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Join Derek Hudson as he explores Essential Dynamics, a framework for approaching the challenges facing people and organizations. Consider your Quest!
Hey, everybody, and welcome to Essential Dynamics. I'm Bryn Griffiths, and joining us is the guy who's on this all the time, and that is Derek Hudson because he explains it all to us. How are doing?
Derek:Hey, Bryn. Great to be on. I don't know if I explain, but I do like to do like to knock things around, and I really enjoy our conversation. So thank you for being with me again today.
Bryn:Well, our first episode in 2026 was a wowser for me. I really loved it. I thought it was great. And then today, I see our topic. Is it mature simplicity?
Bryn:Is that what we're talking about today?
Derek:Let let's see if we can do that. Okay. You know, because one of one of the thing the ironies, I guess, is that in some ways, I haven't really grown up. And when I'm with kids, when I'm with my grandkids, there might be the adults having an adult conversation and I'm on the floor with the little ones. I'm an instigator of all kinds of juvenile fun and now I'm gonna give a podcast on maturity.
Bryn:I think you can do it. I know you can. Well,
Derek:sure. And so part of it is the definition of maturity and I'm not sure I'm gonna toss one out just yet, but maturity is not getting old.
Bryn:Interesting. Yeah. Well, yeah. Totally get it.
Derek:Right. And and so like the years progress and we accumulate age, but maturity, I think, is a different thing. And I I kinda wanna explore that in the context of our last conversation. So I'm turning this one again to young people and saying, like I'm not saying the young people grow up, but life is a lot better as you mature. And so I think I've got some insights into what maturity looks like and how that can simplify simplify your life.
Derek:And it's not again, this is stuff that gets taught in schools. This is stuff we have to learn the hard way, but I'd I'd like to kind of make it easier to to get access to.
Bryn:Let me ask you this because I keep hearing this one all the time when somebody say, you have a tough time acting your age. I've worked in radio and media for a long time, so I can't say that I've ever acted my age. But you know what? Why bother? I'm enjoying not acting my age, but yet I still continually learn.
Bryn:I still continually mature. The one thing that I do like as I get older is the ability to just, on an occasional morning or afternoon, sitting on the back deck and just kinda taking everything in, slowing it up a little bit. That's the simplicity for me. But man, oh, man. When I think back to when we went okay.
Bryn:So we went to high school together, and I think of how crazy I was back then when I was 17 and 18 where I did not have either the maturity or the simplicity that I have now. And it's amazing that the journey is so fascinating to me.
Derek:Yeah. The way I I like to think about it is maturity is a path to a better a better life for us and for people around us. And when we're immature, we either harm ourselves or harm other people. And it's got nothing to do with age. So so here's I guess, here's my my journey on this.
Derek:I remember reading the seven habits of highly effective people in the eighties. Covey had some great stuff in there and one of them was his definition of maturity is it's courage mixed with holy smokes. You remember
Bryn:act this far?
Derek:Oh, that's it. Yeah. Courage mixed with consideration. Okay. Okay.
Derek:Now I'm gonna I'm gonna pull on that and some stuff that we use in essential dynamics and then propose a slightly broader definition of maturity than we'll talk about at least one example of it. So essential dynamics came out of this idea of a quest. And then the elements of a quest I came up with were the there's a purpose. There's some people involved and they go on a journey. So there's a path.
Derek:So it's purpose, path, and people. And there's dynamic forces around that. And so that became something that I found very useful in working with leaders of organizations, trying to figure out figure out how we can make organizations work better together with bringing the people in. And as as we did that, I also found that it was helpful to in interpersonal relationships and our own personal development had some applications to broader society. So I asked myself, am I missing something?
Derek:Like, is there something fundamental that holds up essential dynamics? If I had that, then I could be confident that essential dynamics, you know, kinda had staying power. So I came up with three assumptions which I then elevated to the status of an axiom because I think they're they're foundational to essential dynamics. And there's three of them and they all relate to maturity in different ways. And and the first one is what I call natural law, which is that the universe is discoverable.
Derek:We don't know all of the laws of
Bryn:the
Derek:universe And we can learn a lot at sort of a level and then find out there's actually more to it. But the process of discovering how the universe works is it's coherent. It's understandable. It's useful. And so if you think about, for example, Newtonian physics is very, helpful.
Derek:I was on an airplane a couple of days ago. K. And I'm really glad that Newtonian physics has helped us figure out things like, you know, thrust and attitude and altitude and stuff like that. And we're able to get places we want to go. And, you know, despite the fact that we're in the same city, there's no doubt that there's satellites involved in in the work that we do when we have online meetings.
Derek:And that's all based on Newtonian physics. But later on, relativity was discovered and then quantum physics and there's all these layers of of truth, of reality out there that are there, ours to discover. So the first thing is that there are useful things that we can learn about the universe and once we learn, we can rely on them. So that's natural laws. Second thing is agency, which is we can choose how we interact with those natural laws.
Derek:And in any situation, human beings have a choice. Sometimes it's a moral choice. Sometimes maybe it doesn't it's not between good and evil. But we can make a choice and then we can count on the natural laws to dispense the consequences. Right.
Derek:And some I mean, there's there's uncertainty for sure. But we can choose. And then the third thing is what I call abundance. And and you put the other two together and it's basically that we have the opportunity to make choices that make things better. And so if we use our agency in the face of reality, we can either make things better or we can make things worse.
Derek:So the principle of abundance is that that better is a possibility. Okay. So now let's let's go to immaturity. So one of the ways that immaturity is manifest is when we try to ignore or think that we're an exception or we try and get ourselves out of having to deal with natural law.
Bryn:When do you when do you know when you're becoming mature?
Derek:Well, when when you start to understand understand these key principles and live by them. So for example, it is immature to stay up too late every night.
Bryn:Yes. There's a certain point when you realize I can't keep doing this.
Derek:So natural law hits you and says you're gonna be sick. You're gonna function at a lower level. You're going to forget stuff that you spent all night studying because you stayed up too late. And that it catches up with you. But immaturity is like, doesn't count, doesn't affect me, I don't care, and away you go.
Derek:So immaturity, again, is, you know, sort of flaunts natural law.
Bryn:Okay.
Derek:Okay. And and I'll I'll just give you a good example. It's not gonna offend too many people. It'll offend some. And that is when you buy a pack of cigarettes and it has the warning label on it.
Bryn:But you still do it.
Derek:But the warning label says basically natural law says this will shorten your life and make it worse. Right. And you're like, I don't care. So that's immaturity. Okay.
Derek:So you can be 65 years old and still be immature in that sense. Okay. So let's go to the second one. Well, agency. Agency is we get to make choices.
Derek:So being immature is one of two things. One is not recognizing our agency and saying that person makes me so mad or there was nothing I could do or I'm a victim in this. It's it's not fair. You know, I blame my parents. I blame the school system.
Derek:Like, the cops are out to get me. Whatever it is, not honoring your agency in the best way is immature. Great examples there. Yeah. Okay.
Derek:And then the third one, abundance, is there are things that we can do to make things better for us and for other people. Sometimes there's work and pain involved. Sometimes there's patience. We can do something and not have not have an immediate good consequence, but still do it because we have faith that ultimately we're gonna change the situation for the better. You and I were talking before we got on the air about young people in the context of financial awareness and financial planning.
Derek:And if you have an abundance approach and you look at natural law as an agency, if you can get interest working for you instead of against you, then you can accumulate resources instead of having to pay someone else interest for your, you know, consumption of stuff you can't afford. So so here we have three axioms. We have natural law and it's immature to pretend or ignore or not understand natural law. We have agency and it's immature to not assume our agency and assume that we're a victim of circumstance, that we don't have choice. Certainly, choices are always limited to less things than we'd like, but we ultimately have agency to choose our reaction in any situation.
Derek:And then abundance, it's more mature to seek for higher levels of of benefit to us in our society around us if we if we're mature. So this is the this is the definition that I kinda put together as maturity is a capacity to see reality clearly, accept the limitations we have without resentment, and then act responsibly to seek for the betterment of our situation and others. Or or what I like to say is to seek flow. And so maturity comes from accepting natural laws, exercising agency wisely even when it's hard, and then being patient enough to try to get this good result through the idea of abundance.
Bryn:That is a lot of stuff to put together though, Derek.
Derek:Well, you know, and I've been at it a long time and this is why I wanna talk to young people is to say, I've thought this through. I'm relying on the wisdom of the ages. I'm not coming up with this stuff. But as a young person, if you can say, I'm 16 years old and I don't like doing dumb things. I see my friends doing dumb things and I I wanna kinda avoid that, but I still wanna be a kid.
Derek:Well, you don't have to be a boring 40 year old or an even more boring 65 year old. But you also don't have to be dumb. So what do you do? Well, let's let's try and go for maturity. You know?
Derek:When you say you're wise beyond your years, all does that mean is you're saying, I watch a lot of people get hurt doing that, so I'm not gonna do that. But I can choose this and that situation and this is gonna make it better. Like, for example, in an interpersonal conflict, there are ways that we treat people that are more likely to bring upon ourselves and upon them, you know, more pain and suffering. Right. And we can choose our response in any situation to either escalate or to bring things down a notch.
Derek:And if it's our goal to make things better, there are choices we can make that can do that. And that's maturity. And that could be on the soccer field when you're 16 and it could be in the boardroom when you're 60.
Bryn:Wow. Hey. Listen. I I have to go by what I've gone through, and that is you just have to learn the hard way. There's there's no shortcuts.
Bryn:At least that's the way I see it, is that you just have to recognize why did I do that? I think I did that, you know, not long ago. And after a few of those, I start to go, okay. Well, maybe maybe I gotta do a bit of a refocus here.
Derek:Well, Brent, I agree. You have to learn the hard way, but the thing is is that you also cannot learn Oh, sure. The hard way. Right? So if you're gonna do it the hard way, you know, pay attention and and learn from it.
Derek:And that what I'm trying to do is not to help young people avoid hard hard things, but to, you know, be mature in the sense that if you're paying attention, you can learn from your experience and move on to the next thing. And if you're not paying attention, you know, if you're not paying
Bryn:attention That's a big one.
Derek:You you can put yourself or other people through, you know, pain and suffering that doesn't mess necessarily have the the same redeeming value at least at first.
Bryn:Well, I have this problem and that is okay. So 19 year old. And I see the 19 year old going through exactly what I did. And I so desperately wanna make sure that he doesn't go through it painfully as I did, but there's a process. There's a process here.
Derek:So so one of the things I like to do with that is let's teach people principles. Okay. Give them access to them. They still have to make choices. So you can, as a parent, help a young person avoid all kinds of trouble by restricting their activity.
Derek:Right? Yes. But only for so long and then you bust they bust out in the free world and maybe they don't have the skills to handle it. And so it's definitely a balance. And we've we've talked about the parents paradox of happy child and and preparing for happy adult.
Derek:So you can't you can't abandon them and you can't control them. But I think that true principles understood early are are nothing but an opportunity for a better life, a better life faster, a greater contribution to society, and a better recovery when, you know, you use your agency and then wish you had used it a different way.
Bryn:Yep. Well, it's it's it's funny be that you should even bring this up today because I've read something today talking about, you know, when you bring up kids, if you if it's a little bit harder to start, it makes the freedom easier to get to. I don't know how true that is. But I thought about it and I went, sure. You know, sometimes parents are accused of being a little too strict.
Bryn:Right?
Derek:Yep.
Bryn:However, you find that the freedom comes maybe a little quicker for those that have gone through a tougher time.
Derek:That's right. Well, we've talked about doctor Goldratt who who taught us about theory of constraints in his book, The Goal. And I think it's in the book but I certainly he told it to me personally. And he he was he's from Israel and he served in the Israeli army as they as they all do. And their informal motto is, the more you sweat, the less you bleed.
Derek:Wow. The more you sweat in training, the the less you bleed in battle. And and so there's a there's an element, yeah, of of young people preparing in the practice facility, is school, sports, family life, church, service, all that stuff. So that when they get into the the big game, they've actually got a lot of skills. They've got discipline.
Derek:They've got consideration. They've got that stuff. And so that's that's maybe another reason why it's it's so much fun to talk to youth is is that we can give them a little bit and they can do a lot with it. And we don't sit back and watch them thrash around without any without any guidelines. But on the other hand, we can't run their lives for them.
Derek:So I it's just it's just I find it fascinating. So do you wanna share a story k. From from literature? And I'm not sure this is, like, popular with young people other than the musical Les Mis is a classic.
Bryn:Yes. It is.
Derek:And the story behind it for Victor Hugo is also a classic and it's a bit of a tough read and you probably didn't have to do it in grade 10. But there's a lot there. So there's two characters.
Bryn:There's a movie by the way too. Right? You can watch the movie.
Derek:You can watch the movie. That's right. You can watch the movie. And we've got we've got Jean Valjean and Javert. And Jean Valjean starts out as a as a free citizen of France, but his sister's starving, his children are starving, and he steals bread to provide for the family and ends up in prison.
Derek:And because he keeps trying to escape, he ends up in prison for a long long time. Javert is born in a prison. His parents were criminals. Javert gets out of that situation and decides that he wants to live a righteous life. That he is a good person, not a bad person.
Derek:Jean Valjean is on parole and he ends up in a very tricky situation where there's a someone's been accused of a thing that he did and they don't know that it's him and this man is going to be executed for the crime. But Valjean puts his hand up and says, no, actually that was me. Freeze the man and then he takes off. So now he's a fugitive. And Javert, the upstanding police officer is chasing him.
Derek:So it's very clear at this point that there's a good guy and a bad guy. And Javert and Valjean have this confrontation, many of them. But eventually, during the uprising, the student uprising, Valjean saved Javert's life. Now let's go back to this maturity and consideration thing. Valjean has learned natural law.
Derek:He's overcome his his weaknesses. He's he's been willing to sacrifice himself for others. He sees his enemy Javert in a tough situation and he decides that he will save his life. Javert on the other hand, he's like he's this is the guy he's on. The simplicity on the side of simplicity.
Derek:Right is right. Wrong is wrong. I'm the good guy. He's the bad guy. And that's it.
Derek:And that's it. So Valjean has worked through all the complexity of all the moral dilemmas he's come through and he says, this is who I am. I do the right thing to benefit others for the right reason without regard to my the cost of my own life. And when those two collide, Javert can't handle it.
Bryn:Great point.
Derek:Yep. He he can't he he hasn't done the work to get to simplicity on the other side. He can't understand Valjean's motivations. His his whole world blows up and he decides he can't take take it anymore. Jumps off the bridge.
Bryn:So what do we take from this?
Derek:Well, a couple of things. One, I don't think maturity is about getting old. K? I think maturity is about understanding how the world works, taking our part in it and then trying to do our best to raise the level of benefit to other people. And so we go back to Stephen Covey, it's courage doing the hard thing mixed with consideration which is, you know, having an eye out for other people.
Derek:And I think that we learn that better from the stories than we learned from anything that we talked about in school. But I also think that if we understand the principles as young people, we can save ourselves and other people a lot of heartache. Not that we're always going to get it right. But if you're trying for that real simplicity and you're trying to, you know, for maturity, even young people can be mature if they just practice these things. So I find it very interesting.
Derek:Now let me just put it in my personal disclaimer. I said at the beginning that I'm in many ways immature. One of the challenges with this simplicity on the other side of complexity is once you really get there, you realize how much better a person you could be. And but there's a there's a there's still a path for all of us. And what is it?
Derek:Terry Warner says that we're in the best of all possible situations because we could decide today to do something that makes a difference in our life and someone else's life right away.
Bryn:So about a month ago, I had an opportunity, of course, to watch It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart, which everyone says is a great Christmas movie. And I always say, sure. But for me, it's a great life story. And that is, you know, when you're talking about, you know, I wish I'd never been born. And then you realize the contacts that you had with so many other people.
Bryn:And that if you weren't there to maybe help them or gently guide them or, I guess, you know, guide them without even knowing that you're doing it, What kind of world would we be living in? You know? And to me, I take so much out of that one particular movie and here again, stories. It's a it's a great story for me that just reminds me that we can make an impact on everybody that we touch, whether we know we're that we're touching them or not.
Derek:I I hate to do this this late in the episode, but I wanna highlight that It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol. In both cases, the individuals are pulled out of their lives Yes. So that they can look back and see the system because you can't see it when you're inside. And and for It's a Wonderful Life, it's you don't appreciate what you've done for all these people while you've been trying to get out of Bedford.
Bryn:Yeah.
Derek:And and for Scrooge, it's the opposite.
Bryn:Yes.
Derek:But but but we step like, one of the reasons I wanna talk about systems is we can step out of them and look at the situation we're in and then say, oh, no. I can do better. I can do better. So with all that, I think we've pulled it together. And I want to I wanna close, but you gotta ask me where they can find me and then I'll do that.
Derek:How's that?
Bryn:Okay. Yeah. I'll do that. Hang on a second. Where do they find you?
Derek:You can you can find everything if you go to getunconstrained.com. You can contact me or find links to the wiki and the podcast.
Bryn:Don't forget too that every time a bell rings, an angel finds its wings. Awesome. I think that's what he said.
Derek:Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's it was a wonderful it was a wonderful Christmas. It's a wonderful life, and 2026 is gonna be wonderful.
Bryn:So Alright, Derek.
Derek:Everyone, as as you think about all this stuff, consider your quest.