One of the best things that you can do to help you successfully build your dreams is to find yourself a mentor. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to find someone willing to be a mentor to you. And sometimes there are other reasons why you just don’t feel comfortable approaching someone and asking them to take on that kind commitment. So today we’re going to go through a powerful psychological process for creating a Mind Mentor that you can access 24/7 to help you achieve your goals!

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A Mentor Can Help You Grow

So, first off, why would you want a mentor in the first place? A mentor is someone who can help you to push yourself out of your comfort zone – where you know nothing more will ever happen than what you are already experiencing – and into that scary zone where all the magic really happens, the zone of your growing edges.

Left to our own devices a lot of us would just opt to stick with the status quo. Because – let’s face it – it’s just easier and far less uncomfortable to stay in a place where everything is familiar than it is to take a risk and do something we’ve never done before. Even when we know that what we’ve been doing to build our dreams isn’t going to be enough to get us to where we want to be, we hesitate to dive into the unknown unless we absolutely have to.

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And that’s where a mentor can be helpful. Mentors can help to identify new avenues of possibility and opportunities that we may overlook ourselves. A mentor is also a fantastic sounding board when you want to discuss the potential of a new idea you’ve had, and a trusted advisor whom you can turn to when you are in need of the advice, experience, and accumulated wisdom of someone who has already been where you are.

Your Ideal Mentor

Your ideal mentor is someone who is further along in their journey than you are, but not so far ahead of you that they no longer remember what it was like to be where you are and what the particular struggles of your level happen to be.

As I mentioned last week, great places to find real-life mentors are through associations like Toastmasters and your local business associations or Chambers of Commerce. You can also find lots of local meet-ups for specific areas of interest through web sites like Eventbrite and meetup.com where you can connect with people who might become mentors over time.

What’s a Mind Mentor?

But what if you’re just too shy or too early on in your own journey to feel comfortable asking someone to be your mentor? Or what if you’ve got a pressing question that you want to deal with right now but your mentor is away on a month-long yoga retreat in Fiji?

In such cases, I recommend creating one or more Mind Mentors. These are imaginary, but still powerful figures that embody the traits or characteristics you most wish to cultivate within yourself. They have the knowledge and the skills that you wish you had, and so they can help to advise or encourage you when you feel uncertain or hesitant to do what you need to do in order to build your dreams.

How Can a Mind Mentor Help You?

So how does that work, exactly, if these Mind Mentors aren’t real? How can they possibly be any kind of support to you if they’re figments of your imagination?

They work because they draw on something that’s already inside you, of course. There’s a school of thought out there that tells us that everyone we meet is a potential mirror to something in ourselves.

The people we don’t like are mirroring and amplifying some trait that we don’t like about ourselves (which is why we find those other people so annoying), and the people we like or admire are also mirroring and amplifying some trait that we do like about ourselves. This is a very simplified explanation of how that all works, but it gives you the general idea.

So, when we’re talking about Mind Mentors, the figures that we create will embody amplified versions of traits of characteristics that we already have within us, but which we want to develop more fully. They’re going to be better at doing or being what we’d most like to be, and they’re going to be there to help us build those abilities within ourselves.

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The Power of Archetypes

So how does that work? This exercise draws on the very powerful concept of archetypes.

Archetypes, as explained by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, are universal patterns of thought or action that exist in the collective unconscious. These are patterns that are found in virtually all cultures throughout the world.

These patterns, Jung said, are potentials that can manifest in our behaviour when we interact with the outside world or that become activated when they become images in our consciousness. So, we all have access to these universal archetypes, but any expression of them will be unique to each individual.

In creating our Mind Mentors, we’re going to use these archetypes to help us gain access to wisdom and guidance when we need it. That might sound complicated, but I promise you it’s going to be really easy because we’re going to use standard fictional heroes to figure this part out, so don’t worry.

How to Create a Mind Mentor

In order to create our Mind Mentors we’re going to use a four-step process to call up a specific archetype and bring it into focus in our awareness. In Jung’s words, we’re going to turn them into “images in our consciousness”. So we’re going to get really clear on who our mentor will be, and then we’re going to talk about ways of summoning that mentor when we need it.

Step 1: Clarify the Mentor’s Traits.

In this step, you need to decide on the personality traits or characteristics and the skills and abilities that you would like to develop within yourself. So, who do you most need to be, and what do you most need to be able to do in order to achieve your goal or make your big dream come true?

In my case, for example, if I want to achieve everything that I currently want to achieve by year’s end, some of the characteristics that I feel I most need to cultivate within myself are wisdom, strength, courage, patience, resilience, self-confidence, and discipline or “stick-to-itness”.

Step 2: Match the Mentor to a Known Character.

In this step you’re going to match the mentor to a fictional character that you’re already familiar with and that you already admire. So what you want to do is think of a character in a book or a movie that best embodies the traits and characteristics you identified in Step 1.

Every character in every story ever told is a version of one of those archetypes that Jung talked about. They’re patterns put into a form that we can relate to. And that is where their power is. We learn from our favourite characters without even being aware that we’re doing it.

The character that you decide on will become your Mind Mentor, so choose wisely!

In my case, I decided that Wonder Woman (as portrayed by Gal Godot in the Wonder Woman movie) was the ideal embodiment of all of these characteristics. For those who are familiar with archetypes, I think Wonder Woman is the ideal embodiment of a Goddess archetype, a powerful pattern of female energy and a perfect mentor to teach me all those things I want to learn in order to be able to DO all that I want to do.

Step 3: Find a Connection Tool.

Once you have identified who your Mind Mentor will be, you want to find something that will help you connect to the energy and essence of this archetype; something that will remind you to call forth that energy and power in your daily life.

In my case, I bought an inexpensive little Wonder Woman Funko Pop and she now stands watch over my work area. Every time I glance up I see her and this helps me to stay connected with the energy that I find in the idea of Wonder Woman so that I can keep pulling that energy into my day.

So find an image online that you can print out, or find yourself a keychain or other object that helps you connect to your Mind Mentor. It should be something physically tangible that helps you maintain that vibrational connection with the traits that you identified in step one.

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Step 4: WWYMD – What Would Your Mentor Do?

In the final step, you begin to ask your mentor for guidance directly, or you think about how your mentor would handle this situation if you are unsure what to do or are in need of ideas.

In my case, for example, I’ll ask myself “What would Wonder Woman do in this situation?” If I had Wonder Woman’s wisdom, strength, courage, patience, resilience, and self-confidence, how would I approach this particular problem? What actions would I take and what words would I use to resolve this situation in a way that benefits everyone?

And if I’m stuck trying to figure out what to write for a blog article or a section in a book, for instance, I could say: “Wonder Woman, please help me find the words that will inspire my readers and make their lives better.” Or if I’m finding it hard to concentrate and stay focused long enough to get something important done, I could say: “Wonder Woman, please help me find the determination and discipline to complete this task to the best of my ability.”

So ask your Mind Mentor a direct question then just leave yourself open to whatever little nudges or ideas float through you and make sure you act on them.

And that’s it – four simple steps to creating and connecting with your Mind Mentor!

Your Own Untapped Potential

Now, as I mentioned previously, the really interesting thing about this whole exercise is that everything that you are looking for in your Mind Mentor already exists within you. When you connect with an archetypal pattern like this, you’re drawing on untapped potential that is sort of dormant inside of you, but which you haven’t yet realized that you possess, or which you haven’t yet figured out how to use on your own.

And by formalizing your connection to the archetype by creating your Mind Mentor, you’re using your Mind Mentor as a bridge to let you access this hidden aspect of you in a way that is not threatening or frightening to your conscious mind. You can draw on those hidden talents and let them out to play a little because you’re kind of tricking yourself into believing that you’re “borrowing” them from your Mentor.

Again, this is a very simplified explanation of the underlying psychology here, but it’s enough to give you the basics so you can get going with this.

Summing it Up

So I’m just going to give you a quick recap of that four-step process:

1. Clarify your mentor’s traits;
2. Match the mentor to a fictional character you’re already familiar with;
3. Find a connection tool that allows you to really connect with the energy of your Mind Mentor; and,
4. Ask you mentor for advice when needed.

Give the Mind Mentor process a try and be sure to tweet me @VibeShifting and let me know how it goes!