Advice and Ambition Aligning for Tomorrow's Success (Episode 159)

Have you ever questioned the impact a mentor can have on your path to success? Well, buckle up as Dr. Jason Wiggins, our Motivational Gen Z and Millennial Expert, joins me to unravel the threads of mentorship that weave through our personal and professional lives. In an engaging narrative, we explore the dual roles of being a mentor and a mentee, sharing stories that bring to light the profound effects these relationships have on our growth. From personal blunders to Shohei Ohtani's financial missteps, we dissect the nuances of seeking guidance with a critical eye. This episode is your roadmap to navigating advice and making choices that resonate with your values.

As we step into the limelight of the digital age, where actions are magnified and legacies are defined, Dr. Wiggins and I discuss the weight of our digital footprints. We examine how the essence of mentorship extends beyond counsel to embodying a life lived with intention, and how the decisions we make today can shape the stories told about us tomorrow. Workplace mentorship takes center stage as we propose strategies that align individual ambitions with team triumphs, transforming the very meaning of success. Tune in to a conversation that promises not only to enlighten but also to inspire you to craft a legacy worth leaving.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hello friends, welcome to your Motivational Gen Z and Millennial Expert Podcast. I am your host, my name is Dr Jason Wiggins and thank you very much for being here. Well, let's get our heads right and get started. Today, I want to thank everybody for your listenership and I appreciate you very much, and if you'd like, feel free to email me and leave me comments, you can email me at jason at genzandmillennialexpertcom, and I'll provide you prompt feedback, as we appreciate everything that you have to say and any words of wisdom. So thank you again very much.

Speaker 1: 0:51

Today, we're going to talk about a cool topic that I think goes unnoticed sometimes, but it makes such an impact within our personal and professional lives. It's about mentorship. Mentorship is a give and take. We can either be mentors or we can be mentees, or we can be both, depending on who we are and who are mentoring and who are being menteed by. So the key fact is what is mentoring? Mentoring is the ability to provide feedback and organize thoughts about how it's best to do something to others, where you may have had experiences, you've experienced hardship, you've had great things that have happened to you, and you can share these words of wisdom to others that either they haven't experienced it yet, or they're going through a rough time in their life and really need somebody to provide that extra push, that extra motivation, and that's where not only are you helping them but you can feel good about making a positive impact. So that is why mentorship is so important. But just like being a mentor, being a mentee is just as important, because we can all benefit from others' experience, and that's like leadership that's in our jobs, that's in our friendship. Believe it or not, everybody has the ability to make a studious listener, and that means being a studious listener when you're being mentored is not necessarily believing everything that is said. Sometimes, taking it with a grain of salt is the best course of action. Now, if the individual is trusted at the highest, most authority and you feel 100% confident, then you can go ahead and take their feedback as law and utilize it. But what's important, if you're not 100% sure, know, peel the onion back when you're receiving that mentorship and think about is this the right thing to do? Is this prevalent to me? My life Is it work, professional or personal? And yet then you take that feedback and go okay, this is how I can utilize it to help impact my life in a positive way, as we're talking about mentorships and mentees, I was a mentee back when I was in high school.

Speaker 1: 4:04

I was a young athlete, I was playing football and our coach he had mentioned you know, maybe I might have missed verbatim of exactly what he said, but he basically mentioned if you want to get bigger, stronger, eat raw eggs and drink vegetable oil You're laughing Vegetable oil that'll clog your arteries. Well, at 17, 18 years old, I didn't know any difference. So I started doing the raw eggs, but I also added drinking straight Western oil out of a bottle. And for anybody that's ever done that, well, you probably haven't done that. Because I was listening to something that I thought was true, but I didn't peel the onion back to really determine myself is is this healthy for me? So drinking western oil was not healthy. It can really make an impact on your health and it was not a smart move. Why? Because I know that the football coach had a good reason why he was mentioning it and I just probably took him wrong at what he said, and that is why, with the thoughts he had were good. But I have to peel the onion back sometimes to realize that, ok, not everything that everybody tells you is true, and some of it may be great feedback, but at the same time, it's very important to realize okay, this is something that may not seem quite right. That's where you question it.

Speaker 1: 5:50

And that goes the same thing for financial aspect and all the different aspects of life. For example, let's talk about a figure right now internationally Shohei Itani. He had a translator that was also his best friend, providing him advice, and he was actually taking money from his account. His name was Ipay and he was stealing money from Shohei Itani, a famous baseball player, stealing from his account and paying off gambling debts. And, at the same time, shohei Itani may seem a little bit naive because he didn't check his checking account, his statements and, sure enough, at the end there was about $16 million that was ciphered out of Shohei Itani's bank account.

Speaker 1: 6:47

Now, any normal individual we cannot relate to $16 million being taken out of our account but if you're making $40 million a year on endorsements and you have handlers that may have a real impact on what you're doing, they tell you things and you believe them at verbatim, then that naivety could be something that is a real issue. Then that naivety could be something that is a real issue, while Shohei Natani is a victim of a theft, but he is also. He's also, you know, he was naive to the fact, so therefore he needs to take full responsibility for understanding. These are my finances, this is what I'm in control of, and something like this should not ever happen again. Therefore, the moral of the story is no matter who is impacting your life, as a mentor and as a mentee, we need to take that information and decide and decipher what is real, what is not, and take that and use it for the better good of wherever we're going to utilize that information, and that is why mentorship is so important.

Speaker 1: 8:09

Think about young boys, young girls that are having a rough life and so they have mentorships from a Big Brothers or Big Sisters type of program, and you would expect that those individuals would have an impact that was nothing but a good impact, but not everybody has the best intentions when they are mentoring, and that is why, just because it seems like people are doing a good deed, it doesn't always reflect on the end result, and so, therefore, think about somebody in your life that you would consider a mentor, is it financially, professionally, personally, a friend, a family member, whoever it may be the family member, whoever it may be. Think about the impact that they have had on your life. Would you consider the impact good? Generally, most of us that have trusted people in our life are going to say, yes, this person has made a great impact and I feel very, very good about what they tell me Great. We can only all be so lucky to have key individuals in our life that, ultimately, they want what's best for us. As Gen Z and millennials, we have to realize that there is so much information out there that is available in order to curtail our thoughts, to sideline our ideas, in order to bring us the result that we want. And that's why, as we take that advice and a grain of salt and realize that the impact can be sometimes immeasurable or measurable, but the reality of it is is, if we focus on the end result, the end result of where we want to go, we don't have to rely on somebody's 100% assurance that things are going to be right. It's where we have to take a leap of faith from our own knowledge, our own expertise and information that has been filtered from our mentors, in order to provide that roadmap for our future success in our professional and personal life.

Speaker 1: 10:54

Think of sports in general. Think of all the influence out there. There's a recent basketball player. If you follow the National Basketball Association, he might receive a lifetime ban from basketball, where he makes millions of dollars as a bench player that comes off the bench and helps his team win games. He placed prop bets on the team that he plays for and now he is at risk of being permanently banned because of outside influences. I can only guess, without being in the same room and knowledgeable, that he's had poor influences on his life. I don't know if he had family friends. What he was trying to help out. Whatever the case is, he bet on a game or games where he was involved in the final outcome and, as everybody knows, you cannot have an impact on the spedding world when you're playing in the same game. Why? Because it's cheating, it's taking the integrity out of the game, and that's the thing in life in general for people that provide bad influence. Think about Martha Stewart's in the financial scandal for stocks and insider trading.

Speaker 1: 12:25

The information, again, greed, outside information can play such a pivotal role in the outcome of what we do, and that is why, again, I think it's important to surround ourselves with good people who have our best interest at heart, that realize that we have the ability to succeed with the right mentorship. Gen Z and millennials are the most intelligent generations of all the time. Why? Because we have more information at the hands of the fingertips knowing what's right, knowing what's wrong, having that instant gratification, that instant information.

Speaker 1: 13:16

But that instant information can also be a detriment. Think of all the eyes on everything that we do in our life. We have videos, we have cameras, we have everything that can see all our moves, no matter where we are. And that is scary, folks. I can think of when I was younger and I did things that I shouldn't have done. Did I get caught? No, but if we were in today's society, I would have not only been caught, but I would have had a significant impact on my life due to poor decisions.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Knowing you can be caught via camera, via all the different ways to view on the things that we do on a daily basis, it's easy to get caught. That's why we have to be so much more aware of our surroundings. Our surroundings can dictate our future growth. If we make one bad mistake, we say one wrong thing on social media, we do something that is questionable. Not only will it haunt us for a short term, it will haunt us for a lifetime, and that's why, as those who were born beyond 1980, as those who were born beyond 1980, you've been either in the digital tech world all your life, you've grown up in it, or you've adopted it. I mean, the reality is is it's difficult to grow up in a society where every single step you take is being watched.

Speaker 1: 15:06

Now, does that seem a little bit paranoid? It's not meant to be. It's meant to protect. It's meant to watch what you do, because if you don't watch what you do, these things can take a forever lasting impact on what you do. That's why it's best, as mentors and mentees, to do the right thing, sometimes the hardest thing to do. Out there is the right thing. But when you do the right thing and you do it to the best of your ability and you're straightforward with the information and you say, okay, if you go this route, this is what's going to happen, if you decide to go this route, then this consequence or action could happen, and that is why it's always best to know all your information. Know what deck of cards you're playing with. Have you ever heard that term, know what deck of cards you're playing with, because when you're dealt cards, that's what you have. When you're dealt instances in life, that's what you have. We can make or break our lives by the actions, actionables, expectations or guidance that we have. We can make an impact that will be forever lasting on our legacy as fathers, sons, co-workers, professional, and that is why it's so important.

Speaker 1: 16:45

Sometimes the hardest thing to do in life is the thing that we need to do because it's right, because it's the right thing to do Live your life like it's the right way to do it. Why? Because if you grow up trying to take shortcuts, or professionally you take shortcuts, or personally you take shortcuts these are not shortcuts. Why? Because for every single shortcut that we encounter, it's just another way to do something wrong. Sidetrack the right way. Then you are going to be on the right track, personally and professionally.

Speaker 1: 17:37

I always like to say we have one life to live. By cheating, by taking shortcuts, by not doing the right thing, by not being the right mentor, by not listening to the things that we need to do in life to make the right decisions, those are the things, those are the resources that we need to pay attention to. We need to pay attention to the right, relevant information that will impact your life, impact your success, impact what resources that you utilize to perform at the highest level within your life. Living your life, living my life. The only one way we can do it it's doing things the right way, making those hard decisions, providing that great feedback to others to help them succeed in their life, to help push them to the next level.

Speaker 1: 18:46

At the end, all we have is our mental makeup and our legacy. Body functions will go, health will go, people will pass away. All those things will happen in a lifetime and one day, as morbid as it sounds, we won't wake up one day. That's why you have to cherish every single day of your life and live it to the best of your ability. Hold your loved ones close to you, you know, make sure that you don't fight with others and don't hold grudges. Think about living your life and how would you live it on your last day. And that is how you become a great mentor, a great mentee by listening to others, sharing experiences, collaborating, making others better around you.

Speaker 1: 19:49

For example, if you work within an organization, the number one goal that I like to share is do what makes your boss look good. If you make your boss look good, he knows that you have his priorities at your best task ability, meaning you will do what it takes to ensure that the tasks that are successful are regarding making his job, making him look good overall, and that is the goal of my job in every day. Well, people say wait a minute. Isn't the goal to ensure profitability, increase top line growth, reduce expenses, build teams? Of course, but you're doing all that when you put the first goal at hand, and that is making your boss look good, and that boss one day could be your mentor. He could be the one that takes you from your current position and promotes you. It could be with that company. He could move to a different company. You could get promoted there as well. Who knows company? You can move to a different company. You can get promoted there as well. Who knows?

Speaker 1: 21:10

So many great things can happen when you have the right mentorship, when you listen to it, when you take that feedback and you utilize the aspects that are important and that you deem necessary for improvement, and then you take that information and you pass it along. And then you take that information and you pass it along. You help others and that's how we become better individuals in life. As we like to mention in each episode, this is a motivating episode and aspect of everything we do. As Gen Z and millennials, you have the power to create success by taking that information from your mentor and elevating yourself, elevating your message, elevating your job duties. Find ways to help your organization succeed. By doing that, you will make your boss look good, you will look good and it will help you create an identity and a path towards future success within either your current organization or another one, because, remember, either way, you are learning and utilizing resources that are going to be impactful for you moving forward. The things you learn today are the same resources you're going to use tomorrow in a new role, in a promotional role, and collaborating those messages and taking those to others and providing valuable feedback that is helpful, that has the person's interest, their best interest at heart, has the person's interest, their best interest at heart, and then you will reap the rewards by one day knowing that you helped move somebody's message and or their overall experiences to other next levels.

Speaker 1: 23:18

I've had great mentors. I've had ones as I mentioned. They were great, but you have to peel the onion back to get the right message. As always, I want to thank my listeners. You're amazing. I appreciate you. So, again, this is a weekly podcast. Sometimes we are not able to always be on cue within our week, due to life, due to work, but this is my passion, this is my hobby, this is what I love to do, so when I have the chance to provide a meaningful message that can be impactful, that can help you progress, because this podcast is about motivating and helping Gen Z and Millennials within the workplace and personally. So, thank you, take care and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.