You suck. Embrace it.
You suck. But here’s the truth — we all do. If you’re going to grow and expand beyond your comfort zone in ANY pursuit, you. will. suck. Don’t believe me? Let me tell you my story.
Driving is one of my biggest pleasures in life. Nothing beats the feeling of cruising down an empty street at night, vibing to Louie Bag by Yebba. As you can imagine, owning a car has always been a major dream of mine. And on November 14th, that dream came true.
Or did it?
My new car was beautiful. Pearl-white with swooping lines and a furrowed brow up front, she looked more wolf than machine. I named her Ghost. But once I opened the door, something stuck out like a sore thumb. A gear shift. I have a confession to make — I hate manual cars. Once, when a friend asked whether I could drive manual, I said “Why would I? Do I look like I enjoy suffering?” Well, suffering had come home, dressed as my dream.
Darlin I’m a nightmare dressed as a daydream
After I got over my initial shock and got all the whining out of my system, I found a tutor and started learning how to drive manual. Guess what? I sucked. We started on side roads, focusing mainly on fundamentals like shifting gears and moving from a standing start. I was progressing quickly, and started feeling confident. At the end of the first week, my instructor announced that we would be trying a special challenge — scaling the Aburi Mountain.
Armed with my newfound confidence, I retorted that it would be a breeze. Ghost and I devoured the highway miles enroute to the mountain, ghosting by slower cars with ease. Approaching the base of the slope, we slowed down and joined the traffic approaching the toll booth that demarcated the beginning of the ascent. I didn’t realise it at the time, but the real test was about to begin.
The road in front of the toll booth was littered with short, steep speed bumps, probably put there to thwart toll dodgers. Unfortunately, they thwarted me instead. At high speeds, I was in my element, but here, my flaws were exposed. In the toll booth traffic, I was forced to constantly balance my clutch and accelerator to get the car moving in first gear, a practice known as half-clutch. I hadn’t mastered it, because I’d focused instead on shifting gears at high speeds. The slow traffic, speed bumps and steep slope combined to create a nightmare scenario.
Once I stopped, I found it hard to get moving again. I couldn’t get the half-clutch right, so my engine kept stalling and going off. With only one toll lane open, the cars behind me soon started honking repeatedly, incensed by my ineptitude. Frustrated and flustered, I tried to find the half-clutch faster and faster still, which only led to further failure. My misery compounded, I accepted defeat. Aburi had humbled me. My instructor had to take the wheel and navigate through the traffic until we reached the open road, where he asked me to resume.
Shoulders slumped and sullen, I silently contemplated what had gone wrong at the toll both. Initially, I blamed the circumstances — the traffic, the slope and the speed bumps. Surely they were the cause of my failure. When I got over myself and stopped deflecting, the truth hit me smack in the face. My failure didn’t actually happen at Aburi, it started during my earlier practice sessions. Because I initially struggled to master it, I avoided the half-clutch as much as I could, not realising that it was the foundation of successfully driving stick.
A few days later, something dawned on me — the three lessons I learned that day at Aburi apply to anyone learning something new.
Start from the basics — Rushing through the fundamental stages (low-speed movement) in an attempt to focus on the aspects I enjoyed (shifting gears fast) cost me. There’s a reason we learn the alphabet before we learn proverbs. Solidifying your basics gives you a foundation to express yourself at higher levels.
Apply the 80/20 principle — The Pareto principle (aka the 80/20 rule) posits that 20% of processes drive 80% of outcomes. So when starting something new, find the things that make the most difference (like the half-clutch) and focus on perfecting them. This accelerates your path to mastery.
Embrace the suck — Starting new things is hard, because it requires learning new principles, processes and actions etc that we have not performed in the past. It is even harder because we’re conditioned to dislike embarrassment or looking silly, especially in front of others. The pressure from struggling with my half-clutch in public got to me and made it even harder to execute the basics well, compounding my frustration. When learning a new skill, we have to accept that there are points where we will get it wrong, and maybe even look foolish. But that’s the only way to master new things, and by extension, to grow and escape your comfort zone.
Armed with these lessons, I continued to practice driving Ghost. Three weeks after the Aburi incident, I’m far more adept at driving manual cars. I may still stall my engine from time to time, but now I just restart the car and try again. Looking silly is simply the price of entry.
Last week, something funny happened. I borrowed my mum’s automatic car for an errand. Halfway through the journey, I noticed that I wasn’t enjoying it as much — I missed driving Ghost. I realised I’d actually come to (*gasp*) relish driving a manual car. But that would never have happened if I didn’t give myself permission to be bad at it first and keep practicing regardless. Today, I’m a stick shift evangelist. I guess I do enjoy suffering after all.
