Mentors

I've had a ton of mentors in my life, and not really even knowing it. I started young with my older sisters boyfriends, and I just sort of always was looking for a big brother. Unfortunately, when I was a younger man, as most young men are, I was insecure and very ashamed of myself... Sometimes I'd have mentors where things would go great, and I can still stay in touch now, although I regret not leeping in touch more, I didn't always realize what these men meant to me. But I found it hard to not feel critized even though I was fairly desperate for these men's approval, I didn't always realize these things until hindsight kicked in.

One of my mentors, a karate black belt who also taught kickboxing and was just an all around really cool guy in his 40's and the kind of man a girl in her 20's would want. I admired this man for his general outlook on life, and self confidence, and just the way he was always highly respected and respectful. He told me about his days one time and it was like this... he'd wake up, have breakfast with a few of his business partners, go spar, check on his crews at his brothers eavestroughing company. He was there to make sure the guys were under control and had what they needed, and to do general customer service. From speaking to him, I could tell he simply expected a high level of accountability, and if the guys couldn't live up to it, they couldn't work. he'd go lift weights, drive back to Kemptville, teach a few hours at his dojo between instructing black belts and teaching fitness classes and kickboxing. His club was like a family, and he'd taught the members how to coach each other to be able to coach themselves, so that he only instructed the highest level members, and generally performed along with them, and would always hit the bags in kicboxing that night as well.

This was basically my template for how I wanted to live my life, I had to part ways, as I was going about getting my life together with that, and just fell in love with powerlifting. I haven't spoken to him for a few years, but I'm positive it's still the same story.

That was a tough time when I was closing out high school, and really working to get the grades for university after not giving school any attention for a few years. I was also a young man, and was busy doing what young men do, and that always got in the way of things as well. But when I think back, that was always a wonderful experience for me, and something I try to carry with me always.

However, I've definitely had other mentors, and having to always be in charge running a business 24/7 and being a young man... this was a difficult balance. I have definitely made mistakes and don't stupid things in the last few years, I've done some great stuff as well, but overall, a big feedback I had from business coaches was that i wasn't very open minded. During an insance operating period, it's really hard to work on something like that, surrounded by negative customers and employees, and feeling somewhat at everyones mercy, then to have a business coach try to focus on all your mistakes in a week as well, was just literally more than I could handle. I'm not saying this is an excuse, but believe me, I've seen it happen time and time again to young business owners to a startlingly high degree. The succesful ones were just more upbeat and seemed to turn negatives into positives no matter what the situation, and they were human. I just hadn't developed that yet, and I didn't even know to be aware of it until the last few years. I haven't had the results I've truly wanted in business or in life in general, so that typically means you have to change things, so I've been reading and researching like a madman lately, and I've just seen it time and time again that success in general, whether it be physical, financial, business, sport, spiritual or even ending an addiction is all in the mindset. All succesful people that have gone onto teach have made this connectino, and people who are naturally succesful will tell you the same stuff, but just using different terminology. I've become convinced of this, and have just seen it all over, they go over it in the secret, happiness advantage, 7 habits of highly effective people, secrets of the soviet sports, financial planning, various leadership books, it's all the same stuff.

I could go on and on about that, and sometimes do, but it's lead me to look back at a lot of past mentor relationships... I've made mistakes, and done some good stuff. I always tried my best, but at times that led to my worst. Hindsight can be a serious pain, but I feel to truly be able to take accountabilty you have to just forgive yourself, but that also involves knowing the real reasons everything happened. And once you can do that... you still do a bunch of dumb stuff, but it's much easier to understand it in order to make changes. I don't bother looking at any mistakes my mentors made, those don't matter... It's nothing I can control. But the things I can control I try to make sure I do. One of the things about being accountable, is you have to trust people to come to you if there are problems. Nobody can read minds, but it is my job to hear what they're saying, and to make sure I understand what is actually being said. If you don't understand this, listen to the 7 habits of highly effective people.

I grew up in an environment where it was not acceptable to be upset, or to really talk about it at all. This led me to try to read peoples minds a lot, but generally that just led to expecting the worst, and that's just a sour outlook. I'm not worried about asking now, I typically just love people, and will do anything I can to help someone, I just need them to say something most of the time. If they don't, there's not much I can do. Knowing this about myself, and really believing it make facing situations in general not so bad. It's a lot easier when you only really try to surround yourself with people who will let themselves be happy.

Anyways, I've just been very grateful to all my past mentors lately, I've thought about it a lot, and look forward to gaining new ones, as recently once I started seeing learning as part of my job once again, I've been so excited everyday to learn new things. All usccesful people have a laundry list of mentors, and I look forward to gaining new ones and using past experiences to make the relationships even better than the great ones I had before.