Why did I fail? What is wrong with me? These are the kind of questions that can plague us from the moment we wake until we fall asleep … or don’t fall asleep.
These questions can be incredibly toxic, creating cycles of shame and self-judgment that we should seek to avoid at all costs. There are healthy ways to assess your well-being, and one of the greatest tasks of a mentor is helping you do that. They can help you cut through the lies and see yourself for who you are – an imperfect person who is worthy of love and capable of achieving success.
1. Failure as a gift.
Think about your earliest experiences in school, sports, or the workplace. When you got bad grades or lost the game, you quickly learned that you’d get a bad report card or lose your trophy. These failures taught you how the world works, and at that point, you had a choice: will I work harder or give up? A mentor can help guide a person through these types of learning experiences and even encourage the person to give thanks: failure means learning; it doesn’t mean the end of the experience. Without a mentor’s assistance, we are to see failure as a threat, and we do everything in our power to avoid it – even steering clear of things that could lead to our eventual success.
2. Stress as a motivator.
Most of us think of stress as something that we should stay away from whenever possible. It’s true that too much stress is bad for your health, but stress is actually designed to help you. When you feel amped up by stress, your body is preparing yourself for action. The extra energy is putting all your body systems on alert, ready to take on a challenge and slay the day. Talking with a mentor is a great way to give you an outside perspective – since they aren’t in the middle of your situation, they can see it for what it is rather than something bigger than what it is. A mentor can be a trusted advisor, helping you determine if you just need to harness your stress for success or make a change for the sake of your health.
3. Weaknesses as wisdom.
Just like failures, discovering weaknesses should be considered a gift. Each person only has one life, and they should focus on their strengths to achieve their greatest personal success. Mentors help us recognize our strengths and weaknesses, and we shouldn’t just be glad about the strengths. Discovering a weakness could be the ticket to not wasting time on a pursuit that’s not suited to who you are. Focusing on what is good, true, and strong about you is going to fuel real, powerful growth.
Failures, stress, and weaknesses are all things we typically run away from as fast as we can. Honestly, they can be terrifying. But with the help of a mentor, these things can be used to make you stronger than you were before.