A Good Mentor Is A Gift You Give To Yourself
Having supportive parents and siblings is always a blessing and supportive friends are cherry on the top. The person I consider at the top of the “My Mentor” list is my sister, younger one. Her name is Moomal Fatima. Although she is younger than me but guides me the most. No doubt, learning has no age neither learning from youngsters is the source of embarrassing things. Whoever I am today, is because of my parents and siblings, especially her. She was there for me in every ups and downs, and supported me whenever I needed her. For mentorship, if we think having a mentor in our field is the only option we have so we are wrong. We both belong to different professional backgrounds. She is doing her bachelors in business administration from Italy whereas I am an Electrical Engineer. But she helped me despite having another professional and even being in another country does not make any difference.
A mentor is a person who motivates you, supports you, believes in you and encourage you to do something you can do but also afraid of doing. This is what she did when I entered into my professional life. Like others, I thought my University life is going to be fun and I will enjoy it and nail it. But it was quite a change from my expectations, based on this situation or part of my life I can say “expectation’s Kills”. It was my first semester, and I found it that I need to work hard to get adjusted with students of Karachi who have had more exposure than me as i belong to Mirpurkhas where opportunities and teaching techniques were not as good as Karachi. In 2nd semester, I thought to quit engineering and I was so sure about it that I cannot do anything here, It was a hard time on me. Before discussing this with my parents, I talked to my superhero Mentor, Moomal. She encouraged me as she has done always. She said, it is okay to fail but running away is not an option. She knew that all I need is a little push. Not only this, whenever i work on any project, i show it to her. She gives me brutally honest opinion for my goodness. Her feedback is what makes me do better and better. This helped me to motivated in improving my weak points. She didn’t have any technical knowledge but she supported by helping me to help myself. The achievement was that I became a confident Electrical Engineer. Although I do have some weak points but I never quit. I always try to improve myself in any way possible.
Now, let me connect this whole with humility. She has this supporting nature from the beginning. Back in school, when she asked me to improve at some point or even try to help me with my homework. I felt annoyed and embarrassed because my mentality was that she is younger than me then I am going to help her with her homework and stuff, she is going to learn from me. And I had this pride that I am an elder and I wouldn’t learn anything from anyone as I know i have better knowledge experience than her. I would just take it on my ego if i would learn from her. But as time passed, I realized you can learn from anyone and anything which exists in the universe. Being humble and taking everyone equally was a drastic and amazing change in me. I accepted the concept of humility which is believing that everyone is equal. Learning without having humility was an impossible task, if I didn’t believe in humility then I wouldn't have been able to learn and become whoever I am today. As to become a better version of myself I worked on feedback given by Moomal and others. Without accepting everyone equally I was not able to learn anything from them. This crown of pride that I am an elder and I knew everything etc. needed to be taken off. Because you learn when you have a positive mindset for learning.
I am showing gratitude to Moomal by this blog. Thank you so much for being my mentor. I have to learn a lot from you. Stay happy and my mentor.
So people, learn more, be humble, show gratitude, treat everyone equally, respect others’ opinions especially of your mentor, as they are here to support you.
