🤫 Confessions (and Clusterfucks) of a Contrarian Multipotentialite
A Getting Unstuck Manifesto
I’ve been a creative entrepreneur for over 34 years in multiple fields.
I’m unemployable — and proud of it!
Here are insights I wish I had known decades ago.
Imposter Syndrome:
Everyone has it.
The more successful you become, the more of an imposter you feel.
The more you feel like a fraud the harder you work to prove you’re not one.
Your insecurities drive achievement.
Initially, you worry you’re not good enough to become successful.
When you become successful, you worry you’re not good enough to remain successful.
Imposter Syndrome never disappears; it evolves.
Be More Weird
You’ll spend most of your life hiding your weirdness to fit in.
Only by embracing it will you realise you were born to stand out.
Your creative purpose lies in your uniqueness, not in dimming your lights to fit in with the average Joe.
Short-Term Fear vs. Long-Term Fear:
Your long-term fear is living your entire life without fulfilling your potential.
Your short-term fear?
Looking Cringe.
if you listen to your short-term fears, then your long-term fears become inevitable.
You will find pride in having the courage to share your ideas.
It’s nice for others to think well of you, but critical for you to think well of yourself.
Focus on the latter and the former will take care of itself.
Sensitivity
I used to think my sensitivity was a weakness, but now I realise it’s the creative strength that allows me to connect deeply with others.
But I do need to remind myself of this semi-regularly!
Getting Bored Of Ideas:
I used to be scared to commit to my ideas because I often got bored of them.
I felt deep shame about being flaky.
Now I realise it wasn’t boredom, but a loss of emotional connection.
This stemmed from generating business ideas Outside In, rather than Inside Out.
I have a profound emotional connection with my younger self and true empathy for what I experienced five or six years ago.
I’ll never forget pushing my daughter on a swing in our local park, completely lost in time and despair.
I had so many ideas but was terrified of picking the wrong one and wasting my time, so I did nothing.
Now I understand that as an idea-generating machine, we must emotionally connect with ideas from the Inside Out.
The pain locked in my memory has become my purpose.
This doesn't have to be emotional, it’s simply scratching your own itch.
You Are Not Your Thoughts:
Your potential is blocked by your beliefs.
Your perspective on reality is shaped by the thoughts you project onto the world.
Challenge your beliefs — they are almost certainly false!
For example:
I once believed I couldn’t write this newsletter due to dyslexia and ADHD.
I thought I was too old to build an audience on TikTok. I was convinced they would laugh at me.
These were my beliefs only as long as I believed them.
Limiting beliefs arise when we live and create Outside In.
Outside In
We get stuck living Outside In. This mindset was the source of nearly all my overthinking, stress, and anxiety.
Living Outside In is:
People-pleasing.
Perfectionism.
Basing your self-worth on what others think of you.
Following societal rules and regulations that hold you back.
Measuring your creative worth by the number of views, likes, comments, and shares you get.
Fearing failure, cringe, and not meeting others' expectations.
Living Outside In is basing your self-worth on pleasing other people by sacrificing your truth.
This will keep you small. It will prevent you from fulfilling your potential.
“I wish I lived a life that was true to myself not what others expected of me”
Living Outside-In is the #1 dying regret👆
Inside Out Philosophy
Living Inside Out is helping others by creatively expressing yourself.
It’s living a life that is true to yourself
It is NOT selfish.
It’s your truth.
Your creativity is your authenticity.
Creative expression is how you connect with others by first connecting with yourself.
Create work for yourself, and build a business to help the younger version of you.
It’s where you create your best work.
It’s where you gain self-worth internally by embracing your true creativity.
It’s where you focus on the courage to share your ideas, and not the fear of what others think of them.
Your ideal client is the younger version of you.
By understanding yourself, you understand your ideal client.
It may be a tad cliché, but as a sensitive soul, you heal yourself by healing the younger version of yourself.
Your pain becomes your purpose.
This is the Inside Out Philosophy of life, creativity and business.
Creating Meaning (Tangible vs. Intangible):
Multipotentiality is intangible, like your potential.
It consists of diverse skills that may seem futile in isolation.
Your goal is to niche up your diverse skills into a tangible problem-solving concept.
People pay for solutions to their problems.
Uncover your unique value, and you’ll create impact and earn what you’re worth.
The bigger the problems you solve, the greater your rewards.
Unique Value: ( Niching Up)
We are all the same but different.
There are no cookie-cutter solutions in multipotentiality.
Stack your unique skills, passions, traumas, and worldviews.
This is your unique perspective which gives you value.
Use your unique value to help the younger version of yourself.
You may not change the world, but you will change your perspective.
Every multipotentialite has a unique value!
it’s about uncovering what is already within you but is unrecognised.
Fragility of High Achievement:
High achievers tie their self-worth to success and productivity.
The relentless pursuit of more success leads to burnout.
Burnout means failure.
Failure means losing your identity and sense of self, as it was constructed entirely from your success.
This is the danger zone.
Reinventing Identity After Failure:
The primary reason for failure is burnout.
The reason you burnout is you’re working so hard to prove you’re not a failure.
It’s another paradox.
Failure is inevitable but it only defines you if you let it.
I used to struggle with failure. It used to define me.
This crushed my confidence and I spent long periods spinning my wheels in indecision for fear of further failure.
So I got stuck.
The key is to treat everything as an experiment.
It’s not me that fails, it’s the experiment.
This mindset is liberating.
Everyone experiences failure the only difference is in how we respond.
Make a decision, any decision is better than no decision.
And treat every step forward as an experiment.
Some experiments work, some don’t — that’s what experiments do.
Surrender
I used to think I was protecting myself from anxiety by being a control freak.
Now I see that my need for control created my anxiety.
When we’re stuck, it’s usually because we’re trying to control the future and make the perfect decision.
We want to avoid the suffering of picking the wrong idea and wasting our time.
But the real suffering is being stuck in overthinking and decision paralysis.
Use frameworks—make a plan, follow your curiosity, experiment, and iterate until you achieve product (or service) market fit.
Surrender to the flow of life, and you’ll solve problems you don’t even know exist yet.
This is your true creative potential.
It is my lived experience and that of countless others.
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards" — Søren Kierkegaard
True Confidence
True confidence is built on the journey and not arriving at the destination.
I used to believe it was the successful outcomes that built my confidence, but my true confidence was created by self-trust.
Writing and publishing a newsletter article weekly did not bring instant success.
But showing up every week regardless did.
The success was creating a platform for my true creative expression.
The audience joined later.
Self-trust = true self-confidence.
Unmasking:
Those who resent your authenticity are the same people who gained the most from your people-pleasing.
Results vs. Systems:
Everyone talks about results.
Building audiences and six-figure businesses are worthy goals, but you need a system to achieve them.
Systems are not emotional; they’re just systems.
Successful systems lead to successful results.
Successful systems are built on successful frameworks.
Focus on frameworks and use AI assistants to do all the work you hate.
Audiences:
You don’t build an audience; you connect with one.
The more people you connect with, the bigger your audience becomes.
False Pride: Time Vs. Money
I used to hate asking for help. I knew I could figure it out.
I regret not seeking help to speed up the process.
At 53, I wish I had prioritised saving time over money. If you can accelerate your learning curve, invest the money in that opportunity to save you time.
What We Don’t Change, We Choose:
I used to blame my circumstances on others. Now I realise I’m solely responsible for my situation.
I chose it because I didn’t change it.
That’s a harsh pill to swallow but self-awareness and accountability are signs of emotional intelligence.
What we don’t change, we choose.
Selling With Soul:
This is the competitive advantage of hypersensitivity.
Connect with people through creative authenticity.
Help your younger self articulate their pain and feel understood by your content.
Effective problem-solving takes true empathy.
This is selling with soul.
Comparison:
There are two types of creators and entrepreneurs.
Cooks and Chefs:
Stop comparing yourself to cooks.
Cooks copy other people’s recipes.
We are chefs, we’re innovators blending multiple ingredients to create new taste sensations.
Innovators take longer to succeed.
If you feel left behind, it’s likely because you’re comparing yourself to cooks using cookie-cutter recipes.
This will crush your spirit.
Respect yourself for your dedication to the process of excellence and not the fakeness of social media.
Hope this helps! Peace out.
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