by Erich Sachs and Kim Brown
Mentors are people who have gone before us and broken trail. They have done what we want to do. Or they have a way of being, thinking, or living that can help us on our journey to the life we want.
I’ve had many great mentors in my life and I continue to seek them out because I have found tremendous value in the mentor relationship.
I’ve had mentors at work, in climbing, in school, and in the art of living well. A lot of us wish that we had a mentor—our personal Mr. Miyagi—to guide us through the sticky parts of life and to show us how to become the person we most want to be.
Most of the time when we talk about mentorship we think about a very specific type of one-on-one in-person relationship with someone who we believe has achieved something (or almost everything) that we want for ourselves. That type of relationship is amazing, but there are other types of mentors that most of us overlook. Let’s take a moment and look at these other types of mentors. Here are a few places where I have found my mentors:
Books
I am a huge fan of audiobooks. While I’m working alone outside I listen to great thinkers and researchers. I can learn about how the human brain works or how democracy works or how string theory works. I can get schooled in managing my attitude or making the most of my workout. Almost anything I want to know I can find in an audiobook. For those of you who read actual books, there are even more opportunities to learn from the greatest minds on any topic that lights you up. I’ve learned that you don’t have to meet a person for them to change your life.
Friends and Peers
Mentors are generally people who have already achieved the goals that we hope to achieve for ourselves. A reasonable metric, but it can lead us to discount people we view as peers. So what if they are working the same sort of job as you are, or climbing the same grade, or they are also a newlywed. They may also be incredibly organized or focused or great at housekeeping and goal setting.
Your friends and peers may be facing the same sorts of issues as you are (say, newlyweds trying to get the question of housework sorted out) and have great advice and insight about what is working for them. A mentor can be a friend who successfully navigated the same situation last month.
We generally choose to hang out with people because we see qualities in them that appeal to us. A friend who is very kind or patient or motivated can be a mentor in those qualities. By being with our friends and observing and discussing their choices, we can work to develop the qualities that we find so attractive in them.
Videos
Some of my great mentors in physical fitness have been people I watch on videos, either on DVD or YouTube. There are brilliant, talented athletes sharing their experience and wisdom and I can soak it all in via my computer or TV. The sheer mass of video uploads (on YouTube 300 hours worth of content is uploaded every minute!) almost guarantees that there are people out there talking about what you are interested in.
The internet is teeming with information about training for climbing, eating well, stretching, great gifts to get your wife for her birthday when you’re stumped, and almost anything else that you need to know. And a lot of these people are giving away a ton of information for free. Using the internet as a tool for personal development is the best use of your monthly wireless dollars I can think of. That and animal videos, of course.
There is no one way for a mentorship relationship to look. We all need and want help in certain areas of our lives, and finding that right person to help us can unlock endless doors, but sometimes we have to look beyond the traditional model to get what we need.
If you look around, I feel sure you’ll find the mentors you’re looking for, even if they don’t look the way you expected them to.