"A mentor is not someone who walks ahead of us to show us how they did it. A mentor walks alongside us to show us what we can do." – Simon Sinek, British-American Author of "Start with Why and The Infinite Game."
So, how do we go about finding a mentor?
Finding the right mentor for different areas of your life and business to help you achieve a higher standard can be crucial to your eventual success. There are a thousand other pitfalls you can blindly stumble into, and you won't learn about any of them in school.
It would help if you had someone who has been down the road you're traveling now, who knows what to expect and understands the hazards you'll encounter along the way.
The question, of course, is how do you go about finding a mentor at all, much less the "right" one? It's every bit as tough as it sounds.
You can't just go up to random strangers and ask them to mentor you; that's not how the relationship works. You've got to get to know them, and they have to see and be excited by your potential. This is the first key to finding the "right" mentor for you. The odds are that you already know the person or have some connection with them.
"You won't hang around with ducks if you want to soar like an eagle."
Have a plan and be very clear about achieving your dream. Look for someone in the same industry as you who knows those ropes. What if you don't know anyone and don't have any connections?
Networking is so important, and why you should never stop building your web of both personal and professional connections. Potential mentors are everywhere; it's just a matter of researching to find them and then inserting yourself into their ongoing narrative.
You do that by following the arc of their careers, reading and commenting on the posts they leave on social media, such as ActiveRain. If you are on other social networks, commenting on their tweets, retweeting them, liking them, and striking up a conversation with them.
That, at least, gets your foot in the door, but the important thing here is to make your comments about them and what they're doing, not about you. Interest in you will follow naturally enough once you express an interest in them. What it comes down to then is putting yourself out there.
No one will want to mentor you if they have no idea who you are, the quality of your thoughts, what you're passionate about, and most importantly, what you can accomplish.
A good mentor relationship blossoms independently, with no particular prompting from either party and rewarding both of you.
Yes, you can take steps to put yourself in front of the right people, but ultimately, you've got to let it happen (or not) on its own.
With the right mentorship, follow and catch that DREAM!
"We must find time to stop and thank those the people who make a difference in our lives. " – John F Kennedy
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