Weekly Thought – December 1, 2015
Fred collected ideas the way some assemble sports memorabilia, or pictures of themselves with famous people. He thought constantly and captured these bursts on a tape recorder then transcribed by Margie Keith. This week the email features these explosions on the subject of mentoring. They are not in paragraph form, but certainly a format which leads to cohesive application.
December signals the end of the year for BWF and BWFLI. It also welcomes the beginning of our academic planning season. Thank you for your consistent support through prayer, words of encouragement, and financial giving. Please remember us in your year-end donations if led. Bless.
Mentoring Moments
1) A mentor helps a person have an accountability, a measure for accomplishment, and a clarity of purpose by having them review to you what they are trying to accomplish – not what you want for them to achieve.
2) The most difficult area to mentor is character. Yet this is where most of the failures are. I have rarely seen anyone fail for lack of training, but many times for lack of character.
3) A mentor helps another identify constructive strengths and destructive weaknesses, then focus on the strengths while bolstering the weaknesses.
4) A mentor is a counter-balance. I like to think of myself as the tail on the kite of high flyers.
5) A mentor differentiates between where the person is and where they want to go by always trying for a higher standard.
6) The mentor helps develops the reflexes by instituting habits and reviews.
7) The mentor is not a monitor. Someone can stand in the gym and look in the mirror to monitor progress. The mentor assists in the process, and doesn’t just reflect it.
8) The mentor helps in the clarification of spirit, mood, and intent.
9) It is not the mentor’s job to create desire.
10) A mentor should expose fantasy to avoid kidding oneself or rationalizing.
11) You turn to a mentor after you learn the fundamentals. He may return you to the basics, but it’s the teacher’s responsibility for the rudiments and the mentor’s to coach you to acquire the expert skill in the use of them.
12) If someone were to come to me and ask me what I could do for them, I would probably say, “Nothing” because I refuse to take the responsibility for doing for them what they can do for themselves.
This week think about: 1) Which thought applies to me right now? 2) How can I further develop this thought to be helpful? 3) Who is mentoring me and who am I mentoring?
Words of Wisdom: “A mentor is a counter-balance… a tail on the kite.”
Wisdom from the Word: “And entrust what you heard me say in the presence of many others as witnesses to faithful people who will be competent to teach others as well.” (2 Timothy 2: 2 NET Bible)