For many years now I have looked for a spiritual director. So too I have looked for a mentor. Now, please do not get me wrong; there are ample people in this world who regularly tell me where to go.

Furthermore, and on a more positive note, I have been blessed with some great friends who provide insight and direction in life. People I turn to who have helped me through many very difficult times and with many difficult decisions.

My father was a mentor to me when he was alive. I was lucky to learn a lot about life from him. My father-in-law is a man of great natural wisdom and I have learned much from him as well.

My wife has taught me much about life, love, and commitment, even if she has never been able to teach me a thing about keeping a house clean.

My son has taught me much about how to be a father and a man. He has helped teach me patience, forbearance, unconditional love and now about service.

My daughter has taught me much about balance and compromise, what it means to be a loving father and a good man. She teaches me regularly about spiritual things as well.

So, I cannot complain as life has brought me many teachers.

However, a true spiritual director and a mentor in my business life has been elusive.

I take mentoring very seriously. It is something that I have a lot of passion around and provides energy in this very hectic world. Taking time out to really work with someone in spiritual, business or just life in general in any way I can.

However, this seems to be a lost art, especially in the business world.

Even in other facets of life we seem far more focused on counseling than coaching. Fixing the past instead of working on the future.

Yes, there is a great need to deal with the baggage of the past before we can move confidently forward into the future.

But consider the old adage about an “ounce of prevention being better than a pound of cure.”

My dad always used to say, “there is never time to do something right, but there is always time to do it over.”

This is more true today than ever. The pace we live at allows little time to properly plan or prepare for events. We rush headlong into them doing our best to keep pace and then when we stumble or find the going rough we look back and ask why. Never considering just a bit more time to have planned for the bumps in the road might have made the way far less painful.

When heading out on the motorcycle for a ride, I typically look over my gear and consider the possible weather and other conditions I might encounter. I look to take the proper gear without taking the whole house with me. Just a little preparation makes the ride so much more enjoyable and safe.

I understand that I have been given both the love of mentoring and, seemingly, the skills to do so and this is not important to many.

Now that my dad has passed I must rely upon my own insight and that of others to help me in this life. I am not so proud or deluded to think that I have all of the answers. I don’t, no, far from it.

I move through this life, like many I am sure, just trying to make ends meet. Some months I seem to really have it down and others I seem to not have a clue where I am going or what I am doing.

I am often confounded at my own lack of personal, spiritual or business insight. I make many of the same mistakes over and over, I work harder and hard and make less and less progress, or I have a day of great insight and lucidity and think I have it all figured out.

It is really quite maddening at times.

I guess like many of you I am just making my way through this life as best I can. Life is a lesson, you learn it when your done, right!?

However, it would be nice to find that person or two who I could really turn to gain insight when I seem to have none. Then again, maybe I have that person but they are wrapped into the many who I noted above and more who are sent to us to help guide in the moment I need them.

Maybe there are no singular mentors in life now. Maybe life is made up of nothing more that the teachers sent to us at the time when we need them.

Maybe I am looking for a key to a door that stand unlocked an open already.