“A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you.” ~~ Bob Proctor
Life is complex and, in fact, can get complicated especially when things start spinning off tangent. The good thing is that we don’t have to do it alone, considering the fact that the road we’re travelling most likely has been trodden by someone else before us.
We have goals and dreams we aspire to hit. Most of them are huge and massive that we fear how we’d achieve them. In situations like this, it helps to have someone who can support, encourage and guide us along the path to hitting that goal. And that’s where mentorship can be very valuable.
I’ve always been a raving fan and proponent of mentorship. For the different major areas of life, I’ve been able to identify individuals who I can learn from, people I admire& respect, people who’ll challenge me and help me perform at my best in the given area of life. And I can tell you there’s nothing as assuring as knowing that someone’s got your back to help you avoid mistakes that they made so you don’t spend unnecessary time on trial-and-error. It’s like walking on the shoulders of giants where you can see farther. Proverbs 11:14b nails this on the head, “But in the multitude of counselors there is safety.”
Obviously it’s awesome to have mentors but I feel it’s even more awesome being a mentor. Amazingly, I’ve had the opportunity to mentor others. This started off at my time at the university where I served as a mentor to new students in a mentorship program called “Connecting4Success”. Through the program, I had the privilege of helping them create goals and devise plans and strategies to accomplish those goals – not just academic goals but others that’ll help them be at peace.
I had one of my mentees share his experience in my book on student success and so I just thought to share that here as well. (It was very heart-warming for me so I thought to warm your heart as well by sharing . 🙂 )
“We all start out from childhood with a dream and a purpose of becoming something in future and that happens
to be our goal and our drive to succeed. When I got into the university, I had one, a fire and a drive to succeed, something
I have always had my entire life, but I really didn’t understand a lot till I joined the “Connecting4success”
program.
Through the program and with the aid of my mentor, I learnt a lot about goals that I never knew. I got to learn about
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound goals as well as long-term and short-term goals. Funny
enough, I had only considered long-term goals, but never short-term goals which were equally important as well.
Getting to know this, I was able to plan, create both long-term and short-term goals, and make sure to hit my targets.
If for some reason I didn’t strike the target, I would look at my mistakes and try to avoid them next time.
Sometime in the second semester of my undergrad, I had set goals to attain an ‘A+’ in my courses. Unfortunately, I
came out with some ‘B+’s and ‘B’s. I later was able to identify where I went wrong and it was due to unplanned
events like late assignment and missing assignments. After tightening things up a bit more with the SMART goal-setting
technique, I ended up achieving everything I had planned on paper for that semester.
In fact, till date, I apply the SMART goal-setting technique even outside school. Recently, I had to pay off a significant
sum of money, and I never thought I could get this out of the way quick enough. Instead of worrying about how to
get the money, I decided to set up a plan based on the SMART goals I had created. I broke down the big, long-term
goal into smaller, short-term goals and noticed that if I could save a certain amount of money every day, I would achieve my overall goal. Honestly speaking, I didn’t even realize when I hit the target, but I ended up achieving my set goal
soon enough. From that incident, I got convinced of the power of setting goals and writing them down. Whenever
you do that, it becomes a reminder to you every minute until you have achieved your goals.
The SMART goal-setting technique isn’t meant for the school life alone, but actually for life in general. When you
learn it and apply it correctly to an area of your life, you will be amazed at the impossible things you can achieve. Ever
since I learnt about this technique from my mentor, it has been an integral part of my life. Every decision I make
appears to be based on that technique, and I know that for the rest of my life I will continue to apply the SMART goalsetting
technique.“
Irrespective of who we are and where we are in this life’s journey, I believe so strongly that we have a lot to learn from others. In the same vein, we also have a lot to teach others. In addition, he who mentors teaches and he who teaches learns twice; so it’s not only the mentee who’s learning , the mentor is as well.
So, if you don’t have mentors, what ya waiting for?
And if you aren’t mentoring others, what ya waiting for?
I hope you get started on a mentorship journey, if you already haven’t, and begin enjoying the power it has to offer.
To your amazing mentorship experience!!