“Hi, my name is Kahill Kuteesa, I am a multipotentialite.”
“What does that mean?” ” These millennial and using big words which carry no weight” “Multi.. what?” These are some of the reactions I get when I introduce myself to a gathering.
Today I got an inbox from a new friend on Facebook asking me what I mean with ” I am a multipotentialite” in my Facebook bio.
New Friend and everyone else who has wondered but didn’t ask, this is what being a multipotentialite means.
“A multipotentialite is someone with many interests and creative pursuits. Multipotentialites have no “one true calling” the way specialists do. Being a multipotentialite is our destiny.” via Puttylike “Multipotentialites thrive on learning, exploring, and mastering new skills. We are excellent at bringing disparate ideas together in creative ways. This makes us incredible innovators and problem solvers. When it comes to new interests that emerge, our insatiable curiosity leads us to absorb everything we can get our hands on. As a result, we pick up new skills fast and tend to be a wealth of information.”
6 years ago I was struggling with identifying myself in the different spaces I had interests in and pursues. I was a techie, a digital marketer, a trader, an urban farmer, and many others, pursuing them all passionately. It was so hard to mention all the things I was doing without making the audience feel like I was a confused young person with no actual focus or destiny. ” You can’t be pursuing all those things at once and excelling in them,” an older gentleman told me one time after an introduction. I felt small, and those days I had not found my voice of defense. It threw me off balance somehow, I started criticizing myself so hard. And as the cycle of beating myself too hard to prove a point to this gentleman, also the people my head had convinced me were saying the same things; I broke.
I sought comfort in this Albert Einstein’s quote”I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious” and created my own tagline ‘Driven by Curiosity and Passionate’.
Then one time, a dear friend called me out of my hiding place and introduced me to Emilie Wapnick’s TEDx talk about Multipontentialities and how boxes are not for us. We can pursue all the thing we are passionate about and excel. From then on, I have owned the label and continued to run with it. I am not one to care about labels but this is one I care!
I am a multipotentiality because I am a techie, a digital marketer, an urban farmer, a trader, bible gospel enthusiast, a development worker, a philanthropist and many others.
Do you know who you are?
FYI, multipotentiality and polymaths are two different things.
Patricia Kahill, thanks for the article post.Really thank you! Great.
great post! I agree part of the fun is discovering who you are and what you are capable of 🙂