The help you needed may be different than the help others need from you.
It is an honorable thing to be for others the kind of mentor that you needed yourself.
This is a noble goal and a powerful way to be of service.
As you grow, however, you may find this strategy to be extremely limiting.
Not everyone needs what you needed.
Instead of trying to be who you needed, the higher calling is to be who others need, but this requires a greater amount of compassion and wisdom because it means looking past and feeling beyond yourself.
Good mentors serve who they once were, but great mentors serve who is in front of them.
GREAT MENTORS
By Robert Van Valkenburgh
Meditations of a Gentle Warrior
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When faced with a goal or a task that seems impossible, it is a leader’s job to see past all of the obstacles, all of the reasons it cannot be done, and to provide the vision necessary for others to see optimistically into the future.
A leader shares his or her vision of success with others so that they, too, believe that success is possible.
A leader gives hope where there was none before.
A leader does not use a lack of time, resources, or preparation as an excuse to fail because a leader sets his or her team up for success in spite of limitations, restrictions, or setbacks.
A leader does not say that his or her team is not ready for a mission. A leader ensures that they are.
It is exactly the moments of impossibility, of hopelessness, and of inevitable defeat that define a leader, for it it is in these moments that leadership manifests.
Meditations on God 