Throughout the ages, there have always been historical presences who stood apart from the rest. Men and women who marked history with their passing. To learn from these individuals is the highest calling, the ultimate way to pave your own path to greatness.
Most geniuses have mentors and coaches to give them perspective, and to provide them with a vast source of first-hand and personal knowledge of a topic, way of thinking, lifestyle and how to be successful at it. Socrates mentored Plato. Plato mentored Aristotle. Aristotle mentored Alexander the Great. Thomas Edison mentored Henry Ford. The list goes on.
The best way, the only way if you are someone who is dedicated to making a difference with your life and being more than just an average monkey in a meat suit, is to find someone higher up on the food chain than you, someone who is successful at what they do, and join them as a mentored soul on your path to enlightenment.
The Old Way
Alexander the Great. Arguably one of the most famous names in our recorded history. Born in 356 BC, Alexander was tutored by Aristotle until he was 16 years of age. By the time he was thirty, he had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from the Ionian Sea to theHimalayas. He was undefeated in battle and is still to this day considered one of history’s most successful commanders.
Numerous cultural centers to this day remain major international hotspots for travel, lifestyle and education. He is almost single-handedly considered by historians to be one of the primary drives behind Hellenization, or the spread of Greek language, culture and influence throughout what was previously the Persian Empire. To this day, we still remember his name.
Bill Gates is another example of a modern-day mentored soul, studying under Warren Buffet. Buckminster Fuller mentored Mark Victor Hansen, co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Jim Rohn mentored Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins has mentored people such as Bill Clinton.
The Masters of Destiny always look to history for examples of how to avoid the mistakes of their forefathers. Great men always find leaders to follow in the footsteps of, and they aren’t afraid to serve at the feet of better men if they want to achieve the same level of greatness.
The New Way
Universities and higher education are the biggest lie since organized religion. They are a streamlined and tightly-organized mafia masquerading as education in a system where pieces of paper are given meaning, much in the same way that colored paper is waved around and holds value despite being printed from nothing.
96% of college degrees are absolutely worthless, according to ex-education secretary William Bennet. Nearly half of those who start a four-year college don’t finish, he points out. Of those who did graduate in 2011, half are unemployed or radically underemployed. By his reckoning, only 150 of America’s 3,500 colleges are worth it, and only then for degrees in highly specialized fields such as physics, medical fields and engineering.
College education is nothing more than a manufactured system of indentured servitude, meant to lure the masses into going $150,000 or more into debt, thus chaining them to a desk job for the majority of their adult lives while they pay off their loans to the state. Or worse yet, forcing them into a situation where they work meaningless jobs just to try and appease the creditors. Such as law students in Boston working for less than federal minimum wage.
The vast majority of university students find their lives over once they finish school. “Student loans have basically ruined my life,” says Tanya Carter, who graduated from the University of Toledo in 2008. She went to community college for two years before transferring, and attended classes part-time so she could also work. When Carter maxed out on federal loans, she turned to private loans to finish her degree. As a result of all that debt, she writes:“I never see myself owning a home, vehicle, or even getting married.”
The need to delay starting a family because of financial worries was a common concern. Lauren Dollard graduated from Fordham University in 2008 with $157,000 in debt, including interest. “My boyfriend won’t marry me because of my debt,” she says. “He doesn’t want it attached to his name.” She said she would trade her “fancy private school education” in a heartbeat to live “as an independent adult.”
It is a tragic story, one that is born out of ignorance in regards to global options for expats, as well as reliance upon a system that force-feeds school-loans as the “only way to succeed” down the throats of every high-school student in the United States. Each year, the culpable minds of the American youth are brainwashed into believing that the only way they will ever be able to achieve anything in life is to jump through the hoops of the system.
“Go to college,” they tell you. “Don’t worry about the costs. It’s required. If you don’t go to college you’ll never be able to get a job. Don’t worry about the money. We’ll loan it to you. It’s the only way you’ll ever amount to anything. Trust us. It’s the way the system works. You can’t survive in the system unless you do what we tell you. Watch your reality TV and go to sleep. Sign on the dotted line. Let us take care of you.”
Students are told that they have no other options; it’s this way or starve, they are told. Trust us. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of you. Sign here. Four years later, they wake up feeling the cold steel wrapped around their wrists, suddenly realizing they have become prisoners in a jail cell that was being built around them without them even realizing what was going on.
Get Mentored, Or Go Home
You’ll never get personal interaction with a professor who only has you for limited hours per day trying to teach you generic, everyday knowledge that serves you absolutely no purpose in the real world. You’ll never achieve breakthrough success, never meet leaders of your industry, never rub shoulders with the elite of your niche and eventually work your way up and joint venture with those very same leaders by studying a generic series of educational jokes meant to stimulate you into a life of wage slavery.
Mentoring is also one of the only ways to completely eradicate the learning curve associated with college degrees and the mandatory “work experience” you are expected to rack up once you get out of university. Instead of spending 4-6 years breaking your back for minimal wages while “building up experience”, you can instead get on the fast-track to guaranteed success, working hand in hand with someone who can show you the things that absolutely work and absolutely generate profit.
The only way you achieve greatness is to reach out and take with both hands. Own it.
Don’t be afraid to reach out to the person higher up on the food chain than you in your niche and ask them about the possibility of mentoring. Even if they don’t normally teach, most leaders are willing to train others to follow in their footsteps, if only because of the simple fact that it’s nice to pass something on. And you have nothing to lose by sending a simple email and finding out if you could perhaps serve under them and learn first-hand.
But be prepared to pony up, because mentors don’t give away their best information for free, nor should they. While in most cases you won’t fork over 150k in cash as you would for a university degree, you’ll still pay thousands to tens of thousands if you want the focused, one-on-one, long-term coaching from the best of the best. A good mentor program can last months to years and cost anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 per month. For example, Tony Robbins charges around $5,000 for his 9 day Mastery Program. Gregg Braden charges upwards of $1,500 to $2,000 for three to five day programs.
Guaranteed results don’t come cheap.
If you don’t have the cash, get creative. The mentors of old, be they Plato, Aristotle, Leonardo and beyond, were always paid well for their time training the next generation of leaders, but not necessarily only in money. If you can’t afford to outright pay a mentor for their time, offer up your time and serve a mentorship as an intern or personal assistant. Many times in the old days the maestros would trade labor and general work in exchange for a student’s time. Someone to do the grunt work like cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, chopping the wood, mending the house, washing clothes. They were also offered housing in exchange for teaching the next generation of elite. In the modern days it can also include answering emails, phone calls, doing social media and being a personal assistant so that the maestro can do what it is that he does best: create.
Studying under a mentor is the ultimate path to success, and it is the only way to achieve guaranteed greatness. A generic degree from a tenured wage slave with 300,000 USD of debt to his/her name who teaches 500 or more students just like you every single year isn’t going to get you anywhere in life. It’s going to land you in the same boat as the teacher: working for someone else’s benefit while you struggle to pay off your school loans.
Studying under a mentor who gives you personalized attention, someone who guides you every step of the way, someone who is living free of debt, free of wage slavery, traveling the world, speaking multiple languages, leveraging a global point of view, someone who has truly mastered their own universe…there is no substitute for learning at the feet of A Master where you are given undivided attention and guidance to achieve your own Destiny.
I have personally served two mentorships in my life. The first was to my grandfather, father and uncles, where I grew up as a third generation ceramic tile and natural stone contractor. I was running 10+ man crews by the age of 17, 25+ man crews by the time I was 19, self-employed by the time I was 21 years old, and semi-retired at 28 when I left the United States. Since I’ve been in Mexico I’ve been studying under DJ Vishnu, who has mentored me in alchemy and astrology and led me to the paths of universal awareness I am currently pursuing to great success, both spiritually and in business as well.
Have you served a mentorship? Do you have someone in mind who you would like to study under? What’s holding you back? Leave your comments below!