Emilie Wapnick's Blog, page 2

Why You Need a Staycation & How to Make It Happen

As the school year comes to an end and the weather starts to improve in many parts of the West, a lot of us are thinking about vacations. But as the cost of living crisis stretches on and political landscapes across the world continue to tremor, most of us are probably pushing the thought out of our minds as quickly as it surfaces.

For multipotentialites who are juggling unpredictable incomes and unconventional workflows, a vacation might seem even more mythical. But a luxury two-week vacay in a tropical resort isn’t the only way to take a break.

The humble staycation is often overlooked and underrated. But I think it’s just what the doctor ordered this summer!

What even is a staycation?

Technically, a staycation is when you take a “holiday” but you don’t actually leave your home. Instead, you fill your days with fun and relaxing activities in and around your residence. However, I like to extend the definition of staycations to also include trips where you might stay away from home but you’re within the familiar territory of your local area, for example, you might stay at a friend’s house in the next town, or at a guesthouse in the suburbs.

The whole point of a staycation is to find the joy and wonder of a vacation without spending too much money or straying too far from home, and it’s a particularly great option if you have limited time off. A staycation could be as simple as a day trip, or you could stretch it out over a week.

A staycation is not an excuse to stay rooted in the demands of your daily life. If you’re still working, eating the same old meals you cook every week and spending half the day doing chores, it’s not a staycation. Whether you’re in your house or down the road at a friend’s, you should act the same way you would if you were halfway across the world!

3 reasons every multipotentialite needs a staycation

A staycation can have tons of benefits for anyone, but there are some specific things that make it a must for multipotentialites!

1. It boosts your creativity

Whether you work in a traditionally creative job or not, creativity is a multipotentialite’s best friend! Multipotentialites approach work and life in a way that goes against the grain, and many are also entrepreneurs. So, a boost in creativity is always welcome. When planning a staycation, you arguably have to get a bit more creative than you do on a traditional holiday. You need to look at familiar surroundings with fresh eyes and figure out how to turn your hometown into a dream destination.

2. It forces you to create boundaries.

As passionate people working across a range of projects, multipotentialites can be a little lax when it comes to healthy boundaries around our work. This is especially true for those of us who work from home. When you love what you do, and when you’re your own boss, it can be difficult to step away, take breaks, and practice good work hygiene. 

If you decide to take a staycation within your own home, you’ll be forced to reinvigorate your boundaries around work and life. You might do some spring cleaning and move all your work-related items out of the bedroom and living areas and into a study. You might turn off mobile notifications for apps like email and Slack…and then realize you can leave them off even when you come back to work. You might set clear boundaries for your staycation with clients and collaborators, which will give you the practice and confidence to do so with things like working hours and communication preferences when you’re back to work.

3. You need a break!

I don’t need to know you to know that you need a break. It’s been a helluva few years and waiting for things to “get back to normal” is a futile task. Be really honest with yourself—when was the last time you took a real break? Not an evening off, or a weekend where you did some fun activities but still checked your emails. A real, intentional, rejuvenating break. 

Trust me, I know how hard it can be to fully switch off when there are just so many things calling for our attention. But if we can give ourselves the grace of one day, one weekend, one week of truly disconnecting and focusing on rest, we’ll finally be refilling a cup that probably hasn’t been full for a while. Even though we might battle feelings of guilt, this kind of rest is truly one of the best things we can do for our health and for our careers.

Start planning your staycation

So, have I convinced you? Great! Here are some of my top tips for planning a staycation that rivals all the beach breaks your friends have been posting on Instagram (almost).

Set an intention

What do you really want and need from this break? Is it full on, uninterrupted rest? Or maybe you need some adventure? Do you need to reconnect with friends? Or perhaps you want to get active? Setting an intention will help you plan a staycation that you’ll truly be excited for!

Get the family involved…or not!

If you have a partner and/or kids, you need to decide whether they’re part of your staycation, or part of the support team that’ll help you make it happen. If you need solo time, your partner can help by taking care of all household and childcare responsibilities for the week. If you want some romantic time for you and your significant other, you’ll need to make arrangements for childcare. If this is a full family affair, make sure you plan things in advance in order to limit your care-related workload during the staycation—for example, researching kids clubs and activities or pre-planning meals.

Set a budget

Just because you’re not traveling abroad, doesn’t mean you don’t need to set a budget. Doing this will also allow you to spend more freely during your staycation because you’ve already budgeted and set aside the amount of money you need.

Invite friends

A solo staycation might be exactly what you need. But if you’d rather make it a group trip, get your friends involved! I’m sure they need a break just as much as you do and will be grateful for the push.

You’re all set!

With these tips, you can get started planning the holiday of your dreams without the stress of flying, travel insurance or learning a new language. Whether this staycation is one day or longer, I hope it provides you the rest, excitement and joy that you deserve.

Your turn

Have you taken a staycation before? What will you do on your next one? We’d love to hear your experiences in the comments!

Doing/being/exploring ALL THE THINGS is easier with a community!

Did you know we have a private community of hundreds of multipotentialites from around the world? We support each other, share advice and cheer each other on as we build lives and careers around ALL our passions.

Learn more and join the Puttyverse community here:

The post Why You Need a Staycation & How to Make It Happen appeared first on Puttylike.

Multipotentialite Mentorship Changes Lives. Are You Ready to Step Up?

What is the first memory you have of coming into your own as a multipotentialite? For me, it’s my teachers and extended family members being supportive of my many projects as a child. With their support, I used to publish a handmade zine every summer, documenting moments from my day-to-day life in words and images. 

This was the starting point of my writing for an audience, even before I took to blogging actively as a preteen. In a way, if I hadn’t had the support of my teachers, family and the mentors who shaped my many projects, I would be nowhere close to the multipotentialite I am today.

Well, I’m older now! So, what if the tables were turned and I encountered a young multipotentialite—someone who showed tons of diverse interests and equal gusto to participate in them all? How can seasoned multipotentialites support burgeoning multipotentialites to live fulfilled multi-faceted lives? 

Many of us are grateful to the encouraging support systems we found along the way in our winding multipotentialite journeys. For others, this story may have looked different. If you didn’t have multipotentialite cheerleaders to help you, mentoring a young multipod could be an incredible opportunity to heal and give someone else the support you never received.

Here are five ways to offer your support and mentor a young multipotentialite:

1. Offer words of encouragement. They can last a lifetime

The multipotentialite journey is filled with immense self-reflection and, often, imposter syndrome. When I look back at my own journey as a writer, although I know that self-doubt must have been present, all I remember is getting regular encouragement from my family and teachers. Across my circle of extended family and friends, I was known as the “writing kind” and people took me seriously enough to give me several chances when I messed up.

While bosses and mentors can play carrot and stick , it is important to bolster confidence in young multipotentialites by reminding them that they will get better at whatever they are trying to do. Make it clear that practice and patience go a long way toward honing skills and developing talent over time. As a multipotentialite, you know the challenges inherent in our way of life better than anyone else. So be as kind as you can and support the budding multipotentialite through words of affirmation.

2. Share your journey so that young multipotentialites don’t feel alone

At my former workplace, I was responsible for onboarding and mentoring interns. Most of them were between schools and colleges, and had joined us to learn about project management, while supporting the staff at large. In my time as a mentor to these young minds, I learnt a lot from them. One of my biggest takeways from mentoring is that you have to be vulnerable and share your journey with your mentees. The interns that I worked with didn’t have lives that looked just like mine. But several of them struggled with something I understand deeply: having multiple interests and being interested in pursuing several things all at once, but lacking the direction and support to realize that. 

In opening up to a young multipotentialite, you will allow them to see a future version of themselves. You can instill confidence in their hope that it is possible to do a lot of things together and be good at some of them, too. You cannot possibly explain what being a multipotentialite entails without opening up about your journey. Share your vulnerabilities and listen to them when they open up about their strengths and weaknesses. These conversations can go a long way toward giving a young person confidence to move forward with a dream. 

3. Offer support by helping to hone their skills

Many young multipotentialites are filled with bright ideas, but lack direction in their quest to execute them. If I look back at my journey with bass playing, I can see that I wouldn’t be anywhere without the YouTube tutorials where I picked up my basics. However, I needed a few conversations with a senior bass player from the indie music community in India to set me up with those. He helped me identify the YouTubers that would be useful to me (way back in 2006-’07, in the nascent stage of the platform). It was such a small thing, but without those links, I wouldn’t have been able to teach myself the instrument.

Helping to hone skills doesn’t need to mean sitting with someone daily or tutoring them one on one. A little help in discerning the most appropriate resources, or doing some research on behalf of a young multipotentialite, can take them a long way on their journey.

4. Measure your criticism when giving feedback

As a multipotentialite, I feel the urge to offer feedback—not just to others like me but also to those who are seemingly specialists in their area of work. However, there’s often a thin line between critiquing work and criticizing it. Don’t forget that your delivery of the feedback and the way it is received by a young multipotentialite can be wildly different.

In order to ensure that you’re not harsh, try to understand their shortcomings and what resources are available to them, as well as their interest level and their ability to pick up on any skills needed to complete a given project. It is also critical to look at their age before going all out dispensing advice and guiding them through words. Sometimes all that a 10-year-old multipotentialite needs is validation for doing a task, not details of how they could have done better (from someone with triple their experience). Ensure that you are kind. Build their connection to their interests by guiding gently as opposed to discouraging them with unwarranted brutal honesty.

5. Consult with their parents and guardians to guide them better

Young multipotentialites can have all the intent in the world, but none of it is useful without their parents or guardians on board. If you have identified a young multipotentialite who is struggling to be themselves, it can be helpful to see that their parents and guardians understand what multipotentialites look like and how we function.

In South Asia, where I live, families tend to hyper-fixate on academics and co-curriculars as means to get into good colleges and find stable jobs. If a young multipotentialite gets enough support, the pressure to deliver results can ease up a little and they can shine better and brighter.

The onus is upon the well-settled multipotentialite to inform, educate and help nurture others better so they can be empowered in their multipod lives to do whatever awesome things they intend to do!

It is also important to establish boundaries and not overpromise. Your time and resources are finite and you do not want to lead a young multipotentialite and their guardians towards a situation where you cannot deliver what you have offered. Not only can the impact of not honoring a promise be devastating, but it can also be counter-productive to your mentee’s trust in you.

Your turn

Have you ever known a young multipotentialite? How do you support and encourage young multipotentialites around you? Do you have any words of wisdom for others who are mentoring and nurturing budding multipotentialites? Share your experience in the comments.

Doing/being/exploring ALL THE THINGS is easier with a community!

Did you know we have a private community of hundreds of multipotentialites from around the world? We support each other, share advice and cheer each other on as we building lives and career around ALL our passions.

Learn more about the Puttyverse and get notified next time we open the doors:

The post Multipotentialite Mentorship Changes Lives. Are You Ready to Step Up? appeared first on Puttylike.

Summer Solstice Wants You to Treat Yourself

I know we say this every year, but seriously…where has the year gone?! I’m only just starting to get back in the flow of things and yet summer is already upon us in the Northern Hemisphere. How are you feeling?

Whether you’re feeling fully in control or lost at sea, I’m here to provide somewhat of a checkpoint. As I’ve mentioned in my previous articles, I like to mark the astrological seasons, and I’ve already shared a ritual that you can use for the Spring Equinox. Now, it’s time to talk about the Summer Solstice.

What is the Summer Solstice?

A solstice is a point in time when the Earth is at maximum tilt. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the Summer Solstice occurs when the North Pole is pointed closer to the Sun than at any other time of year. It appears to us as if  the Sun is higher in the sky than other times of the year. This causes us to experience the longest day and shortest night (in terms of daylight hours) of the year, hence the name solstice, which comes from the Greek solstitium—from sol (Sun) and stitium (still or stopped). In the Southern Hemisphere, the June Solstice is the Winter Solstice. Since it’s on the opposite side of the earth, the South Pole is furthest away from the Sun on that day. Folks in the Southern Hemisphere have their Summer Solstice in December. 

The Summer Solstice is in June for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere and marks the start of astronomical summer. The energy of the Summer Solstice relates to abundance and bloom. It’s a time to appreciate and enjoy our blessings, and make any necessary changes to ensure they continue to flow for the rest of the year.

The truth about rituals

A ritual is an excellent way to mark significant moments in the calendar. Especially because by committing to do a ritual at these points, you’re able to be self-reflective and take note of personal growth (or stagnation!) almost on autopilot. But a ritual doesn’t have to be complex, expensive or even time consuming. In fact, for me, the simpler the ritual the better, as you’ll be more likely to come back to it time and time again. Of course, it’s exciting and powerful to engage in, for example, a group ritual in a forest around a fire with drumming and howling and all the rest of it. But, let’s be honest, who has the time, energy and money to do that regularly?

I follow a simple formula for rituals which helps to break down what’s really important. Energy + Intention = Magick. Energy is created by the activity or activities you do within the ritual. Your physical environment, the day/moon/season, and any tools you use (incense, crystals etc.) can also help infuse the desired energy into your ritual. Intention is your reason for doing the ritual. What is it that you want to observe, request or give thanks for? When your intention and the energy of the ritual align, you make magick. Not magic as in Sabrina the Teenage Witch but magick as in transformational change.

Making use of these two elements—energy and intention—I have a super simple Summer Solstice ritual for you. As mentioned, this solstice is all about abundance. For us in the Northern Hemisphere who are observing it on 21st June, it is also the start of Cancer season, an astrological season associated with nesting and care-taking. With this in mind, all I encourage you to do this Summer Solstice is…treat yourself!

Yes, you read that right. No elaborate, multi-step ritual this season. I very simply want you to do something nice for yourself—something out of the ordinary. I want you to remind yourself what it feels like to be pampered. I want you to enjoy luxury without guilt. I want you to put yourself first, even if only for a few hours. I want you to celebrate the home that is your body. I want you to forget Hot Girl Summer and instead have a Home Girl Summer.

Time to treat yo’self!

As multipotentialites, we spend so much time focused outside of ourselves—our work, our projects, our collaborations, our goals, our milestones and, honestly, managing our basic needs with often inconsistent incomes. So if, when you read “treat yourself” you thought Okay, I suppose I can order takeout tonight, you’re probably not alone. But I need you to think bigger. Not necessarily bigger in terms of expense or lavishness. But this treat should be exactly that—a treat. Not something you do regularly anyway. When you spend so much time working, looking after others or trying to tighten your belt, it can be easy to forget what it looks like to treat yourself. So here are a few ideas…

Tasty food. Could you treat yourself to a 5-course meal cooked by a private chef? Or take the evening, consult the internet, and cook the 5-course meal yourself? If you do most of the cooking at home, can you rope your partner, children or friends into making you a lavish meal?Spa day. Of course, you can physically go to a spa but you can also create a spa day at home. Give yourself the day off, get out your best candles and essential oils, make a simple face mask, run a hot bath aaaaand relax.Get away. Depending on where you live, you can have yourself a peaceful getaway by driving only an hour or hopping on a train—whether it’s to a lake, a forest, a beach or even that park you’ve been meaning to visit for years.Escape in some culture. Book yourself a ticket to a show, a movie, a concert or some other performance you can lose yourself in for a few hours.

Hopefully these ideas have got your creative juices flowing. The main point is, this Summer Solstice, you deserve to do something that is really and truly just for YOU.

Your turn

Do you get to treat yourself often? What treat are you thinking of gifting yourself this solstice? We’d love to hear your experiences in the comments!

The post Summer Solstice Wants You to Treat Yourself appeared first on Puttylike.

The Joyful Intersections of Multipotentiality & Neurodivergence

They’re two of my favorite polysyllabic words: multipotentiality and neurodiversity. These two terms have come to represent core elements of my identity in the past few years of my life, although I struggled to embrace each of them at first.

When I discovered that I was a multipotentialite, I finally had the language to describe my diverse interests and how I wanted to integrate them into my life. It felt liberating and empowering, but at the same time, it was difficult to grapple with the idea that I might not have The One Career that we’re often encouraged to pursue throughout our lives.

A couple of years after I discovered the language of multipotentiality and came to embrace how it reflected my identity, pursuits, and goals, I went through the arduous process of seeking an autism diagnosis as a young adult. When I ultimately did obtain my diagnosis, at the age of 21, it was slightly overwhelming to absorb and come to terms with, even though I had been fairly confident in my autistic identity for over a year before receiving an official diagnosis.

If I’m being honest, I’m still hesitant to initially identify myself as autistic in most professional or social contexts. Even as an autistic self-advocate, I only share my identity in situations where I think that it will benefit my relationship with someone or allow me to better support another neurodivergent individual. I have shared my identity with neurodivergent students and clients on a few occasions, and I have seen the real difference that it makes for facilitating their openness and authenticity in our interactions.

I have come to realize that, as I build strong relationships with people and establish myself as a skilled professional in each of my roles, sharing my autistic identity is one small action I can take to help dismantle the stereotypes and harmful views that hinder the success and happiness of the autistic community.

Self-knowledge is empowerment

The enhanced self-understanding—and self-compassion—that came with discovering my autistic identity has ultimately been empowering and informs the way I approach my life. As we recently observed Autism Awareness Month in April in the United States, I want to take the opportunity to celebrate some of the strengths and empowering aspects of my autistic identity, and how they overlap with multipotentiality in my life.

This is certainly not to say that being autistic, in any of its diverse presentations, doesn’t involve plenty of hurdles and challenges, which exist and manifest in different ways for every autistic individual. As the social model of disability reflects, society is not structured in a way that is conducive to neurodivergent individuals’ success. Even the process of initially getting a diagnosis can be fraught, particularly for women, nonbinary individuals, and people of color.

A common saying in the autism community is, If you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person. Since each autistic individual has unique interests, passions, skills, difficulties, and barriers to success, I will focus on my own experience rather than attempting to generalize. At the same time, I suspect that some of these points of overlap are present in other neurodivergent or autistic multipotentialites’ lives as well!

Many valuable resources focus on raising awareness about the struggles and challenges that come with being neurodivergent and how to cope with them. But it tends to be more difficult to find articles about the positive and joyful aspects of neurodivergence. I have come to recognize that many of my autistic traits overlap with the characteristics that make me a multipotentialite.

There are three overarching attributes that make up a significant part of my self-identity as an autistic multipotentialite, and each of them enriches my life and contributes to making me who I am. I want to celebrate these parts of my identity, as a way of encouraging other multipotentialites and neurodivergent individuals to practice loving and respecting their authentic selves:

1. Embracing “special interests”

One of the clear points of overlap between my identities as a multipotentialite and an autistic person involves what can be characterized as special interests or unique passions.

When I was younger I felt self-conscious about the intensity of my excitement about some subjects or activities, because I didn’t see anyone else responding to them in the same way. When I started learning my first instruments, they absorbed my attention and prompted the passion for music that is still at the center of my personal and professional life. As I have come to understand myself better and embrace my natural interests—and their intensity—I have found that special interests can be an authentic source of joy and exploration.

Multipotentialites also experience the excitement of special interests in each new hobby, interest, or career opportunity we discover and pursue. As an autistic multipotentialite, my interests and passions are powerful and intense, and I have learned to embrace that and make space and time for it in my life. In particular, understanding my identity helped me to be intentional about the balance of my interests and passions in my career, education, and hobbies in my schedule. This balance enables me to thrive in different areas, while not feeling deprived of my natural inclinations to explore new areas.

I am always happy to come across examples of other autistic people sharing and celebrating their special interests, and in a similar way I love to see multipotentialites sharing their passion for their diverse hobbies, interests, and career pursuits.

2. The joy of defying stereotypes

There are plenty of stereotypes about autistic people, and the autism community constantly pushes back against misconceptions and harmful viewpoints about autism. The autism community is diverse, and every autistic person has unique characteristics and experiences.

When I first got my diagnosis, I felt like I didn’t fit into the autistic community, based on perspectives and misconceptions that I had unintentionally internalized about how autistic people think or act. In reality, there is no single way to “seem” autistic or “look” autistic. Defying stereotypes about autism—and embracing being autistic in my own way—has become a joyful part of my everyday life.

Multipotentialites also face stereotypes, particularly in professional environments, based on our diverse work experiences, variety of interests, or apparently unrelated career moves. Common misconceptions about multipotentiality can lead people to assume we’re flaky, indecisive, or unable to commit to one path. But multipotentialites are certainly not “jacks of all trades, masters of none.” In reality, our unique combinations of experiences make us forces to be reckoned with.

There is something incredibly rewarding and empowering about actively defying derogatory stereotypes in daily life. One of the joys of multipotentiality and neurodivergence for me is rooted in the hope of being a trailblazer, role model, or simply an active supporter of other individuals who will defy stereotypes—through what they do and how they do it.

3. Celebrating what makes our minds unique

As an autistic person and multipotentialite, I have found that my diverse interests, and the way my brain works, provides me with a unique perspective and approach to everything I do.

By combining many of my intersecting multipotentialite interests into a multifaceted career, I currently work as an instrumental lessons instructor and freelance writer, while pursuing my master’s degree focused on music production and media scoring. During my first semester of my master’s program, I found that I absolutely love mix engineering. It integrates the highly detail-oriented aspects of how my mind works with the creative and artistic considerations that are always present in creating or communicating through music. At the same time, I love to teach instrumental music lessons and collaborate with other musicians as a producer, because I thrive in one-on-one interactions that support creative exploration and growth. And, my decision-making is always informed by applying my undergrad background in existentialist philosophy! It feels like I have finally discovered a blend of careers and projects that completely align with my brain wiring, and to recognize and understand why has been exciting and empowering.

While it can be challenging at first, embracing what makes us, and our minds, distinctive can promote self-empowerment and authentic joy in our lives. It has taken me a long time (basically, my entire life so far) to really understand and embrace my brain and what makes it uniquely mine. But, by honoring how my brain works and intentionally seeking to understand what combination of activities allow me to thrive, I have been able to build a foundational balance that I am confident will enable me to thrive personally and professionally for years to come.

Your turn

Has being aware of your multipotentiality provided you with new insights about yourself or empowered your decision making? If you identify as neurodivergent, how does that aspect of your identity guide how you approach your life?

Doing/being/exploring ALL THE THINGS is easier with a community!

Did you know we have a private community of hundreds of multipotentialites from around the world? We support each other, share advice and cheer each other on as we building lives and career around ALL our passions.

Learn more about the Puttyverse and get notified next time we open the doors:

The post The Joyful Intersections of Multipotentiality & Neurodivergence appeared first on Puttylike.

When Your Difference is Your Superpower

If, like me, you’re a person of color, then you almost definitely grew up with your parents and elders telling you that life would be more difficult for you. You’d have to work twice as hard to get half the recognition. And you will have experienced it within your own life too, from playground bullying to questionable school reports to being passed over for promotion at work. 

In fact, if you’re in any way minoritized—for your sexuality, gender, heritage, body, size, or anything else—this “thing,” this point of difference has potentially become something that you feel needs to be overcome in order for you to thrive. That your success will be despite being brown, gay or dyslexic. Unfortunately, due to the society we live in there is an element of truth to that. But I’ve been thinking a lot about how these parts of who we are that society tries to shame and diminish us for can be such a huge source of strength, inspiration and—yes—even power.

Reality check

I don’t mean to sound like a personal development guru who tries to convince you that the only one in control of what happens to you is you. We do have the ability to shape our realities, but that must be recognized in conjunction with the fact that this very same reality is heavily influenced – or perhaps controlled – by white supremacist patriarchy, which will have a negative impact on the lives of people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, people living with disabilities and other groups that face discrimination, no matter how much positive visualization we do. My purpose here isn’t to ignore the very real challenges we face. It’s simply to shine a light on some of the beauties our differences hold, beauties that we can often miss because we’re so busy fighting simply to live. 

While not all multipotentialites think of themselves as creatives, we are, by definition, living creatively. If you’re a multipotentialite, you do things differently from the norm, you go against the grain. This often requires you to carve your own path rather than following a blueprint that’s been laid out for you. It requires creative thinking and an innovative approach to life, as well as the confidence and conviction to see it through despite doubts and disapproval from others. As a multipotentialite from a minoritized community, I believe that the experience of being minoritized can actually aid us in making multipotentialite life work for us. Here’s how.

How our differences breed superpowers1. We’re more adaptable.

Code switching involves a conscious or unconscious adjustment of our language, behavior or appearance in order to adapt to our surroundings. For me, a Ghanaian-British girl who grew up mostly in the UK with a few years spent in Ghana, this mostly manifested—and still does—through my accent.

The voice you’ll hear me speaking to my aunties in is not the same voice I use, for example, in a London boardroom. And this change happens entirely automatically for me. In fact, I’m currently doing my best to actively unlearn “telephone voice”: the phenomenon of my most polished British accent coming out whenever there’s a phone or a microphone nearby! While this adaptability is obviously borne out of extremely damaging views on acceptability and professionalism, and the idea that anything outside of the “norm” of middle-class, straight, white, cis male is “other” (and not in a good way), the result is that those of us who don’t fit into that extremely narrow window often gain the ability to adapt to our surroundings. In multipotentialite life, this could look like:

Being as at home in a corporate environment as you are in the studio with theater darlingsKnowing how to speak about your work or your business in different ways to varying audiencesBeing able to access opportunities, investments and spaces that might normally be unwelcoming or difficult to navigate for outsiders2. We have multiple perspectives

Growing up accessing different spaces allows us an insight into a range of perspectives. The thing that makes you an outcast might also be the reason you’ve learnt about another religion, belief system, culture or cosmology. Being exposed to these varying ways of seeing the world benefits us in both a personal and professional capacity. For example:

We’re likely to be more accepting and understanding of those who are different from usWe can draw on our culture, heritage, religion etc. for inspiration in our workUnderstanding multiple perspectives gives our work more breadth and depth3. We’re more empathetic

Now there are absolutely exceptions to this, with many people enacting the same discrimination they complain about onto others with nary a brow raised at the irony. But I think it’s fair to say that, for many of us, having the experience of being marginalized makes us more empathetic to others. And empathy is most definitely a superpower!

Aside from being great for our mental health and relationships, having good levels of empathy is also a boost in multipotentialite life because:

Empathy has been linked with creativityIt is key for effective leadershipEmpathy builds community, and community is vital for multipotentialites

I know that these three superpowers—adaptability, different perspectives and empathy—have been hugely important in my work and my journey so far. And I also know that they exist within me partly because of my experiences as a Ghanaian-British woman.

Final word

Despite all the hardships we might face because of our differences, it can be a relief and a boost to also recognize the benefits we gain from them. The most important thing I like to remind myself and others is that, without your differences, you wouldn’t be you…and that would be a real tragedy.

Your turn

Have your differences become a blessing to you? How do they help you as a multipotentialite? We’d love to hear your experiences in the comments!

Doing/being/exploring ALL THE THINGS is easier with a community!

Did you know we have a private community of hundreds of multipotentialites from around the world? We support each other, share advice and cheer each other on as we build lives and careers around ALL our passions.

Learn more and join the Puttyverse community here:

The post When Your Difference is Your Superpower appeared first on Puttylike.

How I Held Myself Together When My Multipotentialite Life Fell Apart

Three years ago, I went through a major traumatic episode that changed my life—I was laid off from my day job. For me, the “Einstein Approach”—having a day job that left me with time and money to pursue my passions on the side—had been the key to my multipotentialite lifestyle. It kept my side hustle going! When my work came to a standstill, it felt like my whole life was cut short.

That wasn’t it. Months preceding my lay-off, I had spent my new year’s eve in the hospital, fighting an arm infection so severe that the doctors recommended amputation of arm and breast. In the months after losing my job, I faced several personal tragedies including losing my grandparent. And, before I could recover from that, the next setback was knocking on my door. In April of 2021, I found myself on oxygen support during India’s severe COVID crisis. 

As someone who has been living with chronic illness and repeated hospitalizations, I am adept at dealing with medical emergencies. Yet, it was really all the other things that got to me—the grief of losing a family member and the humiliation and panic at losing my job sent me over the edge. 

Within a year, I had accumulated trauma from different events and my multipod life, as I knew it, had fallen apart. After all these difficult life events, I was crumbling. My hobbies and personal projects were all at a standstill. I could barely look for a job, since I was struggling physically more than I ever had in my life. My finances were in ruin, since I had been unemployed for over a year. I was draining my savings to keep up with the passion projects that offered me some semblance of multipotentialite normalcy. For several months, I really questioned what it meant to be a multipod who—at least for the time being—just could not do all the things.

Trauma activates flight, fight or freeze responses for most of us. Accepting trauma-induced changes in our behavior is a challenge, perhaps an even harsher challenge for multipotentialites. Since our lives are full of things to do and our schedules are usually overly packed, accommodating the traumatic response and living with its repercussions can be complicated. The experience of any disruption in our lives is amplified. I found myself in the deep end of my problems without any easy fixes. However, living through traumatic episodes has shaped who I am today. Here are three things that helped me cope through living in the aftermath of trauma.

1. Acknowledge your setbacks so you can free yourself from them

As an overachieving academic, I had never truly experienced failure until I lost my job. After the initial shock of being laid off wore out, I had fallen into the next traumatic episode where I was spending all my time at the hospital with my grandfather on life support. Between January 2020 and May 2021, I had undergone several stints in the hospital, including being on life support myself and losing a family member on life support. Even before the grief and the shock of one episode could wear off, the next one awaited me. Within each of these traumatic episodes, and during the time that followed, I was operating on autopilot and had no bandwidth to comprehend my desires for my life.

I was privileged enough to fall back on my savings and schedule therapy. While speaking to a trained counselor was helpful—I would highly recommend it!—it was not enough. Living through these traumas meant navigating dips in my mood and energy levels and a constant sense of negotiation with myself to attempt a piece of a task—whether it was personal or professional. Every task was an uphill battle since wanting to do everything and having the energy to do nothing were always at odds.  I wanted to continue releasing my weekly entertainment columns, but I found no time or mental peace to get writing in front of a laptop. Even something as basic as applying for a job seemed like a huge task, since I struggled to  collect my thoughts. How could I hold a job when I could barely string together a sentence in my cover letter?

It took a long time for me to realize that I was struggling badly because I had feared failure all my life. Now, that possibility of failure was in the room with me all the time. Eventually, I just had to acknowledge that life rarely goes according to our best crafted plans. Embracing the setbacks felt liberating. Vocalizing that I was struggling and admitting that I needed down time to bounce back from my situation was powerful.

If you find yourself undergoing a life-changing event—or several such episodes in succession—it is important that you stop and acknowledge your fears. Be mindful that you might experience failure through your healing journey. It is okay to go through it, without shaming yourself or forcing yourself to believe everything is fine when it’s not. Bottling up our emotions, especially realizations that our plans are not going to work for us, can be deeply troubling. Facing them head on helps us release the fear of failure and disconnect from the victim mentality that can be debilitating in the long run.

2. Trust that recovery will not be linear

As I found the courage to embrace my setbacks, I restarted my previous stint at highly functional multipotentialite life in baby steps. Every day meant picking one thing from my life as I had known it, and telling myself to sit through it and do it. No two days looked alike—and some days meant falling back down and finding the courage to stand up again.

If you have ever experienced burnout, undergone long periods of anxiety or lived with depression, you know that life is not as straightforward or simple as it seems to be on social media. As a grieving multipotentialite, I was challenged to reclaim my old life by finding the strength to be there for myself every day—through good, bad and ugly mental health days and physically challenging days. There were days when writing a single email to a freelance client meant pushing demons out of my head and scheduling grieving time for after the email was sent. Some days, even sitting through a film I wanted to review was hard, since I was battling brain fog with Long COVID.

It was hard to accept the reality that no two days looked alike. I could plan for the smallest activity, but be unable to follow through on the day of, due to physical or mental health challenges. My biggest takeaway in overcoming the setbacks and reclaiming my multipotentialite life was rooted in the understanding that recovery will never be linear. My road back to a high functioninglife was not going to be straightforward. My trauma experiences may not define me, but they shaped my life as I know it today. I now know that recovery is a long, drawn out process—one not achieved by a couple of small tweaks.

The minute you find yourself accepting that effort alone cannot “fix” your situation, you will be at ease. Perseverance, along with effort, is the key to life after challenging personal or professional setbacks. Today, as I juggle my projects (both personal and professional), I feel empowered in my grief and my healing alike. But that is not something that I achieved in a day. This particular road is not as straightforward as it seems.

3. Return to your source(s)

In coming face to face with traumatic and challenging life experiences, our ability to follow through on our projects is usually at an all-time low. Though we may want to do everything, we struggle with the inability to do anything. Getting out of that cycle is critical. The middle ground for me, during my setbacks, was falling back on activities and hobbies that I dearly enjoyed as a child. When I felt alone and miserable, I found myself reconnecting with the music I used to listen to. I also deeply enjoyed binge watching old TV series and films that I had seen during happier days in film school. These activities served as a constant reminder that tough times don’t always last and that the phase I was in, too, would pass.  

Setbacks are not ideal and they can impact both our immediate lives and our long-term functioning. Making time for hobbies and setting aside down time are incredibly powerful tools to combat the disorientation that comes with major life changes or setbacks. Childhood hobbies have an intriguing way of kick-starting and nurturing our interests. We can regain a sense of hope by going back to the drawing board and looking at what we pursued as our younger selves. Seeing our journey through the prism of historical memories, we are reminded of how far we have come—and the time it took for us to nurture a particular skill required to pursue a hobby.

Reflecting on things we loved to do in the past can also help us remember the people we were prior to experiencing the trauma and setbacks. It acts as a reminder that life is full of surprises and that the journey ahead means learning about those surprises again and again.In going back to the drawing board with my old hobbies, I learned new things about the craft of writing. Somehow, it built a new sense of confidence within me. I had revisited something I was actually good at. In true multipotentialite style, I was creating a brand new journey along an old path. Today, I look back fondly at the time I spent in isolation in the hospital fighting COVID, because I was able to spend a lot of uninterrupted time with films that I had seen ages ago. Revisiting them at my difficult time gave me strength to fight for another lease on life.

Your turn

Has a traumatic episode ever impacted your life experiences as a multipotentialite? How did you heal and move forward? Share your journey with the multipod community so we can all learn and grow together.

The post How I Held Myself Together When My Multipotentialite Life Fell Apart appeared first on Puttylike.

The Power of Seeking Your Singular “Why”

Why can’t I find just one thing to focus on? Why can’t I be satisfied with one career? Why do I change my mind so often? Why didn’t I stick with X, while Y became my priority?

Ironically, these questions all begin with that element we’re actually seeking: Why.

One of the challenges that multipotentialites often face is trying to make sense of our diverse interests and pursuits. This issue runs deeper than the ever-present difficulty of finding the language to explain what, exactly, we do or describe ourselves to other people. Even more important than how we represent ourselves to the outside world, struggling to identify what guides us in our pursuits can impact how we view ourselves as individuals and how we assess our own lives.

Without an overarching motivation, passion, ideal, or whatever you would call this elusive entity, it’s easy to feel like we lack a sense of direction or clear purpose in our lives. Even when you think you’ve fully embraced your true multipotentialite self, that nagging feeling of doubt and uncertainty can seemingly strike at any time. 

Part of being a multipotentialite and embracing our multipotentiality often involves coming to terms with the fact that we don’t have that “one true calling,” as Emilie originally discussed in the TED talk that brought many of us here! But even as we come to understand ourselves better and appreciate our multipotentiality, we might still yearn for something to tie all of it together—that single overarching, unifying element that connects our seemingly disparate and unrelated pursuits.

I was recently tasked with finding my own “Why” as part of a class assignment, and my process led me to think deeply about the power of having a clear, identifiable Why to lean on, especially across a multifaceted multipotentialite life. But I also realized that, even if we don’t identify the golden thread that ties our many “whats” and “ands” together, that thread still seems to be present, holding it all together. In other words, the overarching Why and the principles and values that guide us are still present in our lives, even when we struggle to identify exactly what they are.

What do we actually mean by a Why?

The idea of a personal Why can seem a little bit vague, philosophical, or intangible at first. Essentially, a personal Why encapsulates what drives you to do what you do, and guides how you do it.

When seriously considering it within the context of my own life, I was pretty skeptical (as you might be) about how it would apply to me and my multipotentialite values. It seems completely valid to me to think that multipotentialites can have more than one Why guiding their lives, and finding several guiding principles or themes that function in relationship with each other can be just as powerful as identifying one overarching Why.

Your mountain of What, How & Why

Simon Sinek emphasized the importance of a central Why for leadership and marketing in his impactful 2010 TED talk, framing the Why as the middle of a bullseye, dubbed the “golden circle.” In this structure, “What” we do is on the outside of the bullseye, followed by “How” we actually do it, with the powerful “Why”at the core.

To slightly reframe Sinek’s structure with our multipotentialite lifestyles in mind, I conceptualize the relationship between What, How, and Why as a mountain, with multiple paths to the top:

Illustration by Stephanie Gemmell

The pinnacle of the mountain is our (potentially elusive) singular Why, while the routes we can take in pursuing it represent How we approach what we do. Since multipotentialites may tend to get a bit caught up in trying to make sense of What we do—and our Whats can be so prolific—I found that it helped me to actually set what I do aside and focus on How I approach my passions, roles, and responsibilities. In this metaphor, I would say that What we do is just what we take with us on our journey toward our pinnacle of Why.

Searching for your Why can provide a sense of direction

An important element of this metaphor involves the goal of the journey, regardless of which route(s) we choose to take. There also might be multiple Whys at the top of your own mountain, and you may or may not be able to find the single, overarching Why that joins them. Whether or not you can identify your Why and express it in clear language, the goal of fulfilling it still guides how you approach your life and propels you forward on your path.

The power of vagueness

Part of what helped me through the exercise of figuring out how to express my Why involved letting go of the idea that it needed to be specific and somehow reflect all of my Hows and Whats. It might be more feasible for specialists to identify a narrower Why that directly relates to what they do and how they do it. But for multipotentialites, approaching the idea of a personal Why in this way makes the task of seeking it out feel frustrating and stifling, rather than meaningful and empowering.

As Sinek says in his TED talk, “what you do simply proves what you believe.” With this idea in mind, we can view the single Why that we’re seeking out as the core of what we believe. What beliefs about yourself and your relationship to the world inform everything you do? Whether your list is long or short, your Why might begin to emerge from these beliefs and their impact on your Hows.

After conceptualizing Sinek’s “golden circle” a bit differently in this way, I was able to arrive at my own overarching Why—and I actually felt good about it. (I suspect my Why might be one that many other multipotentialites share in some ways, with our more particular, multiple Whys stemming from a version of this overarching guide.)

Illustration by Stephanie Gemmell

While I did ultimately reach an overarching, broad Why that feels meaningful to me, I took away other powerful insights from this exercise as well. As a multipotentialite, I have found that a significant part of my identity involves balancing my diverse interests, skills, and career roles, and figuring out how to represent these complexities to the outside world. The process of seeking out my Why reminded me that the guiding impulse behind what we do is more important than where it leads us to go.

In other words, what we bring to the table as multipotentialites is valuable. But it’s not as valuable as how we approach the table or why we’re there.

Your turn

Do you think that we all have a single, guiding Why in our lives, whether or not we can articulate it? Has seeking out or identifying your own Why or Whys provided you with insights about your own life?

The post The Power of Seeking Your Singular “Why” appeared first on Puttylike.

Ready to Escape the Working World? Do This First!

For many multipotentialites, variety is key. We thrive on wearing different hats on different days and we find fulfillment where others might find chaos. This is why so many of us find that a typical 9-to-5 just doesn’t work. The rigidity of roles and routine can be truly stifling. 

But sometimes, what drives us to ditch regular employment is simply the idea we have of who we are and what we should be doing. The rhetoric that “true” multipotentialites are creatives, entrepreneurs and freelancers not beholden to any corporation is misguided and can prevent us from enjoying the benefits of working for someone else: from stable income to professional development. If you’re feeling uncertain about whether or not to leave the rat race behind, read on!

How to know when it’s time to quit

In previous generations, any real job was a job for life. It didn’t matter whether you were fulfilled or what perks you got—all that mattered was that you had a steady income, good healthcare and a nice pension to make it all worth it in the end. 

Though times have changed, there is still a level of guilt that comes when we think about leaving the workforce, especially in difficult economic times like these. We can wonder if we’re simply expecting too much from working life or maybe going through a rough patch that we need to ride out. You might tell yourself that you should feel grateful that you even have a job and stop complaining or that your chances of succeeding in going it alone are next to none. But the truth is, our work life has a huge impact on our wellbeing, and so it’s imperative that we choose a career path that feels right for us, and that we don’t stay in a job or company that could well be damaging our mental health.

So, how do you know when it really is time to quit? Here are a few tell tale signs that either your job, your company or both deserve the boot.

You have more bad days than good days. It’s unrealistic to expect everyday to be exciting, productive or meaningful. Some days you’ll get bad feedback, other days you’ll clash with a colleague and others still you’ll wonder if you’re any good at your job. This is all normal and part of the package. But this shouldn’t be your every day. The good should outweigh the bad, otherwise it might be time to consider moving on.You’re not learning anything new. This doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone but most of us—especially multipotentialites—need to feel like we’re progressing and facing new challenges in order to feel fulfilled. If you’re in a job you could do with your eyes closed, it may have passed its expiration date.You dread going to work. We all get Monday Blues and the occasional desire to swap working life for the kept life. But again, this should be irregular and fleeting. If you consistently feel a genuine sense of dread when going to work, or even thinking about going to work, something has to change.You feel unsupported, harassed or bullied. If your workplace does not feel like a safe environment…get out! Of course, try the official channels of making complaints and liaising with HR, but if these fail to rectify the solution, your safety is far more important than any job.Your behavior changes. Sometimes there isn’t anything inherently wrong with your job or your company. But you notice yourself snapping at your colleagues, slacking off, producing work way below your capability level and generally checking out. In this case, barring any personal issues that are affecting your overall mood, it’s probably time to move on. It doesn’t matter if you can’t come up with a specific reason; sometimes your intuition is just telling you it’s time to go.

To be honest, you could apply this litmus test to almost any situation: a friendship, a romantic relationship, a housing situation, a business partnership. The most important thing is that you trust your gut and remember that you must move past feelings of guilt and indebtedness and prioritize your health and wellbeing. I’m reminded of these lyrics from “Anti-Depressant,” a song by one of my favorite artists Londrelle: “In order for you to grow, you have to stop watering dead situations.” And that’s that on that.

Try this before quitting

Okay so, maybe you’ve looked at the checklist above and you’re convinced it’s time to throw in the towel. But remember that wonderful steady paycheck and professional development opportunities I mentioned earlier? These and other perks of working life are not to be snubbed. Maybe there’s a way you can keep them while finding more fulfillment. As long as your reason for quitting isn’t a toxic environment, why not stick around and try these hacks first?

Change the scope of your job. When a company values you and your wellbeing, they’ll do all they can to ensure you feel happy at work. So don’t be afraid to speak to your manager or HR about making some changes to your role if you think it will help. It could be taking on more or less responsibility, putting some untapped skills to use or even changing teams. It’s a good idea to approach your company with some ideas on how your role can be better suited to your current needs and use this as a starting point for negotiations. Who knows, you could even come out with a promotion!Try a different job or company! You might think you’re totally over working life and it’s simply not for you. But could it just be that this particular style of working life isn’t for you? Maybe you need to try a laid-back startup environment instead of the super corporate one you’re in now. Or maybe you need to find a job that’s more creative. Perhaps you want to try hybrid working instead of being in an office five days a week. Especially in the wake of the pandemic, there are so many different ways to work. You might find that you LOVE working for someone else…if you only have to see your colleagues twice a week and you get paid to do what you’re really passionate about.Follow your passions on evenings and weekends. If your job isn’t giving you the opportunity to let your creative side run wild, could this be something you prioritize in your spare time? Being mindful not to overexert yourself, you could join a creative community, start classes in your preferred creative field or hit the craft store and make evenings your crafting time. Honoring your need for creativity outside of work can bring a better balance to your overall lifestyle, making you feel more whole.Start a side hustle. You know that passion you want to quit your job for? Could you first try doing it on the side of your job? For many, myself included, having a side hustle is the first taste of freelancer or entrepreneurial life. It’s a low-risk way to test out a new path, build up your skills and client list, and get that jolt of fulfillment we’re always chasing. Again, it’s important to ensure you maintain balance, allowing enough time for rest—but if you feel you can manage both a main hustle and a side hustle, you may find that this is the perfect balance for you!

IN ORDER FOR YOU TO GROW, YOU HAVE TO STOP WATERING DEAD SITUATIONS.

Londrelle, “Anti-Depressant”

Ready to go it alone? Here’s your action plan.

Okay so maybe you’ve tried the ideas above and you’re still over it. Or your workplace is just too toxic to handle and you need a break from the working world. You’re 100% ready to quit. I support you! But it’s important that you quit the right way to prepare yourself as much as possible for what’s on the other side. Here are my top tips.

Save money. This seems like an obvious one but when you’re itching to leave a job it can be easily overlooked. Spend some time planning—really planning—how much money you need in savings. If you’ll be starting a business, you need to calculate your start-up costs and your living expenses for the time it will take you to start earning an income for yourself. It’s better to over budget than under budget in this scenario! Once you have a number, calculate how long it will take you to save that amount. Can you stick out your job for that long? If not, can you be even more frugal to get to that figure faster? Or maybe you need to reach out to your network for support. Whatever the plan, it’s much easier to make it happen when you’re clear on the amount needed and your timelines.Make a plan. Your next phase doesn’t start from the day you leave your job, it starts from now—the moment you decide you need a change. What new skills do you need to develop? What services do you need to procure? What favors do you need to call in from friends and family? Are there any legal considerations you need to make? Figure out everything you need to do to become a freelancer or business owner or whatever your next step is. And then schedule these tasks over the coming weeks so that you’re not trying to do everything all at once. If you do all this in advance, your first day flying solo will feel a lot less stressful.Use your notice period to your advantage. Some people hate notice periods. Whether it’s two weeks or three months, it can feel like a punishment for leaving your job, especially if colleagues become hostile. However, you can view your notice as a kind of blessing. Those around you expect you to check out, so you should do exactly that. I’m not advocating you slack off and leave your colleagues in a lurch. But instead of working at 100% you could work at, say, 60%. Make sure the work gets done sure, but there’s no need to go over and above now. With your extra energy, you can get started on little tasks for your life after work. Spend 30 minutes here setting up your new email address and an hour there designing your new logo. Take advantage of the paid-for subscriptions you won’t have access to after you’re gone and—if it won’t cause issues—reach out to some of your close clients and contacts to let them know what your next move is. One of them could become your first client!Find your fit

The 9-to-5 has gotten pretty bad press in recent years, and with good reason. But the workplace can be a nourishing, supportive and stable environment for many people. Don’t get caught up in the hype—not everyone is quitting their job and you don’t necessarily have to in order to live the life of your dreams. The most important thing is that you do what’s best for you. And whether that means quitting your job tomorrow or sitting at the same desk until you retire, I’m rooting for you!

Your turn

How do you know when it’s time to leave a job? If you have a main hustle and a side hustle, how do you balance them? Share your story with the community in the comments.

The post Ready to Escape the Working World? Do This First! appeared first on Puttylike.

Our Definition of Success Needs to Shift

The first time society’s lopsided metric of success bothered me was when I performed a public show at a local mall with my rickety, old electric bass. The response from my fellow musicians was lukewarm, despite my best efforts. I held myself responsible for my poor sound, even though I’d put in extra practice hours. Years after that, during one of my sessions with my mentor (who I could barely afford to pay at the time), I learnt that my shortcomings were due to my cheap instrument and not my technique.

Back then, I could not afford to get a new bass, even though my sound was completely off. After all those years of practicing via free YouTube tutorials at home—after getting myself to a point of playing public shows without any help—I was still ashamed of myself. Instead of being proud of my journey of pursuing learning an instrument with bare minimum resources, I judged myself hard for it.

How do we account for all the stepping stones and hurdles that shape the journey of a project? These hurdles—and our ability to tackle them—usually determine the “success” or “failure” of an undertaking. But, when we talk about success and failure in a binary way, we tend to ignore or negate real progress, which necessarily includes struggles and failure. And, in order to measure success only by an end result, we accept the assumption that everyone starts from the same place. What if we changed how we talked about success? When is a failure not a failure?

It was unfair for me to judge myself as a “failed bass player.” As I struggled over the years to understand how unfair the metric of success is, I frequently asked myself, How did we begin to equate success only with endings? Is reducing our journeys to absolute success or ultimate failure helpful? Are those the only ways of gauging our worth?  

Almost 15 years ago, my bass playing was something I could not fully explore due to the financial hardships. My parents couldn’t afford any kind of music lessons for me because they had my medical bills to pay and they also supported our extended family. When I eventually dropped the instrument, a decade ago, it was mostly because I was frustrated by my lack of growth. I “failed,” so I quit—despite years of earnest practice and perfecting my form.

Whys & hows matter more than successes & failures

When we label our performance, efforts and journeys neatly as successes or failures, we miss out on an opportunity to understand the “whys” and the “hows” of our lives. We ask ourselves, Did I underperform at the improv? Am I an imposter in my PhD seminar? Can I really pursue pottery as well as my ceramicist friend does? All these questions and gnawing ideas revolve around the binaries of success that we seem to hold ourselves accountable to—and they’re often dead ends.

As someone who finds herself restricted by health conditions, I know firsthand that the world is not a level playing field for those like me who are disabled. I am certain, this is not just true for those who struggle with disability and health conditions, but also extends to those who are primary caretakers of family members living with terminal diseases and other chronic health conditions, as well as those who come from marginalized communities. The world, as we know, is not built equally and does not work in a way where it favors everyone with the same opportunities. How is it, then, that we use the idea of “success” and “failure” in the same way?

Different lives call for different measures of success

Differences in access can be due to life circumstances, which sometimes evolve over time. Perhaps at another point in your life, the conditions will be favorable for that hobby you can’t afford or the language you don’t have time to learn—but what if they’re not? If a condition in your life prevents you from accessing a project and limits your resources, then you may miss opportunities, no matter how frugal or innovative you can be. Or, you may not be able to take a project or endeavor as far as someone else can.

Individual choices also mean we need different metrics for success. For example, a multipotentialite with many projects on the go might choose not to dedicate intensive time and effort to a single endeavor or discipline. You may want to design your life differently, to create space for all the things you’d like to try and experience.

It is critical to acknowledge that multipotentialites are also experts; we can and do excel and rise up in ranks across fields and industries while pursuing diverse interests. Both multipotentialites and specialists can be frontrunners and experts in their field, but they all face the same heat when it comes to measuring success. The conditions of your life don’t doom you to exist without “true success,” nor does a desire to live differently. You’re not destined for failure! The trick is to create your own yardsticks for success, celebrate your wins, and practice a lot of self-compassion along the way. Take the road that works the best for you and use the markers of success that apply to and matter to you.

Comparison is the thief of joy & success

I grew up internalizing this idea of success and failure, projecting my insecurities by comparing myself to others: If I cannot play an instrument as well as the musician who has played it for years, then maybe I should discontinue and pursue some other craft.  This narrative drained the joy from my life, since it prevented me from taking on and pursuing several other art forms and prevented me from exploring a future within any of those.

As a multipotentialite, I did not account for the fact that I brought multiple perspectives to all my work, and offered way more than one thing. I was hyper focused on the idea of “success” through perfection for everything that I tried to pursue, and external validation for all those things was never easy to get. This pretty much ensured that I would drop projects out of a fear of “failure.” I was fixated on the idea of doing “one thing” well enough before I moved on to other projects. Consequently, a lot of them were abandoned when I could not find the validation I was seeking. As an adult, I find joy in starting multiple projects all at once and seeing how they go, as opposed to stressing out about the results. At any given point, after work, you can find me gaming or painting or just writing. Since these take place without any compulsion to be a “hit,” I can actually enjoy the process of doing these as opposed to perfecting them all at once.

When is a failure not a failure?

As you assess your own performance, and that of those around you, consider the journeys and not just the end results.

Access to certain interests, hobbies, educational programs and consequently work opportunities are not effort-dependent alone. A lot of these require external factors including up-front capital, time, and someone to share responsibilities with in order to be conventionally successful. A lot of people quit mid-way through their respective journeys for lack of help and inadequate resources. To me, this is a failure of the system, and of society—not an individual failure. Many multipotentialites quit when they’ve gotten what they came for, not when society tells them it’s time.

It took a long time for me to be understanding of my abilities. I will never be perfect at everything I do, nor will I ever know everything about everything—and that is okay. I will stop and start things for different reasons at different times, and I’ll decide what that means for myself. Sometimes, putting our best foot forward is all that we can do, whatever our circumstances.

Your turn

What counts as “success” when you undertake a project? Is the journey alone fulfilling or do you need more external approval? Do we need to redefine success and failure? Share your thoughts with the community in the comments.

Doing/being/exploring ALL THE THINGS is easier with a community!

Did you know we have a private community of hundreds of multipotentialites from around the world? We support each other, share advice and cheer each other on as we build lives and careers around ALL our passions.

Learn more and join the Puttyverse community here:

The post Our Definition of Success Needs to Shift appeared first on Puttylike.

“Are You Living Up to Your Full Potential?” Transforming the Burden of Representation into a Gift

Are you living up to your full potential? 

On days when I’m focused on using my multipotentialite pursuits to experience personal growth and professional success, my answer is an enthusiastic yes! But on days when I think about the people in my communities who are counting on me to represent them well at the highest level of my potential, my answer is a guilt-ridden no. 

Who gets to decide what your “full” potential looks like, and how do you know you’ve reached it?

The burden of representation can complicate what it means for some of us to live up to our full potential.

As a woman with multiple intersecting identities in spaces where people like me are rare, I feel the burden of representation. Could I be doing more to represent my communities well? Yes. Would it mean so much for a person who shares my visible and invisible identities to see me at the highest level of the discipline or project I’m pursuing? Absolutely, yes! Will I burn out again if I try to live up to everyone else’s expectations of my full potential? Without question, yes. Even if I manage to achieve my goal, will I move the goalpost again? Ugh, very likely.

I decided to take this question to my multipotentialite friend Sue, who I know as an early childhood educator, writer, stand-up comedian, and jewelry maker who does theatrical plays and musicals, modeling, and improv in her spare time. You may know Sue from her viral TikTok, “What kindergarten students have said about my body.” Since releasing that, she’s become a public advocate for body positivity, or as she refers to it, a “plus-sized baddie.”

When I ask her about living up to our full potential as multipotentialites, she says “I don’t think anyone else gets to decide that other than you.” Sue taught me that living up to your potential is a feeling, not a goal—and definitely not an achievement, because it’s always changing as we multipotentialites change and grow.

If you’ve ever been haunted by questions about living up to your full potential, here are 3 steps to transforming that burden into a gift.

Step 1: Look for opportunities to express a new side of you

Sue gets great satisfaction out of showing different sides of herself because they defy the boring, one-dimensional representations of plus-sized women that she sees portrayed in movies, music videos, magazines, and TV.

By day, she happily takes on the responsibility of being a nurturing role model to young children and their parents as an early childhood educator.

“There was a kid that would be considered overweight by society’s standards. They were being bullied for their weight, and the mom had to message me to say that they were in the school yard saying, Well, Miss Sue is fat, and she’s beautiful, so I’m beautiful, too! And I was like, Yes, little Queen, yes!”

By night, she enjoys playing multiple characters in an improv troupe or delivering her blunt brand of stand-up comedy in nightclubs. Every time Sue goes to an audition, she is aware of the assumptions people make about what roles are ‘right’ for her. “As a plus-sized woman, I will get typecast. Now that I’m a grownup, I don’t take that on as my burden. But as a younger person, knowing that I was not going to be the Princess, I’d be like, Fine, I’ll be the best villain!” Nowadays she uses that information strategically: She might agree to a comedic role to get her foot in the door, but she uses every moment she has on stage to show her range. The burden of representation means that she has to jump through more unnecessary hoops to be cast in more diverse roles, but she uses every experience to open doors for more opportunities to write, direct, and produce theatre in the future.   

What would it look like for you to choose multipotentialite projects according to their potential impact? 

You might ask:

Does this give me the chance to express a new or different aspect of my multifaceted self? Can I use this to explore an area (of myself, the world, etc.) that I’m curious about but haven’t had the opportunity until now?Might saying yes to this project lead to future opportunities that are even better suited to my multipotentialite dreams?Step 2: Tap into how you feel when you’re fully engaged in that activity

As an early childhood educator, Sue has felt “those moments of clarity […] Oh, I’m in the exact right place at the exact right time. This is the best version of me.” She tells me that teaching kindergarten saved her life a little bit, because the curriculum requires her to teach students how to regulate their emotions, verbalize their needs, and use their words to treat each other with kindness.

Before she could teach this to her students, she had to teach it to herself. “It was probably a major weakness of mine at one point. So being in a job where I have to constantly be modeling how to express your emotional needs has definitely benefited me in my relationships with my partner, in my relationships with my friends, and I wouldn’t be the person that I am if I wasn’t able to express those things for sure.” 

So, reaching into your full potential can involve challenging yourself to go beyond what’s comfortable. As she began her career in teaching, Sue describes thinking to herself, I’m trying my absolute best, and this is as much as I can give. I’ve gone to the edge of the cliff, and that’s as far as I go! Nowadays, it’s more like, This is what joy is like. This is my fullest potential. When the risk of disaster seems worth the potentially delightful surprise of things turning out much better than expected, Sue challenges herself to do really scary things. Her internal monologue in those moments is, Okay, I’m horrified, but I’m still going to do it.

She tells me about how she responded when one of her students shouted “Wow! Are you turning into my dad?” when he noticed the hair on her arms. While I laugh and cringe simultaneously, Sue tells me that ten years ago, that kind of comment would have made her cry. “I remember there were times in college when I was at my practicum, where kids would comment about my weight or my makeup or something that should be negative, and I’d go home and cry, or even cry on my lunch break. Now, it doesn’t even phase me. I’ve literally heard it all.”

So, when her student recently asked if she was turning into his dad, she didn’t cry. In fact, her first thought was “It was just so innocent, so cute.” She said “No, I’m not turning into a dad. But I have long hair on my arms, like my grandma did. So when I look down at my arms, I think of my grandma.” 

Being an early childhood educator gives Sue the opportunity to practice the skills she needs to feel like her best self, and to help the next generation grow into their best selves by using their words to be kinder and more compassionate to themselves and to each other. For Sue, living up to her full potential involves creating opportunities to grow into her best self, learning and modeling critical life skills, and taking calculated risks that help her feel fully alive. 

Would you choose different ways to maximize your multi-passionate potential if you focused on how being fully engaged in them makes you feel?

For example:

Do I experience moments of flow, where time goes by without me noticing it?Does this make me feel challenged in a way that energizes me?Do I feel like I’m getting more in touch with my best self?Step 3: Create a positive feedback loop

When Sue joined TikTok, she never expected to be an influencer. She joined during one of the early COVID-induced lockdowns in her province, tuning in to see “people also stuck at home, just being themselves.”  TikTok was the first time she saw herself represented in the people who posted videos. She posted her first video in response to a trend, but put her own twist on it, dancing under quotes of what kids have said to her over the years. A lot of them had to do with her body, so she thought: “If I’m dancing in these videos, then I’m kind of promoting body positivity and the freedom to move at any size.” Her first video got 100,000 views within 48 hours, and people in the comments urged her to do more videos. Her fourth video went viral with 4.5 million views, and the rest is history. 

The dancing videos were popular, but she started to feel the urge to give back to the community that had comforted her during lockdowns. She transitioned into posting videos that help folks “feel good about their bodies,” including candid videos about what it’s like to live with polycystic ovarian syndrome. “I’ve gotten private messages from people saying, I’ve never met a woman that shaves her face other than myself! and I’m like, Yes, you have. They’ve just never talked to you about it.”

Her latest project is a video series based on her viewers’ answers to the question: “What are things that people have told you you absolutely can’t do because you’re plus size, or [you] think that you can’t do because you’re plus size?” So far, folks have given her suggestions like taking lessons in martial arts, ballet, or figure skating lessons; going on a roller-coaster or to a skate park; doing parkour; or simply “going to a public pool in a bikini.” Her plan is to “spend a month trying to get really good at the things that people have told me my whole life I would never be good at” and film the results.  

What I’ve learned from Sue is that as multipotentialites, our potential is unlimited. You get to choose some of the ingredients that make up a life that makes you proud. We can’t really be people who others admire if we don’t allow ourselves to nurture a self that we love best. When we start there, the possibilities for others to find their best selves become unlimited, too. 

To create a positive feedback loop of your own, ask yourself:

When I’m living into my full potential, do I allow myself to run on empty?What do I need to feed into my life to keep my productivity healthy and sustainable for me? When my cup is full, what do I do with my overflow?How can I create space for others to live into their full potential?Your turn

Is living up to your full potential possible for a multipotentialite? Have you ever felt the burden of representation? How did you respond?

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