I am very much a people person. I get my energy from being around people who encourage, support, challenge, and love me. But while I get energy from them, that energy comes in the form of inspiration and motivation to be a better version of myself. After all, I think it is everyone’s goal to surround themselves with people who make them better versions of themselves.

For me also, I really enjoy learning and being around people who are older than myself. I have felt like I have an easier time connecting with people who are older or younger than me rather than my peers. In my life, I view these individuals as mentors who are also friends that I am so close to that they feel like family.

For me, these relationships come so naturally that they don’t seem like mentors to me, they are just friends. But in taking time to consider the lessons I have learned from these older role models, I know they have shaped the individual I am in a way that only a mentor could.

These are people who I want to constantly learn more from and who I can rely on to always be there to lend an ear to whatever situation I might be going through at the time. Up until recently, the mentoring relationships I have, have come naturally and gradually, but now there is someone who has come into my life in the past couple of months who I know I want to have as a mentor now and for many years to come.

In looking at this person on the surface, they are so humble that you would have no idea they have accomplished as much as they have. But as I have been able to learn more about them, I am blown away time after time again. Now, I look up to them in a whole new and different way. We are very similar to one another and I know that this person has already been in my shoes before so I want to know how they achieved the success they did.

Essentially I want to call out: “Show me your ways… How can I be just like you?”

However, at the same time, while I have reaped great benefits from the mentors I have had in my life thus far, I also wonder how I can be a mentor to someone else. I can only hope that I can have a meaningful impact on someone down the road and I can pass along the lessons I have learned from the most important people in my life to another person.

But the other thing to keep in mind about a mentoring relationship is that I can hope I am having an impact on someone else but that impact may not be a visible one. I think while the invisibility of the impact you have on a person is one of the most challenging parts of being a mentor, it can also be one of the most rewarding parts because deep down you know that you are shaping an individual in ways that are only visible through their values and their actions towards others.

But the way that you can know that your mentorship is having an impact on someone is if you are also growing as a person through your mutual relationship. A good friendship and mentorship is one in which both parties benefit. There should be no hierarchy involved despite a gap in age, everyone involved should be on an equal playing field.

I am a people person because of how much I can learn from others. I can learn what is important to me and what is not; I can learn how I like to be treated and therefore, how I want to treat others and how I don’t. People, while sure they can get on our nerves sometimes, are truly amazing and I am so thankful to have a great group of people in my life who I can learn from. Now, I can only hope that I can be a source of knowledge for others in my life and they can feel as if they can learn from me.