If you’ve ever had a mentoring experience (whether it was a single conversation that helped you solve a problem or an ongoing relationship that changed your life) you understand the pivotal power of mentoring.

Most of us are searching for help in some way and that is what many people consider the mentoring journey to be: Finding help and advice.

And there’s SO much more to it; a part many people let fall to the wayside…

GREAT ADVICE DESERVES GREAT GRATITUDE

Amazing mentors don’t create spreadsheets and programs to measure the ROI on their time spent helping others. That’s not part of the game. They take pride in knowing they gave back, helped someone else and “paid it forward”. They feel great about helping and those great feelings are payment enough.

And those great feelings don’t have to be temporary and exist only in the moments that they helped you.

Let’s look at how you can…

INSPIRE YOUR MENTORS

Think about someone that helped you; how they helped you and why it changed your life. What happened AFTER they gave you advice and you went out and took action?   What new experiences did you have and what new connections did you make?

 

Think about it.

Write it down.

Take out a thank you card or open your email.

Send that person that helped you out what you just wrote down.

KEY POINT: Be sure to make whatever you send them ALL about them, ALL about gratitude and only that. Don’t ask them for anything; just thank them. Be sure to be specific – tell them when they helped you, what problem you were facing at the time, what happened after they helped you and why that advice means so much to you. Free-form thought and writing from the heart works great here, it’s not an essay that you’re going to be graded on – it’s a simple thank you.

This is an amazing opportunity for you to…

Inspire your mentors to keep inspiring others!

Your note will bring back those great feelings they had when they invested the time to make your life better. Your note will bring back those great feelings you had when you got “unstuck” and created forward motion in your life because of their advice. Your note will bring back the gratitude we all love to feel and you’ll carry that attitude of gratitude forward into your day so even more people can experience it.

Time to stop reading, reflect and start writing…

Who will you reach out to first?