Continuing with the theme of Monday’s post, it is interesting to note that these exact same possibilities exist when seeking out business or professional advice. Personally, when I was younger I used to seek advice from friends that I grew up with. They were good people that meant well but had neither the knowledge or life experience to provide me with input that would bring me positive leverage in the situations that I was was faced with. Their advice was merely their logical opinion. It took me a long time to recognize this. During this period in my life, I “spun my wheels” quite a bit chasing the direction that opinions led me in that resulted in many dead-ends.
The skill that has taken me a while to learn is not necessarily the one needed to seek out people that were more successful than I was to help me. This has become a must for me to evolve. What is more important is trying to figure out what knowledge or expertise this more successful person has that I can benefit from. Within their vast knowledge what can they teach me that would be of value?
Just talking with someone who is more successful than I am is nice but not helpful in and of itself. Understanding the gap in my knowledge is the key to benefiting from mentors who are more successful than I am. My questions of them become more focused. There is less clutter in their answers. And the opportunity to dive deeper is there because the subject matter is more specific.
People complain about their circumstance all of the time. Connecting with people more successful than you can be serendipitous but not game changing without understanding yourself better. I believe we make, to a large extent, our circumstance by who we are and what we choose each day in our lives. Where we spend our time and what we do with our free time.
Getting traction in our lives, in all cases, takes more than one thing for us to get going. Quieting the sources of opinion in our lives in search of those that have knowledge and experience while understanding what is missing in the way we view the world could be just the thing we need to get our lives moving in a positive direction towards a better tomorrow.