This week, Emilie Wapnick is joining me to talk about her brand new book, “How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don’t Know What They Want to be When They Grow Up.” This is her second time on the show; she joined me last year in Episode 29. Emilie Wapnick is the Founder, and Creative Director for Puttylike, an online home for “multipotentialites,” which are people with many interests and creative pursuits. Her philosophy is that you do not have to do just one thing with your life, and that it is possible to integrate your many interests into your life.
In our interview, Emilie shares about how she found what fits for her, how she went from blogging, to creating the wildly popular TedX Talk “Why Some of Us Don’t Have One True Calling,” to writing her book. She took something that was unique about herself, being interested in many different things, and by featuring the that made her unique, discovered a community of people who are also interested in many things, and in doing so, created a business based on her own uniquity.
Here’s why I love this so much – there’s this point near the end of the interview where Emilie shares how a professor at law school encouraged Emilie’s group (in a group presentation) to “feature the the weird thing that makes you stand out,” when they went to present their project. So often, we hide the thing that makes us different, or try hard to accentuate the things that make us similar to others.
Emilie has found what fits for her, in all of her unique-ness. She’s encouraged and mentored others in following their myriad of passions, and helped all of us see that there are options for careers paths that go beyond the popular specialist path; and more than that, she’s shown the true and inherent value in following more than one interest in life.
In this episode, we talk about:
– Emilie’s path to becoming an author: from blogging, to her TedX talk, and now her new book
– why so many of us feel like having multiple passions and interests is undesirable, based on today’s “specialist mentality”
– the value having many interests and passions (that goes way beyond any pricetag)
– how finding the why can help you narrow down your passions
– how defining your “perfect day” can help you find your dream life
– the four common types of “multi-potentialites”
– how to follow what makes you unique, and why you need to
– how multipotentialites work in what Emilie calls “intersectional space” and how this leads to innovations
– all about Emilie’s new book, How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don’t Know What They Want to be When They Grow Up
Resources:
Buy Emilie Wapnick’s new book: How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don’t Know What They Want to be When They Grow Up (on Amazon)
Read more about How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don’t Know What They Want to be When They Grow Up on www.HowtobeEverything.com
Emilie’s site and community at Puttylike
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