The Power of Trying Again: What My Plants Taught Me About Growth
When Advice Feels Like a Door Slammed Shut
I once was talking with someone about her plants, she had many. Beautiful and decorative they swooned all over her home. She had money plants, monsteras, fiddle leaf figs, you name it, she had it. I was impressed and keen to get better at looking after my plants - I could barely keep my spider plant alive- but nevertheless I was keen. So, ready to learn some tips from a very obvious plant wizard, I asked her for some advice. I can’t remember exactly what I asked but I was not prepared for her answer. She said that she felt people were either born with the ability to nurture plants or not. To her it was not something you could learn. You were green fingered or you weren’t. She wasn’t rude or anything and I could tell she was just giving me her genuine opinion. It was almost as if she didn’t want me to waste my time agonising over something that I had no chance of overcoming.
Black-and-White Thinking: Why It Feels True (Even When It’s Not)
I remember being immediately shocked because I felt it was such a limited way of thinking. I immediately recognised that this an example of the ‘black and white thinking’ I often see in clients I work with. This is a cognitive ‘distortion’ where people see issues, situations and other people in extreme and absolute terms leaving no room for grey areas. So, I am either good at this or bad at this. I am the best painter that ever lived or I am the worst. These kinds of patterns of thinking are informed by past experiences and act as a kind of ‘map’, a way of navigating the world that helps ease fears and protect against potential disappointments.
Now, I don’t actually like the word distortions because it makes it sound like the person is making up problems that don’t exist. When in reality they have come by this way of thinking due to very real experiences they have had in the world that have taught and trained them to expect certain things. A lot of these are real structural and society barriers that are not ‘in their heads’. However, the problem arises when they use these ‘maps’ to navigate situations and do not allow themselves to actually test and see if this map actually applies today in the current scenario.
Later when reflecting on the conversation, I realised that because this person was a high flyer and very accomplished in her career, I had assumed that she was also going to be open minded and less prone to such ‘distortions’. I realised that I had taken her career success to mean that she was open to learning and growing in all areas, at all times. I thought that she might have been used to setting visions and making them happen regardless of perceived limitations. And in doping so I failed to see that she is a human, with her own struggles.
You see, I have learned that people can have the ability to see their skills and abilities as well developed and capable of growing even further in one area (e.g. their career) and yet struggle to see this in another area of their lives (like their hobbies). But when we have such black and white thinking, we close the door to a world of possibilities. We inevitably create the dynamic we are afraid of, a self fulfilling prophecy if you like.
How One Plant Became Proof I Could Grow
Thankfully, by this point in my plant journey, I had managed to keep one particular plant alive for years, it was my miracle plant. Whilst others had come and gone, it was the one plant that seemed to take to me and my home. I did not seem to require much effort and allowed me room to learn. It seemed to survive the bouts that I forgot to water it and allowed me the space I needed to develop a routine and ritual to take care of my plants. It gave me hope. I too was learning about my own ‘distortions’ when it came to learning new skills.
Something I learned was that I needed to allow myself space to be a novice. Space to not know everything. This gave me the confidence to really take stock of my skills and instead of thinking about what I lacked in a negative light, I thought about it in terms of what areas do I need to develop and better yet, what areas do I need to be supported in. I asked another friend how she cared for her plants and was able to get some concrete advice about watering them. This was the area I struggled with the most. It turns out I had some black and white thinking of my own. I asked her, "how often do you water your plants?" She said that she did not adhere to a strict time schedule, but rather went by the soil and how it looked and felt. When it was time to water them, she took them into the shower and used the hand head shower head to rain down on them, giving them each a good spell. I had never heard this before and immediately tried it. It helped me immensely. Now my home is filled with plants, more than I ever could have imagined, some have grown incredibly well and I have repotted some too. This may sound like a small deal to seasoned plant parents but for me this is huge.
What If You’re Not Failing—Just Learning?
I am so glad I did not let my desire to take care of plants be squashed by the belief that one either has ‘green fingers’ or does not. In fact, I think it lit a fire in me to reject such limited thinking. More importantly, my miracle plant had given me hope, and was evidence that I could learn new skills despite multiple failures. And perhaps, they were not failures at all, perhaps they were just opportunities to recognize that what I was doing was simply not working. Maybe they were invitations to seek support and explore other ways of reaching my goal.
What we are really talking about here is whether we will allow ourselves space to develop a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. Psychologist Carol Dweck is a leading researcher on this phenomenon. She says that people with a fixed mindset believe that their intelligence and abilities are fixed and static leaving no real room or growth. Whereas those with a growth mindset believe that intelligence and talents can be improved through learning, effort and opportunities.
Don’t Edit Your Possibilities—Edit the Advice You’ve Been Given
It doesn’t make you a bad person if you have a fixed mindset but it can make life unnecessarily hard. I once heard Stacy Abrams say, ‘we edit our possibilities because we think they are too big for us’. It stayed with me and I ended up having this printed on my vision board. Now can we go for every single thing that comes to mind? No. But what a gift we give to ourselves when we allow ourselves to try on other ways of thinking and give ourselves room to dream, learn and grow. So instead of editing your possibilities, take this as permission to edit the advice you receive. Especially for the things you really want.
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