Ian Westmoreland | Mentoring Men and Making a Difference - how to go from Self-doubt to Success | EP 03

Ian Westmoreland | Mentoring Men and Making a Difference - how to go from Self-doubt to Success | EP 03

Apr 20, 2023


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A Journey of Finding Meaning in Life

Ian speaks on his journey and how important mentorship has been not just in his life but in helping others


"And I should explain, mentoring is such a broad term for most people in business. Mentoring means someone with skills, experience, knowledge, guides, and advises someone else. I call that business mentoring. But what I'd been doing and what I felt I needed was life mentoring. And life mentoring is predominantly listening, actively listening. It's supporting, it's encouraging. The people that we're mentoring aren't broken.


They don't need fixing. They just need someone to validate them. So I looked around for an organization where men supported men through life mentoring and was surprised and incredibly disappointed to find there was nothing that suited what I was looking for. So it motivated me to write a proposal to establish an organization called Mentoring Men. Now, there's a whole lot of events that happen along the way, and miracles, I guess, that led me along this path. But in November 2018, Mentoring Them was officially launched.


My wife and I put our money into funding it. I got the local federal MP to be an ambassador for the program. I'd met him because I went to a community event where he shared about his father's suicide. And I saw parallels between what I was doing, which mentoring Men is essentially one of the key parts of suicide prevention. And so he got on board, and the organization grew rapidly. I totally underestimated how much work was involved in doing this.


The second thing, and particularly what I've seen with Mentoring Men, I encounter a lot of very intelligent people with fantastic ideas.


But they can't take the next can't. It's not the right word. They haven't taken the next step to actually bring it to fruition. And I see this again and again, and I'm not sure if it's analysis paralysis. They keep looking at the thing over and over and again. I like the expression Ready, fire, aim. I think some people are Ready, aim, aim. Aim. Aim. So that's the first thing. The second thing, I think it's things that are relatively easy for me.


I'll do whatever it takes to make something happen. If it's boring admin stuff or whatever, I'll just do that. But sometimes these people just can't seem to take that first step to actually write out a business plan or write out a document. And I think another thing is fear. And I think back to my own experience. I had an opportunity to talk about mentoring men on we have community radio over here. I don't know if you have it there, but there's a lot of radio stations, very small, very few people listen to them.



A Conversation on Priorities and Happiness

A really fulfilled life isn't just given to you, but you have to consciously design what that looks like for you. Just like some people who like to live more in the countryside and they like to have the farm and the ranch and the animals and raise a family there. There are some people on the other end that would work for at all and that's fine, but people have to be very clear as to what that looks like for them. What do you have to say about that?


Ian says "Yeah, so firstly on money, I saw a quote this week that said money can be a very useful servant, but it's a terrible master. And I think that's how we should that's a healthy way to look at money. Money can be important, obviously, for food and sustenance, but when it rules our life, where it determines every decision we make, it impacts relationships and things like that, where it's become the master then that's the issue.


The second thing you talked about there was like on social media, and I see social media there's positives, but there's some incredible negatives as well. I've heard Facebook called Bragbook. People put up the very best of themselves on Facebook and that can cause other people to feel inadequate. We run our mentor training courses and as part of that, there's a talking circle and it's on the second day of the course. Trust has built up now. I used to think that everybody had it together.


I was the only one who had these self doubts and all that. But when this group of men, often they were leaders in industry and business, and then when they start talking about the stuff that's going on in their lives, many of them had suicide ideation before. They missed loved ones, they're grieving, they can't get access to kids, they've had relationships fall apart. There's been tragedy all the way along the line.


So the reality is that virtually all of us struggle in life with some different things. And yet social media gives this impression often that, look at me, I've got this fantastic holiday, I'm eating this amazing meal and look at this beautiful family and everything's going to get the danger is that people may see that that's what all these people have got and I haven't got that. It's a lie. Obviously some lives are more together than other lives, but the bulk of people struggle at some point in their lives and that should be and it's okay, it's okay to struggle.


A Discussion on the Dangers of Algorithm-Driven Platforms.


Ian quips


I was the only one who had these self doubts and all that. But when this group of men, often they were leaders in industry and business, and then when they start talking about the stuff that's going on in their lives, many of them had suicide ideation before. They missed loved ones, they're grieving, they can't get access to kids, they've had relationships fall apart. There's been tragedy all the way along the line.


So the reality is that virtually all of us struggle in life with some different things. And yet social media gives this impression often that, look at me, I've got this fantastic holiday, I'm eating this amazing meal and look at this beautiful family and everything's going to get the danger is that people may see that that's what all these people have got and I haven't got that. It's a lie. Obviously some lives are more together than other lives, but the bulk of people struggle at some point in their lives and that should be and it's okay, it's okay to struggle.


Designing a Fulfilling Life Beyond Money and Social Media


So first I'd like to give a definition of success that resonates with me, and that is that success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile dream. Now, you talked about retirement. I don't use the word retirement for me. I've just stopped paid work. I used to think early on how good it would be to go and play golf all the time. And I actually back onto a golf course where I live. I haven't played there for two years.


I'm too busy enjoying being fulfilled, to use your word, doing this sort of stuff. I would rather help other people than go and play golf. For me. Now, I'm not judging people who play golf. That's fine if that's what they want to do. I thought about this a few months ago. I guess the meaning of life for me, I defined what this is ian's view of the best life. And the best life for me is where we use our skills and experience to positively impact the world around us.


It's where we find true fulfillment and contentment. It's where we're authentic, where we're vulnerable, where we're honest. Now, it's very difficult. I understand that for many people, if you're struggling financially, it's responsible to be focused on trying to make money, to support family or whatever. But to me, that's my definition of the best life. And interestingly, when we're born, we start off with some of those qualities. We're truly vulnerable, we're truly authentic.


And then life experiences hit us. Most of the experiences are negative, some can be positive, but we could suffer abuse. We get caught up in materialism. We have victims of advertising and things like that. And I find it sad that so many people lose sight of whatever their best life is. And I've shown this slider that I've produced and hundreds of people my goal is just to get people to maybe take a step back and just think what could their best life be? Is this what they're living in Australia? We have billionaires who are suicidal, who are unhappy and there's never enough wealth for them.


And I just find that sad. You talk about fulfillment and contentment. For me, one of the driving forces for me is just giving back and helping someone else. That's where I personally get my contentment and fulfillment.


To learn from Ian Westmoreland, go to mentoringmen.org.au and kintsugiheroes.com.au