[KATHRYN]: Imperfect Thriving is a part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a network of podcasts seeking to help you thrive imperfectly. To hear other podcasts like the Bomb Mom podcast, Beta Male Revolution, or Empowered and Unapologetic, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.
Welcome to the Imperfect Thriving podcast for all of us women in midlife to discover yourself limiting beliefs, determine exactly what you want your life to look like and the imperfect actions to get you there.
This is the Imperfect Thriving podcast and I’m your host, Kathryn Ely. I’m so glad you have joined me today. We have a great podcast for you. We have Robert Belle today who’s really going to help us tap into our creativity, but before we jump into today’s episode, if you enjoy this episode, please rate, review and subscribe to the podcast. This podcast is designed for you. Let me hear from you what’s working, what do you want to hear more of, and if you haven’t already done so, head on over to imperfectthriving.com to get your very own Blueprint to Thrive. This is a free email course that I designed to guide you step by step to assess your satisfaction with your current life, determine exactly what you want your life to look like and how to take daily imperfect action to get you there. So, go to imperfectthriving.com and sign up today. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Now, more about Robert Belle. Robert Belle is a transformational speaker, mentor and ACCA qualified accountant. He helps people who feel stuck in their career life journey to break away from the norm and find new paths that reveal their true value. I love that. He is identified by three key pillars, champion for creativity, ambassador for wellness, and pursuer of excellence. Hello Robert Belle. I am so excited to have you on the podcast today.
[ROBERT]: Thank you so much. I’m very excited to be on the podcast.
[KATHRYN]: And y’all, one of my favorite things about podcasting is the interesting people that I get to meet from all over the world and I just wanted to let y’all know that Robert Belle is talking to us from Kenya today and I just think that’s the coolest thing that I’m in Birmingham, Alabama. He’s in Kenya, and we get to share our conversation with you all today. So, Robert, without any further ado, let’s get started.
[ROBERT]: All right.
[KATHRYN]: First I want to ask you to tell us about your story, your journey of how you got to exactly where you are today.
[ROBERT]: All right. Well, my story. I can tell you from, since I was a small boy, I’ve always been a misfit, a misfit in the sense that I just never felt comfortable wherever I was in my group of friends, in my family, I was always like an odd person out. For what reason? I have no idea, but I just never felt comfortable, but I was able to fit into any position. I could fit when you needed me to be. I could fit into the classroom, I could fit into the family gatherings, I could fit in. I would have no problem doing that. But I’d never felt alive. I never had anything growing up where felt this is it, I feel at home here. I was always unsatisfied. And that happened even throughout my career. So, I was always open for new things. I studied accounting as you said to your listeners, but my first job was a sales job right out of school, I went straight and did a sales job. I was willing to try it out.
And the employer was like, “What is an accountant going to do in sales?” Well I said, “Sales is all about connecting with people and I think I can connect with people.” And I did quite well. I did well and I tried different rules. I rarely did any finance rules and I’d throw it. As a matter of fact, in 90% of the career roles that I’ve had were rules that were created just for me. The company would just come and say, “Look, we have this position. We don’t know what to call it. It’s a mixture between this and that. Would you want to give it a try?” I’m like, “Sure.” And I did it and we unlocked a lot of new products, we created new territories. We went into a lot of blue ocean areas.
So that’s my story coming up. And then what made the change for me really to how I got to this point is, in the year 2016, I got tired of just being employed. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had a very nasty boss who made me sick. He literally made me sick. I had to be hospitalized, well, not overnight, but I was really sick. And I decided, “You know what? Enough is enough. I need to find my destiny. I need to find what makes me alive.” And so, I stood up. I stood up one day and I said, “I’m not going to fight to fit in anymore when I’m meant to stand out.” And I decided I’m going to find out where I stand out and I stand out right between licensed professionals and creative worlds. So that’s what I do. I’ve defined that space and I’ve established my presence.
[KATHRYN]: I love that. I love so much that you created your own path. You decided that, exactly. It’s just amazing to me that all of your jobs were pretty much just created for you, and then even from thereafter that you decided, “This life is not working for me. I’m going to do something about it.” So that’s super cool. Now the concept that we are all born creative is so interesting to me. I have clients that come in my office all the time that swear and down that I have no creative bone in my body. But you say we’re all born creative. Now, tell me what is all the fuss about that?
[ROBERT]: Don’t you find it strange that the people who swear that they have no creative bone in the body tend to be the most creative people in the room?
[KATHRYN]: Yes, it is amazing. I think we just have a very small view of what creative is.
[ROBERT]: That’s exactly right. And it’s because maybe we don’t have a certificate or degree or did some kind of course of study in creativity we believe we’re not creative. And I used to think that for a very long time, even when I did roles that were created just for me. People would be like, “You’re so creative, you’re so innovative.” And I was like, “What? No.” And if I use my example, I was comparing what I was doing with what I could do, my potential and I was like, “No, I’m nowhere near creative. I’m just doing what seems obvious.” And it realized and dawned on me that what seems obvious to me is magical to other people. And that’s where creativity started for me.
[KATHRYN]: Yes. Okay. I love that. We always think that things that we do are easy and the things that everyone else does is hard and we don’t appreciate the other people see us the exact same way, right?
[ROBERT]: Definitely. And I was, I made a lot of mistakes, so that’s why I didn’t see myself as creative. When I tried a task the first time, I’d fail at it and people keep telling me, “Wow, you’re so good.” Like public speaking, I would literally shake, you’d have to drag me back to my seat and people like, “Wow, you’re such a good speaker.” And I thought everyone has been, played this really rude joke on me. And you know what? I said, “Enough is enough. I need to find out what is this thing called creativity? Where does it come from? Is it just for the chosen few?” And so, I decided to dig into the science, and what I discovered is that neurologists tell us that creativity or having creative thoughts is a normal function of human brain processing. I just have normal function of the way our brains work in processing information.
[KATHRYN]: Oh wow.
[ROBERT]: I was like —
[KATHRYN]: Tell me more about that.
[ROBERT]: There is absolutely nothing special being creative. We’re actually just designed that way. It’s the way our brains function and perhaps we should unpack what is creativity because a lot of us have a misconception that creativity is the arts, it’s music, it’s painting, when in truth, in fact, creativity is two things by definition. It’s something that’s novel and something that’s useful. So, something that’s original, something that’s useful. But if you go to a deeper dimension of that, creativity is about searching for information and then connecting the dots. It’s about searching and combining and we all have different experiences, likes, tastes, so many different things about our lives or personalities. If we just connect the dots, we’re being creative because we’re coming up with something original. No one else has the experiences we have. No one else has the perception that we have and that’s why we are all creative.
[KATHRYN]: Oh yes, that’s right, and so really even if you and I have experienced some of the same things, there’s always going to be something completely unique about what I’ve experienced and the way I view what I’ve experienced. That’s going to be different as well, right?
[ROBERT]: Totally. It’s definitely going to be different because we have different experiences, different backgrounds, just different ways, different lenses from which we look at life. But this is where the science gets really juicy. Science tells us that, okay, the myth that there’s this right brain, left brain sort of thing. It’s not really backed by science or brain does have two hemispheres, the right hemisphere, and the left hemisphere, and they’re connected through a band called the Corpus callosum. And this Corpus callosum transfers information between both hemispheres and research shows us that when someone is creative, that place, if to put it in simple English, lights up when information is being connected to different places. And science tells us that people who are creative or who practice creativity a lot tend to have more neurons connecting between both hemispheres than anyone else.
[KATHRYN]: Oh, that’s cool. What does that do for us? When we have more neurons connecting?
[ROBERT]: It means we have a bigger bandwidth, the bigger capacity to see things that, see ordinary things in a different manner. You know, a creative person can look at something and see beyond that.
[KATHRYN]: Oh cool. Okay. So, we all have, I think we all have creative components that we think about and we use when we’re young. We pretend, we imagine we dream and it seems like as adults we don’t make time to do these things because we are so busy. And I think a lot of us out there think that dreaming and imagining is just a waste of their time. Is that what happens to our creativity as we grow up and become adults, that we don’t take the time and space for it so we just kind of forget about it?
[ROBERT]: Yes. That’s what happens but also what happens is, what I like to say is that our creativity gets stolen from us.
[KATHRYN]: Okay, tell me about it.
[ROBERT]: And I use the word stolen very intentionally because when someone steals something from you, they take it without your permission. And when we were, when we were children, we had lots of imagination, we would play, as you said, we would dream. But as we become older, it’s not that we necessarily intentionally decide to put it off, but as we go through school, as we go to get into the workforce and into society, society teaches us to put that aside.
[KATHRYN]: Yeah.
[ROBERT]: Society teaches us that imagining is a waste of time. So, we don’t see the value in doing it. NASA, the space agency conducted a longitudinal test and they wanted to find out how can we identify the most creative people. I mean, if you’re planning to send someone to the moon, you need someone who can think outside of the box.
[KATHRYN]: Absolutely.
[ROBERT]: And this is what it really showed us. When they tested five-year-old students, their creative ability was at a whopping 98% and they tested the same children as they went through life when they became 10 years 15 all the way up. Can you imagine when those children turned 25 years of age, their creative abilities went down to 5%?
[KATHRYN]: Wow.
[ROBERT]: The same children.
[KATHRYN]: Yeah. I mean, I can believe. We, our schools, and the way we’re brought up don’t leave room for it.
[ROBERT]: Yeah. And, honestly, what happens in life, you can get by or you used to could get by. We don’t get creative or we don’t dream it because you go to work, you have a set task, there’s no coloring outside of the lines. So, you could get by, you drive the same routes home, you take the same subway home, you eat the same meals, you dine at the same restaurant. So, you could get by without being creative. So, we don’t see the value. Not only do we just lose the importance of imagination and these critical components, but we also just don’t see the value become so boxed in our lives. You know, someone once says that we live in a world of boxes. We work in a box, we drive in a box, we live in a box and then we come home to sit in front of a box.
[KATHRYN]: Yeah. And that is what I help my clients within my counseling and coaching practice every day, especially women that are my age in midlife, who their job is to take care of the home and the family and they may have a job outside of the home too. They don’t find one extra second in the day for themselves, let alone to be creative. And they oftentimes feel dull, lost and unfulfilled. So, I encourage them to think outside of their box and their shoulds and what society has told us the rules of the world are, and this is so applicable to that.
[ROBERT]: And I think dreaming is one of the most important creative components. We’ve lost the ability to dream. We’re not, I was speaking to some young entrepreneurs and I asked the room, the room would had about 100 participants and I asked the room, do you have a dream, a vision in your life that just lights a fire inside of you that whenever you think about it, you get excited, you know you’re ready to go? And out of 100 participants, only two could identify with it. The other 90% looked at me with a blank face like, “What? A dream that excites me? What are you talking about?” We’ve totally lost this ability to dream. And I’m big on dreaming because if you can’t dream, then you don’t have the imagination and then you can’t be creative because creativity, as Einstein says, is imagination having fun?
[KATHRYN]: Oh, exactly. That’s great. So, are there certain limitations that you consistently see over and over again that we put on ourselves that block our creativity?
[ROBERT]: Definitely. For me, the biggest limitation that we put on ourselves is when we adopt a scarcity mindset instead of an abundance mindset. In order to be creative and to live a more fulfilling life, we have to move from the idea that everything that I have is, everything that I can give is what I have right now. You know, people fear being identified as creative because if they give you their best idea right now, they think that’s it. I have nothing else to offer. And that’s one of the big limiting beliefs. So, we fear trying to be creative or to do anything creative because if we do this, that’s it. I only have one idea or I have zero idea. So, if I pursue this, if it works, great, if it doesn’t work, still not so good because I don’t have anything else to offer.
But if people were to take on an abundance mindset that no matter what I give out right now, no matter what I work on, more will keep coming because as we said, you know that Corpus callosum, back to the science with the brain, it keeps growing bigger. It’s like a muscle in the gym and the more weight you lift, the bigger the muscle becomes. The bigger muscle becomes is the more weight you can lift and the cycle goes on and on and on.
[KATHRYN]: Oh, okay. That’s great.
[ROBERT]: Yeah, that’s just one of the main limiting beliefs, but I think another key one that I find over and over when I work with my clients, whenever I speak to someone, the first question I always ask, do you think yourself, do you consider yourself to be creative? And one thing I’ve realized is that we are waiting for permission to be creative. That’s one of the limiting beliefs. We are waiting for some sort of permission and that’s why I say our creativity has been stolen from us. We don’t even realize we are waiting for someone to tell us, “You are creative.” We are waiting for external validation as opposed to an internal confirmation.
[KATHRYN]: Oh, absolutely. You’re so right. So how was it, how is creativity beneficial to us in other areas that we don’t normally associate with being creative like science and finance and things like that?
[ROBERT]: Creativity is relevant in all domains of life. For example, in finance, I’m an accountant and I still identify as an accountant and I’ll always be an accountant. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t have creative ideas because if you go back to the definition of creativity, it’s about searching and combining. Creativity at its core is finding a solution to a problem. I think we have problems in every discipline and domain in life.
[KATHRYN]: You are right.
[ROBERT]: I mean, can you imagine a mother who has a toddler who’s crying all night, who refuses to eat? I don’t think there are enough textbooks and data in this world on how to calm that baby down. Sometimes you have to come up with your own unique way. You can’t run to a textbook, you can’t run to Google how to calm a crying baby. Sometimes you just have to come up with your own idea. So, creativity is, might seem very minute, but it’s very impactful in every aspect of life. I’ll give you an example. There’s a doctor, a pediatrician, and he noticed that when children came to do cat scans, to the CT machine, they were very scared. I mean a CT machine can be very scary for a child. And he sat down one day and decided how can I make this experience a bit more pleasant for children? And he decided to create an experience when the child goes into the CT scan, it’s like a Disney World experience that you can see a Spiderman theme or a Batman theme. Something just like that. So that’s what creativity can be relevant, even in science. It doesn’t mean that he has to go out and become a painter, but he can use his imagination and put himself in the shoes of that child and create an experience that will help the child not to be scared anymore.
[KATHRYN]: That’s fantastic. So, tell me about defining my comfort zone and breaking through it.
[ROBERT]: One thing about the comfort zone, a comfort zone is what I call where you, a place where you have the default settings. Just think of default settings on a phone, on a laptop, or any sort of device. The default settings just basically use what’s needed. Comfort zone is a place where you’re just using the limited aspects of your life. You’re not using your full potential because no growth can happen in the comfort zone. If I use the illustration of the muscle, again, if you don’t give resistance to your muscles, they will never grow. That’s just how it works. A muscle has to be broken down. The new muscle fibers are created and the same thing that happens with our brains. The more we challenge it is the more it grows. Think of this, just, for example, I want to relate the comfort zone to something like a diet. I think everyone has a craving or most people have cravings or whatever it is. One of my big cravings is chocolate.
[KATHRYN]: Yeah, you’re right there.
[ROBERT]: I realized when I did the science of it because I converted this science-based thing in all aspects of my life. I used to weigh 250 pounds and in one year I lost like 50 pounds and [crosstalk] what happened to my body. Yeah, it was just amazing. And I realized that when we have a craving, we don’t really crave the particular food. Science tells us we create a micronutrient in the food. So, when I crave chocolate, my body’s signaling to me that I need more magnesium. Usually, that’s the case. When you crave chocolate, it’s because you’re lacking magnesium. So, if I can find a healthier source of magnesium such as cashews, then I can replace that and get better benefits. So that’s just what the comfort zone is. We get so used to our response mechanism that we do the same thing over and over and over. We never challenge it, but we, you have to be able to break out of that habit and challenge yourself to grow.
[KATHRYN]: Yes, absolutely. So, what is the pathway back to the skills that we have forgotten about to get outside of that sort of default setting? How can we, and then how can we use this path to be more fulfilled?
[ROBERT]: I would use your language. We need to learn how to be imperfectly thriving. You have to take a step even when you are not sure of the outcome. You see why I quote, people ask me, ‘Why do you call yourself a transformational speaker? Aren’t you just a motivational speaker?” I’m like, “No, there’s a difference.” You see at the transformation level revelation must precede transformation. You can’t have a transformation in life until you get a revelation that, “Alright, I do need to change.” And transformation allows me to get to a deeper dimension of someone’s existence. I help people tap into this deeper dimension and that deeper dimension is that you are creative beyond what you can even think about. You can create things, you can come up with ideas, you are valuable, you are unique, you have so much to offer this life but we tend to just keep playing it small.
So, one way that we can get back to that place is by looking inwards, looking, and understanding what are the patterns in my life. That’s what I did when in that year when I stood up and said, “You know what? Enough of this working, I need to figure out what’s working for me.” I did a lot of discovery tests, figured out patterns in my life, I went back and interviewed my former colleagues, my bosses, and asked, “What did you see in me? Did you see something different? How did they use to behave?” I mean, it takes a lot of guts to do that because you’ll get good things and you’ll also get bad things, but you have to learn how to filter through and figure out what is happening around you. And that’s why I identify myself with three pillars. I don’t identify myself with labels such as a speaker or an author. I said that I’m a champion of creativity, an ambassador of wellness, and a pursuer of excellence because I realized that was the recurring theme around my life. No matter where I was, in the office, at home, in my family, plane, wherever I was, that was the recurring theme. So, the best way to get back to that place where we can start living and thriving, thriving instead of living is by looking inwards and figuring out what is unique about me?
[KATHRYN]: Okay. So what I’ve heard is to really tap into our creativity and get our creativity back, we need to stop listening to the rules and being boxed in, allow ourselves to dream, look in words, look at the patterns in our lives, listen to our strengths, pay attention to our uniqueness and what seems to come easier to us that we’ve dismissed as not being special. And then we need to enlarge our comfort zone, step out of that box into the zone of discomfort that’s right around that and once we get into that zone of discomfort and work there, that discomfort goes away and our comfort zone has expanded and we can continue to step out. You reveal and embrace more and more creativity.
[ROBERT]: That’s absolutely right. I could sum it up this way. I have a mantra that I use in my life and I teach my clients. It’s called MAMI, M, A, M, I. It’s an acronym and it stands for minor adjustments that give you major improvements.
[KATHRYN]: Oh, that’s great.
[ROBERT]: This way it’s just to keep making minor adjustments,
[KATHRYN]: Minor adjustments that give, say it one more time.
[ROBERT]: Minor adjustments that give you major improvements. It’s not about trying to change your life today. After this podcast, it’s not about getting very motivated and like, “Yes, I’m going to start doing it,” because it just doesn’t work that way and most of it is not built overnight. You have to give it time to rest, you have to challenge yourself, make fear your friend. Stop trying to avoid fear. Grow your comfort zone. That’s the best way that we can kind of work with it. And I want to add one more thing that we can do to advance creativity. It’s value sleep. Value sleep. You know science tells us that we have various stages of sleep and one is called REM, R, E, M, which is rapid eye movement and that’s when all brain is fully at work at that point. But many of us don’t get to that stage in our sleep cycle because our cycles are so short. And I tell people, I don’t subscribe to the notion of hustling every day and not giving me time to rest, not giving me time to reflect because that’s the only way creativity can be unleashed in your life. You have to take time to observe. Sometimes you need, let me say it this way, you need to get to the point to accept that even in stillness, there’s progress.
[KATHRYN]: Absolutely. 100%. So, one thing that listeners can do is really look at their sleep habits, turning off their phones, their screens ahead of time so that they can really get a good night’s rest.
[ROBERT]: Yeah, I mean, I went to the extent of getting dark curtains to minimize the light in the room. There’s a lot of science around it, but you know, improving your sleep has monumental benefits.
[KATHRYN]: And you know, podcasting is a form of creativity, right? It’s having a conversation, coming up with topics and I find my best ideas come on the weekends when I let go of my work and go for a walk. That is when I start typing notes out on my phone of what I want to do next. That’s when it, when I let go of everything, that’s when I get a flood of ideas. So, I completely 100% agree. Now you have a book out, please tell us all about that book and what you go into in more detail there.
[ROBERT]: All right. Yes, so I do have a book out and I want to say it’s my first book, so I’m very excited about it and it’s titled Blow the Lid Off.
[KATHRYN]: That’s awesome.
[ROBERT]: There’s a conspiracy that’s been happening in our lives or creativity has been stolen and this is an opportunity for people to blow the lid off, to let it out, to know that you are creative. So, it’s called Blow the Lid Off, reclaim your stolen creativity, increase your income, and let your light shine. And this book is written for people just like what you said earlier, who consider themselves not to be creative, who swear that they don’t have a creative bone. And so, in the book, I go into the science that we are all born with the ability to be creative and creativity is not something for us to learn, but rather it’s something we unlearn as we go through life. And I give practical steps on how we can get back to that point where we can embrace our creativity or we can increase our value, where we can value our uniqueness. That’s what my book is.
[KATHRYN]: Oh, that is fantastic. Where can we find your book?
[ROBERT]: My book is sold online with major online retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, IndieBound. I mean the list is endless. People can get the full list by visiting my website, www.robertabelle.com.
[KATHRYN]: And that is Robert A. Belle, and the bell is B. E. L. L. E, correct?
[ROBERT]: That’s right.
[KATHRYN]: Okay, and I will put a link in the show notes, an Amazon link to the show notes where listeners can go directly to your book.
[ROBERT]: Fantastic.
[KATHRYN]: And you know what, Robert, I have enjoyed our conversation so much that I think I could talk to you all day, but I want to wrap up with asking you, what is the one imperfect action you would advise our audience to do today to tap into their creativity and take a step towards their best, most creative, lives?
[ROBERT]: Wow. Only one.?
[KATHRYN]: Yeah, I know.
[ROBERT]: I go back to what I said earlier. It’s just embracing MAMI, making minor adjustments to give you major improvements. And one thing that you can do today is how about you go record a video of you achieving a dream, a goal that you’ve set and speak in the present tense? You know, so, I would say your listeners can just take their mobile phone, as imperfect as it is, don’t worry too much about the lighting, this video is for you and record yourself speaking as if your dream has come true, your wildest idea has come to pass. I mean, there are no rules here. Don’t worry about that. I think if people can do that, it would really break that limiting factor of fear and success. Because I think many times, we might fear failure, but we fear success more than we fear failure half the times. And that’s why someone wants to want to dream and that’s why we struggle to thrive in our lives because we fear what if something actually happens? What if this actually works because the light will shine on me and I don’t want people to take notice of me and I don’t want to be in the spotlight? And that’s why I say don’t let your light shine on you. You let your light shine so that others around you can benefit.
[KATHRYN]: Oh, that’s fantastic. And if y’all have listened to the episode with Karen Brown, remember what she says? If your dream is not laughable, it’s not big enough. So, remember that when you’re getting ready to record your video. So, the one imperfect action that I encourage you to take today is exactly what Robert has said. Get out your phone and record a video of you achieving your highest possible dream as if it’s happening to you right now. And when you do that, pat yourself on the back, celebrate the fact that you took action toward the life that you want and you are tapping into your own unique creativity.
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