Synchronize : When the student is ready, the teacher appears
When I look at this painting, I see two figures facing one another : a mentor and a mentee. The figure on the left seems to be taller and wearing a robe with a hood facing the second figure who seems a bit smaller. Between them, two strings, one blue and one yellow, are passing through. The blue string seems to be connected to the mentor and the yellow strings seems to be connected to the mentee. At first, on the left, the strings are not quite in synch but they cross at some point. Then after they go through each figures, they seem to synchronize with one another, adopting the same pattern. The phrase that comes to mind when I see this is “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”
I’m a strong believer in mentors. Even though I never officially had one, like Luke Skywalker did with Yoda, I now tend to see mentors in the many people I meet. They come in various shapes and forms. Some are older than me and some are younger than me. Some I get to interact with and some I get to watch from afar. Some teach me what to do and others teach me what not to do. It’s a question of learning from their experiences by listening to what they have to say and watching what they do. It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that I didn’t necessarily need my personal Yoda. I didn’t need to look for that guru” who knows everything about everything and would take me under their wings to teach me the way. I used to be a little jealous of successful people who had seemed to found their mentor by “shear luck”. Serendipity seemed to have knocked at their door to delivered their mentor who took them under their wing and showed them the way. Think about people like Oprah Winfrey and Maya Angelou, Kanye West and Jay-Z, Napoleon Hill and Andrew Carnegie, Tai Lopez and Joe Salatin, Brian Rose and Dan Pena, Bob Proctor and Ray Stanford, etc. At first, I was looking at this and thought “What about me? Where’s my mentor who knows it all and can show me the way?” In hindsight, I realized that perhaps I just wasn’t ready so I couldn’t see that mentors come in many forms and are not necessarily all encompassed in one person.
Soon, I started to see mentors in the form of peers. By observing their wins, the way they think, the way they act, the result they get from it, and by emulating what I connected with, I started to see positive changes in my life as well. Now, when I look at this image it reminds me of what I need to do: look for people who seem to get the results I’m looking for, observe their behaviour and thought process, and emulate.
One of the main shift for me was when I started to read books on people’s biographies and philosophies of life. I never really read books after University. Studying engineering for four year turned me off of books. Back then, I only read them to memorize material for exams, which I really wasn’t fond of because I never felt like I learned anything significant. So after four years of that, I had this believe that reading was either for passing a test or to escape reality via fiction which I wasn’t interested in. Learning to me is absorbing information in such a way that it becomes part of you. I didn’t feel like I was really learning when I read in University so I stopped reading. Years later, I started to listen to podcasts. They were an entertaining and educational thing to do while I was drawing. At the time I was listening to the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, and during one of the shows, he mentioned a book he highly recommended to all artists called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. He gave it such a good review that I decided to read it. As silly as it sounds, it was one of the first time that I realized that there were books out there that I could read for myself, to really learn something that I could use and not just memorize and repeat when I got questioned about it. Books that would give me a new perspective on life, books the would change me for the better.
That’s when I started to read based on recommendations from people I respected and admired for who they were, what they believed in and what they did. So every time I heard of a book being recommended by someone I admired, I made a note to get the book or audiobook to learn from it. I was doing what the pictured show. I saw their string of thoughts and I synched up with it. I was also interested in Oprah’s show Masterclass at the time, there was a time where she was interviewing celebrities. One of the memorable ones was the one with Jay Z where he listed his top books. I wrote them all down and started to read them one by one. This was another instance for me that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I was ready to start working on myself so book recommendation started to show up from random places. For example, there was a tweet from Jada Pinkett about one of her favourite books called Aspire by Kevin Hall, so I read that. There was a book from 50 cent about the 50th Law, I read that. Then I came across Tai Lopez and his book recommendations. I started reading some of them too. Tai got me into reading the biography of Arnold Swartzenegger, the biggest book I ever read at that time, 646 pages cover to cover. And I loved it. I was a different person. I signed up for the local library and started listening to book that seem to fit what I was interested it. I signed up for Goodreads and started my own reading challenges. First one book a month, then 2 books a month, and more. Every time I found a mentor to learn from, I synchronized with their strings of thought, and became their mentee for the time being.
Now a couple years later, I feel like a better version of myself, constantly in the process of learning and improving. And I’ve event gone to the next step of consciously applying more of the lessons I’ve learned from the many authors I read in my day to day life. Taking the time to write this book is part of that process for me.
One of the benefits reading and synching with the minds of people I connect with did was to help me unlock a source of creativity I’ve always had within me hadn’t made use of. I’m just at the beginning of that road, there’s a lot more to explore but this requires a new approach. It requires me to be more active and less passive. Before it was mostly about absorbing from others in order to change my mind. Now it’s also about creating and doing. It’s about being willing to fail time and time again in order to succeed, as failing are the necessary steps toward success. It’s the only way to learn. If you don’t fail, you’re not learning anything new because you already know it. If you fail, you know it’s something you can work on and something you can learn. I’m learning that it’s crucial not to resist it in order to grow.
My teachers also appeared in the form of the mastermind I mentioned earlier, a group of like minded individuals who get together on a regular basis to take a good look at our own lives and, with the help of trustworthy outside view, see where we fall short and where we can improve. I believe this group appeared in my life because I was ready. I had done the work beforehand, I had read many books, I was attending workshops and conferences somewhat related to self improvement which led me to meet a like-minded individual who invited me to her mastermind. We’ve been working together for the past 2 years now and they’ve been a huge part in enabling me to uncover more of who I am and expressing that.
So the message for me, when I see this artwork is to do the work and keep synchronizing with others. Look for what you’re interested in others, learn from them in person or at a distance, it doesn’t matter, so long as it creates positive changes in your own life. What matter is that you synch up with the way they think or their energy, so that you can start seeing the positive changes in your own life. When you are ready your teacher will appear, in whatever form is best suited to you a the time. There will be instances where you will be the teacher because you also have something to teach others. Just trust in the process and don’t be afraid to fail as it is part of the process.
Now it’s your turn. What do you see in this painting? Don’t be afraid to turn it around until you see something that speaks to you. What is it? Is there a story behind what you see? How does that story relates to something that’s happening in your life right now or a thought that comes to mind? Perhaps you also see the mentor-mentee relationship. In that case, who are your mentors and who are your mentees in life? How can your actions improve the results you have in your life right now?
