In Case We Forget: What Being a Multipotentialte Means

There may be doubt in your mind at some point, about whether you’re a multipotentialite or not, and what that even means.

“So is it supposed to mean I’m somehow quicker at getting good at stuff than everyone?”

Unfortunately maybe not.

Specialists deserve credit, they’ve achieved a ton for civilization and for the furthering of the arts (including technology), and advances in culture and communication that make it easier than ever to be a multipotentialite.  The tools for creating and sharing your work have never been more accessible.

Maybe you’ve heard that Steve Jobs, now becoming to millennials what John Lennon was to baby boomers, wasn’t an amazing programmer. I would venture to say that he was not a specialist even, I may venture further to say that he was more like us multipotentialites.

Okay maybe I can’t claim that, nobody gets to claim Steve Jobs’ legacy or his “type” anyway…

But if you are having a moment where you find yourself surrounded by mastery, by specialists who you see as more talented or more hard-working or more masterful of their style, and you’re cursing your multipotential nature/gifts or you’re just feeling envious, then you need to take a step back.

First of all, if you’re here, then rest assured you are one of us, just accept that now. You’re not alone. And many of us know that feeling of being surrounded by specialists, grading their talent on levels of mastery. We’re tempted to think “They’ve made it!”

Now just for a second, let’s look at what it is that truly makes us tick.

A multipotentialite’s mind

I’ll set a quick scene: There’s me and I see or hear something really amazing, then I have this thought: “I want to do that. I could do that.  Doing that would make me incredibly satisfied. I will learn how to do that.”

And maybe I tell someone. Next scene, six months down the road, and I am doing that thing, or learning how to at least. Maybe not perfectly, maybe not getting the results of a master, but I’m fine with that.

“Wow you really do what you set out to do!” our most positive, friends might say in a matter of words, inspired by our diving into the unknown.

“Oh, what is it this time?” might be another reaction, perhaps implied from more cynical people, transferring their own dissatisfaction with not finding “their thing” onto you. If only they knew…

We are driven by desire

The difference between your healthy desire to pursue new things and the way the cynics may see it as “the indecision of a dilettante” is a major one, imposed by the lens of a society obsessed with specialization, craving simple romantic myths about people who were “born to (insert interest or skill here)” and became “the best” as a result.

The competitive mindset we are exposed to from a young age takes over, we need to know who’s the best, and often debate who’s better than who.  We’re obsessed with the #1’s in society.

But isn’t that kind of ridiculous for artists? Aren’t we supposed to be the ones who live outside this hierarchical way of seeing things?

Competition obsession and my beef with #1

The backlash of this “number ones only” mentality is that it discourages innovation and creativity in newcomers to any genre, medium or discipline. Of course, one can just ignore this, and ubiquity and recognition aren’t everything. I’m only bothered by the #1 obsession insofar as it encourages the amateur to give up.

It also means that the majority of people around us who do specialize, even in the arts, likely aren’t as familiar with that zone of uncertainty as we are.

It’s lonely there, scary to not know what’s next–painful, even, dancing on the edge of the unknown. What’s next for us? We truly often don’t know, and that’s what we deal with!  I’d say if we’re masters of anything, it’s dealing with that!

People start cloying for attention and followers and “likes” because they fear being unknown or unappreciated.  That to me isn’t a fear worth entertaining.  Why worry about ubiquity when you could be pushing the envelope, trying new things, living in the uncertainty.

Pushing the envelope is what we do best

Our society is obsessed with showering the best with rewards and fame, always at the exclusion of those of us who are heroic in our ability to start over, over and over again.

Seth Godin mentions in his new book that what we love to do may not always make us money or would even make us happy if it was a career. The truth is that society may not always reward us for being who we are. While society rewards mastery in any given medium, it does as readily reward the multi-talented, since there needs to always be a “best.”  I personally don’t want to be appraised by the medium my work is in, since that is not my identity!

What makes us multipotentialites in the first place

We don’t give up until we’re finished.

“Finished” may not be defined as “complete,” as much as “I got what I needed.”

Whether it’s to get good enough at graphic design to copy some amazing master’s style and use it to make our own album cover, or to learn how to do public speaking despite zero experience, or just to prove to ourselves that we can do something and then using the conceptual framework of that on everything else in our lives, the fact is that we can’t help it. We do it out of pure desire.

Many times it means putting that thing we made out there and saying “Look, I made this!” People unaccustomed to the amateur may not know how to react.

Obsessed with overnight success and drama, we forget the purity of the amateur and the newness they bring.

The artist can’t expect more, even though more might happen one day. Sometimes art only makes a small sound. Are you ok with that?

Of course we’ll get the blues, nobody said it would be easy, and this isn’t a recipe for amazing business success, nor is it a sign that we’re all amazing entrepreneurs–it’s just our way of life.

So you can take all the business and self-help tips in the world, but none of it will make you happy unless you accept who you are and love it.

Make sure your expectations are in line with what you really want to be doing every day / week / month / year, and not the residue of expectations collected from traditional standards of mastery or the ubiquity of doing one thing only.

We all want to shine and be known for what we do, and for multipotentialites it’s going to take a while, because nobody like us has come before to give us an example of what it’s going to like.

Your Turn

What does being a multipotentialite mean to you?