Two months ago, at the ripe age of 36, I finally learned how to drive a stick shift car. My husband and I were traveling to Fort Lauderdale and he accidentally booked a manual car. Yeah, I know what you may be thinking: no big deal; but for someone who flunked their driving test twice before finally getting their license this was a Big Deal. Having never driven a stick shift before, I thought ‘wow, so my only options here are to 1) learn how to drive in manual quick, 2) depend on my husband and Ubers to take my everywhere, or 3) forgo my desire to gallivant and explore on my own.’ Never willing to forgo an opportunity for some healthy exploration, I chose option #1.
Just before the trip, I made the courageous-ahem, scary-decision to step out in faith and take a sabbatical to get my life back to a healthy place. For some time I had been searching for a deeper kind of work-life rhythm that felt more measured and more flexible. Learning how to drive again wasn’t exactly what I was looking for as my first big lesson after leaving my corporate job. However my experience of learning how to drive in manual has taught me some lessons that I believe apply well to the things i’ve learned in my Work-Life Pivot.
A Bit of Backstory
After spending 10 years of my career working either in my own companies or in corporate startups, i’d gotten really good at leaning in. However, what I hadn’t achieved was a sustainable rhythm that balanced the ‘on the bleeding edge’ entrepreneurial work I crave with the steady pace of nurturing friendships, showing up as a wife, and dedication to hobbies like bread making and gardening. Beyond that, for too many years, I had heard the line “women can do anything,” and while I believed that was true what I did not believe was that it’s healthy to do it all at the same time. And so I found myself at a turning point, intentionally choosing to carve a fresh path to find more ‘life’ and steadiness in the day to day.
Now a little over two months into my journey as a willing participant in the ‘Great Resignation‘ i’d like to offer three lessons from learning how to drive in manual that I believe parallel my journey to find work-life balance.
Lesson 1: Fully Engage with the Clutch
My Florida driving lesson started with learning how to ‘clutch in.’ I realized very quickly that I had to fully engage the clutch if I wanted the car to shift from one mode to another. Now, a clutch is a lot like the ‘driving foot’ each and every one of us has the opportunity to engage or disengage in everyday life. It’s the part of us that makes decisions, chooses the pace we want to go at, enables whether we proceed on course or shift directions, and allows us to speed up or slow down. If we are living from a victim mentality, we may believe that these kinds of decisions aren’t up to us–that we are at the mercy of our circumstances or our position. But, the reality is that each of us in the Western world has the opportunity to drive with purpose in whatever gear and at whatever speed we choose.
Engaging my clutch foot has meant taking a quick pause to check in with myself and God before any significant choice or decision and letting my body flow ‘through’ that check-in to ensure I have good alignment.
For me, learning how to be more aware of my ‘clutch foot’-my will and my attunement to my surroundings-since leaving my job has been pivotal; and it’s still very much an ongoing process. In my day to day, using a ‘clutch foot’ doesn’t come naturally. I tend to let life, and the work part of life especially, happen to me rather than actively creating the kind of life and the kind of work that I want. Furthermore, I tend to be very receptive to the kind of work that others recommend to me, rather than taking the time to sift my desires and ask if the work that is coming my way really honors who I want to be and ask God if this work honors my unique identity and calling. Meanwhile, engaging my clutch foot has meant taking a quick pause to check in with myself and God before any significant choice or decision and letting my body flow ‘through’ that check-in to ensure I have good alignment before I proceed.
Lesson 2: Surrender Your Fear of Looking Stupid (p.s. no one really cares as much as you do anyway)
Sunny Florida driving practice continued with becoming increasingly ok with feeling stupid, even as I accidentally let the car crawl through a stop sign or backed up with unintended vigor. As I drove our cute little red manual Fiat again and again around the same four or five block stretch, I could feel the eyes around me staring, and the mouths laughing at all my mistakes. My head was burning, seriously burning with embarrassment. And, in many ways, this was the hardest part of learning to drive manual. At one point I got so stuck in my head at a sharp left turn towards a stop sign that the guy behind me laid on his horn for what felt like an eternity until I mustered enough wherewith-all to putter-sputter through the intersection, barely giving the car enough gas to make it through the turn.
Failure is part of learning, and giving ourselves freedom to fail is a truly powerful thing. One of my favorite quotes about failure is from Thomas Edison. He said “I didn’t fail 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.” So many of us give up because we ‘feel’ stupid or dumb in those 1000 steps before the breakthrough. The key is to keep getting up and keep trying, without putting the pressure on ourselves to succeed in the early stages.
Jerky motions are part of the learning process.
Both driving and living out of automatic has involved lots of unintentional stops and starts for me. It’s been easy to judge myself for the stop and go pace, but i’ve reminded myself that jerky motions are part of the learning process.
Lesson 3: Get Out of Your Head, and Into Your Body
With more practice driving, my confidence increased. My biggest breakthrough happened when I finally connected with the ‘physical’ element of driving manual, sensing when it was time to add more gas or when to take the car into a higher gear.
Ask yourself if your present choice honors your true intentions. If you’re in the middle of something that you’re doing just to do it, it’s ok to stop mid stride, re-evaluate, and decide to pivot. It’s very often the case that when we decide to get out of our heads and follow our intuition that big things happen.
Making A More Permanent Transition
Learning how to be more in tune with my ‘clutch foot’ has been huge; and it’s still an ongoing journey. It can be easy to blame the things around us for making our lives difficult, or creating stress. That said, when we remove the supposed causes but the problems we were experiencing before still surface, it becomes clear that our beliefs or inner narratives were the real things creating the pain. The more we can recognize that we are in control of our own behaviors, and our interpretations of our circumstances, the more we can have mastery over any situation we find ourselves in.
We are creatures of habit, and when we deliberately change our daily patterns it can force a reset. For me, a sabbatical season was a time to stop living in automatic and study the things that brought me life and refreshment. It was a time to take stock of the way I had been living and decide which aspects I wanted to carry forward and which ones I wanted to leave behind. It was a time to retrain my body and brain to ‘give it gas’ only when I sense alignment to my skills, desires and passions; and to feel my way through the transitions so I know intuitively what speed is best.
Don’t be afraid to take the leap…changing up your space, your routines, and your patterns is a very powerful way to invite freshness into your life.
There’s more to unpack on this topic, but for now i’d like to offer a gentle nudge to those of you readers who are also craving a different way of operating. Don’t be afraid to take the leap, whether that’s to a new work-life pattern, to a new creative venture, or even to a fresh locale. Changing up your space, your routines, and your patterns is a very powerful way to invite freshness into your life. And it might just help you crack open a whole new chapter.