Not a renaissance in terms of invention. We need a renaissance in order for us to make the world a better place.
The world needs a new era of creativity and creative approaches apart from putting stuff on your website and sharing stuff on social media. A new ‘Belle epoque’.
We need something that breaks with the ‘old-school’ way of doing business or even personal development. We need something that aligns that small part inside of us (some people call it imagination) with what we’re doing every day.
People need to feel fulfilled, seen, and aligned with our purposes. I don’t see our purpose as one thing. I don’t feel like a human has one purpose but several, and it’s time for us to let lose the fear that lets our one purpose live in a box. Or let ourselves live in a box. It’s time to stop defining stuff like that.
So all of those questions that you can find online where you find your passion and your purpose and make a living, be happy, have the dreamhouse, etc? Fuck them so hard because it’s not gonna make you happy and fulfilled.
It’s not gonna make you get up in the morning screaming YEY! It’s a new day! I need to go sit in my office for 8 hours (after 2 hours of commuting) and work the numbers because it’s my passion. Because it is my purpose. It is what I live for. You’re still going to have a small voice inside of you saying ‘we can do better than this’.
Introducing the multi-purpose renaissance person
A renaissance person is a person dedicated to finding out what multiple things they are really good at. I personally have been trying to find out what that ‘one thing’ that I do really well is. And Yes – I have more than 15 years building empires as big as the sky from gravel in the startup space. Yes, I have made concepts and business models that have changed the world. But it only gives me so much to gather people around a cause, to make them fall in love with a brand, to have them sign up to something that makes you happy, that spurs some inspiration apart from saving stuff on Pinterest.
I don’t believe it anymore. I don’t believe in a specialist approach and schooling towards one thing.
Why? Because it doesn’t make me fulfilled. It doesn’t make me go to the work I do with passion.
Do you know how many different skillsets Leonardo da Vinci practiced? Apart from being a genius, he was a painter, a sculptor, an architect, an engineer, an inventor, a botanist, an anatomist, a lifelong vegetarian and… a writer.
Why wasn’t he just a writer? Or just a painter?
Or you could ask yourself – what wasn’t he? Was there a part of himself that he didn’t practice? It’s hard to believe. He created. And he created all sorts of things. He was inspired by everything in life.
He was multi-faceted and he had multi-faceted ways of purpose and passion. And, get this, he was ignored by the scholars and the experts of Florence, because he didn’t know mathematics or Latin. And it was first after his death that he really was celebrated.
I believe what you want to create is the tip of the iceberg of creativity – what everybody can see. But I believe that under the surface, that iceberg is a build-up of several different layers.
It’s not important to find one purpose. It’s important to find as many of them as possible because when you find out what fuels your fire in several directions, you can keep building on your joy and happiness.
This is not a ‘find your purpose’ cosmopolitan article that I used to read as a teen in the 90s. Because what is a purpose. It’s like answering the questions in the amazing book ‘Sophie’s world’ that I read as a teen. Finding your purpose is like answering the all over-shadowing question of ‘who are you’.
Your true North / Your inner wiring
So isn’t purpose just doing the right thing for you? What you’re aligned to do? I see it as much more complicated than that. It’s like creating an arrow of activities that points to your own personal ‘true north’. I love writing and building concepts and carry them out in life. BUT I also love gardening, playing guitars, partying, dancing, and when I relax I do it with a game of civilization – a game that has been a standard feature on all my computers since I was 15.
I can compare myself to Leonardo da Vinci, (even though no one is comparable to him) – we are both practicing several skillsets at the same time. We’re both doing several things to reach our status quo – our own true north. He’s on ‘another world-ly’ level compared to me (and most other people) – BUT the mark up is the same. If you’re into woo-woo or ju-ju or what you call spiritual development these days, you’re aligning all the things that ‘spark your joy’ maybe you can even talk about Marie Kondo’fying your purpose?
If it doesn’t spark your joy, it’s probably not a part of your purpose. Sometimes when we have dreams and we are afraid to pursue it, it’s not that we don’t want to work on that dream, it’s more inclined to the fact that we haven’t built the pretext yet. The more I look into this whole purpose, it can be completely daunting – you keep hearing ‘but what if this isn’t really my purpose after all in your head?
We have to start thinking about the new renaissance people – you have to go back to the multi-purpose renaissance person.