Daily motivator # 95 is about choosing your mentors. Whom do you choose and how do you choose them? Yes you want to find people who have what you want, but what does that mean? I think it means that I want to find the people who have the experience that I want. When I’m at work I want a boss who is willing to teach me what I need to know in order to do a better job. If my boss isn’t doing that, I want to go outside of that job for the experience I am looking for.

When I choose my friends. I want to choose people who have experiences that are interesting to me. People who can show me how to live a better life. This means not just aligning myself with someone who has a good message, but someone who actually lives that message to the best of their ability. If someone is telling me that it is important to be on time when I make a commitment to be somewhere, and they aren’t themselves making a commitment to be places on time, for myself I have to reconsider if this is the right person to be aligning myself with.

Everyone we encounter and develop a relationship with is a mentor of some kind. We Engage in relationships with people because of what we learn from being with them. For some people that means lightening up and enjoying themselves – making wise-cracks because they are funny and they make us laugh. Laughter is healing.

For other people it may be discussion of philosophies, theologies, and in simple general terms, living life to the fullest. In these cases we can really learn a lot and so long as everything is kept in perspective and no one is attempting to impose their own beliefs on others everything works really well.

Others may be people who’s lives are substantially occupied with business / career and advancement along those lines. Here we can learn about ambition. As long as we strive for success in this area balanced with success in all other relationships this can be a very rewarding way to live. In fact in a perfect world we can strive for success for one simple primary purpose – to be enabled to provide for others.

Hopefully we can surround ourselves with mentors in each of these areas. Maybe one person in our lives can teach us about all of these things, but I am going to venture a guess that in all likelihood it is going to be several people whom we come to rely on for guidance. When I find myself surrounded by a good healthy balance of these people described above my life can only move in a positive direction over all. Yes of course there will be peaks and troughs and we would not want it any other way because that is of course what gives us perspective. I need to have the lows to appreciate the highs – we all know this in our heads, but do we live this in our hearts? With a support system like the one outlined above and our continued and constant reliance upon it, every low can only be balanced out with a new high because we have the right people to help pick us up when we fall down. And I am not talking about “co-dependence” I am talking about a healthy reliance on others because I humbly recognize that I cannot do this life thing entirely on my own. Over time what happens is the highs get higher and the lows also get higher.

Every once in a while a trendline breaks through and takes us lower than we’ve been in a while. The loss of someone we care about deeply, or in some way shape or form the foundation we stand on falls apart. If I see this happen to someone I care about this means one simple thing – it’s time for a miracle! What does this mean? Read carefully here – It’s time for me to reach out and be the mentor in the relationship. It’s time for me to make sure the person knows I am thinking about them and that I am here for them. The real miracle of this is not that they have me there to help and support them. The real miracle is that I get to see them pull out of a tough situation. These experiences then give me hope for when I go through something similar in the future. We all go through tough times. No matter how positive your thinking, things happen – nobody lives forever and things don’t just keep getting better without some minor set backs along the way. That is an unrealistic striving.

Finally there is another basis on which we can relate to people that I want to bring up. It is the poisonous, vexatious to the spirit idea commonly known as “gossip”. When I am engaged in a conversation with a person and they are talking about other people a red flag goes up in my mind. Are they simply discussing events or is someone who is not present to defend themselves having their character called into question? If it is the latter I find that I do well to change the subject with a specific emphasis on the fact that the person or persons being discussed are not present to put clarity on the issues. That on this basis it is pointless to carry on a conversation about this topic. From here there will be two reactions. Either the person acknowledges and accepts that and moves on, or you will find that they just cannot help but come back to the poison. This is how I begin to see the people that I do NOT want around me. They will will bring me down, forever reaching new lows on a daily basis! LOL!

Advertisement