Your Call to Adventure
I've been thinking a lot about The Hero's Journey these days... and it seems to be following me. I just took an awesome DIY website (re)launching course and the teacher guided us through an exercise where we wrote the "Once upon a time..."-style hero's journey of our clients.
Image source: Pinterest
The Lens of The Hero’s Journey:
In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell analyzes the The Hero's Journey and its three main stages:
Departure - The hero leaves the familiar world behind.
Initiation - The hero learns to navigate the unfamiliar world.
Return - The hero returns to the familiar world, changed.
These three stages are broken down into seventeen steps, beginning with the call to adventure. Some normal parts of the hero's journey include:
Refusal of the call - The hero is unwilling to step out of their comfort zone or face their fear.
Road of trials - The hero goes through a series of obstacles or tests to begin transformation; they usually fail at least one.
Atonement with the Father/Abyss - The hero confronts their reason for the journey, facing doubts and fears, seeing that every prior step has brought them here, and every step forward stems from this moment.
When—not if—the hero faces obstacles and difficulty, these are seen as opportunities to grow and develop new skills that will allow them to continue on their path.
Image source: Pinterest
To paraphrase Campbell, the extent to which you and I can see ourselves as heroes on our own journey is the extent to which we can find a sense of meaning and possibility in our own lives.
Seeing ourselves as heroes on our own hero's journey is a choice that's available to us at any time, and it's always useful in coaching. We can see that discomfort, self-doubt, and failure are not signs we should turn back—they are normal steps on the path.
When I do this work with twentysomethings, they're sometimes resistant to viewing themselves through the hero lens. The two most common reasons are "it feels egotistical/self-indulgent," or "it's kinda cringe."
In response to the former, the hero's journey ends with the hero returning, changed, to the world from which they began. Most often, the ways they've changed allow them to more easily and more effectively support others. The hero returns from their journey courageous, generous, and empowering. They may inspire or guide the next generation of heroes to move through their fears and answer the call.
And secondly, I've found that a bit of corniness is often the toll you have to pay for truly transformative experiences. Your aversion to being cringe might be the only thing standing between you and a powerful breakthrough.
My workshop, Quarter-Life Crisis: Averted, gives twentysomethings a new way of seeing themselves as heroes on their own journey. I've led four groups so far and they've learned how to approach their inevitable challenges in ways that optimize their energy and build their confidence. It's been a joy sharing this work so I'm gonna keep doing it!
September sessions available:
Friday, 9/6 — 3:30 pm ET / 12:30 pm PT
Sunday, 9/8 — 6 pm ET / 3 pm PT
Thursday, 9/12 — 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT
Monday, 9/16 — 7:30 pm ET / 4:30 pm PT
Wednesday, 9/25 — 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT