Motivation through Mentoring

Teaching someone else to do something that you’re good at will give you the confidence, and other tools, you need to reach your own goals.

Helping others to lead better lives is a gift of inestimable value: It enriches them, it elevates society—and it can inspire you.

The “you get by giving” adage applies to the age-old practice of mentoring which can help you to sharpen your own skills; it can inspire you with confidence; and it can motivate you to pursue new and challenging health and fitness goals. “In its simplest form, mentoring is people helping people, but our research indicates it goes much deeper than that,” says Terri Sjodin author of Mentoring: A Success Guide for Mentors and Protégés (McGraw-Hill, 1996). “It's more spiritual, and considerably more focused. The power of helping people in a mentoring program can be the key to achieving more in life than you ever dreamed possible,” she says. Here’s how to maximize the mentoring experience for your protégé(s)—and for yourself.

TIP: Define what you want to give, and get, from the process. The rewards of mentoring can go both ways, but you must be clear on what you want going in. “You’ll get more from mentoring if you clarify your own goals first, because if you get as much as you give, everyone will benefit more from the experience,” says Sjodin. There’s a national program based in Fort Collins, Colorado whose acronym is FIRM: Fitness and Increased Recreation Through Mentoring, tagline: mentor a child and lose five pounds. (I can already hear you asking: “Great, can I mentor three children?”)
EXERCISE: Within each of us lies unique skills, passions and ideas, and mentoring can help you actualize those qualities and channel them to enrich others. First, pinpoint a few of your strengths that can improve someone else’s health: are you a nutrition expert? A tennis ace? Someone who’s nuts about soccer? Next, write down what you want from mentoring: maybe it’s to improve your diet or to enjoy exercise more. Finally, determine your ideal scenario: Do you thrive in one-on-one interactions, or in group settings? Do you prefer working with younger or older people? Do you want to serve as an informal mentor who provides advice in an unstructured manner, or as a formal mentor who commits to help others reach specific goals over a designated period?

TIP: Jump in and help out. In mentoring, the most important step is the first one. “Once people begin mentoring, almost immediately they receive a flood of rewards; it’s the signing-up part that stops most people,” says Sjodin.
EXERCISE: Learn more about mentoring and take steps towards getting involved. Begin at the Volunteer Match, a website that "connects good people to good causes." Sjodin’s book is a useful resource for getting started as well. The National Mentoring Partnership at www.mentoring.org is another excellent organization.

TIP: As you teach and inspire, learn and get inspired. Watching your protégés improve shows you that you’ve got the right stuff: if your protégé can do it, eating right and exercising better won’t seem so daunting for you. “Serving as a mentor forces you to set an example for others, and that creates a better you,” says Sjodin. “You can't let your protégé down; you have to practice what you preach, and that spurs you to try harder,” she says.
EXERCISE: Tap into that “I can do anything” frame of mind in your diet and workout program and strive to better yourself. For example, if you’re mentoring a child on how to eat and exercise smarter, commit to sharpening your own diet and workout program. That way, you both reap the rich rewards of mentoring.