Confucius, Carl Rogers, and what happens when the men who should have guided you model everything you refuse to become
The men in my life who should have been my mentors were, in a strange and painful way, exactly that.
Just not in the way mentorship is supposed to work.
They didn’t show me who to become. They showed me, with absolute clarity, who I refused to be.
I had no grandparents to lean on. No uncles to go to. No elders in my corner. The village that is supposed to raise a child — I didn’t have one.
So I found my models where I could. Hollywood. Rock stars. Musicians. Television.
And among all of them — the warriors, the rebels, the icons of cool — one stood out in a way I didn’t expect: Carl Rogers. The psychologist. The man whose kindness and genuine respect for every human being showed me that softness and strength could coexist. That compassion was not weakness.
That landed differently for a boy who had grown up around men whose power expressed itself as force.
This week’s piece is about mentorship — Confucius and Carl Rogers, the East and West of what it means to guide another person — and what happens when you have to build the mentor you needed from scratch because no one handed you one.
The mentor I needed did not exist. So I became him. Not because I was ready — because someone had to.
That is why I built The Sacred Kings. The accountability program. The integrity certification. Because I knew I was not the only lost man out there drawing the map in the dark.
Read the full piece →Drawing the map as I go,
Shiva J