A lot of interesting reactions to the post about “The first thing about having a mentor”.
A #TMP reader asks:
“I want some clarification on this matter: can my parent be my mentor?”
It is a question several people have asked me recently and so I have decided to discuss it in as few words as possible.
Let us start with my definition of mentorship:
Someone who was once where you are now and is now at a place you want to be and is willing to assist you to make the jump.
So, the first honest question you would need to ask yourself is whether you want to take in your parents’ footsteps. Do you want to end up like them or do you want to do better?
Your mentors cannot give you what they do not have, that is why you have to pick mentors carefully. Advancing beyond where your parents left will require a higher form of mentoring and training which they might not be able to offer. The reason many parents and their children get into trouble is because while the parents always want what is right for their children, making those choices might hamper the better choices the child wants to make but which the parents do not understand.
The simple solution is to make them understand, right? But as we all soon find out, making your parents understand you can be difficult.
Indeed your parents are your first set of mentors, but you soon probably need to outgrow them as you seek to carve out a path for your own life. If you adopt your parents as your sole mentors, you cannot expect to live a life that will be much better than the one they lived.
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Watching The World
- I always thought 12″ tablets were silly (go and get a real PC!), but now Samsung is working on a 18.4″ tablet.
