Sometimes I imagine myself standing up in a ‘Multipotentialite Anonymous’ group, looking around the circle and nervously wringing my hands as I say out loud for the first time ‘Hi, my name is Vikki Coombes and I am a multipotentialite’. After all a lot of our world … professionally and socially … treat us as if there is something ‘wrong’ with us, telling us that if only we make a choice and settle down we’ll do well and get recognised and rewarded. And yet I have known for a very long time that change, variety and making a difference are what is important to me. I just never had a term for it. Now in my 5th career – having experienced 20 jobs across the other 4 – I have a lot of experience to share with other people who have ever-changing multiple passions. I get it. And the challenges that so many of us face, I have worked through and I continue learning every day.

Which is why I have set up this website with a blog that addresses all sorts of questions we have about being us with lives we love in a world that still rewards ‘relentlessly pursuing your driving purpose and one passion’. As well as the terms ‘multipotentialite’, ‘scanner’, ‘polymath’ & ‘renaissance soul’ I have added another to our lexicon … I call people like us ‘Hummingbirds’. It is such an amazing analogy as we flit from one interest to another, gathering the nectar we need from each passion before moving on to the next, cross-pollinating as we go and bringing life to others!

How did that all come about? Well, in my first meeting on a Friday with my business mentor, Camilita Nuttall, she challenged me that if my coaching, learning and consulting business was going to be a success that it needed to be about WHO I am rather than what I am. This was a total mind swivel for me! I’d spent 15-20 years in the corporate and public sectors where they most definitely are only interested in what you can do for them. Pretty much zero interest in who you are. This needed some time out for me to process internally. The following Wednesday I sat down with my partner, flipcharts, post-it notes and a range of coloured pens and started brain storming in response to that delightful question … ‘Who am I?’

I began with the easy stuff … all my work, voluntary and study experience. All the interests that I’d had a go at or even developed good competence in over the years. Then we began to go deeper – what challenges had I faced, how had I overcome them? What did other people tell me about me? What are my strengths, what am I unconsciously competent in? What are my weaknesses? What have been my biggest achievements and celebrations in life so far? And then we looked at how all of these things fit into my top 3 values in life and what I want to be doing to make a difference in the world. And then I slept on it … for two nights. It was Friday again, a week since that conversation with Camilita, and I was listening to Elizabeth Gilbert speaking at one of Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sessions on ‘Don’t chase your passion and maybe you’ll find it’ … and she used the analogy of Hummingbirds. As I was listening to her my waist length hair stood on end! It is quite a sight I can assure you. This was me, I AM a Hummingbird.

And I realised it wasn’t up to someone who is a self-declared ‘Passion Flame’ to tell Hummingbirds how to live life fully, it is up to Hummingbirds to empower one another. Suddenly my business and the services I offer took flight. And as I began to speak this truth out into the world people introduced me to the work of Emilie Wapnick and Barbara Sher. I came across Margaret Lobenstine and the Davinci Divas. I fell over the Human Venn Diagram Podcast. So many amazing people providing insights, forums and support. Time for me to add my perspective and services globally so that other Hummingbirds could join me in flying upside down! 

And I continue living what I am coaching … which is to keep my own need for variety satisfied. So I have also been diving into my latest passion relating to how people tick … mBraining. I now know (thanks to latest findings in neuroscience confirming what ancient wisdoms have known for centuries) that as well as the one in our head, our heart and gut are also ‘brains’. A brain is defined as a complex functional adaptive neural network … which each of our heart, head and gut is. And we know that each of our multiple brains has primary functions and that they communicate – both discreetly and with one another. And that the evolving new field of mBraining gives us a profoundly deep and simple framework to use that allows us to tune into those communications and where there is misalignment bring them into congruence … which leads us to healthier bodies and wiser decision making. It is an amazing and life changing modality. And I am now trained to share multiple braining integration techniques (mBIT) with the world.

 And this is just one of many passions I am pursuing … 

I love being a Hummingbird … that my life and business are filled with variety. I’m looking forward to hearing about your own varied life. Share in the comments below!