April is autism acceptance month and I’m grateful to share a personal and eye-opening post written by my wife Sydney. She found out she is autistic in her 40s, which came as a surprise to us both.

It has been an enlightening discovery that has explained and taught us so much about how to better communicate. Further, I have more empathy and understanding of the way my wife does things.

I hope her story will help spread awareness and acceptance of just how diverse and remarkable the spectrum truly is. The better we can understand other people, the less conflict there will be. – Sam

Discovering Autism As An Adult Woman

How did the height of the global pandemic affect your life? I’d wager it was aggravating and down right exhausting. But, hopefully you turned some of those endless barrels of lemons into lemonade.

Maybe you picked up a new hobby, switched careers, really focused on your family, or KonMari‘d your whole house.

What did I do? I did a heck of a lot of homeschooling, stress-eating, research on ambulances and the broken EMS system, bleary-eyed reading at 12-1am, oh and I discovered that I’m autistic.

Yes. I discovered at age 40, right smack dab in the middle of the global pandemic, that I’m on the autism spectrum and have been my whole life. Phew! It was quite a lot to experience.

Between the ages of 18 – 32, I experienced chronic back pain, sciatica, tennis elbow, golfer’s elbow, and TMJ. It was only after reading Dr. Sarno’s book, Healing Back Pain, did my chronic pain eventually went away. Now, at 44, I hardly have any chronic pain. And when some ailment does flare up, I review my notes about Dr. Sarno’s book to heal.

If you’re unfamiliar with Dr. Sarno, he is a pioneer in treating back pain. He practiced for 50+ years at the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation at NYU. His research and treatment program are featured in four bestselling books which instruct patients to address their emotions to break the cycle of chronic pain.

The following is a guest post from JayCeezy, a regular reader who experienced his own bout of chronic pain. Dr. Sarno also helped him overcome his persistent ailments and feel healthy again.

Cure Your Chronic Pain To Get On With Your Personal Finances

One thing stands out to me, as I consider Sarno’s work. His patients have high intelligence and are motivated high achievers, who score quite high on the conscientiousness and neuroticism traits scales. The readers here are not just a cross section of people with aching backs. Many of you fit the profile of Sarno’s clients.

Have you ever missed a day (or more) of work because of an unspecified back injury? A physical ailment that prevented you from getting out of bed? Never mind the hours missed, let us consider the cost to our reputation of reliability and consistency. 

“Don’t get sick at crunch time!” is pretty real. At the very least, everyone knows someone who is hindered by recurring back pain. 

Keep in mind I’m not selling anything or stand to gain from this post. But like Sam, I had a very real struggle with chronic pain that I was able to cure thanks to Dr. Sarno.

And since I’m sure some of you out there are also suffering from chronic pain, I wanted to share my thoughts and experience. If you find this of interest, please watch the documentary All The Rage: Saved By Sarno and/or check out the book Healing Back Pain which I highlight below. 

It’s truly worth it if you are struggling with painful ailments. Not only will your lifestyle likely improve, so can your work and personal finance goals as well. Everything is easier without chronic pain.

When it comes to your health, be risk-averse. When it comes to your money, you can be more risk-loving. After all, if your investment returns take a hit, you can always spend time earning back your losses through work.

However, if you lose your health, you might never recover fully. Sure, having money to pay for medicine and ongoing medical bills is huge. But if you are chronically sick, money becomes an afterthought.

We should all remember the saying, “A healthy person wants a thousand things, a sick person only wants one.” Every time I’m sick, all I want is to be is healthy again. Nothing else really matters.

If there’s ever a time to have the ideal body weight, it’s during a global pandemic! All the studies have shown that those who are overweight or obese have a much tougher time combatting the coronavirus. If you’re in better shape, you increase your chances of living or at least recovering quicker.

Another thing to think about is maintaining an ideal body weight once you’ve reached financial independence. If you’re financially independent, your number one goal should be to be as fit as possible in order to live as long as possible.

In any discount cash flow analysis, it is the terminal value that often makes up the largest portion of a company’s value. The longer you can extend the terminal value, the wealthier you will be!

In other words, to be rich and out of shape is irrational. Yes, when you are rich, it’s easier to hire people to mow your lawn, drive you around, and eat all the buttery steaks you want. However, it makes more sense to get in ideal weight to give yourself a higher chance of living a longer life.