We live in a world full of opportunities, where the question “What will I be when I grow up?” can turn into an existential dilemma, especially for those who are multipotential. But what exactly is multipotentiality?
According to what I call a “strong” definition, multipotentialites are people who have the ability to excel in various disciplines with the same level of excellence.
Margherita Hack, a gold medalist in high jump and long jump at the university championships and an internationally renowned scientist, is one example.
On the other hand, Emilie Wapnick, in her TED Talk that brought attention to this topic, takes a more “light” approach, referring to people with multiple talents and interests who feel they have the “potential” to develop all of them with equal satisfaction and success.
In a broader sense, multipotentiality embraces a worldview where potential is not limited to a single career but extends to a variety of experiences and knowledge.
This form of multipotentiality characterizes many people, especially a large portion of today’s youth.
Being a multipotentialite means dealing with a constant tension between the desire to explore new possibilities and the reality: the concrete factors that push you to focus and follow what seems to be a single path.
That’s why I refer to it as a “dilemma”: our culture tends to reward specialization, making us feel inadequate if we don’t find and follow a clearly defined trajectory.
Multipotentialites face this dilemma of choosing between the wide range of possible paths where they could realize themselves and the need to fit into a specific “shape” of a profession. It’s almost like an identity crisis.
So, we’re faced not only with the question: “What will I be when I grow up?” but more with the question: “Who will I be when I grow up?”, calling us to reflect on the person we want to become.
(Photo – Robert Collins)
Considerations on Multipotentiality
For a multipotentialite, choosing a future feels like standing in a supermarket of opportunities, looking at a shelf full of possible choices, all within reach.
Here, the dilemma becomes even more direct: “Which one is the right one?”, “Which one will fulfill my “true” passion?” and most importantly, “What possibilities, that I can actually pursue, will I miss out on by making a choice?”
On one hand, the culture we’ve grown up in pushes us to believe we can be or do anything we want. On the other hand, it reinforces the idea that if we don’t specialize, we’ll never be professionally successful.
So we get stuck, staring at the shelves, unable to make a decision. This paralysis comes from a fear of the unknown, the desire to fly, and the fear of choosing to take that leap—a force that protects us but also limits us.
We remain trapped in our limitless potential, which fuels a sense of powerlessness and dissatisfaction.
One strategy to break free is to return to ourselves and honestly and openly examine what has helped us grow and what has held us back. We can review our experiences and find the thread that ties them together, as if watching a play and waiting to see how the story unfolds. Recognizing our interests, abilities, limits, and most importantly, our passions, is not a simple process.
We know that, over time, what once fascinated us and seemed like something we would bet our future on can become boring. It’s therefore crucial to understand our own rhythm and timing, starting with the question: “What can we do to sync our passions with who we want to become?” This challenge makes us ask what our passions really are, without losing sight of what truly matters by measuring ourselves through action, as action is the only way to understand what we truly desire and how intensely we can pursue it. Facing the challenge of taking action and “grounding” our opportunities requires patience and a willingness to fail. Failure is always a great learning opportunity and a resource that helps recover talents: it’s a necessary step for growth.
For multipotentialites, the ability to embrace and value failure is a way to keep alive only those possibilities that truly align with what they want for their future.
And in the end, this all must be filtered through some crucial questions: “What is life calling me to do?”, “What value do I want to give to what I do?”, “What value do I create for others?” Discovering our purpose, “the why” helps guide our choices towards an authentic calling.
Conclusion
Looking at the past without judgment is essential to understanding how we got here. Recognizing external influences helps us define what we truly want.
Asking ourselves, “What contribution can I make to the world?” is strategic for positioning ourselves in the future.
Reserving time for this reflection, and once we’ve set a goal, proceeding with determination while enjoying what we do—ready to put in the sacrifice, perseverance, embrace failure, and stay open to learning—will help us find the path to our satisfaction.
Multipotentialites who are willing to put themselves out there, act, and grow discover that they’ve developed key talents for both individual and team success: flexibility, open-mindedness, the ability to navigate complexity, welcome and reinvest learnings, appreciate cross-disciplinary contamination and inclusion of diversity, and the capacity for mediation and process facilitation, creativity… and I could go on about these skills, which are far from “soft.”
The truth is, the perfect job doesn’t exist for us, but we can build our calling step by step. We must give ourselves permission to act, approaching the future with freedom and flexibility. In this journey, our multidimensional potential becomes not only a resource but a beacon lighting the path to who we want to become.
