In a Quarter Life Crisis? Become your own Mentor with this Self Development App

What is Mentorship?

Professionally, mentorship can come in many forms, including supervisors, experienced peers and those in roles to which we aspire in other fields. Academically, they can be professors and instructors, advisors, student leaders, upperclassmen and even successful peers. In the traditional journey, the hero will meet or otherwise encounter their mentor shortly after beginning their quest and, hesitantly or otherwise, come under their tutelage.

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My experience with mentorship

Personally, it's not hard for me to look back and identify specific mentors I've had as both a student and professional, from my undergrad program director to my assigned mentor at an academic coaching firm to a current coworker who took me under her wing when I started out and really showed me the professional and cultural ropes within our office and at my university as a whole.

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The thing is, I never considered these individuals as traditional mentors so much as I took for granted they were there to help me, and that I had and would continue to fill that role for others. I saw each instance as a transactional give-and-take with the implication I would one day pay it forward, rather than the powerful, lasting relationships into which each of my mentor-mentee relationships has developed.

I feel retroactively narcissistic typing that out, but hopefully it reads as an honest reflection on the ignorance of (semi-) youth. I understand now that those folks weren't fulfilling a role purely for my benefit, but rather that we met each other at such a time and within a certain set of circumstances that allowed me to (ignorantly) serve as their mentee. I'd like to think they benefited in developing their mentoring skills as much as I did from being their mentee.

All of this serves as preamble to a slightly different approach to the concept of a mentor, with the key point being that mentors are hugely beneficial drivers of self-awareness and growth. To some extent we will be mentors and mentees throughout our lives, and the better we are at recognizing these relationships the more we'll enjoy the numerous benefits of the mentor-mentee relationship, whichever role we're in.

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Become Your Own Mentor

The specific concept I want to focus on is that of being your own mentor, which can allow you to reap the benefits of being both mentor and mentee. The LIFE Intelligence app is a personal DIY career coach app. In Mission 2 (of 9 Missions, or topics, on self, career, and relationships) it outlines how we can just as easily visualize idealized versions of ourselves and figure out the necessary steps to get there. In something called Narrative Therapy, we can actually use our own stories and seeing ourselves as the hero in our story to be our own best mentor. A huge component of the program is journaling, including writing letters from our future selves.

This approach works. I've experience it personally and with students, especially when letters are as specific and illustrative as possible. Research has focused on how letters from and visualization of our future selves can help benefit us when it comes to everything from saving for retirement to decreasing delinquent decision-making to improving exercise adherence.

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Finding Your LIFE Direction

When I was an academic success coach, I would typically hit a lull with students during our third or fourth session as we progressed into the latter half of the semester. This occurred for myriad reasons, but pretty much always led to an awkward pause after a few minutes of catching up. Growing pains had been navigated, a new routine established, an approach to each class put into place. The work-life-social balance had reached a new homeostasis, and they were mostly focused on finishing the semester strong. Or just finishing. Typically, especially with first-semester freshmen, this is when I would pitch the now-future exercise.

"Who are you now," I would ask, "and who do you want to be?"

This exercise is essentially a facilitated version of the future letter, with the student building themselves up as a mentor with a bit of help and navigation. If things were going great or terribly that semester, we could discuss why and develop a plan to sustain or improve the situation for the next one. We could talk about a graduation timeline, and who and what they hoped to be when they finished up. We could talk about dream jobs for which they were earning degrees, and what they looked like on day one in that professional role.

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Essentially, we'd pick a perfect endpoint, featuring them in idealized form, and work backwards. That endpoint version was a mentor, and outlining the steps it would take to become that was equivalent to progressing through one's own hero's journey with a mentor.

The key in plotting out what it takes to achieve that seemingly perfect future self is identifying attainable specifics for every step of the journey, and tapping into the elements of our individual selves that will motivate us to achieve them.

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How Career Coaching Apps like LIFE Intelligence Can Help

I haven't used that exercise in awhile as an academic advisor, because I and my students are typically more focused on the day-to-day. However, I do still engage them in future planning, and the LIFE Intelligence app helped remind me of this and other exercises. Download the app for free, and use the exercise in Mission 2: writing a letter from your future self. This powerful exercise allows you to channel your idealized future, dreaming as big as you want. By writing from your own future, you can gain inspiration, find life direction, and build a roadmap for how to achieve those aspirations. When things get rough, you can look back on this to keep your north star in mind, with affirmation that it's well worth it. And in years you can look back and say: I knew I could.

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