How could this mentor me?

Since high school, I’ve been lucky enough to have numerous influential mentoring relationships.

The amount of time, money and energy these mentors have saved me is immeasurable.

It’s proof to me that mentoring is more than just a relationship, it’s an inheritance.

But the piece most people miss about this exchange is, mentors don’t always show up in human form. When you come from a curious constitution, searching out each current and particle of existence for truth, there is nothing in this world that can’t be your wise advisor and sage counselor.

Sinetar’s profound book on the mentor’s spirit shows how we people leverage their inborn spiritual intelligence to see the world and everything in it as a potential mentor. If you look and listen hard enough, she writes, it’s all just one big life affirming source of guidance and inspiration. These spiritual guides are all around us, waiting to give generously.

It all depends on our intention and attention.

One question that I’ve found it helpful to ask is:

How could this mentor me?

These words install the proper postural humility. It tells me that no experience is meaningless in my sight, helping me search out the mentor’s spirit that permeates all things. And the wisdom available from these sources have accelerated my learning curve dramatically.

It’s funny, so many people bemoan the frustrating uphill battle of searching for a mentor. They study all these life hacks about how to ask the right questions and how to shortcut their way to wisdom, but they end up treating mentors as unpaid part time life coaches.

Or they end up paying some exorbitant amount of money spend a weekend with some guru, waiting for wisdom to just fall into their laps like fruit from a tree.

But that’s not how the inheritance of mentorship works. Prescribed, lockstep approaches to growth and learning might be efficient and economical, but they hardly inspire lifelong learning.

Truth is, the universe offers us substance, but only if we have humble eyes and curious hearts with which to receive it. Only if we presume that there might be something outside our own experience. 

Only if we learn to ask ourselves, how could this mentor me, at every turn.

With that mindset, the number of wise advisors and sage counselors is infinite.

How are you enhancing your ability to be influenced in the moment?