Learning to Drive at 26 Has Taught Me Skills Beyond the Wheel
At 17, I jumped at the chance to learn to drive. All of my friends were also planning on starting driving lessons and I followed suit, not giving much consequence to what it would mean or how much it would add to my already full plate.
At the time, my mum warned me it might be best to wait a few years after I’d done my A-Levels (in the UK this is the stage before university or college) so I could focus on my exams.
Like any teenager, of course, I didn’t listen and wish I had. I ended up spending a lot of money and hours learning to drive and building up to my test, only to realize the anxiety about passing and doing it was too much on top of trying to ace my exams.
So I stopped for a long time. And then I started again. And then I stopped. And then I started again at university and found the perfect instructor, but she had no availability, and let’s face it, I didn’t have enough money.
And then I went 7 years without getting behind the wheel. In all fairness, I didn’t need it. I lived in a city at university and walked everywhere. I then moved to another city right next to the train station so I didn’t need it either.
But I kept telling myself I didn’t need it when I was wrong. I did need it — but I was scared to start after all those years. But at the beginning of this year and the promise of turning 27 near the end of it, I knew I couldn’t leave it for much longer.
So I started again, even though I was terrified.
If you take anything from this story, I want it to be this. If you’ve put off doing something for so long that it now feels unattainable, start anyway, because it’s never too late.
And if you feel scared, you’re going to have to feel the fear and do it anyway. I wish I had realized this sooner.
Mindset is key
Part of the reason for my delay in learning to drive was that I had allowed myself to lean into the mindset that it didn’t matter and I’d never need it. This was a way of me masking my anxiety, and a lie I kept on telling myself. In fairness, it was true for a while, but I know that one day I would feel restricted by not being able to drive.
Gradually over the years, telling myself this again and again had manifested itself in an anxiety about being on the roads and all the risks that had come with that.
As a result, in February of this year when I got behind the wheel for the first time in 7 years, I was terrified. It took me 3 or 4 lessons to not panic and break down in tears multiple times.
But thanks to the first understanding instructor I’ve ever had (I only got lucky on number 4) he gave me that time to pull over, reflect, collect myself, and carry on if I wanted to.
The space to mess up and feel anxious was allowed, which gave me the motivation to carry on. But to take that first step and start learning again, I had to force myself to change the way I was thinking and realise what I was doing — masking.
As someone who has struggled with anxiety pretty much her whole life, saying you should do something despite being scared is easier said than done. I get it, I do.
But sometimes, we have to dish ourselves some tough self-love that doesn’t just come from friends and family, especially if deep down we only know the real reason why we’ve put off doing something for so long.
It was in the middle of my two year job hunt that I realized my lack of driving could be holding me back.
I scrolled past many perfect looking jobs after finding out they required a driving license, or one day in the office a week in some remote location that couldn’t be reached via public transport.
And then it started happening more and more, to the point where I started to get annoyed with myself. So I tackled the problem head on.
As I booked my first lesson with this instructor, I purposely attempted to disassociate from it so the anxiety couldn’t creep in. I reminded myself I had so many hours worth of experience and it would be like muscle memory when you haven’t ridden a bike for so long.
I focused on what I didn’t have by not driving, instead of what I was scared of. Ultimately, that mindset shift convinced me to start and keep learning.
Doing things you’re scared of is never easy. Challenging that anxiety is really hard. But focusing on what overcoming the problem will mean and what you will eventually gain from it will propel you toward success.
Once I realized the freedom, increased opportunities, and flexibility driving would give me, I knew I had to feel the fear and do it anyway as it was my only option.
Mindset is everything — but once you challenge your barriers towards success you’re already halfway there.
Resilience is constant work
Ultimately, this mindset shift made me realize the importance of resilience, but it wasn’t something I only used with the first few lessons. I kept having to work on it, for every lesson. Each time I drive, I have to remind myself why I am here and what I will eventually gain if I stick on this path.
Even when cars dangerously cut me off at a roundabout, or I was overtaken by a bald man in a Porsche down a narrow one way road. Even when I stalled not once, but twice at a busy set of traffic lights on a hill.
When you’re doing something you’re afraid of, the only way to stick with it is to remind yourself constantly what you’re going to gain from it by fighting it. This is something I have had to do for weeks on end, until 5 months into these lessons I finally feel somewhat relaxed behind the wheel.
But the truth is, resilience isn’t a one time thing. Being resilient one day doesn’t mean you are for the rest of your life. You have to work at it and show up every day and try to maintain it. And once I realized this, and the importance of shifting my mindset, learning to drive didn’t seem so terrifying.
I can finally say I don’t lie awake at night the day before a lesson dreading having to get behind the wheel. I’m still at a stage where I feel a little anxious when driving because there are so many idiots on the road, but I no longer have that creeping feeling of dread anymore.
It’s not an easy one, but if you’ve been putting off doing something for a long time and have built up a lot of anxiety surrounding it, this is my three step solution to making it seem a little bit more achievable:
Focus on the benefits that you gain from facing what you’re afraid of
Remind yourself daily that you are resilient and you can succeed
Acknowledge the anxiety (because it’s normal) and use it as a motivating force
Of course, there will be setbacks and obstacles you don’t predict, but focusing on these three things can help put you in a healthier mindset to go and achieve the thing you’ve been putting off for years.
Although I’m yet to pass my driving test (there’s a minimum of a four month waiting list here in the UK) I feel like it’s even possible for me to achieve, when I’d all but written off this possibility in the past few years.
Final thoughts
The brutal truth about adulthood is that we have to do things we don’t want to do. Unfortunately, we can’t live in a fairytale and float through life, hoping things will sort themselves out because life doesn’t work like that. We have to put in the effort ourselves and make things happen.
I always knew that eventually, I would have to learn how to drive not only because of the freedom it would give me but for the practical benefits.
I don’t want to have to rely on others to drive me around or on the rubbish public transport systems in the UK. If I ever want children, I don’t want to have to lug their prams onto a packed bus.
In the end, I knew I had to take a deep breath and think about tackling learning to drive in a different way so that I could provide benefits for my future self. It might be hard, anxiety-inducing, and stressful now, but in the future, I’m going to be glad that current me took the plunge.
Please note: this blog was originally published in Publicious on Medium.
