Establish this and you will live a fulfilling life
Summer Lotus Oct 26 5 min read
My definition of a mentor
A mentor is someone who is more knowledgeable than me in a particular field or skill and is willing to impart that knowledge to me. He or She is like my personal teacher or counselor and is very generous to share whatever he has to make sure that I can become as capable as him. There is no fee involved.
I have always searched for mentors in my life without my realizing it. That is due to my natural thirst for knowledge and to do things well. But my journey as a mentee started late because I was not a very sociable person and hence my networking circle was small.
I was curious and did go to great lengths to learn. Of course, I remembered hitting some resistance. Not all people were magnanimous after all. As a young dentist in a public institution eons ago, I used to hover around some experienced dentists when they were working to see what they were doing.
Once, I was shooed away and I sensed that the dentist did not want to share his trade secret with me. It happened again at another private clinic where I had the audacity to ask to watch while the dentist was treating her patient but her body language told me that I was not welcome.
Except for those two long-ago incidents, my journey searching for mentors had largely been fruitful. Today, where my career is concerned, I count among my mentors, a prosthodontist, a periodontist, a few oral surgeons who are generous beyond words.
As a general practitioner, my field of work is diverse but in each field, I aimed to do as well as the specialist in that field. This involves humility, patience, persistence, and hard work. Specialists are mostly perfectionists hence I wished that their mentality would rub off on me.
As a mentee, I would show my earnestness to learn, question, and take notes. Humility is an important trait as perfectionists are rarely patient. They have honed their craft to an art level and will not stand to have a common person like me to be slow to imbibe information especially if it is repeated a few times. But I have skin as thick as a hide. I do not fear to incur their wrath as long as I learn and become wiser.
As a mentee, it is important to be persistent and apply whatever that is learned, then sleep and breathe it. Subsequently, I would apply my mentor’s technique to my case and see it come to fruition in my hands. It has been possible. It is not achieved in a quick way but the more one practices it, one will see the light until it becomes second nature.
As a mentee, it would be impressive to go beyond what is taught and work hard, finding new information to discuss with your mentor so that you could contribute instead. If you could jump one step ahead of your mentor from what you have learned elsewhere, that would cement his trust in you that you are a sincere mentee.
I search for mentors in other fields too. In learning Mandarin, I had the good fortune to spot talent among my patients. One day, a young lady walked into my clinic and she was carrying a thick literature book. After the dental treatment, I struck a conversation with her and discovered that she came to Singapore having graduated from Szechuan University of Arts in China and had found work as a cashier in a supermarket. She wanted to experience Singapore culture and pick up English here. But there were few opportunities.
I made a deal with her to meet up twice a week after work. She could teach me Mandarin and I would teach her English. Over a year, we had the most interesting exchange. I learned a lot about Chinese philosophy and stories behind Chinese idioms, improving my Mandarin language by leaps and bounds. She, being an ardent and intelligent girl, chose to read short novels and learned about stories and words pronunciation through me.
In that short span, her English improved tremendously, due to her own diligence too. She would always be my unforgettable mentor, being 33 years younger than me and so learned and enthusiastic about life. She finally left for China after one year where romance beckoned.
I had a mentor for my Japanese language too. I met her by chance at a Toastmasters’ Club meeting where she signed up and wanted to pick up some English but it was difficult for her at the club level. On a personal arrangement, we would meet every week during an extended lunchtime, where we did our exchange.
My mentor would converse with me in Japanese, even preparing notes for me to read. Then I would listen to her read her favorite English article and correct her pronunciation. Another fruitful mentor-mentee relationship had blossomed until she decided that she missed Japan and went home.
At our Toastmasters Club meetings where we honed our communication skills, having a mentor is part of the program. A mentor is usually an experienced Toastmaster who follows Toastmasters guidelines in most of his projects. He then provides counseling to new members whom he is assigned to be a mentor and accepts any requests from a mentee who may need help in his or her speech projects.
My mentors are my fellow members who had given me constructive feedback on my performance and delivery of my speech and its contents. It has been a very profitable experience for me as it benefitted my career as well as personally. Having been in the club for more than 35 years, I have also availed myself to be a mentor to any mentee assigned to me.
The mentor-mentee relationship and importance cannot be over-emphasized especially where it comes to communication skills, the bedrock of all your successes in life. The program is so helpful because it is based on a very detailed and structured way to advise, encourage, and motivate the speaker that one can only get better with practice.
Senior members have a wealth of experience to impart to the younger members. The latter in turn would become mentors to new members who join the club to hone their communication skills. The fact that we are all from diverse backgrounds, interests, and careers with a common goal of helping each other is of immense benefit not much experienced outside this club.
Learning is one of the most meaningful and interesting things to do in life. Without the thirst to know and be enlightened, I can imagine boring days ahead. When one delves into a subject wholeheartedly, it opens up a whole new world of opportunities. You become a better person, more understanding, more skilled, more confident, happier, and an interesting human being.
That is the gist of living. To learn, then to give back, and grow together. You look for a mentor and be a good, responsible mentee. You also become a good and responsible mentor to any keen mentee. The circle is never broken and life is truly fulfilling.
“Better a thousand days of diligent study is one great day with a mentor” — Japanese proverb
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