Get A Leg Up: How Mentorship Can Change Your Life

Mentorship is an important ingredient for growth—both in the saddle and in life. In this episode, we dive into the art of mentorship from both sides of the fence. What makes a great mentor? How do you find one? And just as importantly, how do you become one? Whether you're looking for guidance in your horsemanship, career, or personal development, we’ll explore the responsibilities, mindset, and mutual benefits of these vital relationships. 

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey there, and welcome to the Philosophical Cowgirl. I'm your host, Sarah Geis, a former philosophy professor and current full time horse person. This show is where the horse world meets the deep questions of life. In each episode, I'll share insights from my own learning process, and sometimes discuss fascinating ideas with some of the brightest minds out there.

I'm a relentless learner. So in this podcast, you get to ride along with me on that lifelong journey. Whether you're a philosopher at heart. A horse person looking for something new to listen to? Or you're just curious about how these two worlds intersect? This is the show for you.

I wanted today to talk about mentoring because I think that this is something that is extremely important. Most people acknowledge that it's important, but they haven't put a [00:01:00] whole lot of thought into it and aren't being necessarily real intentional about either being mentored or being a mentor.

One of the two or both. Both is, I think, the ideal. Um, I think that especially as you get older. It's important to have mentors but also become a mentor to other people in some ways. And the vast majority of the time this is informal. This is not anything where it's, you know, you sign up to become a mentor or volunteer through some organization.

It's more like just becoming an example for someone else. And that can be a specific someone, or that can be the younger generation in general, trying to, to live your life in such a way as to be an example for other people. Um, it can be for your kids, it can be for just younger friends, it can be for whoever.

But, I think that using your life as [00:02:00] an example for other people to follow, uh, in a positive way, is a very, very good way to add purpose to your life. 

There's a saying that goes something like this. You become the average of the five people that you hang around most. And I think there is some truth to that. I think it can also become overly simplistic. And it can cause people to try to cut people out of their lives that maybe they potentially shouldn't.

Or maybe it's not possible to cut certain people out of your life. I do think that there's some truth to it, and we are influenced by people.

We are influenced by the people that are around us, whether we like it or not. Uh, the, the type of energy that they have, you know, if they're a positive person, if they're a negative person, if they're high achievers, if they are empathetic, it, I mean, all of that stuff does influence us on a day to day basis, whether we like it or [00:03:00] not.

So, if you are not one of those people who thinks, Oh yeah, I need to cut anybody out of my life who's not actively helping me grow. Um, you know, and I'm not one of these people. I, there's, it takes all kinds and sometimes if I want to be an influence, a positive influence for other people, then, Potentially I need to stay in their life.

So if that's the case, then what I can do to counteract some of that is to add a mentor. Add someone positive that I want to emulate or I want to influence me. And so that's where I think mentoring is exceptionally helpful. Is that, uh, you don't necessarily have to get rid of people in your life who maybe are below

your standard. Instead, you can help them. And then in order to try to become better yourself, you can add mentors who are better [00:04:00] than you, who are more advanced, more experienced, wiser or all of the above. I think that's a really important thing. We also need to realize that, um, Mentors help us to evaluate our life in ways that we wouldn't necessarily be willing to do on our own.

There's a quote from, uh, an old seminary professor, and I say old because he's no longer with us, but his name's Howard Hendricks. He was a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, which I didn't go to. I went to Denver, but, um, but I was heavily influenced by a lot of people from Dallas Seminary. And one of the things that he And I actually taught a class at Denver Seminary using some of his books.

So, I have been influenced by Howard Hendricks. And, um, One of the quotes that he said that I think is really good here is, Experience does not necessarily make you better.

In fact, it tends to make you worse unless it's evaluated experience. [00:05:00] And that is a really interesting line saying that experience can tend to make you worse. I think that what he's getting at there is that unless you evaluate your experience, it can make you bitter, it can get you stuck in a rut, it can make you judgmental toward people who are not like you.

Experience doesn't necessarily help. Unless your perspective is right, unless you're looking at it and evaluating it through the lens of reality.

There's a couple of Bible verses too that I think are really helpful here. Romans 12 to says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Now that's something that, um, can be done in a lot of different ways. Christians believe that, uh, as soon as we, uh, give our lives to Jesus, that the Holy Spirit will start the process of renewing our minds, renewing the way that we think and the, and therefore the [00:06:00] way that we live.

Um, that's theologically called sanctification, which is a lifelong process. But, um, there's other ways that this happens too, through what we read, what we listen to, again, the people that we're around, um, A lot of different factors can affect how we think and how we think affects how we live. So, if we want to transform the way that we are thinking, one of those ways is to change or um, cultivate the people that we're around and make sure that those people are helping us to think better.

Proverbs 27, 17 says as iron sharpens iron. So one person sharpens another. And this is important because what it says is important, but also what it doesn't say is also important that [00:07:00] iron has to actively sharpen iron in order to do anything in order to do any good. Um, it has to be intentional.

It has to know how to sharpen. It has to be sharpening the right spot. You can very easily have iron dulling iron as well. It needs to be something that is done again, intentionally. So mentoring cannot be something that, um, just haphazardly happens. It needs to be intentional. So mentoring and being mentored both require you to improve yourself in order to get anything out of it.

And improving yourself requires being humble and it requires being truth focused. You have to be willing to find the truth, listen to the truth, and then accept it and then change. So these are hard things. Also , in this mentorship journey, a lot of people quit because they can't [00:08:00] find the perfect person or they don't think that they're the perfect person.

But I think that we can approach this a little bit differently than trying to find the ideal individual. Look at it this way. What if mentors could be found in little niche areas? So what I mean by that is someone who's a character mentor may not necessarily have the skills that you want.

Somebody who has a lot of skills in the areas that you're interested in may not necessarily have character that you want to emulate. 

These are things that happen all the time, where we find things in people that we want to emulate, that we like, um, that we want to adopt in our own lives, but we maybe lose a lot of respect for them in other areas, or don't give them the time of day, because there are other areas that they're not necessarily Quite a strong in.

But if we look at it differently and look at it in terms of what can this [00:09:00] person offer me rather than what do they lack, then all of a sudden I think we're able to benefit from them in the ways that they're gifted.

The other thing is, is that sometimes in our current day and age, given the internet, given podcasts, audiobooks, regular books, things like that, mentors don't necessarily have to be people that we even know. So I'm gonna tell you a story about kind of an atypical mentoring situation. This is someone who is an is now what I would consider to be a mentor of mine in certain areas in business and perspective, motivation, that kind of thing.

But mainly business. And this is someone who I would have never given the time of day in the past. And I really I've never even met this person. And this [00:10:00] person has influenced me immensely in the way that I look at business, the way that I conduct business, and the way that I motivate myself to move forward in business.

And that person is Clinton Anderson. And it's so strange because if you know me, I have for years been the kind of person that I have rolled my eyes whenever somebody has talked about Clinton Anderson or said I'm gonna go to Clinton Anderson Clinic or my horse is Clinton Anderson trained or whatever and the reason being just because I've been I've always been the type of person that thinks that there are lots of ways to skin a cat and any kind of outline form of horse training has always been a obnoxious to me.

And because I think that, uh, that is just overly simplistic. And, uh, I've had lots of reasons for that, that I don't have to get into now, [00:11:00] but I, uh, Clinton Anderson disciples have historically annoyed me. 

I've I found myself thinking Clinton Anderson himself is arrogant, is stuck in one way of doing things, whatever. I mean, there's just you know trainers Trainers disagree with trainers all the time on all sorts of things, but This is somebody that I never in a million years thought that I would find myself listening to.

My husband, about 10, 15 years ago, I remember saying something along the lines of, I know the whole Clinton Anderson deal gets on your nerves, but you need to look real hard at what he's doing and how he's doing it from a business perspective because the guy's a genius.

And I remember thinking, whatever, you're just not letting me complain, I'm not going to take that seriously. And, uh, When Clinton Anderson [00:12:00] started his podcast, which is specifically about high achieving business people that happened more often than not be in the horse industry.

But it's more about business than anything else. All of a sudden, I found myself thinking this guy knows his stuff. It has again nothing to do with training. What he has been helping me understand is how to handle people that disagree with you. How to live as an entrepreneur, how to handle money, how to handle people who don't want you to make money.

Clinton Anderson through his podcast Has helped me hugely in just, Getting my act together as a small business and as an entrepreneur and has also kind of been a kick in the pants that I needed a lot.

So, never met him, um, and it is hilarious. The tables have turned, where now [00:13:00] I am listening to the guy, I'm taking him seriously, and he is helping me a lot in how to think through certain things. So, um, it's something that, you know, first of all, you never know where you're going to find a mentor.

That's number one. But number two is you don't necessarily have to know the person. You don't necessarily have to have that person actively in your life physically or otherwise. You don't have to know him. So you can find these mentors in a lot of different places. Okay. So I'm going to look at different types of mentors, different, different little niche areas where you can find these people that can help you.

So number one is a character mentor. This is somebody that You, you really love how they live. You really love who they are. You love how they handle people, um, how they talk to people, how they act, how they [00:14:00] treat kids, how they treat animals, that kind of person. The person who just is the kind of individual that you want to emulate, that you think.

shares your values or at least has values that you want that you think are ideal, um, that handles conflict well, that handles disappointment well, that sort of thing. This is a hugely important mentor. This is, this is one of those non negotiable types of people. Um, obviously Jesus is a good one, but,

I think this is somebody that uh, you open yourself up to, to give them the authority to call you out on character deficiencies. This is why it's important maybe to have a small group in church or to have people that are, of really solid character that you give permission to, to, uh, help you to strengthen your own character, uh, to, to not be living a double life, [00:15:00] to not be living in a way that is not healthy for you and the people around you.

Because if you're not living in a healthy way, and I don't necessarily mean in your diet or anything like that, I mean in terms of your your, your values and the way that you are who you are inside, essentially, who you are when nobody's watching. Um, that person, that person affects the people around you.

So who you are, whether you like it or not, inside, does affect the people around you. So I think it's extremely important to have somebody in your life who, is watching you, watching you live, watching how you handle people, watching how you handle suffering, um, and is given the authority to actually say, hey, look, let me pull you aside and let's talk because there's some things that are going on in your life that I don't necessarily think [00:16:00] are healthy.

Or I don't necessarily think are good for your health. spouse or your kids or your friends or, uh, whatever. So I think, again, that's something that, again, evaluation of our life is essential. Um, a business mentor is the next one. So there's going to be seven, by the way, seven different kinds of mentors. The second one is a business mentor.

This is someone who is This is not someone necessarily who has the best character, not necessarily someone who has the best, um, perspective on life, but is someone who is darn good at business in the specific way that you want to do business. And this is someone who is going to help you with money, help you with investments, help you with hiring, with firing.

Who helps you [00:17:00] understand resumes, understand how to be a good employee, that sort of thing. So this is a very, very important piece. We too often, especially young people, just kind of wing it. Being a good person to do business with, to be in business with, and to work with is not something that comes naturally to most of us.

And so we need a mentor to help us through that. Number three is a skill mentor. This is someone who, uh, has the skills that you want in a certain area. So for me, cutting and cowhorse are kind of my two niche, are kind of my two big interests that I'm trying to up my game in.

And so I am trying to find the best people possible that are A. highly, highly skilled and B. are capable of giving me the [00:18:00] kind of help and feedback that I need in order to grow. And that means that they need to be people who actually have eyes on me, you know, have eyes on the way that I do things because, um, You can't, you can watch all the videos in the world in cutting and cowhorse, but until you go through those motions on a horse and get feedback on how you're doing those things you really can't add that as a new skill. It doesn't go from mental understanding to being able to physically do the thing and do it well and do it almost without thinking because it's not a skill until you can do it without really thinking about it much. Um, and you need people to help you through those rough patches where you're learning and doing it wrong and not quite understanding [00:19:00] the the end goal, all of that kind of stuff.

You need somebody to help you through those moments. So it needs someone, it needs to be someone who's This is very good at what they do, extremely good, way more experienced than you, and also is a good teacher, is a good, is good at pointing out where you're going wrong and explaining to you how you need to fix it.

There's also the perspective mentor, this is number four. This is someone who, can help you to see the bigger picture in life, help you to reevaluate how you react to problems, how you react to issues, how you react to difficult situations, um, how you look at things.

This is someone who is going to help you understand that life is about something bigger than you. So again, going back to church, right? Your pastors are a really, pastors are a really good [00:20:00] perspective mentor a lot of the time. They're able to tell you, okay, you're focusing on a tiny little slice of life right now, but look at, look at what this is doing for you in the bigger picture, or potentially look at what this could do for you in the bigger scheme of things, in the greater scheme of things that maybe you can't see right now.

So that leads into number five, the spiritual mentor. This is someone who helps us to understand that life is about more than what we currently see right in front of us. Life is about something bigger than ourselves. And the best way to get through the rough patches of life is to figure out what life is actually about and what we're here for.

The spiritual mentor is more often than not the person to go to for, for that sort of thing. Now, when I say spiritual mentor, I'm not talking about somebody who's going to have you chant and, [00:21:00] uh, go out on a vision quest and be all weird and woo woo because that is, as far as I'm concerned, that is not productive.

At least, that's not the way I'm wired. Spirituality, I think is best understood as Understanding who we are, what we are, and what our purpose is in this challenging world that is full of suffering. So what do we do with suffering?

Is there a way out of it? What are we as humans? And what is our purpose? Um, and That, those are things that, uh, lead into an improved perspective. So number five, the spiritual mentor, I think often is also a perspective mentor, uh, because when you understand what we are as human beings, who made us, what our purpose is, all of that stuff, [00:22:00] all of a sudden, Your perspective shifts where you think, Okay, well, things that I once thought were important really aren't.

Or the things that I didn't think were important really are. Or maybe all of a sudden I didn't care about other people, but I feel like now, understanding what people are, now other people matter more to me, all of a sudden.

So, um, again, it doesn't need to always be pastors, but someone who has a perspective that you, you value and that you respect. Might just end up being a spiritual mentor because that perspective may come from some sort of spiritual insight that you may benefit from. Um, the motivational mentor number six is someone who Can give you that kick in the pants like I was talking about with Clinton Anderson to say, Get out there and do it.

Get up and work. Or maybe, um, you [00:23:00] are taking people's negative feedback too seriously when really their negative feedback is a reflection of, more of a reflection of them than it is anything else.

Now I think that sometimes negative feedback Is important for us to consider, the old comment of consider the source is important too, because if it's coming from people who you wouldn't want to go to for advice, uh, then potentially it's not worth taking very seriously, but the motivational mentor is someone who can help you through that kind of stuff and can say, you know what?

Sometimes it doesn't matter. Sometimes you need to just keep on moving and Only take seriously the, the people's feedback that you need to take seriously, that have earned that right. And, uh, that person can be really helpful to you. That person can really motivate, motivate you quite a bit. Uh, that person can also motivate you to get, to snap yourself out of bad habits, to snap [00:24:00] yourself out of negative, uh, habits that are not productive.

That sort of thing. So the last kind of mentor, so even though there are probably a lot more kinds of mentors that I'm not thinking of, uh, the seventh one is the short term mentor. This is someone who may not be in it for the long haul, you may know them for a little bit of time and then they move, or they die, or there's some reason that they're only in your life for a very short season, but they may offer any or all of the previous little niche areas, um, in a very, very short amount of time.

And there's nothing wrong with that. There, these are people who you can learn as much from as you can a long term mentor. And, sometimes we dismiss them because they're short term. Right? We don't necessarily allow them to teach us in the same way that we do the longer term [00:25:00] relationships that we have just because we don't want to have to spend a lot of time and energy on a relationship that might not be with us for a long period of time because it's uncomfortable or it's painful.

But these are people that are still very important, I think, for us to lean into and get to know and allow them to get to know us so that they can teach us. So let's look at being a good mentee. So if you don't think that you would be a good mentor, if you want instead to be mentored, you need to be a good mentee.

So there's eight here that I think are really important. If you want to be mentored, if you want to be helped, you have to be able to say, hey, what do you think? Or, hey, I like what you're doing. Do you have any feedback? Do you have any tips for me? Um, or, you know, hey, I've seen you around, I've seen you ride, I've seen you show, I've seen you whatever. Um, here's where I'm at.

What do you think? You [00:26:00] know, or would you be willing to give me a lesson or whatever? Most people are willing to in some way. It may cost you money. It may cost something. But, they're usually not going to offer help unless you initiate. So, uh, they're also usually not going to actually give you feedback at all unless you ask for it because it's uncomfortable.

For It's uncomfortable for them because it may make you uncomfortable and they don't know how you're going to react and respond to it. Um, and it may make you uncomfortable and they don't want to make you uncomfortable. So, they're not going to initiate an uncomfortable situation unless you ask for it.

And you seem willing to accept it. 

And they also know how it feels when somebody offers unsolicited feedback. It's kind of obnoxious. And when you don't want it, it is just a waste of energy. And a waste of air. So there's usually no reason to offer unsolicited feedback. And so most people who are any good aren't going to [00:27:00] do it.

The second piece of being a good mentee. is being an energy donor. So don't be someone who makes your mentor dread being around you because you suck the energy and the life out of the room. You need to be someone who shows up with energy.

And I don't mean energy in a, um, not being tired sense. I mean, energy in a positivity sense. You need to be ready to learn, You need to be willing to not talk back when they tell you to try something or, uh, tell you there's something you need to think about. Um, you need to be willing to be humble and accept what they're telling you.

You need to be willing to check your feelings at the door and grow as a person and be willing to [00:28:00] Let them guide you. You also need to, number three, put in the work. Because mentors, if they're any good, that means they are high achieving people. They are not going to spend their time on someone who is not gonna work.

Who is not going to be a return on their investment, so to speak. Um, if someone who I want to mentor me, who is A really high performing trainer, for example. This has happened to me before. Uh, I need to make sure that when I go and ride with that person, or I ask that person for help, then the next time that I show up, I've put in the work.

Because if I haven't, they're gonna think they just wasted their time. in trying to help me because it, it didn't take, it was a complete waste of time because obviously I had gone home and forgotten everything that [00:29:00] they had told me. Or I maybe didn't forget, but I didn't do anything about it.

So you need to be able to put in the work. You also need to ask, this is number four, ask good questions. And I am a firm believer in the existence of stupid questions. 100%. Now what counts as a stupid question? It's something that shows you weren't listening, shows that you haven't done your homework, shows that you don't appreciate or acknowledge the caliber of the person that you're talking to.

If you ask someone a question that's completely out of their field of knowledge or their scope of what they do, They're gonna, they're gonna think, This person has no idea who I am. They don't know what I do.

They don't understand what my contribution to the field is. They enough to even ask the right category of question. So, uh, like if I'm learning from someone who's a reining trainer, I am not going to ask them [00:30:00] about cutting questions. I'm not going to ask them about trail riding. I'm going to ask them about reining questions, right?

So stupid questions do exist. And they do make you look stupid. So we need to ask good questions, not just questions in general. So if you just pepper someone with, with questions that are irrelevant to their field, irrelevant to their contributions, um, they're not going to know what to do with that other than to put you in a category of someone who's not worth helping.

So number five is kind of related. Don't be a liability. Don't be someone who can't be trusted with the information that this person wants to give you. So if, if this person wants to give you some really valuable information, don't be someone who is going to just sit there and cry about it or act like they're [00:31:00] abusing you or be really easily offended. So here's another thing that, that makes you a liability.

If someone, if you ask someone a question and then you won't shut up in order to let them answer, that is, that is you being a liability because you're actually. taking precious time away from that person's day. And you're at, you're not acknowledging the gift that they could be giving you, which is wisdom and experience.

Um, number six then is related, which is listen well, you need to listen very well, not just to what they're saying, but what the intent behind what they're saying is. So sometimes they might say it in a way that, You could easily get your feelings hurt by. Maybe it's a little harsh, maybe it's a little abrupt.

But what you need to understand is, they're probably not trying to hurt your feelings. They're probably [00:32:00] not trying to be rude or, uh, harsh or anything like that. What they're trying to do is just be concise and direct. Which, you is the best way to be when you're someone who's busy and has a lot on your plate and has a whole lot that you're trying to accomplish in a day.

So we need to listen to what is being said and the intent behind it and again, check your feelings at the door so that we can learn and not let our emotions ruin it for us. Um, you also need to ask how you can help. In a lot of ways, how you can help the person's day be easier, how you can help spread the word about what they do, and then jump in to actually do it, so you can sort of repay them for helping you out.

Number eight is that you need to realize that your mentors will let you down because they're human. And that doesn't [00:33:00] make them less of a mentor. It just makes them human. Anybody who's alive is going to let you down at some point. Only Jesus is the perfect mentor.

And other humans are not going to do that for us. All that's human is going to disappoint. So, we need to realize that it's not about not being disappointed. It's about growth. It's about net growth. So, um, that's a really important facet here. So finally, how to be a good mentor is really important as well.

I think that it's essential for all of us as we grow and as we improve our own life and as we improve our own perspective, our own businesses, our own skill sets, all of that stuff. We need to start looking at being mentors to other people so that we can bring along the next generation, bring along people who maybe aren't as skilled as we are, um, in certain areas. There are several ways to be [00:34:00] good mentors, but here's just a few. These are just five of them. One, we need to be really careful with our words. We need to realize that everything that we say has consequences. And that may be positive or negative. It may be simply that if you talk too much and have too much to say without any meaning behind it, people are going to stop listening to you.

Words matter. Words have consequences. So, we need to start to cultivate how we speak, what we say, uh, even the language that we use. I have what I call equine Tourette's, where I try real hard, normally, on a day to day basis, to not have, uh, To not use foul language, and then somehow when I get to training a horse or talking about horses, I get so intense sometimes that my language starts to slip.

And I start to, uh, say things that I'm not necessarily proud of. So that's something that I work on. [00:35:00] A lot. And I try really hard to kinda catch myself and work on it, but I'm a flawed individual, and that's one of my weaknesses, is when I am working with horses. Cows also, um, my language starts to slip, but those are things that I try to work on on a day to day basis.

So. Number two here is be a learner. Be someone who is always willing to learn, always trying to get better, always up for hearing new perspectives. I think that that's the kind of person that, because they're always growing, it inspires other people to always grow and to always learn. Number three is don't over promise success or results.

So If you're telling people, oh, I can take you far, I can, we can, we can go to the top, we can do this, we can do that. Well, a lot of the time, over promising means that you're going to end up under delivering. So [00:36:00] instead, just be realistic. Just say, here's what we could do. Here's, here's what's within the realm of possibilities.

Here's what is not within the realm of possibilities. Um, Here's what I can help you with. Here's what I can't help you with. Here's what maybe is a weakness of mine, that I might be able to help you with on a good day, but on a bad day, you know, maybe I can't. Be realistic.

Number four is to improve your own communication. So this is different than just simply the words that you use. It's It's how you talk. It's the tone that you use. It's whether or not you choose to share important information. It's how you choose to share important information. It's when you choose to share information.

Um, it's what, how much of that information that you're sharing. The better a communicator you are, the better it'll help the people that you're trying to mentor or influence positively. And [00:37:00] then number five is always be developing your character. Work on how you respond to difficulty.

Work on how you listen. Work on how empathetic you are. Um, work on the perspective that you bring to the table. Um, There are so many things. I'm going to do a whole podcast on character development and looking at the virtues of good character. But this is something that's extremely important because I feel like a lot of times we don't necessarily consider character to be all that important and we instead just look at results.

I think that those two things go hand in hand. We don't need to just look at results. We need to look at both. So that's all I have for today. Hope it was helpful.