You have never seen your own face! You have only seen a reflection of your face! This is the reason using a mentor is critical to your personal and leadership development.
Well, not the exact reason, but it relates, strongly, to the reason you need a mentor.
Because our eyes are a part of our face, essentially - in our face, looking out - we never actually see our face. We use a mirror as an aid for feedback as to show us how presentable we are... or aren't.
The mirror is not us, it will never be us. It can't decide what we should look like or what we should wear. A mirror merely reflects back to us the image we present to the world. It let's us see hair out of place, sleep crust in the corner of the eyes, and reflects back the radiant, or not, smile that we give others.
The primary role of a mentor, like the mirror, is to reflect back the image we present to the world through our vision, mission, goals, hope's and dreams.
We are essentially stuck in our own faces, looking out, and not always conscious of whether what we do aligns with who we are. We are not always aware of the "grooming" we may require.
When selecting suitable mentors (yes, you should have more than one) to guide your life's journey, consider the following:
○ The mentor should reflect you, not be you, nor get you to be them. The mentor should reflect back your purpose and actions, and how these are viewed by the rest of the world.
○ With the use of wisdom and experience, the mentor should help you align who you are with what you want to achieve. Cars, houses, and fat bank accounts are not who you are, these are thing with which we reward ourselves for the effort of living deliberately.
○ A good mentor should never take responsibility for your choices or results. The responsibilty is ours, and only ours. Yes, the mentor should guide the options from which you choose, and point out the consequences of each, but they should never make the decisions for us.
Working with a mentor allows us to get a different perspective on the world. If we change how we look at something, what we look at changes. Using a mentor as a mirror helps us get real about our personal and leadership growth and grooming.
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