10 excuses why we fear giving and getting advice

I have been doing a lot of soul searching over the past year in regards to my personal and professional life. One thing that always draws me to making decisions is the importance of asking for help, advice, guidance and assistance from someone, a mentor, who has gone through similar experiences. It's has not always been easy for me to do this and at times I become very fearful of it. But as human beings we must help each other, it's in our nature to share our life experiences in order to get better at what we do.

Asking for advice begins when we start to understand the teaching on the subject. We are blessed with these tremendous online tools and resources that allow us to get information and advice at our finger tips. We are all dependent on each other for help and when we overcome that fear of asking, it opens doors to get us where we want to go.

Many people fail to seek out experts for advice because of various misunderstandings and excuses:

1. They think the concept of mentoring doesn't apply to them.

2. They don’t believe it works today.

3. They’re too embarrassed to admit that they need help.

4. They’re too proud to ask for help.

5. They’re afraid to help others because their advice might not be accepted.

6. They’re too embarrassed to confess their mistakes or failures to someone else.

7. They’re so consumed with their own needs and don’t have time to sympathize or provide help for others.

8. They have problems in their own lives and doubt that can help anyone else.

9. They don’t feel worthy to be used.

10. It’s easier to send a card or email than to engage in serious help for others.

Are you allowing to be used as an agent of help? Many people are going through difficulties and need someone to listen and give them great advice. You don’t have to be a leader or senior to be used. If you’ll allow yourself to make an effort and find someone who needs your expertise, your effective advice will accomplish much.

If your looking for great self-help, career, business,or startup advice, Mentorplus.me is a community that offers online mentoring with a social purpose by helping you do what you do... only better. Join us to EXPLORE, DREAM and DISCOVER.

What's holding you up?

3 KEYS TO NOT LIVING YOUR LIFE WITH REGRET

During my personal and professional life journey, I have experienced the news of  my two son’s chronic diseases, the tragedy of a failed marriage, the loss of a job and home and the death of a parent to cancer. Along the way, I had the experience to be influenced by some great Giants(mentors) in my life. These people shaped and to continue to re-shape me to the person I am today. The common theme that has come out of their advice is do things that help discover your passion. Although I find myself at times doing things the hard way I follow their advice and ...

SO I EXPLORE...

I have done a lot of crazy things in my life but the past year for me I have journeyed into one of the riskiest decisions of my adulthood... I decided to become an entrepreneur. Over the past few years, as I came to a turning point in a number of personal and career situations I realized that my passion has always been to serve people. I love to see individuals excel and be successful especially when they come out of their own trials and tribulations. I believe adversity makes us stronger.

If you really think about it our lives are like running our own enterprise. We balance what we do between two major departments - Personal and career. The success in one department determines the success of the other. If you want to take it to another level... how profitable the personal determines how profitable our career department or vice versa.

AND DREAM...

I discovered in others and my life journey that people sometime live their life with so much regret. They are not happy with their career and thus personal life suffers. People are just looking for so much hope today. Maybe why so much success of all the reality TV shows?

I want to be a part of the solution now and know there are others that want to do the same. I believe that as the baby-boomer generation gets older that there is and will be a ton of help from people willing to share their professional and personal life experience. I want to bring these individuals of diverse generational groups together in way that makes it easy and simple to get personal and actionable advice. Hence, the reason for Mentor+me. This will be unlike any other social or professional network as it will provide the  successful advice you need in your career and personal life.

The career, job training and self-improvement market is a Multi-billion dollar industry world-wide and close to 200 Million people would be willing to enter into a mentoring relationship. Imagine if these people were able take 5 people and mentor them. That would be 1 billion people that would be impacted.

Mentor+me is a social networking site that connects industry leader mentors with people who want personalized and actionable advice.

THEN DISCOVER.

Mentor+me  is a dedicated community that will ensure that you Don’t go it alone. For mentees, if you are looking to improve your job performance and career growth, expand you personal network or just see what others are doing to become successful then we are here for you.

As a mentor, this will enable you to be recognized thought leader. If you are a person that has something to say or add-value and have the ability reply to calls for help then this platform is for you.  Mentor+me will help you grow your personal network from a diverse community group.

So now Facebook has connected you with your family and friends… LinkedIn has connected your with your collegues…  Mentor+me  now helps people become a mentor(s) and/or a mentee(s) and helps both to achieve their highest potentials.

Please join me as we begin to help you make your life the best ever and help us impact a billion people by 2022. Let's do this!
Sign up today at thementorplusproject.com.

Why you will fail to have a great career...unless?

It was a Thursday night a few weeks ago and I was heading to Toronto to my first advisory board meeting regarding The MENTOR+ project. This was a very important meeting  as I really wanted to dissect our next moves and have a game plan over the next few months.

I have had the privilege working with these great mentors/advisors the past number of months. They are generous, kind and brilliant individuals but what has made them so successful is their passion. My mentors at the meeting spent a great deal of time talking to me about options, being flexible and the sacrifices I have to make in order to be successful. Some people would have left this meeting discouraged and given up because of the fear of failing. But what made me feel good was that I left the meeting more encouraged and motivated to keep moving forward. A confirmation that I wasn't afraid even the slightest to fail.

I think about The MENTOR+ project 24/7 and love to talk to individuals who are passionate in helping others reach their highest potential. So it's fitting that I found this TEDx talk by Larry Smith who shares on one of the key aspects of having a great career.

Here's a small bio of Larry Smith:
Throughout his three-decade career at the University of Waterloo, Larry Smith has inspired legions of students to take up the mantle of economics with his passionate and homespun tales of economic wizardry. A renowned story-teller, teacher and youth leadership champion, Larry has also coached and mentored countless numbers of students on start-up business management and career development strategies.

Highlights of Larry's talk and why I want a great career:

• Good jobs are now disappearing.
• Good jobs are high workload, blood sucking, high stress, soul destroying jobs and then there are those in between.

If you want a great career you have to pursue your passion but most decide not to do it because:

1. In order to have a great career people use the excuse that its a matter of luck.
2. Great careers are made for geniuses.
3. People with great careers are weird. So nice and normal people don't have passion?
4.  If I work hard I will have a great career and success. Are you sure? As all the evidence says the contrary.

Passion is your greatest love not your interests. Passion is beyond your interests. 

• You need 20 interests and then you might find your one passion. 
• Your passion engages you more than anything else in comparison with all your other interests.
• You must look for alternatives so that you find your destiny. Find the highest expression of your destiny. Does that scare you? If you settle for interesting then it's a missed opportunity.
• You will FIND your passion and still fail because your not going to DO IT. 

Larry uses an example of an excuse on human relationships...

• I want be a great friend, great parent but I will not sacrifice them because of great accomplishments. So suggesting you want a great career sounds somewhat unrealistic.
• Do you think it's appropriate to take children as a shield? What about if your son or daughter came to you, who is great in math, but says he wants to be magician. You say to them that is tough life, not much money, no security, etc.
• Are you going to say to them, I had dream to but I was afraid to pursue it? Do you want to use your family and see them as your jailers.
• Instead you could say go for it son... just liked I did! So the sins of the parent are visited on the children.
• Many seek refuge on their kids preventing them from pursuing their passion.

Some closing thoughts on "UNLESS":

Many are afraid to pursue their passion because they are going to fail. Instead of saying unless...

Or there are those that say..If only I had? Instead of saying unless...

Enjoy the video below, I hope it finds you more passionate than ever about your career! It did for me.