Shoot for the moon and Miss Completely.

This line from Norah Jones 2008 album Come Away with Me, is steadily becoming my mantra for experimenting with new things in life.

Somewhere along the line, I created this truth that if it was meant to happen it would happen instantaneously or I’d be a natural at whatever I decided to do-these were the indicators that determined my destiny. In college when I was deciding to enter into medicine my biology professor told me “ you need to do what you love, but you also need to do what your good at.” I took this to confirm that if I wasn’t getting the science right away, then I shouldn’t be going into medicine. Now I know that I probably shouldn’t have listened to this professor. Especially after reading Carol Dweck’s book Mindset, where I realized how wrong I was in understanding my potential. (Interestingly, Carol Dweck ad my former biology professor taught at the same university where I attended school).

Carol describes that there are two distinct ways of thinking. The first way of thinking is the fixed mindset which assumes that character, creativity, and intelligence are given to us at birth. For instance, the fixed mindset would decide whether one was “naturally” good at math or as one who would never be good at math. The other way of thinking is called the growth mindset which thrives on challenges and believes that each experience will lead to growth in our existing abilities. With the growth mindset, one would believe that abilities in math were not predetermined but a skill to be worked on and improved upon. [Although I agree in the existence of both paradigms, I don’t believe that one paradigm dictates every area of a person’s life. I could have a growth mindset in areas like creativity while a fixed mindset on intelligence.]

But I think it’s important to examine the areas where we might carry a fixed mindset and ask ourselves, if we have been limiting ourselves in areas that could be growing. This gives me hope. I might not be a master fruit juggler, but it doesn’t mean I can’t be one day.

So get out there and start shooting at the moon and missing completely or just until you stop missing as much.