Are you a renaissance woman?

[00:00:00] Sarah Potter: Hello, beautiful soul. Welcome to the La Dolce Vita lounge podcast, which means the sweet life in Italian. I'm your host, Sarah Potter, a sacral authority best-selling author, coach, healer, and vegan baker. And I'm here to activate and inspire multipotential women so they can grow businesses to activate their brilliance and manifest radical change in their lives and the world.

 Hey there beautiful soul! Today's podcast is all about Renaissance women and Renaissance people. Are you an undercover Renaissance person? 

About seven years ago, somebody called me a Renaissance woman and I kind of smiled, kind of took it in gratefully. But I didn't really know what it meant. 

And to be honest, I was in the middle of a big adventure. I was on a train from [00:01:00] Russia to China and I just thought it was a cool compliment. After then I continued my journey of creating different businesses in completely different areas. So marketing business, cake businesses, coaching business, and just doing my thing. Being told very often that I need to focus, I need to niche and having people around me feel very uncomfortable about the things that I create. And, and sometimes feeling very stressed and pressured by it too, by the own pressure that I create, I put on myself. And I didn't really take onboard that name, I just carried on living my life. But I definitely felt a sense of, being scattered not having focus because that was what I was being told on a daily basis on a weekly basis. Whether that is in coaching [00:02:00] forums and business forums, where you've got a niche, you've got to get down tight on who you're focusing on or who you want to work with. Who's your dream client, et cetera, et cetera, or in a.

Creativity weirdly in creativity, coaching as well. Like what's your, what's your specialism?

 And I just couldn't do it. I could never narrow it down to one dream client. I could never narrow down to one element of my business life that I wanted to focus on because actually they both give me energy in very different ways.

So my cake businesses have always been a true free creative outlet where I just enjoy making and creating. And I love the orders I get from clients when they just say, this is how many I want and it's this kind of colors. And, and I get to go wild and create [00:03:00] something intuitively based on that brief.

And then my coaching and healing business gives me something completely different. So I do have a healing gift and I get to creatively write stories that heal people. My words will heal people, and that is just. I adore that I, whether that is through storytelling or through Reiki, energetic healing is a completely different gift, but it's creative in a different way.

And even my marketing business is creative. So there is a thread of creativity that runs through them all. So I always kind of saw them as coming off the same. Uh, I guess main line of my creative energy, but when I am invited to share that with somebody else, somebody says, what do you do? That's the point at which I kind of lose the, pride, I guess, [00:04:00] in my abilities because you're just like, oh gosh. Wow. Where do I start? I don't even know where to start. And then the judgment comes because people think, oh, well you don't know what you do. 

Well, actually I do these different things on different days of the week, on different months of the year sometimes I switch cakes off for example. But that makes people feel really uncomfortable.

People that have chosen one path, and it's fine to choose one path. We need people that choose one path. And, but it's taken me a long time to get to the point where I feel comfortable with celebrating my Renaissance woman status. 

And I really, really love a very classical description of a renascence person. So they need to be charming witty well-educated able to dance thing, play music, write poetry, be a skilled writer, wrestler and swordsperson, and apparently it was something that was encouraged in sciences as well. That you would [00:05:00] have , lots of different knowledge of lots of different things.

This is a period of time when there was lots of innovation, . So, it was encouraged that you would know lots of things to be able to pull them together. And I can't quite believe now that I didn't have the, wherewithall to go and dig around in that one. But to be honest, I was distracted by a big adventure, which is another one of my passions, travel. And getting to know new places, meet new people. 

 and, it's considered fine in those contexts where you're in new environments, you're embracing these different things people accept it. But then when I would stop, and stay in a place for a period of time. When I lived in Melbourne, for example, and people would say, why did you come?

"Oh, I came because I had the food was good" and they literally would just stop in their tracks and look at me like I was mad. But that was the real reason why I came. Most people had traveled for a partner's [00:06:00] job or for their own job, I didn't come across anybody else that moved to Melbourne because they had the food was good and they wanted an adventure, but that was my truth.

So that was what I shared, and I created a job for myself. I created a business for myself and I wrapped to my passions and interests around the life that I wanted to create. So it's an example of, some of the traits that, Emily, Wapnick describes in her multi-potential life observations. Which was something that only was brought to my attention in the spring of this year, when I was having a bit of a meltdown with someone in a coaching group that I'm in and about the pressures that I was putting on myself within these different businesses and within these different challenges.

And you know, where should I focus? I was being told that I needed to focus again. And [00:07:00] actually she sent me in the direction of the Ted talk and I just breathed out for the first time in a long time. And I had such a sigh of relief as I saw someone openly talking for the first time and celebrating the things that I embrace in my life.

Being able to dive in deep into things that interest me quickly to learn quickly, to be adaptable, to, really, really embrace all elements of me and finally having space to be proud of that. It really clicked for me, and the three things that, that she really celebrates. So the fact that, ideasynthesis is something that we're really good at.

So we can, we can problem-solve because we take experience from different areas and then put that together in the middle in [00:08:00] order to create a solution. We learn really quickly because we're curious, and we're super adaptable and. In the wrong environment, that really doesn't work. So for me, when I was in wrong environments, I remember doing, a personality profile test.

It was the insights test, and I came out in the middle. There were lots of people in the team that were very, very clear reds. They were very directive, they were very ruler types, behavior patterns. And I came out in the middle because I would change how I worked based on the environment that I was in and who I was working with, which obviously has benefits because it means I can get on with anybody, but it also meant that nobody could define me.

They found it really difficult to put their finger on what I was all about, which in a corporate matrix type organization [00:09:00] can be quite detrimental because that's all they want to do is put you in a box and have you in a specialism. Or in a lot of organizations, they want to put you in a box. And I used to find when I applied for jobs, I'd get bored even just reading the job description. Because it would be "specialize in one thing". And that's never been my bag because from a very young age, I worked, I worked in creative roles in a non creative organization. So I worked in a marketing roles in an engineering and energy company. , So we had lean teams, we worked very entrepreneurially and had comparatively small resources compared to marketing teams in other organizations. I was exposed to a lot, I was in control of a lot, I was in charge of lot. I got involved in all different elements of the marketing mix that my peers wouldn't have done. And I think that helped [00:10:00] shaped me into this Renaissance character that exists today.

and actually I enjoyed that organization, because I was able to move into different parts of the business every couple of years or so. And so, although I was in one area of business, I didn't stick within the same sector. , So I was constantly learning new ways to do stuff.

So even within that other environment, I was still finding ways to diversify my skillset and use it in new and creative ways. And creativity is the thing that I really see lays over for me. The three things that the Emily identifies in her talks about multi-potentiality is a lot of us are very creative.

We end up in creative fields or we have this balance between, science science and creativity scientivity! [00:11:00] I think just tried to trip out of my mouth. And if we don't embrace that creativity, then we get into this place where we get bored. We feel scattered, we end up self-sabotaging and all kinds of really destructive habits, whether they are, patterns of thought, negative thoughts, whether they are active, physical habits of self-harm. It can become very lonely, it can become a place where you feel quite purposeless because you're being told that you have to have this one key thing that you put all your attention on. But there's beauty and brilliance in this adaptability because it can apply across anything.

So from the sublime to the ridiculous, I have learned to love this. I have learned to embrace it and just boldly step into things. I know I learn quickly, and I know that I am very observant and I know that , whatever I put [00:12:00] my attention to will bear fruit because of all the things that I have learned quickly in the past. , 

Whether it's working with a new client and I can tell exactly through the words that they use or don't use what it is that we need to get to, and the questions that I need to ask in order to get underneath the things that we need to heal. To doing things like helping out behind a bar for the day. I'd never poured a pint before in my life, but I volunteered because I was researching beer for a cake project. And I thought, well, it can't be that hard they'll tell me what to do. I did it for the day. Everybody thought I'd been a bar lady for goodness knows how long. And they asked me to come back and help them at more events! Than I had to say I just wanted to research the beer it was fun for the day, but, you know. Having that creativity and curiosity is a really good thing. It allows you to make connections and allows feel the pull to [00:13:00] different things and embrace it.

If you feel drawn to something that's completely diametrically opposite to your day job, don't judge it. Don't try and find a why behind it. There may not be an end game to it. You may try it. Not like it. You may try it and it leads to something else, but you'll learn something in the flow of the calling.

The lesson will reveal itself. If somebody saying to you, well, what are you doing that for? Why are you doing it? Not everything has to have a purpose, or the purpose for everything is not always clear immediately upfront. And I have learned that through my, travel adventures primarily.

I would just feel like I needed to go to a place and not be able to explain why. There's some things that just unfold. You just have to trust the journey and trust yourself to be able to follow your instincts, to connect to the right people, to connect to the right passions. To create the right framework to [00:14:00] hold them all within.

This is where the magic happens for Renaissance people. This is where the. Synchronicity happens. This is where you draw in beautiful opportunities when you just trust that flow of, "oh my gosh. Yeah, that feels really good." That feels really good in your body. That feels, it makes sense. You don't always have to understand why or explain why, if it feels good to you, then follow that call.

The whys and wherefores where you've come and the beauty of following these callings is. They lead us to other people that appreciate our gifts and who we compliment. So I've worked really, really well with specialists in all different types of fields. So, um, from scientists who are vocationally focused on their one thing, you know, for their whole career to academics, to healthcare experts, to [00:15:00] lawyers and all sorts of people. 

I have worked with them and used their knowledge to create things in the world that they wouldn't be able to create on their own. So we compliment each other really beautifully and we need each other. So, it does people a disservice when we try and get them to focus on just one thing.

And I think particularly at a young age, I know I would have found it a lot easier to fully love and embrace and accept myself and be able to identify this beautiful label that I was given. I quite liked that label. I'm not one for labels generally, but I quite like that Renaissance woman or person label.

Now that I know what it means now that I've had time to understand it. It's a celebration of all the different elements of me. And I think more of us should be encouraged to celebrate that. So if you are being pulled in different directions, if you are [00:16:00] questioning, you know, why am I doing this? Do I really have time for it?

What's the point? Especially when it comes to creative pursuits. Be kind to yourself, make time for it. If you're feeling drawn to it, you're being pulled to it for a reason. You don't need to know what it is straight away. If feels safe, if it feels good, if it feels like a positive thing in your body, and if you get into flow state, when you do it as well. This is what often happens for me.

If you get into flow state where you've been doing that thing for hours, and you didn't even realize. This happens to me a lot with, writing for hypnotherapy and also for cakes. , Obviously I don't write cakes! But when I create cakes, when I am, decorating, when I'm making, I get into total flow state and I will be I'm that person that's "oh, my feet are hurting so much. Why my feet hurting? Oh, it's 2:00 AM. And I've been on my feet" [00:17:00] like the time just flies away. 

So if you find yourself getting into that flow state with the thing that's calling you, trust it, follow it. Obviously, make sure that you're taking care of yourself and the self care is really on point, but trust the flow honour the flow, embrace the Renaissance in you. It's calling you for a reason allow it!

Thank you so much for listening to episode two of La Dolce Vita lounge podcast, where we went in on the magic of Renaissance women, and how to embrace the Renaissance woman in you. 

Are you an undercover Renaissance person? 

Are you being pulled in different directions in business and creative pursuits? Or alternatively being told not to listen to these things that call to you because you must focus.

We can get lost in the wrong environment and just know that you are not alone. We are the glue that makes the world work. If you want to [00:18:00] share your story with me, my inbox is always open. You can find me at @Ladolcevitacoach on Instagram. The link is in the show notes if you want to come and find me, I'm also quite active on LinkedIn.

And also, if you really enjoyed this podcast, I would love if you could review and subscribe or even share with other friends that you think would love it too. Thanks for listening. Have a sweet day!