”If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” John Quincy Adams
There’s a lot of talk about the importance of having mentors and surrounding yourself with people that will help and challenge you to grow. A mentor is defined as a trusted advisor or guide. All of us at one stage or another need a trusted someone with whom we can bounce off ideas, get guidance, go to for counsel, help with the right connections, provide a different perspective, speak truth in love, and point us in the right direction. More often, these are people who have already achieved quite a bit for themselves, have been on the road you want to be on and are in a position to offer guidance based on their experience and wisdom. In addition, these are people with whom we feel comfortable and trustworthy enough to follow in their footsteps.
There is another element though. How would you feel if I were to tell you that every one of us is a mentor in one way or another? Having a mentorship relationship does not have to be a formal process with an agreement on some steps to take and occasional meetings to touch base on progress. If you think about it, there are people in your life that are your mentors without them being aware of that fact (they are also not always people who have achieved more than you either). They are your mentors/role models simply by being themselves and you looking up to them and learning from them. Their actions and words either encourage you, inspire you, give you courage, give you hope etc., yet they don’t know that you are taking certain pages out of the book of their lives. They don’t know that you are observing them, that their actions or by simply being themselves, translates as mentorship to those around them. Yet they are just living their life, pushing their dreams and working just as hard to achieve their goals, be better people and to get to the next level.
By the same token, who you are, your actions, your passions, your dreams, you hobbies, your standards, your principles, your behaviour, your life may be having the same effect on those around you. As you live out your life in every area - it can be professional, spiritual, physical, financial etc, there’s always someone observing you either intentionally or by default, and they can be impacted negatively or positively by it. You may not have a formal mentorship agreement with them, but your life is impacting them somehow. Being true to who you are, can be birthing something in them to be better, to do better, to be more. Yes, being who you are and working to achieve your desires takes discipline, hard work, effort and focus, yet, it is never always just about you. Successful leaders didn’t get to the top alone, but inspired and took others along with them.
Today, I want to remind you that you are a mentor to someone whether you know it or not. You are a mentor to someone whether there is an agreement or not. Everything that you do is under observation and can influence someone else to be better too. So, which pages should the people around you be taking out of the book of your life?
