Disagreeing With Your Mentor
Channel: Charles Botensten
Date: 2018-10-30

There's a lot of nuance to how we perceive our role models, and also the people who are the antithesis of our role models. Most people tend to put their role model on a pedestal, and do not want to hear the slightest of a critique about them. This, I believe, is a failing on our part to allow for disagreement. Disagreement with people who you look up to. Disagreement with your role models.

Whenever you hear someone opine about something you feel passionate about, your first response would be to box their opinion and perceive everything they say accordingly. Say, Donald Trump speaking about a policy. If you perceive him positively already, you'll start with a bias that works in his favor. If you perceive him negatively, you'll view him a completely different way and tend to disagree with him from the get go. The better approach, in my opinion, with perceiving role models is to take the positive and discard the negative. What does this mean?

One thing is clear - you're not going to find someone who has the exact same standpoint as you on everything. Be it about politics, society, philosophy, art - you're always going to be at odds with people at some point because you'll have a different opinion to them. In this situation, it's almost foolish to box a person's dissenting opinion immediately and view them a certain way from then on. How about, you take from them everything positive they have to offer and just discard everything negative.

If you happen to be someone who is looking to grow and prosper, who wants to evolve with time and learn from the people around them - you'll have to develop a tolerance for dissent, be it with your partner, your neighbor or your role model. Once you make a habit of just learning the best of everyone has to offer and not focusing on the negative - you'll have unlimited room to grow as a person, because you'll be able to learn something from everyone!

All of the above said applies not only to people who have something positive to offer - but also those who have absolutely nothing positive to offer! Even with people you see as the epitome of everything you don't want to be - at least they're teaching you how not to go about things!

It takes a lot of self awareness and rationality to put your feelings and emotions aside and learn from people who you dislike. It takes an equal amount of course to see your role model as someone you dislike, because they said something you disagree with. But in the quest for growth and development, one has to make sure to treat humans as humans, and allow for dissent, disapproval, and disagreement. So, the next time you watch a role model do something you despise - just keep in mind everything you've admired about them, and don't let them become a villian in your mind because you couldn't accept a discrepancy in your views and their's!


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Charles Botensten lives & works in New York City as the founder of a residential real estate agency. 
Passions: cycling, hockey, and personal development.