The Insight That Changed My Entire Approach to Mentors, Peers and Support

I had spent years making a specific mistake that I couldn’t see because it felt like wisdom.

I was highly selective. I didn’t join communities unless they seemed exceptional. I didn’t commit to mentors unless I was certain they could give me something I couldn’t find anywhere else. I didn’t reach out to peers unless I felt I had something meaningful to bring to the exchange first. I was protecting my time, my energy, my discernment.

And I was getting, on average, about thirty percent of the value from each support relationship that was actually available in it. Because I was keeping myself at arm’s length from the very thing I was investing in.

The insight: selectivity in choosing support is a virtue. Selectivity in receiving support is a defence.

I had been confusing two different things. Being discerning about where I put my time and money — that is important. But once I chose a mentor, a community, a peer group — I was still holding back. Still managing. Still arriving prepared with what I would share and what I wouldn’t. Still showing the polished version rather than the actual current situation.

What I was getting from my support structures was proportional to what I let them actually see.

The Receiving Is the Work

The part that shifted my understanding most: getting support is not passive. It is active. It requires a specific kind of effort — not the effort of performing or managing, but the effort of being genuinely present, genuinely honest, genuinely open to being seen in a way that might feel uncomfortably raw.

Most people who struggle with support structures put enormous effort into finding the right mentor or the right community, and relatively little into practising the skill of actually receiving support once it’s found. It is as if they have acquired the most nourishing food available and then eaten it standing up with distraction, barely tasting it.

The support you deserve from a mentor is built through the quality of what you bring into the sessions — the real questions, the genuine confusions, the things you are afraid might make you look less than you’ve presented yourself.

The Peer Insight

The same insight applied to peer relationships with an interesting twist. I had been looking for peers who were further ahead than me — who could teach me something — rather than peers who were genuinely at the same stage. The first kind of relationship is mentorship. The second is something different and equally necessary.

Peer relationships at the same level provide something unique: the normalisation of the struggle. When someone I respect — someone at my level, doing the same kind of work — tells me they are navigating the same confusion I am, something releases. The experience moves from “something is uniquely wrong with me” to “this is what this terrain is like.” That relocation is healing in a way that even a brilliant mentor cannot fully provide.

I had been undervaluing horizontal relationships in my pursuit of vertical ones.

The Structure Insight

The third piece: I had been resistant to accountability structures because I associated them with the corporate world or with early-stage entrepreneur culture — spreadsheets and check-ins, productivity tracking, the kind of accountability that felt mechanical and irrelevant to the depth of work I was doing.

What I eventually discovered is that accountability structures, at their best, are not about performance metrics. They are about the right kind of presence. A call every two weeks with a peer where you tell the truth about where you actually are — not where you hoped to be, not where you’ll be next time — is one of the most potent support structures available. It cuts through the drifting. It makes the inner work visible. It creates the experience of being known in your process rather than only in your outcomes.

I had dismissed that form of support for years because it seemed too simple. Simple is often what works.

What Changed in Practice

More honesty. Less curation. More willingness to arrive uncertain. Less waiting until I had something impressive to show. More contact with the actual current situation, rather than a retrospective account of what I had processed and resolved.

The returns from the same mentors, the same communities, the same peer relationships — doubled. At minimum. With no additional investment, only a different quality of presence.

You are not behind. The support available to you is probably better than you’ve been allowing it to be.

If you want to practise this in a community designed for exactly this kind of genuine, honest engagement, the Abundance GPS Skool community is offering a free trial. Come in and see.