Mentors Empower

Life is a journey. A journey that is never-ending until the day that it suddenly does. The day it ends is unknown for everyone so it is a good idea to take advantage of the present day and live your life enjoying the journey. Along the way, life will throw numerous trials and tribulations your way. Life is a series of steps and a series of opportunities and challenges. Life is a game this way. We traverse the journey of life from one step to the next. While enjoying this journey, it is a valuable perspective to realize you cannot do it alone. You will not know everything— far from it. You are better off if you lean into your lack of knowledge and form relationships with those who are one step ahead, or a few steps ahead, and learn from them. Mentors and the mentorship they provide empower you to live the life you want to live.

With almost any stage of life you are in, you can seek out a connection with someone who can serve as a mentor. This person is someone who can support you educationally, from their experience, emotionally by supporting and challenging you, and spiritually by being there for you in times of need. Who the mentor is to you can be anyone. It can be a parent who you go to for relationship and life advice, it can be an alumnus from your college who helps you transition from college to the real world, it can be a friend who you lean on after the loss of a loved one, and it can be a co-worker who has taken you under their wing. Mentors and the opportunity for mentorship can appear at any turn in life.

A good mentor cares about you. They care about you in a genuine way that goes beyond what you can do for them. It is a two-sided relationship where both parties interact not out of selfish gain, but out of a personal desire to lend aid. The mentee inherently needs more from the mentor, but the mentor is open to new perspectives and any learnings that can come from the mentee. The interaction and relationship become genuine. It adds life and fulfillment to both sides engaged.

In life, you do not need countless mentors. As you transition through life’s many stages, there will always be opportunities to find someone who can mentor you. In each of these stages, you can choose to find someone. Some people have one mentor that led them to stay in school and pursue a degree. Others have multiple mentors as they move from youth to adult life to having a family. The amount of mentors you will have is variable. It is not the amount of mentors that matters, it is the connection and impact they have on you that does. Sometimes you just need that one person who believes in you when you do not believe in yourself. Sometimes all it takes is that one person to genuinely care about you to show you the light and lead you along the path you want to follow.

Accepting mentors and mentorship is the acceptance that you are not better off alone. It is an acceptance that you cannot live life in the absence of others. It is a realization that you can learn from others. It is a realization that you can be better because of others. It is an awakening within yourself that you will become a better you, through the impact of others. Mentors empower, you just need to take the leap and accept them.