Breaking the Ceiling

When I was a little girl (as opposed to the short woman I am today), I would listen to my uncle and his wife talk about how every musician has a ceiling. This ceiling was a scary concept, because it stood for the top level a musician could achieve and never grow beyond, and you just never knew when you would hit yours… 👻

This prospect haunted me through my years at the conservatory, as I kept scanning for signs I’d hit the limit of my abilities.

Now that I’m well into my thirties, switched careers not once, not twice, but three times, have 6 years of therapy under my belt, and a decade-long special interest in personal development, I’ve realized two things:

1. The fear my uncle and aunt instilled in me was based on a stuck mindset.
2. Moving beyond it takes both awareness and action.

These days, I believe that everyone has a ceiling in terms of how far their talent, enthusiasm, and perseverance will take them. But when you reach that point, you can get curious about doing things a different way so you can break that ceiling.

I also know that if natural ability got you pretty far, say, all the way through your master’s degree, it can be extra difficult to break that ceiling.

When things come easily for a long time, it becomes part of your identity. The mental effort and strain that come with deliberate practice just feel a little too uncomfortable, a little too hard. This isn’t what it’s supposed to feel like, right?

Wrong, it turns out (for me at least).

I need to learn to sit with the uncertainty and discomfort of not knowing how to proceed, and try anyway. Learn smarter ways of working that allow me to build on my previous work and develop my thinking.

I’m a law scholar in heart and kidneys, as the Dutch saying goes. But as the annotation I started to write in 2022 grew into an academic article, which kept expanding until I realized it was going to be a dissertation, I ran into the limitations of legal dogmatic research.

That’s why I’m learning about systems research: how it can shape my thinking in intellectual property law, and what it might mean for scientific (and personal!) development more broadly.

This space is where I explore what it takes for me and my research to break the ceiling.