Shifty Business

A friend’s teenage daughter was given a car by a family member. Every kid’s dream, right?. But she was having trouble learning how to drive it because it had a manual transmission.

I had been driving a stick since college, so my friend asked if I would give her daughter some instructions.

As the teenager and I sat in her car for the first lesson, I said that before she turned the key perhaps she could tell me what she was having the most difficulty with.

She replied that she was fairly adept at upshifting and downshifting once the car was in motion. But she was struggling with starting out in first gear from a standstill.

I asked her if she knew why she was having such a hard time with that. She said no. I replied, because that’s the hardest part.

I said it wasn’t that she was doing anything wrong or that she wasn’t capable. It’s just the most difficult thing to learn about driving with a standard transmission. For everyone. So relax.

When I told her this, she got a big look of relief on her face. Then we got going and after about an hour of starts, stops and turns, and with a few tips from me, she was shifting like a pro.

Sometimes when we’re struggling with something new and can’t figure it out, we assume the we’re deficient in some way. That WE’RE the problem.

In reality, often it’s simply because what we’re trying to do is kind of hard.

So now when I run up against something like this and I’m banging my head against the wall, I try to take my own advice. I take a beat. I take a breath. I try to relax.

Then I re-read the instructions and get back to work.

(Archiving this post as an article)