Living the Hero's Journey

by Will Craig

  Destination – Awareness and Action

  Your ultimate destination is bigger and more involved than mere awareness and action. To finally “arrive” requires multiple stops, challenge points, and—hopefully—safe havens along the way. This mid-journey destination (one of many) is to awaken, become aware, and act on your calling.

  Fellow Traveler – Herald

  The first traveling companion to join you is the herald. The role of the herald is to warn and challenge. The herald kickstarts your journey with the announcement of a call for change.

  A piece of information is delivered that jostles the status quo and challenges the hero to answer the call to adventure. The herald’s job is motivating the hero to take action, in spite of the fact that “the call” may have repeatedly refused in the past.

  The herald is the personification of a call to adventure. A person can serve this function or, just as easily, an event or force can trigger the awareness. A mentor can act as the herald. The call to change can also be heralded through a dream or during meditation, or come from some external event like a close encounter with death, a timely call from an old friend, or reading a poignant passage in a book.

  In essence, something deep inside is awakening the hero from an ordinary life. The resulting jolt of energy races through the hero’s body, causing vibrations and a heightened awareness that change is not only inevitable but imminent. The herald is calling you to the adventure. It’s time to take action.

  Personal Guide – Truth

  Walking directly beside you is the guide of truth. Be true to your word and let your word be true. Continue moving forward. There are seven more legs to the journey, and you will gain a new guide and additional fellow travelers at each transition point.

  You’ve already taken the first step. You acknowledge it is time for change and are preparing to take action and move forward. As William Shakespeare would say, “This above all: to thine own self be true.”

  Be true to your word and deliver on your promises, especially to yourself. Listen to your inner voice, and heed the advice and counsel of the wiser and nobler you. Respect your needs and desires, and it will become easier to respect the needs and desires of others. Your life improves significantly when you take a chance on being sincerely honest and authentic.

  If you’re feeling sentimental, look at it this way: “We are all of us born with a letter inside us,” asserts novelist and artist Douglas Coupland, “and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.”

  The guide of truth is always with you. Just be sure you’re listening from the inside out.

  “The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” ~ David Foster Wallace

  Suffering the Status Quo

  The first stage of the hero’s inner journey is all about awareness. Some hidden part of us may be hinting at change, seeking a renewed spirit, foreseeing a better future. Let’s do a full overview of the awareness stage of the journey. Then we’ll talk specifically about the call to adventure—or, for our inner journey purposes, the call for change.

  Our baseline is the status quo. This is where we are. It may not be pretty or exactly the way we want it but, for better or worse, this is who we are right now in the ordinary world.

  Then, we get the call. It could be something out of the blue and totally unexpected. For instance, you’re passing by the mirror in your brand-new clothes. You stop with a jolt and turn your back to it. Your conscious mind asks, “Do these jeans make my butt look big?”

  Your subconscious knows better than to answer.

  And there it is. Awareness has crept into your world. Now, every time you pass a mirror—or glass of any kind—you’re checkin’ out the caboose to see if the mirror was lying. This is known as the quiet suffering phase. You’re not going to do anything about it, but it doesn’t feel good.

  Those same jeans that started this whole awareness mess now make a second call. Having gone through the laundry, it seems tougher than normal to get them buttoned. It must be because the dryer shrunk them. This is known as the resisting the call phase. You haven’t refused to deal with the issue, but you’re not ready to acknowledge there actually is one—yet.

  Committing to change takes some help. You start to notice and take heed of weight-loss products and programs. Not because you need to, but because you should just be informed about these things.

  The next step is about seeking help and meeting the mentor. It need not be formal or cost any money. You confide in a friend, who tells you, “What could it hurt to modify your eating habits a little and join a yoga class? The worst that could happen is you’d feel better.”

  Now you’re ready to cross the threshold and make the leap of faith into a weight-loss regime. This won’t hurt a bit (insert smile here).

  Everything we’ve talked about so far falls within the awareness stage of the journey. The actual hard work begins on the road of trials in the next stage, which is where real change happens. We’ll delve into that in the next part of the book. For now, let’s go back to the beginning.

  Call for Change

  On our inner journey, the aim of the call to adventure is that of a call for change. It is to wake up and shake up the hero within. Becoming aware can be the trickiest part. We don’t always hear the call, or see it, or feel it (even if it’s attached to a 2x4 upside the head).

  In the movies, the call to adventure is usually pretty blatant—Princess Leia’s “help me” hologram in R2D2, the treasure map received by Joan Wilder in Romancing the Stone, or the flood of letters from Hogwarts to a smiling Harry Potter.

  In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Herald is “News” Carver, who reads newspaper accounts of the gang’s robberies and learns that a super posse has been assigned to hunt them down. In Beauty and the Beast, the Herald is an old beggar woman who warns the prince not to be deceived by outward appearances. For me, the call came while watching a PBS television special—an enchanting view into a crystal ball of sorts. No one knows exactly when the call comes, much less who or what will deliver it.

  Sometimes the heralding can even be silent. In the (otherwise) black-and-white film Schindler’s List, the girl in the red coat symbolizes the innocence of the Jews being slaughtered by the Nazis. The scene personalizes the horror for Schindler and challenges him to act in ways that are nothing short of heroic.

  Many of us are familiar with the role of the herald because of Greek mythology. Hermes is the great messenger of the gods and guide to the underworld. He is also the patron of boundaries and guardian of the travelers who cross them.

  The Romans, craving their own identity (and deities), “borrowed” many of their gods from the Greeks and simply renamed them. Mercury, the messenger, was one of them. They used Mercury’s name in place of Hermes, added a few original myths to the legend, and called it good.

  For you and I, the call for change could come as a literal knock on the door or from an Animal Planet documentary. It could arrive as a subtle “a-ha” moment in the shower, or a disturbing tap on the shoulder (hopefully not in the shower). In whatever form it arrives—mystical or just plain ordinary—it is a wake-up call to rise and shine. It’s opportunity knocking, and it may not come this way again.

  The hero may have somehow managed to survive an imbalanced life and get by with charm, adequate looks, and a sack full of coping mechanisms. The herald’s message makes it simply impossible to get by any longer. The new energy of the wake-up call sparks the hero into action.

  You’ve been stuck in the status quo for too long, and the herald is rousing you to venture out and see what’s just beyond your comfort zone. It’s time to rise to the occasion and shine like the star of your personal action-adventure film. This is your reality show and the camera is rolling. Don’t make it boring.

  Until we become aware, we will not hear the call. There are many reasons we don’t hear it. We may not know ourselves well enough to recognize it. Even if we do
know ourselves, we may not be ready for it. We might not want it badly enough, or maybe we’re not sure the call is really for us. However, we want to label it, we’re resisting the call.

  Well, that doesn’t sound great, does it? So, what should we be listening for, then?

  The herald doesn't always bellow the official call to adventure through a ceremonial baroque trumpet. Often, the call comes in a much softer, gentler voice. Consummate student of personal growth—and consequently, a master mentor—Oprah Winfrey tells us, “That whisper you keep hearing is the universe trying to get your attention.”

  The call to adventure is likely to be the shortest part of your journey and the most benign. Given the gravity of many of the other steps you experience around the map, this one seems trivial in importance. Doesn’t sound too exciting, does it? Ahhh, but wait—there’s more.

  There’s a good reason an entire section of the book is devoted to the “call.” Comedian Steve Harvey told Oprah that the two most important days of your life are the day you were born, and the day you find out why. The call to adventure may be short and sweet, but it is also supremely important. If for no other reason, when you miss your call, there are no other steps to be taken (except maybe the ones that go backward).

  Sitting in Awareness

  The call is the beginning of awareness. Once we receive the call—whatever it might be about—we can no longer deny the reason it came to us. We can ignore it. We can pass it off as just an abstract, fleeting thought (the first time, anyway). We can pretend we’re going to deal with it later. In fact, we don’t have to do anything about it.

  But one thing is different: The reason for the call has now come into our awareness.

  Mentor coach Dr. Jackie Black, draws clients into awareness by asking questions. The twist is, she’s not really interested in the answers. The goal is to have them sit and explore beyond the story they’ve been telling themselves. What if the story is no longer their truth? Again, the answer is unimportant. The goal is the exploration that ensues within the client and the call—a call for change—that may be triggered as a result. Dr. Jackie calls it “sitting in awareness.”

  Think about this section of the book as an immersion into awareness. Let’s explore the many calls you receive, as well as why they might go unanswered, and provide you with some basic tools and knowledge to determine which “calls” are irresistible and which are irrelevant. It’s not like you have Caller ID with this.

  That’s the trouble, isn’t it? Throughout the day, we’re bombarded with so many calls for our attention. How do we recognize “real and genuine,” even if it smacks us in the face?

  Why should we care? Because calls open and close doors. And walking through those doors changes everything. At least it did for Helen.

  Helen arrives at work one morning, only to get fired from her job. She takes the subway back home, just slipping between the rapidly closing doors as the train pulls out of the underground station. Arriving home, she discovers her boyfriend in bed with his ex-girlfriend.

  This is half of the premise of the 1998 movie Sliding Doors, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. The other half of the premise is a different version of events. Helen misses making it through the sliding doors and is forced to wait for the next train. By the time she arrives home, the girlfriend is gone, no one the wiser. Outside of losing her job, the status quo is maintained—or so it seems.

  The movie continues down parallel tracks into drastically different worlds for our heroine. The film intertwines between the two realities (made the train, missed the train) and explores the “what-ifs” determined by a split second.

  The story is intriguing because most of us have thought about what our lives would be like had we walked through a different door at some point. What would be different this very moment if you hadn’t sat down with this book? What would you be thinking this very second if you had sat down to check your social media instead? Surely, you wouldn’t be thinking about this. How, if at all, does this change your life?

  Maybe a lot.

  Every decision we make, big or small, alters the course of our lives just slightly—and sometimes by quite a bit. With a fresh sense of heightened awareness, is there a call for change that you’ve been resisting? Are you quietly suffering about something?

  Sound the Bugle

  It’s the fall of 1981, and I’m about to receive my call for change. I’m on the couch channel-surfing and stumble across the Summer Music Games on PBS. The games are an annual championship competition comprising the best high-school and college musicians from around the country and the world. Talk about herald trumpets.

  It looks like a marching-band competition on steroids. The only instruments on the field are shiny brass bugles and thundering drums. The participants call it “drum corps”; the fans call it exhilarating.

  I’m taking in the sound, excitement, and sheer power of brass instruments in four-part harmony, accompanied by a precision drum line in cadence with other percussion instruments. I just know that if I were in that stadium sitting on the 50-yard line, I’d be getting my face blown off by a wall of sound. These students are amazing! When the broadcast announcer introduces the corps director, Scott Stewart, it strikes me that this guy can’t be much older than me.

  When the Madison Scouts Drum & Bugle Corps finish their hair-raising performance to a roaring standing ovation (including one from my living room), I hear the call. It is the call for change. I don’t know how or when, but one day I am going to be part of this activity.

  I was right. Exactly ten seasons and ten broadcasts later, I became the corps director of Magic of Orlando Drum & Bugle Corps. I held the full-time position from 1991–97. I also served most of those years on the Drum Corps International Board of Directors—one as vice chairman of the board sitting alongside chairman Scott Stewart of the Madison Scouts.

  This particular full-circle journey falls under the category of “be careful what you wish for.” The volunteer youth activity changed my life. I totally switched careers, spent summers touring North America, and married my ex-wife. Well, she wasn’t my ex at the time, but you know what I mean.

  Little did I know at the time that I was headed down one of the lengthier road of trials and certainly one of the toughest periods of my life. There was never enough money to operate the nonprofit organization. We were always fighting for sponsorships. There were always mechanical problems with the tour vehicles. But who I am now was engendered in those stadiums and on those practice fields. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The passion for this musical art form was hibernating inside of me all along. Answering the call that fateful day, vibrantly activated another piece of the puzzle that is me.

  I sometimes wonder—if I hadn’t been channel-surfing that day and caught the PBS broadcast, would I have received the call in another way, or was that a sliding door? Had I not been awake to my passion for music and harmony or mindful of my love of experiential learning, would this path have even opened up? Would an essential part of my purpose have been missed?

  What about you? Can you remember specific moments when you received a call to adventure? In retrospect, was there a call you possibly didn’t recognize at the time?

  Refusing the Call

  You see it in almost every movie. This is when our hero has been tapped on the shoulder to step up. Instead of answering the call, justifications are given and excuses are made. “We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures,” says Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit.

  William Wallace (Mel Gibson) is a simple farmer in 13th-century Scotland. He only wants to live in peace, even though the English are responsible for his father’s death. Wallace witnesses and endures subsequent injustices, yet remains steadfast in his pacifism. He refuses the call to adventure by refusing to fight. Patience and toleration are virtues—until they’re not.

  It is not until the English magistrate has his wife publicly executed that he takes up the call to lead Scotland into rebellion. This dramatic and pers
uasive call to adventure is from the Academy Award–winning Best Picture, Braveheart.

  Each refusal of the call intensifies the need to respond, until the call can no longer be resisted or refused. On a lighter note, in Groundhog Day, Phil (Bill Murray) is forced to relive a negative loop cycle until he embraces the call for change to become a better person.

  In between high school and college, some students are aware enough and smart enough to take a year off from school. Some backpack across Europe. Others take the time to “find” themselves, or at least get a better sense of who they are and what they want to do with their lives.

  I guess I embraced this strategy a little longer than most. Twenty years after graduating high school, I still hadn’t gone to college, nor had I seen Europe. I didn’t even have a passport. I continued refusing the call. When did I stop refusing the call? When it became too painful to ignore.

  “The universe is forever sending out a casting call to us to accept our starring role in an A-list movie,” says Michael Bernard Beckwith. “As we sit in our inner screening room observing the moment-to-moment changing scenery of our life, we may wonder what indeed is the part we have come to play on this great stage of life.”

  Know Thyself

  Before screenwriters and novelists pen the first scene, they are totally knowledgeable about at least one aspect of their story. They know everything about their protagonist, the hero. They even know things they may never use in the story. If it becomes necessary, however, the “backstory” is congruent with the character. They understand the hero: what motivates her, what scares her, what fills her with purpose and passion.

  The quickest way—in fact, the only way—to discover your destiny is to know yourself. It might sound trite, but the truth is, we often dismiss the idea of fully understanding who we are. We seldom make the effort because we think we already know ourselves. We’re reluctant to take on the task of self-discovery because it sounds like a silly seminar exercise. Maybe we don’t explore the depths of our soul because we’re afraid of what we might find.