Circle de Luz

The Power of Mentors May 6, 2008

…Lately I’ve been dreaming big – REAL BIG! I woke up the other morning and decided that I would like to go to graduate school to earn an MBA. On that very same morning I also decided I wanted to complete both my first Marathon and Ironman Triathlon before I turn 30. One might say my very recent 28^th birthday might have some significance to the urgency of my BIG dreams and maybe they’re right. Maybe for the past 28 years I’ve been getting away with the status quo and in my 28^th year I’ve only just realized that my potential for greatness far exceeds the status quo. Could that really happen? Could you just wake up one day and realize your true worth, your market value to society?

I remember when I graduated college, I ruled out perfectly good job opportunities because I wasn’t “good” at math. Only after working and learning on the job skills did I realize that I was actually very good at math. The concepts and rules made sense when someone taught me their “real-life” application. The jobs I had looked at before had months of training associated with them so I ruled them out based on my ability to learn. I didn’t believe in myself, but the irony is I learned it anyways. There must be something to this epiphany, and it has nothing to do with my 28^th birthday …

You know what it is? It has to do with the people in my life now who have encouraged me. Not to say I didn’t have encouragement and support growing up, but it wasn’t like it is now. You remember what it was like to be a kid. To want to grow up and be an adult as soon as possible, but how many of us really understood what that meant? I knew I was going to go to college, but I didn’t know why and I definitely didn’t know which school. And you guessed it, I ruled out perfectly good schools that I was well qualified to attend, because I didn’t think I would get in.

I like to think that if I had someone, a mentor perhaps, when I was in middle school or high school that I would have pushed myself harder because there was someone telling me, specifically, that they believed in me. That I could actually do the things I doubted in myself.

If you had someone in your life like this, then you are an incredibly lucky person. You also realize the impact this person has had on your life and as a result, the success you have today. For me, I’ve only recently benefited from someone like this. Truthfully there are handfuls of people who have taught me to dream big. They have encouraged me when I felt unqualified. They have supported me when I have felt overwhelmed, and they have inspired me to do great things that I didn’t think I was capable of. And I am forever grateful to be this lucky. But a part of me wishes this could have happened a long time ago, when I was just kid, when I had the guts to dream big, but I didn’t have the heart.

I have another big dream. To make sure I’m a role model, a mentor, a person of endless encouragement for someone like me, when I was a kid. And the best part about this dream is that I know it could be really hard, but I also know I have the guts and the heart to do it – REAL BIG!

– Anna Freuler, Circle de Luz Board Member