How To Find A Mentor

[kravin]

Now this is a tricky one, and I'm not sure whether there's a 'solution' in the sense that I'd like. But I thought I'd open up a discussion on finding a mentor and see what flows from it.

I, personally, have never had what I'd call a true mentor. My goals are bigger and require more pro-activity than those of others in my family and peer group, so although I've received advice or done my own research, I've never gotten the kind of guidance and resource of experience that a mentor could provide.

I have tried to think of what has limited me in my ability to find someone to mentor me, and I can see a few places I can improve:

Openness
I should talk more freely of my goals, successes, and failures. Attracting a more experienced person will require me to put myself out there a lot more. Who will offer their help to me if they don't know I need it?

Diversifying my social group
Most of my friends are young professionals or old friends from school, roughly around my own age (24). Although it's not necessarily true that age=experience=wisdom, I should try to break into circles consisting of people from other age groups. I could do this by strengthening the friendships I have with a few of my more experienced friends, or maybe even by joining some sort of professional association in the field I require guidance and begin meeting people cold. Obviously the point above about openness will apply here - meet new people and let them know about me and what I'm looking for.

ASK!
Ask people. Directly. Approach someone already in my social group and: 'I could really use some guidance in area X. Do you know of anyone who could help me out? You do? great! Could we maybe meet up next week for a chat?' This doesn't have to be a covert search.


Wow. I actually sat down at the start of this post to ask for advice from everyone else, but I think those three points above really highlight what's holding me back here.

Nevertheless, can anyone offer another perspective on this? Who has had success finding an awesome mentor? How did you find them? Who has relationships with multiple mentors for each domain of life they're working on? Who here already mentors people? How do you feel about relative strangers approaching you for advice and a long-term relationship of guidance?

If you you've got anything at all to say about the topic of mentoring - hit me with it!

[modern_monk]

Hi kravin,

"what's holding me back here" - maybe start by writing a list of this?

Waiting for a mentor meantime you do something by yourself. We have to start somewhere. Do not worry
teacher will show up when you will be ready to go to the next level.

What helped me a lot is the EFT - the technique you can do on the internet.
There are videos to be followed :
www.mygenie.tv - I suggest you take one month membership at £15.
He has made many ready to apply emocoach sessions also about your “'inner' coach”.
It can really change your social behaviour fast. Efficient and cheap regarding what you can get in a short amount of time.
Another one:
Tapping.com
I would suggest the "Self Acceptance" - a good start before your improvement.
magnustapping and other eft videos are as well on the youtube

I would just tell you that there is no a mentor that will take care of you totally. Unless you are a politician, a sportsman or have a lot of money.

The whole life I have been looking for an "awesome mentor" and I have discovered that each person (younger,older, poorer, ...) you meet can become your "awesome mentor" if only you accept to learn from them.
Start looking at people in a different way. Ask your self what can I learn from this person? What to do as well as how not to behave.

Find someone you could model. Who inspires you most? Maybe an actor or a friend… Try doing the same.

So, your mentors will be people, books, films, your personal reflections, dreams – listen to them and you will develop your inner mentor….

Good luck to you

[Antiventurecapital]

Modern Monk,

Any thoughts on this?

[kravin]

modern_monk,

Thanks for the reply, but perhaps I need to clarify what I meant by 'mentor'. I'm not looking for a personal development coach, and I'm certainly not looking for someone to coddle me and live my life for me.

Suppose, for example, I wanted to get into real estate investing. A possible mentor in this case (by my definition) would be someone who has been a private investor for a number of years, has a good working knowledge of the industry and the people working within it, and who has achieved the kind of results I was looking at. Now, far from holding my hand, I would look to this person to be able to:

• Answer any specific questions I have about the field (or point me to resources that could)
• Be a sounding board for my ideas, and
• Encourage me to pursue my path (both actively and through example)

My concept of a mentor is someone with a specific experience that I would like to tap into. Not someone to coach my whole life, but just act as a beacon for a particular goal I've set myself.

Now what I was hoping to do by starting this thread was get together some ideas and discussion on attracting/seeking mentors for the various goals we may have set ourselves, and the issues of being a mentor or a mentee.

I hope that makes things a bit clearer. Does anyone here even have a mentor-mentee relationship with another person? How did your relationship with them start? Have you found it useful and fulfilling?

[Antiventurecapital]

The mentors you have most likely heard about are the ones found in the corporate world. Here's out it works. Top management identifies an up and comer in the organization who has the potential to join its ranks within a few years, so it assigns one of its members to serve as a mentor for this rising star.

IOW, it's part of the senior executive's responsibilities to act as a mentor when asked to do so.

About the only other examples of mentoring you will find is where someone has a vested interested in the newbie. Maybe the kid is a relative?

It's next to impossible to find a complete stranger to serve as your mentor for free. Why? People are just too busy to continuosly slow down and explain things to a rookie.

[dalante]

I can totally relate to you. I wrote a post on my blog a couple of weeks ago on the same topic.
From mattress salesman to writer » How I would like a mentor…

I haven't found mine yet, though!!

[judge45]

The real problem with mentors is that they aren't you.

I always look to others for inspiration and knowledge, but ultimately, while somewhat helpful, there's always a conflict even if you are a very passive person.

I think the best thing is to take what you can from who inspires you and build your own successful reality. Other people are just guides for you to get guidance from and a mentor seems to negate much of your personal responsibility.

It's a big scary world out there, if success was easy (it is relatively speaking ) then everyone would be successful.

HTH

Jeff

[kravin]

Originally Posted by Antiventurecapital

It's next to impossible to find a complete stranger to serve as your mentor for free. Why? People are just too busy to continuosly slow down and explain things to a rookie.

I think that's rubbish.

There are many people out there who love to teach and who gain a lot of satisfaction in sharing their knowledge with others - and often these are people who have become quite successful and desire to 'give back' to the community. Let me give you one such example from my own life. Until now I had not made the mental link that this relationship was actually one of mentor to mentee, but I realise this now and I'll share the quick story of it for anyone still reading this thread.

A few years ago, I entered into a mentor-mentee relationship with my taekwondo instructor. He had retired from instructing to focus on his studies (he was trying to get into the police force) and didn't have the time to hold classes as well as handle all of the overhead of running a business. About a year after he stopped teaching I approached him about private lessons and he agreed, saying that he had found it difficult to be motivated to train when it was just him by himself.

Initially he charged me about 4 times the standard full-class lesson fee, since it was one-on-one tuition, and we trained twice-weekly for an hour. But as time went on, he gradually reduced the fee, eventually eliminating it entirely, and we upped our training to 2-hour sessions 3 times per week.

This was because I was able to demonstrate to him my commitment to learning all that he had to teach, and I was quickly able to challenge him enough to make training for him more worthwhile. Also, we were able to discuss different ideas and techniques that I had read about or thought of myself. He also invited me to use his training room whenever I wanted.

He was accepted into the force after 18 months or so, and with his unpredictable work hours, we had to ramp down and eventually discontinue our training sessions.

This relationship fulfilled the three requirements I previously posted (answer specific questions, be a sounding board, and be encouraging) and then some.

It seems most people here (other than dalante) are against the idea of being mentored in a particular discipline, but I think that comes from a misunderstanding of the mentor-mentee dynamic. You are not required to unthinkingly obey your mentor's advice - you are still you, and you should analyse every new idea before internalising it - but working closely with someone of superior experience than yourself is incredibly useful in the quest for growth in a particular discipline.

[Antiventurecapital]

I'm just expressing an opinion as someone who used to mentor entrepreneurs at my alma mater. I was part of a program that hooked up technology related startups from engineering and computing science schools with grads in the business community.

You might look for a retired executive.

[Antiventurecapital]

Originally Posted by kravin

I think that's rubbish.

I just finished watching the UK version of The Office on Monday night. It was my second viewing in three years. On Tuesday I couldn't stop calling everything "rubbish" in a cockney accent.

That's rubbish!

Oh, rubbish!