Staying Consistent In A Mentoring Relationship

As the old saying goes, “Consistency is key”. This is also true when it comes to a mentoring relationship. You have to be consistent for your relationship to continue to grow and evolve. This means being committed to your mentoring relationship and always looking for ways to improve and upgrade.

The Face of Consistency

Part of our principle series is finding a soul guide that perfectly embodies our principles. And for consistency, we introduce you to Mr. Alex Trebek.

George Alexander Trebek was a Canadian-American game show host. He hosted a variety of shows like The Wizard of Odds, Double Dare, High Rollers, Battlestars, Classic Concentration, and To Tell The Truth but he was most famous for hosting Jeopardy. He hosted the famous game show from 1984 to 2020 and tallying a total of 8000+ episodes which earned him a Guinness World Record for most episodes as a game show host!

Trebek fought a battle with cancer for 20 months before succumbing to it in November 2020. We may have lost him but his legacy still continues.

What is… Symbols?

Like any of our spirit guides, we looked for symbols that greatly exhibited our principle, consistency within Mr. Trebek and the game Jeopardy. Here are the key symbols we found:

• Thinking Music
• Contestant Banter
• Daily Double

You might be thinking how this relates to consistency and more importantly, mentoring. We’ll reveal the in-depth answers in the next sections.

Thinking Music

Aside from having the question running on your mind, hearing the thinking music gets you ready to start thinking. To add on to that, Trebek hears the thinking music consistently on a day to day basis throughout the filming of the game show.

In a mentoring relationship, thinking music is your cue to get into the mindset. It symbolizes that you’re ready to take a minute and figure things out. When you consistently have a thinking music in your mind, you’ll be able to think things thoroughly and resolve many of the hurdles that come your way.

Contestant Banter

If there’s something consistent about the show Jeopardy!, it is the constant flow of contestants that come every episode. Each contestant has their own story to share that tickles the minds of Trebek and the audience watching.

In a mentoring relationship, you can use this opportunity to take nuggets of wisdom from the constant flow of contestants (people) that comes your way on a daily basis. You can maximize the knowledge you’re gaining by following these tips:

• Be Curious. Ask questions that you’ll think help enrich the knowledge you’re gaining.
• Research Meticulously. Aside from learning from others, you also need to enrich your knowledge by searching on a variety of relevant topics.
• Harness Productivity. Not everybody has a lot of time to share. It is on you to harness productivity and make the most out of the time given.

Once you’ve practiced maximizing the knowledge you’re gaining, you’ll be able to do it consistently even without trying and you can use these skills to enrich your relationship with other people.

Daily Double

A daily double is an event hidden inside one of the questions on Jeopardy. Whenever a contestant lands on the daily double, they must declare how much they are willing to wager before the question appears. If they get the question right, they are awarded with the same amount they wagered but if they miss, the same amount of points will be deducted.

The daily double represents the risk you’re willing to take to enrich the relationship you have. We believe that in order to truly enrich your mentoring relationship, one should be ready to risk something for your mentor or mentee. Daily double also represents the different ideas that you can bring on a day-to-day basis. You have to have a backpack full of perspective and ideas in order to be consistent.

Consistency Is Really the Key

It really takes a lot from a person to attain consistency so it takes a lot of practice and commitment. Aside from the symbols mentioned above, here are some other steps you can take to be consistent in your relationships.

• Make promises you can keep. Only commit to promises you know you can do or work hard to keep.

• Ensure that your words match your actions. Being consistent also means that you keep your word and it matches the actions you take.
• Inconsistency can occur. Inconsistency happens from time to time. What’s important is you know when it happens and apologize and take the time to discuss why it happened.

Summary

Consistency is really the key in a mentoring relationship. It is a commitment to a long-term goal that you need to nurture and evolve. Being consistent means that you need to be always ready to get into the right mindset whenever needed, you need to constantly gain knowledge from nuggets given by the people you encounter daily, and not to be afraid of taking risks as without it, you can’t truly enrich your mentoring relationship.