During the season break, we've pulled out a bonus short from one of our early episodes. This one is from Episode 7, Don't Let Stalling Stop You.

So stalling. Okay. So the first thing is to think about is the clutch pedal. The clutch pedal is the pedal that causes the stalling to happen. And what we want to try and do is to think of the clutch is your friend. We don't want to think of the clutch is your enemy. What will happen if you think of the clutch as your friend, you will stall less, which means you become more confident in moving away. So what we need to do is to find out what the clutch actually does and how, and when we can use it. To help us. So basically what we're doing in this instance is. Building your knowledge base of the clutch pedal. Because there seems to be a lot of people that I see. That think they know how to use the clutch, but then they don't. So find out. What actually happens with the clutch and this might actually even mean. Practicing stalling. Because if we practice stalling, We know why the car will then stall. So, what we can do is practice not stalling in, so change what we're actually doing. Okay. Now, you know, this is something that I talk about a fair bit. But when I talk about practicing stolen, I talk about it from a different point of view. I've never really thought of it. That way round that if you practice how to stall, then you understand. why your stalling. And therefore you can avoid it. Now my take on practicing stolen and I'm really happy to confess here that I consider myself a bit of an expert on stolen. I've been doing it for years ever since I got my license. And. My feeling is that people need to practice stolen so that it doesn't become a problem. It doesn't become something that you're fearful of or worried about. It just becomes. Like dropping something, just a minor annoyance, but you know what to do when it happens. So when I stole, yes. Okay. I might swear. But pretty much, it's just, you know, sort of like, oh, Swear word. And I'll just get good again really quickly. And I think that's comes with practice. So. Yeah, it does come with practice. And, but it's also knowing how to get the car moving again. So it becomes, yes, I've stalled. But what I'll do is this. Yeah. So you're changing the mindset of, oh no, I've stalled. I've stalled. And you keep replay in that in your mind. And you go to move away again and all you think about you're stalling. So you start again. And you store it again, and then it becomes the frustration. And the anger comes in. And it's like, I can't do this. I can't do this. And people just shut down. Yeah. But, so what we're trying to do is to say, okay, so that happened. We know why it happened because we've practiced it. Oh, what I'm going to do next time is this. I'm going, just going to take my time. I'm going to do things slower. I'm going to make sure I can hear those noises. And basically that's what you try and do in those situations. From my point of view, as an instructor, Mistakes happen, but it's how we deal with them. And what I like to do is, practice store. Or practice moving away and stop in dependent on what we want to do. But also think about. When have we. Moved away and it's been nice and smooth. What did you do in those times? And when you asked those questions, when you sat on the side of the road in the most quiet area, It becomes quite easy to formulate a process of how you're going to move away. So that when you come to be in sat in a set of traffic lights and you're the first one in the queue. There's lots of people behind you. And. The pressure's on you feel the pressure's on to move away quickly so you don't hold people up. Think about. How would I like to move away? And it's, I would like to move away. In a nice controlled. Movement. So it's nice and smooth and I'll get moving. I don't want to rush because when I know I rush, what happens is things go wrong. So relate back to, how you moved away from outside your house at the start of the lesson. How you moved away. at a junction before, you know, whatever it is that you've moved away. Smoothly before. Bring that into that instance where you're at that set of traffic lights with cars behind you. I guess it's not something I've really thought about, but moving away. It must be one of the earliest things we learn when we're on driving lessons. And actually it must be one of the things that we do the most. Throughout lesson or, even when we're driving in general, we're moving away all the time. Aren't we starting stop him moving away. Yeah. It's. I think it's the biggest skill that we can use. Driving a manual car is clutch control. Because once you get the clutch control in a nice quiet area where you start in off. What you can do is just transfer that skill into a busy area. By doing the same thing again. The only difference this time is that you've got others around you. And our mind starts playing tricks on us. People start thinking about. How people have said things about, oh, there's a learner driver in front of us. This is going to take ages. And we've had those thoughts and we've had those people saying that for a long time, and this is how we remember those thoughts because we've had them. Fired at us for a long time. But when it comes to driving yourself, What we're trying to do is to change that mindset. To say, this is how I want to move away. If I do this, this is what's going to happen. The other thing we can do as well. If you do get stuck at those traffic lights where you do keep stalling, it's just move into a quiet area. Move back into a quiet area where you can then be in your comfort zone to be able to practice again. Just replay in some of those things that you've done before. Like. Just put the clutch here. I can feel that make some noise with the accelerator so I can hear that. Release the handbrake. So, what I'm doing is I'm doing it in a controlled. Bit by bit process. I'm just going back to the basics. And then go back into practice in those other areas. Again. Just to build that confidence back up to go and practice again. Yeah, I like that. That's something that I talk about quite a lot. Isn't it about? Making sure. When you're in a driving lesson, you should be somewhere in your challenge zone because that's when you learn new things. But if something does go wrong, if something does stress you out and you end up feeling very stressed, very nervous, very anxious. So you've moved from challenge into panic. What you need to do is to come back down into your comfort zone. So that idea of once you've resolved that situation, going into a quieter area and then practicing the basics again in your comfort zone. That helps your body to calm back down. Get your your equilibrium back. a bit. Yeah, but also, yes, I can do this. These are basic things I can move away. So get your confidence back that you are able to move away slowly, smoothly, easily. And then go back and try that set of traffic lights or that roundabout or whatever it was that caused you the problem again, and maybe using that. Skill that we've talked about a few times in other episodes of talking yourself through it. Uh, speaking out loud, you know, you can do it. Let's get rid of those negative thoughts that are sneaking in by speaking out loud, don't leave room for them. You know, you can do this. Yeah. And one of my learners came up with a phrase for herself. And it was just make some noise. And every time we got to a set of traffic lights, she would say to herself, Just make some noise when I'm moving away. Just make some noise. Um, right. So w with the pedals, making sure that you can hear. Yeah, so she knew. If she had the accelerator on and she could hear the accelerator, that's where the noise was coming from. Yeah. Then she could take her time with a clutch pedal because she, she was confident that she had that. Noise from the accelerator. And she knew that the power from that would actually help her move away. Anyway. So coming up with a phrase for yourself, but works.

I'm just gonna jump in here to let you know about our drive calm journal. We've created a 12 week prompt journal to support our listeners to take action and improve driving confidence. The journal includes questions, prompts, and exercises to create an action plan and an opportunity for reflection afterwards. Search drive calm on Amazon to take a look. We hope it helps.