All kinds of minds. I’m just one.

 
I love TED. The videos are always so relevant to nearly everything that I am researching at the time. This one hits me especially in the self-doubt department — the part of my brain that says, “You should be good at everything, but you’re not.” You know that little voice?
 
It’s been a great past few years in college. I have taken everything from ceramics to math, from web design to cultural anthropology. And, with only a few months remaining, I am realizing that the greatest lesson that I have learned in school is who I am and what I am good at, which essentially equates to deep analytical thinking. What I’ve found is that I am not good at everything. I am the visual thinker that Temple Grandin mentions in her talk. I, too, think like a human Google images catalogue. I see colors and pictures, where others see patterns or words. I tried to play music and I failed at it. Not because I did not try repeatedly for years, but because it simply made no sense to me or my body. I tried to be a journalist, but I could never fit pieces of a story together painlessly. I think in pictures. I reference things on a visual timeline.
 
So what does all of this mean? It means that I am learning to be happy with the way that my mind innately works. It means that I am happy to share the load in a given project. If a campaign requires witty commentary, then I find a great writer. If it needs a media buy schedule, then I find that person, and so on. But when it needs a sharp, critical eye on design, photography or videography then I want to be that person. Of course everything requires practice and experience, but design, photography and videography is something that I love to be learning and feels natural honing that skill.
 
This does not mean that I can’t do all of the other things or that a musician can’t also be a accountant. It means that we have to find out how our mind works, accept it, and then find ways to use that potential to the fullest while letting the other minds handle the rest. It means letting others in who are great at what they do. It means that a team can make a product or project immensely better than usually just one person.