Harness Your Opportunities for Free Mentoring as a Youth
In continuation on this series on Maximizing the Treasure of Your Youth, I’d like to show you another treasure you have as a youth – your opportunity to get mentored by many people for free.
Mentors Give you Lift in Life
You see, in life you can hardly move forward as much and fast as you should unless you have the privilege of being guided by someone or people who have gone ahead of you. That’s what mentors do for you.
The truth is that as a young person you still don’t know so much and therefore can benefit from a lot of free coaching opportunities that are more like crumbs from the premium coaching available in your environment – family, church and society.
Your Free Coaching Opportunities
One of the reasons why you can get such coaching is that truly successful people take pleasure in transmitting what they know to you without charging you a dime. Therefore, if you show any serious interest in learning from them, they will easily and quickly oblige you.
Even those that wouldn’t want to mentor you or give you free counsel for fear of your dominating them would do that when you are a youth because they don’t see you as threat or competition. They may not tell you as much they know and you really don’t need to know all they know. The much they can tell you will suffice since you are just starting out.
Moreover, society generally carter for the youths and have a provision for their mentoring; that’s why you can easily get access to good mentorship programmes from government organizations, NGOs and your church.
You can equally connect with mentors from a far. Use social media and internet to connect to people of like mind and simply listen. This is the easiest, cheapest and quickest. All you need to is to follow them and as they drop tips, take them seriously and apply them in your life as they drop.
What I have done so far I to show you the huge opportunities for free mentoring available for you. However, despite all of the opportunities, many youths hardly harness the treasure of mentoring.
Seize Your Mentoring Opportunities
One reason for this is ignorance of the lift that having a mentor offers. A mentor is someone who has gone ahead of you in a particular course of life. He has gotten what you only aim to have and can show you how. He saves you the pain of avoidable mistakes by showing you what works and what doesn’t work.
Many youths don’t take advantage of mentoring because they are too full of themselves. They think they are so intelligent to need a mentor Intelligence cannot be equated to the value that is gained through mentoring.
What you read and got top grade in school on is largely theoretical; the person that has gone ahead of you knows what obtain in real life and has devised a means of navigating common challenges and shortening distance between starting and result. Relaying on your intelligence and skill and despising the power of a mentor is actually taking the longer route to your destination.
You don’t have to agree with a mentor in every sense of it; but there must be one or two lessons you can pick from him. You can equally learn how not to do things by observing what is not working for him. By all means be humble enough to expose yourself to necessary mentoring opportunities around you.
One other reason many youths shy away from mentoring opportunities is their craving for independence from other people. They want to brag as being self-made. This, I am sorry to say, is plain foolishness! The truth of life is that nobody is self-made. Yes, none.
Successful people like Isaac Newton said that they saw farther because they stood on the shoulders of those that were ahead of them. Bishop David Oyedepo gives credit to powerful people that mentored him and transformed his life through their books. That’s why I adjudge the desire to brag as being self-made by some youths as plain stupid.
Please don’t allow the craving for independence from others rob you of your huge opportunities to learn from those ahead of you and move faster in life. If they chose to brag about making you, allow them. What you should be concerned is your succeeding and reaching your maximum potential by their input.
I have also found that many youths, even when they chose to get mentoring from people, fall of out with their mentors or limit how much blessing they get from the mentors because their differences with the mentor.
See, you don’t have to agree with your mentor in everything; just ensure you are together on what really matters. If he, for instance, likes wearing native, that’s no problem at all. Wear what you like and let him wears his. And if he starts pushing you to his preferences, please blend; it’s neither a sin nor will kill you.
By the way, before you approach someone to be your mentor; I expect that you should take a closer look at them to really understand, at least, the core of their ideals and values. That will help you decide whether they are the right fit for you or not.
I cannot possibly sign up for life mentoring from someone who thinks the Holy Bible is a literature text; instead of a document containing direction for every aspect of my life. My reason is that the Bible is my manual for living and I am not even living up to standard.
My relationships should encourage me to get results; become my best without tempering with the truth in that document. The one doesn’t believe in the Bible can mentor me on how to buy the best phone; become a better marketer but hardly how to live my life!
So, even when you don’t agree with your mentor in every sense; learn as much as possible from them and reject as much as is wrong from them as well.
My point?
Give your life a boost with abundant of free mentoring that is available in your environment. Be humble enough to learn from those that have gone ahead of you and don’t just learn; put your knowledge to practice!
