Hey Guys!
We’re taking a break from The ETA Log to share a few more integral facts about me.
Like I said before, I think it’s important for y’all to know who I am and some of what I stand for.
What’s Integral fact number 2?
I am a Polymath.
I’m sure many of you have questions now, huh? What is a Polymath? What does Polymath mean?
A Polymath is a fancy term for a person who can do a lot of different things.
Polymaths have gone by many different names over the millennia: a Multi-Talented, a Renaissance Person, a scanner, a Generalist, and the one that led me to finding a word for for who I am: a Multipotentialite (Pronounced (MULL-tye-po-TEN-shul-ite)).
The term multipotentialite (Multipod for short 😉) was coined in a 2015 TED Talk by Emilie Wapnick. Emily started and runs a company called Puttylike, a paid online community of multipods, all coexisting together, imparting wisdom and making a difference in the lives of members and consequently, the world! She also has a book I’ve started reading called How to be Everything (Which has me written all over it)!
She’s a great person, and I love her!
A concern that comes to mind in many people when thinking of being or speaking to a Polymath is this:
I/they can’t be good at everything.
We’ve been raised in a world that favors and honestly enforces specialization. Which is weird to me because in the digital age, especially when you’re starting your own business, fortune favors the brave, I mean, Multipotentialite.
They often bring up the quote that “A jack of all Trades is a master of none,” which perplexes me further because I think people have forgotten the full quote due to what society has crammed down our throats.
The full quote goes, “A jack of all Trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”
The takeaway of the full quote is that if someone gathers skills from a bunch of different places, they’ll think of solutions that specialists in a field won’t due to the rigidness of their training.
But what if I told you that this quote only gets part of the picture?
I believe that jacks of all trades can be masters of all! All they want to be masters of!
People often wonder how the Renaissance Men of Italy did all they did. Leonardo da Vinci not only painted the Mona Lisa, but he also invented the base model for what would become the helicopter.
Michelangelo hand-sculpted the marble statue of David in Florence, Italy, while also being the man behind the ornately-painted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican!
I don’t think that Leonardo and Michelangelo are these untouchable, esoteric artists whom no one will ever get to! I think this because people have said of my work across these first 25 years of my life the same genius-related remarks and reactions that many masters of their craft have been told. Every thing or subject I was/am good at, have been suggested as being my single career by people around me.
And I’m not the only one here! There are people younger than me who are doing huge things I haven’t even done (yet!) before they turn 20! Plus, you ever hear about those older people who take up new things and strike it big in retirement? I’m talking about the them, too! They broke through the conditioning that was shoved in their faces as kids and found one or more new talents within themselves!
And it also helped that my parents taught my sister and I that we could do anything and didn’t try to force a specialty onto us (for proof of concept, we’re both geniuses in all the fields we have between us)!
People who can do multiple things are misunderstood. I want to keep talking about Polymathy because of that, and because people don’t talk about being multi-talented as much as we should! Believe me, I’ve looked! 🤣
If this topic interests you, I invite you to subscribe to the blog down below and leave a comment if this resonated with you in some way!
That’s about all I got for this post.
See you guys soon! ❤️
Evan