Multi-Passionate Embodiment with D'Ana Joi Spencer

I could not be more thrilled to have D’Ana Joi Spencer on Under the Surface today. I’ve gotten lots of Joi time lately, but I always feel like it’s never enough! I always want more.

Joi (2/4 Emotional Manifestor) is a coach for multi-passionates and the host of the Multi-Passionate Mastery Podcast. She believes having many passions is a gift, not a burden, and is on a mission to rewrite the narrative around “choosing one thing,” being the only path to success.

There’s not a lot of people advocating for multi-passionates, and Joi has made it her life mission and passion to break free from the mindset of picking only one thing to focus on.

This blog is for all the coaches out there who feel like the “choose one niche” advice is too restricting for all of your passions.

Prefer to listen? Tap play to hear how Joi chooses herself in pursuing her multiple passions:

Listen to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Thank you so much for being here, Joi! Please tell us about yourself and why you choose to pursue being a coach for multi-passionates—because that is so powerful!

“Thank you. I am a life coach for creatives. I help creatives from all walks of life, all different industries, create clear priorities so that they can break free from the pressure of doing all the things at once and on paper.

I know that sounds very masculine, very quad lefty, and it is in a lot of ways. But, when a multi-passionate person has clear priorities, and they no longer have to use their brain power on trying to figure out what to start with first, what to do next, those kinds of questions, what happens is…they can really blossom and express themselves as the multi-passionate creatives that they are.

So yes, on paper, I'm teaching about priorities, focus and clarity. But the after effect, the ripple effect of that, is that I'm seeing so many multi-passionates bloom and really come into their own because they're no longer using all of their magnificent brilliance trying to troubleshoot and problem solve.

I really think of it as a movement that's being started. Multi-passionate creatives are still an underdog group in our society. We are a highly underserved sector of society.

If you, you know, have traditional business coaching or you're in a more traditional business coaching or are in a kind of mentorship space, the number one piece of advice will be to pick something to be known for—to niche down, like as soon as humanly possible. There's not a lot of people advocating for the opposite.

So, the work that I'm doing is my life's work. It's my passion. And it's something that I'm really doing with the Multi-Passionate Community, with everyone who listens to my podcast, joins a program signs up for a course, everyone who's getting involved, is helping to rewrite the narrative that choosing one thing is the only path to success.

And so during my lifetime, we're gonna see a shift. That is my mission.”

Oh my god. I just love how clearly and efficiently (you know I love efficiency) you expressed that. It’s so beautiful.

I love how you’ve actually taken the time, energy, and care to hone this message that you just gave us.

I think that some of us get lazy and say that we don’t know, when really we know and just haven’t taken the time to get really great at communicating what it is that we know. You just did that, and I honor that in you.

Second of all, when you said that it sounds really masculine, I’m over here like: no, no, no.

It doesn’t feel masculine to me at all because I also have a lot of left energy too, but in order to prioritize, you have to get in touch with your own intuition, your body’s wisdom, and connect with your environment. Those are all very feminine themes. 

I believe those have to happen before you’re able to have clear priorities. 

Wouldn’t you agree?

“Totally, totally. And you know, the first module in my program is called Cultivating Clarity, which is not very masculine at all. And it's very much about getting in touch with who you are. You are the featured Human Design mentor in that module. So, it's really about getting to know yourself and what is it that you actually want.

The subtitle of that module is called Cause What You Want Fucking Matters…Sometimes we come with a goal of, ‘oh, I wanna create clarity,’ you know, ‘I wanna have clear priorities.’ That sounds great. But, whose priorities are we setting? You know, we wanna make sure that from the beginning, you are in touch with who you are and what your unique desires are.

What's your definition of success? What's your energetic signature? What do you want your life to look like? To feel like?

And I personally don't think there's a better tool than Human Design for learning those things. We also include some things like tapping and journaling and other ways to, what I call, like creating an atmosphere for clarity to thrive on a day-to-day basis.

But, that has to be where you start, because otherwise you might just be looking at a list of things that you have committed to, and you're trying to put them in some kind of order. But, none of them might actually be what you wanna truly be doing.

So you're, you're spot on…

I think there's a balance of masculine and feminine in the process.

I'm a little bit hyper-aware of my love of structure because I'm a quad left. So that's probably why I kind of prefaced it that way, but you're absolutely right. It's a beautiful blend of both. And we know that structure creates a lot of room for freedom.”

I would argue that structure is what creates the room for freedom.

We have to be able to be free within the structure that we build and being able to do that with clarity is so powerful.

I think on this macro level, as you and I are both Manifestors, we’ve talked about this before where we kind of are like feeling into the future.

It’s like, am I creating the future? Or am I seeing what the new paradigm will be?

Look at the birth of the personal brand. This has been very in line with what you’re doing, where you’re realizing that you are not going to be one thing. You’re going to be seen and embrace all these different sides of you. The degree that you can do this is very correlated to the degree of your impact that you have on people around you, in your environment, and in the world.

I think what people are lacking most is connection.

So, for us to be able to connect with ourselves first, you know, let all of those freak flags fly, THAT is what creates the environment for more connection and impact, and all of those juicy things.

I would love to hear more about you and your experience with this. You have so much conviction in your voice when you talk about this and you can tell that it’s not just a really good business idea, it’s also YOU. This has been birthed from a lot. I can feel it when I’m looking at you and when we’re speaking.

So, be real with us. How did you really get here? What were those stumbles along the way that really defined where you are now?

“Not at any point did I have an intention that I would become a life coach and start an online business.

I, throughout my twenties, struggled so much.

Well, in our twenties, we're kind of all in the season of, well, what am I going to do? Like, what's it gonna look like? You know, what's my future gonna look like? But, my unique experience was: I was so talented at so many things that I genuinely had a lot of options.

I could sing very well, and write music. I was a great writer. I had a love for home decor. At one point I wanted to go be a buyer and travel all around the world and just shop vintage goods. I was curious about fashion. I also really wanted to be a motivational speaker. So I had all of these different interests, but I also was genuinely good at a lot of things, and I had options.

So during my twenties, I was kind of bumbling around. Trying to figure out what was gonna be the thing. What was I going to ‘get serious about?’ And it was painful, because if I would say, ‘well, okay, I'll do the music thing. I'll go all in on music,’ it would feel like I was leaving these other parts of myself on the back burner.

But, really the stove was turned off and they were never going to have their moment and it felt wrong that I even had to choose.

And so, I ended up kind of getting in this cycle of starting things, committing to them, maybe even committing with more ferociousness, because I kind of knew that I wasn't sure. So I kind of overcompensated. Getting in the middle, and then being bored and not wanting to do it anymore. Jumping to the next thing and repeating that process.

And the story that I told myself was I'm just never gonna be successful.

How can I be successful if I can't settle on one thing? What's wrong with me? I’m all over the place. Wishy washy. I'm flaky. I must just be the creative type and maybe like success just isn't meant for me.

Then one day, and it sounds cliche, but literally one day I woke up and I was like: If choosing one thing, isn't working, what is the opposite? What is the opposite of that?

I decided that instead of trying to choose one thing that I was going to do, I was going to choose myself. I was going to choose myself. I was going to choose to embrace it all—that used to be my tagline when I first started my blog. I was gonna embrace it all…

And I was like, you know, I'm going to not choose one thing, but I'm willing to choose one platform to pour my energy into. I started a blog. And I called the blog Joi Knows How because I needed it to not be specific at all.

Like you said, I was coming to it from a personal brand approach, and my thought was: Joi Knows How To Cook, Joi Knows How To Do Plant Care, Joi Knows This, Joi Knows That. That was how I positioned my blog.

So I started this blog and I gave myself wild, creative freedom. Even when I was learning about blogging, all the advice that I was getting was to have your blog be successful, first, pick a niche. And I was like, ‘fuck that, fuck that.’

I learned really quick [that] I’m gonna have to ignore a lot of advice if I'm going to continue to honor this choice that I've made, this commitment that I've made, to choose myself…

Well, one day I wrote a blog post that's called It's Time To Start Celebrating Multi-Passionates. I had always positioned my blog as: Hi, I'm Joi and I'm not gonna choose one thing.

This blog is my playground where I embrace it all…But, what happened was I kept coming back to the multi-passionate experience.

I kept coming back to it and coming back to it. So one day…I must have been cleaning and it was like a lightning bolt struck me and I realized I've cracked some kind of code here, because I was feeling so good…Truly, I no longer felt like, ‘oh, I'm not gonna be successful.’ I could see that I was going to be able to carve my own path, even if I didn't know exactly what it was.

I could see that I had found my voice, that I had found a way to embrace my talents as a gift, and not a burden. And as I was realizing that in the same moment, it hit me that that's not enough. It's not enough for me to have that realization and for me to feel so good about being multi-passionate. I want other people to feel this way.”

Joi, you probably hear this all the time: your message is so impactful.

I’ve seen your Human Design chart because we’ve worked together and I know you’ve got 8 defined centers and you are an emotional Manifestor with the Cross of Rulership. That’s very big, powerful energy.

You’ve gained this confidence and conviction on your own. You ignored advice and went all in on yourself. You choose yourself. But, I have to believe that part of that has always been your energy.

That’s always been there and a part of you.

So, I’m curious about the people you work with, because that may not be their story. That’s not their energy. Everyone’s energy is different. How much of a challenge do you think that is for other people?

Also, how is it a challenge for you?

“Showing up confidently as an embodied, empowered, multi-passionate, the reason that that can be really challenging is [that] the concept itself is widely challenged and not just in our society, but also the voice in our head. Right?

‘Oh, if I share more than one thing, I'm gonna confuse people.’

I hear that all the time.

‘Oh, I don’t wanna seem like I’m all over the place.’

‘Oh, I don’t wanna seem flaky,’ or ‘I don’t wanna make all these promises I can’t keep.’

So many self doubts come up. And it’s the unwillingness to be curious about all of it that causes so much hesitation.

Let me explain what I mean. The multi-passionate creative is a curious human being, wants to learn new things, [and] isn’t afraid to try something new. We'll deep dive on something in a heartbeat and just see, as like very one line energy. Like, ‘okay, what is in this for me? Let me just check this out. Let me dig. Let me dig. Let me dig.’

The multi-passionate creative is a curious person because there's so much available. We learn fast. We're not afraid to try something new. There's a lot available to us.

When you are operating in a society that tells you, you better get your shit together and focus and narrow it down, what starts to happen is that curiosity gets suppressed. And on the surface, it might sound like it's not that big of a deal. Sometimes you have to filter things out, and it can be good to suppress that right on the surface. It seems kind of harmless, but what happens is that becomes a symbol for something else.

When you suppress your curiosity about a subject about that book that keeps lighting up on the shelf, about that show that you wanna watch, when you suppress your curiosity on those levels you're also gonna suppress your curiosity with bigger questions. Like why do I keep stopping in the middle of these projects?

Why am I so afraid to tell people that I also sing? Why haven’t I ever shared my music…that suppression of curiosity, in my opinion, is a big part of what I replenish with my clients.

When I'm in a coaching container, or I'm talking to a client, and they're questioning themselves, or they're unsure about something, or they may be not as confident, I take the approach of curiosity.

Well, whose voice is that, that you're hearing? When’s the first time you felt that? Is that the truth? What thought got you there? Do you enjoy believing that thought? It's a series of questions that I can ask that can help someone to tap into what's available when curiosity is in the room. I really do think that curiosity in our ability to follow it can breed confidence. Truly taking action is also important because confidence is a result of taking action, right?

We don't always have confidence first…but, if we're never curious about those things that are calling us, and we're never even willing to go down that that lane or walk down that path, we don't even have those opportunities.

The way that I've been able to build so much confidence in my life, and in myself, is I question everything.

If I think I can't do something, I question that. If I think I can do something, then the downside is I might question that too, but that helps me to fortify it with what beliefs and thoughts I need to help me root into the belief that I absolutely can do that thing.

If something isn't working for me, I don't just throw my hands up and get frustrated. I get curious. Why isn't this working for me? How can I feel more supported today? What do I need right now? And so, it’s not suppressing my interest in learning how to do hand lettering, or taking a macrame class, or going to a dance class.

It's not suppressing that, then allows my curiosity in other areas to feel safe for me. I think that's a key component.”

I love that because I think curiosity is available to us all of the time, while confidence really needs to be built up. 

It’s clear to me all of the benefits of your own confidence. You own your certainty in your voice. You’re well spoken about who you are and what you do, and there’s so much confidence and conviction in that. I can see how that benefits you, and I also know how challenging that is.

To have such a strong personality, to be too much of this for someone and too much of that for someone else. Let’s dive into this a bit.

I know that many multi-passionate creatives, really women, and many other people who just feel like they’re a little bit different and don’t fit in, we all really relate to this.

“Ooh. Yes. So I am an assertive person by nature.

I'm the person where if I ask for water with no ice and you brought it to me with ice, I'm going to return the water and request that it has no ice in it. I'm the person who, if I get a meal and I don't like it, I have no problem letting people know, ‘oh, I'm so sorry. This is not what I thought this was gonna taste. Can I order something else?’ And I've been in situations like that where everyone else is cringing and can't believe that I would have the audacity to advocate for myself at a restaurant.

I mean, literally. I'm gonna tell you a story.

So, I went to Palm Springs with my cousins. We went to some like kitchy, brunch space, and we're looking around and everyone has these deep fried bacon bloody marys. Every table has one. So we're all like, okay, fuck it. Like let's get a round of those. We get them and they're terrible. They're so salty. Like the breading on the bacon is just getting soggy in the drink.

It's just the weirdest. It's bizarre.

So we're all kind of making faces and I'm like, I'm sending mine back and they're all like, ‘well, we'll just try to make it work.’ So they're like pouring water in it, pouring ice, mixing it up, taking little sips.

I didn't do that. I sent mine back. I got a moscow mule. I enjoyed every drop.

When we left, they had barely gotten through half of their drinks and I had drank my whole beverage and I was fine, but out of four women who are also, you know, all my cousins, are pretty strong…women. I was still the only person at that table willing to advocate for myself in that moment….

It’s very triggering for a lot of people to be in the presence of someone who is not afraid to advocate for themselves. And I think it's because a lot of women, specifically, don't have that skill. They would rather not rock the boat or not ruffle any feathers, or be agreeable. And given the fact that I'm a Black woman. When I advocate for myself, it can come off as being super aggressive.

Whereas someone else with a different skin tone is me, they’re just making a request. I've dealt with that so many times, I remember specifically I went to a nail shop and I used to get like, you know, nail art and things like that. And I asked the nail technician to change the shape. I didn't like the shape.

I said, ‘Oh, excuse me. This is not really the shape that I wanted. Could you do it more like that?’ I was very nice about it. I was not rude about it at all. I was making a request. She changed the shape. I gave her a huge tip. I left.

When I came back the next time for an appointment that I had, they told me that she didn't wanna work on me because I was too picky.

And they all were laughing and trying to find someone in there who could do my nails. So needless to say, I never went back there and I left a very communicative Yelp review.

But, it hurts. It hurts to be treated that way.

When all I did was ask for what I wanted. Was I supposed to go home and look at my nails for the next two weeks in a shape that I didn't want? Why would I do that when I could simply make a request?

So, I don't know exactly what it is. I think part of it is the Manifestor aura. The other part of it is I'm a Black woman and maybe it's a little bit intimidating to be in the presence of someone who isn't afraid to advocate for themselves. But, it’s been really hard to navigate this…

I wanna be loved and accepted. I wanna, you know, I'm a nice person…so, while I love this part of myself, it's something that I'm really learning to come to peace with in terms of not everyone's going to understand this. That's not about me. It's about them.

I have to embrace that and let people have their own trip and continue to advocate for myself.” 

I hear that Manifestor energy in you. But, even if you’re listening and you’re not a Manifestor. It’s still true that a lot of us settle.

A lot of us settle because the immediate discomfort of being honest and speaking up for what you want is too much for some of us.

Instead, we accept the moderate discomfort long-term. But, when we have that immediate discomfort, that is really what brings us the ease that comes afterwards.

It’s okay to want something the way that you want it. But also, you’re absolutely right, Joi, that’s part of your impact. And it’s really empowering.

I always say this: When I say no, I’m giving that other person permission to do the same.

This conversation is so wide and deep, as always. I can imagine that being in a container with you is so powerful, not only because you’re obviously a walking, breathing embodiment of the work you do and the mission you’re serving, but also simply because of your energy.

Well, I have fully enjoyed every single word that has come out of that beautiful mouth of yours. Thank you, Joi, for joining us!

Please tell us how someone can find you and experience your work first-hand.

“Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure to be around you and near you in any way. So I will come back any time. And I just love you so much.

If y'all enjoyed this conversation and you wanna spend more time with me, please check out my podcast. It's called Multi-Passionate Mastery, and you can get that anywhere that you listen to podcasts. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's a podcast for multi-passionate it's created by a multi-passionate…

I also have a coaching program it's a year long container and it's called Prioritize and Thrive. This is the program for multi-passionates…to learn how to create clear priorities so that they can finally break free from the pressure of doing all the things at once [and] bring their ideas to life on a completely stress-free timeline, and experience the joy of being multi-passionate without burning out.

It's really, really good stuff…And if you are just, just kind of wanna say hi, you're maybe not ready to go out on a date, but you just wanna flirt a little bit, come hang out with me on Instagram.

My handle @multipassionatejoi.”

Thank you, Joi!

And thank you to everyone reading. If you enjoyed this blog, please take a screenshot and share it to your Instagram stories, and tag both of us to let us know your takeaways.

See you next time!