Man with Asperger’s helps others level up in life

Kieran Moran inspires others through his online content. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Kieran Moran is helping others level up in the game of life.

The British college student, who has Asperger’s Syndrome (part of the Autism spectrum), produces self-development content.

Kieran, 20, who resides near Manchester, explained why self-improvement is vital. 

“Self-improvement is important to me because as a young kid, I fell into the trap of just playing video games all day and not really looking to have any ambition with my life,” he said. “When I got to the age of 17, I had a look around me and realized there were other boys my age a lot further ahead in their development. That made me feel a bit insecure at the time because I don't want to be left behind. So that's when I decided to just stop just doing bad habits and just really focus on using all my free time into bettering myself.”

Kieran explained why he wants other people to succeed.

“I believe it's important to help others because I originally discovered self-improvement not through myself, but through a friend who got me onto it,” he said. “Instead of spending my free time being unproductive, at least try to provide some kind of value and build a portfolio of videos and my thoughts to showcase to the world.”

Kieran, whose video topics include The Struggle of Being Independent and Being Authentic in a World of Artificial, also discussed his autism and being a foster child.

“I choose topics for videos depending on what is fresh in my mind that day,” he said. “As most of the content is unscripted, whatever topic is at the front of my mind that day is what I will start recording about. I try not to follow trends or patterns.”

Kieran started his journey by improving his body.

“Fitness was definitely the first step,” he said. “That's the first really good habit that I implemented into my life, and it gave me a lot of confidence to delve into other areas of self-improvement.”

Kieran works out throughout the week.

“My sessions are usually anywhere between an hour to an hour-and-a-half,” he said. “If I'm going five to six times a week, then it'll be anywhere between six to 10 hours a week.”

Being 6 feet, 2 inches tall, Kieran works harder to add muscle to his frame.

“Especially because I have a very fast metabolism,” he said. “I have to eat a lot of calories because my body's constantly burning through a lot of it.”

Kieran cited motivation and discipline as what led to his physical transformation, but those didn’t come immediately.

“It's a mixture of motivation and discipline,” he said. “When I first started out, I found it hard to be consistent with the gym because I always had to walk there, and it was a 20-, 30-minute walk. This is the first six months of my journey, so I wasn't as consistent with it, and I found it really hard to actually enjoy it as a hobby. But when I moved out of foster care and I went to live with my grandma, I signed up for a new gym. It was a lot easier to get to that gym because I could just take the bus, so that's when my consistency really built.”

Kieran’s routine eventually became a pleasure.

“It just formed into a hobby that I actually like doing instead of a chore,” he said. “Most people treat the gym as a chore, but now I just actually go for fun and I enjoy working out. I'm not too obsessed with the results and the change anymore as I used to be. I used to always focus on how much weight am I lifting, but now I just go for fun, do as much as I can and just judge my results by the mirror instead of the scale.”

With Kieran’s classes and work schedule as a delivery driver, he reserves afternoons for the gym.

“If I've got any tasks to do in the day, I'll do the hardest task in the day first,” he said. “Usually, I go to the gym in the afternoon. I don't like doing it in the evening because it's always too packed. I do it in the afternoon before work usually. Most evenings, I'm working. I don't really have a lot of free time at the moment, but I fit in YouTube videos whenever I can. They'll mostly be in car rides.”

Kieran also tries to achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm state.

“I do meditation sometimes,” he said. “I've not been that consistent with it recently, but I used to do five- to 10-minute meditation sessions when I woke up. When I meditate, it's a step in my routine that gets me going. When I do lots of things in my morning routine, it just makes me feel more productive. Adding a step of meditation in there feels like that. During meditation, I can really just become self-aware and analyze my thoughts and think to myself, oh, there's a thought coming in my head. I acknowledge that, and I just keep on focusing on my breathing.”

Kieran stressed the importance of not comparing oneself to others with regards to fitness.

“Because social media is always very hard to distinguish what is real and what's not,” he said. “You've got people photoshopping their pictures and you got the genetic freaks at the top who are obviously always going to be posting about themselves. You're going to have people in better shape than you. If you're in the top 0.01 percentage, you're obviously going to want to show that on social media. If you compare yourself to these people right at the top, you're never going to be able to be satisfied with your current state.”

Kieran recalls the moment upon realizing he wanted to make a change at 17.

“I used to be in a Discord community, and that's an online chat room forum,” he said. “It was a bad place. It was full of bad influences and I got myself into a lot of problems and online arguments that really weren't good for me. One day, it escalated and I didn't know what to do, so I just left because it was taking a massive toll on my mental health. After a month or two of just trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, I think it was July 2021, when one of my friends from that community who also left and decided to improve his life messaged me. He suggested that I start listening to a YouTuber called Hamza Ahmed, who was also from the U.K. He has 2 million subscribers, I believe, and his content is primarily focused on self-improvement and becoming more of a man instead of a boy. That's when I started the gym and started listening to Hamza's advice on how to become more independent and more outgoing.”

Kieran soon experienced mental benefits from fitness.

“When I first started, I was like why haven't I started this before, because I used to be very scared of starting things,” he said. “I used to live in a state of comfort where I didn't really want to go outside my boundaries. I never really tried anything new. When I started the gym, even though I wasn't making much progress in the first six months, I discovered that it's something that I do like and actually interests me. I realized how fun it was and how much you can actually get out of just being disciplined with a routine. It doesn't even matter that it's the gym, it's just the fact that it's a way to build discipline and get confidence. It's a very easy way to see visible results, because with the gym, you're always constantly seeing results because you're looking in that mirror and you can see that you're making results, so you kind of just feel better.”

Kieran said he developed a positive outlook.

“Working out had a lot of mental impact on me, like the way I carry myself around,” he said. “I wouldn't have been able to walk around with the confidence and the state of mind if I didn't have the physique I have now, because I would have just felt inferior in a way. I was a very skinny and unconfident, insecure guy. Whenever I'd walk around, I'd always feel like people were judging me because of how I walked or how my posture was or anything like that.”

Kieran also saw the physical benefits in daily life outside the gym.

“Regarding physical things, I do find day-to-day things easier,” he said. “I can do stuff like push-ups and pull-ups now that I never used to be able to do. I’m not healthier in a way of I can run for longer or do cardiovascular exercises because that's not my forte. I'm more weightlifting instead of running. Not much has changed in forms of cardiovascular health, but in terms of muscular mass built and a physique built, that definitely helps me out.”

Kieran is now the de facto person in the family to move furniture.

“With my family, they were always waiting for me to come down from university to help them,” he said. “My grandma bought a new mattress and she needed me to help move the old one downstairs and unpack the new one.”

Kieran strums a guitar.

Kieran is majoring in computer science.

“When I was back in high school, this is U.K. high school, so between the ages of 11 to 16, I was a lot of a different person than I am now,” he said. “I used to be only solely interested in artistic things like graphic design and drawing and also computers. When it came time to come to college, so between the years of 16 and 18, I had the choice of going into an arts field, like graphic design or painting or something like that, or I could go into computing. I decided to go into computing. At 18, when I left college, I personally didn't feel like I had the independence or the people skills or any life skills to go into a job straight out of college. I decided the next best step is to further progress my skills in computing and do a degree in computing at university.”

Kieran’s career path indirectly led to content creation.

“I realized that I do like this and I'm getting good grades in it, but I don't really have a passion to delve deeper into the topics that they're teaching us because I just feel like it wasn't the sort of thing that I was interested in as a younger kid,” he said. “It revealed to me how I don't want to be sat in front of a desk as a job for 8 hours a day. This is a reason why I started my YouTube. Because if I can at least put my energy into something that I'm passionate about, maybe I will build the skills to be passionate about my degree. Maybe if I learn to be more hardworking through making YouTube videos, I'll also build the discipline and the focus and the hardworking skills to pull that into my degree and really get invested into my degree.”

Kieran intends to continue making content even if he does end up at that desk.

“I'm really grateful for the subscribers that I have, but I'm not doing it solely for trying to choose a different career path,” he said. “I'm just doing it because I'd rather use the free time to create content. I'm grateful and surprised that I've managed to build the audience that I have in such a short time frame, but I was going to make the videos daily regardless.”

Kieran wasn’t always comfortable talking in front of a camera.

“I have tried YouTube before,” he said. “I used to make gaming videos and I talked in them, but it wasn't in the level of detail that I go into now because I talk about more deeper topics than just commenting over a video game. When I first started, I was stumbling a lot over my words. Sometimes, I'd have like 10-ten second breaks where I couldn't really think of what to say. That's the reason why I keep going, because I can focus on working on my speaking and being more extended with my vocabulary.” 

“Autism helped me with accepting that I am different and that I should embrace it.”

Kieran previously had trepidation about speaking to an audience.

“I was nervous sometimes doing presentations because I used to stutter my words a lot and mumble,” he said. “I couldn't really speak from my chest. It just kind of came from my mouth. I wasn't really just talking with the power that I can do now. I'd be cowering. I'd never really want to be the one speaking. I'd be hiding behind people or rush to get things done. I really used to hate being in the spotlight or having the focus on me because I just felt like I wasn't worthy enough to have it on me. I just felt like I couldn't even perform in the moment when I did have the spotlight shined on me. I always felt a lot of pressure and uncertainty whenever I was up at the front of a class or tasked with giving a demonstration.”

Kieran doesn’t fret about public speaking anymore.

“It's definitely improved a lot more,” he said. “I've had a few demonstrations for university that sometimes the old me kind of comes back, and it's like are we sure we can do this? But I just tell myself that, yes, I can do this. Usually, the only thing I'm worrying about in the more recent university presentations is whether I can actually remember the words I'm supposed to say rather than are people judging me.”

Being autistic, Kieran can focus greatly on particular activities.

“An old one, because I don't really play them anymore, but when I used to play video games, I used to be able to put 100 percent focus into that,” he said. “Not in the way as in I'd spend a lot of hours on it or just mess around on it, but I'd be able to play video games so efficiently that I'd be able to get so much progress done in a short amount of time. I'd always be finding the quickest ways to solve X problem in the game or something. I wouldn't really just go on video games just to waste time. I'd play them just so I could progress as quickly as possible and level up my virtual self.”

Kieran said being autistic was beneficial in some ways.

“Autism helped me with accepting that I am different and that I should embrace it,” he said. “It allows me to focus on things and pursue what I am really passionate about without outside judgment from others.”

Kieran also focuses on music.

“I do play the guitar,” he said. “I picked that up about six months ago now. I'm completely self-taught on that. I can play it to a standard where I know a few songs and know how to read music and what bars and chords are all different strings and tuning it. I built the amateur knowledge on how to play the guitar.”

Naturally, Kieran also enjoys working out.

“I also feel the gym,” he said. “I always knew how to put 100 percent focus into that.”

Kieran believes it’s important to be open about his autism.

“I felt it was,” he said. “There's a lot of creators coming about nowadays that create these channels that are designated towards self-improvement. I'd thought me coming from a more unique background would be more of a niche and would appeal more. I come from a background of foster care, and I grew up with autism and ADHD. It's a bit different to when I tell my stories because I haven't been through some things that some people have. I feel it was necessary to talk about my autism and list it in my bio because it's not something that I'm not really ashamed of, it's something that I just say, oh, I've got it. I don't ask for pity because of it, because some people treat it like that.”

Kieran put emphasis on learning skills to become independent.

“It used to be a big problem because before, between the ages of 11 and 16, I wasn't properly taught about a lot of things because I got moved about a lot in foster care,” he said. “I was in a total of five or six different foster homes. It was hard to develop correctly. That came with a lot of issues. Hygiene was a big one. Between 10 and 14, my foster carers still had to remind me to shower because as a young kid I just was never taught that you're just supposed to do this. I just viewed it as like a chore or something. That was bad. I wasn't taught that showering was a good thing that you were supposed to do. So when my foster care treated it as a chore, I didn't want to do it. So that was bad. But obviously I grew out of that.”

Kieran relied on himself to achieve that independence.

“Now as far as independent skills, I built them on my own,” he said. “My foster care has never really pressured me to become independent. I just became independent on my own because I realized that it's coming very quickly that I'm going to have to be independent and if I don't, then I'm going to get myself into a lot of trouble because I'm not going to know how to look after myself and I'm going to have to fall back on people. I don't want to do that.”

Kieran made the effort to learn how to be self-sufficient.

“When I came out of foster care and I started to live with my grandma, that's when I really learned a lot of my independent skills,” he said. “I started to cook all my meals and create my own diet and start taking the bus, go to the gym, go to college by myself. I always used to be dropped off everywhere. I never used to be able to be left in the house by myself. That was the thing with foster care. Once I was able to really become independent, that's when I realized that this is not so bad after all. I can really use my autism to discover problems, make mistakes and learn from them in my independence development. Another large part in growing my independence was moving away from home to go to university. When I was at 18 in the summer of 2022, that's when I moved to the town that I'm in now. I started living away from home, buying all my own, shopping, cooking and cleaning for myself, paying for my own accommodation, using student loans.”

Kieran is an advocate for spending time in nature.

“Nature is the best healer for anything,” he said. “The ability to dedicate a whole day to just exploring the world is a gift that everyone should delve into when they have the opportunity. It makes you realize that the world really is your sandbox.”

Kieran hasn’t struggled to stay motivated.

“In my case, working out is more of a fun hobby that I do now,” he said. “I don't treat it as a chore or a requirement. I just go because I like going. Honestly, I don't even think about it much anymore. I just go. I have fun, finish my workout and go back.”

Kieran used a breakup as fuel to work on content creation.

“I used the motivation from my first relationship and my breakup to focus my attention from being in a pity state about my girlfriend leaving to using the energy to distract my mind and put into something productive,” he said. “So it's not really been enough time for me to really analyze and see how my mind will cope with this content creation long-term. But for now, I don't feel like the motivation is worn off.”

After years of foster care, Kieran had to learn how to trust others.

“I don't really struggle with it anymore, but it's my inability to trust people,” he said. “You move between different families and people are just kind of getting rid of you. Raising an autistic child in foster care is really difficult for some families. When they're getting you to leave to go to a different foster home, you can never really connect with the foster parents and just led to a lot of isolation and time by myself.”

However, Kieran now doesn’t feel isolated.

“Now, I'm comfortable being alone,” he said. “I don't isolate myself anymore, but still try and socialize when possible and see family and friends. But I'm completely fine spending the day to myself. I'm not extroverted, where I need to have connections and regular social contact to boost my energy and my mood. I'm introverted, so I get a lot of my energy and my self-satisfaction from being alone. Sometimes, socializing actually drains my energy.”

Kieran said foster care provided understanding.

“Foster care gave me a lot of insight into how the world works,” he said. “I experienced a lot of bullying, self-isolation and pain during my years in foster care which helped me understand myself better, and I fought through it to become a better person today.”

Kieran dispensed advice for those wanting to start self-improvement.

“You need to realize that there's people putting in 10 times the effort that you are currently putting in,” he said. “If you don't catch up to them, then you're going to be left behind. They're going to be getting the things that you eventually want in life, whether that be the career that you want or the house that you want or the car that you want or the woman that you want. That's the way I view it, as if effort and hard work, discipline, really gives you the success in life. If you're just living day to day and not really utilizing your free time into starting a side hustle or regularly exercising or trying to become more self-aware and come out of your comfort zone, then you're just going to go down a path of mediocrity. You're never going to be able to fulfill your true purpose. My greatest fear is just obviously being older, looking back and realizing that I didn't do as much with the body that I had and the energy that I had that I could have done to really fulfill my potential.”

Kieran’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@kierannmoran

Kieran’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kierannmoran

Complete list of Kieran’s links: https://bio.site/kieranmoran