Finding a person who has done something you admire goes beyond admiration--they can be a guide, an inspiration, a model, and even a road map for how you could do that thing---or be that way---too. They help us to be more than we might be without them.
A role model is someone who helps our confidence to bloom, whose accomplishment helps us to visualize ourselves doing that same thing or something similar.
Where does one find such inspiration? Unlike a mentor, this is not typically an arranged relationship. This person can be someone you personally know, or someone you have never met. She could be a character from a book or movie that moved you. He can be a family member, a friend, a colleague you look up to. Role models can even be hiding in plain sight--a neighbor, a teacher, someone who walks through your neighborhood as you do every day (I have one of those: Darlene, an octogenarian who walks bent over due to scoliosis clutching her walking stick in all kinds of weather with her little dog Muffin. She is my reminder to not complain about aches and pains as I get older.)
As I think of the people that have influenced me when I was young, I recall a track coach in 1973, the year after Title IX was passed, which meant that my junior high school in Racine Wisconsin had to offer a girls track team for the first time ever. The track coach encouraged us girls to "dream big." I wanted to be like Mary Decker Slaney---only two years older than me---who was one of the best American female track stars. I dreamed of running in the Olympics just like Mary. My love for running ignited by Mary Decker Slaney and nurtured by my first track coach still is a gift that keeps giving to me.
Feminism was on the rise in the 60's and 70's and I began reading Ms. Magazine in high school. The first issue came out in 1972 with Wonder Woman on the cover and I was fascinated by the feminist ideas within that publication. Gloria Steinem, co-founder of that magazine and champion of the second wave of women's rights, inspired me to think differently about how I imagined my future as a young woman. It was the first time I considered the vast amount of labor my mother did in the home and how that was expected of her rather than something she did because she chose it.
I also recall a female professor I had at St. Olaf College in Northfield Minnesota my freshman year in 1979 who stunned me when I met with her in her office. She talked with me about my feeling stuck with my essay while nursing her baby that she kept in a crib in her office. I blurted out, "They let you bring your baby to work?" She laughed and said "I didn't ask, I just did." It opened my eyes to the surprising idea that a woman could be a professional and a mom at the same time. I grew up with a stay-at-home mom, like all of the moms in my neighborhood in the 60's and 70's. That professor's assertiveness inspired me ten years later in 1989 when I decided to take my first real job as a therapist despite my first baby being only three months old. I negotiated being able to arrange my schedule so I could leave the therapy clinic mid-morning to go home and nurse her and then return for the rest of my clients. In addition, after the birth of my second child, a co-worker and I negotiated a job share so we could both remain therapists at the clinic by splitting a full-time position to accommodate our growing families. Both of these arrangements broke the mold at the time of the organization we worked for.
Another person during my years at St. Olaf made a significant impression on me. The college pastor listened to me as a senior in 1983 pour out my fear to him that I had made a huge mistake getting engaged to my high school boyfriend over the summer. He invited me to describe all of the reasons I felt it was wrong, and all the reasons that made it feel right. He listened in an unhurried compassionate manner with an unwavering attention to my feelings that acknowledged me as an adult. When I asked him "What should I do?" he quietly said, "I think you know what you want to do." His respect of my inner wisdom has reminded me again and again these many decades later to treat my own clients with the same respect and attention to helping them listen to their own inner wisdom.
A closely held secret of mine is that one of my role models is Moana. Yes, the Disney character from the first Moana movie. Something about that character inspired me to find myself at a time in my life when my heart had broken after my son died. I admit that I watched that movie more than a dozen times between 2017-2020. Every time I watched it I felt flooded with a sense of hope that I, too, could find the missing piece of my heart and make my way through the towering waves, the monsters, and the unknown to return it to its rightful place inside of me. An admittedly unconventional model of grit and fortitude for me at my age!
And finally, my spirit son Ethan inspires me as I remember his best qualities that still shone through him despite addiction slowly killing him. His quick ability to forgive, his sunny affectionate nature, his intensity and passion for things he cared about, his brilliant mind, and his ability to make beautiful music. His gusto for life continues to inspire me not to take life for granted but to treasure each day.
Our brains are wired for learning through watching others, imitating others, seeing others do what we aspire to do. But choose carefully. Beware of too shiny, surfacey role models. The world is full of people whose example won't sustain your effort to be the best you can be. Like cheap clothing, flashy types of role models don't last. Currently one of my role models is the unpretentious, steadfast, loving group of women in my bible study who I look up to as beautiful examples of abiding in their faith walk with God.
Having a genuine role model helps us to envision ourselves doing difficult things. Then actually trying that difficult thing increases our emotional and physical grit. It develops confidence in our capacity to move toward a goal we aspire to. It increases our resilience to endure and overcome challenges along the way.
And thus we can be more than who we might be on our own. Explore deeper, fuller, and higher possibilities of ourselves with a role model to look up to.
Who are your role models? Share with someone your stories about how they make a difference in your life (maybe even with the role models themselves if possible?!)
