Six Ways I Feed My Passions, Plural

Sara Kobilka: I said that I had four tips for how I personally feed my passions. Well, turns out I was wrong. We're trying this again. Here are my six tips for how I personally feed my passions as a Renaissance Woman.

(sung) Connecting the Dots with The Renaissance People

Sara Kobilka: Hello, everyone. I'm Renaissance Woman, Sara Kobilka, and you're listening to Connecting the Dots with The Renaissance People. This is a podcast for multi-passionate Renaissance People, as well as folks who would like to cultivate a Renaissance Mindset. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, please check out my podcast episode, Renaissance Mindset: A Quasi-Manifesto, and you can learn a little bit more about it, and I'll talk about it a little bit today.

Once again, I am here joining for a shorter episode, and this episode is solo. It may be Connecting the Dots with The Renaissance People, but summer Sara is still in charge.

It's mid-August right now. We still have a few more weeks of summer vacation for my children. I have limited work hours because childcare is getting harder and harder to find as the summer draws to a close, and we have a lot of other things to get in.

So quick and dirty, we're getting one in before we get back into my episodes with my amazing guests. Like I said, I tried to make an episode with those four tips, and you can definitely listen to that if you haven't already, about how I feed my passions, passions plural, and also how do you stop yourself from burning out as a Renaissance Person, because with this many passions, yeah, you can get burned pretty easily.

Then I listened to the episode, and I was like, "Uh, it's not enough." Of course, it's gonna be an ever-changing idea for me. I'm a Renaissance Person. I like living documents. But I did wanna circle back right now because I had two additional thoughts that I wanted to add. If you're someone who did not have a chance to listen to that first episode, I'm gonna quickly fill you in on those first four that I gave and then talk a little bit more about two additional ones.

So six ways that I feed my passions as a multi-passionate Renaissance Person, and these are things that I recommend to all of the clients that I do coaching services with.

Number one was I take on projects that allow me to connect the dots. Name of the show, right? It's a thing I love to do. We are boundary spanners. I like to look for places where I can be a systems thinker, and I've got a new term that I've actually come across this morning that might appeal to some of you, and that is I like to act as a strategic integrator.

This came from a LinkedIn article I came across by Pherabe Kolb who is the president and CEO of the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance.

Like a good Renaissance Woman, I will throw that into the show notes for those of you who would like to dig into this particular article and also take a drink. Throwing it in the show notes. We're celebrating that fact because we Renaissance People love to share resources with one another.

In this particular article Kolb was talking about how we need generalists, specifically in the nonprofit space. When you have those small teams, and I have been both a leader and a member of small teams for nonprofits, you need to have people who know about a lot of things. Now, the term generalist was used, and it is one that I throw out for a lot of folks, or for actually everyone who comes on my podcast to see if that's one that they identify with.

And I've actually found that most people who say yes to Renaissance Person as an identity say no to generalist, because it sounds kind of like, "Oh, I'm generally good at a lot of these things," versus Renaissance People, I think we really pride ourselves in both going wide, but then also deep in select areas.

So yeah, you don't want to necessarily be a generalist if you're a Renaissance Person, if that term implies, well, you're, you're okay at a lot of different things. We wanna be good at a number of different things. She does suggest at the very end of the article that maybe a new term is needed, and so from the comments on that article, uh, it sounds like a lot of people like that idea of being a strategic integrator, and I think that sounds great because we are systems thinkers and span boundaries, and I really do find that taking on projects that allow me to play that integrator role is really fulfilling for me and keeps my passion going. We are complex Venn diagrams, and I always want to expand on who I am and what I can do and what I take on.

Second thing, I like to have something sparkly that I can spend time on that feeds my soul, and sometimes it's work stuff that's a sparkly project that I get to take on. It's new, it's different, it expands, again, my boundaries, and so that's fun.

Sometimes it's the side projects that I take on that may or may not, not actually be part of my job, but very often I find that what I do in those projects ends up getting integrated into my work in some way, shape, or form through wonderful serendipity.

Third thing that I do really helps me feed my passions is that sharing resources with other people, the celebrating how I'm putting things into the show notes, which I take a lot of time to create my show notes, and I'm realizing I need to spend more time sharing those show notes beyond just the show notes part of a podcast platform.

I'm putting them on LinkedIn, which doesn't like links, so then that isn't working very well. But, suffice it to say, I put a lot of time into that because there are really great resources out there, and I'm a big fan of not reinventing the wheel. I think that's another thing that some of us systems thinking integrators may realize is that, hey, somebody else has already solved this problem. Rather than us trying to come up with a new way to solve this problem, why don't we look at what other conversations are happening in other areas and bring that back to what we are doing? And that's where those resources and the sharing of those resources, particularly from outside whatever box or space I am currently working in, I think that's really helps me feed my passion for supporting and encouraging other people.

Now, the fourth one is that I find community with other Renaissance People, and I finally got to have my very first inf-- uh, it was kind of informal gathering because it was during the middle of August, which is a time when people are either really busy with the start of the school year, or they're in the throes of the end of summer and they're trying to squeeze in every visit to the pool and every family trip and everything like that.

I realized as I was editing this episode that, you know what? I went a little overboard with my black and white thinking. I realized that there are more than just two kinds of people in the middle of August. My brain has been very much in the space of parent of small children, as well as person who teaches at a university.

I realize that not everyone's life revolves around education. And also not everyone is in the Northern Hemisphere right now and having the end of summer. So whether you're in the Southern Hemisphere and you're looking forward to moving into spring, or if you are someone who the mid-August timeframe doesn't really mean much of anything to you, I apologize that I left you out at first. Renaissance Person expanding.

But back to that Fertile Grounds first meeting. So we had a very intimate group, but oh my goodness, it was so much fun throwing out ideas, bouncing them off one another. And that is the kind of play space to play with our minds really, and to support each other, to share resources, to do all these things that can feed our passion. That's the kind of space I'm creating with Fertile Grounds.

And so after this first kind of test run and, myself getting to bounce ideas of what am I thinking that this space is gonna look like, it really helped me to have somebody to talk that through with. And so I'm really looking forward to getting that going finally in September. Now, I said I had to add onto it.

So I've got two more things that have come to mind that I really want to dig into about ways that I feed my passion. number five on my list is that I look for balance in my life. Note that is not me advocating for work-life balance. It's a phrase that I despise. I can't stand it. Interestingly, back to that conversation of strategic integrator, work-life integration is a term that I've actually been advocating for for many years as a way to think about finding balance in our lives, but not here's work, here's life, never the two shall mix, 'cause they are not two distinctly different things.

And in fact, when you are an entrepreneur like I am, when you own your own business, there is a whole lot of overlap between what is officially work and what is officially life. What I mean by looking for balance is that it allows me to recognize the aspects of my personal Venn diagram of needs. Like, mentally I need a mix of creativity and analysis, of working with people and working on my own, of taking the lead and following directions.

Going way back to when I was in college and when I first kinda started recognizing that I was a Renaissance Woman, I had taken all these classes that I needed to of math and science. I'd taken AP calculus and tested out and got the credit. I had taken advanced physics. I didn't need that anymore, so I was ready to start college and say goodbye math and science. I'm mostly done with you, other than the statistics class that I have to take for my journalism degree, which I think all journalists should have to take, statistics. But that is a tangent which we also celebrate, Renaissance People, because tangents are really interesting places for finding solutions to things.

Anyways, I realized that I needed to have that mix in my life of taking the math and science classes and taking the journalism and history and then having a little theater and singing. Actually, I was in band when I first started college, and then I joined karate, and I wanted to have that whole mix of things in my life, and that was really important to me for my mental health.

Now, this is not me saying that I am constantly splattering my energy in all directions. I try not to have one single project take up all of my energy, But I also spend focused times on specific projects or tasks. Jumping back and forth within a five-minute time period between two different projects isn't the best way to use our energy either.

What I try to do is I have those multiple projects, whether they are projects that I need to do for work or in my private life, and then I can look at the energy that I have any particular day, any particular time, and choose to spend my time and energy on the tasks that maybe I am most energetically aligned with at that point in time.

So what's that mean, like, for me right now? Well, in my business, Renaissance Woman Consulting, I just had my sixth anniversary celebration, party hat, all that sort of thing. Very fun. And so currently for Renaissance Woman Consulting, it means I'm prepping for a visual science communication course that I virtually teach for the University of Arizona. I'm setting up the academic calendar for my students in our platform. I am recruiting speakers for our visual science communication seminar series. I am getting new students registered for that class. One side of things.

I'm also prepping another podcast episode about math identity in the out-of-school space.

I'm recording and editing for another audio project that is not related at all to either of my podcasts.

I am communicating with my growing Renaissance People community about things like Fertile Grounds, which if you want to find out more about that, I'll have a link in the show notes if you'd like to join and be part of our Renaissance People community and the opportunities that we're going to have in the coming year.

I'm also providing career coaching for folks, and I'm creating and sharing my Growth of Growing videos on social media, and I'm analyzing the data from that experiment.

s do I like to do right about: 11:45

But when I really strategically adjust my schedule based on where my passion and energy feels like it needs to go any particular day or time, it certainly feels like those passions continue to strengthen and even grow, versus if I am just like, "I have this one project, I have to get it done. I have to put all of my energy into that!" That is like a surefire way that even if it was the project that I was super-duper passionate about before, if I'm forced to do just that because there's a super tight deadline, that is going to take the sparkle, take the passion out of that particular project.

And so the sixth idea that I want to add for how I feed my passion is actually something that I heard from another podcast. So I was listening to Jillian Rothschild-Scholar say something during an episode of French Kissing Life with Shauna Stivers. And, French Kissing Life is actually a podcast that I myself was on, recently. You can check it out. And I've been listening to more of her episodes. I did listen to a bunch of them as my homework prep work before I went on the podcast, but I continue to listen 'cause there's some really interesting conversations.

And so Jillian was talking about this year and how it's the year of the fiery horse, and one thing she's trying to do is pad her projects, and I like that.

I think that we get to that point of, "Oh my gosh, I have to put all of my energy into this one project right now because we set a deadline." And if, as Renaissance People, we set a deadline that assumes that we are going to put the majority of our energy every single day for a certain time period into a particular project. And especially if you have the freedom to adjust your schedule a little bit, it just gets overwhelming, and you get uptight. And you're like, "I have to only work on this thing, and that's not the thing I'm passionate about anymore, but this is what I have to do." Drain, drain, drain energy down the drain!

Versus if you pad the project. And yes, if you're on your passion high and sat down, you might be able to edit that thing. You might be able to write that thing, research that thing in two days. But rather than telling the person or other people that I'm gonna get this done in two days. Why not give yourself more time?

These artificial deadlines that we set for ourselves, we are sometimes our own worst enemies. We are the perfectionists, recovering perfectionists right here. Hello, I'm Sara. But we really need to think about, yes, we could if we had that full passion drive and chose not to take care of our bodily needs and didn't sleep and forgot to eat and all that sort of stuff, sure, we could get it done really fast, and we could burn out really fast.

So when you have the ability to pad a project and give yourself more time than you think you need to get it done, that frees you up to say, "Hey, today I'm really not feeling it. I think I'm gonna step away and work on this other thing instead." And then that keeps the flame of passion going for that project that you really do care a lot about.

So there you go. Six ways that I feed my passion: take on complex projects that allow me to connect the dots; have something sparkly available that really feeds my soul, just kinda fun thing; making sure I'm always sharing resources with other people. Fourth thing, connecting with my fellow community of Renaissance People and people who like to think creatively and be multi-passionate. Looking for balance so that I can have different activities that I could do that are still on my to-do list, depending on my different energy levels. And finally, padding my projects, giving myself a little extra time to get them done so that I have that freedom to jump to another thing that aligns better with the energy that I have in any given day.

So there you go. I recorded it. I even got it done with a little buffer, padding for myself, before I have to go pick up the kids from camp. I'd love to hear from you on what your thoughts are on this. Are any of these things that you do that help you keep your passion aflame? Or do you have any other ideas? Is there anything that I missed that really is important for multi-passionates to keep that plural passions going in their lives?

Send me a message. Connect with me on social media. I'm on a lot of different platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, YouTube now. I'm in all these different places. So reach out, connect, let me know what you think, and sign up to be part of this Renaissance People community because I think when we all pull together and we support each other, again, we're gonna live a better life.

Thanks for listening.

(sung) Connecting the Dots with The Renaissance People