Selecting the Right Mentor

Finding coaches and mentors is an important mission, and you will no doubt have several over the course of your life. It is critical that you choose them wisely. Your mentor is someone to whom you’ll be committing a great deal of time and attention, and who ideally will take a very focused interest in you as well.

The process of selecting a mentor begins, first of all, with a clear-sighted view of what your life’s goals are, both for your career and your personal life.

If you’re just starting out as an associate in a large law firm, you might choose one of the senior partners as your mentor, or perhaps a partner in another firm you’re familiar with. If you’re just starting a family, and you’re facing the lifestyle adjustments that kids require, your mentor could very likely be someone who is reaching the other end of this very exciting, but demanding, process. In any case, your mentors should be people whose experience can serve as a model for reaching your most significant goals in the most important areas of your life.

Selecting a mentor is not just a matter of finding someone you like or feel comfortable identifying with. Make sure that the mentors you choose have a genuine history of success. I’m continually amazed by the number of people who look to only superficially successful people as role models for achievement. Even experts can make conspicuous mistakes of judgment in this area. The next time you’re in a bookstore or library, take a look at the best-selling books on business and management from four or five years ago. There’s an excellent chance that some of the companies cited as models of efficiency are now out of business. I don’t bring this up to disparage anyone’s business expertise, but simply to point out the need for great care in selecting a coach whose success will stand the test of time.

In addition to selecting your coaches based on their ability to achieve goals similar to your own, choose mentors who in the process have overcome some of the same obstacles you’re facing. Ideally, a mentor really represents both what you want to become in a particular area of life and what you want to do. Seeing your mentors today is like seeing what you intend to be. The coach has arrived at or been to places similar to where you want to go.

Choosing a celebrity or public figure as a mentor is a very questionable decision. If at all possible, select a mentor with whom you can actually spend time and with whom you enjoy having conversations and exploring ideas.

Of course, you can have admired historical personages, authors, educators, or artists as role models. If
you discover someone with whom you feel a special affinity, make an effort to obtain everything that person has written or said. Really become a student of the person’s work and life. Don’t just admire him or her; genuinely learn from him or her, as I have learned from the life and wisdom of Benjamin Franklin.

One of the most interesting aspects of selecting a mentor is the fact that one can rarely separate people’s tangible achievements from the qualities of their character. More than their bank accounts or their real estate holdings, role models prove by the conduct of their lives that they’re worth emulating.

— Denis Waitley

Success (Poem)

Success is speaking words of praise, 

In cheering other people’s ways.
In doing just the best you can,
With every task and every plan.

It’s silence when your speech would hurt,

Politeness when your neighbor’s curt.
It’s deafness when the scandal flows,

And sympathy with others’ woes.

It’s loyalty when duty calls,
It’s courage when disaster falls.
It’s patience when the hours are long,

It’s found in laughter and in song.

It’s in the silent time of prayer,

In happiness and in despair.
In all of life and nothing less,
We find the thing we call success.

A Letter from a Mother (Story)

If you're a SON or a DAUGHTER, you have to read and share this. 

“My child, the day you see I’m getting old, I ask you to please be patient, but most of all, try to understand what I’m going through.

If when we talk, I repeat the same thing a thousand times, don’t interrupt to say: “You said the same thing a minute ago”… Just listen, please. Try to remember the times when you were little and I would read the same story night after night until you would fall asleep.

When I don’t want to take a bath, don’t be mad and don’t embarrass me. Remember when I had to run after you making excuses and trying to get you to take a shower when you were just a child?

When you see how ignorant I am when it comes to new technology, give me the time to learn and don’t look at me that way… remember, honey, I patiently taught you how to do many things like eating appropriately, getting dressed, combing your hair and dealing with life’s issues every day… the day you see I’m getting old, I ask you to please be patient, but most of all, try to understand what I’m going through.

If I occasionally lose track of what we’re talking about, give me the time to remember, and if I can’t, don’t be nervous, impatient or arrogant. Just know in your heart that the most important thing for me is to be with you.

And when my old, tired legs don’t let me move as quickly as before, give me your hand the same way that I offered mine to you when you first walked.

When those days come, don’t feel sad… just be with me, and understand me while I get to the end of my life with love.

I’ll cherish and thank you for the gift of time and joy we shared. With a big smile and the huge love I’ve always had for you, I just want to say, I love you… my child.” - Unknown

Profit From Failure (Poem)

The test of a man is the fight he makes,

The grit that he daily shows;
The way he stands on his feet and takes
Fate’s numerous bumps and blows.
A coward can smile when there’s naught to fear,
When nothing his progress bars;
But it takes a man to stand up and cheer
While some other fellow stars.

It isn’t the victory, after all,
But the fight that a brother makes;
The man who, driven against the wall,
Still stands up erect and takes
The blows of fate with his head held high;
Bleeding, and bruised, and pale,
Is the man who’ll win in the by and by,
For he isn’t afraid to fail.

It’s the bumps you get, and the jolts you get,
And the shocks that your courage stands,
The hours of sorrow and vain regret,
The prize that escapes your hands,
That test your mettle and prove your worth;
It isn’t the blows you deal,
But the blows you take on the good old earth,
That show if your stuff is real.

Read the Right Books

“People are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.” — As a Man Thinketh

We spend thousands of dollars a year for clothing, cosmetics and other items to change or improve our outward appearance, but very little money or time to change our inward condition. Many people easily spend an hour a day brushing, flossing, bathing and shaving the outside, but find every reason in the world not to spend even a few minutes a day improving the inside.

How do you apply what you learn from As a Man Thinketh? Since it is our thoughts that determine the life we will have, you must focus on doing those things that will change your thoughts, and nothing is more effective at changing your thoughts than reading the right books.

I first read As a Man Thinketh because of Charlie “Tremendous” Jones. I had attended a seminar where he spoke and he had a table set up at the seminar where, among other things, he offered a huge discount on a big bundle of various personal-development and self-help books. I bought the big bundle because I’m a sucker for a “good deal.” As it turned out, it was one of the best deals of my life, because several years later, when I finally got around to reading the little book, As a Man Thinkethliterally changed my life.

Here is what Charlie Jones wrote in the foreword to the book that I purchased: “You are today the same you’ll be in five years from now, except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read. The people you meet can’t always be with you, but what you read in books can remain with you a lifetime. How often we hear of individuals who began a new era in their lives from the reading of a single book.”

Why not start a new habit today? Spend just fifteen minutes every day before going to bed or upon rising, and read from a personal-development book or biography of someone you admire. At the end of the year you will have read about 12 books—at the end of five years about 60 books! Through your changed thoughts you will have become much more like the “vision you enthrone in your heart.”

As English writer Aldous Huxley observed, “Every person who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant, and interesting.”

And that’s worth thinking about.

- Vic Johnson

What our Mother went through for us

Our Mother carried us inside of her womb for nine whole months, she felt sick for months with nausea, then she watched her feet swell and her skin stretch and tear. 

She struggled to climb stairs, she got breathless quickly and even a simple task like putting her shoes on was a huge struggle for her. She suffered many sleepless nights while we kicked and squirmed inside of her and while we demanded that she scoffed junk at 3am, she then went through EXCRUCIATING PAIN to bring us into this world. (FACT: A human body can bear only up to 45 del (unit) of pain. Yet at time of giving birth, she feels up to 57 del (unit) of pain. This is similar to 20 bones getting fractured at a time.)

She became our nurse, our chef, our maid, our chauffeur, our biggest fan, our teacher, our agony aunt and our best friend. She's struggled for us, cried over us, fought for us, put herself second for us, hoped the best for us and has driven herself insane with worry for us but never has she asked for anything in return because she loves us and did it all on love alone!

Most of us take our Mums for granted but there are people who have lost or have never even seen theirs. If you have a loving Mother who did all of this for you, you are very lucky, never devalue her worth because one day, you'll wish you hadn't!

Father Forget...

If you are a PARENT or a LEADER, you must read and share this message! 

Listen, son; I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.

There are things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a twoel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, "Goodbye, Daddy!" and I frowned, and said in reply, "Hold your shoulders back!"

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came Up the road, I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before you boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive - and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, form a father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. "What is it you want?" I snapped.

You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding - this was my reward to your for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too muchof youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.

And there was so much that was good and fine and true in yourcharacter. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself overthe wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!

It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you alugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: "He is nothing buy a boy - a little boy!"

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother's arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.