When you were five, you were asked what you wanted to be when you grew up. You answered something like: a paleontologist entomologist astronaut photographer hula hoop champion. And today? Not much has changed. Except now, you want to be a marine biologist musician organic farmer poet yoga instructor former hula hoop champion.
It didn’t help that people told you, “You can do and be anything you want! You’re so lucky!”
You didn’t feel lucky. You still don’t.
You feel overwhelmed. Guilty. Frozen.
You are afflicted with multipotentiality. Or as Emilie Wapnick says, “You’re a multipotentialite.”
It’s one of your too muchnesses. Kind of like how you have so much enthusiasm for learning, gobs of intensity, 100s of ideas for new projects, extraordinary perception, extreme curiosity, deep sensitivity, wide empathy, a gazillion questions. See? Kind of like that. (Sometimes these are called overexcitabilities. Find out about OEs here.)
You’re the fire hose to everyone else’s garden hose.
When it comes to multipotentiality, it means that you might have changed your major in college several times or you were in college an extra several years or you didn’t go to college because you couldn’t choose just one.
It means that you can’t “follow your bliss” or “find your passion” because there are just too many so where the heck do you start?
And it means that you feel guilty. It’s embarrassing. Too much of a good thing. People want what you have. How can you complain about having multiple interests and abilities? It means that you believe (falsely) that you must not do anything very deeply since you’re such a busy dabbler. It means that your resume is suspect because you change jobs every 2-5 years when you get bored and need to move on.
Here’s the thing: It’s time to realize that a rainforest mind is very very full of life. And all of that life is important to the well-being of the planet. So, it’s not something to reject, or shrink, or chop down. It’s something to manage, understand and celebrate.
For specific ideas on what to do, read this post, this post and this one. And if you want to join a community of multipotentialites, check out Emily Wapnick’s site.
And, of course, know that here at Your Rainforest Mind, we love and are grateful for all of your many muchnesses.
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To my bloggEEs: Are you a multipotentialite? What’s that like for you? How else do you feel like too much?
This post is part of a blog hop from the wonderful resource for parents of gifted kids: hoagiesgifted. See many other great posts about multipotentiality by clicking on the image.
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