“What do you wanna do in life?”
Do you know these questions from your past, do you remember those quiet moments asking yourself and you still can’t figure out an answer?
That is the case for me — I don’t know. I have plenty of ideas and a lot of plans, but I can’t name this one thing I really want to do. I will always answer with a list of things I really want to accomplish in my life. Wanting just one thing sounds crazy to me.
But I am tired of not living my dreams, yes, there are multiple dreams and I won’t abandon most of the dreams for the sake of one dream.
Seeing myself facing so many important life changing decisions I did the most logical part: I froze.
Terrified of making a decision I felt like standing in this hallway of life and all these open doors were the possibilities waiting for me, I just had to make the decision and walk through one of these doors.
As I told you already, I did nothing because I was afraid all the other doors would then close and I would have to endure a life without any more options nor with any open doors. It took me a while to realize I would die unhappy if I wouldn’t move, I couldn’t just procrastinate till the end of time.
Procrastination is a big topic for me, but I won’t get into this topic now. Maybe in the next article, or maybe in the future but definitely at some point. (Spoken like a true procrastinator)
So I went on a journey with my first stops on the unhealthy side of things till I reached a turning point and went through psychological counseling, different kinds of self-help books, admiring people who are achieving their dream by watching movies based on real events and getting by. But no matter what I did, I did not move the tiniest bit in my ‘decision-hallway’. I could not find any answer, nor examples of people living their dreams happily, almost everyone thinks or lives a one-dimensional dream, exactly what I could not do.
At a university course given by a experienced coach I explained her my problems:
“Yes, medicine is great and I want to be a physician, but I don’t want to miss being a clown, nor doing my doctoral thesis, nor on writing and there are even more dreams”
She told me to get this book by Barbara Sher and read about ‘Scanners’ and so I did.
Barbara Sher is well known for inventing Success Teams, has a famous TED-talk about how Isolation kills dreams.
Right there in the bookstore I read chapter six called “I want too many things at once” from her book “I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was“. Wow, I felt the hallway disappearing and I raised above seeing these endless chains of possibilities expanding over a vast horizon with unlimited options. This warm feeling of reaching a turning point, wanting to hug someone, maybe cry a bit but certainly being overwhelmed.
There were more people like me. And this woman had the audacity to say that being like that was alright. She understood me. I sat down right there on the floor; the relief was enormous.
Mrs Sher already had written another book called “Refuse to Choose!: A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything that You Love” just for scanners because of the overwhelming response to chapter six
So what is a scanner?
A person who cannot decide on one thing, scanner are people who
“love to read, to write, to repair, to invent stuff, to create projects, business ideas, to cook, to sing and to give perfect dinner parties”
The author then underlines that there is no ‘or’ because to be a scanner means to love it all at once!
Scanners are not easy to be defined and most known as jack-of-all-trades. But finding a job or even tracking all your interest in a world ruled by specialists might become a soul-crushing experience.
I am a scanner.
Why would you care?
On the one hand it feels great to be able to admit it, to be able to name it and to be okay with it. On the other hand, I wanted to raise my voice in a world full of people talking in podcast, writing, and doing videos on consistency, habit building and self-improvement.
And here I am telling you it is okay to be you with all these different kinds of interests that change over time. The most important thing is the knowledge that there are others out there and it is completely okay to be a scanner.
Take myself as an example, standing still in my ‘decision-hallway of life’ because there were too many things I wanted to do, and I was taught to decide and specialize on one particular topic.
Since then I learned how great it feels to be able to peak in the various doors and options, how satisfying it is to go through one of these doors taking a decision an realizing all these new doors opening and to treat this labyrinth of life more as a playground and not like this one-way odyssey where I have to come out on top of this mountain of success.
So to be a Scanner is one of my topics but as you can imagine there will be a lot of variety of topics because this variety is my niche — hence I have no niche.
Hugs
