44 The power of focus for the 'Renaissance Soul'

Margaret Lobenstein describes the multi-interest character as The Renaissance Soul; such persons tend to get excited by many things at a time, but find it difficult to choose; love new challenges but once these are mastered, get easily bored; take up many hobbies briefly; feel trapped and restless even in successful jobs. They want variety and fresh challenges all the time!  In her 2006 book, this pioneering inn-keeper turned life and career coach has many suggestions to get such a life while still making ends meet.

The essence of Margaret’s advice is expressed in these three points: firstly, get focus, so that you are able to get into action; secondly, get money by “linking your passions to a source of income”; and how to organize your time to match your “Renaissance soul rhythms”. Regarding the second (income), she suggests many options to finance your wanderings and love of variety: pursue different careers, sequentially; or get an “umbrella” job that “embraces many interests”; get two jobs rather than one; get a J-O-B that “serves one’s interests”; or even a “single career path”  that allows you to accommodate many interests. I think I got lucky with the last alternative, as a career in the forest service allowed me not only to indulge my love of nature and travelling, but also gave me the time and the support to pursue higher studies, occupy positions in different fields and levels in general administration, teaching, research, policy direction, even the corporate world, apart from developing other interests and hobbies on my own, like music and photography. Plus, as I explained before, it gave me a good retirement scheme – enabling me to satisfy both passion and pension!

An initial exercise recommended by Margaret Lobenstein is to identify your five or half a dozen core values that you feel are most important to you now, from a list of fifty or so. You could also match your life goals (from a list of ten or so) to circles of different sizes to get a feel of their relative importance to you. She also gives you the ‘obituary test’. Once you’ve done these self-discovery exercises, you are supposed to find it easier to reorder your life to give more space to your highest priority values and goals.

The book suggests that one way to move out of the paralysis of choice, and achieve more of your Renaissance soul goals, is to narrow down your priorities to four or so activities at a particular period in your life, or to identify your focal points. This is an acknowledgment, of course, of the limitations on every person’s time and resources. It will be impossible to do all those fifteen activities you are fascinated by, all together, so the strategy is to dwell at a time on a short list of three to five (“When it comes to Focal Points, four seems to be a lucky number  for Renaissance souls”). This would be akin to the Serial Master type of Scanner in the previous post (Barbara Sher’s book): they get their variety, plus they are able to get on with some activity instead of being eternally undecided and flitting from idea to idea. As you get into each of these limited areas of interest, you may find you’ve had enough of some of them, and can happily retire them in favour of other, more interesting activities. Of course, if you do not want to abandon them altogether, then you will have to keep them on the ‘back burner’ till you are done with the other choices, and circle back to them at a later period of your life like the cyclical Scanners of the last post.

An interesting part of the book is the advice on how to bring the circle of passions and the source of income closer together. Margaret calls this the J-O-B, spelling it out letter by letter,  as distinct from a routine soul-deadening livelihood as in ‘don’t give up your day job’. One has to pick a J-O-B that in some ways complements the focal points of one’s real interests and values. These are the five possible benefits of a J-O-B: it could be a source of income, a source of energy (not competing with the focal point passions!), a time saver, a way of getting training or equipment, or a means of networking. The J-O-B chosen should supply at least a couple of these benefits.

Personally, I am not quite sure that a series of temporary positions will amount to a satisfactory career in the long term, but I suppose the job situation is different now, as many youngsters do want to build up their own outfits after a few years of working for others. A variety of occupations and experiences may be advantageous here. A lot of people are trying to combine a love of outdoors with photography, conservation, or with a business like running a resort or a tour outfit, or running nature camps for kids, for instance. It may be interesting to do a little study of where they all end up: as publishers or film makers or restaurateurs or directors of NGO concerns – or political activists?  To give the author credit, she does advice that even if the day job amounts to a long-term (full time) career, it should be used to advantage to support the passions, by thinking of it as a J-O-B rather than feeling handcuffed and frustrated by its demands on your time and energy. I think I like this option, as it may save a lot of young people from going astray in pursuit of moon dust! Another interesting and fruitful idea she offers is to find an “umbrella” career position that can provide a legitimate job title as well as a cover for your current focal points.

There’s lots more good advice here, including suggestions for young people in choosing courses at school and college. A point I really like is that you may be attracted to a process of learning some occupation, but may not really be inclined to take it up as a career: “sometimes success rests not in the product but in the process”. She suggests the PRISM test of the current Focal Points to identify your priority interests: the test of Price, Reality, Integrity, Specificity and Measurability. This jargon should appeal to the management-oriented types amongst the Renaissance souls (or Scanners, if you prefer).

Most of us have probably experienced short periods of intense immersion in some project or activity under the pressure of some deadline or obligation, when things seemed to come together of their own and our inner system seemed to be humming along powerfully in synch with events in the outer world. The author Robert Greene in his book Mastery describes the experience of focus this way: “Instead of flitting here and there in a state of perpetual distraction, our minds focus and penetrate to the core of something real. At these moments it is as if our minds – turned outward – are now flooded with light from the world around us, and suddenly exposed to new details and ideas, we become more inspired and creative... Once the deadline has passed or the crisis is over, this feeling of power and heightened creativity generally fades away. We return to our distracted state and the sense of control is gone. If only we could manufacture this feeling, or somehow keep it alive longer… but it seems so mysterious and elusive.”  

And yes, Margaret does have a Focal Points workbook to maintain, with one section for each Focal Point (and a miscellaneous appendix for all the rest!). Like I said in the last post, this is my weak area, and I tend to just keep a very untidy daily cashbook sort of diary with a running list of ideas and things to do, rather than formal work charts or critical path charts (“working backwards from the goal”). I’m sure by now that I will be neither opening resorts nor running NGOs, and I will be amusing myself by myself in my own way - but perhaps you may be made of sterner stuff!

Books cited

Greene, Robert. 2012. Mastery. Profile Books Ltd., London.

Lobenstine, Margaret. 2006. The Renaissance Soul. Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One. Broadway Books, New York.

Sher, Barbara. 2006. What Do I Do When I Want To Do Everything? A Leading Life Coach’s Guide to Creating a Life You’ll Love. Rodale International Ltd., London.