Did you know that some people’s mentors are not even alive, yet influence their success immensely?

It’s true. You can be led and guided just by learning about someone you respect and see as having reached greater success than you.  

That is why so many successful people read biographies of famous people–to learn their secrets as best they can. In Napoleon Hill’s work he talks about convening regular meetings with people long dead to review his problems from each of their perspectives, as best he could imagine having studied them.

Who might you convene, if you could, to help you find creative solutions to your own problems? Here are a few ideas to get your creativity going.

• Mother Teresa
• Oprah Winfrey
• Marianne Williamson
• Queen Elizabeth I
• Eleanor Rosevelt
• Golda Meir
• Margarent Thatcher
• Marie Curie
• Margaret Mead
• Indira Ghandi
• Sandra Day O’Conner
• Rosa Parks
• Gloria Steinem

The list of powerful women is endless. Find those that you admire, respect, or even those with a certain quality you lack and would like to cultivate–even if you do not like the person’s views.

For this same reason, I bring to you each month my Interviews with Influential Women.  In each interview you get a glipse of what each of these women did to achieve their success, the stuggles they surmounted, and their views on issues facing women, like you, today.

To read this month’s interview, and any of the prior ones, click here.