The tipping point: Turn a bad event into your advantage and perhaps a passion
Photo: Ralf Weiser. The first car engine I worked on. Many followed….
Just when I got to drive my first car, it broke down coming home from work where I went through apprenticeship. The darn thing sputtered and hesitated like crazy. Just what I needed. How would I get to work without the car? I went to the local gas station in the village and the owner agreed to take a quick look. He did that and told me that he had no time to fix it until later in the week. Just as I tried leaving the gas station I saw a relatively new Audi with out of county plates on it pull in and the nicely dressed owner needed to have his car troubles fixed. I stopped in my tracks as I observed the car getting pulled into the shop bay and getting worked on right away. I was totally shell shocked and mad as a hornet. That was the day I turned this trouble into a passion o mine: Working on cars and motor cycles.
The next day I got myself a repair manual and a few special tools and parts and off I went in my garage to address the problem. It turned out to be a blown head gasket that did not take long to fix at all. I had a lot of fun doing the work and was quite happy with myself and the result. Not only did I get this fixed a lot sooner than any shop would have been able to fit me into their schedule, but I also saved a lot of money. Almost overnight I had turned a moment of being disappointed and mad at a situation into a lifelong love for fixing things on wheels and otherwise.
The defining moment was realizing whether or not I wanted to do something about this myself. Once that choice was made the rest was like clockwork:
- When you are emotionally affected in a moment of crisis scan for how mad you are and if you are remotely capable of addressing the situation yourself.
- In a moment of solitude listen to your inner voice whether or not you want to choose to do this yourself or with help of others.
- Make this choice!
- Learn as much as you can about the topic at hand.
- Learn about people that are similarly affected like you and see if you can connect with them.
- Go online and into a library to gather the necessary materials.
- Get the special tools that you need to address your issue in the best way. This can range from a simple wrench to computer hard- or software, etc.
- Find a suitable place to take your issue and for you to work on it.
- Fix what needs fixing.
- Celebrate success.
- Think about if you want to do more of it.
- Seek new challenges out and repeat.
- Voila, you just found a new passion!
Mind you that this cheat sheet works for just about any issue and not only mechanical ones. Have fun getting mad.
Ralf
