Dear Reader,
I have made a discovery, one that makes my world and hopefully yours make a little more sense. That discovery you ask? It was the moment I realised I was a multipotentialite. A mouthful I know, but that just makes it all the more exciting. A multipotentialite is somebody who has a wider range of interest than the average person and I would argue ambitions too.
This journey started about 3 weeks ago when an Irish man named Nicholas Grundy introduced himself to me and invited me to listen to his TEDx Talk.
Which I did and soon I realised it was like looking at my future self. Nick is a professional photography now, he’s fluent in German, he is a speaker and also somehow has fitted in the time to see much of the world. These are all interest we have in common, but he also told me he is an engineer and has done time in the army. Looking at Nick I saw my doppelgänger, not in terms of the interest we have in common but rather the amount of them. I found it fascinating.
For the first time in my life, I had met somebody who did not just have a passing interest in so many things but was passionate enough to peruse so many dreams and ambitions just like I try to do every day. Nick’s talk was called “How to become a Jack of all trades and a master of some” Yes “some” rather than the more popularized “none” The talk gave me hope that it can be done and I am not doomed to a life of underachieving because I can’t settle on one thing or rather I get distracted from one passion for another one. Right now it is this topic of the multipotentialite.
From my own experience, I find that people settle on a few set things and that’s it. Have you noticed the same? They become a web designer or an accountant for example and just are happy to do that for the next 30-40 years of their life. They then take up a hobby. For example, the guitar and maybe a sport to top it off. While there is nothing wrong with that and I definitely see the sense in focusing on a few areas and becoming strong in all of them, in recent years I have found that it’s very different for me.
I hope you the reader have found that thing in your life that keeps you up with excitement at night because you’re just that exhilarated about doing it the next day. If you haven’t I beg you to go out and find it. When people ask me what I’m going to do after college I never really know what to say. Not because I don’t have passions or plans but rather I have too many. I have ambitions to be a professional photographer, I want to be a writer, I want to travel the world, I want to be a career coach for others, I want to work in football, I want to work in a job where I get to use my German and finally I want to follow in the footsteps of people like Brendon Burchard and get involved in “Thought Leadership”. I am open to job title suggestions if you have any? I have learned over the last few weeks I am not alone with this and that I should embrace been a multipotentialite and not settle for anything different.
The term multipotentialite was formed from by an American artist named Emilie Wapnick. I came across her on, you guessed it the Ted Stage where she talks about her experiences as a multipotentialite. Like her I feared that “I was scattered or that I was self-sabotaging, afraid of my own success” Emilie soon after mentions a few people who have many career paths throughout their lives and all I could think about what the late Steve Jobs said to a group of Stanford Graduates as he gave his commencement speech. It went as follows “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect the dots looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worth path and that will make all the difference”
So after the talk I rushed home I wrote down all the things that I enjoy doing and all the main experiences in my life that I feel have made me the person I am today and started literally connecting the dots and trying to figure out how my dots will connect. It was amazing when I really set my mind to it I realised that some of the dots have already connected.
I realised that the reason I want to get involved in thought leadership and career coaching is because I understand the struggling of been confused about what you want to do with your life. My desire to travel comes from my love of photography and my love of writing comes from enjoying poets like Philip Larkin back in school. Who would have thought that a love of poetry and deciding last minute to do a photography class because it was too late to sign up for anything else would unearth a near-unhealthy obsession with the concept of living abroad and poetry about WW1 would lead to me writing pieces like this? I most certainly did not.
In the world of the internet and globalisation, it is now easier than ever to experience new concepts, ideas and to find things you are passionate about. So why does society demand that we commit to so few things and miss out on so much?
As a multipotentialite, it is easy to become the Jack or Jackie of all trades and master of none and this is the trap I find myself falling into from time to time.
I pressed Nick about how he did it and he gave me advice that in hindsight makes perfect sense. The advice was that to be a jack of all trades and a master of some the key is to focus on one or two of them at a time and become good at them and then gradually move onto another. I often fall into the trap of chasing all my goals every day even if it’s only five minutes and in reality end of half doing everything. I felt if I was not working on something every day I had no hope of ever getting better. The sad truth is we may try and kid ourselves but it is focus not multi-tasking that achieves results in this world. In fact, as a multipotentialite focus is even more vital because you won’t have as much time as others to become better at something so you have to make the time you have count.
At this point, it would be easy to think of been a multipotentialite as a bad thing but I assure you it is not, and that’s a very important lesson for everybody especially those who fall into this category. You have to be the hero of your own story and I believe this is my superpower. But like any superpower it’s about controlling it and not letting your life lose direction. I have already mentioned the negatives but there are also many positives.
The main strengths of this talent and I repeat talent are adaptability and creativity. First of all, creativity is the creation of something new that is useful. New creative ideas come from exposing ourselves to new ways of thinking and beliefs. What you know already is one line while what you don’t know is another and creativity is what happens in between those. Multipotentialite’s are constantly exposing themselves to new things, new people, new hobbies and situations. Because of this we have a far greater chance of creating something new. There are more dots, to connect. To be efficient I will give you an example of creativity while taking about adaptability.
Multipotentialite’s can adapt to any situation because it’s not just something we do because we have to but it’s a part of our very nature. To find new challenges and explore them. Adaptability and variety are great skills to have. As a football fan, I have noticed a shift in the type of footballer we see. 10 - 12 years ago the best players were the specialists. The great goal poachers like Michael Owen, the great tacklers like Roy Keane or an out and out crosser of the ball like David Beckham. But today the best players are the players who can do everything. The best goalkeepers like Manual Neuer are as good with their feet as their outfield teammates, players like Ronaldo who are strong and pacey but still have a bag of tricks and maybe the most obvious example, the player who is about to become the world’s most expensive footballer ever, Paul Pogba. He is a midfielder who would be a match for any footballer physically, he can pass, he can shoot, he can run all day, and he has more tricks up his sock (yes sock) than a magician.
Did you see the originality of that last paragraph? I dare you to try and find the another article with the words “Paul Pogba” and “multipotentialite” in it. But I guarantee you will be left empty handed.
Because of globalisation and the internet the world has never been so full of ideas and perspectives. Variety is the way we must tackle ever more complicated problems. The world needs people to think outside the box and to be able to see things in a more tolerant, creative and passionate way. The ideas we have to be one thing when we grow up, or that you defined by what you study or doing right now need to be thrown out this instant.
Kind Regards,
Your faithful Multipotentialite,
Diarmuid
F.Y.I
Check out Emilie Wapnick's talk here
Check out Nick's ted talk here
For a fantastic podcast about the potential of multipotentialite's check out this episode call "So Crazy it Just Might Work" from This American life about a Music techer trying to find a cure for a cancer with th power of music
