Developing Your Attitude Among Mentors
How do I become like those I admire?
In the book The Master Key to Riches, author Napoleon Hill interviewed over five hundred of the most successful men of his era – including Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Alexander Graham Bell, and Thomas Edison – to get some insight in to how these geniuses and high achievers had attained their high degree of success in life.
The results of this study were published in the form of The Law of Success, an encyclopedia of seventeen principles that were common in the thinking of all these men. One of the main principles is the mastermind idea. This idea basically states that we become like those individuals we surround ourselves with.
In fact, a variety of things in our immediate environment have an impact on our day to day lives – from the movies we watch to the books we read and beyond. This is a key way of maximizing one’s potential for a healthy attitude that will lead one to new plateaus of success.
Everyone has a choice in life. It is possible to allow outside factors to have an influence on our thoughts, attitudes, and goals in life. They can have an impact in a negative way, by letting underachieving, degrading people with bad attitudes play a dominant role in our lives; or we can eliminate those people altogether from our lives and focus on surrounding ourselves with more positive influences. Each individual is the master of his or her own environment. Nobody else should be allowed to influence that.
How do I surround myself with Mentors?
The best way to succeed in any kind of business is to surround oneself with highly successful individuals who are currently operating in that field. Those individuals can be thought of as mentors – people who you can turn to as role models and guidance throughout your career.
Once you have defined which aspect of a particular business you wish to pursue in life, you should then make a list of colleagues in that particular field who you have the utmost respect for. Of course, it is not possible to surround oneself exclusively with individuals who are more successful than you happen to be.
But by understanding this, you can purposefully choose to surround yourself with such people as often as possible, and thus spend less of your time surrounded by individuals who block your growth or consume your day to day life with trivial matters.
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Should I drop my old friends?
While a lot of people tend to choose friends among people who are less successful than them because it boosts their self esteem, this should only be done on a limited basis. The reason why is that such individuals rarely inspire us – as a matter of fact, they might wind up stifling one’s creativity.
This is why it is always best to surround oneself with those who are slightly more successful than us – people we can readily see ourselves becoming one day. These people might be slightly older than us, or just a bit more advanced in their profession.
How many Mentors should I have?
It is always beneficial to have at least one mentor in life. Perhaps you feel uncomfortable with the idea of having a mentor. After all, you do not want to “copy” someone, right? A lot of people are afraid of the idea of having a mentor, fearing that they will somehow lose a part of themselves by consciously emulating someone else.
But the fact is, everyone in life depends on other people for guidance. When we are first born, we know nothing – we are like blank slates. We depend on those around us to guide us and teach us things. Everything that you learned in life, you learned from other people. By identifying those who we feel will have a positive impact on our growth and development, we are providing ourselves with a clear definition of what we wish to one day become.
Of course, one does not have to associate personally with one’s mentors. There are numerous ways to connect with a mentor. Reading books that the mentor has written, or reading books about them – this is one positive way of seeking guidance from mentors in life. In fact, reading books can be even more useful than having a personal association with someone, as it gives you direct insight in to their thinking process – and can thus teach you how to assimilate their thought process in to your own.
Do you already find yourself surrounded by individuals who you want to become? Then you have already begun to travel down the road of success. If your answer to that question is no, then you may want to take a long, hard look at the people you surround yourself with.
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