It is common knowledge that in the animal world it is the elders who teach the younger animals where to get their food, how to hunt, how to protect themselves and how to behave.

The young ones need role models to learn how to sustain the family, pack or herd.
Without the guidance of the elders young animals don’t know how to live and succeed in their environment.

In old cultures it used to be the elders who gave guidance and direction to the youngsters, by taking them under their wings for a certain period of time, during which they were taught about the wisdom and traditions of the tribe.

All this feels so completely logical to me that I started wondering about how this works for us humans in today’s modern world. In our society and in our schools we are being taught a very limited amount of knowledge.

The question is do we get the guidance and the direction that is needed from our elders? Do we learn the things that really matter in our lives? Isn’t it necessary that we are being taught how to live our dream or passion by people who have walked that path before us and who have proven that they made something of their lives.

Mentoring and coaching are not a deep-rooted part of our culture. Only some people seek guidance and many of those start seeking it when they got stuck or when they are close to some sort of crisis.

Very few people in the world accomplish something in their life that is close to their dream or passion, because most people solely build their experience on the number of mistakes and errors that they made during their lives.

The clever path to take is of course to find somebody who has been there before and seek their help for guidance in order to become the person you want to become.

An interesting phenomenon is for instance that Mike Litman, in his business / self improvement radio show in New York, interviewed more than 23 top American CEO’s who were all extremely successful, very, very wealthy and they all asserted to live their passion. Mike found out that all twenty three of them had one thing in common. They all had exactly the same success secret.
They all sought guidance at some stage in their life. They all decided they needed a mentor.

Don’t you think you do, too?

Ab van Deemter
www.passiontogrow.com