What do you want to be when you grow up?

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Now, fortunately, or rather unfortunately none of us have been able to escape this question. Growing up I used to find it really easy to answer this question. I remember a time when I wanted to play for the Indian cricket team, and the irony is I was better at hockey :)

I also wanted to be an astronaut during primary school, and I could barely survive Physics in high school. The point being I used to find this question intriguing, and the innocent child in me used to wonder how nice everyone is. They are interested to know what I would like to be when I grow up. The good thing is I can make fun of myself thinking about it, I was so naive. In college this became the most difficult question to answer, I really had no clue what I wanted to do, but it wasn't the end of the world. Over the years through conversations with several inspiring students in India, the Middle East, and some other parts of South Asia, I have been able to observe how decisive students are now. They are decisive about not making a career decision without exploring their options, I know this is just a minority of the students, but we have to start somewhere.

Now, when I look back and reconsider, I was just giving answers about what would I like to be when I grow up based on my knowledge at that point in time. My interests have been so diverse, and being my eclectic self it is almost unfair to narrow down on one path.

Today, when we look around the problem isn't that students don't have interests --rather the problem is they have too many.?In high school, I liked English and math, and economics and I played sports?and I played guitar and I participated in debates. I was all over the place, and trust me I enjoyed that. I really wish someone would have told me to take a second and reflect on what can you possibly do with these interests, how can you leverage your aptitude and excel.

This pattern did not leave me in high school and carried forward when I went to university as well. I would become interested in an area?and I would dive in, become all-consumed,?and I'd get to be pretty good at whatever it was,?and then I would hit this point where I'd start to get bored.?And usually, I would try and persist anyway,?because I had already devoted so much time and energy to this field.?But eventually this sense of boredom,?this feeling of, like, yeah, I got this, this isn't challenging anymore --?it would get to be too much.?And I would have to let it go.

This pattern caused me a lot of anxiety,?for two reasons.?The first was that I wasn't sure?how I was going to turn any of this into a career.?I thought that I would eventually have to pick one thing,?deny all of my other passions,?and just resign myself to being bored.?The other reason it caused me so much anxiety?was a little bit more personal.?I worried that there was something wrong with this,?and something wrong with me for being unable to stick with anything.?I worried that I was afraid of commitment,?or that I was scattered, or that I was self-sabotaging,?afraid of my own success. I really did now know how to break this loop.

The funny thing is when we grow up this innocent question evolves, and in college, they start asking you, what major would you like to pursue, and then you are anxious all over again. When does this interrogation stop? More importantly, how do we find the answer to this question? Is there a right answer to this?

To be honest, there isn't a right answer, but the good thing is there isn't a wrong answer either. What if you're someone who isn't wired to just pick one area of interest? ?What if there are a lot of different subjects that you're curious about,?and many different things you want to do??Well, there is no room for someone like you in this framework.?And so you might feel alone.?You might feel like you don't have a purpose.?And you might feel like there's something wrong with you.?There's nothing wrong with you.?

While browsing through TED , I came across this really interesting talk by Emilie Wapnick, where she explains how some of us don't have one true calling, and for me, that was really intriguing. I wanted to pull a thread or two from that. The term used during the talk was - 'multipotentialite'.

Link to the TED Talk

A multipotentialite is someone with many interests and creative pursuits.?You can also call them liberals.?You can also use one of the other terms that connote the same idea,?such as polymath, the Renaissance person.?Actually, during the Renaissance period,?it was considered the ideal to be well-versed in multiple disciplines.?Barbara Sher refers to this as "scanners."?Use whichever term you like, or invent your own.?I have to say I find it sort of fitting that as a community,?we cannot agree on a single identity. We don't have to conform to a particular notion that was preconceived in the stone age!

It's easy to see your multipotentiality?as a limitation or an affliction that you need to overcome.?But what I've learned is that there are some tremendous strengths to being this way. One should rather use this as their superpower. I can probably highlight 3 advantages of this:

1. Adaptability: The ability to morph into whatever you need to be?in a given situation.?
2. Rapid Learning: When multipotentialites become interested in something,?they observe everything they can get their hands on.?They are also used to being beginners,?because they have been beginners so many times in the past,?and this means that they are less afraid of trying new things?and stepping out of our comfort zones.?What's more, many skills are transferable across disciplines?and they bring everything they have learned to every new area they pursue,?so they are rarely starting from scratch.
3. Leveraging Interdisciplinarity:?Combining two or more fields?and creating something new at the intersection.?This is where new ideas come from.?And multipotentialites, with all of their backgrounds,?are able to access a lot of these points of intersection.

To be fair, now that I think of it I am a multipotentialite. I have worked across domains and functions with some of the leading Luxury Brands. I carried those skills with me to the EdTech industry. I have already worked across verticals in major corporates and startups. I am also a writer, who is passionate about every sport you can think of. Travel is my catharsis, and I love photography. And I am not done yet :)

It is your journey, don't let anyone decide for you. Don't live in a box, the learning happens outside it.