So Apparently There's a Word for People Like Us-Multipotentialite

A few of my favorite things

You may be wondering what is a multipotentialite?

A multipotentialite is someone with many interests and creative pursuits — someone who doesn't have One True Calling, and who maybe never will, and who is actually fine about it once they stop apologizing for it or beating themself up over it.

English major here, so I always want to start with the word itself. "Multi" is obvious. But "potentialite" — it's about potential. Plural potential. The idea that you could go in many directions, and that this isn't indecision, it's capacity.

"The question was never 'why can't you focus?' It was always 'why are you trying to be one thing when you were built to be several?'"

Emilie Wapnick, who popularized the term, gave a TED Talk about it that's been watched something like 9 million times. Which tells you how many people heard it and went: oh thank goodness, it's not just me.

The "pick one thing" myth

Here's what I think is really going on. We built a lot of our institutions — school, career ladders, LinkedIn profiles — around the idea of specialization. Go deep. Stay in your lane. Become the foremost expert in a very specific thing.

And that genuinely works for some people! Specialists are wonderful and necessary. I am not knocking the specialists.

But it is not the only valid shape for your life. And we've been so focused on the specialist model that people who don't fit it end up feeling like they're failing — when really they're just playing a different game that nobody told them had a name.

The classic knock is "jack of all trades, master of none." But the saying originally was “jack of all trades” full stop. It originally was meant to be high praise!

What we're actually good at

Multipotentialites tend to be fast learners — not because we're naturally smarter, but because we've learned how to learn. Every new interest was once completely foreign territory. We've done this before. We know how to be a beginner without falling apart about it. (Mostly.)

We're also really good at translation — moving between disciplines, between people, between ideas that have never been introduced to each other. That's not nothing. That's actually quite rare.

Every random thing has lead to this path

I wouldn’t be good at my day job if I hadn’t decided to open a business years ago. All of the tips and tricks and project management software I’ve learned about have lead me to being really good at operations.

Along with that all of my interests, whether it is sewing, perfume, textiles, project management software, DIY or taking a job in Iraq have lead me to where I am today. Smart, capable and lead by curiosity. Oh! And I have a lot of great stories to tell.

I'm a life coach, and I can help you with this

Here's the thing — I didn't just stumble onto the word multipotentialite and feel better and move on. I've spent a lot of time working through what it actually means to build a life around this, and I do that work with my coaching clients too.

Because knowing you're a multipotentialite is one thing. Figuring out how to stop explaining yourself, find work that actually fits, and trust the nonlinear path you're on? That takes a little more than a TED Talk.

If you've been sitting with this feeling that you're too scattered, too restless, a failure because you start things but don’t finish them — I want you to know you're not alone. And if you want some help figuring out what to do with all of that, I'm here for it.

I've spent years feeling like I couldn't commit to one thing. Turns out that's kind of the whole point.

Life Coaching

If you want to find out more about what how Life Coaching can help, please sign up for a free half hour Curiosity Call. You can ask all the questions you have to learn about how Life Coaching can help you.