Do you have a Mentor?

[EnduranceNinja]

Do you have anyone you might consider a Mentor to you? Is it a person you normally see or someone online or maybe some historical person who is not even living but their works have helped you achieve and motivate you? I feel I need a Mentor but how do you go about finding one?

[Nick Hansen]

Hi EnduranceNinja,

I completely agree with you, everyone needs a mentor, someone to look over their shoulder and watch out for them, someone to catch them if they fall, and know when to let them fly for themselves.

I am a strong believe of the power of attraction, that you will attract people, in this case a mentor, if you strongly enough want one.

When you think of a mentor, you think of someone who is your personal life coach, who is always at your side, almost someone you report to on a daily, weekly or perhaps monthly basis.

But mentoring relationships come in many different forms, firstly serendipitous mentors. These are the types of people and situations, which their primary purpose is not to mentor you, but they inadvertently. An example of this is someone who gets drunk, gets behind the wheel and wrecks their car, almost taking their life. You look at this situation and say to yourself, ' no way am i going to do that, because look, he has lost his car, almost his life, and certainly the respect of his friends and family.

The second type of mentoring relationship is hands on mentors, these are the people who work with you to help you learn. Most likely the type of mentor you think of when you think of mentors. An example of this is a baseball coach, who trains you, works hard to make you the best you can be. He wishes more from you than you do of yourself.

The last type of mentor is the hero / shero mentor. These people do not have a direct role in your life, but as the name suggest, they play rolemodel type role in your life. You look up to these people and see that they have done in their lives to get where they are, you look at the mistakes they have made, and learn from them so you don't have to learn through the school of hard knocks. Examples of these types of people are Buddah, Confucius, Jack Welch of General Electric, Katharine Graham of Washington Post, Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, Abraham Lincon and so on.

As the saying goes "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear" This is true because when you are finally committed, you become aware of all the teachers and mentors that exist all around you.

[NotesMaeve]

MANY mentors, copilots, and friends!

Find someone who has a quality you want for yourself. Be open in learning how to attain that.

[TheFlyingMan]

Nick's post is fantastic. I'd like to add my own 2cents. I found that many of my mentors were my worst enemies - they showed me where I was the most unconscious. Or you could say they showed me where my shadow self was.

But a proper hands on mentor, one that talked to me, and taught me, was actually found when I started my own blog. Then I began making a lot of friends, and some of them became very close to me and I learnt so much from them.

[bmhansen]

I agree that Nick's post was valuable and I would also like to add to it.

I have had many mentors in my life and many of them didn't know they were my mentors.

Many of them I have never even met, and some have even passed on long before I was born. But I have looked for examples of people that I could study throughout my life in the form of books, audio recordings or just researching online.

There have been a tremendous amount of books and audio recordings that have changed my life and this is what I would tell anyone looking for a mentor. Find someone that you look up to or has accomplished something that you want to do and emmulate them. Do exactly what they did to get to where they are. Follow in their footsteps.

Brian Tracy says that you just have to get in line. If there is something you want, find someone who has it and do what they did.

Often times I will find someone in my field that has achieved what I would consider success and just call them up and pick their brains for a few minutes. Successful people are (generally speaking) willing to share their story with others. I would record the conversation (with their permission) and listen to it over and over again to get an idea or two.

There are many ways to get advice from very successful people, many times you can get it simply from readign a book or making a phone call.