Be Willing to Learn
Behind every great person is the mentor, or mentors, who taught them and coached them along the way. Behind Plato was Socrates, Batman behind Robin, and Yoda behind Luke. It’s very rare for someone to go through life and become highly successful without having some noteworthy teachers along the way. Now, I don’t mean your favorite teacher from junior year who let you skip class all the time; instead, the youth group leader who held you accountable and read the Bible with you for seven years or the basketball coach whose metaphors still ring in your mind whenever times get tough.
A mentor is a lifelong or long-term teacher.
Not that you can’t receive mentorship from your eighth-grade science teacher, but if you don’t keep that relationship going, then it’s just lessons learned instead of life guidance.
Mentorship is crucial for success and wisdom in life.
Often, a mentor is someone who is older than you and has more experience than you in a given field. Mentorship is one of the most significant ways to become wise young and learn about the challenges that life presents before they come. Mentorship can be super broad or uber-specific to whatever your needs are.
If you’re considering finding a mentor for every aspect of your life, your schedule will be packed with coffee dates, meet-ups, book studies, and small group meetings. Instead, focus on three key areas: academic or professional, personal, and spiritual.
An academic mentor is just that: a teacher, professor, principal, dean, or elder statesman—someone who has been in your shoes and can give you relevant and valuable advice. As a student in college or university, a fantastic mentor is a professor in whatever field you’re pursuing. So, if you’re going to be an aerospace engineer, then go to the aerospace engineer professor and ask them to meet for coffee or a beer once a month so that you can glean knowledge and wisdom from them. The same can be said for professional mentors, someone who has done your job and works where you work or had your job for many years and talk to them. Ask them questions and listen carefully to their answers. Hopefully, along the way, you will not only become wiser and better equipped to do your job well but also gain a friend.
A personal mentor is the person who gives you general life advice. How to talk to your girlfriend/boyfriend, how to handle a social situation, what hobbies to pursue, and generally how to enjoy life and get along with people. This could be your mother, father, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, pastor, priest, boss, or coach. Someone who has lived significantly more life than you have. Someone who can speak to any experience in a given situation.
Finally, a spiritual mentor—a pastor, priest, bishop, or cleric. It’s important that everyone have a spiritual leader, ideally a religious mentor. This means that if you go to church, you regularly meet with either one of the elders or pastors of the church. Religion is hard to understand, so it is highly beneficial to meet with and talk about what it means—especially someone who has spent their life researching and practicing the teachings of the religion.
If you plan on living life by yourself, without guidance, figuring it out on your own, then plan on being less successful, depressed, and often confused. While wisdom is gained through experience, it is also gained through relationships, so it is vital to foster mentorships whenever possible in hopes that one day you can be the mentor that somebody else needs.