The Greatness Project

Who Is Your Guru?

June 15, 2005

An ancient Asian proverb states that “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” In our studies, a key element of greatness is the willingness to listen to new ideas, to hear concepts that challenge our worldview helping us to gain new awareness and develop the shadow side of ourselves. Yet, two developmental challenges are contained in the aforementioned proverb. How do we become “ready” to listen and learn, and who is our “teacher?”

Listening is quickly becoming a lost discipline. Most of us have neither the time nor the inclination to sit at the feet of anyone and listen until we retain some of their wisdom. One of our greatest challenges as adults is that we have developed “mental models” of how the world around us works, how we relate to the world, and what information is vital to us. These mental models, formed as we developed, inhibit us from listening openly because we tend to seek validation of what we already know and discard new ideas because they do not substantiate our models. Awareness of our own mental models is the first step to a regular discipline of allowing ourselves to be challenged. Only then can we hear a new idea.

Time is also an element that robs us of our ability to listen. We have become a culture that is always on the move and prefers information in “sound bites” so we can digest them and move on. Davenport and Beck in The Attention Economy note that the entire attention span for the average adult is approximately 7 minutes. So much for sitting at the feet of any guru. Developing a discipline for exploring a topic deeply can easily enhance our capability of learning new ideas.

As for the “teacher” appearing, our guess is that many “teachers” have passed us by because we did not recognize them. Many of us tend to think of gurus as older, wizened, Yoda-like characters who spout wisdom in fortune cookie phrases. For example, Melissa looks younger than her 23 years which doesn’t offer a lot of comfort when you are flat on your back and she is holding weights over your head. A personal trainer at our local gym, she shatters the mental model that wisdom comes with age because though she is paid to enhance the body, she does so by challenging the mind.

Melissa could easily be dismissed as “just a young, inexperienced trainer” until you observe her. Unlike most personal trainers, she does not tell you the number of repetitions you need to do and then count them out. She watches your body and breathing and lets you know when it is time to stop. By listening to and observing her, we learned that it is not what the trainer wants to impose that is important, but what the student is capable of learning. That wisdom profoundly affects how we conduct our coaching of others and yet it would have been so easily missed if we just dismissed Melissa because of her youth and seeming inexperience and not accepted her as a teacher.

Life provides a plethora of teachers and teachable moments. Sometimes reality stares us in the face with a profound message and we just pass by hurrying to our next meeting. Books offer us the possibilities of new thoughts, ideas and worlds but too often we cannot take time to appreciate their content. Even nature provides the possibility of illumination, if only we realize the wisdom pronounced from dawn to dusk.

Our personal greatness is enhanced by listening to the collective wisdom that surrounds us and acknowledging the “teacher” who offers that wisdom. Who is your guru?