"Renaissance Souls often get stuck, moving from entry-level job to entry-level job, degree to degree, or hobby to hobby, unwilling to settle on just one thing to do “for the rest of my life.” Or, after achieving success in one field, they yearn for new challenges and begin looking around for something different. Yet they are also afraid that if they pursue their changing interests, they will have to give up on financial security, becoming “a jack of all trades and master of none.”
A situation that has frequently effected my life. Margaret has turned her experience as a renaissance soul into a book and a coaching business, and uses her experiences and expertise to help people find ways to incorporate their multitude of interests and skills into novel ways. One thing I've learned from her is that to embrace being a renaissance soul, one needs to be creative.
Margaret developed a series of exercises to help people get unstuck, and these have included the series of brainstorming exercises that I found extremely helpful. In trying to figure out what I want to do as an entrepreneur, I have found myself restricting my ideas more and more. I think to myself, "that's not practical" or "that's not something I could you forever". In going through guided brainstorming activities, Margaret helps to push out the judgement and self-censorship that often happens, yet is able to help narrow down ideas by building one exercise on top of another. My meeting with Margaret help me to see that there are many possibilities for what I can do, and there are many things I want to do, and they don't have to happen all at once.
In our meeting, Margaret started with an exercise of brainstorming "who don't you want to sit next to you on a long bus trip". Using those answers, she was able to help re-frame the question into "who are the customers that you want to serve". The next question was "what do those people like to do", requiring more thought about that customer base from the initial brainstorming session.
From the first exercise, I found that I really don't want to serve children or the elderly. With the second set of brainstorming I was able to just really break down that my target customer base was women in their 20's too late 60s. And the things that they like to do was narrowed to planning activities, cooking, activity and event organisation, and craft things. The next brainstorming session help me identify which of those things I particularly like to do; I like to plan, I like to come up with special gifts, I like to cook. The brainstorming continued to narrow down my interests and my vision for what I want to do now in my life.
Part of my challenge as I've looked into my future as an entrepreneur is that I have so many dreams that it feels impossible to choose one. I've considered being a chef, an event planner, a caterer, a librarian, an author, an innkeeper, an activities coordinator etc. I've tried my hand at a number of those activities and found that I really enjoyed them. In trying to decide my future, is it seems impossible to contain myself into one thing only.In many ways this reminded me of our guest speaker. She not only embraced new ideas, but was willing to put an idea aside for other visions if they seemed more appropriate at that point in her life. I was also reassured to see that what I do now can be a failed venture and I still have plenty of time to keep working through other opportunities. From her presentation and talking to Margaret, I feel more confident in knowing that I can try something and it can be a temporary situation; that it's not unusual to want to do many things, and that experimentation (and sometimes failure) isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Anyone interested can find out more about Margaret, her work, her book etc here:
http://www.renaissancesouls.com/coaching/index.htm
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