How I Found Success (and Peace) as a Multi-Passionate
Growing up, I was often told to pick something and stick to it, but there were so many different things I was interested in, that it was hard to pick one path and commit. I thought there was something wrong with me. Over the years I have been called “flaky”, “wishy-washy”, “unfocused”, “confused.” I felt like no one understood me. I remember sitting in the guidance counselor’s office my senior year, looking through college catalogs (yes, this was pre-Internet), and feeling completely overwhelmed by all the choices.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. I had so many passions — art, music, writing, literature, history, interior design, fashion. I wanted to be on TV, I wanted to write a book, I wanted to design clothing, I wanted to be an interior designer, I wanted to be a model, I wanted to work in a museum. My ideas were endless.
“You don’t have to be just one thing, but you have to start with something.” — Claire Bowditch
In high school, I played the cello for a while, I wrote for the literary mag, I got into drama and the art club, and participated in multiple sports — soccer, swimming, basketball — but I could never commit to more than one season of each. No sooner did I finish one thing than I was on to the next. (I might have even quit mid-season if not for my family’s rule that you have to finish out the season).
It was the same in college — I joined a Sorority (lost interest and went inactive my Senior year), I was an anchor on the campus news show for two semesters, and then a producer, I worked in the Women’s Center and as an R.A. in the dorms, and I participated in Reader’s Theater for a year. I changed my major THREE times from Broadcast Journalism to Business and finally Speech Communication with a minor in Public Relations. It took me six years to graduate and when I did, I still didn’t have a clue.
But, let’s go back to 17 year old me, leafing through those college catalogs. Not only was there the issue of choosing a major (it’s still crazy to me that we ask young adults to choose a career path for the rest of their life), but I was also faced with the overwhelming task of choosing a school. I ended up choosing a small state school — Kutztown University — it wasn’t my first choice, but I couldn’t afford to attend an out-of-state school.
Two years into my Kutztown experience, I was done. I was ready to transfer. I had outgrown it and I found myself getting bored with everything and everyone — my classmates, the professors, the campus, the town. I needed a new adventure but transferring was more trouble than it was worth, so I decided to stick it out and graduated from Kutztown with a B.A. in Speech Communication and P.R. (One of the few times forcing myself to stay the course paid off).
Let’s face it, our modern educational system doesn’t really give us the tools to pursue multiple passions; to take our strengths and our interests and apply them to an unconventional career path. Most kids, when asked what they want to be when they grow up, will say doctor, lawyer, teacher, firefighter, etc. It’s better now than when I was in high school, but we still tend to shame those who don’t know the answer and try to force them into picking something, ANYTHING!
This can leave us with a lot of shame as kids (and adults) for not doing what society expects of us.
Reframing The Conversation
No matter what you call it, multi-passionate, multipreneur, multipotentialite, scanner, Renaissance human, polymath, living a portfolio life — it is totally possible for you to thrive in the structure-loving world that we live in.
But first, we need to reframe the conversation. And, it starts with acceptance and self-love. It starts with all of us who consider ourselves multi-passionate people accepting ourselves and embracing the idea that we don’t really fit the mold. While “multi-passionate entrepreneur” may never be on the list of majors at a college or university (undeclared or related arts is probably as close as we’ll ever get), it is up to us to bring the term forward.
Since graduating, I have held many jobs and titles across multiple industries and organizations. Some I have loved, some I have hated, but they all have one thing in common — after a while, I started to lose interest. It wasn’t that I had come to the end of my learning curve; no, something else had caught my eye and I was on to the next thing. My coach would call this “bright, shiny object syndrome.” As much as I would try to fight it, try to finish what I was doing, I could feel it pulling at me, gnawing at me, and I knew deep down that it was time to move on.
The same is true of places. I have lived in Kutztown, PA; Rehoboth Beach, Delaware; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Harrisburg, PA; Waynesboro, PA; and now Montclair, New Jersey. I love new adventures, new places and meeting new people so much that I have seriously considered digital nomadism to cure me of my ennui. My remedy for this is travel. I travel as much as I can. Just being somewhere else for a week helps me to appreciate wherever it is I call home.
“Why can’t you stay put? Why can’t you sit still? Why do you always have to be so ‘extra?’”
As a kid, I was pretty outgoing. I was super chatty and friendly and always on the move. I would fidget in church, at the dinner table, and pretty much everywhere you were supposed to sit still. I was endlessly curious and I always had to be the center of attention. By the age of 12 though, I had learned to control that part of myself in order to make the adults in my life happy.
The last question would come much later in my life. I have always felt like I am too intense for some people. I feel too much. My sensitivity and my passion scare a lot of people away, but they can also be magnetic when I am around the RIGHT people. Still, I felt like I had to control my intensity, to bury it deep down inside of me when it became clear that others were uncomfortable with it.
I spent over 40 years of my life making myself smaller so that other people would feel more comfortable. I tried hard to fit in, to be “normal,” to keep my emotions in check, and to conform to what society thinks a woman should be. Throughout my life, I figured out what role I needed to play and I played it. I have been the dutiful daughter, the doting mother, the supportive wife, the good employee, the engaged parent. I was a people pleaser and a nurturer, always taking care of others, sometimes to my own detriment. I’m not perfect — I’ve been divorced twice, my kids have two different fathers (one of them I was never married to), I’ve struggled with anxiety throughout my life and at one point I could barely make ends meet.
Somewhere in my mid-30s, I remember thinking, “ Maybe I have ADHD.” I carried so much shame about being the way that I am. I would constantly apologize — at work, to my significant other, to my kids. I did everything that I thought I was supposed to do.
When I would run into a friend or a family member I hadn’t seen in a while, they would always small-talk me to death.
THEM: “How’s work?”
ME: “Oh, I got a new job.”
THEM: “OH… NOW what are you doing?,” asked in a condescending tone.
I could just imagine my judgmental Aunt telling my Uncle over dinner, “I ran into Kristina the other day, she quit her job and you will never believe what she is doing now!”
And that’s the problem. Not so much for the multi-passionate individual, but for the rest of society. We don’t fit into a neat little box with a bow. What’s more, we are perfectly fine with the decisions we make until we have to carry the weight of other people’s judgment.
The Joy Is In The Journey
I know it’s cliche, but for multi-passionate women (and men) — the joy IS in the journey because the journey matters more than the outcome. Unfortunately, we are raised in a society that says, “DO! Achieve! Finish what you start!”
When you are a multi-passionate, creative person, this feels stifling but we have to realize that it is nothing more than a limiting belief that keeps us from becoming who we truly are meant to be.
Still, this is where the guilt comes in. For most multi-passionate people, finishing isn’t really the point. It’s the experience of doing it. We feel satisfied and ready to move on only to have the world tell us that we are lazy or that we never see anything through. And then what happens? We start second-guessing ourselves.
What most people don’t understand is that it’s fulfilling enough for us to have mastered a new skill or to have gained insight into a specific discipline. It’s the rest of the world that has a problem when things remain unfinished. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating being irresponsible here or letting people down when they are really relying on you to get something done. I am simply saying that multi-passionate people have changing interests and that is OKAY — it’s part of our personality.
It’s a personality trait — just like being an extrovert or an introvert (or if you are like me, an ambivert). It isn’t really something you can change, and once you become aware of it, you have to accept it and embrace it as a part of who you are in order to do what makes you happy.
Here’s an example from my life: I have signed up for multiple network marketing opportunities — Avon, Stella & Dot, Chloe & Isabel, Thirty-One, and most recently Savvi. I’ve learned a lot from all of these companies, and I loved working with every one of them. I eventually “quit” because I moved on to a new opportunity. I didn’t want to just wear Avon makeup or Stella & Dot jewelry or carry a Thirty-One bag everywhere I went. I didn’t hurt anyone by quitting, I was just ready for something new.
This brings me to my next point:
Give Yourself Permission To Quit
“Giving up isn’t the same as moving on.” - Marie Forleo, Everything is Figureoutable
REPEAT AFTER ME: Quitting is NOT giving up, giving in, or lacking the “stick-with-it-ness” to see something through. Quitting simply means that you are done and THAT IS OKAY!
We are ALL born with multiple passions, but many of us lose touch with those passions as we grow up. Society tells us that we have to pick something; that we have to choose a path. No wonder we feel overwhelmed and ashamed when we can’t or don’t want to settle. No wonder we stay in places we have outgrown.
Our entire identities are wrapped up in the memos that our culture writes. Girls are soft, quiet, emotional, and nurturing. Boys are tough, loud, stoic, and ambitious. You are born, you go to school, you learn about history and literature and how to read, write, add and subtract, maybe you find something you are passionate about OR something you don’t really love but you are good at, and you go to another school to learn about that one thing; that one thing that will become your career for the rest of your life. Along the way, you don’t just learn about math or English, you learn how to behave in order to meet society’s expectations. Our parents, religion, school, civic organizations, every group we are a part of imparts their own cultural norms, and we have to decide if they fit in with our worldview.
We are told, “You can’t be all the things, you have to narrow it down to one thing.” Maybe you want to be a teacher and teach that one thing, maybe you want to be an accountant and add and subtract for the rest of your life, maybe you want to work for NASA. Whatever you choose, that is your path, and anything else is a distraction. Maybe you meet someone, you fall in love, you get married, you have children, you raise those children. Maybe you stay single. Either way, you will probably work a lot, doing that one thing you chose all those years ago, day in and day out for the rest of your life. Maybe you will get divorced. Maybe you will get remarried. Those are all acceptable things. Maybe you go on vacation for one week out of the year, two if you’re lucky. Year after year after year, until you are old enough to retire from that one thing. And as the years pass, your children grow up and they repeat the same cycle. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. On and on, until the end of time.
Unless, you give yourself permission to quit, to change the entire trajectory of your life. Maybe instead of doing that one thing, you decide you want to do many things. Maybe you don’t even know what you want to do for a living until you are 50. So many of us live by the rules that our society and our culture ascribe to us. We go through the motions. Trying to fit in. Trying to stay under the radar. And when we desire to do life differently, we are shamed into conforming.
Give yourself permission to quit and you are also giving yourself permission to live.
You Are A Goddamn Cheetah
Three years ago, I read “Untamed” by Glennon Doyle, a book that changed my life and my entire way of thinking. Not that I ever needed validation, but Glennon’s words gave me the permission I needed to quit, to go in a totally different direction than the one my life had been taking for the past twenty years. And all because of a goddamn Cheetah.
If you haven’t read it, the book opens with the story of Tabitha, the Cheetah, who was born in captivity. Even though she has never lived in the wild, there is still a wild look that comes into her eyes every so often, a remembrance of sorts, passed down through the genetic code of her ancestors:
“Something’s off about my life. I feel restless and frustrated. I have this hunch that everything was supposed to be more beautiful than this.”
Looking back at her cage, the only home she has ever known, the zookeepers who take care of her, and the spectators who come to watch her chase a pink bunny on the back of a Jeep through the Cheetah Run, Glennon imagines Tabitha sighing, “I should be grateful. I have a good enough life here. It’s crazy to long for what doesn’t even exist.”
No, Tabitha. You are not crazy. You are a goddamn cheetah.
There are so many anecdotes and quotes throughout the book that resonate with me. So, when the journal came out this year, I knew I had to go a step further in my journey. Answering the questions posed in the journal really allowed me to “unearth my beliefs” about what it means to be a good girl, a good mother, a good friend, a good daughter, a good partner.
I think more than anything it helped me to embrace my many passions and the unconventional life that being multi-passionate has led me towards. I am more committed than ever to my own joy and living my life without asking permission or offering any explanation for my choices.
Glennon says that age ten is when we “learn how to be good girls and real boys.” Ten is when children begin to hide who they are in order to become what the world expects them to be. Right around ten is when we begin to internalize our formal taming. Glennon says, “Ten is when the world sat me down, told me to be quiet, and pointed toward my cages.”
We weren’t born distrusting ourselves, rather we have been conditioned to be afraid of our true selves, “so we do not honor our own bodies, curiosity, hunger, judgment, experience, or ambition.” Instead, we strive to comply with society’s memos and “arbitrary expectations.”
We need to remember who we are in order to fully live our truest, most beautiful life. And in doing so we can rewrite our story.
How Do I Know If I Am Multi-Passionate?
“The only constant in my life is shape-shifting, exploration, and evolution. I went from being a musician, to web designer, filmmaker, law student, entrepreneur — and wrote a book and program for multipotentialites: Renaissance Business.” — Emily Wapnick
Does the quote above sound familiar? Multi-passionate people go through life collecting knowledge and experiences. Early on, they may feel confused over how everything fits together. If you are multi-passionate, you probably feel a sense of joy and fulfillment from wearing many different hats. You may also suffer from low self-esteem and lack of confidence because you don’t subscribe to societal beliefs and norms when it comes to a career. Many multi-passionate people suffer in silence because they spend so much time trying to become a watered-down version of themselves to satisfy others.
The good news though is that a lot of multi-passionate people are successful entrepreneurs — Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, and Richard Branson are good examples.
Here are a few more signs that you might be multi-passionate:
You don’t fit neatly into a conventional career
You have a gazillion ideas going through your head at all times
You have a whole list of passions, interests, and hobbies that light you up
Pursuing a single career path sounds suffocating
You struggle with answering the question, “What do you do for a living?”
You feel torn, stuck, undecided, and unsure about what you want to do
You are overwhelmed with all the choices, so much so that you spend most of your time overthinking about what your next step should be instead of taking action.
So how do you overcome low self-esteem and begin to build your confidence?
First of all, trust yourself. Self-trust is defined as the “firm reliance on the integrity of yourself.” It’s making a promise that you will be kind to yourself no matter what the outcome. You also have to trust that all the things you are doing will lead to your purpose. Steve Jobs once said, “You cannot connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward.” You have to trust that everything will work out in the end.
Secondly, believe in yourself. This is the only way to build confidence. Sitting around and thinking about what you want to do with your life, gets you nowhere. You can envision the goal, but you have to take action to reach it. Start by recognizing your accomplishments, your talents, and the skills you have cultivated along the way.
Third, find your tribe. Being part of a community of like-minded individuals is empowering. For me, this is my Polka Dot Powerhouse chapter. Being surrounded by other multi-passionate, smart, capable, and ambitious women is extremely motivating for me. If you can’t find your tribe, you can always create it. The world is a huge place filled with all kinds of people who have been brought closer by the power of the Internet. There are communities in literally every corner of the web — join a group on social media, find a subreddit, or another online community. You are not alone- there are a ton of multipotentialites out there.
Fourth, set a big hairy audacious goal for yourself. Envision where you want to be in ten years. What do you want your life to look like? Do you want a beach house, a motorcycle, do you want to be a digital nomad? Plan a career strategy or visualize a business that will get you there.
Finally, tell your inner critic to SHUT UP! Stop questioning your ability, your authority, and your right to take up space. Imposter syndrome is very real for all of us, but showing up as your most authentic self no matter where you are or what you are doing, can go a long way in building up your confidence. As Glennon Doyle says, “ I do not adjust myself to please the world, I am myself wherever I am and I let the world adjust.”
Final Advice for the Multi-Passionate
Multi-passionates CAN be successful in business and life, but in order to do so, we need to embrace our passions and create our own narrative.
It can be uncomfortable when someone asks you what you do for a living and you can’t give them a definitive answer. Chances are, though, it is more uncomfortable for them than it is for you. Our human brains have an innate need to categorize everything and when something doesn’t fit neatly into our brain’s filing system, panic ensues as the brain tries to make sense of the new information.
The best way to avoid this uncomfortable moment is to come up with a quick elevator speech that you can spout off whenever you need to.
Here’s mine: I am a female empowerment coach specializing in branding and marketing. I help female entrepreneurs go from feeling lost, confused, and overwhelmed about how to grow and manage their business to becoming clear, focused, and engaged in the RIGHT activities so they can attract their ideal clients. I also help multi-passionate women to gain clarity and turn their passions into viable businesses.
Be aware of trying to do much. Multi-passionate people often start multiple businesses and while it can be tempting to turn every idea into a business, it probably won’t get you very far. I have a few businesses that fall under one umbrella and all of them tie together in some way, but they have been built one at a time. Building one business is hard enough, let alone two or more simultaneously.
I know this sounds like every career book you have ever read, but finding a niche can really help you focus. Until I decided who I wanted to work with, who needed my help, and who would benefit the most from my expertise, I had a really hard time defining what it was that I did.
Creating a powerful From/To statement is also extremely helpful:
I help (your target audience/niche) go FROM (insert where they are, how they feel, what they need here) TO (insert how they feel after they work with you here).
You don’t necessarily need to communicate WHAT it is you do, your target audience needs to know WHY you do what you do and how it can benefit them.
Being Multi-Passionate is Your Superpower
The best part about being a multi-passionate business builder is 1.) I have multiple streams of income and 2.) If one business doesn’t work out, I still have another one to fall back on. I still have a gazillion ideas every day and who knows, maybe a decade from now I will be doing something totally different but I try not to be tempted by “bright, shiny object syndrome,” if I can help it.
The beauty is that it’s never too late to try something new or go in a completely different direction if you want to — you just need to give yourself permission to quit what you are doing and change your course.
If you look at being multi-passionate as a gift, you can learn to embrace your passions to build a life and a career you love. My only regret is that I didn’t learn this sooner. If I could give my younger self one word of advice it would be this:
Trust your intuition, follow your passions, and you WILL find your purpose.
Being multi-passionate is your SUPERPOWER, so be strong, live boldly, and follow your passions.
