Joanna Gaines Wasn’t Always Joanna Gaines
“For me, it was about learning to try.” ~Joanna Gaines
A few weeks ago I came across an interview that Chip and Joanna Gaines, of Fixer Upper and Magnolia fame, did with Jenna Bush. Always interested in success stories, I watched from beginning to end. I didn’t think much about the interview again until today when a thought hit me, “Joanna Gaines wasn’t always Joanna Gaines.”
I got the line from a favorite film of mine, Julie and Julia, in which struggling writer Julie Powell is waffling on starting a blog about spending a year cooking every recipe in her idol Julia Child’s famous tome, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. When Julie laments, “I’m not a real cook like Julia Child,” her husband deftly responds, “Julia Child wasn’t always Julia Child.”
Just listen. Stop and let the truth of that statement ring like a meditation bell. That is why I say that Joanna Gaines wasn’t always Joanna Gaines. What I believe to be as true is that Joanna Gaines would be the first person to agree. How do I know that? Because she’s always talking about her learning process.
I could have said her mistakes, but that is the problem. Successful people don’t focus on the mistakes themselves but on what they learn from them. In the interview I watched, Joanna and Chip both laugh at her first attempts at interior design. Her family tried to dissuade her from opening her first Magnolia store based on what they saw of her early design attempts.
It’s hard to imagine that she once created a different theme in every room or had a habit of using sailboats and lighthouses. It is clear now that she definitely has a personal style, and people can’t get enough of watching her do her magic on previously gaudy or rundown homes.
Julia Child herself was famous for telling the audiences of her cooking shows not to worry about failure. She often made on-camera blunders, once trying to flip an omelette that ended up splattered on the stove. As she nonchalantly picked up the lost pieces and pushed them back into the mix, she encouraged others not to lose faith. No one will know if you don’t tell them was her motto.
During the Stay At Home order of Covid-19, I started watching the Gaines’ show Fixer Upper on Hulu. Wanting to find a home of my own and have it reflect my personal style is a wish I have been focusing upon during these months, and Joanna proved to be an inspiration.
Late to the party, I join millions who want the same thing and wish we could have Joanna come do her magic on our homes. Last fall a book caught my eye because of my interest in gardening, We are the Gardeners, and I found out that it, too, was written by Joanna.
Both the interview and the book helped me to understand why someone like Joanna Gaines is so successful, and I am writing to reveal her “secret” because so many people believe that luck and talent rule the world. They don’t.
In We are the Gardners Joanna writes about how she and her children became gardeners. It all started with a tiny plant that Chip brought home one day. Everyone loved the plant, eventually to death. Even though the plant was over-loved and over-watered, that did not stop the family from continuing with their love of growing things.
The entire book is about the trial and error process of becoming a family of gardeners.The story is a model for having a growth mindset whenever we attempt to follow our hearts and do that thing we really want to do.
Growth mindset is a term created by Stanford psychologist and researcher, Carol Dweck. She and her colleagues worked with students, observing the ways they approached and reacted to learning challenges and failure. When students believed that their talents and abilities were fixed (fixed mindset) they looked at failure and challenges as signs that they didn’t have what it took to succeed. Students with a growth mindset reacted differently to those same challenges. Dweck in an interview with the Atlantic says,
“…when students had more of a growth mindset, they held the view that talents and abilities could be developed and that challenges were the way to do it. Learning something new, something hard, sticking to things — that’s how you get smarter. Setbacks and feedback weren’t about your abilities, they were information you could use to help yourself learn.”
People like to believe in the myth of overnight success but when we look closer at successful people, we find that so-called failure has been a regular part of their journey. I challenge readers to look into the stories of superstars like Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, and the late Whitney Houston. These women represent the height of success in the music and entertainment industries, but their successes did not come from simply singing in the shower or being discovered on a street corner.
What I like most about Joanna Gaines is her openness in sharing her journey with fans. What she is saying to the rest of us is that if we stick with something we want to do, we will develop the skills and talents we need to succeed. We can be like her, successful at something we enjoy doing.
Knowing that the people we admire have faced numerous challenges along the way to their success, and failed as well, should be the best news we’ve heard all day. It means that if we begin something that we’ve always wanted to do, and we expect to fail and learn from those failures, we will eventually find the success we are seeking. In the end, we will become someone different from who we were when we started.