In design studio today we made a table filled with failures separated with a door in the middle. The door represents the border between growth and fixed mindset. The fixed mindset half of the table was filled with the past failures that we hated and never wanted to see again. The other side was filled with the same failures but fixed in the ways that we envisioned for them to work. My failure, for example, was supposed to be a chair, that would be suspended in the air, hanging from a rope, in the end, it was four popsicle sticks hot glued together, to look like a mountain with stabilizers. It would have worked, had I had enough time to nurture the idea and turn it into a reality. That didn’t happen. Instead, it was a catastrophic failure, and it won’t ever be fixed. That kind of thinking is a fixed mindset, a growth mindset is basically the opposite, saying next time, I’ll manage my time more wisely and fix my mistakes and improve, I’ve seen this play out time and again throughout my life, my favorite was the time I decided to try to play baseball.
My favorite failure was last year, 2017, I was in 7th grade. It was the first time I had ever played baseball. My parents gave me a choice, baseball or football(I never played football before so I didn’t know how fun it was). I thought baseball was going to be easier physically, whereas football would be physically grueling, and now that I’ve done both, I was right. So I chose baseball. Long story short, I was awful at it, but my parents saw the potential for success. So they put me in a camp with another kid I knew from school. His name was Jordan Fehr.
The only thing that sold me on baseball was batting. That’s the only thing I knew how to do; swing a bat. The first season I played baseball, I was on a team with players that were all one grade above me so I thought it didn’t matter if I was good since they would just carry and pull my weight with theirs. Long story short, we lost every game except one, we faced that team twice and we lost to them the second time. We sucked. When I went back to school after the summer, I met a kid named Jordan Fehr. We both liked baseball except this kid was good, crazy good. I asked him how he got so good, and he told me that he went to a camp that met three days a week at a place called “The Batting Cages”. I told my mom about it and we agreed to do it. I went on the first day and I was lost. There were baseball culture and activities everywhere. It was mesmerizing, there were three individual batting cages, the constant smell of hot dogs, sports games on at all times on three TVs at central points throughout the place. It was small with a big personality. The trainer that seemed to be the head of the camp that I was attending was named CJ, I did not know this at the time, but it turns out the CJ was a former player for MLB team, Toronto Blue Jays. CJ mentored me for three camps in a row that summer, and all through the winter, and I got good, really good. Before CJ, I was afraid of the ball, I couldn’t hit, I was decent at catching the ball. I was the first baseman all my first year. After a year with CJ, I was a closer pitcher, and a starting first baseman, and the hardest hitter on the team.
Fast forward to spring. I thought that I would just be the same as last year, a failure, I only knew a fraction of my abilities when I came out of those camps. When I stepped out on that field for the first game of the season, I was terrified, my family was there, and I was fourth at-bat. There were two people on base and I was on deck. The person in the batter’s box, was good at getting on base because they had a very good eye for when the ball is a strike and what is a ball. He got walked and I was up to bat. It felt like an eternity before the pitcher wound up. Finally, he did, felt a sudden surge of calm, I saw the ball coming and everything that I had learned at camp just came rushing through my brain as if my life had flashed before my eyes. The ball seemed to be moving slower and slower until it was within 5 feet of my bat. It got right into the sweet spot, and I hit it, the first game of the season, my first ‘at-bat.’ and the ball went within 10 feet of the fence. An infield grand slam.
I’ve never felt more successful in all my life.
What I took away from this experience was that, if there is help available from professionals, use it. They know more than me, and they know how to make me better beyond my wildest dreams.
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