At many points in life will you be confronted with a situation where you will feel the need to do some extra thinking?
There will be times when you feel the need to take decisions which is beyond your reach of thinking.
Thus, at such times you will feel the need of an extra guidance or hand that will motivate you to work better.
You will need an elderly figure that will clear you dilemmas about taking any decision. What you will need in life is a mentor.
Yes, everyone in life needs a mentor. A mentor is the most helpful and the guiding figure in your life.
He or she will be the person to tell if you are on the right path or direction. He or she will be the correct person to be there to guide you when you are facing enough problems to be handles.
Thus, always try an approach such a mentor who will be comfortable with you and you with him. But the common problem everyone faces is who should be your mentor and how should one approach such a mentor.
The ways could be many but which you choose depends upon one’s choice. Here are some of them:-
Why one needs a Mentor?
Rather than approaching the subject directly on how to choose your mentor, you must first know whether you really need that mentor.
Yes, it is important that you know it in the first place, whether you need a mentor after all and that decision could be taken only by you.
Thus, try asking these questions toy yourself:
Why do I need a mentor?
What will a mentor do to me and my career?
How will having a mentor change my life?
Does having mentor mean so much to what I will want to becomes/ if you are able to answer at least two of them positively, may be you are on the road of wanting a mentor.
How to decide who is your mentor?
Thus, now that you r road a direction is clear on having a mentor, all you will need is a little guidance on who could be your mentor.
Remember any learned or verbally proficient person does not excel the level of being a mentor.
Mentors need to be individual appealing to one’s qualities or demands. Put it this way, if you approach botanist for treatment of bones and run to a tailor when you need a pair of sunglasses, you are going to be nothing but disappointed.
Thus make a wise decision and follow these thumb rules before choosing anyone to be a mentor:-
- Make sure the person has the right qualifications (Educational, [past experience, earnings, friend circle, tastes, temperaments and other such factors) to be united to guide someone.
- Ensure the person has coached or guide someone else before you choose that person for mentorship.
- Make sure the person is proficient in your likings or fields of choice. At least, if the person is not that learned enough in your field, you must make sure the person is that educated enough that he or she can research well, ask others and give you an informed decision.
- Compare and judge. Talk to the person well before you take a decision of asking him or her to be your mentor. Go to him or her approach to the person a subject they could discuss about. If you think they have come close to your satisfactory level of answering, choose him or her to be your mentor.
- Never ever choose a mentor based on the background of familiar relations, social circles, friends contacts, neighbors, close acquaintance or money solely. These conditions alone can never qualify the person to be a mentor completely in totality. Many other factors including all of above do count in whom you chose.
What to discuss with your mentor?
Now that you have choose the most important person of your life who is going to guide you with various important decisions for which you will need counseling, the time comes to judge how exactly one must approach the person.
Remember, thinking that you go and tell a person to guide you for mentorship is not going to make him or her completely happy about it.
He or she will want to first analyses and take time out with him or herself to be able to take this decision on their own.
They know that it is a big responsibility that you are giving them and thus they need to be sure how they must go ahead with it.
The foremost thing you must remember is never ever to intimidate that person. Be calm, cool and composed.
The things which you must actually discuss with your mentor must involve about your goals, aspirations, dreams, your methods of achieving them and relatively your problems.
You must be able to place them in your shoes and tell them how important it is for them to need a helping hand who is an expert.
You must also be able to convince them that yes, with some good amount of guidance, you will be able to do something wonderful with your life.
Thus, telling them things like how you have always enjoyed their company. How you have given a value to their words and how you have always been a good listener and student to their ideological mentorship will accentuate your chance of the person getting more convince to be your mentor.
Questions to ask your mentor:
Depending on your situations, you could be having a galore of questions actually.
There would be so many things going on in your mind and all you would want to do is ask those essential questions which will help you judge about your decision of asking the person to be a mentor. These are few examples:-
Q1: What is in life that you most enjoy? (Supposedly if the answer turns out to be teaching, guiding, helping someone or even saying advocating, it seems to be the right choice)
Q2: Try asking questions about the details of your subject choice. If your chosen person is able to answer, you do are suited to have a good mentor.
Q3: Try asking the mentor about his personal life a little. Try and not go deep into it. Just here and there to see if he or she is a balanced person.
If you try finding that correct, move in to his other interesting choices in life like friends or tastes in outings.
You will be able to know more about the person and then voila you can make an informed choice.
Q4: If you are only interested in having a mentor who will be able to tell you about your further future decisions, and then place him with a practical application based question.
Ask him about the point in your life where you took a certain decision and ask him or her for opinions.
If you think the arguments he gives for supporting that opinion holds valid, you have made a clear choice for your mentorship.
Q5: Try judging the available time and longevity of period with your mentor. You can pose questions of his or her work timings and if he has any future plan s of moving out or having a different stay in another country.
If answers go against what you have planned in finding your mentor, you can be sure that things are not going anywhere with him or her.
Examples of how to ask someone to be your mentor:
It is easy to make your mind after this discussion with yourself but when it comes to asking, things start to become a little lose.
Do not worry as some of these ways will gear and make you ready to take the chance to ask your guide to be a mentor.
Way 1: There have been times when I have really admired the way you have given me your piece of advice. Would you please like to extend it to a noted relationship and be my faithful mentor?
Way 2: When you talk or when you tell me something to do with my life, I actually tend to take it very seriously. Thus I have been considering if you can and want to be my mentor because I really admire you as my guide.
Way 3: ( At the coffee house) after you’re done sipping coffee, just asking the waiter to pass a side note along with the cheque asking: – I do not always want you to pay…Can I repay you by being an excellent student. Please be my mentor.
Way 4: You are on your way to school or college and you text your mentor saying…This institution may or may not teach me everything. However being with you has just taught me everything. Please become my life-saving mentor.
Way 5: May be there was this serious problem and the person has helped you either financially or emotionally.
As a thank you note or just after you meet him or her you can narrate this:- For I thank you for every single amount of time and sensitivity you donated me and that it’s true that any level of repayment cannot compensate for the amount of help you gave me.
Thus, in order to be loyally indebted to you forever, please be my mentor.
Way 6: There are times, when all you want to do is cry, sob and say to yourself such failure you are. Or there are times when you want to be with the closest person who will be able to understand you so well.
I want to be with you because even If I genuinely believe I am a failure you are here to tell me how can I be not.
Way 7: I admire the way you have made yourself what you re today. You were nothing but became everything. Your words of wisdom are not only helpful to me but to all.
Now that you genuinely know how interested I am in your qualifications and work, do you really mind being my mentor? Promise to be a good student.
Way 8: What you can do is you can actually behave according to the way he or she would have guided you to be last time.
The using the same example, you can approach the person and say, “I like listening to you because you make me feel good, you have brought out the real good in me and I want this to go in every time in my life. Help me do better, please, be my mentor.”
Way 9: When I had to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea you came as the savior and showed me the only way out, I glee. Thank you but I want more. For being my mentor may not help you in any way but it will give me a lifetime of support and encouragement to be someone. I guess one act of social service would do no harm.
Way 10: When I actually step out and try to see myself in the mirror I see you. It is not craze but the passion to step into your shoes. You motivate me, encourage me and make me want to do better always. I want you to be my mentor so that I can tell the world how lucky I am.
To Wrap Up:
Thus, having a mentor is the most awesome thing in one’s life. However it depends upon you how you preserve that mentorship.
A mentor is supposed to be your guide, philosopher, advisor, counselor, judge and also your teacher. A mentor will shape up your life in the way he or she thinks that it would be right and you will then have to listen to him or her because otherwise things will get complicated.
If you know you have all the capacity to be accepted and giving that certain amount of respect to the opposite person, approach your guide for being a mentor and be the lay student as well.
