Lean Into It

I have to admit I'm not a handy person, and I think that stems from my childhood. It's something I actually carried throughout my life.

If there was something that required manual effort or physical labour, I wasn't interested.

I've been known to say, "I don't do manual labour."

And I was as serious as food poisoning.

Let's call it a trauma wound.

I didn't like building things. I could look at something and know it needed to be fixed, but I would never dare try.

Trying meant failure.

Failure meant mistakes.

Mistakes meant imperfection in my mind.

Being a self-proclaimed perfectionist, that wasn't an option.

So I always stayed away from fixing things myself.

If something was broken, I'd call someone who knew what they were doing.

The sad thing was, as I got older, I grew tired of constantly asking for help, paying for help, and waiting for someone to come save the day.

So I started trying to fix things myself.

Sometimes it was something as simple as changing a taillight on my car. Jobs I used to pay someone else to do suddenly didn't seem so intimidating.

Other things were a complete disaster.

I won't talk about it in specifics, but let's just say thousands of dollars later I learned my lesson.

It forced me to stop looking at what I couldn't do and start paying attention to what I could.

But This Is Where It Gets Interesting

But this is where it gets interesting.

I realized I had a mind for conceptualization.

I could imagine things from nothing.

I'd be in the middle of a conversation and create an entirely new product in my head within seconds.

After countless inventions sitting in notebooks and files waiting to be created, I realized I needed to capitalize on my strengths.

There's an expression, "Stay in your lane."

But I think it should be amended to "Know your lane and lean into it."

I realized the things I couldn't do weren't a weakness.

Maybe if I'd been good at building with my hands, I never would have learned to build with my mind.

Imagine having the ability to walk into a room, pick up a hammer, and build a basement without thinking twice.

That was my dream, but it wasn't my path.

What I could do was look at something that already existed and improve it.

Or create something completely new from nothing.

I've tried many times to find like-minded people on both sides of the coin.

I think it's fair to say not everyone is good at everything, but everyone is good at something.

If you can figure out where you excel, it can change your world.