Do you believe all newborns are born equal? Of course not! The journey to one’s destiny starts right from the time a newborn arrives in this world. Some part of it is luck. For instance: If one is born in a royal family or in the lower end of the pyramid. Unfortunately, real Luck isn’t that but how good your parents are as mentors.
Why Parents Are Our First Mentors
It is an accepted fact that parents nurture and shape future of their kids. Like a building which does not have a rock solid foundation, cannot stand for long, parents also need to build a foundation for their kids. Sometimes parents mistake this foundation as love for their kids.
These are two different aspects. Training kids need time, dedication, effort and more importantly a plan. A long-term plan. A 20 year plan to put those fundamentals in place. What your kids will turn out to be 20 years hence depends on that plan. So, if the parents don’t have a plan, it’s unlikely that the kid will have a robust foundation.
Why Mentors Matter
Once the kid grows up and starts the next big phase of his professional life- that’s starting his career, unfortunately, his luck runs out. Why? Millions of young guns start their career every year. Many of them have very strong fundamentals in place like excellent academic record, skills to adapt to the fast pace of life, good ethics etc and no doubt they get an excellent kick-start as well, but what matters, in the long run, is to have someone who can guide you, who can give direction to you, who can pass on their own experience to you, who can nurture you, who can mould you into a great leader.
Its not necessary that a mentor would take out a lot of time to make you understand and guide you but having even the luxury to directly work with a mentor can itself teach you a lot. He can teach you where to focus and where not to.
Unfortunately, not everyone is lucky to have a mentor in life. Not that you can’t figure out your way without a mentor but it might take much longer along with extra efforts to reach your goal. So if you ever get to work with a great mentor: don’t leave him, even if he leaves you.
[This post by Abhishek Singh first appeared on Digital Bananas and has been reproduced with permission.]
