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He was like a God to me. In my eyes, he could do no wrong and everything he said, I took it as a the greatest thing anyone has ever said. When I had problems, I would turn to him; when I needed advice, I turned to him. That was my biggest mistake, to put my mentor in this pedestal and worship him.
He became my teacher, my mentor, my coach – the one that would guide me. He was the one that facilitated my passion for teaching and trainings. For about 2 years, he was a huge part of my working life and I had the greatest respect for him. We had gone through a wonderful journey of discovery, growth and possibilities through personal development trainings which we both working for. We had the most fun times, laughing as a team, crying as a team and working as a team. A friendship and bond was created from working together.
I had started hearing rumors about him after a few years of knowing him. Things about his personal and professional life that were quite damaging to his reputation as a coach. There I was, like a samurai warrior ready to chop someone’s head off for saying such blasphemous things to me about my mentor. I was like one of those martyrs willing to die for a cause. Like a spoilt little brat I would preach, “My mentor NEVER makes mistakes, you are wrong!’, and I would storm off in a huff.
Like everything in the universe, everything (including our mentor – mentee relationship) evolved, we as people evolved. Our priorities had changed and we were not going towards the same direction of ‘that bigger cause of saving the world’ through personal development trainings.
In the end, business of working together outside of the training room had killed our relationship. I had assumed that because we had a great mentor-mentee bond we would have a great business relationship as well. How wrong was I?! I allowed the dog-eat-dog ugly side of the business world of making money (and the lack of transparency dealing with it) and backstabbing get in the way of our mentor -mentee relationship.
Drama, conflict and back stabbing started to rumble and violently erupted. We no longer added any value in each others lives and it was way beyond repair. The relationship went from sour to totally rotten. He was no longer my coach. And to top it all off, I slowly discovered with my own eyes, that the damaging rumors were true. I was disappointed and sad about the situation. I allowed myself to be a powerless victim of the bad business dealings, where someone done me wrong and cheated me. I became bitter and angry about it all and eventually I had to let go and move on with my life. At one point, I had let the drama consume me. Yes, there was learning from all this: my learnings…
Everyone is human and we all make mistakes. Even mentors… c’est la vie. So cliche but true in this case. The God-like image of him in my mind, maybe I trapped him into a corner to a point where he was not willing and afraid to share with me what he was going through in his personal crisis. Always allow that breathing room for people around me to ‘fall’ gracefully, make mistakes and pick themselves back up. I had to stop being hypercritical of people and stop putting such high expectations on them.
No value = no space in my life. When things, people, relationships no longer add value to my life (as semimetal and great it once was), it doesn’t have it a part of my life anymore. It will only be a burdensome heavy baggage. It’s an easy thing for me to say, but at times the most painful.
Be open to all teachers, not just one. My ‘mentor worshipping’ did not help in the process of learning, if anything it slowed my learning. Everything new I was taught outside the scope of my mentor, I was not open to or I never looked at it objectively. I thought I was open minded as can be, where as in actual fact I had ignored all the many opportunities to learn right in front of me from other teachers.
Learn, apply, evolve and move on. I know, it sounds so ‘wham, bam, thank you maam’. I truly believe that in my lifetime I will meet different souls that are meant to teach me something and bring value to my life. They will come in and out of my life. Some ‘teachers’ are only around for a short while some for decades. I have to learn to let go and take the learning and ‘live it’ in my life and move on. Not all teachers or mentors will be there my whole life. Eventually the student will out grow the teacher and hopefully one day become a mentor or teacher.
After all that, he had wished me a good life and prayed that my life turns out well. And that he no longer wanted anything to do with me in business or as a mentor. He wanted to move on with his life and let go of the mess we both were responsible for creating. All good things come to an end and the evolution cycle starts again. I’m not as naive, a little bit wiser and the silver lining to all this – even the ‘rotten’ ending of our relationship was a great learning experience in my life, a lesson to be learned.