Emilie Wapnick's Blog, page 8

Why Your Goals are Getting Away from You

I have a love/hate relationship with goal-setting and planning. It’s exciting to make new plans or set a goal, but not as exciting—or easy—to stick with it. Over the years, I’ve figured out a few tricks to staying on track, and I’m going to share them with you.

At some point, we’ve all made plans for our projects, our health, or for learning something new. We set goals with hopeful ambitions of what will be, but sticking to those goals is where things can get a little tricky. The famous New Year’s Resolution comes to mind—something often made and rarely achieved.

No matter what time of year it is, our goals can get away from us, causing frustration and guilt, and eroding our self-confidence. This is particularly true for us multipotentialites, as we regularly load ourselves up with interests and projects. There are several reasons why this happens. Some of them we can control and others are plain ol’ circumstance.

Let’s get into some of the reasons our goals escape us, and then I’ll lay out some practical ways to address each one.

Life happens

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans

As a multipotentialite, I’m frequently making new plans and setting goals for all the things I want to do. When I make my plans, I factor in things like:

How long do I think it will take?Will it cost money? If so, how much?Will I need help from anyone else?

One thing I typically forget to factor in probably has the most significant impact: life.

A couple years ago life inserted itself firmly into my plans and I was completely thrown off track.

In fall of 2019, I started writing a book on a subject that I am passionate about: customer service. I’ve been working in some form of retail customer service since I was 14, and I had years of notes and ideas to work from. I had trained hundreds of people in creating great customer relationships, and had learned a ton of new things along the way. It was finally time to put all my experience and knowledge into a book. 

By the holidays, I had a solid outline. By February of 2020, the book was written and I was laying it out and creating illustrations. The project was a multipotentialite dream.

As February turned to March—well, you know the history. COVID-19 had made its ugly way around the world. While I was concerned about that for myself and my fellow humans, I didn’t let it deter me from completing my book project, at least not right away.

I had big plans for marketing the book. Since I was self-publishing, I had been working hard to line up interviews, YouTube videos, articles and a well-planned social media campaign. That is, until businesses started to close and people stopped going out to shop.

Since the audience I was speaking to was mostly small, brick and mortar businesses, all the methods I was touting suddenly seemed useless. After all, you can’t create a great environment for customers if you can’t even have them inside your store.

Suddenly, the environment the book was based on was rapidly disappearing. I sought advice from friends in marketing, who collectively agreed that it was “just the wrong time for this book.” I pulled the plug on the promotion. I quietly published the book to use as a portfolio piece, but the project as I had envisioned it ended. I was angry at the world situation and disillusioned that I hadn’t achieved my goal.

Life gets in the way sometimes. Our plans can get derailed by circumstances beyond our control. But what happens when life is humming along in total agreement with our plans, but we get in our own way?

The problem of feelings

Wouldn’t it be great if we could become emotionless robots just so we could carry out our plans and accomplish our goals? Okay, maybe “robotic” is not an ideal state of being, but sometimes our feelings can be an obstacle on either end of the emotional spectrum—i.e., we’re just not feeling it or we’re feeling it too much.

Not feeling it

When we’re starting out with a new project or making any kind of plans, we feel the dopamine rush of excitement. We are certain that nothing will stop us from reaching our goal. How could it? It’s just too exciting! 

Then, weeks later, we’re just… not into it. Meh. We could work on the project, but doing laundry sounds so much more enticing. Sometimes a feeling like this only lasts a day, and sometimes it spans months.

Multipotentialites, in particular, have to contend with this problem—especially because it’s so easy for us to fall in love with a new idea very quickly. Even if we’ve made solid plans for a project, it can suddenly take a back seat when a new interest pops up. The ambitious goals we set for ourselves start to feel like obligations, rather than hopeful future milestones.

Feeling it too much

The flip side of “not feeling it” is when we feel too much about something we plan to do. A common multipotentialite pattern is getting so psyched about an endeavor that we become paralyzed. Thoughts buzz around our brains that keep us from even taking the first step.

What if I mess it up? What if I’m not worthy of this goal? What happens if I decide I don’t want to continue. Would that make me a failure?

While those thoughts block us from starting, they ironically come from a place of excitement. And since no one wants to make plans about something they’re not excited about, it can become a vicious circle.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Another outside influence that can derail our plans is other people. I don’t mean our partners, our kids or our besties who won’t let us say no to happy hour. The derailer I’m talking about is the competition monster.

The competition monster is the thing that makes us scroll through social media convinced that everyone else is doing more and better than we are. The internet is filled with admirable people who always seem to be posting about their amazing achievements. Friends and acquaintances seem to be constantly shouting about their latest success, while we feel like we’re just as quickly getting nowhere.

When my book launch fell apart, the competition monster wouldn’t let me forget about an acquaintance who had published a book and launched an entire online learning system just as I was close to finishing my project. I wanted to support her—and I did—but on the inside I was cringing. It didn’t matter that her project was coincidentally in tune with the millions of people suddenly working from home. My competition monster was turning an ugly shade of green. I would be lying if I said that comparing my project to her work wasn’t a small factor in shutting down my book.

The comparison monster can derail us faster than a gap in a railroad track.

How to stay on track (Or get back on track, or make sure you’re on the right track…)

Now that we’ve discovered all the ways our goals can get away from us, we should talk about how to wrangle them back into our life corral. There are some surprisingly simple ways that we can get back on track – or prevent ourselves from losing our way in the first place.

Give yourself room to reassess your goals and plans

It’s pretty easy to become rigidly attached to our goals, as I did with my book project. While it’s helpful to set goals for ourselves, it may be more pragmatic to think of goals as a loose framework rather than an edict written on a stone tablet.

As you plan out your projects, factor in life stuff. I guarantee things are going to happen that will nudge you out of your lane. While you’re scheduling milestones, build in space for the unexpected. Account for the fact that your circumstances, and maybe even your desires, are very likely to evolve over time. Every now and then, review your goals and allow yourself to reassess them.

Dump the guilt for taking time off

When we set goals, they easily become little “shoulds” on our task list. We set ourselves up to feel guilty because we “should” be working on our project. The truth is, we sometimes don’t feel like it. That’s called being human. And forcing yourself to work on something you’re just not into is a one-way ticket to producing something uninspired.

Rather than get in your own face like an overly aggressive personal trainer, allow yourself to take time off and recharge your batteries. If you’re worried about losing track of a project completely, it can be helpful to set a date when you will come back to look at it again—not necessarily to dive back into work, just to take a look around and see how you’re feeling. If you’ve got your gumption back, then reassess your timing and adjust your goals accordingly.

Conversely, if you feel paralyzed by your boundless enthusiasm, try breaking down your larger goal into the tiniest chunks possible. For example, let’s say your goal is to create a series of paintings to exhibit by the end of the year. Forget about the end result and start with the smallest beginning. Go to the art store and just touch some brushes. Feel some canvas. Flip through the French watercolor paper. Check out all the pretty paint colors without a predetermined idea of how you’ll use them. You could even just aimlessly doodle with a pencil.

If you combine enough of those tiny steps over time, you’ll eventually have your series.

Set your own pace

Rather than try to keep up with everyone else, you do you. Don’t give the comparison monster a comfortable place to sit.

While you’re working on your project, you might hear about a friend’s new website launch that seemed to take only minutes to snap together. On the surface, it can seem like you’re going at a snail’s pace in comparison. The truth is, your friend’s website likely took months to plan and execute—you only saw the launch.

It’s likely you’re doing just fine where you are. Or, maybe you can kick things into a higher gear. That’s only for you to decide. If you do have to reassess your plans, do it on your own terms.

Plan for things getting away from you

Whether it’s the competition monster, just not feeling it, or life happening, there are always going to be obstacles in our path to planning perfection. Being aware of those potential obstacles early on can help us successfully accomplish our goals—and be ready for when things go sideways.

If your goal-getting isn’t going as planned, dump the guilt about stepping away for a bit and reassessing. Try to ignore the Joneses; they will always be there and keeping up with them isn’t your job. And, of course, factor in some life happening along the way.

Planning for your goals to get away from you isn’t planning for failure. In fact, it’s super smart. You may even find that it makes you feel better about dreaming big—whether it leads to success, failure, or something in between.

Your turn

Have you had your goals get away from you? What kinds of things did you do to get back on track? Share your experiences in the comments!

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Your Permission Slip for an Unapologetic Life

Some of the people I admire most are those who live an unapologetic life. 

I found out recently that lots of people think that I’m one of these people, too. 

To be honest, this shocked and slightly offended me. You mean to tell me that, all this time, I had been living a fabulously unapologetic life without reaping any of the benefits of total self-assurance and a healthy sense of pride?? 

When other people call me unapologetic, they are looking at my life in retrospect. They’re seeing the times that I was willing to wrestle with vulnerability, which Brené Brown describes as “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.” In those micro-moments of clarity about my purpose, I summoned the temporary courage I needed to move my life in a new direction. In those times, I didn’t wait for permission to do what I felt needed to be done. But, until now, it’s never been a conscious strategy.

That’s because in my own mind, I am far from unapologetic.  I go to battle daily with fear and uncertainty about who I am, what I’m allowed to ask for, and whether I’m doing anything right. My fear is twice as potent when it comes to pursuing a multipotentialite passion that makes me feel vulnerable or risks potential failure. 

So what’s all that fear about? 

I recently discovered that it might be because I, a middle-aged woman, still do not believe that I have permission: Permission to banish the ghosts of old and crusty gatekeepers that I failed to notice no longer have a hold on my life. Permission to confront my most demoralizing mistakes and then forgive myself for making them. And most of all, permission—finally!—to reap the full benefits of an authentic, multipotentialite life characterized by more beauty and far fewer apologies. 

Is this as intriguing to you as it is to me? Let me put this theory to the test in my own life so that you can see if this is something you’d like to try, too.

Step 1: Acknowledge the influence of past gatekeepers

Growing up, I had a lot of hopes and dreams about multipotentialite passions I wanted to pursue. Like every other child, I also had no language, power, or resources to pursue them. As a child, I understood this as not having the “permission” to pursue my childhood-dream career as a Broadway/Disney singer/dancer/pediatrician/professor. As I grew up, the gatekeepers of those opportunities (parents, teachers, administrators, partners) changed. What didn’t change was the fact that I still didn’t feel I had permission. 

Who was the first person in your life to withhold permission from you? What kinds of gatekeepers have you encountered since then? What was the impact of being denied permission to live a fully authentic multipotentialite life?

Step 2: Ask, compassionately, what if you’re in your own way?

As I aged, fewer people had power over my life and my decisions, but my sense of still not having permission only grew stronger. Without realizing it, I had transformed the gatekeepers of my childhood into a generalized sense of fear that (a) I wasn’t good or deserving enough to get what I wanted and/or (b) it was too late to start anyway. After years of being denied permission, I started colluding with my past gatekeepers to let fear keep me from going after what I really wanted. What if those people were right to keep me away from my multipotentialite dreams?

Do you still hear the voice of the first person in your life to withhold permission from you? Sometimes, very real gatekeepers are still working to keep the life you want just out of your grasp.

Now what about the flip-side of that, when the prolonged presence of multipotentialite dream-inhibitors has morphed into the more generalized fear I described? Long after a gatekeeper has ceased to have control over your decisions, they can be living rent-free in your head, in the form of fear. What does that fear call out in you? What might you be afraid of being named? How does that fear keep you in check? How does that fear keep you small?

Step 3: Accept the uncomfortable truth about who the gatekeeper is now

Fair warning: once I worked through these questions for myself, I didn’t really feel better. I felt depressingly guilty for having unknowingly held myself back. I had to forgive myself for personifying fear as coming from an external source, when it was really coming from within. All this time, I’d felt like the world was refusing to give me permission to live the life I wanted, when no one really had the power to do that anymore—except me.

As I processed these realizations, I went down the strange, sad road of naming my unanticipated detours on the road to figuring out how I wanted to live my authentic multipotentialite life:

Asking my parents to pay for an expensive MCAT course, taking the MCAT (that my parents also paid for), and then refusing to apply for medical school because I feared I didn’t have a doctor’s confidenceDropping out of grad school that I’d only enrolled in to make up for not applying to medical schoolInvesting in my dance career and taking private singing lessons, then only participating in two terrible auditions where I was cut in the first round before abandoning my Broadway/Disney dreams and going back to grad schoolAlmost failing my final teacher training practicum because my methods were at odds with the way my supervisor expected me to teachApplying to grad school again…this time because I almost failed my teacher trainingGetting a PhD in Education, then only applying to one tenure-track professor job which I clearly did not get

When I look back on this list, I see how it could make me appear to be one of those unapologetic types.

In reality, I spent my life inventing increasingly elaborate ways to apologize to the people I was sure I had confused and disappointed. I thought I owed everyone a very good explanation for taking yet another risk when my current situation was perfectly good, normal, and stable. And if the explanation wasn’t good enough, I would try to shape my life into an even better apology-in-action:

Sorry that I got too scared to become a doctor. Did you know that people with PhDs are also called doctors? I will get one of those. Oops, sorry that I dropped out from the other program to become a doctor. I will follow in your footsteps and become a teacher. Oops, sorry that I did not become a teacher. I will try to become a doctor again…

Have you ever found yourself living inauthentically because you were stuck in an elaborate, never-ending apology-in-action? What might you need to face—and forgive—so that you can retire from the role of gatekeeper in your own life?

Step 4: Reap the benefits of moving from fear to forgiveness

A key part of being authentic, in my opinion, is to be as honest about the ways I’ve succeeded as I am about the ways I failed. So as tempting as it was to wallow in my own disgrace, I had to keep it moving.  When I faced the times I had let fear keep me small, I realized something very important: Focusing on my list of failures—the ways that I had invited uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure into my life—disregarded the ways in which entertaining vulnerability had also allowed me to create beauty in this world. 

It turns out that my fear was never able to stop me completely from taking risks, trying something new without knowing how it was going to turn out, and building my resilience after colossal embarrassment and failure. These steps were an unavoidable part of figuring out how I wanted to use the gifts I’ve been given to create beauty through living my version of an authentic multipotentialite life. Allowing myself to be vulnerable in this way isn’t something I need to apologize for. 

Besides, it also ignored the simple truth that none of these people had actually asked me for an apology for living my multipotentialite life. They were confused, yes, and some were even disappointed. But they also got to witness the beauty that came next, and none of them hold the sad, strange times against me. In fact, a lot of them take pride in having witnessed the messy middle before I figured out where my multipotentialite journey was headed next.

So today, instead of composing more unasked-for apologies, I choose to move from fear to forgiveness. Forgiving myself for the ways that my multipotentialite life didn’t move in a straight, orderly line clears the slate so I can grant myself permission to create more beauty with less fear. 

Your turn

Are there some messy areas in your multipotentialite path that could use some of this permission, too? You’re in luck! It’s time to create your very own multipotentialite permission slip. 

Use it to begin carving out a life for yourself where you know who you are, and to communicate what you are worth. Use it every time you feel afraid to ask for what you need—and, if what you need isn’t available, to summon up the courage to create it for yourself. A multipotentialite path can look unconventional. Here’s permission to forge a path that you can leave for others to follow in your footsteps, if they choose.

Download and fill in your permission slip, and share whatever parts of it you like in the comments below to inspire a fellow multipotentialite to lead a more unapologetic life.

The post Your Permission Slip for an Unapologetic Life appeared first on Puttylike.

A Love Note to Amateurishness

I’m an amateur word nerd. Nobody pays me to rave about etymology or to irritate my friends with my Wordle score every morning. But I like it that way. Being an amateur is wonderful. After all, the root of the word is “one who loves”. Is there any better reason to do something than love?

When I think of amateurs having fun, I remember an internet craze from last year: a little-known game called “chess.” For a period following the release of The Queen’s Gambit, chess was suddenly absolutely everywhere.

Chess’ surge in popularity is both unsurprising and massively bizarre. It’s unsurprising because the game is over a thousand years old, so it clearly has some lasting appeal. But chess is a famously difficult game to master, and—if we’re honest—most of us prefer to avoid difficult things, particularly if they’re competitive. It’s demoralizing to realize that a super grandmaster will almost always beat a grandmaster… who will almost always beat a master… who will almost always beat a good player… who will almost always beat a bad player… who will almost always beat me.

In other words, my stance towards chess has historically been, Sounds cool, but no thanks! My ego is built on a solid foundation of only doing things I’m already good at, thank you very much.

But last year’s wave of mass enthusiasm* was enough to overcome my natural reluctance to be bad at something, and it finally got me into chess. This was in large part due to discovering Pogchamps.

* Enthusiasm: a word derived from “being filled with divine inspiration”, which—like being filled with love—is a good reason to do something if you think about it.Amateurs + Experts = Magic

Pogchamps is an online chess tournament in which amateurs are paired up with professional coaches to battle amateur vs. amateur across a chess board over several weeks.

Before this, I’d never really considered watching a chess tournament. I always figured it would be so far beyond my level that I couldn’t possibly enjoy it. So, although there is some joy to be found watching experts operating at a higher level than I could comprehend, I’d never been gripped by chess.

But I immediately discovered that the most compelling part of the Pogchamps formula was the amateurs themselves. They were having fun. Rather than being held back by the fear of looking silly in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers, they played their best and laughed about the mistakes afterwards.

Their mistakes also brought me a lot of joy. It was fun to watch a game swing from extreme to extreme as players traded huge blunders, but I preferred the seemingly innocuous moves which caused the commentator to gasp. To me, nothing different had happened, but this could only mean I’d missed something dramatic. In other circumstances, failing to follow such a simple game might make me feel stupid. But, in keeping with the theme of the tournament, there was usually an amateur co-commentator who also needed an explanation from the expert sitting beside them. I never felt behind, because the whole broadcast was aimed at bringing me along.

The dynamic of experts interacting with amateurs, in both the coaching and commentary, is fascinating. It turns out I love watching people learn. Seeing a player get coached on what they could do better, and then watching them do better afterwards was almost as satisfying as experiencing improvement myself.

Learning from learners

My weeks of addiction to Pogchamps taught me a couple of lessons.

First, it’s fun to learn without shame. I know this to be true, and yet I often struggle to let go of my ego enough to genuinely not care. As a multipotentialite, it’s important to aim for the mindset of the happy amateur, where just doing something for fun is enough and the outcome doesn’t matter—at least some of the time.

Second, surprising and exciting things happen when you take an activity that’s traditionally reserved for elites and make it more inclusive. Watching people from all walks of life learn to play chess was exciting. It also made me admit to myself that, while I might not be cut out to be a grandmaster, I could actually have fun playing a few games.

That said, the reaction from the wider world of chess wasn’t all positive. As you might expect, some were worried that opening up to a wider audience could be bad for the community. That seems silly to me – it’s not as if anybody is advocating for traditional chess tournaments to be scrapped. Adding enthusiastic amateurs to a previously insular landscape seems like it could only be positive.

Lastly, improvement is addictive. Whether it’s my own improvement, or becoming emotionally invested in the ability of a random person to develop their Sicilian Defense, nothing beats a feeling of progress. This is an overarching theme that runs throughout everything I enjoy, from writing to video games to speaking to playing music. Improvement itself brings me joy, and it doesn’t even have to be my own improvement.

The Bearable Lightness of Amateurism

There are many reasons that I’m telling you about this. Maybe you’d like to check out the recordings of the tournament. Perhaps hearing the story will make a connection in your mind and inspire you to shamelessly enjoy something you’re bad at, or to make your own entrance into a traditionally closed and elite pursuit.

But I’m mostly telling you just to share my enthusiasm and enjoyment. I’m enthusiastic about enthusiasm and in love with acting out of love. That’s the best bit of being an amateur: you don’t need a reason to do something.

Sometimes it’s just fun to have fun.

Your turn

Have you been swept up by excitement and enthusiasm lately? Is there anything you do purely out of love? In what way do you enjoy being an amateur? Share your stories with the community in the comments.

The post A Love Note to Amateurishness appeared first on Puttylike.

Your Wins Exist. Celebrate Them!

I’ve always been obsessed with the future. As a child, I dreamed of asking my house robot to fly my car for me. If you’d told me about an impending vast network of connected computers, I’d have been thrilled at the prospect. After all, what results could that possibly produce except uniting humanity through better communication, which would surely bring about world peace!

But my natural inclination to focus on the future also brings me stress, anxiety and difficulty enjoying the present moment. 

Most of my present moments, in fact, are spent dreaming of future moments. Which is a bit silly when you think about it. For example, I motivate myself during projects by imagining the moment of completion. But when that moment actually arrives, I barely take time to enjoy it. I’m already focused on the next thing.

I’m like the proverbial donkey chasing a carrot, except I’m clever-stupid enough to have built the carrot/stick machine for myself.

Image licensed under  CC   Attribution 3.0 United States  : Luis Prado, from the Noun Project.

Still, this tendency isn’t the worst thing. Dreaming of success at least provides a means of motivating myself. But it’s important—for morale, motivation and enjoyment of life—to occasionally pause and celebrate some wins. Or, at least acknowledge them. Otherwise, what’s even the point of a win?!

If the only reward for completing a task is another task, then we’re depriving ourselves of an important source of joy.

What even is a win?

Like most activities that are good for me, I find acknowledging and enjoying wins to be easier said than done.

In the rare and easy case, where I can look back over recent months and see a string of achievements, I still have to fight my instincts. I have to step back and take time to reflect on the achievements and to enjoy my accomplishments.

Sometimes, though, the wins aren’t such low-hanging fruit. There have been periods—sometimes lengthy ones—when “wins” feel far off. There’s little joy to be had in looking back on an endless series of setbacks.

However, even outside of times of crisis, it’s amazing how much of my life is spent feeling as if I haven’t achieved anything. Usually the sense that I’ve achieved nothing is due to being so hyper-focused on one specific goal that I ignore all the other positives in my life. But when I actually look back, I consistently recognize that I achieved a lot without realizing it.

Partial wins count

Sometimes my wins are vague and not all that reassuring: “I made it through the month!” feels like lowering the bar. Other times, I have to allow myself a partial win. This doesn’t come naturally to me—my instinct is to assess every end result against my initial goals and then throw it into a bucket marked either “success” or “failure.” 

But wins are still wins, even if they aren’t the wins I planned for and dreamed of—and even if they’re partial. Learning something from failure is a win. Growth during a tough time is a win. Why deprive myself of joy by denigrating my own accomplishments?

In order to make our wins visible, we have to look back through a positive lens. Otherwise, we can easily discount every accomplishment, or convince ourselves that nothing we did matters because we never got that One Thing that we really wanted. But it’s pointless to compare our lives to what we can imagine, because we can always imagine something better. 

Living in reality means acknowledging the positives—however small—as well as being real about the negatives.

Wins in boring times

The hardest times to reflect on sometimes aren’t the worst ones. The most trying times tend to offer us obvious lessons. But life doesn’t usually coast along at the extremes: endless triumph or constant setbacks. Often, life just kinda… happens. There aren’t any particularly big wins, or any massive disasters. 

I find these times to be, in their own way, more frustrating than anything. But we can learn a lot from these times of doldrums. They can be indicators that it’s time for a change. We can use the feeling of being stuck as fuel to make that change. And, guess what? Making a long-needed life change is a WIN. For example, I once had a whole year where it felt like nothing happened. Reflecting on those twelve months inspired me into the most life-changing year I’d had in a decade.

How to celebrate wins more easily

Imagine if, twelve months from reading this post, you didn’t have to try to acknowledge your successes. You can get there by putting in a little effort ahead of time, and making a habit of celebrating wins big and small. Here are two easy techniques to implement the habit:

1. Choose your goals

This is a whole topic in itself, but I find it helpful to always have goals of many different sizes. It’s great to dream big, but if I have a massive goal (like going to the moon) then I should also have an easily achievable goal (like going for a nice walk more often) to go along with it.

My brain likes to imagine that easy goals are pointless, as if goals are only worthwhile if they’re literally impossible. But actually being able to achieve a goal should count in a goals favor, not against it!

Try this: Set an ambitious, exciting goal—something that makes your spine tingle. And set multiple small goals: achievable things that will make you feel good about yourself

2. Dump your “to do” list and make a “have done” list

Again, this works well on multiple scales. You could keep a daily diary of little things you’ve achieved. Or you could work at a larger scale by ticking off days on a calendar when you kept to a good habit or made progress (even partial progress) towards a goal. At a huge scale, you could keep a physical list of big wins that you update as they occur.

Then, set a time in future to look over the evidence. It doesn’t have to be anything deep. Even just five minutes of flicking through your daily “have done” list will remind you of all that you’ve accomplished.

It’s great to have a carrot to work towards, but you’ve got to let yourself catch it and eat it occasionally. You’re worth it, and you’re winning—whether you see it or not.

Your turn

How do you reflect back over your accomplishments? Do you have any wins—whether big, small or in the middle!—to share with the community? Let us know in the comments!

The post Your Wins Exist. Celebrate Them! appeared first on Puttylike.

A Mindfulness Tool for Your Multipotentialite Curiosity

When I suggested to my  friend (let’s call her Kendra), a fellow multipotentialite, Tarot card reader, and visual artist, that she should enroll in an online sound therapy course, she responded fifteen minutes later. “I signed up. You should too!”

Wait a minute. My cup was way past overflowing. I could not imagine entertaining another new thing. Plus, the whole point of checking in with Kendra, every month, was so we could keep each other on track and hyper-focused on the projects already in front of us. I was not signing up. I really wasn’t, but I was a tiny bit curious.

During our monthly check-ins, little instruments would appear on Kendra’s side of the virtual screen. Meditative ones like Balinese bells, ocean drums, and Tibetan bowls, but also conventional instruments like her keyboard and guitar. She’s someone who straddles the art and sacred wellness worlds—until recently, very secretly. The art world didn’t know about her tarot card/crystal collecting/ocean drum life, but I did. So, I thought sound therapy training would fit her properly. Turns out, it would also become my next big thing…

What is sound therapy?

A sound bath, sound meditation, or sound therapy is an approach to wellness that uses instruments like crystal singing bowls, tuning forks, drums, chimes, rattles, your own voice and more, to aid you on your journey toward greater energetic balance and alignment. It’s a complementary health practice best used in conjunction with conventional medicine. (I.e., please continue to see your house doctor, primary care physician, licensed psychologist, and other health care professionals.) No water is involved. Instead, you bathe in the healing vibrations produced by the instruments.

You can think of sound therapy as a cheat code for meditation. Sound bathing is nice for people who believe they can’t sit still or in silence. The fundamental tones in a sound bath session serve as a guide, easing you gently into meditative practice.

D.I.Y. wellness

A little over a decade ago, I entered the formal practice of meditation without any formal training. I simply sat and breathed. This sitting let my family know that I needed a little time to myself. They honored this sitting time and left me to my woo-woo ways.

For a brief while, I looked for someone to teach me the “right” way to meditate. What I found felt either far too traditional (think Zen) or far too out there (think Transcendental) for me. So, I kept up with my intuitive practice and let go of the idea of learning any proper protocols. 

Cue Kendra, nudging me toward sound therapy training.

On the multipotentialite spectrum, I’m most like a Phoenix-type, someone who veers toward the sequential side. While I’m into playing around with a few smaller interests at once, for major, more time-intensive projects, I prefer to do one thing at a time. The plan was to work on my book and NOT on building a sound meditation practice, so I’m not sure what compelled me to say yes. 

Kendra said, “You should do it too.” And I signed up. That’s the beauty of collaborating with other multipotentialites. They can broaden your life’s path in astonishing ways, challenging you to fully explore all the dimensions of yourself, especially when you’re tempted to hide behind a specialist’s cloak.

An unexpected new passion

Not only did I sign up, I went all in. I was likely the most skeptical person in the class, at first, but when I tried practicing sound meditation techniques on my family, I noticed little changes in them. Instead of brooding, my moody teenager would sing show tunes around our house. My overworked husband found an excuse to take it easy, kick off his shoes, and let me tinker with tingshas over his heart chakra. In a word, I was hooked.

The benefits of sound bath meditation may include, “help with stress, fatigue, and depression.” Insider even lists “deepening relaxation, lowering anxiety, improving mood and well-being, improving sleep, heightening focus and energy, and feelings of rejuvenation” as perks of this meditative practice.

In addition to witnessing the benefits of sound bathing in my own family, I fell in love with the beauty of sacred instruments. And my sound library quickly expanded. I began with one tuning fork. Now I have juju chimes, wind chimes, plant rattles, seed rattles, crystal singing bowls, cascabeles, Ghanaian iron bells, a Balinese bell, a Vietnamese gong, a frame drum, an ocean drum. Yeah, it’s quite calming but also quite addictive.

I found that working with sound helped me think more expansively about my book project, even if I put it aside for a few months more than intended. 

And now, I’m a certified sound therapist. Late last summer, I launched a business called The Funk Refinery where I offer opportunities for people to creatively engage in mindfulness practices.

Sound therapy for the busy multipod mind

Sound therapy is a form of meditation, which the Mayo Clinic suggests can help us with “the stream of jumbled thoughts that may be crowding [our] minds and causing stress.” If you—like many multipotentialites—walk around carrying lots of life’s big questions, practicing a meditation like sound bathing can help lighten your load. Or, dare, I say, wash the stress away.

Meditation can even help you conserve more of your brilliant, puttylike brain matter. According to Forbes, “long-term meditators had better-preserved brains than non-meditators as they aged.” This should keep you diving into new things, even as you approach deep maturity. Forbes also cites a Harvard study that found mindfulness based stress reduction aka meditation could “increase cortical thickness in the hippocampus, which governs learning and memory.” So you can remember to return to those side projects that bring your multipotentialte self a little more balance.

Here’s your mini-sound bath

I’ve created a 5-minute mini-sound bath just for Puttylike readers, so you can try this form of meditation for yourself. If interested, grab some wired earphones, find a quiet spot at home or work, maybe light some incense, and take a seat in a chair or lay on a yoga mat on the floor. 

Sampled tingsha sound via FreeSound.org

Your turn

How do you feel? Let me know in the comments section below.

The post A Mindfulness Tool for Your Multipotentialite Curiosity appeared first on Puttylike.

Why You Should Keep Your Projects Secret

When you land on a new idea or discover a fun subject to explore, it feels so exciting! Maybe you want to share your new thing with the world as quickly as possible. Maybe you almost feel like you’ll burst. Many multipotentialites frequently feel this way, but sharing your ideas with others too soon can sometimes lead to disillusionment. If your pals or loved ones aren’t as pumped as you are right out of the gate, it can be deflating.

It doesn’t have to be that way. You can keep that gung-ho feeling going much longer if you create a secret space to ruminate and develop before letting anyone weigh in.

You need Skunk Works.

History of a super-secret lab

Contrary to how it sounds, Skunk Works is not a place where a black and white-striped mammal concocts new scents. It’s actually a holdover from the last century.

In the 1930s, aircraft manufacturer Lockheed Martin was developing new systems and equipment for the U.S. military. While they had a team of engineers coming up with lots of new ideas, military leaders weren’t always confident in their most outside-the-box concepts. New developments got squashed before they were fully realized. Progress could be stifled by a Senator with a pessimistic budget outlook or a General with no clear understanding of the developing technology.

After much frustration, the company created a secret lab for what they termed Advanced Development Projects. Their engineers had their own pseudonym for the lab: Skunk Works.

Skunk Works was a super-secret lab where engineers could develop new systems to their hearts’ content. No authority could weigh in and halt progress. The only factor in whether or not a new project would move forward was the opinion of the engineers themselves.

Only after a new concept had been fully developed, tested, and proven would it be presented to the military or to Congress. Imagine how much was accomplished without the engineers looking over their shoulders, worried that their project would get the ax before it was ready.

The Skunk Works lab was so successful that the term “skunkworks” is widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields today. Now, you can appropriate the concept for your own use.

Some of the best ideas flourish in privacy

Creating a super-secret lab of your very own is relatively easy, and it doesn’t have to cost you a dime.

The best part is that you don’t necessarily need a physical space to do your work. You don’t need a separate room, a disused garage, or to have a child leave the nest in order to open your secret lab. It can be a Moleskine notebook if you want. Your secret lab could even be all inside your head.

Of course, you can call your lab whatever you want. After all, “skunkworks” doesn’t sound like a very aromatically pleasing place to work. And, unlike Lockheed Martin, you don’t need to use your lab to develop supersonic fighter jets—or misuse U.S. taxpayer money to illegally lobby for government contracts. Your lab can be an ethically sound center for the discovery of new plant species, or a home for tinkering with vintage film cameras. It can be centered around anything you want, with multiple departments for varying areas of experimentation.

The greatest thing about your secret lab is that it’s private. There will be no authority overseeing your projects, except you. You’ll have free rein to develop whatever your mind can imagine, and to stop and start projects on your own terms.

My grandmother had her own secret lab dedicated to sewing projects. It was piled with fabric, sewing machines, yarn, crafts—a little bit of everything. Trying to navigate that space or make sense of anything was nigh impossible for anyone but Grandma. And that’s fine. Her lab was her domain, impervious to the judgment of anyone else.

My personal skunkworks is a bookshelf in my office. It’s filled with old laptops, monitors, a Raspberry Pi, circuit boards, and various electronic parts. It’s a special place where I get to tinker with new and old tech, without worrying whether or not my latest project makes sense to anyone else. So far I’ve been able to give a 15-year old MacBook a new life as a Linux machine, and I created a media server for our home using an old laptop and other components. I have other projects in the works, but I’m not divulging them until I have a better handle on where they’re headed.

Keeping your projects to yourself might give them a higher chance of success

The most important part of creating a secret lab is that, in so doing,  you are officially sealing the doors on your ideas to prying eyes (or ears). The only people you’ll invite inside are the ones who might help you build your new thing—and, then, only if necessary. We all need a place to kick around ideas or work on things that may never come to fruition. Knowing they won’t be examined (or even known about) by anyone outside the lab really takes the pressure off!

A secret space to work on new things helps to keep you from quelling your own interest early on, when you’re still figuring things out. There’s no judgment allowed in the lab, only wild experimentation and idea generation. You could ruminate on an idea for weeks, do some research, and ultimately decide that it’s just not that interesting to you after all. No one will be the wiser. 

There’s no reason to explain to your friends or family why you’re suddenly dumping a newish idea. You’re the only authority in your lab. You also don’t have to give a presentation to a committee on why a certain project is taking so long to develop.

Multipotentialites will thrive on the freedom of developing new ideas in a secret space.

The next steps

Once something gets developed and tested a bit, you can choose to share it outside your lab. Show that handmade jewelry to a few friends, play your mom your latest composition, or hit publish on your brand new theory of everything. You might find that you feel more confident answering questions about your idea or project when you’ve had time to figure it out for yourself. You’ll be standing on firmer ground than you would be if you’d extemporaneously burst forth on a notion that needed more time to grow. Your potential for success is higher when you have time to test things out before you alert the six o’clock news.

Build yourself a secret lab—whether it’s in your head, a disused closet, or the back bedroom. The details aren’t that important. Give yourself a gift: the freedom to experiment in the confines of a private space, on your own time.

Your turn

Do you have any projects that your friends and family don’t know about? What would your ideal super-secret lab be like?

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 Why You Should Keep Your Projects Secret appeared first on Puttylike.

Dear Puttylike: Our Multipotentialite Kid is Exhausting

Welcome to Dear Puttylike, where our team of writers tackles your burning multipotentialite questions! Submissions are edited for length and clarity.

Dear Puttylike,

We’re contacting you from Switzerland after having watched Emilie’s wonderful TED talk. We have an 8-year-old son who has always been demanding and thirsty to learn and try new things. He has so many hobbies (piano, basketball, football, karate, swimming) and he is brilliant in all of them. School bores him—he is first in his class. And at home he is driving us nuts to get more.

He currently acts in a theater and sews with a machine, but we know that soon he will close these chapters and ask for something new. My hubby is an engineer; I’m a biologist. The next step for us is to create a lab at home and start our son with technical drawing, etc. But we know that this, too, will only keep him engaged until he finishes it in his mind.

Luckily, his teachers see his talents. We went to a psychologist, who tested his IQ. She told us he is not “highly gifted,” and that we should go home, lean back and not worry. But we do worry. We don’t know how to handle our son. Continuing my search online, I found Puttylike.

It’s clear, our brilliant boy is something different. We cannot name it yet. But multipotentiality is kind of a full match.

Is there anything you could recommend to us? Anything that parents should know to deal with talents like my son’s? It is a gift, for sure, but it has a downside for us parents as well. We are so exhausted…

Dear Switzerland,

Hello! I’m Mel and your delightfully demanding 8-year-old son sounds a lot like 8-year-old me. You are not alone.

Surprisingly, if I were to summarize my advice to you in one sentence, it would sound exactly like what your psychologist said: Go home, lean back, and do not worry. Since you’ve already heard that advice, let me get into the why of my recommendations. 

Firstly, as a fellow multipotentialite, I am admittedly envious of your son’s after-school schedule. Basketball, football, karate, swimming, and theatre—what fun! This packed schedule might be incredibly valuable for your son, especially if he’s a tad socially awkward like I was. As a young person, I vacillated dramatically between being socially disengaged (because I was too busy watching a more fascinating idea flow through my mind in high-definition movie quality) and talking so much that it seemed like I kept very little to myself. Allowing your son to participate in activities that he finds fun and fulfilling is a great way for him to learn vital skills like turn-taking, leadership, empathy, and losing graciously.

“Go home”

Although they may be great for you son, are all of the activities you mentioned the source of your exhaustion? Is funding your son’s ever-expanding list of extracurriculars is breaking your budget? Or, is shuttling him from one activity to another without enough time to breathe ruining your family time? If this roster of activities is making your life unmanageable, go home!

Don’t force him to quit everything (unfair!), but engage your wonderfully creative son in a conversation about how, together, your family will decide on a few activities for him to focus on per period of time. Don’t forget to talk about why you are making this decision—it will help all of you. Conversations like this can help your son start to practice what it feels like to make good decisions as a result of identifying – and living – his values. And it can help you get clear about why him choosing only a few things at a time is so important to you and your family. 

Once you and your son have more time at home, you say that you plan to create a lab and start with technical drawing! These could be great family activities…if you actually anticipate this being a fun experience for everyone,—and if you can mentally handle the possibility that he will abandon both before you’ve paid off the equipment bill. If the lab and technical drawing studio are just the newest additions to his already-bursting schedule, resist the urge to bring more in until you have that “why” conversation and he decides what costly (either in time, financial resources, or emotional energy) activities he’d like to focus on for now.

“Lean back”

Since you may be rolling back the big-budget activities, remember that creativity is still free! In addition to learning about new disciplines and ideas, multipotentialite kids need to work out how to be in the world with their own gifts and limitations. You might decide that being bored at home counts as an activity that your son gets to (perhaps literally) wrestle with. What if, in those moments, it was his responsibility to bug himself until he figures out how to quench his thirst for learning and trying new things? Parents can have two roles here. First, communicate your excitement for the creative things your brilliant boy comes up with all on his own. And, if he needs help practicing how to quiet his mind, try some kid-friendly mindfulness activities with him during family time.

“Do not worry”

When you say you don’t know how to handle your son, is it because he seems to be running through activities, ideas, and experiences at an alarming rate? Are you concerned about the speed at which he claims to get to the end of each chapter in his young life? I still get this worry from friends & family in my middle age. For one thing, I seem to read faster than humanly possible. People often ask me to prove that I’ve actually read something they’ve sent to me seconds earlier. Similarly, people in my life often express concern when I come to a strong decision or announce that I am finished with something. From the outside, these changes seem to come out of nowhere. 

In reality, some multipotentialites really do process information at a speed that seems unsettling. When you are the parent or partner who processes information or experiences at a more “normal” rate, it can feel like you are locked out of a mysterious process that the multipotentialite isn’t able to fully share or demonstrate the return on investment right away. Therefore, your differences become an exercise of trust and communication that you will all keep growing into day by day. 

You will have fascinating conversations about what your son gleans from his learning activities. You will undoubtedly learn something new from him, and he will learn from you about what he can discover when he persists a little bit longer. Sometimes, he’ll still be done too soon for you, and you will make him stick with it or decide to trust that he really did get everything he could out of it at that moment. Remember that, for multipotentialites, quitting doesn’t always look the same over a lifetime. Your son might circle back later, either to the activity or to what he learned from it, to apply it to something new in his life. I do that daily in my personal and professional lives.

You’re doing great

Switzerland, I admire the attention and care you have shown to your son’s interests and development. You are doing a great job. Writing to Puttylike is just one small example of the countless ways you demonstrate that you want the best for your son. I understand that, as a parent, it is impossible and wrong to never worry about the future. I can imagine the excitement and fear that comes with knowing for sure that your son is something different, yet feeling equally unsure about what exactly to name it. I bet that there are days that you find yourself wrestling with the uncertainty that manifests as a deep longing for that thing to have a name… Because, with a name, we desperately hope that there might be a roadmap to tell us how to handle what comes next. 

But, as we know, none of us has that kind of crystal ball. (If you do, I want one too!) What I’m proposing is that you consider how your daily experiences with your multipotentialite son could be more joyful and less fretful when you intentionally seek opportunities to live more of your life together in the present. If there’s one thing I have learned after a life of too much education and rumination, it’s that we don’t have to figure out what everything means today. 

Your son will keep discovering new things every day—and you are not required to keep pace all day, every day. Set your own boundaries about the resources you can provide to support each new discovery he makes. Roll along with him as best as you can, in your own way and at your own pace. 

Much love to you and your son,

Mel

Your turn

How does balancing self-care and supporting friends and family members show up in your life? Any tips for parents of multipotentialite kids? Share your experiences in the comments!

Is there something that’s getting in the way of you living your best multipotentialite life? Got a puzzling productivity challenge or career quandary? Is there a particular family member who won’t accept your many facets? Or maybe you have a more general question about multipotentialites and how we move through the world? Send your “Dear Puttylike” questions to advice@puttylike.com

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 Dear Puttylike: Our Multipotentialite Kid is Exhausting appeared first on Puttylike.

What to Do When Trying New Things is No Longer Exciting

Suffering comes in many flavors, but one of the cruelest is when something we used to love becomes a chore. Disliking something that once brought me joy makes me feel sad, hopeless… and even a little guilty, as if I’m betraying myself somehow.

I feel lucky that, these days, most things I spend time on are exciting and energizing. And one of the best things about being a multipotentialite is that there’s always something thrilling around the corner. If one passion has dried up—or taken a sabbatical—then there are always new pursuits to discover that will keep life interesting.

But what happens when that love of discovery… just stops? Is it possible to fall out of love with the concept of new things?

That might sound silly, or even impossible, but I know I’m not the only one who experiences periods when nothing at all seems exciting. In those moments, stumbling on something that I’d normally think is super cool can feel deadening, even soul-destroying. There’s something deeply sad about the thought, I’d normally be excited by this… Why don’t I care?!

Over the course of our lives, we can expect that seasons will arise when nothing feels new or exciting. We may even feel that nothing will be new or exciting ever again.

Taken to its extreme, this feeling is called anhedonia: the inability to feel pleasure. Unsurprisingly, this is one of the major symptoms of depression. (Arguably, it’s also one of the major causes of depression, as being unable to feel pleasure is itself pretty depressing. Thanks, brain!)

Certainly, the times in my life when I’ve most struggled to find any passion have been times when I’ve been most depressed. Once, near the end of a difficult six months, a friend was telling me about a mathematical model of the atmosphere that they were building. I was stunned to realize that I was genuinely excited by their project. That jolt of feeling made me realize just how little passion I’d been able to access during the previous several months. It gave me hope that I was still capable of feeling that thrill—I had been afraid I was somehow broken.

Inability to be excited by novelty isn’t necessarily a sign of depression. It could arise for many reasons. After all, multipods experience so much novelty that it’s perfectly natural for the associated excitement to wax and wane over time. It can be tiring to repeatedly start anew. Sometimes it takes a long search before we stumble across the right next exciting thing. And, when we do find it, sometimes circumstances don’t allow us to fully invest in it.

Whatever the reason, when trying new things has lost its sparkle, you can do something about it. Nobody should live without joy.

What can I do?

Of course, if anhedonia is due to some deeper issue—whether life circumstance, chemical imbalance, or a need for mental health support—then there’s no true solution that doesn’t involve solving the deeper issue. In most cases, though, there’s plenty we can do for ourselves. For me, it all starts with daydreaming. Allowing myself to dream, without judgement, back to a time when I was enjoying something new is a powerful exercise. I might think of when I first played a recognizable tune on the piano, or imagine the thrill of meeting somebody who shared my latest obsession. But instead of thinking, I wish I felt like that now, I just try to dream about the feeling itself.

Then, I have to let myself believe that that feeling still exists out there, and that I can find it again. In these moments, it’s important to tell myself that the feeling of excitement and inspiration brought on by new things is not lost forever, and that it doesn’t matter that I don’t yet know the reason why it disappeared. Simply wanting to feel excitement again is a critical ingredient to finding it once more.

Give it time…

I always find it extremely annoying to be told that something unpleasant is part of the natural cycle of life, but it’s true: sometimes we’re just in certain moods for no particular reason, or for an unknowable, transient reason. Often, these feelings pass, and we stumble into something else exciting before too long. So, there’s an argument to be made for waiting it out!

…but not too much time

At the risk of getting over-poetic, if a season doesn’t naturally end then maybe it was never a season to begin with.

One good reason for not feeling any excitement is that we genuinely haven’t come across anything exciting in a while. In this case, it may be time to cast a wider net.

Sometimes, when I feel as if the world has run out of interesting things, I realize I’ve only been looking in the same places I always look. It can be hard to break out of the bubbles we’ve created, particularly when our devices are full of algorithms showing us things we already like, rather than expanding our horizons with things we might like. But it’s worthwhile to put in the effort to discover something truly new.

One method I’ve found is to ask friends about their interests that I’ve previously never been paid attention to. This isn’t necessarily about adopting that particular interest. It’s about learning to look at it through their eyes. What do they love about it? What does it bring to their lives? Where does the joy come from? Sometimes, just being exposed to other people’s joy re-sparks my own, or gives me a new idea.

Believe!

A while back I met a puttypeep who had fallen out of love with new passions. But for them, it wasn’t depression, random mood, lack of desire, or circumstances holding them back. They’d internalized years of negative messaging about themselves.

Decades of criticism—from ourselves, from others, or even imagined—can pile up. If every time we start something new we say to ourselves, Oh, given up on everything else again, have we? What a quitter! then of course starting something new will begin to feel stressful. 

This kind of internalized negative belief teaches our brains to associate starting anew with the pain of self-criticism. Before long, it can poison the entire concept of new passions.

Internalized beliefs can be un-internalized

We just have to recognize them and dissolve them. For example, rather than criticizing themselves for starting something new, my puttypeep friend could make a conscious effort to praise themselves for their curiosity, passion, bravery and whatever other positive qualities this new interest brings out in them. Eventually they could even learn to associate new passions with excitement instead of anxiety, and novelty would be thrilling once more.

You’re in good company

I know many people feel a lack of joy in novelty from time-to-time, and some feel that way for a long, long time. So, it’s common to feel this way.

I hope that, if you find yourself wondering if there’s anything exciting left in the world, it turns out to be a passing mood or period of low energy. But either way, the Puttylike community is here for you—if the ideas in this article don’t help, then hopefully community support can make the difference.

If you’re struggling with anhedonia for a long time, don’t be afraid to reach out for professional support. Sometimes, this isn’t a problem we can easily solve on our own, and working with a therapist or other mental health professional can be a way to move forward more effectively.

Your turn

Have you ever lost the joy of new passions? How did you get it back? Share your tips and stories 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 building lives and career around ALL our passions.

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

The post What to Do When Trying New Things is No Longer Exciting appeared first on Puttylike.

Why You Should Get Used to Feeling Stupid

“Argh! I’m so stupid!”

I had just called the bank to find out why my debit card didn’t work at the store and discovered that my idea of my account balance and my actual balance didn’t sync up exactly. In fact, I was overdrawn. Not that I’d had much extra cash in the first place. A few tasty snacks were enough to push me over my balance.

As I exclaimed again to the empty room about how stupid I was, I threw my checkbook and pen against the wall, where the pen broke and left a blue ink stain on the paint.

I was only nineteen, sweeping up floors at a theater and borrowing space on my mother’s couch. I was already living on thin margins. Now, in addition to figuring out where I’d gone wrong in my checkbook, I would also have to get cleaning supplies for the mess on the wall.

Learning how to reframe the concept of being stupid

I’m much older now. I don’t throw my financial recording instrument at the wall like I used to—mainly because it’s a laptop, but also because I’ve matured somewhat. But I continue to fail and feel “stupid” regularly. Sometimes I even put myself in situations that will make me feel that way on purpose.

For example, I recently decided to learn to code in a big way. Even though I’ve been messing around with computers since the early 1980s, the learning curve has been steep.

I decided early on that I would approach learning how to code through a personal project, in the hopes that it would help me learn faster than a course. I was going to make an online book and movie database for my family, so we could all see what books and movies we owned at a glance. Armed with a manual on creating a similar site using PHP and some previous knowledge of HTML and CSS, I dove in with the enthusiasm and excitement typically reserved for moon landings and PostMates deliveries.

Three months later, I was kicking myself for being so shortsighted. My half-baked idea was getting nowhere, fast. I kept running snippets of code that should have worked but refused to cooperate for unknown reasons. I wondered if maybe, I just wasn’t smart enough to tackle something like a complex database after all. Who was I to think I could build something so challenging right out of the gate? I put my project on hold, waiting for a time when my brain might somehow improve on its own – which, incidentally, never happened.

Then I listened to an interview with Mike Little, one of the founders and original developers of the website platform WordPress. During the interview, he mentioned that when he recently went back into the WordPress code, it took him a while to get readjusted. Even then, he spent a lot of time googling PHP code to figure out what he was doing. He got stuck more than a few times.

What? I thought, This seasoned developer who created the world’s most popular website platform still has to Google code? I was floored. I was also invigorated. Once again, I realized that my barrier to coding genius wasn’t a lack of smarts, it was simply a lack of education and experience. That could be remedied! I immediately got to work, filling the gaps in my knowledge.

I also read an article in a similar vein by our own Neil Hughes, about his ambitious experiment to have one of his articles written by artificial intelligence. I know Neil, and I know he is a smart person. If he also gets stuck doing this stuff, then maybe the problem isn’t that I’m stupid, but rather I need to take it easy on myself.

Why we need to be gentle with ourselves

Stupid is a strong word. It’s also totally inaccurate. Machines are stupid. Computers are stupid. Even smartphones are pretty stupid when you consider that they need human input to do anything for us. Humans, on the other hand, are super smart beings with an almost limitless capacity to learn. Maybe we should stop using the word “stupid” to describe ourselves, ever.

If we can take a moment to breathe and calm ourselves, we might discover the truth. We’re not stupid, we just haven’t mastered the thing we’re trying to do. As multipotentialites, the fact that we’re almost always in a state of learning new things means that we often feel like we’re failing.

In the case of my checkbook, I was nineteen and had never been taught how to manage my money. Even though I could do simple math, I didn’t understand things like service charges, or how to keep track of them every month. Once I learned how it worked, I no longer felt like I was stupid, even if I still messed up occasionally.

Are you bad at the thing, or just new to the thing?

When first uncovering a new interest, we multipotentialites tend to dive in deep very quickly. While it can feel exciting at first, it can also lead to feelings of inadequacy in the brains department. Especially with experiences that often require extensive learning, like programming or cooking, a deep dive can feel like we’ve suddenly landed in quicksand. 

In my case, creating a complex movie and book database app was probably several steps ahead of where I should have started. Perhaps if I had taken a few courses in PHP or built a few small projects first, I would have felt more adept when I moved into more complex projects.

Even when we feel an unbounded passion for a new pursuit, it’s important to remind ourselves that we’re venturing into new waters.

Though we multipotentialites may imagine ourselves swimming with dolphins, dipping our toes in the ocean first can be a smart move. Once we’ve waded in and noticed where the rip currents are, we’ll be much more prepared when we finally meet up with that dolphin.

As multipotentialites, we probably feel “stupid” more than most. The nature of trying new things and exploring new territory means that we’re in a continual state of learning. That can make us feel stupid, although there are many more accurate words for what’s actually going on. We should get used to that feeling, though—not because we are stupid, but because when we make peace with not knowing things, we open ourselves up to better and deeper learning.

Your turn

When was a time you felt stupid while learning something new? How did you deal with those feelings? Share your experiences with your fellow multipods in the comments below.

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Want to Do Everything? There’s Time for That.

I first noticed the ukulele at the ice cream shop. It was crafted from glossy Koa wood, and the minute I plucked my fingers against the strings, I knew I wanted to buy it. No way, I told myself, paying for my popsicle and getting out of the shop as quickly as possible. My schedule was already so busy studying Spanish, surfing, longboarding, writing, and working on my business. It was an absurd time to learn a new instrument. I had also just moved to a beach town in Mexico and if I were going to be watching YouTube on a loop, I should be brushing up on my salsa moves, not learning ukulele chords. No harm in learning a song or two, the devil on my shoulder whispered. It will just end up gathering dust in the corner, the practical angel shot back.

I resisted the temptation to buy the ukulele and kept to my existing projects. A few weeks later, I injured my knee in a scooter accident. I was crushed—I’d have to spend two weeks with my leg propped up in bed without surfing, longboarding, or salsa dancing. But even though my knee was throbbing in pain, I had a devilish grin. It was the perfect opportunity to try out the ukulele.

When I look back on the past decade of my life, I’ve seen this scenario unfold time and time again. I studied Spanish in college and spent a semester abroad in Buenos Aires. I loved the language, but didn’t make the time to speak or study regularly for 8 years. I always felt a twinge of guilt about this unfinished project, and every so often would vow to finally download DuoLingo or find a conversation partner. This past year, I relocated to Mexico, where I get to speak Spanish every day. My desire to learn the language never faded; it just wasn’t the right time. I only wish I had had patience and trust that the opportunity to pursue the passion would emerge in the future—once I had established my career and dabbled in a few other projects.

As multipotentialities, we can sometimes feel overwhelmed by our curiosity and hunger to pursue new businesses or projects, read every book, or learn multiple languages, instruments, sports, and fill-in-the-blank-with-your-thing-here. Sometimes, I’ll feed into a scarcity mentality and feel anxious that there won’t be enough time to learn and do everything unless I start it all right now. This leads me to create a self-sabotaging trap where I overload myself with ambitions and then feel guilty when I don’t have time to commit to it all.

Here are a few tips for knowing when it’s the right time to pursue something new and when it’s best to file away a seed of curiosity and trust that it will make its way back to you:

1. Sit on it

I once read that if you decide you want to quit smoking, you should think about it for a week before you actually put the cigarettes away. I think this is good advice for pursuing a new hobby or launching a project, as well. The beautiful thing about being a multipotentialite is that we can be curious about almost anything! But having a passionate curiosity for something might not translate into wanting to dedicate the hours to really learn it.

Once, after going to a music festival, I came back completely psyched to become a DJ! After some light googling, I realized I would have to download all the songs I wanted to mix (adorably, I thought I’d do it on Spotify) and I knew it wasn’t the path for me. When a new inspiration hits, give it a few weeks or months and see if the desire keeps coming up. Take the time to reflect and be honest if you’re interested in diving deep into the process or just want to fast-forward to the presumed outcome. I was definitely more excited about traveling the world as an international DJ than sitting at my computer and tweaking frequencies on a software program. If the desire naturally floats away after the initial inspiration, let it go!

2. Reflect on how it fits into your portfolio of pursuits

I learned to surf this year, and the first couple of months were very challenging. And when I say challenging, I mean demoralizing. I spent at least half of my time in the ocean getting whirled up by waves and swallowing liters of saltwater. It took a couple of months of consistent practice to get to a level where I was actually having fun.

The early phases of learning something new can be exciting, but can also involve a lot of failure and rote practice. Do you currently have the time and patience to commit to being bad at something before you start to find your flow? Everyone is different, but I also like to consider how a new endeavor fits into my portfolio of pursuits. I like to have at least one active project or hobby where I feel very confident to balance out a project where I am starting from scratch.

3. Trust there is a season for every call of the soul

My favorite part of being a multipotentialite is that I have an abundant array of coping mechanisms and curiosities to carry me through different seasons of life. Injured and stuck in bed? Time to strum on the ukulele. Quarantined for a global pandemic? Spend two hours a day alone in a parking lot learning to longboard dance! Failed business? Well, now it’s time to pursue your writing career.

Being a multipotentialite is such a gift, because we’re able to adapt when life throws us challenging circumstances. Every time I make the intentional choice to feel ease instead of guilt when I put a project on hold or save an idea for later, I build my trust muscle in myself. Whenever I feel a flash of inspiration and then decide, Hey, that’s not for me, I strengthen my commitment to my true callings: the ones that keep coming back. 

If you ever feel overwhelmed with your curiosities…

…Or with your desire to pursue new endeavors, you’re not alone! Take a deep breath, turn inwards, and sit with the feelings that come up for you. Life is a series of seasons—of rain and drought, summer and winter, beginnings and endings. I now see my endless curiosities as a vibrant seed bank stocked for the future, instead of a to-do list of things I feel guilty for not actively pursuing. We can trust that all of our soul’s true callings will float back to us when the time is right. And it’s fun to have a few things to look forward to.

Your turn

How do you feel when you put a passion on the side burner? Do your natural passions always float back to you eventually? Share your stories and tips in the comments.

The post Want to Do Everything? There’s Time for That. appeared first on Puttylike.