How To Be Everything: A Book Review
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Hello my loyal readers and happy September!
The temperatures are dropping and I am ready for it! Though I enjoy all seasons, the Fall and Spring seasons are probably two of my favorites, mainly because of the temperatures outside. Outside of the temperatures, there is truly something so beautiful to me in the transformation. How trees will display beautiful colors before letting go of their leaves for the year. How a simple plant developing will blossom out beautiful buds, and the magic you feel when they finally open.
Transformation is beautiful, but the internal work that has to go on to make change happen is hard and often something we don’t see.
Two years ago I was at an fork in the road when it came to my professional life and identity. I was working as a dual enrollment advisor and serving at least one hundred and fifty students at my old high school. They were taking online college classes as well as in the classroom at the high school. It was a job role I had always dreamed about since I was the age of my students, especially since I decided on a career in the field of higher education.
When I started my job role I had watched the TED Talk “Why Some of Us Don’t Have One True Calling” by Emilie Wapnick.
I had worked as a Career Counselor for three years prior, and quickly realized the upcoming generation was all over the place with aspirations, especially since it was during the Covid pandemic. I loved the TED Talk so much I decided to purchase the book, How to be Everything, but wouldn’t start reading it until a year later when I decided to look for a different job myself.
For a solid year I debated about if the type of work I was doing was really meant for me, and I evaluated everything when it came to it. This included going back to why I pursued a career in the field of education in the first place.
In my inner discovery I found that I do love education and what it does for the world, but I love and enjoy other things just as much if not more. I realized I wanted my work to have meaning, but not be a type of job that would fully consume me and all my mental and emotional energy at the end of the day.
What were my biggest takeaways from the book?
Like many millennials I grew up hearing the phrase “if you love your job you will never work a day in your life”, and about our parents staying with employers for thirty years. We were told this tale about going to college, earning a degree, and absolutely loving our job at the end of the day.
However, what if you don’t love just one singular thing?
I have always loved helping people since I was a little girl, but discovered with age that I carry other peoples burdens and emotions with me. I majored in Psychology in college because I find human behavior insanely fascinating. Even now I love psychoanalyzing situations, and doing my best to help the people involved.
What I enjoyed the most about the book was the different approaches it discussed with building a multipotentialite (someone with many interests) life. Those approaches included:
– The Group Hug Approach
– The Slash Approach
– The Einstein Approach (This one is mine)
– The Phoenix Approach
Hearing that it was okay to enjoy your job enough to support you financially, will also allowing you the space (and energy) to pursue your passions outside of it, was like a light bulb going off for me. It also helped me know it was okay to want this when it came to my life, and that I wasn’t alone in this thought process.
Sometimes the “good enough” job is the dream job you were searching for.
The truth is we need jobs to survive and pay our bills, including student loans some of us took out to afford that college degree like yours truly. Even if you love what you do, at the end of the day it will still feel like work.
Being in a rural area I knew I had to be open to different lines of work with my job search. I couldn’t keep myself in the small box of higher education considering there were only three institutions in the area I was willing to travel to.
When I read about the Einstein Approach I knew without a doubt it was the approach for me with finding a new job role that would help me achieve my multipotentialite life. Financial security is a BIG deal for me, so I knew I needed a job to support me in this way. However, I knew I needed a more non-student facing or client role to feel energized at the end of the day to pursue other passions, like this little blog of mine.
At the end of it the book it wasn’t about me finding my dream career, but about how to find and build my dream life.
How to Be Everything is a book that truly changed my world for the better. It helped me realize that I was a multipotentialite with my many interests and passions outside of my day job, as well as helped me discover and accept what I wanted. Figuring out how I wasn’t going to be that person who dedicates my life to just one thing, but to an abundance of things was freeing for me.
If you are at a fork in the road in life, and feel you yourself are a multipotentialite, I can’t recommend the book enough in helping you build your best life. Even if you aren’t a multipotentialite, I think this book is a great read to help you in understanding how to support a multipotentialite in your life or how to create a life you truly love.
Until Next time,
