The Renaissance Soul: How to Make Your Passions Your Life—A Creative and Practical Guide

proud. And yes, there was a brief period in the history of time—basically, the latter half of the twentieth century—when a person could be hired fresh out of school by a large corporation and steadily climb that corporation’s ladder to more and more money and perks, until he (and sometimes she) retired with a good pension and absolutely no financia

Wherever they end up, Renaissance Souls usually find that they have to tackle three challenges in order to get where they want to be: focus, money, and time. The challenge of focus is to avoid being paralyzed by the seeming need to choose among many paths. The challenge of money is to link your passions to a source of income. And the challenge of t

you may have a long history of beating up on yourself when you dropped one passion for another. You may have fallen into the trap of thinking that your different choices must have been the wrong choices. This is usually far from the case. One of the best ways to dispel uncertainty is to clarify what you value.

Renaissance Souls much prefer a work process that’s less restrictive, one that allows us to grow and evolve. We need lives and—yes—flexible plans that allow us to change direction and to respond eagerly to new possibilities. We enjoy stretching in directions we had no idea we’d turn.

As soon as I took the Renaissance Soul quiz, I knew I was one. That made me happy the whole weekend. But when Monday morning rolled around and I was back at work, I went into a panic. How can I have any sort of economic security if I keep changing interests all the time? Deep down I think I really count on that regular paycheck, the promotions, and

Her name? Maya Angelou! Here’s what she has to say, one swan to another: “I think we’ve done a real disservice to young people by telling them, ‘Oh you be careful. You’ll be a jack-of all-trades and a master of none.’ It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I think you can be a jack-of-all-trades and a mistress-of-all-trades. If you study it, and

Because we love a good challenge, we tend to define success and completion differently from other people.

FIVE SIGNS THAT YOU MIGHT BE A RENAISSANCE SOUL The ability to become excited by many things at once, often accompanied by difficulty choosing A love of new challenges; once challenges are mastered, easily bored A fear of being trapped in the same career or activity for life A pattern of quick, sometimes unsatisfying flings with many hobbies A succ

experiments? Fine, his wife might say. Why don’t you go to MIT and pursue a nice stable career in science?