It can take time, effort, and persistence to find a wise, nurturing, encouraging mentor. Someone who's really engaged, with a true, ongoing commitment to you and and your success, and who also possesses that specific body of knowledge you're looking for. In the meantime, your goals and advice needs aren't waiting around until you find that person, and neither should you.
What can you do? Be your OWN Wise Mentor.
Why be your own Wise Mentor?
Being your own Wise Mentor means you're THERE for yourself when you're ready for transformation but the teacher has not yet appeared. There are many scenarios in which this is the case.
You need unique, unusual, or odd-combo knowledge. The body of experience you're working within may be just unusual enough to make it hard to find the person with the right combination of skills and knowledge to help you go farther. This is especially true with business professionals who want to grow in specific ways, or sixth-sensory individuals used to working with intuitive as well as physical/logical guidance.
You haven't found that committed someone. You haven't found an individual who is ready to present YOU with the level of collaborative support, investment, and participation you need to thrive.
You have trust woundings. You've been professionally hurt, and opening up to a mentor-mentee relationship requires a higher level of trust than you can give at this time, especially through the discovery phase when you're figuring out whether you really can trust them to work with your deepest interests. This can make it hard to dial in to supportive professional relationships and/or, make you vulnerable to those who pick up on that past energy and take advantage of you.
You're an introvert. Doing all the cold-calling and discovery sessions to reach out and find a mentor who's a good match for you sounds daunting and draining.
You're not yet good at owning your skills in approaching others. You're not the best at self-presenting your skills, and the idea of reaching out triggers you feeling you've done nothing and have nothing to offer, even when your skills are amazing. It's completely unrelated to your real skills and value, and has more to do with barriers and blocks in your ability to perceive it.
You need a mentor NOW. You crave to begin mentored growth immediately, and know that finding a good mentor could take weeks, months, or even years to find the right person.
All these are forces that don't need to be holding you back, don't need you to wait until you feel more ready, and definitely don't need to put coaching or mentoring on hold. For immediate change, you can be hooking up with that specific someone who has the chemistry of being fully invested in bringing out your skills and passions - yourself.
How to be your own Wise Mentor
As with any situation, maintaining the power center within yourself brings you a higher quality of action, thought, and results. So, if you haven't yet found your mentor, or if circumstance conspires to make you shy away from the thought of even looking, bring the power to create that back into yourself by being your own Wise Mentor. Here's how.
Alternate between the roles. Envision yourself in each of the two roles, your Wise Mentor self, and your mentee self, alternately. Pose a question as the mentee, then jump in as your Wise Mentor and respond. You'll immediately see how your perception, clarity, and advice changes, depending on which perspective you're using.
Set goals. Set goals in what each of your roles wants from the mentor-mentee relationship. Write them down, just as if you were working with a regular mentor or coach.
Meet consistently and keep notes. Set a consistent meeting schedule for yourself. Consistency is key. During each meeting, keep a logbook of all the ideas you and your mentor discuss, so that you can re-read them at leisure to reflect on the insights.
Infuse your Wise Mentoring with new ideas. Read widely on your goal topics whether as mentor or mentee. Bring those new inputs to your meetings.
Be serious. Treat your mentor-mentee relationship with all the seriousness you'd give to receiving mentoring from another individual.
Keep your Wise Mentor role positive, supportive, fun, and honest. Often, you're far more hard on yourself critically than any real-life individual would be. Allow your mentor-self to always present with the wise, supportive voice you need to get past any blockages, self-doubt, or self-criticism that you'd otherwise layer on to stifle your best efforts.
Learn more about mentoring. Build your knowledge of how to mentor by reading on the subject. You'll be surprised at how much you can learn and how it directly applies to your success.
The advantages of being your own Wise Mentor
The sooner you begin to work with yourself as your own Wise Mentor, the sooner you can work within a mentoring framework immediately, without holding off, waiting and wondering when you'll find the right person to help you. You'll also get used to working the mentoring process from both sides -- yourself as mentee, needing advice, encouragement, and problem-solving ideas, and yourself as mentor, serving as the wise advisor.
The more you familiarize yourself with this process, the more comfortable you will become with the idea of being a mentor and of receiving mentoring. This can translate into being more able to find a professional mentor in the future, being more ready for the process when you do find one, and being far more familiar with the process such that you're also ready to offer your own investment in others as their mentor.
Your Wise Mentor is waiting RIGHT NOW with fantastic advice for you. What will you and your Wise Mentor work on today? How will you and your Wise Mentor work together to #healworklife?
Keep growing,
Katherine Lieber coaches and trains on achieving self-leadership, limitlessness, energy health, inner power, and healing your inner, wounded professional to recover your core vision, joy, and high-powered performance in the workplace. She is the founder of TitaniumBlue LLC.
Be limitless - be the hero. The world needs you, and it needs your unique vision.
