Finding Your Mentor Can Help You Fight Your Fears
In a previous article, we came face to face with every reason to be reluctant, to refuse, or to walk away. But, in order to go where nobody has gone before, we have to do what nobody has done before. In short, we give up and risk everything that has been done before and everything that we know.
How can we go from where we are to where we want to be?
Out of the depths of our own doubts, fears, and uncertainties, we desperately need a nudge. We need someone who can propel us forward in our journeys, who can provoke our ability to see possibilities we had not seen before, and who can ignite within us the fire to forge ahead.
For many of us, our mentors may be family members, friends, neighbors, principals, teachers, coworkers, supervisors, coaches, or teammates. Mentors also may be aspirational, fictional, or historical figures we never actually meet. Nonetheless, whoever they may be, mentors provide a critical ingredient for the hero’s journey.
In fictional stories featuring the hero’s journey, mentors allow the heroes-in-training to approach their journeys with greater confidence, knowledge, insights, or training or they may even provide special tools the heroes need to succeed in their quests.
In our own journeys, the mentor role is not altogether different. So what separates the great mentors like Albus Dumbledore in literature, Obi-Wan Kenobi in film, or Oprah Winfrey in real life from everyone else? What should you look for as you seek mentors for your journey?
Mentors See Our Best
Chances are that you have already benefited from mentors. For me, one of the most powerful examples was a teacher I had when I was a junior in high school, even though I did not understand it at the time.
For most of my life, I did not see myself as a leader. As I looked around at my friends and classmates, it seemed that every one of them was more of a leader than I could ever be. After all, they were constantly surrounded by groups of people and seemed to be able to influence others with ease. I, on the other hand, always felt like I was a step or two (or seventeen) behind the popular kids, forever on the outside of the “in” group.
However, Kathy Stern, who taught health and math at my high school, saw things differently. More than that, she saw me differently.
Near the end of my junior year, she approached me to tell me that she had nominated me for a national youth leadership conference in Washington, DC that summer.
What in the world did she see in me?
Our mentors see potential in us before we see it in ourselves. This may be as specific as pointing out to us our strengths or opportunities to lead, or it may be as general as a belief that each of us has unique talents that the world needs.
Whatever the case, the greatest mentors see something bigger for us than we may see for ourselves.
Mentors Show A Way
The second clue to finding great mentors is that mentors show us there is a way. That is, they may not show us the way, but they show us that a way does in fact exist.
As we begin our journeys, sooner or later we will find ourselves “stuck” in a particular situation, and we will have no idea how to move forward toward our goal.
Our mentors can bridge the gap between our current situation and our desired destination, providing the insight needed to get “unstuck”-just the spark we may need for our journey.
The best part? We don’t even have to know them or talk to them to get that spark and they don’t even have to be real.
Although a number of research studies have shown that reading profiles or watching movies featuring heroic figures, from Nobel Prize winners to Mother Teresa, can drive us to higher achievements in the classroom or spur a desire to serve others, recent studies by Rachel White and Stephanie Carlson have extended this phenomenon to even fictional characters such as Batman and Dora the Explorer.
As experimenters instructed the participants to pretend to be any of these powerful fictional characters, sometimes asking them to don some of those characters’ props, the participants demonstrated some of those characters’ best qualities and outperformed the control groups.
Believing in the heroic does, in fact, help us become heroes ourselves.
Author's note: Parts of this post originally appeared in Building up without tearing down: How to cultivate heroic leadership in you and your organization, which was released Summer 2018.
