Auto Body Technician Career Perks: Here’s Why Working with Your Hands Is so Rewarding

Working in a blue-collar trade often includes physical tasks, whether operating machinery, painting a house, or opening the hood of a car. But few people know that physical work can actually have a variety of physical and mental benefits.

Additionally, having the technical skills needed to complete manual jobs can make a significant difference in guaranteeing future job security. Working with your hands can make for not only a fulfilling career, but satisfaction in mind and body as well. Here’s how you can reap the rewards of a hands-on career.

Working with Your Hands Works Your Brain Too

Engaging in any physical activity affects the way we think. Running, for instance, releases the chemical dopamine in our brains, which in turn makes us feel good. You know that feeling you get during physical work, where it feels like your mind switches off and you’re in the zone, fully focused on the task at hand (no pun intended)? That feeling is caused by endorphins, which are a biological response that makes us feel stronger, happier, and even more confident. It also produces serotonin, which helps regulate our mood and contributes to emotional stability.

Similarly, our brain chemistry changes when we work with our hands because it forges new neuro pathways that a less physical environment wouldn’t necessarily use. In other words, we’re using a different, larger part of our brain with physical labour than we do with mental work, and having a more active day job gives our minds a bigger workout than one that’s more stationary.

There Are Health Benefits for Physical Jobs Like an Auto Body Technician Career

In addition to giving your brain a workout, physical activity can also boost your personal health. When we work with our hands, our goal is, ultimately, to create something, and the more physical the final product is, the more personal satisfaction we get at finishing it. An auto body technician, for instance, can take a rusty, falling-apart car and by restoring it, now has something that proves they put in the work that led to a tangible result.

Working with our hands encourages our ability to problem-solve as well as our creativity, and contributes to a sense of manual competence, which boosts our self-esteem and confidence in guaranteeing a job well done. Using your hands also motivates what’s known as an effort-driven rewards circuit, which can help to alleviate stress and underlying symptoms associated with depression. A body that’s in harmony with its brain can also have a boost in immunity, avoid heart disease, and keep an active mind, which wards off mental degeneration and illnesses.

Manual Skills Have an Edge over Technology

Simply put, physical work can do tasks that machines can’t. The technical skills that students learn in auto body schools can’t be outsourced or digitally replaced, because the day-to-day tasks require demonstrable use of your hands to solve a problem. Current technology does not have the full sophistication of the human touch, and doesn’t have the capability to address the complex maintenance and variables of everyday physical work. Additionally, because no technology exists that can fix a car, paint a house, or even perform surgery, there is still a high demand for work that has to be done with your hands that other people may not be able to do themselves.

Are you interested in auto body technician careers?

Contact your local Automotive Training Centre today for more information!