As you go through life, people are going to stereotype you. They are going to do all in their power to put you in a box based on how you look, where you work, and where you live. This allows them to mentally file you away alongside the thousands of other boxes consuming their mental real estate.
Take Emmett, for example. Let’s say that Emmett is an entrepreneur who lives in Palo Alto, attended Stanford, and wears tee shirts and jeans to work every day. When you meet Emmett and learn about these characteristics, you immediately try to put him in a box that you neatly file next to the boxes consisting of all the other entrepreneurs that you know. For you, this categorization is effective in that it allows you to infer many other things about Emmett based upon his entrepreneurial characteristics – most of which are probably correct. But for Emmett, the fact that you filed him in the entrepreneurial box in the first place may make him feel the need to hide his other interests in order to assume the mold associated with his primary domain.
What if Emmett is an entrepreneur who paints watercolors two nights per week and writes fiction novels on the weekend? What if he lives in Palo Alto but spends three months of the year in Montana taking care of his parents? What if he only started his company as a means of generating enough revenue to support his dream of becoming a full time writer or artist? With this additional information, the box that we tried to put him in may not be as appropriate as it originally seemed.
We are not meant to be singular beings, put in boxes, stacked away collecting dust. We are complex, creative, living beings constantly exploring and trying to improve our understanding of the world around us. When people that we meet want to force us into nice little boxes, it is not our responsibility to help them to do so. It is our responsibility to simply be the multifaceted beings that we are.
Having interests outside the scope of your primary domain does not make you strange. It makes you interesting. It gives you something to talk about when you bring clients out to dinner. It stimulates creative thinking in your primary domain, as it allows you to draw new connections derived from the influx of outside material.
Don’t be afraid to break the mold and defy stereotypes. Be the investment banker who bakes, the athlete who sings, or the ballet dancer who spends her weekends going to heavy metal concerts.
Keep breaking barriers. Never limit your journey simply because it doesn’t make sense to other people.