Embrace Your Hero’s Path 🦸‍♂️ – A Fresh Perspective on Your Journey

If this is your first read, welcome! If you have been here and made goals, welcome back! This edition, we’re discussing a different perspective on how we look at goals, processes, lifestyle habits, and methods of self-improvement through, ‘The Hero’s journey lens’. According to findings from Rogers et al. (2023), seeing yourself as a hero in the “Hero’s journey” has been associated with an increased life satisfaction, and an enhanced well-being, and we can apply it to our lives in many different ways.

🤷 What is, “The Hero’s Journey”? 🤷

‘The Hero with a thousand faces’, by Joseph Campbell, now commonly referred to as, “The Hero’s Journey” is described as a cycle according to TED-Ed. One that anyone can choose to go through. It involves leaving your comfort zone, taking on a challenge in a new, “special world”, learning along the way, having an experience that transforms you with successes and setbacks, and ending in a new, and better you than you were before in the, “Ordinary world”.

Blake (2024), Darbellay (2017), and Allison et al. (2019) show how this same cycle has already been used as a lens to help people in areas such as: drama therapy, interdisciplinary research, and transformations of one’s personal life whether they be mental, physical, moral, spiritual, emotional, or motivational. We are going to apply this to goal setting and where we want to be in the future by looking at our goals through The Hero’s Journey perspective (lens). Keep the picture below in the back of your mind; we are going to use it later.

🦸‍♀️ Rediscover Your Hero’s Journey 🦸‍♂️

If I told you that you were the hero of your story - would you believe me? If yes, great! If, no, then let me show you how you’ve been through this journey before, and that you can choose to be the hero in the story of life that you are writing. What’s more, you’ve very likely completed the Hero’s Journey more than once.

Curious? 🤔 Have a look and see if you can identify with these:

There are lots more examples too! What’s one area of life that you 🫵 can think of where you’ve been through ‘The Hero’s journey’?

Similar to Darbellay (2017), and Blake (2024), we’re going to actively apply ‘the Hero’s Journey’ to help us achieve our goals.

The two aims are:

1. To encourage you to see that you are the hero of your story.

2. To see our previous goals and processes through, “The Hero’s Journey” lens*.

*You don’t have to have goals to do this, it can be through other things too! We are just using goals as an example. However, if this has inspired you and you want to check out how we made goals and plans to achieve them, check out:
Making S.M.A.R.T. goals newsletter 👉 here
Methods to achieving goals newsletter 👉 here

🚶‍♂️ Application of The Hero’s Journey 🚶‍♂️

Remember that picture of the Hero’s journey as a cycle from earlier? Well, this is where, “the rubber hits the road.” By doing this, I hope to encourage and embolden you to picture a bright future that you can get to! And, afterwards, you’ll aim for something higher as well!

🔍 Through the, “Hero’s Journey lens," on our goals, and using the Ted-Ed cycle concept, let’s see how it works:

1. “Status Quo” – Your everyday life.

2. “Call To Adventure” – An inspiring invitation, message, or even a newsletter 🤔 that wants to inspire and encourage you, the hero, to have a long-term positive, sustainable lifestyle, and that can start with goals and/or the desire to be better.

3. “The Guide” - A mentor, coach, or a literal/metaphorical inspiration that provides guidance/support. Someone who equips you with the tools and wants to see you succeed. This can be through: teaching, exercises, blogs, examples, life stories, etc.

4. “Departure” - Once taught and equipped; the hero knows what they want to do, and they make a plan. Then they start their adventure (process) to become the person they aim to be.

5. “Challenges” - In the adventure, the hero faces trials, resistance, setbacks, failures, wins and losses. They must learn and grow as they pursue the person they aim to be, and reach milestones along the way. There are times to review, build resilience, celebrate little victories 🎉, and refine their growth 🌱. Support from friends, teachers, accountability partners, or strategies help keep them on track.
   
   The two 🗝️ key points here are:
   a. Refinement: Fine tune the process as you grow and work towards your goal. Is it still realistic? Does it align with who you still want to be? Has the path changed? Are there new goals?
   b. Resilience: Don’t quit, keep making progress, it takes time, and patience, small steps. Each step is one closer to the goal.
   

6. “Transformation” - After the trials, you have reached your goal. It might have changed, but you’ve made it (Bonus: you’ve made a lifestyle habit you can continue to use for further growth! 💪)

7. “New Life” - Lastly, we come full circle to a new status quo. You’ve changed, become someone new, and better than before. Now, you can begin the cycle again for higher, or different goals! Find the world you want to explore and dive in!

🫵 Want to try it out? 🫵

Take a moment to reflect 🪞. Where are you in your Hero’s Journey at the moment? Are you in a stage of the Hero’s journey?

Can you see yourself as the hero in your story at the moment? Remember, you’ve already been through the Hero’s Journey a few times already through school, career, parenthood, etc., there’s all sorts of different areas, so why not in life and lifestyle as well?

Is there a Hero’s Journey you want to embark on?

I will be writing on my experience with this as well. If you are interested, check out the blog 👉 here

✍️ Quote to ponder: ✍️

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. – Joseph Campbell

What is the symbolic cave you fear to enter?

📖 Want something else to read? 📖

Blogs where I expand on the Newsletter and show you more about how I use these tools: 👉 Here
More newsletters 👉 Here
Sci-Fi Fantasy Short stories 👉 Here 

🎨 Lastly, this edition’s Artwork Alcove design: 🎨

At the time of writing, these are just artworks, but soon, these are going to be made into t-shirts and posters, so watch this space for when they are ready for purchase!)

You can repeat the Hero’s Journey cycle to help you grow further, and I hope this has encouraged you. This edition has touched on the main concept we’re going to be focusing on in later newsletters to reinforce long-term positive lifestyle habits:

✨Synergy – Finding the common ground between two different concepts to create something greater than what they can achieve separately.

Also, the application of the “Hero’s journey lens” is to aid in the ‘Lifestyle Approach’ we touched on in our previous edition:

💡Lifestyle Approach - Learning skills/processes to create sustainable and enjoyable regular life habits that help you to reach milestones, achieve goals, and maintain progress even after completion, ensuring that these new habits benefit you over the long-term.

That’s it for this edition! Share your ideas, comments, and feel free to ask questions on my posts in Instagram, Facebook, or X/Twitter: @the_norskiwi_nz. I will be posting material relating to this newsletter to help encourage, and inspire your progress on your Hero’s Journey throughout the fortnight.

Until next time!

Much love to you all, and see you in the next one!
🍵Cheers!☕

Norskiwi

P.S.: If you’d like to see a second visual format about the Hero’s Journey, check out this short video from TED-Ed 👉 Here
Another application example for The Hero’s Journey in your everyday life can be found in this article 👉 Here