Coaching for Multipotentialites, Scanners and Polymaths

Are you a polymath or renaissance person?  Here’s my coaching process!

[VIDEO TRANSCRIPT]: 

When working with multipotentialites, the number one question is about career.

The Big Question

How do I create a life and a career that I love while still being able to pursue all of my different interests? 

I’d like to walk you through my process of how I take multipotentialites from a place of overwhelming chaos to organized curiosity.

 

Embrace Your Multipotentialite Brain

The first part is to “start from where you are” if you haven’t already embraced this idea of who you are and that you’re a curious mind and that it’s okay. 

For sure pick up Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher or of course Emilie Wapnick’s book How to Be Everything. 

I highly recommend both of those to start to give you that feeling that it’s okay to be who you are in this very specialized world that is constantly telling you that there’s something wrong with you. 

When you’re in this place of overwhelm and lack of clarity, it’s really difficult to decide. 

Because you have all the talent and energy and intelligence to go do all of these different paths and do very well. 

But they all seem to have equal weight, so where do you even start to sort this out, and how can you choose one versus another? 

I believe that the first step is not talking about all the different potential career paths. 

 

Eliminating the “Shoulds”

The first step is to see what has influence over you. 

We want to make sure we eliminate any influences that are “shoulding” in your mind that you should be this or should do that. 

So we’re going to look at cultural influences, what your family would say about what you should pursue, and what your schooling was like. 

And we want to eliminate all of those influences that are yelling in your head, so that you can tune into your own voice–your own voice that is more of a whisper. 

Once we’ve eliminated all those different influences, and you have cleaner communication with yourself, then we get into organizing and prioritizing what the different paths might look like.

 

Organizing and Prioritizing for Polymaths

Another book I recommend is Designing Your Life. 

This one asks a lot of really good questions about what’s important to you and also has you gauge where you fall in terms of energy and enthusiasm for some of the different areas that you prototype as you look at potential career paths. 

Now when it comes to organization, as a multipotentialite myself, I really resisted this early on in my life, because I didn’t want my life to be routine and boring. 

Colleagues and people who know me think that I am super organized. In reality, I’m not–I’ve just found the right systems, and the right systems keep me in line. 

Here is the truth of the matter:  when you’re more organized, you have more freedom to do the things you want. You will not have a boring life. Getting yourself organized will actually give you so much more freedom and so much more time to pursue your different interests. 

There’s many tools for organization and I would recommend different tools depending on who you are as a multipotentialite. 

So once you’ve prioritized and organized, then it’s time to start creating your next thing or maybe more than one thing. 

 

The Entrepreneurial Assessment

Before we start creating what’s next, we’re going to take an assessment. 

I’ve been working with the BOSI DNA assessment for many years, and I worked very closely in the past with the founder Joe Abraham.

This is the same assessment that I administer at Rice University’s MBA program. 

So that way, we can not only start to determine what are the best types of things for you to pursue as an entrepreneur, but also who you should partner with, what should you outsource, what are the things that are going to bring you energy and what are the things that are going to drain your energy? 

 

A Word of Caution for Scanner Entrepreneurs

Here’s the one word of caution that I have for multipotentialites who are entrepreneurial: Every entrepreneur that I know who has built multiple streams of income, they’ve done it one or two at a time. 

Yes you have a ton of interests. Yes you could pursue all these different ones, but the best way to do it is to get one or two up and running. 

Go ahead and kind of expend all that jet fuel to get the jumbo jet up in the air, and then it takes a lot less time and energy to maintain that particular income stream. And then you work on the next one. 

Use the Best Tools for Business

So when you’re creating what’s next, if it is a business, we want to make sure that you’re using the latest and best business techniques, make sure your website converts, and make sure you have a good marketing plan. 

You don’t want to just jump into it and get involved with all kinds of social media without having a plan in place.

The advantage that you have as a multipotentialite is that you love learning. And so there’s all different types of platforms that have their own language that you get to learn about. 

There’s always a new way to apply what you already know and to learn new things. 

For those that don’t want to start their own business or freelance, keep in mind one thing: there has to be variety in what’s next. 

And in the prototyping process that I mentioned earlier, part of that process will be interviewing people and finding mentors and getting the information of what a day in the life is really like. 

You don’t want to spend a whole lot of time and energy and money getting educated for something that the daily life is going to suck. 

 

Seek Diversity and a Learning Curve

So for sure if you’re looking at the next job versus creating your own freelance or entrepreneurial business, you have to absolutely make sure that there’s variety in that thing that you’re pursuing. Because as soon as you learn something, you’re kind of done with it. 

So make sure that either you get to learn continuously in that role, or you’re working for a smaller company where you’re able to wear a lot of hats. 

 

The Fun Part: Take Action!

So once we’ve eliminated the outside influences, we’ve organized and prioritized all the different paths we can take, and we’ve created what’s next, the next thing is to have a plan of action and execute. 

And when you have a plan that’s mapped out, then the rest of it is easy. 

Keep in mind that any other personal development obstacles that may be in your way, any beliefs about yourself or about the world–anything else that could hold you back, that’s also what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years.

So that’s the process that I use when working with multipotentialites. 

 

Remember That I’m a Multipotentialite, Too — I Get It

Throughout the years I’ve had a disproportionate amount of curious minds who approach me. I love working with multipotentialites! 

I’ve overcome just about all of the difficulties that you can have, with looking at a whole bunch of different paths, and not knowing what to do. 

Feeling like a failure, like and impostor, feeling like I should be doing something differently–what’s wrong with me!? 

I can help with all of that. 

My trial session is free of charge–we’ll have a conversation for 45 minutes to an hour.

I very much look forward to our conversation to see if we’re a fit for working together. 

Talk to you soon.