Your mentor sounds like the woman who taught me how to sew garments.
There came a moment when I had to say to her (and myself) "I got into this for fun, and trying this approach looks like fun to me. I have to start creating my own rules to sew by." That took a lot of the pressure off of both of us. I had to venture out and make my own mistakes, and in some cases, learn that only my eye saw the mistakes.