A little meditation on how I distinguish between teachers and advisers:

Metaphorically, if you think of yourself as a car, it may help clarify
an important distinction, not just for the sake of taxonomic
classification but, rather, to help understand WHO you need and WHY
you need who you need:

1. Far too many advisers, while perhaps offering good advice, offer
that advice from an *external* relationship. From an external
position. When advisers advise from this position, they are
comparable to a driver trying to drive the car from OUTSIDE! (Live
with that image for awhile, please...) I've had many, many, many
people give me the same "good" advice over and over and over. Like
good seeds falling on infertile ground, unfortunately, very little has
come of their good advice. I believe it was because they seemed to
be trying to "drive me" rather than *teach me* to "drive me, myself".
And though I may have had a natural hunger to want to join them in
solving the problem they were giving advice to me to solve, my
ordinarily fertile/receptive mind became less fertile by becoming less
receptive - to "being driven". Autonomous people don't like being
driven. Even my advisers, being autonomous people themselves, don't
like being driven, either. Yet, autonomous people NEED HELP, TOO!
There are lots of intelligent, experienced, well-meaning advisers who
advise from the outside but who don't reach the inside of the people
they wish to help.

2. On the other hand, far too few teachers, fall in the role of
advisers and forget that they must get into the vehicle *WITH YOU*.
Teachers mustn't reduce their opportunities to teach. Once in the
car with you, in order to be true teachers, they must transfer what
they have TO you. Good teachers don't just advise - good teachers
invest something of themselves. They invest, they transfer what they
have TO you. Again, the word "teach" means "to show". So, when a
good teacher teaches you, they show you something. You *see* for
yourself how to do what they've agreed to teach you. They get in with
you - they're involved with your learning process/outcome. They
confirm that you've learned. Because, if you haven't learned how to
drive, can a car wreck be far behind?

Do you see my point?

Thanks!!
Vincent Wright
Entrepreneurial Recruiter/Social Media Consultant
Twitter.com/VincentWright | Linkedin.com/in/VincentWright |
MyLinkingPowerForum.com | MyVirtualPowerForum.com | MyLinkedinPowerForum.com |
My Virtual Power Forum on Li Groups | http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/732357 |
http://www.jaxtr.com/vincentwright |Skype/GTalk = MyLinkedinPowerForum
+1-860-967-0563