Growing
I never really learned how to garden. There… I said it! It feels virtually un-Canadian to confess that I don’t really know how to garden. This spring, I noticed how often people would ask about my garden. Depending on the relationship, I would either talk about my husband’s garden - to say he has a green thumb is an understatement - or talk about having a “brown” thumb - my plant survival rate is dismal!
The universe often can be relied upon to serve opportunities on a platter, and I re-read some of Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindsets as I prepared for an engagement earlier this year. It struck me that my perception of myself as a gardener is firmly rooted in a fixed mindset.
According to Professor Dweck, there are two ways to view our abilities. We can believe that we have an innate ability to do certain things (a “fixed” mindset) or that our abilities result from focused effort, good planning, and support from others (a “growth” mindset). In a 2016 Harvard Business Review article, she points out that we all move between fixed and growth mindset moments.
The Imagineers at Disney use the Disney Creativity Strategy to create some of the projects we know - from theme parks to rollercoasters. The process calls on three parts of ourselves: the visionary, who can boldly envision the future; the realist, who can take a bold vision and turn it into a plan; and the critic, who can find the holes in every plan to develop actionable steps to make small and big plans a reality.
As I contemplated the unruly and derelict flower bed outside my office window, it dawned on me that I could use these concepts to tame some of the chaos! Armed with a vision of a bed with hydrangeas my grandmother would have been proud of (she was a connoisseur), a pair of brand-new gardening gloves, and reminders added to my phone for all the things I normally will forget to attend to in the garden, I am hoping that the hydrangeas will survive my learning curve as I convert my fixed brown thumb to a growing green one. Luckily, I know many excellent gardeners who can support me with advice and feedback as the summer unfolds. I will let you know how the experiment proceeds.
In the interim, here are some questions to ponder:
Where might a fixed mindset be stopping your growth?
Which vision might unlock your growth in new arenas?
I would love to hear about what and how you plan to grow this summer!
