hey everybody David Shapiro here it's been a minute since I've written or produced a neurospicey video but this is one that's particularly near and dear to my heart and it's going to be pretty quick so basically this video is uh meant to teach you about a really simple framework that I use in order to make uh fast appraisals or assessments of people now as a public figure I encounter lots and lots of people I have literally dozens of people reaching out to me every day whether it's on Discord or LinkedIn or YouTube comments or whatever but also as a neuro spicy person um the way that people interact with me and approach me is very different from the privilege that narrow neurotypical people enjoy and so what I mean by that is by by neurotypical privilege what I mean is that people operate in the world by and large just by virtue of being in the majority that there are certain emotional paradigms and communication schemas and other expectations around boundaries and behavior that neurotypical people don't even ever have to think about because they are neurotypical because they are part of the majority just de facto and so for those of us that are neurospicy we often struggle with things because the way that we engage with the world and other people is not the way that they do we have certain expectations around say for instance truth and boundaries and other things and not everyone shares those and so this framework is primarily for people like myself whether whether you are vulnerable because of neurodiversity or some other thing that that lowers your privilege this framework is very simple and very straightforward and it is the combination of capacity and intention and so capacity is a broad catch-all term that basically says does someone have the emotional capacity the intellectual capacity the maturity whatever you know they have the training the learning do they have the uh emotional self-awareness in order to engage with me right now or in the context of whatever relationship you're talking about so I know that that's a little bit vague so let me give you an example let's say for instance you are on LinkedIn and someone reaches out to you and they want to collaborate this is something that I get all the time I have to assess whether or not they have the capacity to collaborate with me on my level and so in in that case it might be that someone uh certainly means well but they might not possess the skills background or education in order to collaborate in a meaningful manner in many cases people are aware of this they might say I don't have your level of expertise I don't know python I don't know X Y or Z and they're aware of the limitations of their capacity in other cases they're not going to be aware of their capacity and so in some cases there are people that reach out to me and this happens more often than not it's more rare lately fortunately but it used to happen a lot where people would a cost me for some kind of collaboration or work and when I would basically push back at all use any level of scrutiny to say what is your intention here are you cape capable of collaborating they would just have a meltdown I've been called paranoid I've been called kg I've been called all sorts of things by people who did not have the emotional capacity to interact with me and engage with a necessary level of scrutiny now of course this is all just professional uh interaction that might happen on LinkedIn there's also the ability to assess someone's capacity to be a friend with them they might not have the communication skills or emotional intelligence or self-awareness to be a good friend or a good romantic partner or that sort of thing and so in that case you might say well like I like this person but they don't have the capacity to to be the right person for me this relationship might be lopsided it might even be harmful so for instance someone's capacity to respect boundaries is one of the most important things when gauging someone as to whether or not to let them in your life particularly for those of us who are more vulnerable and so uh the uh appraising someone's capacity it's not necessarily passing judgment it's inferring what their capacity is based on their behavior based on what they show you and so there's a very famous quotation uh that said uh when someone shows you who they really are believe them the first time uh and so when someone demonstrates their capacity or lack of capacity to believe them when they show it to you and the other thing is intention so intention is what someone's goals are uh what they what their motivations are what they want what they need and so intention again is something that you have to infer or deduce based on uh various factors about them so for instance um if it's on LinkedIn you can one thing that I pay attention to is their name their description their tagline their picture all kinds of stuff who are they connected to how many connections they have where did they go to school where do they work so this is all context so you can infer a lot about someone's intentions and capacity they based on their context their historical context their background which is one reason that I actually really like using LinkedIn is because it can allow you to very quickly appraise someone's contextual background and therefore make these inferences about their capacity and intentions another thing the other thing that you can pay attention to is their behavior how do they treat you how do they act towards you in terms of demonstrating their intentions so for instance I will often get people that are many of them are very helpful and kind and one thing I want to say is that like 99 maybe maybe 95 percent of all interactions that I have are positive but it's those five percent that are a little bit more dubious and potentially harmful or potentially dangerous and so you know some things that I look for in terms of the way that people behave towards me is are they demanding because I've had people reach out to me that like they basically demanded that I start signing ndas and other stuff right off the bat which is really suspicious Behavior Uh I've had people that they'll jump into a call and just immediately start rattling off like business propositions and I'm like hey I don't even know you um and so when people don't demonstrate uh good intentions um if they don't seem like they're operating above board I pay attention to that gut instinct uh so there's very specific red flags that I look for in terms of their behavior or their context but usually the context I try not to like pass judgment too fast just based on context because like myself I don't necessarily know someone's story just from glancing at their LinkedIn profile I usually give people the benefit of the doubt in order to kind of assess where they're coming from but uh in terms of gauging their intentions I look at things like how well they explain themselves do they react well to boundaries and like if someone does not react well to even the slightest pushback I generally just don't talk to them and don't work with them because um people that that struggle with boundaries I have never had good experience with them in the long run so if someone doesn't handle a little bit of pushback or a little bit of scrutiny then that's usually a huge huge red flag if someone's overly demanding or if they're insensitive for instance like I often have people like demand to know like what you're doing and it's just like Allah laundry list of questions and I understand that this could be entirely innocent um so for instance if they are also on the Spectrum or they have trouble with with written communication people sometimes people just come off poorly uh online this is a known thing you lose a lot of context when you're talking to someone online and uh however that being said all else being equal uh if someone does not have the capacity to communicate clearly with over chat or email maybe that is actually a valid reason to you know maybe not work with them even if it doesn't imply anything like fundamentally wrong with their character or their intentions the fact that they have not developed you know that they didn't take the time to draft a better message or if they are not aware of how they come across that could indicate either bad intentions or lack of capacity to be worth interacting with and of course this might sound really judgmental or anything like that but the basically I developed this framework as a combination by being a combination of uh narrow spicy person and a public figure and it has served me incredibly well and what I will also say is I am often wrong um I'm I might you know very quickly gauge someone's capacity and intentions and I can be wrong and so one of the ways around this if you make a snap judgment or a snap appraisal and you're wrong is check with other people and so this is something that that I recommend doing where uh you know I say like hey talk to my you know talk to my partner over here talk to my friend um but I also really trust recommendations and so if someone comes highly recommended and maybe they don't come off well or I otherwise have a good working relationship with them I'll provide them feedback and again judging uh based on how someone responds to feedback is a really good signal so for instance there's been cases of people that I really appreciate admire and enjoy working with but sometimes they don't know how they come across or their communication schemas are a little bit wonky compared to what I would expect and prefer to work with and I provide that feedback and I use the compliment sandwich so someone reacts well to a compliment sandwich that's usually a green light and so what a compliment sandwiches is you open with some kind of compliment you say hey I really like working with you I really appreciate everything that you do for me however there's a little rough spot that I want to correct and I'm I want to push back on this idea and then you give them the feedback and you don't Don't lecture people this is something that a lot of us neurospicey people do is where we're very very very direct with our with our feedback and criticism and um not everyone reacts well to that one of the reasons that a lot of us are that that a lot of us know spicy people can be direct is because we've been treated that way um I actually realized this recently where um people are not aware of how critical and how um uh cutting they can be when providing feedback to people that they perceive as lesser than or people that they perceive as having violated social norms which many of us neurospicey people do and so like the feedback that we're used to receiving other people don't like receiving it and so that was really confusing to me for a long time it's like well but you criticized me this way why can't I criticize you in the same way that's one of the major hypocrisies that I see and the difference between neurospicey culture and neurotypical culture anyways getting lost in the weeds point being is that using the compliment sandwich is a way that neurotypical people tend to react better and that's not to say that it's only good for neurotypical people neurospicey people also tend to react well to complement sandwiches although in some cases you do have to be more explicit for us neurospicy people that's how we prefer it anyways just be be very concrete very explicit and very direct but the compliment sandwich can soften the blow and uh anyways so all this is couched under capacity and intention and so the reason that I wanted to make this video and the reason that it is helpful to me is because it is a reliable framework that I have developed over years and years and years of studying communication of studying neurodiversity psychology and relationship schemas and all this kind of stuff and it's super simple and my hope is that you'll be able to use it to avoid manipulation and to overcome any any kind of vulnerabilities that you might have as a neurospicey person basically if I can give you this tool that can allow you to quickly and accurately and safely assess people uh then maybe it will result in better outcomes in your life certainly it helps me so again take it all with a grain of salt if it doesn't make sense to you don't try something that doesn't make sense but if it does if this if this schema of this tool does make sense to you in terms of assessing People based on their capacity and intention uh you marry the two and you say what is the are they are they capable of this interaction that they're proposing are they capable of rising to the level of being an inner circle friend are they capable of being trusted or do they have good intentions or bad intentions or maybe they have and like I said many people have good intentions but they don't have the capacity or in other cases they have the capacity but they don't have the right intentions maybe that's a better way of thinking about it instead of judging someone as having good intentions or bad intentions there's having the right intentions um is do their intentions align with your needs and wants and your intentions so maybe thinking about intentions in terms of alignment rather than right or wrong is also a better helpful more helpful in in constructive way of thinking about it but still the idea is assessing People based on capacity and intentions so thanks for watching I hope you got a lot out of this cheers [Applause] [Music]