What Oprah Knows

While hunting through Oprah's website for a post on personal photos and self-confidence at The Art of the One Person Business, I came across this quote from one of last year's What I Know For Sure columns.

Find the flow and follow it. You can't go wrong. Even if you're in a situation where you feel uncomfortable or out of place, don't try to swim against the current. Change direction. Find the flow and follow it.

May 6, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

A Chunk of Paint

For much of his life, my dad worked in a GM auto plant. One day, when I was a kid, my dad brought home a loose chunk of paint that he'd scrounged up somewhere. When I say a chunk, I mean it was a one inch thick chunk of brown, solidified paint. He'd brought it home for me as a present. I don't think I was too impressed.

My dad knew better. I followed him downstairs to his workshop and watched as he began cutting away one side of the paint. Now the truth stood revealed. This "chunk" was actually hundreds of layers of brightly colored paint that had built up on the walls of the GM paint booth. Gold, silver, turquoise, scarlet, emerald... the colors seemed endless. By the time my dad finished polishing it, we had a work of art!

I learned more than a few lessons that day... and gained a fascination for the power of layers.

Lately, I've been watching an interesting show on TV, Melvyn Bragg's The Adventure of English. It's an eight part history of the English language. Bragg shows how English has been built up in a series of layers over the past 1500 years. Celtic, Friesian, Norse, Latin, French... our language has become richer, more diversified, and more powerful with each layer.

When we look at our lives, we can see a similar pattern. Childhood, high school, college, jobs, relationships, communities... our lives come together in a series of layers.

Sometimes a layer doesn't add to the overall composition of our lives and needs to be stripped away to let the original essence stand on its own. Sometimes an earlier layer is more powerful than a later one and begins to show through. Artists call this effect Pentimento. Ultimately, the layers of our lives enrich us and strengthen us. We need only to polish them to let the many colors show through!

By the way, Happy Birthday Dad!!

April 29, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

From Dilettante to... Renaissance Soul!

Twenty-five years ago, I was a bright kid just finishing high school. My teachers were full of recommendations about what I should study in university. I should go into computers. I should study English. I should get a degree in physics.

I was interested in all those things but nothing really grabbed me. So they asked me “What do you want to be?” I didn’t know.

I started off in biology (???) but quickly grew bored… although superheating glass beakers with a Bunsen burner and then pouring cold water in them was kind of fun. I eventually gravitated to an interdisciplinary program where I could more or less make up my own course of study, a combination of psychology, philosophy, and art history.

As for choosing a career, I was Moses wandering in the desert searching for the promised land.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one, according to Margaret Lobenstine, author of the upcoming book Secrets of the Renaissance Soul: How to Make "Too Many Interests" Work For You.

Lobenstine talks about two very different personality types.

On one hand are those who nurture a single abiding passion or talent for their whole lives. Mozart was consumed by music almost from birth. Bill Clinton knew he wanted to be president when he was eight years old. Earl Nightingale called these individuals “river people” because they spend their lives being swept along in a rich river of interest.

On the other hand are individuals like Ben Franklin or Leonardo da Vinci, those infinitely curious people whose interests are constantly changing, and whose achievements span multiple fields of endeavor. Lobenstine calls these people renaissance souls!

During the renaissance, having a wide range of skills and interests was highly honored. Now, however, the specialist rules. Find you niche and stick to it.

Those with wide-ranging interests are considered dilettantes and face some common problems as they go through life:

• They pursue a career and become successful but find themselves feeling trapped by their own success.
• They bounce around, working in low-paying jobs while avoiding making a commitment to a particular career.
• They pursue a variety of jobs, but eventually run into employers who hold their broad range of skills against them.

Are you a renaissance soul?

• Do you prefer variety to concentrating on just one thing?
• Do you prefer widening your options rather than narrowing your choices?
• Do you go more by what your energy feels like than by what your schedule says you should be doing?
• After you succeed at something, do you prefer to move on to something new rather than expanding on your success?

Career coach Barbara Sher in her book Wishcraft talks about how to manage multiple interests and dreams. Some of her approaches include:

• Sequential careers.
• Moonlighting. Pursuing two very different careers at the same time. For example, an accountant who trains horses on the weekend.
• The patchwork quilt. Alternating your time between different careers. For example, a teacher who spends her summers on archaeological digs.

Chris King is someone who proudly embraces the diversity of her interests. Chris is an advocate of having a Portfolio Career, multiple jobs or businesses going at once. It makes for a busy way of life to be sure, but I don't think she'd have it any other way.

If you want to explore this more, Margaret and Chris each have a quiz to help you determine if this is a choice that's right for you.

Margaret Lobenstine's Renaissance Soul quiz

Chris King's Portfolio Career quiz

I’d offer one more option. Let’s call it the Quest approach. This is where everything you do, while often seemingly unconnected, ultimately leads you to a place where you can use all the abilities you’ve picked up along the way. Call it life as a scavenger hunt. You embark upon an adventure and pick up tools and clues along the way that hint at your final destination.

In some way, everything I’ve done and studied has prepared me for what I’m doing now, running the Center. When I look back on notes I wrote more than 20 years ago, I see the clues. There is a remarkable consistency that wasn’t apparent back then.

By the way, a quick thank you to Maria Sariego for bringing Margaret’s work to my attention.

Continue reading "From Dilettante to... Renaissance Soul!"

April 22, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)