The Hero’s Journey- Answering The Call to Personal Greatness – As a lifelong writer and literature fan, I have always been captivated by a timeless storytelling pattern called The Hero’s Journey.
It’s a framework that helps writers create compelling stories that resonate with their readers by depicting a protagonist who goes through a transformative journey. The journey usually involves a series of challenges that the protagonist must overcome in order to achieve their goal.
The hero’s journey transcends cultures and time periods because it embodies universal themes such as self-discovery, transformation and growth. It’s a timeless theme in mythology and literature because it speaks to a part of the human soul that is inherent in all of us- a part that wants to find adventure, overcome obstacles, push ourselves towards greatness and growth, and emerge strong, empowered and victorious.
I’ve learned through the 40 years of experience that I’ve gained so far on this planet that our happiness in life is often a matter of choice and perspective. No one is immune to struggle or hardship, but it’s how we frame our journey and the things that happen to us that ultimately determine how we feel about ourselves and our walk through the world.
Applying this mindset to my fitness journey has been particularly helpful in pushing through boundaries, plateaus and obstacles that might normally derail someone who doesn’t discipline their mind right alongside the rest of their body.
The heroine (me) receives a call to adventure. A small, persistent inner voice keeps tugging at her, telling her that she can look, feel and perform so much better in life than she is right now. She knows what she has to do in order to answer the call to greatness- she needs to lift weights, eat better, and refine multiple aspects of her current lifestyle. She is simultaneously afraid and intrigued, but she decides to embrace her brave side and answer the call.
She begins to meet friends and mentors along the path who help her in her quest to becoming strong, healthy and fit. She gains knowledge, wisdom and experience, and her journey deepens into one of true commitment to process.
Then a stubborn plateau hits where the scale won’t budge anymore. She gets injured using bad form during a lift. She’s tired of meal prepping every week. Work is busy and her motivation and consistency levels are in the toilet. She becomes angry and frustrated with the rut that she’s in, but in this moment, her quiet inner voice reminds her of the warrior in her heart that never quits. So she presses on despite the obstacles.
After emerging from the cave of doubt and despair, our heroine is once again empowered to take up her quest, and her newfound strength in the face of adversity leads her to push harder than she ever has before. She gets back on her path to health and wellness and lives happily ever after as the metaphorical butterfly who emerges from the cocoon of weakness, doubt and fear into a renewed creature of freedom, strength, depth and beauty.
Turning myself into the heroine of my own life story has drastically shifted the way that I view hardship, challenge, victory, defeat, triumph and everything in between.
It has given me the confidence to try things that I may never have had the courage to try before. It helps me to pick myself up when things don’t work out the way I wanted them to. It gives me an extra boost of faith during my low points when life doesn’t feel fair and I’m struggling to find meaning and purpose in it all.
Does my heroine reject the call to better herself in the gym? To try that new business venture? To take that solo trip? To go back to school? To write that book?
Does she cower and shrivel when things get challenging? Or does she lean in and remember what she’s made of in the face of obstacles and adversity? Does she let the pain and unfairness of the world make her bitter and defeated? Or does she alchemize her pain into greatness like the Phoenix that rises from the ashes?
The wonderful, timeless, ubiquitous aspect of The Hero’s Journey is that it can apply to an endless number of scenarios in a human life. This is why the concept and general storyline has resonated so deeply for so long in so many cultures.
I feel as though it taps into a universal aspect of the human soul that we all intuitively understand and connect with, and I’ve come to believe as a coach that framing our fitness journey in this way can help us get better results and learn to apply the concept to other journeys in our lives as well.
From our careers to motherhood, to relationships, to aging, learning to frame our various walks through the lens of The Hero’s Journey can help give us an extra boost of faith, determination and magic in our lives. I challenge you to try this shift in perspective for a few weeks and see how much more empowered you feel.
Be the heroine of your own story. It will resonate with an ancient part of your soul and will carry you far if you allow it to shift and transform you.
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