Why Not Make a Difference in a Young Woman’s Life by Being a Mentor?

As women, we live complex and wonderful lives and accumulate wisdom through a wide range of experiences. The strange thing is that we sometimes don’t realize how much we’ve learned until we speak with a younger person and realize they are struggling with issues that we dealt with years ago. It’s not that we have all of the answers, but, we do have some perspective.

When I was working with younger colleagues, I would watch them deal with situations that I had gone through a hundred times. Take arguments with boyfriends, for example. One girl in my office had met the man of her dreams, but she was an extrovert and he was the opposite. They fought all the time and she was convinced that she could “help him to change.” I was able to give her some gentle feedback, based on similar situations from my life.

Younger women are so confident, at least on the outside. At the same time, in my experience, they usually love the idea of having an older woman as a mentor – someone who is not related to them who can give them honest, no-nonsense advice. Being a mentor is a wonderful choice that I hope many women in the Sixty and Me community decide to make.

There is one other important way that we can help women from other generations. We can show them that life after 60 is a time of exploration and fun! We can teach them, through our own experiences, that aging is nothing to be feared.

I’d love to get your thoughts on this. Please join the conversation and “like” and share this article to keep the discussion going.

Have you ever been mentor to a younger woman? What did you talk about? What one piece of advice would you like to give younger women in their 30s or 40s?