If you’ve ever had a really great mentor, count yourself lucky. We all have mentors in some form all around us—our parents, teachers, friends, colleagues—many have something to teach us. Yet how many of them truly inspire us? All too often we confuse mentorship with advice, or someone more experienced than us, telling us what to do. And while there is value in being shown the way, I argue that there is greater value in being inspired to take action.
Stories have the power to inspire us and shift our thinking. That’s why the best mentors are first and foremost, great storytellers. These are the people whose stories trigger our imaginations and push us into action in spite of great obstacles.They often fall into two buckets (there may be more, but these are the ones I have commonly observed)—the ones who inspire us through their stories, and the ones who inspire us to tell the best story of ourselves.
The ones who inspire us through their stories
This one is easy. Examples of mentors who inspire us through their stories are all around us. It’s every book you ever read on someone who inspired you. Or every public figure you look up to. Or someone that isn’t even real, like a character in a movie or book. Or even someone in your own, immediate circle of family, friends and co-workers whose behaviors and attitudes are ones you want to emulate.
These mentors are our role models or as actress Laverne Cox calls it, possibility models. Everyone needs a healthy mix of role models at all levels—the really aspirational ones (the Oprahs and Michelle Obamas), ones who are more relatable and the ones who continuously push us to be better. These mentors inspire us through stories of their lives and experiences. We take their lessons and apply them to our unique circumstances. There is great value in this. It’s powerful to know that once upon a time, someone whose life we aspire to was similar to ours. It makes us believe that truly remarkable things are possible if we apply ourselves or work at something. Even if we are not aspiring for a career like Oprah’s, having relatable role models shows us that success is possible and you don’t have to be a handful of seven billion people in the world to achieve it.
The ones who inspire us to tell the best story of ourselves
This mentor is a little harder to identify but actually more accessible than we realize. Our greatest mentors are the ones that inspire us to tell the best story of ourselves.
So what does this mean exactly? Our world and our society is built on comparables. We measure our success and progress in relation to how we stack-up against others and most of us are hardwired to tell a less than ideal version of our story because of the all too familiar ‘F-word’—fear.
Our fear of failure, of what others will think, of humiliation and embarrassment, of letting our friends and family down, of financial ruin, of any number of permutations and combinations of these reasons, is what keeps us from reaching for what we want. The constant hum of not good enough or you will fail at this and be the laughing stock of everything is what holds us back.
Our greatest mentors are the ones who help us shift that thinking. They are compelling but also vulnerable and teach by sharing their own struggles in a way that energizes the listener. They are empathetic in a way that allows them to crawl inside our heads and understand exactly what we think of ourselves and they have the ability to help us change that self-belief.
They are the ones who get us to believe that our ideas will work, that the world will want to listen to what we have to say. That we will lose weight and keep it off, that we will buy a house, that we will be rich. They make us believe in our own possibilities.
The good thing about finding great mentors through storytelling is that they are literally everywhere. You don’t need to be part of a school program or professional organization to find them. They can be found through the media you consume, in books, movies and podcasts, people in your community doing incredible things. They can be people in your own circle of family and friends.
The key is to identify them. I bet, if you pay attention there is at least one person you know, whose personal story inspires you to be more, and do more, and one who inspires you to tell the best story of yourself to make that happen. The key is to find them and when you do, learn everything you can.
