Refuse to Choose
Use all your interests, passions and hobbies to create the life and career of your dreams
Do you constantly start projects, but rarely finish them? Do your interests range across a vast variety of subjects?
What's the longest you have ever held a job? How many web domains do you have registered? How many new projects are you thinking about?
You may have something in common with Ben Franklin, Aristotle and Leonardo Da Vinci!
This unique class will provide you with tools and techniques to learn how to use this marvelous gift. You will design your life to include everything you love to do—and make a living, too!
Call 303.410.8167 for information
This class is based on the book Refuse to Choose by Barbara Sher, who coined the term Scanner for people who are wired to be constant learners.
I have discontinued the 4-week class for now, and am conducting it on a drop-in basis. If you are the only one who shows up, I'll coach you on whatever issues you want to discuss. If more than one person shows up, we will roughly follow the schedule below.
The sessions allow you to meet and brainstorm with other Scanners, and design a unique plan for your life.
I have copies of "Refuse to Choose" available for $12 + $3 shipping (if I need to ship it).
Session 1: What’s a Scanner? You will create a Scanner Daybook and complete your first entry. You will review your present life and see how being a Scanner shows up. You will start to appreciate yourself for the genius you are!
Session 2: You will examine patterns in your life and see what has excited you about all the jobs, hobbies, and interests you have had. You will discover what “finished” means to you. (Hint: It isn’t the same as what it means to the rest of the world!) You will examine Scanner Panic and receive more tools to deal with it.
Session 3: You will reexamine the notion of Commitment and start to look at how Scanners can make money doing what they love—and how to decide what you love! More tools and ways to plan that honor your Scanner self.
Session 4: What kind of Scanner are you? Different types of Scanners require different kinds of rewards and different kinds of lives. Some Scanners are done with a new subject in a matter of weeks; others take years before they move on. Other types pick up new interests, but also recycle the old ones over and over. Each type lends itself to a different Life Design Model and different tools will keep you on track. During this fourth and last session, you will decide what kind of Scanner you are and design your life going forward.
If you sign up for 4 sessions, you will receive an additional one-hour coaching session. This can include other tools I use including Psych-K to help reprogram negative beliefs that are sabotaging your affirmations. (Value $125).
Investment: $45 per session or $175 for 4 sessions, paid all at once.
To register, phone 303.410.8167
More information about Stephanie Roth and other Scanners.
I’ve been told all my life to pick something and focus on it.
Yes—it is what we are taught by other specialists. After I read Barbara’s book Refuse to Choose I realized I was holding an owner’s manual for Scanners, one that finally gave me permission NOT to focus on just one thing. And having decided that, I finally claimed a coaching niche and vowed to spend at least awhile teaching other Scanners how to design their lives to encompass all their loves, rather than beating themselves up for not focusing.
The other thing I've heard from my family a lot (and some "friends") is: "You are so smart and so talented, why aren't you more successful?"
Don't you agree that "success" is in the eye of the beholder? My success might not look like other people's, but I have had an extremely fulfilling and rich life. I have learned so many things, had many experiences, been a lot of great places. I feel that my best years are ahead of me and that eventually, the other kind of success will be mine, too. In the meantime, the spiritual journey is much more important--in fact, it always has been!
What degrees do you have? What kind of jobs have you held?
I started college as a math major, then switched to technical writing after 2 years, after seriously considering music. My master’s is in Criminal Justice and I wrote a self-esteem curriculum for teenagers for my thesis. I’ve also graduated from Coach U, Bovine Metropolis’ 1-year program in improvisational comedy, Brad Blanton’s Radical Honesty Trainer Training, T. Harv Eker’s two Train the Trainer courses, and taken art workshops, and every type of personal growth workshops you can think of. I have worked as a secretary, a tech writer, a seminar leader, a life/relationship coach, a probation officer, a freelance business writer, had 3 network marketing businesses, written and self-published several books, developed a bunch of seminars and talks I’ve given approximately once each. I knit, crochet, sew, quilt, bead, paint and play piano (and have taught people how to do most of those). I had a yarn shop in military housing in the 70s. I published a couple of issues of a magazine: wrote most of the articles, sold and designed all the ads, did the layout.
Sound familiar?
Well, that’s you. Who else is a Scanner?
After spending an hour or so reading through How to think like Leonardo da Vinci (Michael J. Gelb), and Googling the word “scanner” searching for ideas for another or a better term, I’ve decided to stick with the original, which Barbara Sher coined in 1994.
I actually did find two other already-existing words:
Polyhistor and polymath, which both mean “a person of great and varied learning.”
Another word is “renaissance man/woman,” defined as “a present-day man who has acquired profound knowledge or proficiency in more than one field.” I think I’ll stick with Scanner!
Here are some famous Scanners:
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Leonardo da Vinci: Artist (Mona Lisa, The Last Supper), architect, sculptor, inventor (flying machine, helicopter, parachute, extendable ladder used by fire departments today, bicycle, locks for a canal system, folding furniture, musical instruments, water-powered alarm clock, automated machines including a loom), military engineer (armored tank, machine gun, submarine), scientist (anatomy, botany, geology and physics)
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Aristotle: Aristotle studied almost every subject possible at the time, and made significant contributions to most of them: physical science (anatomy, astronomy, economics, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics, zoology); philosophy (aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, psychology, rhetoric and theology); education, foreign customs, literature, and poetry. It has been suggested that Aristotle was probably the last person to know everything there was to be known in his own time.
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Albert Camus was a Algerian-French existentialist philosopher, novelist, playwright, essayist, member of the French resistance .... and international (soccer) goalkeeper for Algeria!
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Richard P. Feynman assisted in the development of the atomic bomb, expanded the understanding of quantum electrodynamics, translated Mayan hieroglyphics, and was also a fine painter and musician.
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Douglas Adams was a writer, environmentalist, and visionary. A modern polymath.
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Benjamin Franklin: journalist, politician, revolutionary, scientist, inventor. He invented bifocal lenses, and nearly fried himself investigating lightning.
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Terry Jones is a film director, author, television presenter, literary critic, and historian. Not to mention a member of the Monty Python team.
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Andrei Sakharov was a brilliant nuclear physicist, human rights campaigner, and a fearless advocate for international understanding and world peace.
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Umberto Eco is one of the foremost of modern polymaths. A man of truly awesome intellect, he combines being Professor of Semiotics at Bologne University with writing best selling novels, and is also an expert on literature, medieval philosophy, and pop culture.
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Alexander Porphyrievich Borodin was a 19th century chemist and composer, who wrote three symphonies, conducted scientific research, and campaigned for women to be allowed to study medicine.
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