I have a background that surprises people. Not because I’ve done anything wild — because of my childhood. People meet me and assume I came from something safe and predictable. I didn’t.
I still ended up living the way I wanted to. The reason isn’t talent and it isn’t luck. It’s that at some point I decided I was the kind of person who figures things out.
That decision came first. The ability came after.
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Helplessness is learned, not built in
I used to be less generous about this. I’d look at people stuck complaining about their circumstances and think they simply weren’t trying.
I’ve changed my mind, mostly because the research is clear and because I’ve watched it up close. When people try repeatedly and nothing changes, they stop trying — and the stopping generalises. It spreads to situations where they would have succeeded. That’s learned helplessness, and it’s a trained response, not a character flaw.
Which is genuinely good news. Anything trained can be untrained.
I’m from Norway. It’s comfortable here — comfortable enough that a lot of people never have to develop this at all. Nothing forces the issue. And a skill you never need is a skill you never build.
The rusty cars
My first cars were rubbish. Rusty, half-dead things that constantly needed mending, taping and stapling back together. You should have heard the swearing — creative, varied, sustained.
But they ran. I got every one of them running.
Except one. I had a pickup so rusted through you could push a stick clean through the body. The annual inspection was coming and the exhaust was hanging off, so I fixed it with rope. Tied it to the trailer hook. It held.
The inspection crew were less impressed than I was. They cut my plates. I left it parked outside the workshop and walked home.
I tell that one because it’s the honest version. Figuring things out doesn’t mean you always win. It means the default response to a problem is to reach for something rather than wait for someone.
I liked it because it put me in control. Less dependent on other people, and moving faster than I would have otherwise.
What figuring things out actually is
It’s not intelligence. I’ve met plenty of clever people who stall the moment a situation has no instructions.
It’s the refusal to treat “I don’t know how” as the end of the sentence.
That’s it. Not being stopped by the situation, the feeling, or the practical obstacle. And it isn’t taught anywhere in school, which spends twelve years handing you problems that already have methods attached.
Real problems don’t come with methods. That’s what makes them real.
Once you adopt the find-a-way stance, something odd happens: solutions start appearing that were always there. You weren’t blind before. You just weren’t looking, because you’d already decided there was nothing to find.
The two responses
When something goes wrong, there are broadly two ways people go.
- Shrink to fit the problem. Accept it as the new ceiling and quietly rebuild your life a size smaller.
- Or get stubborn and find the way through.
The first one rarely feels like a decision. That’s what makes it dangerous. Nobody announces they’re giving up — they just stop mentioning the thing they wanted, and after a few years it’s gone from the conversation entirely.
I’ve watched people do this in their thirties and live another fifty years inside the smaller version. Not dramatically. Just quietly, and permanently.
If you’re telling yourself you’re stuck because you lack the degree, the course, the certificate, the permission — that’s the shrink talking. I’ve written about that one separately, because it deserves its own argument.
How to actually build it
You don’t need a suit or superpowers. You need reps.
- Say it before you know how. “I’ll figure this out” — out loud, before you have any idea. The sentence commits you and your mind starts working the problem in the background.
- Get better at questions. Most people ask a vague question, get a vague answer, and conclude the answer doesn’t exist. A precise question usually has a findable answer.
- Read past the point of comfort. Eleven books on any subject puts you ahead of nearly everyone who has an opinion about it.
- Practise on things that don’t matter. Fix the small stuff yourself — the appliance, the software, the flat tyre. Build the reflex on low stakes so it’s there on high ones.
- Notice when you’re waiting. Waiting for permission, for the right moment, for someone else to handle it. Waiting is the default. Reaching is the choice.
You’ve done this before, by the way. When the stakes were high enough, you found a way — everyone has. The whole task is making that your ordinary setting instead of your emergency one.
One physical thing that helps
We call it biohacking when it’s the body and life-hacking when it’s the day. Here’s the unglamorous version that actually moves the needle for me: eat properly.
I’m not going to make grand claims about nutrition rewiring your brain. What I’ll say is what I’ve observed in myself over years — when I’m eating real food and sleeping properly, I reach for solutions. When I’m running on rubbish, I reach for excuses.
Figuring things out takes energy. Persistence in particular is expensive. It’s much easier to conclude a problem is unsolvable when you’re depleted, and most people don’t notice they’ve made that call from a state rather than from the facts.
The short version
You are not missing a qualification. You’re missing the reflex — and the reflex is built by using it.
Start with something small this week. Something you’d normally hand to someone else or leave broken. Do it badly. Do it with rope if you have to.
If this lands, you’ll probably also recognise yourself in why you don’t fit in with society — the two tend to travel together.
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