The importance of mentors...

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I just had one of those "Duh!" moments. After trying to figure out how to progress with my music and repeatedly coming up blank, it occurred to me that I need help.  A specific kind of help in fact.  I need a mentor.

Actually, we all need mentors.  Mentors guide us along the right path, offer support and empathy when things go wrong and cheer for us when things go well.  They open our eyes to options we had never thought of.   When we are little kids, we have our parents, our teachers, our tennis coach, our school councillor...   In my own profession we make sure that our students have mentors - at the very least they have a program guidance mentor and a research mentor, and often more.  For instance, we encourage them to use a sympathetic soul as a well-being mentor too (being a postdoc at a high functioning research university can be more than stressful).   It's amazing how helpful it can be for them to hear that someone else went through exactly the same thing and lived to tell the tale - nay - even prospered.  And of course they have their peer mentors who are just a year or 2 ahead of them.

Once we embark on our careers, it doesn't stop.  Mentors can be the difference between success, and well, just plugging along.  Mentors introduce us to powerful people, include us in decision making,  put us on important committees, give us increasing levels of responsibility and make sure we are taking the right steps to succeed.  After all, they succeeded so they know what it takes.   I'm not saying you can't make it without a good mentor, but unless you're a force of nature, it helps to have help!

So how is this different in any area of our life where we want to progress?  Do we trek along hoping that hard work and enthusiasm will result in exciting possibilities? Maybe more often than not! Those of us who are lucky have guitar teachers who can work with us to learn to play the guitar better.  If we are really lucky we have a teacher who guides us through a course of study that will produce results if we put the work in. And if we have landed in the promised land,  our teacher may also be able to introduce us to new opportunities, act as our cheerleader and guide and do all those other things mentors do.  But don't hold your breath.  Guitar teachers are usually insanely busy being musicians, teaching students and generally making a living.  In addition, their experience probably involved studying the instrument for many years as a child then going to music school and then developing superlative instrument skills as a practicing musician for many years.  They haven't had the experience of being an adult student wishing to nurture his or her amateur musical talents and then use them in some way.

Which brings me back to the mentor idea.  Next question: where to find one?