So today my car battery died, couldn't even be revived with a jump. I was able to walk to an auto store to get tools and a new battery (damn that mfer was heavier than I expected). I had never had to replace my own car battery before.
I screwed the fastener nuts the wrong way for like 5 minutes, cut my hand, and ultimately accidentally crossed the positive and negative terminals with a wrench that exploded in sparks. I don't even know what stopped me from being electrocuted but I didn't feel a thing.
While I'm happy I was able to take care of it myself and will be able to in the future, I also feel like such a dunce for not knowing wtf I was doing and almost shocking myself
As someone who's fairly handy (but sucks at lots of other things ofc), the only way you get better is by doing shit and giving yourself a little space to fuck up. I did all kinds of dumb shit to get to where I am, and I'm still not nearly as good at design as my older friend, or as good with cars as my mechanic buddy, or as good at following through on regular maintenance as my neurotypical friends.
I've broken off captive nuts internal to the frame of a car, I've glued in a stubborn alternator bolt, I've tried to cut steel chain with a metal chop saw and wrecked the blade. I've seen someone set off a sawstop, I've driven a car with no brakes like 30 miles to the nearest town, I've vaporized the tips off my multimeter leads by testing the voltage of a 40v battery with them in the 10A position, I've bent or broken plenty of (mostly crappy) tools, snapped the heads clean off 100 rusty bolts, rounded them on 50 more. I've shocked myself with 120v by working on a powered-on rack mount ethernet switch with it perched on my lap, and then continued to work on it on my lap and did it again. I could go on but the point is everyone does dumb shit sometimes you just live and learn and next time you take on an even bigger project thats even more out of your comfort zone, and the more you do it the better you get.
shit, half of being seen as "handy" is just confidence. If you tell someone "wellll I watched a youtube video and I think I could fix your plumbing issue, probably" people are gonna think "this person doesn't know shit, nice of them to offer at least but I better get a real plumber", but if you have absolutely no idea what you're doing but some blind confidence and you go "oh yeah I could fix that for sure. a plumbers gonna cost you a fortune, why don't we just do it ourselves?", you might well get seen as handy even if you just improvise and watch some youtube (not saying blind confidence is the way to go but don't sell yourself short or assume that "handy" people are all actually competent
Absolutely this on confidence. The first and most essential step is letting yourself be someone who can solve the problem. Next is being careful about it, sure.
Another big part is just careful attention to the parts available, as a huge number of intimidating problems (especially in plumbing) are solved by carefully browsing the catalogue and following up on the leads it offers.
Seconding everything said in this comment, confidence goes far.