Every story follows a typical pattern that Joseph Campbell first popularized as the Hero’s Journey.
You are on your own Hero’s Journey right now as you read this and the fact you are reading this suggests you will emerge transformed the way you’re meant to.
The Journey is broken into 5 segments:
- Home: Your ‘ordinary world’ where you’re familiar with everything and the general patterns followed there.
- The Call To Adventure: You hear the call for more and get to make a decision to either step forward into growth or backward into the false illusion of comfort that contractions send us racing toward.
- The Adventure: This is where you will enter the rooms in your own personality you closed down when you first judged and criticized yourself as ‘not enough’. You get to unplug from your former self-image here.
- The Integration Phase: Here you get to integrate the lessons you’ve learned into your habitual response patterns so that instead of re-acting you activate your creative faculties and change your trajectory.
- Contribution: This is where you share the wisdom you’ve acquired from facing your dark side.
Each step of the way you will be pushed to your edge and forced to come face to face with your own limitations.
Limitations are not a bad thing, in fact they are the reason we are able to experience liberation in the purest sense.
If we allow ourselves to indulge without any limitations we will become unhealthy quickly because nothing in excess is ever good for us. We require limits on everything and our willingness to accept this fact will ease our discomfort during the stages of transition that every Hero must go through in order to emerge reborn as the Hero that you were previously waiting to come rescue you.
When you understand your own power you will become like a magnet for others who are on a similar Quest for power and significance. Sometimes their guise of friendship will deceive you into thinking your relationship has substance rather than just being the manipulative relationship you will later reflect on as your dynamic.
And other times you will be drawn to connect with like minded individuals questing for a common good like I was to Lewis Howes when he came to Toronto for the Archangel Summit. I saw he would be coming and decided to go in order to meet him and make the first official introduction but at the time I was going through my most depressed phase of life to date and nearly didn’t go.
I also didn’t take advantage of an extra meet and greet where he would have been more available simply because I didn’t want to introduce myself as the chaotic mess I felt like I was at that particular time. I wanted to connect with him when I was back on his level.
It was only the investment that I’d made into my seat and the resentment I knew I’d feel toward myself if I didn’t go that pushed me to get myself in the room and I am grateful that I did. It was my first introduction to Simon Sinek and I fully resonated with his message. This picture with Lewis Howes is proof that my awareness grew because I got myself in an event I knew Lewis would be at and I decided before I went that I was going to get a picture with him – validation that we get what we expect, when in the greatest and highest good of all.
Every time you get yourself in the room you grow and you expand your circle of influence.
There will be characters you meet along your journey that will challenge you and bring out both your best and worst characteristics, so you must take charge of how you show up regardless of who else is in the room.
When you are able to authentically express yourself you grow one step closer to the truth of your own being than you were before. And that is truly the point of it all. To remember our inherent greatness.
Yours in P.E.A.C.E,
Laura JE Hamilton
