For the longest time, I thought I had a black thumb and even had the nickname of “Cactcus Killer”. Many years ago, a friend gave me a small planter with three cacti. I wasn’t really sure what to do with it, so I put it in a window in our bathroom that had a shade that was always pulled down. I would water it occasionally when I remembered. Fast forward two years, and all three cacti were dead from not being watered. Yeah, I’m the person who killed not one, not two, but three cacti by not watering them.
Because of that, I just thought, “I can’t grow plants.” After reading Carol Dweck’s Mindset, I realized that I very firmly held a fixed mindset in this area of my life. Or as Tony Robbins would call it, not just a belief, but a deep conviction that I couldn’t have a green thumb. It was just an inherent trait that I couldn’t change. Boy, was I so very wrong about that—in a good way!
Fast forward to 2019, after I left my nursing career and started my first business, I had some more time on my hands and new camera gear to get familiar with. So, I went to the store and bought a few flower plants to take photos of. When I got them, I really thought they wouldn’t last long, but I could still get some good photos before I killed them. Well, I was half right—I got great photos, but they stayed alive. One of the plants is still, to this day, out on our deck and continuing to grow (the other plants were just annuals, so they were meant to die—something I have since learned).
The following year, I decided I wanted to plant kale (because we were eating a ton of it at the time), tomatoes, and peppers. I started everything from seed. Again, because I was still partially in the fixed mindset of “I will kill all of these plants,” I planted all of the seeds in each seed packet. If you know anything about plants, you know that means I ended up with A LOT of plants, like a lot. I ended up harvesting so many pounds of kale, and probably thousands of tomatoes and peppers—all on our tiny 2nd story deck that is only about 3 feet deep and 20 feet long. To give further context, we live in a townhome complex that is essentially just a concrete jungle, and where there is grass or plant life, it is minimal and sprayed quarterly.
Each year since, I have planted and grown plants from seeds and some from starter plants I purchased from the Amish. And each year, I end up with what looks like a jungle on my deck because I keep underestimating my skills. Now, not every plant I have flourishes—I have had plenty that die. But at this point, I have had more that have flourished than not.
And a super funny story for this year’s plantings…
I decided that I wanted to grow more flower plants this year to attract more pollinators (last year, we had a ton of bees and even a few hummingbirds). So in the late winter, when we were at the grocery store and the seed packets were finally out, I looked through them and picked out a bunch that mentioned they were good for pollinators. Well, it turns out that two of them produce plants that are quite large. I kept going out every day as they were growing, and the one looked like a sunflower, and even the app Seek kept identifying it as a sunflower, but I was adamant I didn’t buy any sunflower seeds. Well, it turns out I did—the seed packet says Red Tithonia, but they are Mexican Sunflowers. When I told Damien, he was like, “didn’t you read the packet?” and I was like, “well, I saw it said good for pollinators but not that it will grow to five feet tall!” I get excited.
Anyway… how does this all relate to business? Well, it is a great (and long and kind of hilarious) lesson on how important it is to get out of the fixed mindset. We aren’t limited by our traits—we can constantly learn and grow—we just have to believe we can (“Believe in the ball and throw yourself. You can do it!” - The Wise Janitor) and then do, and fail, change some things and do again—rinse and repeat. I am specifically not using the word “try” here because it is a word that creates doubt and suggests that it is unlikely that you will succeed. So, we’ll go with Yoda here, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
Share your experiences and insights in the comments below!