Link to podcast on Youtube Channel.
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Alicia Parr: Hello, this is Alicia with Performentor, and we’re doing another heuristic podcast. Today, I’m speaking with Billy Redhorse, he’s a thought leader and guide, and he is known online as a gentleman mystic. Now I have been following the gentleman mystic for years now on Twitter, and sometimes we engage in conversations and there’s so much wisdom. I really appreciate his time here speaking with me live. So I’m very excited that I get a chance to actually communicate verbally. But, before we dive into the heuristic, Billy, anything you’d like to add?
Billy Redhorse: Well, anybody that follows me online, they know the deal. I’m all about joy and beauty and magic and what I call medicine, which is another way of discussing or thinking about the life force energy that is our world, and I think that’s enough. I’d much rather talk to you than talk about me. So please have at it.
Alicia Parr: We’ll see; I love the way that you described that talking about the life force energy. That is us right. Um, well, anyway, so the heuristic that we pointed at, I can cover a lot of them, but the one that we are going to talk about in particular is what’s old is new again, again, and just a little.
Billy Redhorse: I love the fact that you invite the guy that just turned 60 on your show to talk about old. So, okay. I’m up for the task.
Alicia Parr: Well, you also this hashtag the gray wave. Yeah. So you want to share what that is?
Billy Redhorse: Certainly, gray wave kind of came about was one of those little magical things that happen just on its own. Probably about certainly two, maybe even three years ago now where there’s several of us old codgers in my little corner of Twitter, chief Chuck Whitworth, Johnny Noble, Noble Brown he’s on the gray wave junior varsity, Dennis Hines, and several other guys that were just over 50-ish and had a little life experience. And one day I was just, I think it was on a weekend. I was just kind of out of character, being a little silly, and instead of being gentlemanly and I made a reference to the gray wave, and then it just kind of stuck. It’s kind of like the, for those that are familiar with professional wrestling from the 80’s and early 90’s, here in the south, there was a stable that Rick Flair and Arn Anderson was a part of called the four horseman.
And I said, well, this is kind of the full horseman for the geriatric set, and it’s just kind of stuck, and we give people our opinions, whether they ask for it or not. We speak from many decades of experience. I’m not one of those guys that tries to tell people what to do because I’ve not been very good at that, but I am very, very good at telling people what not to do because I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. And it very much ties in with I think your heuristic of what’s old is new again. So, as I said, I just recently turned 60 and it’s one of two birthdays in my adult life where it was noteworthy and specifically that turning 60. I feel like this is a new birth and so what’s old is new again.
Alicia Parr: Yeah, exactly. See, I mean, so, and that’s why I added the extra again at the end because it’s cyclical. And so as you probably know, I work in the world with entrepreneurs, small business owners. I run an HR firm so just very much into people business and there’s always so much to this flavor of the month stuff that comes and goes, and I’m old enough to be on that gray wave so.
Billy Redhorse: Well, I’ll be kind, and I’ll be gentle, which is what I’m known for, and I’ll say that you’re in the junior varsity you’re you haven’t made the varsity yet.
Alicia Parr: But I’ve been around long enough to see things cycle through and I just started to get the sense that some of these new-fangled ideas, we’re going to retro back to some principles based, just stuff that’s been true forever that, I think that some things get maybe a little bit forgotten and sort of that chasing after that cool new thing. And when it comes to organizations and people working together, what’s always been true, a lot of that’s still going to be true now and in the future. So that’s kind of where that came from and the extra again is me being, I like to have a little sense of humor. Well, I’m really excited about talking to you and Chief Chuck, who I will also talk sometime. I’m grateful for him to do that as well with me, is that talking about this idea that what are these old ideas that are going to feel new again? And I don’t always know that I’m able to really talk like explain this to people quite yet but I sense it’s true. Does that make sense?
Billy Redhorse: Absolutely. The important thing is we live in a world where experience is dismissed, where the, I don’t have wrinkles. I have what I lovingly and laughingly call experience divots.
Alicia Parr: Divots.
Billy Redhorse: If it’s shiny and new, it must be good, it must be better. And when I was a young man, I absolutely agreed with that and fortunately mother life has given me the opportunity to make lots of mistakes and I have not had severe repercussions. I’ve had the opportunity to write wrongs and such, but I have more than anything been able to see that okay the old saw of the elders around me get the smarter they seem to get realizing that it also has something to do with the fact that I’m getting older and see that what they’re talking about.
Especially in our modern technologically driven society, whether it’s about these phones that we carry everywhere, the computers that we talk on. I don’t discount the value and the magic that all of these things bring. But I recognize that good is often good enough, and whether it’s with people relations, which, basically everything in this world comes down to our relationship with life and our environments and the people around us, whether they’re coworkers, family whatever, there are fundamentals that never change. And so, when something says you with your heuristic being, what’s old is new again, again, I think what’s old should be new again, simply for the fact that if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. There’s nothing wrong with trying to refine something.
I mean, the whole nut of what my work is as the gentleman mystic is refinement; making things better than they were before, but the wholesale discarding of what came before just because nah that doesn’t work, perfect example, and then I’ll shut up and let you let you ask a question or point me in direction with the wheel, you know, the old saying of you don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
Alicia Parr: Yeah.
Billy Redhorse: But we live in a society where people just, ” I think I can come up with a better wheel.” So instead of the circle, I’m going to make a wheel that’s square, and granted in certain situations, if you’re going slow and you need to be able to dig into the earth, having a square, a 90-degree angle that can dig into soft earth that might actually work better than a round wheel but if the idea is to stick with the old fashioned round wheel. Okay, a new tire with a new compound. Yeah, I can see that, but it’s refining that which you absolutely work.
The dynamics in human relations of respect, kindness, and giving people an opportunity, never goes out of style, at least not with people that are smart.
Alicia Parr: Yeah.
Billy Redhorse: So, that’s my view on the whole thing. So I guess we’re done now. So I’ll talk to you later.
Alicia Parr: I’ve got to say, but what you said actually reminds me of, you heard of Nassim Taleb who wrote The Black Swan, and Anti-fragile. He talks about this principle called Lindy, which I think it’s named after a restaurant perhaps, and the principal or his heuristic is that the longer something has been around, the more likely it is to still be around in the future and the idea.
Billy Redhorse: That works well for me then, they are both well for me then.
Alicia Parr: Yeah, well, I mean, like most heuristic, like it’s mostly true, right with a few clear exceptions. But the point being is that if the design of it or the way it works has worked through the course of time. A long time through changes through different people, through different cultures. That wheel that’s round still works, no matter who’s pushing it, no matter what the ground’s like then it’s a good design so the amount of time that something’s been around, and that has enabled survival and continuity, the more likely it is to work under many different conditions, therefore it’s more likely to work, work under future conditions. So, that to me was a big aha. Anyway, so I don’t know if you had come across that before.
Billy Redhorse: Yes. It goes back to what I mentioned earlier, fundamentals and essentials. Those things, yeah, it might be great for someone, let’s do something different, let’s do something new and fresh and fabulous and build a 1,250-foot skyscraper out of timber and bamboo.
Alicia Parr: Well.
Billy Redhorse: I suppose that there’re types of timber and certainly bamboo that if brought together in a certain way, might be able to work for a taller building. Probably not. There are tried and true things. There’s you have to have the foundation, you have to have the superstructure and all of the accouterment that goes with it. Certainly, you might be able to have a new alloy that’s lighter or is able to move in the wind a little bit or with the earth-shaking.
If mother earth is having a little tummy ache, but it has to be going out there and just doing something whole-cloth new that has no regard for what has come before is foolish, and I have no hesitation in pointing that out.
For anyone that, that would point to me and say, “Oh, I’m old fashioned. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I have no clue. There’s these better things.” I’m not against innovation. I’m not against, as I’ve used the term earlier refinement. The whole point is to make things better than they were before but just because something is new or different, doesn’t automatically make it better.
Alicia Parr: Yeah.
Billy Redhorse: So that’s kind of where I sit on that.
Alicia Parr: It’s like Chesterton’s fence, yeah, so like the fence, if there’s a fence there and you look at it, and you’re like, why is there a fence there? Like, you know, I see no reason for this fence to be here. So let’s remove the fence rather than asking, “Well, why did this principle, why did this process, why did this method of doing things come into being in the first place? Just because something’s old doesn’t mean that it’s out of date and no longer viable. And in fact, like we talked about very, many, many cases if it’s been around for a very long time, that makes it more likely that it is viable, which maybe the young mind doesn’t want to believe.
Billy Redhorse: I cannot hold anyone guilty or blame them for in their youth wanting something new, I was the exact same way. And the people before me were the same way and people 120 generations before me were the exact same way. That itself is nothing new. So the real mark of genius to me is that willingness to, okay, let’s hold on to what we know works, but let’s see what we can do that’s that makes it better. It’s a whole lot easier to create something I think certainly with me in my youth. It’s a whole lot easier to create something new and whole cloth than it is to take something that you know has been around and been proven and to try to make it better.
So it’s actually kind of a cheat to just start from new it’s easier., and that’s where part of the issue is. Well, do you want to do the work or do you want to make something that’s that stands the test of time.
Every once in a while we stumble on something, we by design create something, we come together like we’re doing now and have meeting of the minds and hey, this case, she said something that made me think about this, come, I’ll take that and then six months down the road, there’s this new wonderful thing that I’ve thought about, or people that are listening to this chat between us are thinking about, and then they’re the ones that like I don’t have a clue what this old guy’s talking about.
It makes no sense. I’m just going to go over here and do something else and fine. That’s not an insult to me. It’s not an insult that people do it. We all have to find our own way and if we could have a society that’s based entirely on innovation and what’s new, as long as it’s new for better and not just new for news sake, I’m all for it. Certainly with what’s been going on in our society in the last 20 months, right now I’m ready for something new because this old nonsense is not working.
Alicia Parr: Mm-hmm, I’m curious to go back to kind of what you said earlier in the work that you do, some of the foundational components are like I think I heard you say. One thing is that everyone’s got to find their own path. I think that that’s nice and broadly true. Talking about kindness, you talk about refinement. What else do you see as sort of a theme that comes up over and over, not just because it’s your thing, but because it works?
Billy Redhorse: The respectful interaction between humans whether it’s family, as I mentioned earlier or it’s a job situation, someone in HR, someone trying to build a new company, someone trying to staff a new company. There are just some fundamentals that it’s dangerous to overlook them. And that is interacting with people from a position of kindness, that doesn’t mean being nice. If you look at the etymology of the word nice, it actually wasn’t a very nice word when it came about. it was actually something in an insult to call someone nice, but to be kind, to be considerate, to be open-minded about things to, to hear people out, the willingness to just sit and listen to someone else, what they have to say without sitting there and in your mind immediately trying to compose a response, or you getting ready to say what’s next.
One of the things that has come easier to me over the years is willing to be silent, to sit in the silence. Someone says something and I don’t immediately have to say something. Let the silence blossom. Let’s let it bloom on its own, and in that silence, we can think about things, we can process things. Especially in older cultures, older societies, and such, it’s very common for people to get together, have a cup of coffee, sit after they’ve gotten past their small talk about the weather and their bones hurting and such, they just sit, they just sit, audio podcasts are not very conducive to that.
Video is a little easier, but we live in a society now in part where people are just not willing to move at the speed of trees. They much prefer to move at it to speed of airplanes, and that’s part of the problem in my view. I don’t for a minute expect everybody to have the same perspective that I have. I don’t tell people what works. I tell people what has worked for me, and that whole thing when, when it came to me years ago about moving at the speed of trees. Yeah, okay. That’s magic.
Alicia Parr: I like that.
Billy Redhorse: Medicine.
Alicia Parr: That’s a cool thing, yeah. It’s funny. I mean there’s so much in our environment that tells us that more and more, more, faster, faster, and there’s definitely and sort of the way I’m wired as a person, and one of those people that’s, maybe I relax a little as I get older, although my husband would probably disagree but it’s interesting. I think that that is something old that can be new and that’s just being, being there, being with each other, and not rushing to judgment, not rushing to decision, not rushing to action, just being, and seeing what comes of it.
Billy Redhorse: I have never met a person in my life that I would consider powerful that rushes ever, ever. If you are balanced, if you operate from your own power, that’s not to say that you can’t move quickly, but I’ve have thought about this many times, which is why I can be so definitive about it right now. I’ve never encountered a person of power that had something that I would look up to and, and recognizes whoa, and maybe they have wealth, dollars, maybe they don’t, but they, they all operate from this thing that you will not rush me. You will not push me. I will not rush or push you unnecessarily, but to just be able to let things move at an organic pace and to let things unfold.
And then once the unfolding starts, then you can nudge a little bit. The worst mistake that the, pardon the pun budding gardener might make is they put the seeds in the ground. The soil is very nutritious and has lots of good fertilizer in it to, you put the seeds in, nice distance is parting it, sun water. After a short time, you start getting sprouts. The worst thing that a budding gardener can do is to say, I want to help this little plant grow and reach down and go to pull it out of the ground to make it grow faster and what happens just that it comes out of the ground and it’s over. So there are things that can be done to motivate and make things happen, but some things just have to play out on their own.
And that is something that I really wish, I did a tweet thread, I don’t know, probably three years ago, something to the effect of, “Okay. young men. It was directed specifically at young man, that okay, you’re driven, you’re energetic, and you have a goal, great. You are already ahead of most of your peers, but what would happen if you take all of those energies of a young man and temper them with the mindset, the patients, the perspective of someone old enough to be your father or someone old enough to be your grandfather even. You take and do that while all your buds are still doing what they’re doing. If you were to take your energy and moderate it and observe it from the point of an older, wiser person, he would be a god.
And I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. Several young men have reach and young women actually over the years have reached out to me when they’ve discovered that thread and talked about how it has impacted them. So I know it worked for me. Again, I don’t, I don’t tell people what to do. I tell people what works for me, but some things that work for me are good, good for other people too. And that’s another fundamental, that’s another basic if it works for one person, it’s probably going to work for most, maybe not everybody, but most.
Alicia Parr: Yeah, maybe not exactly the same way, maybe only when they’re ready.
Billy Redhorse: Indeed.
Alicia Parr: That’s one of the things that it took me probably far too long in life to realize or recognize is trying to push other people’s awareness or knowledge about something that I felt was important for them to know along my timeline and that was very stressful.
Billy Redhorse: I wonder why? I wonder why?
Alicia Parr: I can just let them be where they are and if what they’re doing or not doing is impacting something that’s having to do with me. Well, I can manage my environment so that impact is reduced or maybe I can find actual personal, or familial advantage in some manner from something that I thought was a problem.
And I’ve come to realize that the universe, I’ll give you a little story but there’s so many through my life where, when something doesn’t go the way that I thought I wanted to go, I say, Okay, universe is saying or you with, God is saying, it doesn’t matter so I just used universe because usually it’s the most generally accessible term to use “Universe is saying, not this not right now, hold tight, hold that intention in your mind, Alicia and the right thing at the right time will come along, just stay aware.”
The most recent example that I had was in my business, I’m scaling to a point where I need more help on the running of the business and not just more consultants and I thought I had someone that was going to be great to help me with this part of the business and I tried to convince her to stay and I did everything I could but she’s like, “No, no, I really appreciate everything you’re trying to do here but really I feel like for me, I need to do this other thing” and I’m like, “Okay.” And I said, universe has got something else in mind for me. We’ll see how long it takes. I’ll busy myself thinking about other things or worry about other things.
It was probably just about a month later I’ve been having conversations with somebody else and it seems like it’s kismet, it’s serendipity, and I’ve almost wanted like knock on wood somewhere, too good to be true. But no, I mean, I think that letting the universe tell its tale on the timeline that it needs to tell its tale, not on the timeline that I decided is an old truth. I think that even in a busy, busy business, I think that’s a truth that can be put into action.
Billy Redhorse: Well, it’s another analogy for exactly what I was talking about with the seed. You do what you can do and then you just have to sit back and let the seed do its own thing. The funny thing about a seed, when you’re getting ready to plant it, it doesn’t have a little arrow that says this side up. You put it in the ground and hopefully when you do it you put it in with love and, and intention and hope for something greater yet to be and then you do all the stuff I talked about. You cover it up, you fertilize it, you weed it, you water it, you let the sun get to it, but then you got to just let the hell go.
And that seed knows what to do. It knows which way is up. It doesn’t need an arrow. It’s not stupid like we are. It grows, it grows up and it grows towards the sun. The problem though, is when some people do all of those things, right but then they bitch because what grew was a tomato when they expected corn, but they planted a tomato seed.
Alicia Parr: Yeah.
Billy Redhorse: There has to be consistency. There has to be coherence.
Alicia Parr: Yeah.
Billy Redhorse: You can bitch at mother life all you want to about, well, yeah, this is a great tomato but I wanted corn or vice versa. Well, there are certain rules that I don’t care how old you are. I don’t care how obstinate you are, there’re certain rules that can’t be broken.
And that’s just one of those things and I’m not one of those men that is real big on suffering as a matter of fact, I think it’s overrated. I think we’re here not to suffer. We’re here to enjoy life and to express beauty in every way we can and to experience it so grouching and gripping have never served me at all. It might not make me feel better, but it didn’t help anything and fortunately, I learned long, long ago that’s just wasted energy, use it in some other way, or just keep my mouth shut. That’s an old.
Alicia Parr: I was going to say you’re the second person in the last few weeks that I’ve heard make the point about suffering being overrated. So I just wanted to.
Billy Redhorse: I have a background in Zen Buddhism and I was ordained as a Zen Buddhist teacher almost 30 years ago and one of the first noble truth that the Buddha is attributed with saying is that, and I don’t agree with this translation. I have a whole video series about this, that I’ve talked about in the past, but the first noble truth of Buddhism is that all “Life is suffering.” No, no, I personally say that’s, a misinterpretation of what the Buddha’s intention was. More accurately, I think it was that suffering exists. There’s no denying a suffering exists, but it’s a self-inflicted condition. It’s not something that, with rare, rare exceptions and I’ve even met people that have been afflicted physically that have had cancers or broken bones or broken hearts.
And they have, I mean, they’re not happy, bubbly, bubbly, but they’re not suffering because they just acknowledge that this is the way are, and how I go forward with these things is up to me. It is within some people’s makeup that they want others to recognize how much they suffer and they get the condolences for being such a long suffering person. I don’t, I’ve been around too many people in my life that chose that path and none of them ended up happy. So suffering, if you want to suffer, that’s fine but the magic of it is I would say this, “Try it my way for six months, if it doesn’t work, you can always go back to being a miserable bastard, it’s up to you.”
Alicia Parr: Easy peasy.
Billy Redhorse: Absolutely.
Alicia Parr: That is a great point. I like that just sort of, and maybe that is a very Zen thing, kind of going with the flow of things. I think consulting can be one of the most developmental, and maybe even it can be a spiritual practice in some ways. I haven’t really stated it quite this way so I’m just going to run with it.
Billy Redhorse: Well, don’t give away all your secrets now. Don’t give away all of your secrets.
Alicia Parr: I tell my secrets all the time. That’s the thing, maybe not everyone could put them in the practice. It’d be great if they could.
But I think it is because to really be a great consultant, it’s not about the consultant at all , the less it can be about you. The things that I see go wrong with my team, if I hear something’s not going right from the client it’s usually because there’re little voice inside the head of the consultant that I have to behave in these ways or prove my worth because I’m not getting that from myself right?
And the more that you can come to terms with who you are and be good with who you are and just try and show up and just be, and, and be there in service for the other and not worry about what other’s thinking and engage in the process. That’s great consulting. And it’s very hard to do that. If you’ve got a tremendous amount of head trash and noise going on that distracts you from being there with the client.
And sometimes the client’s got their own noise, but you got to let them be there but if both parties are having a lot of noise that’s impacting how they’re interacting, how they’re perceiving each other, I think that’s when things just sort of run into conflicts. So I mean, I love this. I love entrepreneurship and consulting are both things where the world tells you whether or not you’re perceiving it correctly.
Billy Redhorse: Well, we live in a world today that even if you’re perceiving it wrong in a world populated by almost 8 billion people, there’s somebody out there that’ll benefit from what you have to say, even if you’re a colossal failure.
So, for people that are concerned, it happens everywhere in every field, in every discipline, the old thing of imposter syndrome. Well, I have these great ideas and you think about it on strictly on the surfaces. “Okay, so you’re a consultant, huh? You’re going to tell me how to better do X.” “Well, that’s what you’re hiring me for, yes, sir.” “Okay, give me better.”
Well, you can come up with a bunch of shiny stuff and that might make the average person’s like, “Oh yeah, this is great. I love it.” but if you come up with the basics of “Are you getting enough information? Are you getting enough rest? Are you doing X? Are you….,” “Well, I’m paying you how much to tell me to do the common sense.” “Yeah. You’re obviously not doing it.” So, again, it goes back to my old thing. If you try it my way for six months, if it doesn’t work, you can always go back.
I find that I have the greatest confidence in the things that are the time tested and proven and okay maybe it’s not as entertaining to go to a basketball game and see a guy that can just hit shot after shot, after shot, after shot. There’s nothing flashy about what he is doing. We’d much rather see a guy that could shoot behind, over his shoulder, dribble behind his back, do fancy alley-oop passes, you know? Yeah. That may be more entertaining but if the goal is to get that ball in a hoop to score a point to get your team ahead, you do what works. It doesn’t have to be flashy. It doesn’t have to be fancy.
Every once in a while, life might give you a gift. Did you do something that from the outside looks flashy and fancy, then you can just say, oh, it’s nothing. I couldn’t help it. It’s just natural.
Alicia Parr: Being able to do that kind of stuff comes from hours and hours and hours and hours of practice and messing up and….
Billy Redhorse: Exactly.
Alicia Parr: Makes it look easy. So as a previous athlete, now the ball sport, I do not have that kind of coordination and I know the kind of work that they take so in order to do something difficult and make it looks easy.
One thing that was sort of bobbling inside my head, maybe we’ll see where this takes or we heading towards wrap up just in case my internet takes another hiatus, trying to get ahead of it.
One of the oldest thing in the world is meditation whether you are good at that or not. I think it’s what we’ve been talking about just sort of being in whatever form it might take and more and more, I mean I have clients that are present and they got like a meditation app that they use on their phone. I’m like” Well, if it works.
Billy Redhorse: Yes, I have no issue with apps at all, but I have to wonder with all of the years, decades of experience I have, if people are meditating or if they’re just being distracted by something else, uh, I will say this, meditation for the average person is not what they have been told that it is just like with magic. Magic is not what Hollywood tells us it is. Meditation is not having a quiet mind. Meditation is just peace. It’s focusing on one thing usually, I never try when I sit to get to a place where my mind is still. If I can just think in my own self, focus on my breathing and just think about grass that’s blowing in the wind or water that maybe has a little ripple on the top, and I can do that for 10, 15 minutes, that has much more impact, much more effect.
You can hook up electrodes to someone that’s meditated for a long time, and you can see changes in brainwaves and patterns. I don’t worry about that. I just sit on my cushion. I look at my altar, I look at the smoke from the incense. I smile, I’m happy and maybe I’ll have a good sitting period, maybe I’ll have times where I’m fighting with myself and remembering things that I should have done, something that the Lady Mystic asked me to do, or I forgot I was supposed to have a podcast with a delightful young lady, or that’s all wonderful things. It’s just life, and the more you live and the more you operate you in general, you specifically, you anybody, the more fundamental, the elemental, I cannot stress it too much.
If you just do one or two simple things over and over and over again in a disciplined fashion, you’re light years ahead of the average person, and that’s…the average person doesn’t want to hear that. Okay, you just go chasing after your shiny things and I’ll sit. And like I said, I’ll think about grass and the breeze or I’ll write something that makes me smile, or I’ll interact with someone and make them chuckle, make them laugh, hopefully.
My job is very simply to hold up a mirror to people. It’s nothing more than that. When I fill out job applications, what are you good at holding up mirrors, holding up mirrors. Basics, fundamentals, elemental, and I let people do with that, what they will. So you can do with that, what you will.
Alicia Parr: I don’t know. Am I holding up a mirror? Am I doing it?
Billy Redhorse: Yeah, hopefully.
Alicia Parr: Yeah I mean.
Billy Redhorse: Hopefully, nobody, I don’t care how good you are as a teacher or as a consultant, you can never teach or consult to someone the taste of an orange. They have to experience it themselves, and you and I can say, if we were out of this virtual meeting and sitting in the same room, breathing the same air, I could put an orange on the table between us and I could cut in half. I could give you half and I could have half.
That experience of that orange still is going to be unique between the two of us. What happens if the orange, I give you half and it’s magnificent and being the kind gentleman that I am, I recognize that half that orange is spoiled so I keep it for myself so it’s going to be a very different experience for me than it’s going to be for you.
So even if it’s a perfect orange, your experience of that orange is never identical to my own. Even if I bite one half of one piece of the orange and you have the other half. It’s different. So the acceptance that people don’t think the way we do. One of the greatest insights I had in my life is when years and years ago, I recognized that no one on this earth thinks the way I do, which it doesn’t mean that they don’t have the same values that I do, that they don’t have similar perspectives.
It’s just flat out the way we are wired as human beings. We don’t experience and process information the same way so probably the worst mistake that a consultant can make, regardless of what their discipline is, is to expect the person that they’re consulting to grok entirely what is being said? That’s where the dance comes. That’s where the magic comes is being able to speak to people in the language that they’re going to understand and be able to process.
Alicia Parr: Yeah, yeah, you know. I rarely expect people to understand what I’m saying the first time I try.
Billy Redhorse: Well, I’ve said it for years, that if someone could crawl inside my head and think the way, you took what is completely normal and natural for the way I process information, it might scare someone else to death and probably, it would be reciprocal. I’ve often wondered if I look at my wall here in my office and I have two accent walls that are painted red. I wonder if what I view as red is what you would see as purple, or what you would see as green. There’s no way of actually knowing unless we get to a point where you’re able to put electrodes in and see. So, that’s just a very simple and silly example.
What about the rest of life? What is it that makes a food delightful to us or repulsive? What is it that makes a way of solving a problem compelling versus that’s just a waste of time? I’m not going to do that. Yeah, I shouldn’t do that.
I mean, that’s part of the magic and delight and joy of being here on this Mother Earth is seeing and experiencing new things in new ways. So you experiencing new things through old eyes? There’s another heuristic variant of what’s old is new again, again.
Alicia Parr: Yeah. I mean, I guess, raising children actually, yes, that’s one of the gifts and I imagine, eventually or realize this as a grandparent as well, you start to see the world through your children’s eyes. Again, or when I first met my husband, and I saw my family through his eyes but he looked at me like, “Ah, no, I just add a little more.”
Billy Redhorse: Yes, yes, you might want to stop there, it could go down roads you don’t want to go.
Alicia Parr: I was like but it was very striking because families are different and I kind of looked at some of the things that were just normal for me, this is just the way things are, is not just the way things are for everyone. It’s just the way things are for me.
I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about families, you have some of these things that aren’t exactly shared experiences or maybe a little bit closer to shared experiences and thank goodness for that. Thank goodness for that but, yeah, so yeah, and so I guess, to maybe wrap up, I mean, one of the things you said earlier is I can’t remember your exact words, but it reminded me of I would say the mission out of my business, but probably more like my purpose, is about unleashing human energy and for small organizations. Because that’s just the schtick that I’m in.
The more that people can get into a situation where their natural interests and desires and capabilities are synced up with the work that they do, and they have nice clarity and have people to work with and can create these new ideas and things that come out of these foundational principles but they look just a little different because they’re a combined effect. It’s the magic that you talk about.
To me, the more that can work, the healthier an organization is, and I don’t want to say the happier people are, the more feeling of purpose that people have, and so that’s definitely something that when I see that happen, when I see evidence of that sort of thing happening, that’s the best thing in the world to me.
Billy Redhorse: Well, while suffering is overrated, satisfaction is underrated in my view, and far too many people are not satisfied and that’s very different from being dissatisfied. We could go for another two hours on that so I won’t go beyond that except to say that our purpose in life is to live is to experience what life is, and the meaning in life is the meaning that we choose to give it. And people would just that you don’t get more fundamental, you don’t get more old school, you don’t get more old in a heuristic sense than those two ideas to me.
If people would just operate with that awareness, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to think that certainly 80%, if not more of the problems we experience in interpersonal dynamics here in a moment, if we all operate it reckon from the recognition that life is for living, and the meaning of our life has the meaning we choose to give it.
Alicia Parr: That’s a great one. But yes.
Billy Redhorse: Yep.
Alicia Parr: Thank you Gentleman Mystic.
Billy Redhorse: Thank you, madam.