Yesterday I mentioned this week’s focus, The Hero’s Journey. I’ve been re-reading Joseph Campbell’s work (good thing I saved all of my books from college) and today I’d like to further explain the journey a hero takes to live their life on purpose.

 

Because when you live your life on purpose, you activate your inner hero.

 

And I realized that The Hero’s Journey is exactly what a person who chooses to live their life on purpose goes through.

 

If you don’t know the work of the late philosopher and mythologist Joseph Campbell, you absolutely need to read his work. There’s also a lot of beautiful archived interviews with him that you could download.

 

Most people already know The Hero’s Journey, even if you never heard of Joseph Campbell, because it’s the basis of a lot of popular movies out today: Star Wars, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings. 

 

And here’s the thing: if you are listening to this podcast and you’ve been joining me here for a while, you know you are a hero. 

 

Because it takes heroic courage to choose to live intentionally and live your life on purpose. 

 

Living out the greatest version of yourself takes tremendous courage when faced with the daily pressure to follow someone else’s path.

 

A real hero follows his own path.

 

So, let’s take a look at The Hero’s Journey and how it applies to living intentionally. I’ve broken it down into ten levels and will focus on level 1 today, The Ordinary World.

 

Are you ready to accept this mission?

 

 

The Ordinary World is the world that everyone else is living in, expect you.

 

This is the world you may be living in now. For some reason, you want more. You’re questing for more because you know that you don’t want to follow everyone else path.

 

You don’t want to conform. You want to expand and grow. You want to fly higher because you think so many people have grown comfortable flying low.

 

To leave the Ordinary World,  You must think big and be ready to fly high.

 

Let me tell you a story. There’s an old story about a guy named Icarus. You probably heard of it. But, most people don’t know the whole story.

 

The story goes that a guy named Icarus was trapped in a prison with his father. To escape, his father attached wings using wax to both himself and his son, Icarus.

 

The father gave him two warnings. Most people only know the first warning: fly too close to the sun and the sun will melt the wax and you’ll fall down to the ocean and drown. No one really remembers the second warning: fly too close to the ocean and the waves will lap water on your wings -- the wax will harden and you’ll fall in the ocean and drown.

 

And now that you know this, think about this throughout your day. 

 

It starts to become really apparent how often we limit ourselves.

 

If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably hearing a call. 

 

I  call that, The Call to Purpose, but in The Hero’s Journey wordage, it’s called The Call to Adventure.

 

Steve Pavlina heard the call midway through his career in computer technology and game developer. He was always a bit of a misfit as a kid, having been locked up in jail as a kid. 

 

He turned his life around when he realized that the reason behind his disdain for authority as a kid may be because he just didn’t want to live like everyone else.

 

Steve Pavlina is now a widely acclaimed life coach and motivational speaker. He had one of the most popular self-development blogs up and running when most people (like me) didn’t even know what blogging was about. 

 

Tomorrow, I’ll dive into level 2 of The Hero’s Journey: The Call to Adventure because I’m sure a lot of you are hearing that call and eager to get started (if you haven’t already).