5 Lives! or eight?

Another Havi post! . This comes from Barbara Sher’s Wishcraft (download it free). I love Barbara Sher’s stuff – I’m totally a Scanner, and she has practical ideas for people like us that have all sorts of interests and want to give them all a go.

The question is:

Think about it: if you had five lives, what would you do with each one? I don’t mean if you were five different people. I mean if you could be you five times over and explore a different talent, interest or lifestyle to the fullest each time … If you could manage nicely with three lives, take three. If you need ten, help yourself. I just picked five because it’s a nice round number.

Here’s my five (well, eight):

1. Full-time performer from childhood onwards – instead of computer classes I would have had the music/acting/whatevs classes I wanted. Or at least being all artsy in my younger years and then moving on to actual performance experience once I got old enough to do it without doing my head in.

2. More skilled web developer. This was mainly because I’ve been using computers since I was 2, been online since I was 9, and everyone nearly expected me to be some sort of computing genius. I did do a bit of it (aside from personal sites which I do still) around 03/04, but coding bores me. zzz.

3. Writer/journalist. This was actually going to be my current life – almost all my life I was passionate about writing. Then I went to uni to do creative writing and I had that passion sucked out of me. I instead rekindled a hidden desire to perform, so I’m starting to do that a bit now.

4. Social entrepreneur/businesswoman. I did try to charge for club newsletters as a kid! I got really involved with this the past couple of years but moved on after some incidences.

5. Teacher. I was surprised to see my past school records and notice that my one constant answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up” was “teach”, because I had a horrible time at school. I did become very involved in alternative education for many years mostly BECAUSE I had such a crap experience!

6. Some sort of NGO save-the-world type person. Like Hugh Evans (he won Young Australian of the Year for his constant work in international development).

7. A gymnast – it was my secret childhood dream (along with performing but that wasn’t so secret) but I never got the chance; I’m unsporty and got scared! I got to make up for it by doing circus lessons last year and now I’m a circus trainee! Yay!

8. World traveller. Well I am now to a great extent, but this would have been more full-time. Instead of government Malaysian school and 1.5 years in a crappy Malaysian uni (before moving to Australia) I would have been in international school, did tons of student exchanges, studied at United World College, and actually get that most-coveted UN passport.

I think though that no matter what life I chose I’d still be something of a multi-disciplinary Barbara Sher-type scanner. I run in cycles of 3-4 years and even within that I get involved in multiple things. It’s what keeps me going!

What about you?

Comments

1. I never promote my own stuff on other people’s blogs, and only came over here to thank you for mentioning WISHCRAFT, and then I saw your ’5 Lives’list. I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that you should be both a writer and a performer, that you must be a teacher and a ‘save the world’ type — and that those entries describe exactly the career I teach in my WriteSpeak program. That’s the only kind of person I want to each. So I read your other blog entries. Wow. I won’t put up the URL and I’m not even going to mention this comment on Twitter because, honest, I’m not promoting this program for the public in your comments section, but please email me if you want to know more.

   Barbara Sher

   — Barbara Sher · Aug 3, 09:05 AM · #