Ep. 12 - You’re More Talented Than You Think

Ever had your plan evaporate overnight and wondered what’s left when the title goes quiet? That’s where  found myself after a narrow statewide loss and a forced pause that led me to Italy and a dog-eared copy of Ken Robinson’s The Element. Somewhere between Florence and a hillside in Tuscany, I started rethinking what “smart” means, why creativity isn’t optional, and how to rebuild a life that fits.

We walk through Robinson’s core idea, the sweet spot where natural talent meets personal passion, and why so many of us miss it thanks to narrow definitions of intelligence and a school system designed for the factory floor, not a creative economy. We dig into multiple intelligences beyond IQ, from emotional and interpersonal to kinesthetic and spatial, and talk about how broadening those metrics changes hiring, leadership, and self-belief. Creativity takes center stage as a practical skill for uncertainty, not a luxury, with real examples from my pivot into business projects and producing a documentary that pushed me past my comfort zone.

We also get honest about limiting beliefs, the damage of low expectations, and the power of mentors and tribes who spot your spark and insist you fan it. I share the tools that helped me reinvent at midlife: auditing peak moments, naming skills not titles, aligning passion with marketable capabilities, and building communities that tell a truer story of your potential. If labels like smart and dumb have boxed you in, consider this your permission to redraw the map and find the work that feels like oxygen.

If this conversation helps you see your own path a little clearer, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a quick review telling us where talent and passion intersect for you. Your story might be exactly what someone else needs to hear.

Transcript

After The Election: What Now

Choosing Italy To Reset

The Element’s Core Idea

Many Kinds Of Intelligence

Creativity, Mentors, And Tribes

Breaking Limiting Beliefs

Schools Built For The Factory Age

Reinvention At Any Age

Challenging Dogma And Assumptions

Humility, Labels, And Potential

Closing Reflections And Invite

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome back, everybody, to the Radical Moderate Podcast. I am your host, Pat O'Brien. This week, I am going to talk about a book. The name of the book is The Element by Ken Robinson. And uh first, before I tell you about the book, I'm going to tell you about the story of when I read this book during a really kind of a very important part of my life. And the fact that this book had a made a big impression on me. And something that until I decided uh to do this podcast, I wouldn't say I forgot because it's something that made a big impact and I, in some ways, tried to integrate into my life, but I probably didn't realize the relevance of how it played into what I'm doing right now and really what I've done uh since really in the last 15 years. So let me go, let me go back to the story. It'll make more sense. Um it's late 2010. I had just lost a statewide election for Secretary of State, and uh I was a lame duck in the off in the job that I was in, and I didn't know what I was gonna do next. Um I if I as I look back on it, I had done a couple of things in terms of practicing law, in terms of uh running a family business uh as a McDonald's franchisee with a couple small stints in between. But for roughly 20 years, the goal, the thing that I was trying to accomplish was to make an impact in public policy. And I was doing, and I eventually did that after school board. I did that as the Pulaski County Circuit County Clerk. And then I was this statewide candidate, and it looked like I was gonna win. And I've talked about that in previous episodes. And then I didn't. I lost in election 5149. And what I can say about remembering that time period, you know, 15 years ago, is that I was able to move on pretty quickly from the loss. I I knew how politics worked, the finality of things. I know that you're on a calendar because you're running for elections, re-elections, a new higher office in this case. And it just, there's no sure thing. It's just not how it works. And and so the loss itself, I was really able to move on from pretty quickly. But then just as quick after that, I had to say to myself, what do I want to do next? I mean, that I had few people, not everybody gets to to to chase a dream the way that I did for for almost 20 years, and to come fairly close, or at least to to being in that stratosphere of attaining some of that dream. And I really didn't know what I was gonna do next. And so I had a a little bit of what I call a lame duck period, which was about seven weeks, and then I was just without a job for about two months. And so I didn't, I don't know that I realized at the time, but I was really searching. I was searching for what is that next thing? And keep in mind I was single the time, no children, no, no obligations like that. I could kind of do anything I wanted to do. I had enough money in the bank that I could have taken a significant amount of time off. But, you know, I thought, should I go back and practice law, which I'd done before? I had some attractive offers from friends to get into businesses, both startup and existing, which I eventually did take one of those offers, and it's turned out great. But during this time period, which was about probably about three months, I was trying to figure it out on a personal level. And so one of the things that I decided I wanted to do was take an international trip. I had never been outside the country, never even had been to Iwana or Montreal or anything at that point, and which is odd because I'd had numerous opportunities and I consider myself a very curious person. And I've now since traveled quite a bit internationally and had a blast. But at the time I had not. And so I talked to some people I knew of like what makes a lot of sense. And it was very quickly, it uh I realized that going to Italy made the most sense. And so I did. I planned a trip to Italy uh for about two weeks. Again, no job, no responsibilities. I wasn't even, I didn't really care about email because nobody, I wasn't anybody's boss. I mean, for it had been quite a while since anything like that had happened or had been in that kind of position. So right before I left, right before I left, I was telling uh a family friend, and her name is Pat Bond. So her, I guess her God-given name is probably Patricia, but I've always called her Pat. And Pat Bond uh is an incredibly accomplished woman, uh, an educator. Uh, she was a state representative in Arkansas for several years, uh, ran for state senate, uh, didn't didn't win that one. Uh, but then her son, or she's got three kids, but what her only son and I grew up together, became law partners. So very close uh to the whole family. And somehow we were at a Christmas party or something, and I was kind of telling her where I was at with everything, and and and and she picked up on something, I guess as a mother and an educator would, and she looked at me and she said, Pat, you need to read this book called The Element. And so I bought it and I took it on the trip and I read it, and it made a really significant impact because it it was at a time where both personally I was searching for something, but I was also searching in the broader context to understand even what had happened politically to me and all that. So let me let me talk about the book for a minute. Um, I can just kind of read, read uh a quick summary of it. And this book was uh, I believe published in 2009. And and here's the core idea of it. The element is about discovering the intersection between natural talent and personal passion, the place where you feel most alive, most yourself, and capable of your highest level of creativity and achievement. And that intersection is what Robinson calls the element. And the book argues uh that many people never find their element because they get trapped in the traditional education system, social expectations, family expectations, and limited definitions of intelligence that often suppress their individual potential. So all of that, or at least I'd say some of that, was things I was going through because remember to go back a second, for 20 years I'd had this laser beam focus on public policy and how to be a really good uh you know communicator and and and someone who would listen and get feedback from constituents. And I just put my heart and soul into all that. And then it was that lane was taken away from me, and I'm like, well, what do I do next? And this book really opened up my mind to so many things. And the first thing was that it's okay to do something else, and maybe the thing that I'd already done is gonna help me find that next thing. And it absolutely, it absolutely has. So the structure of the book, there's a lot of stories about people you've heard of, like Paul McCartney and Richard Branson, and then there's lots of uh scientists and artists, and and it would be real easy to simply say, well, those are outliers, you know, like that's that's not there's no real common thread there. But I think um Robinson really just uses those people to, you know, because it's familiar and it goes into a lot of depth on it. And I would absolutely, you know, I'm not getting paid to do so, but I would absolutely recommend that you read the book or at least look at a synopsis because there's some really, I think, interesting ideas. So the first one I want to talk about that the brook, the book brings to light. And remember, by the way, I'm like I read most of the book. I traveled all over Italy for two weeks, Rome, Venice, Florence, but I was in Tuscany when I think I read most of the book. So I'm sipping on wine, eating great Italian food, no responsibilities, and doing some touristy stuff, but also being lazy and really able to concentrate. And so one of the core uh or the fundamental things about this book is that it argues that for the most part, society has a very narrow definition of intelligence. So think IQ test. And you, you know, our whole lives we've heard about people who have an eye high IQ, or in a negative fashion, you've heard of people described a low low IQ. And I've never even taken an IQ test, so I don't know what my IQ is. I'm a I'm just guessing I'm somewhere in the middle. I hope, you know, or at least I used to hope, I've been between the middle and the high end. But this book really opened my eyes to the idea that hey, that is one of maybe a dozen, maybe 20, maybe 30 types of intelligence. And you know, you've heard terms like Street Smart and Book Smart. This book goes so much deeper than that. And uh the author Robinson talks about you know emotional uh intelligence, which I think a lot, I think fast forwarding 15 years from when I read the book for the first time, a lot more people talk about emotional intelligence. I they didn't talk about that, you know, in my to my knowledge in the early 2000s. He talks about creativity in a really deep and meaningful way. And I think that that has a lot to do with uh like Miss Bond, who's kind of like a was a second, is a second mom to me, if you will. Um, but she was a big proponent of infusing art into school, like especially at the early grades. That was one of the big things that she she really championed. And and so that creativity aspect of intelligence and growth of your brain, but analytical intelligence and physical intelligence, like uh just in a way that, you know, your equilibrium with your body, like you've got your various senses, but then you have you have even more senses than that. And some of those rise to a level of intelligence. And I mean, autism, and especially if if somebody's a savant, is clearly a type of intelligence, but that person isn't going to do well at an IQ test. So the when I read this book, it really opened my idea, my brain to say, we don't, we may not even know how many kinds of intelligence are. And so I've through for 15 years now, I've been very quick when people talk about, oh, that person's not that smart, to push back and say, uh about what, though? Like maybe they can do something that you can't do, or maybe they speak two languages and I only speak one, and you just don't realize that in their own language they flourish, et cetera, et cetera. So I've really I've I've learned to push back on the concept of this narrow definition of intelligence. And it's really because of this book. And I appreciate I appreciate uh the element for that. The role of creativity, uh, the author Robinson really goes into a lot of depth on this and talks about creativity might even be more important than literacy. So think about that for a second. You know, being literate and just the ability to read and articulate the words on a piece of paper, clearly important. But the idea of creativity and being able to think about things differently and see things differently, um, it is pretty powerful. And I can say I can, I'm not going to, but I could list a number of people who are dyslexic and incredibly high achievers. And I don't think that's a coincidence. I think some of it has to do with when they were shown or they were kind of typecast when they were young because of their reading challenges, they overcame in a different way and they allowed creativity and thinking about things differently to expand. And they, because that's what they had, because they they didn't have the same literally literacy skills that other people did. And he talks about the importance of tribes, and he kind of means this in terms of communities and and mentoring uh and through these stories of Paul McCartney, Richard Branson, and others, of how they always had a mentor. They had somebody there to encourage him and say, ah, you know, go go chase that and do that thing. And I think unfortunately, I've had the occasion to meet a whole lot of people who in their life have been told that they can't do something. And whether they've been told that they're dumb or whether they've been told that their dream is too much, they've been they've been told that they should limit their expectations. And I'm usually the person in their life when I come into contact with them who says, look, you can do, you can do anything you've set your mind to. So just forget about that noise. Now, clearly you got to do the right things. I mean, you've got to show up on time, you've got to be responsible, you've got to get people to trust you, all of those things. That's a given. But I I just it infuriates me in any setting. But, you know, I remember I was on the school board for four years. It infuriates me when anyone looks at someone else in their authority position and looks at someone else and is like, you can't do that. Those low expectations, just that just burns my ass. And and uh I just I won't tolerate it. You know, I just won't tolerate. I get pretty fired up about those sort of things. So the book talks about how you need a community that's supportive of your growth and creativity. Um, it celebrates the uniqueness of you. Now, keep in mind, I'm a capitalist. So one of the things I like to say is all of us are artists, but not all of us get paid for our work. Creativity, though, is something that is a skill and it's it's brain power and expanding your ability to think about things. It's all very important and should eventually lead to your ability to make money and provide for yourself and your family. So, so the first big takeaway from the book was that most people have a narrow view of intelligence, and there's at least a dozen, but maybe 20, 30. I think one of the places in the book he says there might be a hundred. He doesn't know for sure. Types of intelligence. That kind of blew my mind, to be to be very frank about it. Second, he talks about the role of creativity and how we need to nurture that. And then the third, and I'm kind of drawing this out as a takeaway that I had, he talks about you know, kind of breaking out of limiting beliefs. I kind of boiled that down to insecurity, the fear of failure. Um, just think about it. Like a lot of people are defined by the expectations their family have have for them. And that's it can go either way. I've seen situations where people grew up in a family that didn't have much economically, maybe didn't have many opportunities in life, didn't travel much, that sort of thing. And and so some of the expectation was like, well, everybody in my family is going to be in the same boat. So limiting in that sense. But then I've also seen the reverse where people grew up in tremendous economic circumstances with opportunities in front of them. But then they, and typically it's the child of a successful parent, feel like they didn't do enough. Like they didn't, they disappointed their parents when typically the that's the opposite view of the parent. The parent just wants them to chase their dreams. So expectations are really important. And I think I was very lucky with the type of expectations that were set for me in life, um, which was more just love and support from my parents, and then nurturing my curiosity. God, I used to bug the hell out of my dad with questions, um, and my mom too. Um, but I think my dad enjoyed it a little better. So, insecurity, though, I think is one of the biggest barriers. And I see it all the time in business and in personal relationships that I've seen. Like somebody gets insecure, and instead of thinking about uh the logical way forward and and like, hey, there's success, there's goals that I can reach, instead of thinking about that, they become insecure. And I've seen it be so destructive that I mean, I just could I could talk about it for hours. Um, but that's a third like big takeaway that I took from from the book is that you've got to fight insecurity. And and everybody's has them. I I've had my own insecurities in life. Uh, and that's it's kind of breaking news because most of my friends would tell you that I got a pretty big ego and I'm I'm very confident. And that's true in a lot of regards, although I've been humbled a lot in life. But there have been times that I've been insecure about things, particularly on a personal level, trying to, you know, meet women in my young early 20s and that sort of thing, and all the insecurities that come along with that. But for some people, it's debilitating. And I think that that it has a lot to do with uh the way that we view intelligence and the the lack of encouragement we have for some of these other things that that Ken Robinson talks about in the book. So the fourth thing that I'll bring up is, and I I think he's just 100% right on this, is that he argues that schools are structured for industrial age efficiency and not for unlocking individual talent. And I think he just nailed it there. And I did a whole podcast on what I believe is the lack of education and innovation in public education, probably private education too, for that matter. I just, but I was a product of public education. And so this idea that everything's got to be a standardized test and one size fit-all curriculums and this rigid, even the rigid subject matter and hierarchies, I don't think are great. Now, I've I've always been a person who thought, you know, science and math and we need hard skills. And I still think that, but but I will say that this book would argue that you've the better solution is to let each individual go after what they want to go after. Because if you're curious about something, if you've got a passion for something, you're gonna follow it and you're you're probably gonna be a lot better at it. And then you've got to kind of, I think you've got to keep an eye. This is me talking now, not the book, you've got to keep an eye toward a skill that can pay the bills. Um, because you know, we don't need if if if you can write poetry, that's fantastic. And I think it will help you in life. I I am not. I am not a person who's really ever attempted to write poetry, but I can see the benefits of it, but that's not going to pay the bills. So you got to. Maybe you're a plumber who's also a poet. Like, how beautiful does that sound? And that's that's a radical moderate view right there. Cause it's it's counterintuitive because not many people know anyone who is a plumber who's a poet, but you don't know what's going on after they fix your sink. Like, you don't need you like do you really get in a deep conversation with your plumper, plumber about life? You probably don't. I don't. And so maybe they are, and maybe, maybe that makes them a better plumber because of the creativity they have and the way that they can put words together that makes sense. And maybe what they're doing really is art. I would say so. And it's definitely a hard skill. So those are the types of things that I took away from the book. And I think our industrial age efficiency, I think that is not good in the education system. And we need something different and better. Now, I don't know that I have all those solutions right now. I'm really kind of reflecting on this book I read, uh, and I reread it recently, but uh that this book that I read for the first time 15 years ago, one thing that hit me in a big way um was that age doesn't matter. And so when I read this book, I was, I believe, 41 years old. And as I stated earlier, I was, you know, trying to do the next thing. I'd come out of this mindset of being in politics and public policy, and I was trying to find my next thing, which I did. And the book, I think, really encouraged me to say, look, you can reinvent yourself. You know, I think the core of who I am, and if you talk to my friend, I've got lifelong friends. I mean, it's it's my biggest asset is I've got lifelong friends. But if you were to talk to them, uh, I think they'd say that I'm I'm consistent in like my ethics and integrity and a lot of my mannerisms. But I hope they would say that I'm a person who's willing to take some chances, reinvent myself. I'd say this, what I'm doing with this podcast is an example of that. Discovering new passions. I haven't talked about this yet. I believe, I don't believe in any episodes, but I was a part of a project to make a documentary about the rendezvous restaurant in Memphis. The documentary is called The Vue. Um, I'm one of the executive producers of it. This kind of happened during COVID. And I'm sure I'll do an episode about that experience because it was very cool. That was totally different than what I would have thought I would have done at the age of 25 or 35, or quite frankly, even 45, because this kind of happened between about 2020 and 2023. But it was a tremendous experience, and it was a willingness on my part to put in some time. And I asked a lot of people for money for this project. And it was it was me saying, I need to embrace the creative side of my brain and and who I am in a way that quite frankly was a little bit uncomfortable, but but ended up having some benefits to it. So that in the core, that's his book. And so I think I've done a you know kind of a deep dive here, and clearly you'll understand now that you should read it, uh, the element by by uh Ken Robinson. But to talk about the the broader implications is is I would boil it down to this always challenge the conventional wisdom. No matter what you've been told or sold during your life, verify. Ask yourself, is that still true or is that a myth? Is that dogma or is that absolutely for 5,000 years, whatever, true? Because I think that's just my nature with my curiosity. I'm always and I'm always kind of just put tweaking and pushing a little bit and and asking that next question. I have what's called working assumptions. I mean, I've done something many, many times, and so I enter a new situation with a working assumption saying this is probably what needs to be done. But what I found is, you know, like I've built been a part of building three Sonics is just one example. I thought after the first one, I'd never built any a doghouse before I did that. But after building the first one, being part of that team and working with the general contractor, the architects, and all that, I thought, well, the number two will be so much easier. And in some ways it was, but in some ways it was like a different experience. And then did the third one. I'm like, surely, after two of these, I got, you know, got the cookie cutter, I got the Google Doc, they handle everything. It's gonna be a breeze, but yet there were different, some different challenges and timelines that weren't involved with the first two projects. And it forced me to be able to read um architectural plans. It forced me to be able to have conversations with uh you know, a civil engineer and things, things that I just didn't want to be a part of, but were good experience and stretched my brain quite a bit. And uh I'm the better for it, I hope. And hopefully I did a decent enough job with my participation in all of that. And so I can definitely look back over the last 15 years and say there were some big takeaways from this book, and I hope that others will too. Whether you read it or not, if you're just like the only thing you're gonna know about the book and the idea is this podcast, what I would say is just know that whatever you've been told during your life, and I don't care if you're, you know, like me, you had seven years of higher education, or there's people out there, maybe I got a PhD listening to this. I would just challenge you to say, is there anything about my education or experience that could be wrong? I mean, am I willing to go back and question some of the things that I was taught and have always taken as the absolute truth? I I can tell you when it comes to politics, I have a radically different perspective about politics than I did when I was in the thick of it. When I was in the thick of it, it was all about my team and what I could do with my team to help me get my goals. And I did believe in the policy, and I thought I had some interesting ideas, but at the end of the day, I never really got to a position where I could be a broad policymaker. I think I did some nice things in the offices uh that I held, or specifically one office of being the county clerk. But at the end of the day, I don't think I changed that much. And I'm not even sure that I was focused on the right things. I I believe I there was some good, did some good management and there were some turnaround things that happened under my watch. But really, 15 years in the rear view mirror, I look at some of that stuff and I say a lot of it was pretty damn silly. And I don't know that I would do it again. And I have a lot of respect for people who do run for office and are in the thick of it right now. But if I have people who are running for office or, you know, staffing campaigns and all that, I just say keep a little perspective. And it doesn't, it doesn't have to be just us versus them. And and one of the things, and and I'll kind of bring this episode to a conclusion by saying this one of the lessons about this book is be very careful when you're throwing out adjectives. So words like smart and dumb are not good words. There's no nuance there. Narratives where you're trying to pigeonhole someone, and I don't care if that's a five-year-old in kindergarten who is having a hard time with their ABCs and their colors, or if it's a 23-year-old college graduate who just started, starts in your office environment and and they're struggling, and you're thinking, ah, this generation didn't work hard, and this kid doesn't, he's not quick. Like, you don't know, you don't know their background, you don't know how they got there. And if you're using in private conversations with ownership words like smart and dumb, I think that the person who's being dumb is you by not kind of digging deeper into what's really going on here and what's this person's potential. Or certainly people who are, you know, like me, 56 years old. I'm still trying to learn, man. Like there's so much that I don't know. Uh, there's so many things that I want to do. By the way, I I don't know count exactly, but I've been to like nine or ten foreign countries, uh, Cuba, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, finally. Um, and I just want more when I get back, I'm like, that was awesome. Where am I going next? And I hope I'm humble about it, and I hope you will be too, because when you start thinking about it, you know, you've heard the phrase the smartest person in the room. I don't think there is a smartest person in the room. If there's 10 people in the room, there might be 10 people who all have something to contribute, who have what we generally call intelligence, that they might be really intelligent in a very specific thing that could help you solve your problem for your business, they could help you solve a challenge in your personal life. Like hopefully you surround yourself with uh with good people, good friends, people who will challenge you. I know that I try to do that, and I think I've I've succeeded pretty well. And this book challenged me, it challenged my thinking and made a big impact on me in a way that I've I've read you know a couple hundred books, don't know how many. This one was a little different. And so I appreciate you uh allowing me to kind of do a book review. I'm clearly a big fan. I mean, I'd love to have Ken Robinson or someone, you know, who who thinks like he does, and there are there are some other authors who think similarly to him. I'd love to have them on the podcast someday. So if anybody knows them or has a connection, reach out to me. But for uh with that, I'll end this episode. Uh thank you for listening as always. And uh that is for this week, that is the POV of P.O.B.