Reasons You Need a Mentor

 

Setting goals and reaching them includes identifying the tools necessary to increase your probability of success. A mentor, also known as a coach, is an important tool that may help you reach the goals you’ve set for yourself. But why do you need a mentor?

Reasons you need a mentor include:

• Accountability for your decisions
• Increases your confidence
• Successful people have mentors
• Learn the unknown
• Learn things from other people and their experiences
• Learn to be more strategic
• Increase probability of success
• Observe and duplicate what they do
• Inspires you when times are tough
• Help avoid costly mistakes
• Has connections you don’t have
• Offers an unbiased point of view
• Offers encouragement and empowerment
• Can cost you nothing but your time

Accountability when you need it

A mentor is someone that you can check-in with about your progress. Accountability is key to accomplishing your goals. Everyone needs someone that’s going to hold them to the promises they made to themselves. All successful people have someone that holds them accountable. Your mentor, also known as your coach, gives feedback and perspective so you can perform on the highest level.

If you know you’re the type of person that has a hard time keeping promises to yourself, a mentor is crucial to making sure you aren’t making empty promises. Get the accountability you need to keep going from a great mentor.

Mentors increase your confidence

Always surround yourself with the people you want to become. We are what we consume and a reflection of the company that we keep. We can live up to the standards of our environment through great mentorship. Big things require you to be surrounded by big people.

It’s easy to get intimidated by people who have the life that you aspire to create for yourself. However, those people are eager and ready to share information so that you too can have the life that they live. Don’t be afraid of the confidence that you’re going to attain from surrounding yourself with people who are doing great things. That greatness will rub off on you if you’re committed to doing the work that’s required.

Successful people have mentors

Successful people don’t become successful just because they worked hard but they also had people they admire that inspired them. Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama are just two examples of successful women that had mentors that motivated and inspired them in their personal and professional lives.

Mentors can be a family member or even someone that you don’t know personally. Even people who have reached the highest of heights in their personal or professional lives, also have a coach to help them navigate through many important moments. If successful women also have people that they work with and look up to, then you can too.

Learn the unknown

You don’t know what you don’t know. A mentor helps to expose you to new ideas and solutions that you may have never considered before. A mentor can open your mind to a new way of thinking which could also create many more possibilities than you had ever imagined.

When you’re working with a mentor, be ready and prepared to be exposed to the unknown. Understand that learning things that you’ve never been exposed to before can be uncomfortable, but never forget that when you’re uncomfortable that means you’re growing.

Learn from the experiences of others 

Each one of us has particular experiences that we can share with others to provide a new perspective. When working with a mentor, it allows you to learn other ways of getting things done that you may not have known.

A mentor helps you avoid some of the same mistakes they made which results in wasting valuable time and sometimes money. Take the opportunity to learn from their mistakes so that you can spend more time focused on the things that will end in a positive result, instead of things that will actually set you back which may actually stop you from pushing forward.

Learn to be more strategic

Being busy doesn’t also mean that you used your time wisely. Being strategic allows you to get the most out of the resources and yourself. A mentor can help you work more strategically when you’re trying to accomplish your goals.

Sometimes learning a new strategy can be something that you can read about in a book, but other times good strategies come from individuals that have already accomplished the things that you’re attempting to do. A mentor can help you use your time more wisely and the resources available to you so you can get the most out of everything that you need.

Increase probability of success

When we set goals for ourselves we all come into it with the intention of making those things a reality. A good mentor can help increase your probability of success. When you’re working with someone that allows you to ask the questions that you need to and is willing to give you honest and unfiltered feedback, it can greatly improve the chances that everything that you set out to do will become a reality.

If you know that the things that you’re striving to accomplish might be tough, having a mentor there to provide guidance and coaching can ensure that it’s more likely to happen. If you really want to be successful you try to identify the things that will actually increase the likelihood of success. A mentor, a good one, doesn’t guarantee success but it can certainly increase the probability that it will happen.

Observe and duplicate what they do

Successful people also love to share or give you insight into what they do so that you can duplicate those behaviors. When I first wanted to learn more about computer programming, a colleague told me to stay after work and ask other individuals that knew how to do the things I wanted to learn how to do them. He told me that those people love to share information about what they do on a daily basis because they wanted to see other people succeed as well.

Mentors will allow you to see how they work so you can duplicate the behaviors that work for you. Understand everything they do may not work for you, but you can identify the elements that do work for you and duplicate those behaviors. if you have an opportunity to shadow your mentor do it.

Inspires you when times are tough

Seeing your mentor do great things can also inspire you to keep going when times are tough. One of my favorite mentors is Daymond John. What I like about Daymond is he shares not only his successes, but also the struggles that he has encountered through different business ventures. He does a great job not just focusing on the successful portions of his life but also the times when maybe a lot of the things that he attempted to do were unsuccessful or how he could have done things better.

Seeing your mentor grinding and pushing forward can be a true inspiration to keep you learning and growing. When you see that the people that you look up to are always trying to learn more and do better than they did yesterday, then you have no excuse when it’s time for you to make the effort for your life. Find you a great mentor or mentors so that you can continue to be inspired even when you think you might want to quit.

Mentors can help avoid costly mistakes

Successful people have made a lot of mistakes and sometimes those mistakes have been extremely costly. A good mentor will share ways to avoid wasting your time and your money on things that will yield no results. Listen to them.

It’s good to learn from someone who’s already done the things that you’re thinking about doing that will never lead anything good. Helping you avoid costly mistakes can put you in a position to spend more time doing the things that will actually lead you closer to the life that you want to live.

Mentors have connections you don’t have

Earlier I said surround yourself with big people when you’re striving for big things. But sometimes you don’t have the connections to get in the room with the big people that are doing the things that you are attempting to try to do. A mentor is helpful when it comes to connecting with the people who have the life that you’re trying to duplicate.

Not only can a mentor connect you with the people that you may need to get to the next level when it comes to accomplishing your goals, they may also have the investment capital, skills, and expertise that you need. This is why it is important to have a good mentor or mentors because it exposes you to things that you may not have had access to on your own.

Mentors offer an unbiased point of view

A mentor is someone that you can obtain feedback that has an unbiased point of view and has no stake in whether or not you succeed. They aren’t trying to sell you something or get you to pay extra. Their goal is to see and you succeed.

A mentor allows you to get information on what improvements you can make and you can even bounce ideas off your mentor. This can save you time and money and a lot of frustration. If you have a mentor obtain an unbiased point of view because you’re going to need it.

Mentors offer encouragement and empowerment

Another reason you need a mentor is for encouragement and empowerment. When you’re trying to accomplish something important, having words of encouragement and empowerment can help you keep going. A mentor can offer the encouragement and empowerment you need to push beyond your circumstances. They have survived tough times and can give you the words you need to hear when you’re trying to navigate through difficult situations as well.

Mentors can cost nothing but your time

Not all mentors require you to pay a fee in order to get the coaching you need. Some mentors are available to you free of change but cost you nothing but your time. Mentors can be found online via YouTube or in your personal life.

You can also obtain coaching from mentors by reading books written by the people you admire. Follow these people on social media so that you can learn from them directly. Reply to their posts with calls for action. You may get a direct response from your mentor and get the coaching you really desire.

A mentor can become the secret sauce to making the progress you’ve always wanted. If we’ve been lucky or purposeful, we’ve been able to have several mentors throughout our life helping to navigate through difficult situations and decisions.

A mentor doesn’t guarantee you will accomplish everything you’ve attempted, but they can surely help you remove your blinders and focus your attention where it should be. Get connected with a mentor as soon as you can so you can begin your journey toward the life you’ve always dreamed of.