How to find a great mentor

in #life8 years ago

I am sure we all have someone we would love to spend a day with. Maybe someone like Elon Musk, Linus Torvalds or Warren Buffett and this is very well possible but you'd need to do something spectacular to get their attention. What would a day with your role model be worth to you? $100 000, $500 000, $1 000 000? There are many people who offer mentorships and charge a fee for their time. If you're able to do this, I would highly recommend it because the ROI will be 10X. But with a smaller budget in mind how can we spend time with great mentors?

Social Media

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It is absolutely astounding to me how much free content some great people share with the world via social media. This is the first place to start. Now bear in mind that it's going to take some time to find the genuine people in amongst the mass of superficial content, but they do exist. Do your research before you commit to consuming their content and ask yourself these two questions: 1. What have they done? ( Have they built that company? have they written all those books? ) 2. How long have they been doing this for? You want to spend time with people who have done the things you are striving for and who also have become experts in this area over the period of many years.

Podcasts

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What I really love about podcasts in how convenient it makes content consumption. I always have a couple on my phone ready to go for when I am in the car, walking the dog, or during a flight. Now you may find that the mentors you follow on social media may have a podcast too, but if this is not the case I guarantee you will find something similar. When we really think about this we're spending time with these people and not only are we spending time with them, but they are pouring out some of the richest content they have. It must be or their podcast would not be successful. Again, here, ask your self the two above questions. What have they done and how long have they been doing this for?

Books

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Apart from spending one on one time with someone, I have not found a better way to get mentored than through reading a book. I have found this to be the most concentrated form of information available. I believe it to be so because of the amount of effort and thought it takes to produce a book. A person does not just write a great book. It takes work, it takes commitment and it takes careful revision to produce a book that someone will read from cover to cover. Not everyone is a reader, I know. I wasn't initially but it started for me when I got the Kindle app on my phone and I would read 10 min in the bus on the way to work and 10 min on the way back to camp. I noticed that every two weeks I was buying a new book and when I did some basic math I was blown away by how many I could read over the period of a year.

"You cannot open a book without learning something." Confucius

A book is where a mentor shares some of his/her deepest thoughts, lessons and ideas. They understand that their legacy is recorded in those pages so they will ensure that the written words capture their message in its entirety. Where do you start? Well, choose your area of interest, go to Amazon or similar retailer and start with one of the high ranking books in that category. In many cases, the mentor/s you've chosen on social media and podcasts also have written a book. Audiobooks are another great way to consume an authors content on the move.

In conclusion

We should at all times be investing in ourselves and positioning our lives to learn. It is most definitely possible to meet these great people of our time in person but until that day comes we cannot sit around and not learn. We must progress daily and use whatever resource we have at our disposal to do this. With the amazing progression of technology, we now live in possibly one of the greatest times in human history. We have access to information that the previous generation only dreamed about and we should grab this with open arms.

Below I have listed just a few of some of the genuine mentors I follow. Feel free to check them out and let me know if you have any questions regarding my post. Thanks for reading.

Andy Frisella - http://themfceo.com/
Dean Graziosi - https://www.deangraziosi.com/
Tim Ferris (@timferris) - https://tim.blog/
Grant Cardone (@grantcardone) - https://grantcardone.com/

Photo by William Iven on Unsplash
Photo by Jonathan Velasquez on Unsplash
Photo by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

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"We should at all times be investing in ourselves and positioning our lives to learn." - this!!!

i too believe in always pursuing knowledge and wisdom. living life day by day without learning something new is the same as being dead in my opinion. thanks for this wonderful post my friend! love it! :)

Thank you for the kind comment

Nice post. Some great mentors you listed.

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