Welcome to Episode #114 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Driving Without Brakes.”
I’ve done some stupid things in my life… but driving without brakes may be the stupidest!
Of course, I didn’t plan on putting myself (and everybody on the road around me!) in danger, but it also wasn’t a big surprise. Nope! I’m ashamed to admit that I had ignored the warning signs for months before experiencing the terrifying consequences.
I hope that by sharing this embarrassing story of bad decisions and misguided priorities, you can avoid creating unnecessary terror in your life.
This incident truly scared me straight and changed my life for the better… I hope it might change you a little, too.
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Driving Without Brakes
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TRANSCRIPT
Howdy, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode #114 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.
I will apologize up front, in case you hear any construction noise, we’ve got some work going on next door. They’ve got radio blasting, hammering, sawing, yelling.
So, let this be the first message of the day. You can’t always wait for perfect conditions to do things. Do the best you can with what you’ve got. And this is what I’ve got today.
What else do I have today? Well, not just that message. I’ve got a story for you. This is a terrible story. And by terrible, I mean full of terror. My own personal terror.
You probably won’t care. But this is a story that was a real horror for me. And it’s also very embarrassing because it was completely my own fault. But it did happen over 30 years ago. So I am prepared to forgive myself, especially if sharing this horrific story can in some way help you avoid a similar mistake.
So let me hit you with this story. Prepare. And then I’ve got three quick lessons that I drew from it. And maybe one of them will make sense to you, too. All right, ready?
I was 16 years old. This is 16 year old Ando. Had just gotten my driver’s license. Didn’t have a car.
I was holding out, saving up for some type of sporty coupe. But that plan never worked out. Instead, a kindly neighbor had an old Buick station wagon that she no longer required. And I picked it up for I think $600.
That was my first car. Dark blue, red leather-ish interior. And like most older cars, there were some tricks to operating it.
It had a window that you had to kind of jimmy a little bit to get to work. And yes, it was an old-fashioned window, not an electric window.
There was some smoke coming out of the tailpipe and the carburetor was tricky. It had some type of the butterfly valve on top where you had to use a twist tie once the car got running in the cold weather, you have to go out and tie it open.
So there were some tricks to keeping it moving, but I didn’t care. It was my car. This was freedom. This was my chariot of independence.
So there I was, a young driver, and I got a couple years out of that thing, at least a year and a half, two years, but I had no money. So I wasn’t one of those kinds of people who could soup up the car or trick it out in any kind of way.
I had no money and, of course, no mechanical knowledge. That’s the other big part of that. And no friends who had any mechanical knowledge. So anything that was wrong with that car stayed wrong or got worse. In most cases got worse, which brings us to this horrific story.
One day, I hit the brakes and heard a squeak. And as I learned, that might be an early sign that your brakes are starting to go. You might need to replace those. But I had more important things to do and they were still working, so I didn’t think too much about it.
But as time went on, and this is one of those things that you don’t really notice right away because it’s so gradual, but at some point I noticed that I was really having to press the pedal deeper than I used to. Instead of just touching the brakes, you would have to get it half an inch, maybe then to an inch, an inch and a half. You had to press more and more.
Until eventually, and here we’re getting into the embarrassing part, I had to press that pedal all the way to the floor. Not only did I have to press it all the way to the floor, I found myself having to turn in my seat, jam my heel down into it and use the back of my chair to kind of add extra leverage to really depress that pedal and pin it to the floor to get any kind of breaking reaction out of it.
Now again, I’m going to just claim that I was young, poor and stupid. That’s what makes this so embarrassing. I just thought I could get by. It seemed like I had more important things to do.
I was able to drive. I was functioning. I actually developed a whole technique where I didn’t really use the brakes that much.
Instead of speeding off to destinations, I would just take my time and if I looked up ahead and I saw that there was some braking going on, I would just start coasting. And I always gave myself a big cushion of space around the car, which is good defensive driving anyway. And I found that I could just kind of stay in this bubble and time myself to get from place to place.
So it’s crazy how you can adapt to things you shouldn’t have to adapt to. I shouldn’t even have had to develop that skill. And it didn’t last that long because ultimately, here’s what happened.
Heading to Taekwondo class. I think it was like a seven o’clock class across town. I’m driving myself to class because I’m a big boy.
I head out and this is all happening within a block or two of my house. I head out and the first turn I need to make is a left into a two-lane road. One lane coming, one lane going.
So I time it, there’s a space, I roll out into traffic, I’m heading towards an intersection. Up ahead, I see the light turn red, there’s five or six cars because it’s basically, I mean, it’s a seven o’clock class, so there’s a lot of traffic on the road. This is basically rush hour.
I need to stop. I turn in my chair, I jam my heel down to the ground, I start pressing… and on this day, no reaction whatsoever from the car. No braking response. I am rolling unhindered.
Calculating very quickly, I realize I’m going to smash into the back of those cars. There was not enough room to coast, there was not enough time to wait for that light to turn green. This was bad. So I swerve into the oncoming lane.
First miracle. I didn’t hit anybody, didn’t run into anything. I get into the oncoming lane, but I can’t stay there for long because now there’s cars making their right hand turns up there and whatever they’re doing, left hand turns.
So I get right past the residential portion and there’s a gas station on the corner. I get out of the incoming lane and I make it to the edge of the parking lot of the gas station. I roll into the gas station, still going full speed.
Second miracle. There is an opening to get through the parking lot around the gas pumps to get to the far side of the gas station. So I’m thinking, great, I can just kind of let this slow down.
And as I round the corner of the gas station on the far edge, I see an air pump, right? And behind it is a high curb, maybe like six inches high. Behind that, there’s a big row of like seven or eight foot high hedges, green hedges.
So I just set course for that curb and figure if I can just hit the curb, boom, just get ready for that jolt. You’re going to come to a sudden stop here, but you will stop.
Nope! I hit that curb, ba-boom, and roll right over the curb and right through the hedges.
Miracle three. I didn’t know what was behind those hedges, but fortunately, there was no one there. Could have been kids playing, could have been… who knows, right? I mean, it’s horrible.
What I end up seeing as I break through the hedges is a front lawn, a driveway, a front lawn, a driveway. There’s a whole block of houses, houses on my left, street on a right. And I just start rolling. And I make it about three or four front lawns before I start slowing down.
And I realize, well, you can either stop on someone’s front lawn, which seemed like a bad choice, or you can just jam that wheel, get up one of these driveways, and at least get into a backyard on a driveway.
That’s what I did. I yanked the wheel, went down a driveway, ended up in someone’s backyard, and I figured out finally, threw it into park, and the car stopped.
Now, why didn’t I use the emergency brake, you might ask. Never occurred to me. Never once did that occur to me. I never used the emergency brake, so it just wasn’t in my thinking. I never used it, so I wouldn’t even know where it was.
Anyway, there I was, sitting in the driveway. I realized how many miracles I had just experienced, how lucky I had just gotten, and how ridiculous my decision-making had been up to this point. What a fool I was.
And as I caught my breath, I realized, okay, the next step’s here. You’re not going to make it to class tonight, my friend.
I pulled out a scrap of paper out of the glove compartment, left my phone number and a note for the homeowner, walked home — talk about a walk of shame — walked home, and then contacted a salvage yard.
I walked back, met the guy that night, and he gave me 50 bucks for the car. I was shocked. Maybe that’s a mini-miracle.
I just remember his flatbed truck, him towing up that car, and him driving off into the night. I never saw the car again. Goodbye, my chariot of independence.
So that’s the story. And boy, I learned a lot from that. I really did. And I’ll try to sum up very quickly three important things that I still think about. I still think about that brake story.
I don’t know why it took so long to share it on the podcast. Probably because I’m embarrassed by it. But here we go.
Lesson number one, look ahead.
Look down the road to really get a full view of where you’re going in life.
When I was young, I thought so many things were just not that big of a deal, whether it was brushing your teeth or fixing a headlight or squeaky brakes. There were so many things that just seemed too small to worry about. I had more important things to do, whether it was school or training or my hobbies at the time, everything was more important.
But as you grow older, you realize no problem starts big, really. Everything starts small. There are little warning signs, little flags, and as you get wiser, you start to notice those things and you pay attention to them. And if you’re smart, you deal with them. You nip them in the bud.
If you don’t brush your teeth for one night, okay, if that becomes your habit, down the road, if you take a look, you’re probably going to have to spend a lot of money and go through a lot of pain to fix those problems.
I have a video, maybe you’ve seen, called Why I Quit Taekwondo, and no, it wasn’t because I lost my car. Taekwondo changed my life, so I’m not bashing Taekwondo. So, if you’re in Taekwondo, stay there, I hope you’re getting what you want out of it.
But at the time, I was doing fine, I felt great, but this was my late teens into my early 20s, so it wasn’t that hard for me to bounce around, throw high kicks, stay flexible, stay athletic enough to participate. But eventually I started to really ponder, would I be able to participate in my 40s, 50s, 60s?
Could I see myself as an old man doing the conditioning to participate in an art like this? Would I want my self-defense strategy to rely on that kind of conditioning and those kinds of tactics?
I ultimately decided, no, I think it’s time to shift into a different art where I could invest my time and my energy so that I could do things even into my 60s, 70s or 80s. I wanted an art that I could grow old with and I just did not believe, right or wrong, you may have a different opinion, I just didn’t believe Taekwondo was the art for that.
So that was one example of looking ahead and I think it saved me a lot of pain and disappointment. And now that’s become my life habit. I try as much as I can.
If my headlight is out, I will go get that serviced right away. Even doing dishes, I used to always think everything was more important than doing dishes, and then it starts to smell, you get mold or people visit and it’s embarrassing.
So now as soon as I use a dish, I wash it right away. I do not let dishes linger anymore. And of course, this applies to everything you do.
Self-defense, same thing, when a flag pops up, you should deal with it right away. If someone is crossing your boundaries, if someone is disrespecting you, if someone breaks your trust, the earlier that you speak up for yourself, the earlier that you set a boundary or move away from them, the safer you’re going to be.
So in self-defense, the earlier you act, the better.
Saving money, the earlier you start saving, the better. Your good health, the earlier you start practicing good habits, food, sleep, stress, the healthier you’re going to be.
So that’s lesson number one. Take the long view. Look down the road and see if what you’re doing today, if all the little flags and warning signals that are going off around you really are something you can ignore? Or if you look down the road, do you see them getting worse and worse and putting you in danger?
Lesson number two, keep moving.
Let’s say you’re sitting at an intersection. The light turns green. When I started driving, that green light was like you were racing cars. Go! As fast as you can. Hit the gas. Go!
And it didn’t matter if the next light had already turned red or if there was a bunch of traffic. It was just fun to hit that gas. Go!
And then, okay, you’d have to stop and slam on the brakes. That’s probably why my brakes wore down. I was used to a very herky-jerky style of driving.
Stop! Go! Stop!
And it wasn’t until I was forced to change my habits to start slowing down a little bit and just kind of finding the flow in the traffic where I didn’t have to be so herky-jerky. Of course, that saves gas. It’s not as hard on the car. It’s not as stressful. You can just stay in that sweet spot and just move along. And I think that’s a far more mature way to drive.
It’s also true that you could end up at a green light and start daydreaming or looking at your phone or staring at the person next to you and thinking about their life. And you suddenly, beep, beep, beep, you’ve been sitting too long.
You weren’t paying attention. You’re not going to get where you want to go. Now you’re running late. Now you’re interrupting the flow.
Either way, these are not good habits to take off like a rabbit or to just sit there and lose your focus. And that’s the same also in anything you do in life.
You might jump into a project, I know, I’m going to start this business. And you jump in, you invest a lot of money, you just, you go so fast and you end up burning out, making a huge mistake, not setting things up properly and the whole thing crashes and you lose.
On the other hand, you might have a great idea for a business, but you’re terrified that it’s going to fail. So you don’t even start. You don’t even try. And that also gets you nowhere.
So we have to start trying to find that flow in our lives where we can keep moving, keep learning, keep improving without courting the risks of crashing or just sitting still.
And of course, this applies to your training, right? In your sparring or in your wrestling, if you’re aggressive, aggressive, go, go, go all the time, well, you could walk right into a KO. People see you coming and say, whoa, boom, walk right into a punch, walk, dive right into a leg triangle.
But on the other hand, if you’re always blocking and passive and backing away, well, you can also get knocked out. You can’t block forever. At some point, you got to find the balance between aggression and passivity, between waiting and attacking. You find that sweet spot.
In your training in general, there’s the risk of overtraining, but there’s also a risk of undertraining. If you train too hard, that can hurt your body. If you train too little, that’ll hurt your skills. You won’t be very good.
So again, you have to find that balance. Find the sweet spot. This is really important. So that’s tip number two. Find your flow.
Find your timing on whatever projects you’re working on, whatever is important to you, so that you can keep your forward momentum going, that you can keep flowing, so you’re not always starting and stopping or just quitting.
The key here is to not worry about other people. Don’t worry about falling behind your buddies. Don’t worry about getting ahead of everybody you know either.
Run your race. Set your pace. You know I love rhyming. So I say again, run your race, set your pace.
Tip number three, just ask.
Ask for money if you need it. Ask for information if you need it. Ask for more time if you need it. Ask for help if you need it.
You’ve got to invest in yourself. And one of the greatest investments you can make is just to ask questions. Put yourself in a situation where you are the student. It’s okay to do that.
When I was younger, I didn’t like that. I thought it made me look stupid and made me look weak to ask for anything from anybody. But that’s completely wrong. That is completely foolish.
With what’s worse, feeling stupid for asking a question or feeling stupid because you just crashed your car through a row of hedges and watched your car get taken away on a flat bed truck. Yeah, that was stupid.
So please, don’t wait till you end up in jail to learn this lesson. Don’t wait until you lose everything you’ve got. Don’t wait until you crash your car. Don’t wait till all of your teeth have to be replaced. Don’t wait until you find out you’re terrible at what you do. Don’t become a person who’s just bitter and angry and makes excuses.
Get what you need. Money, information, time, help. Get it. Ask for it. Please don’t be afraid.
Life is short. Get on it.
Let me tell you, I have spent thousands of dollars, I’m not kidding. I’ve never added it up formally, but I can tell you for sure, thousands of dollars on private lessons, on classes, of course.
I’ve also asked thousands of questions. I’m putting out the bills and I’m putting out the question marks. I have not been afraid to put on a white belt.
Sure, you know, you have the anxiety of starting over or trying a new art or being the new guy, but ultimately I haven’t stopped putting on white belts over and over again and be the new person.
So take the class, sign up for the course, pay for the private lesson, email that contact, approach that mentor, do what you have to do to get what you need.
You don’t have to suffer alone. You don’t have to be afraid alone. You don’t have to just live your life quietly alone. That choice usually leads you down a darker and darker path. And I think you’ll find that your life only gets worse, not happier.
Make no mistake, the better you are at being you, the better able you’ll be to help everybody else. So invest in yourself.
Ask for what you need, work for what you need, and be the person you should be.
Was that already lesson number three? That didn’t take long at all, right?
So let me wrap this up…
I really, truly hope that by sharing this horrible story, this embarrassing story, that it will spare you from making any similar mistake. You are probably wiser than I am, but there’s also probably some part of your life that you could apply one of these ideas to, and I hope you do.
The big plan here is to keep setting goals, okay? And you don’t have to jump into them right away and blow all your resources. Don’t jump in blindly. Take your time.
Look down the road. Pace yourself. Find your flow so that you can keep moving, keep learning, keep improving. And when you need to ask for help along the way, ask for help.
If, on that journey towards your goals, you need to pump the brakes, or you even need to come to a stop sometimes, that’s okay. That’s okay. That’s part of driving. That’s part of life. But I do believe that the more you practice finding your flow, listening to your own timing, whether you’re driving or you’re living, you won’t need the brakes as often.
You’ll be able to stay in that safety cushion. You know who you are. You know what you’re doing. You’re not concerned about anybody else. You’re just focused on your goal and you found your flow to get there. If you do that, I think you’ll just keep rolling along and get closer and closer to a happy life.
Okay, I hope sharing my story will help you avoid crashing through the hedges in your life. Hey, if you’ve got an example of something that started off small in your life and grew into something horrific, feel free to leave it in the comments. I’d love to hear about it. I’m just happy that you survived to tell the tale.
Until next time, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.
