MENTORING: CUTTING THE TIME IN HALF

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It is great to be back on this page.  Thank you to all who have responded to this blog either by posting a comment, sending an email or commenting on Facebook.  It is an honour to have you in my world and to be able to share my gift and learning experience with you.

I have done my best in the years that I have worked my dream to share the lessons I have learnt in the hope that others will find it easier to reach their goals with less mistakes than I made and with the hope that their dreams will progress faster than if they had to find their way alone.

Today's post and maybe a couple after, we will be looking at the difference that having a Mentoring relationship can make in the time it takes to achieve our goals and the quality of success that we record.  This post is actually informed by a question someone sent in asking how they can find a Mentor or Coach.

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What Is Mentoring?  The word Mentor comes out of the Greek mythology on Odysseus.  When King Odysseus went to fight the Trojan War and left his son behind with his trusted friend, Mentor, to look after.  The war took ten years and Odysseus wandered another decade after the war; all the time that Mentor spent in bringing up his son to become a fine young and responsible young man.

Mentoring is therefore when two people, who otherwise may not have a relationship, intentionally come together with the goal of the more experienced one helping the less experienced grow and achieve greatness in a particular field.

A mentoring relationship is when two people get together with the intention of the Mentor teaching time tested principles that can enhance the life and dream of the Mentee with the goal of creating and adding value to both of them and their society at large.  Mentoring has been used over the years.  

The question becomes why do you need a mentor? 

We all know that experience is the best teacher, the lessons learnt from experience stick faster and longer than those learnt in any formal school environment.  Wise people take advantage of the benefit of another's experience.  There are lessons we don't want to and do not need to learn from our own experience. If we know someone around us who has already learnt them and is willing to pass it on, we should be grateful to learn from them.

Experiences come at a cost, and Mentoring saves us that cost in actual monetary value and in pain and mistakes that come with learning a new thing. Mentoring accelerates the time we should spend on any one principle.  It is like traveling to new territory and having the advantage of going the journey with someone who has been there before.  Mentoring is owning our own human GPS.  We don't get lost and are most likely to arrive our destination faster than if we had to use a map.  Our Mentor can tell us what the map cannot, like what route is free at what time, and which road has the less number of bottlenecks and things like that.

The point of today's post is this: you don't need to reinvent an already existing wheel nor do you need to find the way yourself if you can find someone who is willing to show you the way.

I had published Effectual for about four years when I wanted to change the look and quality.  I knew what I wanted and could draw you a picture, the resources to begin to publish at that level of professionalism and quality was not the problem I faced, my biggest challenge was finding my way to those who offered the services I required. One meeting of not more than an hour with another Publisher, who obliged me the time, was all I required. At the end of that meeting, I had every piece of information I required and contact information of those I needed to make my dream happen, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I learned fast from that experience that what I needed to succeed was not all in what I knew but that I could ask questions and find answers faster than I could if I did it alone.

Whether you are already living a dream or considering one, one of the greatest resources that I will recommend is that you 

a. Identify a Mentor
b. Cultivate a relationship with the Mentor
c.  Nurture the relationship
d.  Begin to reap the harvest of benefiting from his/her experience.

Till next week when I bring you tips on the different kinds of Mentors and how to pick one, remember that smart people do not reinvent an already effective wheel.

Stick with the plan people and you will make it NeverTheLess.

Hugs
Sistar B