19/02/2025
Have you ever mapped your life against the hero's journey?
The hero's journey is used in storytelling and by astute marketers who want to position themselves as a guide (because they've been through what you are going through and can help you navigate the path).
Meanwhile you (the hero) are on a glorious quest which begins when you decide to leave the ordinary world and face the challenges and trials that come with choosing the road less travelled.
On your journey, you may experience pain, heartache, you might be injured or led astray and always in some form there is a villain, who readily awaits to take you away from your path.
As the hero you always have choices to make.
The choice to continue your journey.
The choice to be derailed by the villain.
The choice to face the challenge.
And the choice to share your victory and 'save' others who may be enduring the same difficulties without a place to turn for hope, inspiration or answers.
When you reflect on your own life and consider that each of the journey's you have travelled are represented by circles you may notice a sea of concentric and intersecting circles.
Some are complete circles, while others are half done.
Journeys you found your way to the end of and others you abandoned or were cut short.
At any given moment we can be living the different elements of the hero's journey at the same time.
In your relationship you are facing challenge,
In your job, you have come to an end and
In your business you are creating something new.
Each part of the process will lend itself to calling in different needs for you.
But to understand my life and to know where I am at any given moment, I have used the hero's journey to map and assess where I am right now, and what's coming for me next.
I've used it to identify the villains because they aren't always people (and sometimes, in fact often, have been found in my own head), other times their habits, nature, systems or society, technology, time, or a curse or fate.
And then there are guides - people, books, messages in songs or the gospel, dreams or visions, a synchronistic encounter or the sense of higher power.
Nothing screams balance like the hero's journey.
The plight and call to adventure meets the struggle and fight for freedom and change.
It's a poetic push-pull.
And one that given the option to dive in and explore, can open up incredible opportunities we never saw before.
So how does your life compare?
Where are you now on your glorious quest?
And what adventure is calling to you?
I wonder if you'll go looking for who is behind THAT door?
