Hey guys today, we’re going to dive into the concept of mentorship for military spouses. Do you have a mentor and where do you find one? This is something that I am so excited to talk to you about because it’s a tricky subject and something that I struggled with for several years. So let’s dig into this concept.

Now, before we get started, I want to remind you that the best way to help people find this show is by leaving us or a review on iTunes.

[00:01:28] So if you have not yet done, so please pause this episode right here, head over to iTunes. You can scroll down. Just leave your review, give us five stars and help us get the word out and help more military spouses find this show, life, mindset, and business mentorship for military spouses. Now in case you didn’t notice the tagline for the milspouse mastermind show is life mindset and business mentorship for military spouses.

[00:01:58] And I put mentorship in here specifically because I know that this is an area where I struggled for several years and I didn’t feel like I had anybody pouring into me helping me figure out what my thing was. How to build a career as a military spouse, how to balance work and life as a military spouse.

[00:02:24] And I wanted to put forth a new idea to you. I wanted to help fill the gap in the amount of information available to military spouses. This is what I wish I would have known what somebody would have told me as a young military spouse. And I want to reiterate that whether or not it’s your season to pursue something outside of the home, in addition to being a spouse and a mom finding mentorship in all areas of our life are important.

We can learn from others. What it looks like to invest in our children, in our marriages, in the places that we live, the places that we call home, we can learn so many things from people all around us. So if you are thinking of turning off this episode, because you’re not looking for a mentor in your mission and purpose, right now, I want to say that this applies to each and every one of us, no matter what season that we’re in, and what kinds of growth goals that we’ve set for ourselves.

[00:03:38] So let me first start out by talking about what my issues were with the subject of mentorship. I was frustrated with this concept for two reasons. The first one was from reading about people who were high performers who had experienced success or done a lot to create a life impact. And when you would read about them or hear about them, all of them seem to have.

[00:04:07] In common, they had. And mentor or multiple mentors. They had people who were investing in them who were giving them advice, who were helping them grow and become people of impact. They knew I didn’t have anyone like this in my own life. Now I will say in looking back on this, I realized this is way more common with men than with women.

[00:04:32] Probably there are a number of reasons for this historically. Men were more in leadership positions and women more. Juggling both home and impact outside the home. Maybe they didn’t have anyone pouring into them or they didn’t have time to invest in others. Obviously, people who pour into others are more likely to do so because someone has taken the time to pour into them.

[00:04:59] And if no one has poured into us, sometimes we don’t feel qualified to pour into someone esle. There’s probably a number of reasons that there are fewer women who have said that they had a specific mentor in their lives.

I also think that so often we let that fact hold us back rather than saying, even if no one has poured into me, I can still move forward. I can still make an impact and I can still pour into that. I think the other reason that this lack of mentor concept bothered me was because the military does a really good job, I feel, of investing in military members. So my husband’s been in the military for a while now, and he gets regular performance feedback.

[00:05:56] He gets regular opportunities to meet with someone and talk to them about career progression about how to develop his skills and how he can grow as a leader. So early on in our marriage, I would look at how much people in the military were investing in helping him and his future career. And then I would look at myself trying to piece a career together and figure out a plan of how my life was going to look like and the career progression I was going to have.

[00:06:31] And all of that got blown up when I got married. But the only advice I really received was, well, you should just go back to school to become a nurse or a teacher because you can probably find those jobs anywhere. I was like those aren’t my passions. If they were, I would have gone to school for that particular area.

[00:06:55] But how do I use my skills and what I’m interested in and how do I do something with that? How can I craft something that I can take with me when we move? So I did. In depth in this cycle of remove, I start over, I tried to prove myself at a job and right when I get to the point where I’ve been somewhere long enough to where people start to offer me guidance and mentorship and give me supervisory opportunities, we would move.

[00:07:30] And I would have to start over somewhere new and explain to them, well, I wasn’t in this position long enough to get promoted or receive the annual feedback because you have to be somewhere before you start getting feedback and mentorship and growth opportunities. And I was so tired of starting over and trying to prove myself again and again, and not really make any progress in a career.

[00:07:58] And I desperately wanted to know how to build something that I could take with me. When I moved, one of the things that irked me a little bit was this discrepancy. I felt between this desire for the military. To invest in their members to provide them with educational opportunities and growth and mentorship opportunities and job skills development, and all of these things to help grow them into leaders and high performers and help them succeed in their career and in life.

[00:08:37] And then on the flip side, the idea was expressed that the military spouse should just be grateful that she can find a job, even if it’s not fulfilling or doesn’t play to her strengths or light him up inside.. that they should just be grateful to have something, to be supporting the military member.

If we are going to help families thrive, we have to support military members and their personal and professional growth. And we have to support the spouse and the family and support opportunities for them to develop their skills and play to their strengths as well.

I realize this is a really big issue without simple solutions, but this podcast is designed to be a part of that solution to say, Hey, military spouse, you are valued. You are important. You matter. You have skills. Let’s figure out how to translate your skills and use what you have to help you build a life that you love now and impact the world for good. And that prioritizes what matters to you.

What I will say is that there are a lot more opportunities now than there were when I first became a spouse. There are a lot more organizations that are aware of the need for military spouses to have something meaningful and to provide those opportunities or to connect them with ways that they can use their skills to earn an income from.

[00:10:20] That was never something I was made aware of when I was a young spouse and a lot of that can be contributed to how much we, as a culture in a society have moved online, moved into virtual work in the last several years. And particularly in the last year with the pandemic. But what I want to talk about today is not having that one person that’s going to pour into you, but about shifting the way that we look at the concept of mentorship and rethinking what it looks like to have mentorship in our lives.

[00:10:58] So the first thing I want to say is, to reiterate the idea that we cannot find our calling on our own. We don’t live in a vacuum. We really do need feedback and guidance from others. Finding your calling will not happen without the aid and assistance of others. This is a story of community.

[00:11:27] So I think we need to set the foundation there that no, this is not about being your own person, finding your own way, achieving it, pulling yourself up by yourself, because that is not what really happens. We do need people to speak into us, to give us guidance and feedback and help us learn and grow and become who we’re meant to.

[00:11:50] So if we need mentorship, but it’s not readily available to us, then what do we do? Well, I want to start out by saying, we’re asking the wrong question. We want to know how do I find a mentor? The better question is, How can I keep my eyes out for a community of supporters that champion me along the way?

This is the idea of what I’m going to call an accidental apprenticeship. And these are all around us if we listen, observe and recognize them. So what is an accidental apprenticeship and how do we begin our own accidental apprenticeship? Okay. So the idea of an apprenticeship is to give you guidance from an expert knowledge in a given field and experience. In a challenging environment.

[00:12:51] When you just look at the idea of apprenticeship, which has been around for thousands of years, and it’s probably not as popular today with people going to college and starting a career and kind of moving themselves around. But if we look at what an artist community looked like thousands of years ago when someone trained to become a metal worker or a Potter or a painter or whatever skill they wanted to develop, they would usually train through an apprenticeship.

[00:13:26] So the idea of an apprenticeship, as I said, is guidance from an expert knowledge in a given field and experience in a challenging environment. So how do we create our own apprenticeship? Well, I’m going to talk about five characteristics that will help us find our own accidental apprenticeship. Number one is to pay attention.

[00:13:51] We have to go in and be looking for it. This is your education of what is in your life, not what you think it should be, or the teacher that you want, but just start observing who in your life. Can you learn something from, secondly, look for mentorship in unexpected. Places, you know, so often we think of a traditional route to finding a mentor.

[00:14:28] If you want a spiritual mentor, then you need to go to your church and ask a pastor or an elder look for opportunities in unexpected places. Maybe you can learn something from the person sitting next to you when your kid is playing baseball. Throughout our lives, we are going to encounter people who are ready to instruct us, and it will be our job to recognize them.

[00:15:01] And it may not be a formal. Sometimes this looks like finding someone that you observed, that you want to be like, and just looking for opportunities that you can come alongside them or serve with them or observe them. Several years ago, there was a spouse whose husband was in leadership on our base. And I loved so much of how she showed up in life and the characteristics that she displayed.

[00:15:36] And I really wanted to learn more from her. And so I just went and asked her if I could come to an event she was doing for new spouses. I didn’t have a whole lot to offer because I had not been in the military for much longer than most of them, but I just learned so much from showing up and observing her interactions and how she was pouring into them.

[00:16:03] And that affects how I see. Not only on this show, but how I pour into younger spouses today, an accidental apprenticeship also involves a willingness to serve someone else’s dream. So often we want something to be about the thing that we’re building, but often the best way to learn the skills that we need are through serving someone else.

[00:16:30] I find it so interesting that I have been reading in my daily Bible reading about Moses and Joshua. Now, if you’re not familiar with the biblical story of Moses, he was the leader of the people of Israel. He led them out of Egypt through the desert and to the promised land, but he was not actually the one to take them into the promised land. Joshua was.

[00:16:54] Now who was Joshua? He actually was Moses’ servant. And he followed and served Moses for years and years. So often when we think of leadership, we think of taking more responsibility ourselves and growing ourselves rather than just serving someone else and becoming a leader through watching what they’re doing.

[00:17:26] If you are not willing to take a back seat, and just serve someone else’s dream, then maybe you’re not ready to be that leader. We have to be willing to serve someone else’s dream before we are ever ready to take a leadership position.

Number four. We have to invest in the education and experience that will teach us what we want to learn and give us the knowledge that we need to pursue our dreams.

[00:18:00] So when you identify what dream is in your heart, and you know that you do not have the skills or the knowledge to execute that. Your next step is to start figuring out what knowledge and skills you need to develop, and then figuring out how you can start growing in those skills. When I realized that one of the ways that I could reach more spouses and make an impact is by launching a podcast.

[00:18:31] I did not know the first thing about podcasting. I did not know how to podcast. I did not know how to upload an episode. I did not know how to edit an episode. And so I invested in a course that would teach me how to do that so that I could pursue the dream on my heart of helping military spouses uncover their dreams and walk in the calling that is on their heart.

[00:19:06] Sometimes that means hiring a coach or someone that can help you grow in a particular area that might mean investing in a counselor. Or it might been hiring a business coach or a clarity coach or a life coach or anyone that can teach you a skill you do not have, but one that you want to have for the future.

[00:19:34] The point is you’ll never get where you want to go, unless you are willing to invest your time and your money and your energy into getting to that point. If you do nothing. You will not grow. If you take action steps that lead you to where you want to be, you will find the people and the mentors, whether they be paid or accidental.

[00:20:04] Come alongside you that come across your path and the right time. The next thing I will say is to find your community, to find a tribe of people who are moving along with you, maybe not pouring into you, but that you’re at the same place in life and you can encourage and equip one another. People that can cheer you on who understand the struggles of pursuing something who understand the challenges of whatever you’re facing and have either been there or are on the same journey that you are the whole purpose of the milspouse mastermind Facebook group is to provide this community for you.

[00:20:50] So if you want this. Be this community, be someone that shows up who gives value, who speaks life into others and who encourages others to chase their dreams and to build a life of purpose, joy, and impact, which goes into my last point, which is. Always be looking for how you can mentor or encourage someone else wherever you are in your journey.

[00:21:23] There is always somebody, a few steps behind you. You have some skill that you possess that someone else does not yet have. If you are married. You may have a friend who is not married and is asking, Hey, what’s it like to be married? What are some skills that I can learn now to bring into my marriage? If you are a parent of young kids, look at somebody who is not yet a parent, or is actively trying and give them some games.

[00:21:58] If you have launched a business and you’re a couple of years in, you have so much knowledge that you can give to somebody who is just starting out or is seeking more information about the challenges and joys of launching something new. If you have been a military spouse for a few years, then you have a wealth of knowledge to share with somebody who’s just coming in and has never PCSed, or if they’re in their first step.

[00:22:27] In a location away from their home and family for the first time, all of us have something to offer someone. And when we look for ways to learn from others to connect with others and to speak life into others. This is how we make the world a better place. It’s not just about what is good for me and how I can grow, but how I can give back how we can contribute to others, how we can help make this world a better place.

[00:22:59] If you have been bemoaning the fact that you don’t have a mentor, you don’t have someone that is giving you a step-by-step plan of how to build something with your life, how to make it. Matter then maybe it’s time to rethink this concept of mentorship. Look for the accidental apprenticeships.

[00:23:23] Look for the people you can learn from that you can grow from and then how you can intern invest in the lives of others. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you are not. Of the milspouse mastermind Facebook community. Please head over. You can find the link in the show notes below, or you can find a link on our website, milspousemastermind.com.

[00:23:48] My prayer for you today is that you actively seek out and find people who are willing to speak with you to encourage you, to equip you and to grow. And that. We can positively impact the world for good through each of us showing up and being a light to those around us.