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If you’ve consumed any self-help books (like Mastery by Robert Greene), interviews of successful people (like Warren Buffett), or content from self-help gurus (like Tai Lopez), you’ve heard how important it is to get a mentor.
The problem is that the current image of having a mentor out there is flawed. It caused me to have a super narrow, perfectionist idea of what a mentor is.
Because of this, I thought that I had never had a mentor in my life because I had to have determined my life purpose and a rich expert in the field that I got feedback with multiple times a week, if not every day, to teach me — someone I spent hours with.
I had this twisted idea that a mentor had to be some old, wise guy who stays with me for years throughout my years in school and guides me towards the wealth, passion, and mastery of my skill. Heck, I even wished he did everything for me: decided if I should follow a certain career path, tell me the secret truth about the world on dating, fitness, happiness, and so on.
But the truth is that this mystical being doesn’t exist.
Jack Welch is widely regarded as one of the best CEO’s of the era. He delivered billions of dollars to GE’s bottom line, having worked his way up the company from the lowest engineer position over three decades. His passage in his book Winning describes what a true mentor is.
He claims he has had younger employees who worked under him that was his mentor for a few months when he was transitioning to another industry of the business.
Simply put, Jacks’ definition of a mentor is a lot looser.
It’s anyone who has taught him something useful in life.
He’s had tons of mentors through life and he still does.
I trust Jack’s advice more than most people and I think this is the secret to finding a mentor. Rather than chasing some imaginary man that doesn’t exist (no one knows the A to Z truth about how to succeed in dating, fitness, happiness, etc. — we only try our best to find that out through different tools like science and history), he finds and honors everyone who has helped him become more successful by teaching him something.
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Photo: Getty Images