Some motivational words.
I grew up in MA. Unions rule the land there.
I was raised to think in terms of "There is a person that does that job", and then you just paid that person to do whatever job was needed because if you didn't "horrible things might happen".
I moved to the south in my early 20's. People here were broke as sh*t.
All my neighbors fixed their own stuff which was a culture shock for me.
My very good friend and neighbor at the time taught me how to work on cars. He stated quite logically when I suggested that it was beyond my capabilities "Have you ever talked to an auto mechanic? They aren't all rocket scientists you know? Same for most jobs you are paying other people to do. The difference between an auto mechanic and you is they started turning wrenches on cars at some point and you haven't. So, lets start turning a wrench.", and with this we did a brake change on my car.
The shift in my mentality about what I could and couldn't do happened on that day. It was a great feeling of self-reliance.
My appetite to learn all these things I was previously "scared" to do myself increased with each new challenge.
I looked for projects that I previously would have been scared to take on, and
studied and learned how they worked and how to fix (or build) them.
Knowledge is power. This is what allows someone to buy a car that "doesn't run" for almost nothing, and fix it into something worth several thousands more than they paid. Same with house flipping. Everyone that owns a boat had to back that boat down the boat ramp and into the water at some point. Not the most natural thing in the world to do, and especially not under pressure of people behind you waiting to launch their boats. If you want to have fun on your boat though, you HAVE TO do it at some point. You aren't going to call your friend to come tow your boat and put it in the water for you, right? I'm an expert at backing a boat down a ramp now.
I'm not saying to go do open heart surgery on someone tomorrow, but fixing an oil leak might give you the
confidence to expand that success to other areas you once thought you couldn't do yourself. It sometimes takes hours of reading, sometimes staring at a problem and going through the process of all the steps you are going to take, and being logical and methodical about how you tackle it.
There were times when the field manuals for the CUCV didn't tell me certain things that had me frustrated, but the people on this forum who have "experience" helped me. For instance, I tore my hand up trying to get to the bolts holding the lift pump onto the block. I spent hours being frustrated.
@cucvrus had a post I found that said to take off the generator and bracket. Once I did this...it was easy peasy, and THAT is where experience comes in. The only thing you don't have is experience, but you have a brain, a working body and the manuals...this forum is the experience part. Hell, go read my post about changing my flexplate and torque converter. I had to do that job 3x to get it right. Now I have the experience, and I can do it again and again if I needed to.
Just my .06 cents (due to inflation)