Mentors: The secret to making your life more successful

Last week over lunch, a friend and I were reflecting that it was too bad people only got to live life once. We then each shared a few ideas about what we would do differently if we had an opportunity to go back and start all over knowing what we know now.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen (well, unless you have a time machine or believe in reincarnation). However, we do have the next best thing:

Mentors

People who have walked the road before us can give us the insight and advice that we lack.

Mentors share with us what their opportunities and challenges were when they were at the same stage in life that we’re at now. They can illuminate the path because, let’s face it, life is full of foggy, confusing decisions and it’s not always easy to know what to do.

How to find a mentor

Start by figuring out what your own goals in life are. This might not seem like the most obvious place to start but it will help you to find the right mentor and it will help you and your mentor get a strong start.

Next, identify the people who you aspire to be like. Use your goals as a guideline — whose life reflects the accomplishment of the goals you have set out for yourself? Another way to find the right mentor is to think about whose life you envy. Although we should eradicate envy and jealousy from our lives, a little envy is a good guide to help you find the perfect mentor. Whose life do you envy? Whose job/business do you envy? Who has the healthy-living habits or the wealth-building habits or the relationship-growing habits that you envy?

Once you’ve found some potential mentors, approach them and ask. Just ask something as simple as, “hey, I’m looking for a mentor and I was wondering if you would spend an hour or two with me every month.” Don’t ask them for a huge commitment (although you’ll probably find that they will happily give more).

Then get started. Set up an initial meeting and share your goals and why you have chosen them to be your mentor. Ask for their help and insight to accomplish your goals. Ask lots of questions and LISTEN. Listen to what they have to say. At the end of your meeting, thank them and set up a meeting the next month.

Then, go out and put their advice in action. Don’t harass them but send them brief, periodic updates through the month to let them know what your progress is and to get some course correcting suggestions as you go.

By finding mentors and learning from them, we can have the best possible solution to the “if I knew then what I know now” problem.

My Bucket List

I think it’s important to have a list of things that we’d like to do or accomplish as we each journey through our individual lives. It helps keep us on track with some of the bigger, or even smaller things that we’d like to try at least once as we go through. Remember, we only go through life once, better to do it now rather than leave it till later.

It can also be a useful tool to show those people around you just what sort of a person you are, and what types of things you have an interest in. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone who see’s your list goes one step further and offers to help you with one of your goals.

(I was out driving with a friend one day, and as we drove by the Airport, I commented on a nice looking helicopter out front, I commented that I’d always wanted to fly in one, but never had as yet. Turns out his company needed him to rent one the following week to video an area they were going to be laying some pipe. He offered, I accepted, and the following week I spend two hours flying in the very helicopter I had commented on.

Scratched one more off my list!

I’ll share with you my own list in the hopes that it helps you to either create your own, or simply gives you a few things you’d like to add to your own.

My Bucket List

Completed

Not Completed

1.       Make someone laugh till they cry 2.       Laugh till I cry 3.       Find true love 4.       Befriend someone I don’t like 5.       Befriend a wild animal 6.       Be celibate for a whole year 7.       Fly in a helicopter 8.       Write a poem 9.       Dive to 225 feet 10.   Feed a wolf eel 11.   Feed a wild seal 12.   Pet a wild skunk 13.   Catch a bird with my bare hands 14.   Catch a fish with my bare hands 15.   Dive in a sub-marine 16.   Dive a sunken ship 17.   Dive with sharks 18.   Go to a museum 19.   Go to a wax museum 20.   Go to a planetarium 21.   Do a puzzle 22.   Save someone’s life 23.   See a play 24.   Drive a hummer 25.   drive a corvette 26.   Drive an 18 wheeler 27.   Be more assertive 28.   Go to college 29.   Get a tattoo 30.   Type at 65 words per minute 31.   Learn a poem 32.   Climb a mountain 33.   Swim across Lake Okanagan 34.   Skydive 35.   make  a collage 36.   Write a song 37.   Find silver in the wild 38.   Find nickel in the wild 39.   Hunt once 40.   Eat what I kill 41.   Spend a month in the wilderness 42.   Visit a ghost town 43.   Spend the night in jail 44.   Own a house 45.   Own my own business 46.   Love a child 47.   Drive across Canada 48.   Try Sushi 49.   Drive at 170 MPH 50.   Achieve 230 pounds at 9% body fat 51.   Weigh 270 pounds of muscle 52.   Bench press 400 pounds 53.   Bench press 500 pounds 54.   Give up Christmas to feed the homeless 55.   Be Happy 56.   Shave my head for Cancer 57.   Own a horse 58.   Own a dog 59.   Build an amazing computer system 60.   Build a website 61.   Go to a rock concert 62.   Buy property on the moon 63.   Go ocean fishing 64.   Go to the Aquarium 65.   Read the bible 66.   Read the Koran 67.   Get married 68.   Volunteer at the SPCA 69.   Watch a movie entirely in subtitles 70.   Watch a movie alone in a theatre 71.   Talk to someone famous 72.   Do lots of good deeds 73.   Be in two places at once 74.   Sing Karaoke 75.   Change a diaper 76.   Go to a comedy show 77.   Give someone a chance 78.   Make another list

1.       Write a book 2.       Fly a plane 3.       Go up in a hot air balloon 4.       Fly a hang glider 5.       Para glide 6.       Swim with Dolphins 7.       See an opera 8.       Go to a ballet 9.       Solve the rubics cube 10.   Drive a Ferrari 11.   Learn another language 12.   Learn a programming language 13.   Learn sign language 14.   Sleep in a hammock 15.   Spend the night on the beach 16.   Freefall from 10,000 feet 17.   Ride a horse on the beach 18.   See the Grand Canyon 19.   Find gold in the wild 20.   Write a program 21.   Visit the Dalai Lama 22.   Have a family 23.   Learn to cook 24.   Learn to play an instrument 25.   Invent something 26.   Make a difference 27.   Ride a camel 28.   Go whitewater rafting 29.   Volunteer for Habitat  for Humanity 30.   Make a million dollars 31.   Be debt free 32.   Go up in the CN Tower 33.   Visit the Eiffel tower 34.   Visit the Louvre 35.   Visit the North Pole 36.   Visit the Pyramids 37.   Visit the Eiffel tower 38.   Visit the Empire State Building 39.   Learn how to juggle 40.   Play paintball 41.   Earn a hundred thousand dollars a year 42.   Sleep on a boat 43.   Go rock wall climbing

 

And I am continually on the lookout for new and exciting things to add to my list, so if you the reader would like to share your own “Bucket List” with us, I look forward to reading them!

Once again thank you all for reading TheHappySelf.com

Warren

End of the Worst Decade or Beginning of your Best?

Will this New Year’s Day ring in the end of the worst decade ever?

That’s the claim made by Time Magazine, which recently featured an eye-catching cover of a crying baby in a party hat with the headline “Decade from Hell.”

According to Time, some of the worst events of the “worst decade ever” began with the disputed election of George W. Bush as President, which was followed by the 9/11 Terrorist attacks.  There were continuing military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and a series of major natural disasters, including a tsunami in the South Pacific, Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. South, and major earthquakes in India and China.  As the decade ends, we have double digit unemployment and a global economic crisis.

Granted it was a tough decade, but hardly the worst ever.

Those who are familiar with history can think of rougher decades, such as the 1930s, which saw the Great Depression, or the 1940s, when World War II brought worldwide chaos.  The 1860s were another rough decade in the U.S. due to the Civil War.  And then there were the 1340s, when the Black Plague led to the deaths of almost half the population of Europe.  Viewing this past decade with respect to history puts things in perspective.  We’ve had a tough decade, but probably not the worst ever.

By focusing solely on the problems of the past decade, Time Magazine is engaging in the type of thinking that leads many people to anxiety and depression.

Read more..

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