The magic of multipotentiality

If you were ever a fan of Harry Potter, you were surely drawn to the concept of a magical world parallel to ours. We sad Muggles, trapped in our bland routine, not knowing that we are surrounded by wonderful beings. Witches, wizards and fantastic creatures coexist with us, and their survival depends entirely on going unnoticed. The Muggle world is conservative, they have a panic of the unknown, and when Muggles are scared, they attack.

That goes for those who felt like a muggle, I of course felt like a witch, and not a witch as an adjective (that has negative connotations) but as a noun, as a person with supernatural powers. And what was my power? I had no idea! But I always knew myself differently, from a very young age I dreamed of adventure, traveling the world, getting to know other cultures and people.

(You have) The smell of someone who has ridden the back of the wind, Peter. The smell of a hundred fun summers, with sleeping in trees and adventures with Indians and Pirates. Oh remember, Peter? The world was ours. We could do everything or nothing. All it had to be was anything 'cause it was always us.

Tinkerbell to an adult and amnesiac Peter Pan (Hook)

In case you doubt it, magic exists, adventure exists, and there are some wonderful beings living among us, who endow the world with colors without the majority knowing them. They move in the shadows, they call themselves strange, different, some even consider that they have a problem because they cannot adapt to the current canons... until they receive their letter from Hogwarts, that wonderful message that says “you are not weird, you have no problem, you are different, you have magic: you are a multipotentialite, and there are many more like you out there, more than you could possibly imagine”.

Tears of relief and joy come, and you devour every book, article, publication or video on multipotentialites. At last all the turns in your life, all the frustrations, all the sterile explanations to people who looked at you with their muggle eyes make sense. They tried to understand you from the love they profess, but labeled you as clueless, crazy, immature, while at the other extreme others classify you as gifted or as a bookworm... Yes, you are all that at the same time and much more, you are a multipotentialite, and you have not yet finished learning to pronounce the term and you already feel comfortable inside it because it makes sense, finally a label makes sense.

Discovering Your Essence: The Hogwarts Letter

All multipotentialites remember exactly how they found out that they were one, what they were doing at that moment and how they reacted, for many it was a before and after in their lives.

If you think I'm exaggerating, I'll try to find an equivalence ... there was a time when education was purely rote with the repetition technique, and with this technique some children learned quickly, and others took three times as long. These children in all probability perceived their learning difficulties, some probably felt less intelligent than the rest, for them learning was traumatic because they compared themselves to others and lost out.

Until they discovered the different types of memory. Suddenly some discovered that they had a more visual and less auditory memory, taking them half the time to learn by images than listening to lessons. They began to let the kinesthetic person touch the objects so that he/she could experience learning ... and just like that, the way of transmitting information could be adapted to the different ways of receiving it, and those children who had suffered for years had their lives changed. And if you still don’t believe me, ask a dyslexic how their reading has improved since Kindle added a font for them.

The same goes for multipotentiality.

A TED talk that changed my life

When in the lockdown, I received a message from my cousin Lucia:

–Prima, watch this talk please and tell me what you think.

–You have just given meaning to my life –I replied after watching it, while tears rolled down my face.

–It’s totally you –said Lucia

I had just received my letter from Hogwarts. Suddenly I went from being the dreamer head-in-the-clouds Carmen, to feeling Carmen the invincible.

Are you a multipotentialite?

And now comes the moment of truth, what the hell is a multipotentialite? As its name suggests, it is a person with multiple potential(s), that is, people that can dedicate themself to different things and excel in all of them.

You will recognize a multipotentialite around you because it will be very difficult for you to explain what they do for a living, and many times, once you manage to learn their profession, they will go and change it for another one that is even more complicated to understand.

Many of us have been associated with this famous character from the Friends series.

A multipotentialite is a creative and passionate being, to whom discovering a new area of knowledge will seem both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because we love to learn (have you seen a child's curiosity to learn? Expand it with the years and you’ll have an adult multipot) and a curse in turn, since it is ANOTHER topic to add to the eternal list of topics to explore.

The Internet has done a lot of damage to multipotentialites, who usually have the shiny object syndrome. Learning to organize ourselves and prioritize before a free buffet of knowledge with new advances emerging every day, becomes a real challenge.

Speaking of challenges, I challenge you to find a multipotentialite with less than 40 tabs open in their browser (Why is it that from tab number 100 the aren't numbered but have a smiley face instead? I’m asking for a friend ??)

Releasing the inner child

The dream of every creative artist (and more and more entrepreneurs) is to recover the inner child, the one who felt that they could eat the world, who was not afraid of being wrong, who was so curious about the world around them that they wanted to learn everything, the one who wanted to save the world as a superhero, the one who learned by playing ... that child was the multipotentialite to whom our schools specialized.

When asked "what do you want to be when you grow up?" I remember that my friend María always answered without hesitation: "actress, singer, veterinarian!" receiving the approval and complacent smile of all the adults who listened to her. María ultimately chose something different, and she is very good at what she does, she has been doing it for 15 years, and she will probably continue to do it until she retires. María has specialized, she has the life that everyone dreams of: stability, security, progressing in her field ... María attends professional courses aimed at perfecting the profession she chose. In fact, Maria hated maths, so it was logical that she chose a career in the humanities.

If you want to see a multipotentialite have cold sweats, offer them a stable job for a lifetime.

All multipotentialites remember that interview with the institute's counselor. You take several tests of aptitude and knowledge, and your day arrives, finally someone is going to tell you at last what you are good at. You go to the interview excited, like visiting a guru that will read your future, the doubts are over, I no longer have to make a decision, it’s being done for me, someone has looked inside my brain and has my answer ...

His words fall on you like a jug of cold water "you can dedicate yourself to whatever you want, you have very good abilities both for science and humanities" and he is not aware of how difficult it is to breathe in that moment, welcome back anxiety, you have to choose. You leave the room to find your smiling Latin teacher saying "here is the student who is going to study humanities" while the math teacher reminds you how good you are for numbers... and you are only 15 years old, how are you going to make that decision?

Sir Ken Robinson in his masterpiece The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything spoke of enhancing that unique gift that each of us has at birth, but it is not applicable to this case.

The power of a multipotentialite is in diversity, but we do not know it, because we live in a culture that punishes diversification in favor of specialization.

I have deleted courses from my curriculum because they made me look unstable, I have had to explain my changes in muggle language. Years ago my mother told me “Leonardo Davinci in our time would have been diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder”.

Mothers... as intuitive as ever, she knew why she said it. What company would currently hire an inventor/painter/sculptor/architect/etc? Today you can only be one thing, and specialize very much within that thing (you are no longer a cook, now you are a natural/gourmet/macrobiotic vegan kitchen cook, etc.)

And I know this because I took an ADHD test myself. Perhaps that was my answer, an attention deficit ... but, can a person with an attention deficit study two degrees, two masters, several languages, I don't-know-how many courses in completely different disciplines...? Nobody ever had to chase me to study, I have a wonderful capacity for concentration and I am constant... so what happens to me?

Can a multipotentialite have the same job forever, or will he/she be jumping from one profession to another continuously? Yes and also. The power of a multipotentialite is not in choosing, but in combining all those skills you have and incorporating new ones.

Imagine a video game in which you have a store with different weapons and abilities. As you level up you can buy more skills, it does not mean that you are losing the ones you bought at the time, but now you have a wider range of weapons to use depending on the occasion, and yes, some will have become obsolete, but in general, it will be because you have replaced them with a better one.

I belonged to Emilie Wapnick's multipotentialite community for over a year (I'll be back as soon as I have time!) That community was my Hogwarts, my school of magic and wizardry for a newly declared witch. You arrive with emotion, you are leaving the prison of the specialization in which you have tried to fit a whole life with little success, you introduce yourself to them and say "I am multipotentialite" and it is the first time in your life that you feel that a label gives you wings instead of restraining you.

You explain your crazy resume, and suddenly you are not ashamed to say that you have taken a course as an expert in foreign trade, along with one as assistant in drug addiction, while you are an anthropologist with experience in organizing events, and in your free time you like to play to learn Esperanto and German. And it’s the first time that nobody judges, while you start to discover everyone's weirdness (superpowers), and suddenly you feel proud of what until recently you were ashamed to be. All of a sudden being different is wonderful, the mistake was to try and fit us all into the same pattern.

Because the reality is that we are all unique and unrepeatable, and every time we measure everyone with the same yardstick, we are crucshing some wonderful potential, and preventing the development of a more creative and happy world.

Which brings me to another characteristic of multipotentialites: we are eternal dreamers, sensitive, with a great connection to people, we know how to read inside people and we accept those who are different (maybe for a lifetime of feeling weird?), we definitely work actively for a better world.

Put a multipotentialite in your life

If you are considering hiring someone, in a multipotentialite you will find a completely passionate, fireproof, creative, decisive person, involved in the improvement of the company, with a thousand ideas per minute, who enjoys what he/she does ... give them wings, give some specific objectives to comply and leave them free to choose other ways to improve the company. A motivated multipotentialite who feels valued, I assure you, will shine with their own light and their ideas will fascinate you.

If you want to wipe out your multipotentialite employee, give them a repetitive task.

If you are a multipotentialite and want to start your own business, I know that you are afraid, and you probably think you have to choose one of your passions. Don't do it, don't limit yourself, you naturally possess all the qualities of a leader, and some more. Embrace your multipotentiality and become a Renaissance entrepreneur (there's a book for you with that title).

If you have a multipotentialite friend, do not hesitate to share with them all your doubts related to your work options, he/she knows a lot about very different fields, is creative, and can perfectly connect your skills with professions that you may not even know. And the best part is, we love a mystery to be solved; if they don’t know the answer, let them investigate since you will both be winning, you will benefit from the summary they give you, they will have spent hours doing what they enjoy the most: investigating and learning new things.

Are you a multipotentialite?

If you have read up to this point and you have identified, if you have been moved by saying finally a coherent answer to what happens to me! Congratulations! you are a multipotentialite and this article is your letter from Hogwarts. In fact, I venture to say that I know what you are going to do in the next 24-48 hours ... you are going to investigate as if there was no tomorrow, you are going to exhaust all the possible information about multipotentiality, and you are going to be excited to tell it to everyone around you (I apologize in advance ... at some point they would have to find out...)

If, on the contrary, when reading this you have been indifferent or you are horrified by the idea of studying for fun, or of having a curriculum in which you are an engineer, poet and pastry chef ... I am afraid that Hogwarts will not be a place of magic and fun for you, but there is a good chance that you know someone you have not stopped thinking about while reading these lines, if so, send them this article, they will surely appreciate it ??