Multipotential.le.s, do not follow the rules!

I must admit, one of my great regrets as a teenager and a young adult was that I did not have enough hindsight and autonomy to question certain principles of life that were instilled in me by my parents, by education, and by society. Not easy you will tell me, when everyone explains to you that life is like that,and not otherwise. Later, when I began to study the subject, read biographies and discovered those"free spirits"who led their lives by accumulating different passions and activities without worrying about what others thought of them, I still bit my fingers, reproaching myself for not having had enough courage to assert myself as I was. But it was also, once again, a good life lesson, namely that you always have to question what you are taught and what is established, the rules to follow. What you have already read and what you will read about being a multipotential.the must above all allow you to no longer feel different from others. The mere fact of being able to put a name to what you considered a "tare" will already take away your great weight. No, you are not a "loser", a "pretender", an "undecided". Now you know 1/who you are and 2/ that you are not alone. And you will also understand that the usual rules that have made you an"outsized"are far from perfect.

Get out of social rules and formatting

We do not necessarily realize it, as I explained in my previous article on multipotentials,but we are born and we are in a social and cultural, religious, or spiritual context, a society, a civilization, which has its own rules and its own habits. And this culture, this way of seeing life, is rarely questioned. These are sorts of immutable commandments, which it is true are not totally stupid, but which are not suitable for everything, nor for everyone. Thus, we are taught from a very young child that we must finish our meal before leaving the table. We are told to finish our homework before going to play, and to do the math exercise before moving on to biology. The rule is that any action started must be completed before moving on to another. We are instilled with punishment if necessary, without listening to the child's own rhythm. At school, we accumulate hours of lessons in a specific order, without worrying about the rhythms and preferences of each other – in the traditional public and private school is understood, because some establishments (Montessori, Steiner …) have rightly called into question these pre-established principles. Yet, when you read great experts in organization and effectiveness, knowing how to divide your various activities into smaller steps can be much more efficient and produce more results.

Flexibility and adaptability

For example, knowing how to pause the writing of a long writing for a child, a report for an adult, to go for a walk in nature, enjoy the day (or the sun) before nightfall (or rain), at the right time, can allow you to come back regenerated, with more motivation and ideas. You can replace the ride with a little chore or a little pleasure, such as throwing a laundry or watching a documentary. This means being able to refuse this 'start-mid-end' injunction and listening to one's own rhythms. Later, we are quickly pushed by the school system (or Pôle Emploi) to choose a profession, and once and for all. Society, in order to function well (she believes) needs to put people in boxes: field of activity, profession, one and only one, corresponding to a qualification. First you study, then you work for 40 years, and finally you retire. The fact ofimagining alternating studies and work,for example, is not part of the norm. You do not change your activity, or very little, by staying in your profession and your field. We have to complete every mission, every function, and we make progress as we go along. That's how our grandparents and parents managed to build their careers, starting small and progressing linearly. Since it worked for them, why question this concept of linearity? Those who prefer to go from activity A to activity B, then C, and then return to A, whether over a day or over several professional years, are often seen as unstable,preventers of going round in circles who do not know what they want. We do not envisage another way of operating,which is that of multipotentials: to do several things in parallel, not to get tired, to advance on several fronts at the same time, or to test different concepts, business, trades, or products. Even if it means abandoning the less satisfactory, but faster than by progressing in a monolithic way. These rules in fact mask other possibilities, alternatives of operation, in all areas of life. This reflects a great lack of flexibility; yet adaptability is one of the keys to man's success in survival since prehistoric times. Like knowing how to interrupt one activity to make another more urgent, or that can only be done at a given time. Or have the intelligence to change profession when it seems doomed to disappear, go and train on another position, in another profession, a more promising professional branch. If we assume that society seeks efficiency and result, this way of conducting everything in a row is not necessarily the right choice,in any case the only choice of organization. The goal, when we spend time on a project, is to finish it, a priori it is what will bring us the most satisfaction. Firstly because it is wasting your time without reaching the goal, then because if it is a dream, not to fulfill it, in any case not to have been to the end and to have tried as much as possible to get there, it is frustrating for everyone! But the path to get there can be very different for different people, like timing. Imagine climbing a mountain: you can choose different circuits, shorter (and steep) or longer (and quiet), depending on the landscapes you prefer to see, depending on its level of shape – you walk 2 hours a day, or climb at full speed. You can even choose to stop at a level, and go down, because the ride was enough for you, or you have reached your goal to yourself. Similarly, you may want to start running just for fun, not necessarily with one goal: to win a marathon, to run such a distance in such a long time, to lose X kilos… Society is increasingly asking us to have results goals in everything we do. But our life goals belong only to us.

Respect its rhythms and its mode of operation

Every human being has his own rhythm, his own abilities, his own energy. When we ask all the employees of a company to work from Monday to Friday from 9:00 to 18:00, we forget that some are more efficient early in the morning, others late at night, that some will have difficulty working 8 hours at a time, that others will suffer from the back or arm while sitting or making the same gesture for hours on end. That in winter, we need more sleep, and that in summer less. That not everyone wants to go on holiday in the same month, and sometimes in small slices. That not everyone wants to be an employee, that some prefer to work more to earn more, others work less… That you may want to do a 6-month mission by working like a mule, to then go around the world or write a book. As an employee, I had already managed to introduce some changes that corresponded to my own rhythm. I had negotiated to be able to start at 9:30, to avoid traffic jams, and thus take only 20 minutes instead of an hour to make the journey from my home. And I would leave half an hour later in the evening. I thus gained 1h20 of leisure time (because the traffic jams, for me at least, it is not my favorite moment) per day. Which is huge! I worked all the time on a screen, but I needed from time to time to visit my colleagues; so I progressed on my work, then regularly I left my office to join them, without waiting for the end of the whole project, following my small validation steps. I went from one project to another, when the first one came out of my eyes. I did not hesitate to get up to relieve my back, to do stretching, which initially attracted mockery from my colleagues, before they imitated me, after the application of occupational medicine directives. And when I moved close to my workplace, I was escaping at lunchtime quietly, healthy, and… take a nap! What I didn't say to anyone: napping is for the old, or the soft, the weak… Yet it allowed me to be perfectly fit until bedtime!

Being an explorer

To be a multipotential is above all to be curieux.se. It is to have different desires, ideas, impulses, desires, dreams. Even if it is more difficult to succeed everything when you run after several hares, it is also a great wealth, which in the end can lead to a happier life. Allowing a child to try several sports in parallel, to try several musical instruments, or to move from one toy to another, is to allow him to better know his tastes, to discover his inclinations, his natural talents. Life is too short not to do what we love, but it is also very long: we have the opportunity to have several professional lives, to "switch" when a new profession no longer interests us, to carry out several projects, to live in several countries… It would be a shame to deprive ourselves of all the possibilities that life offers us. A multipotential is opposed to the notion of what is defined as an "expert", i.e. a specialist in a field. He/she is the "explorer" who walks in different fields. But there are plenty of types of multipotential. Some will become experts in one field and "scan" many others. Some will become experts in several fields – we speak of "polymaths": having several skills. Some spend all the time from one subject to another, over a short or long period, without ever returning to it once left, others work "in a loop" on their different subjects of predilection, passing from one to the other, without necessarily scanning other areas. It takes everything to make a world… but they often have the common need to know how to deal with this incessant curiosity and bulimia of variety and activities. To be multipotential.le,is to have a fan vision,against those who have a linear vision. It's having lots of interests instead of one big passion. And none is better. Both are good. It is not necessarily easy to be able to stop a project, a mission to move to another in your work, but you can ask to have more freedom in your organization, or change jobs, for a position or profession that presents more variety. And in his private life, there are many little tricks to follow his natural inclination while managing to finish what we started, without having the impression of giving up certain projects, without being bored, without feeling in failure. By following one's own inclinations and nature. >>> To discover:

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