My mom always tries to give me advice whenever I come across a very difficult problem, and I admit that most of it is entirely spot-on either due to her experience or intuition. But even though I keep it in mind, I don’t exactly take it. Every important piece of wisdom, every answer she gave me was always found on my own.
For example, when I’d grapple with hard feelings, she’d tell me to “let them go”; however, I had taken that advice to mean that I needed to ignore and shove them into the back of my head, when she actually meant to let them be and let myself feel them.
I’d give people advice myself, such as “You’re cool, don’t be so hard on yourself”, or “People are only annoying because you feel really upset right now and daily annoyances are setting you off like a flame on a stream of gunpowder.” But it doesn’t seem to register to them, does it? In their mind, they can’t believe in what I say because it seems so untrue, so irrelevant.
Is the answer that we need to give ourselves lessons instead of finding them in an external source? I was often given lessons and information from the older people in my life, like when my history teacher would give me a lesson without asking me if I cared about it, or when my grandmother would make me watch her cook so I could learn how to. And I just wasn’t interested.
But passively processing information became a habit, and I watched media reviews without considering how I felt about what opinions I watched. I read self-help and health books, and I indulged in astrological horoscopes and oracle cards that could give me the answer to all my issues. But I had thoughts that they couldn’t help as much as I initially perceived that they did.
Whenever a piece of Mama’s advice or a psychology paper’s findings resonated with me, it wasn’t because I was a “tabula rasa” waiting to be filled with information and lessons; it was because I personally agreed with it. Every time I came upon a possible answer, I used my own gut feeling, my intuition, to verify if it was true. I am not sure about the future and I’m not sure about the answers. But I believe in my intuition and body to know anything I need to know, to give me any answer I need to know.
I am my own teacher, despite years of passively believing anything I have heard telling me otherwise. And if I want to help people grow, I am going to be a mentor, not an educator.
Mentors see that intelligence and energy in another person, and they inspire them to nurture it and chase their dreams. They ask a person what they want to know and encourage them to research that topic in their own way. They believe in them. Most importantly, a mentor’s job is to let that person know that they are there for them in the event that they do need a little bit of help.
I am my own teacher, and the people who care about me are mentors. If I listen to any advice, it’s because I realized it resonated with me and I liked it, and I wanted to reinforce my own opinions and beliefs. The people whom I listen to and interact with are there to help support me and my life. They’re reinforcements of myself; they make sure I don’t stop being myself when times are hard, and they encourage me to be the best I can be by exposing me to new perspectives and ideas.
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