Not all, but most of you reading this will remember learning to drive a stick shift. Switching gears takes patience. It’s hard to forget the seatbelt taut across your body caused by the jerky motion that was supposed to be a smooth transition from one gear to the next. There was a fine-tuned balance of letting off the clutch and onto the gas that was challenging to master. It took numerous attempts to avoid whiplash or revving the engine. Your practice probably took place in an empty parking lot for two reasons. Reason one was safety. The second reason was, obviously, self-preservation! Who would willingly nearly drop their transmission as they lurched along in front of spectators? One day, after much practice, plenty of frustration, and a lot of pep talks, it all finally clicked. Switching gears became instinctual, natural.
Nowadays, people are used to everything being automatic: cars, responses, news. Flip a switch, turn a key, or swipe. Because we are accustomed to getting instant results, we lack patience. Switching gears of any sort takes patience. Going from an emotional high to a low, or a professional mindset to a social setting, are examples of how we change gears daily. Life requires us to shift up or down quickly, but not instantly. We end up grinding our gears as we bounce between roles. Now more than ever, patience needs to be practiced.
It’s handy to apply the same principles as driving a stick-shift vehicle to life: Ease into it, pay attention to the sound of your engine as you’re switching, know when to back off, and don’t grind the gears. Switching gears takes patience, and transitions aren’t always smooth, but the more often we work at it, the more natural and instinctual it becomes.
