues, needing to hit her head with pillows or impulsively throw things at times, which is not appropriate in this position, because the thrown items end up in someone else’s storage unit and the pillows normally come from someone else’s storage unit.

On occasion, these things happen. But when they do, this individual says out loud, “that’s strike one.” We began giving her strikes in order to help her recognize what actions were inappropriate. One strike is normally just a warning, two mean no reward at the end of the shift (generally candy), and three strikes mean that we will call her transportation and the day will end early.

I don’t know about you, but I might be tempted to get three strikes if my job was cleaning garages and storage units. But she has never made it to three strikes with me. This client loves her job, because it means she gets “big money in the bank,” which is important because her mom picks her up every weekend to go to Burger King and hit thrift shops. She needs that money for her sewing crafts and her Christmas music CDs.

When she finds any sort of change on the ground, she’s ecstatic. She has started to carry around a little piggy bank while she is working so she can save up the change she finds and get a soda when she gets enough. Sometimes I will bring a dime or two and drop them periodically just so she can get excited about finding it and yell, “I found a dime!” When you ask her what her favorite song is, she will burst into it singing, “you are my sunshine, my only sunshine.” She finds joy in what is simple and lives her life that way.

Life is very complex. It would be naive to say otherwise. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find ways to live simpler. Finding joy in the small things is the easiest way to live simpler. Here are a few more…

• Find joy in simple things — already mentioned but to expand, appreciate things you might not normally appreciate. Smile when someone lets you in on the freeway, or when someone holds a door for you, or even when you find a penny on the ground. Finding the joy in small things like that will bring joy into your life. Try it.
• Clarify what you want (in life) — I am guilty of not doing this one. I have had mixed emotions about what it is I want to do in life exactly. I haven’t sat down and thought about what it is that makes me happy or what I am passionate about. I struggle staying the course with one career goal. Long story short, I highly advise against this. It brings a good amount of stress into my life, so sit down, think and feel all of the feels, and decide what you want and what you want to do. It will help tremendously to have a plan.
• Mindfulness — Talked about this in the previous section. Being mindful is as simple as 5 to 10 minutes a day. No one is too busy. There is no excuse. So try it.
• Practice doing nothing — Similar to being mindful, however our society is always moving so fast. Too fast. With technology how it is and everyone being too competitive, we all feel like we need to be doing something, and if we aren’t, we get filled with feelings of stress and anxiety. So practice it. Do nothing for 5 or 10 minutes in the middle of the day when you feel you need to be working or something needs to be done. Just sit. Listen. Breathe. Do… nothing. Don’t force yourself into a panic. But practice being able to relax. We don’t do this enough.
• De-clutter your living space — Another thing that can cause anxiety is a mess. So clean it. Get rid of clutter and disorganization in your living space. This can tend to be a representation of your life outside of home, so if your house is cluttered, your life is cluttered. Organize your house, and it will be much easier to organize your life.
• Track your expenses, fix your expenses — A big stressor is money. Financial stress is even one of the leading causes of divorce, depression, and other health problems seemingly unrelated. Track your spending. Have a budget. Stick to that budget but know where you can treat yourself. It shouldn’t be difficult. It is a matter of discipline. There are even apps that do it automatically, like Mint, however, doing it by hand or on an excel helps you not forget about it and allows you to really see the numbers.
• Track your time — This one can help you in the organization category. Know where you spend your time. Perhaps you didn’t realize how much time you spent watching Netflix or playing video games, and now all of the sudden you aren’t too busy to exercise or meditate. This one is somewhat more difficult to do because you can’t always track what you are doing. It might get tedious. My suggestion would be to keep a journal and use it as a calendar for EVERYTHING so you can see where you spend your time. If it is hard to keep up with that, keep a journal for just occupational time tracking. If that is too difficult, find time to exercise and keep an exercise log. These are just potential ways to start the habit. If you can get off the ground with any of these, the next step would be to incorporate more tracking. There are even some app options that make it easier to track how you spend your time. Check them out!

There is no difference.

So far, all of my clients have been able to advocate for themselves, ask and answer questions, and even do their tasks with minimal assistance. My final lesson: A disability does not mean they are any less human. Some of my clients are just as intelligent, capable, funny, social, stubborn, and emotional as you and me. So talk to them and interact with them like you would anyone else.

People are under-educated.

Not a lesson I’ve learned, but something I have definitely been exposed to and observed working as a job coach. A lot of people are under-educated when it comes to dealing with individuals with disabilities. I have been in situations where my client has been talked to like a dog, or where the other person talks to me and asks me questions about my client (questions that should be directed at them) despite he or she being right there. I want to yell, “JUST ASK THEM! THEY ARE RIGHT HERE!”

I URGE you to watch the video below if you already haven’t. It is a few minutes showing a day in the life of someone with disabilities. Some of the examples are extreme and there is profanity, however, it is to prove the point of the video.

Take this as you will, but smile today. Just cause. You’re awesome.

Peace and love.

Noah