That One Person

We need one person in our life who can be very real with us and give us honest feedback. Someone who can help us identify our shortcomings. 

The word Mentor has become very popular, mostly in a career aspect. But pretty much any aspect/area of life can be positively impacted by the right mentorship. Question is how to define a mentor?

Mentor is someone who can be brutally honest with us. Hopefully a lot more honest than brutal – sometimes it can be vice versa, some enjoy being brutal more than being honest.

Mentorship in teenage and young adulthood can be life changing, nowadays it’s also kind of become a cool thing – having a mentor. One practical example is a simple one – choosing a career. Few people are either very clear about why and what they want to study and do for their career. But the majority of us make decisions based on influence from parents, peers, what’s trending on social media and random factors. A good mentor can guide that person to make the right decision. It takes time to develop the relationship, get to know each other, get comfortable, trust the other person and then earn the other person’s trust. 

Another practical example and perhaps one that would rank numero uno in rankings for cause for most distress – relationships. I have nothing to add here, I recently got married 🙂 Please refer to Swami Ji’s videos, articles and books.

The big challenge with a good mentor is being humble enough to earn their trust so they can tell us the truth. The fact is we don’t know what we don’t know. Once we know that, it becomes easier to understand why mentorship and guidance matters. 

There is always this one person who is causing problems in our life – mostly that person changes time to time. Then there’s this one person who can be a mentor who we trust and accept. If we can focus on the latter, we do ourselves and the world a big favor. 

I think to be happy in life, there is only a very few number of people ( probably in single digits ) that would probably contribute the most to the quality of our life. One of them would be a mentor. 

This brings me to a business idea – an app that lets us be friends/follow with only 9 or 10 people? 🙂