The Hero’s Journey is the template for the great myths of world history, and understanding how it works will not only improve your writing, it will also enhance your life.
After completing the first draft of my debut novel, LOCKS, in 2013, I picked up a book I had been meaning to read for a while: The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. In it, Campbell describes the narrative arc he noticed as a recurring theme in myths and religious stories. The Hero’s Journey, as Campbell called the narrative, dates back to antiquity and has been the template for heroic stories all over the world.
Learning this blew my mind for a number of reasons: because it seemed so incredible that we had all been telling the same story the whole time, and because the idea felt so right to me.
However, the thing I found most amazing was that I had just written a Hero’s Journey without any prior knowledge of its existence. And, if that wasn’t incredible enough, LOCKS wasn’t a story I had picked out of the ether, LOCKS is a story I had lived.
I hurried back to my manuscript and scanned the whole thing. Amazing! Not only where all of the stages described by Campbell there in the story I had written (and lived), they were even laid out in perfect order, step by step, just as Campbell had described them.
I have since come to recognise the Hero’s Journey myth as it is disseminated in contemporary western culture through comic books, movies, novels and so on. Popular examples include Star Wars, Frozen, Moana, Lord of the Rings, Wonder and The Hunger Games.
What Is The Hero’s Journey?
For those who aren’t familiar with the Hero’s Journey story arc, here’s a breakdown:
- The protagonist is at home but there is something wrong at home.
- The protagonist is prompted to leave the ordinary world behind and go on a journey.
- They either refuse to go or society tries to stop them.
- Then they meet a wise mentor who offers to guide them.
- Under the mentor’s aegis, they dare to cross the threshold and venture into the world of the unknown, the adventure.
- Once there, they have to work out who are their friends and who are their foes.
- They prepare for a big battle which culminates in . . .
- Death (real or metaphorical) and rebirth.
- Coming back from the darkness, they seize their newfound power.
- Then they must return back home.
- They often face a final challenge on the way back home.
- They finally return back home with the power to make the world a better place.
Why We All Tell the Same Story
So, how would it come to be that we all tell this story? Why is it so powerful that it has inspired us throughout the millennia? And how could it be that I lived a mythical narrative I had never even heard of?
To answer my first question is to answer my third question. We all connect with this narrative because we all live it.
The Hero’s Journey is, in its simplest form, the story played out in the heavens: every 24 hours the sun lives, dies and is reborn. The moon plays out a more protracted life, death and rebirth every month. And the plants and animals that die so that we may live all go through the cycle of challenges, death, rebirth and flourishing to help the world.
This happens everywhere, for everyone. Moreover, we all face challenges that take us over the threshold: birth, growth, a new school, coming of age, marriage, childbirth, a new job, divorce, sickness, loss and, finally, death.
The people who achieve the most in life are the ones who seize their power, and then use it to make the world a better place. They are the ones to be revered – the mature, self-actualised ones, the heroes.
And so, to my second question: why is the Hero’s Journey so powerful?
People have told this story to each other around the campfire as a guide, as a moral compass and to offer hope in times of despair for untold millennia. And we have found no better way of telling a story that achieves those ends.
Once a story becomes so prevalent it resonates in and all around us. It is not only in the mouths of our parents and their parents ad infinitum, it is also in our dreams, it’s in our genes.
How The Hero’s Journey Will Improve Your Life
As you may have noticed, I am passionate about the transformative power of story. It is the first thing I teach on my courses. So, you can imagine how thrilled I was when I saw the healing power of story had made the front cover of one of my favourite magazines, New Scientist, earlier this year.
The article by David Robson, author of The Expectation Effect, cites numerous studies that have been done over the past few decades to examine the power of narrative to transform one’s life and allow you more control over your own existence.
The article explains how people naturally tend to see life as a narrative, particularly as they mature into adults.
People view events as turning points, they remember certain phases like chapters – the time we lived in such-and-such a place, the time I went to that school, the time I was married to that person. It is as if life has a plot with characters. Moreover, once we take control of our own narratives, we become the authors with the power to tell our story any way we like.
One of the most fundamental things I teach on my courses is that consciously taking control of our own life story empowers us massively. We can start to perceive challenges and hardships from the past as the origin myths of our own internal superhero.
Batman, for example, became Batman due to the immense childhood trauma of witnessing the murder of his parents. And Batman is far from perfect, but he chose to fight crime and not to become, for example, The Joker.
You, also, have survived trauma, upset and massive change, and you have come out the other side a stronger, more resilient and wiser person: a hero/heroine.
If you choose to see it that way.
As discussed in Robson’s article, there is plenty scientific data to back up just how powerful seeing life as a narrative really is.
In one of the studies he cites, members of Alcoholics Anonymous were asked to describe the last drink they had. Some only gave the straight facts. Others, however, described the events in a narrative way where a realisation led to a positive change. Four months later over 80% of those who described their last drink in this narrative way were still sober, while only 44% of those who only described the plain facts were still sober.
Wow! The redemptive power of story.
Seeing life in a narrative structure gives meaning to life’s events and it gives us a sense of power over our own existence. Indeed, the belief that we have some power over our lives is, arguably, the only power we do have.
Perception is everything.
In another study cited by Robson, teenagers were asked to write about a time they had failed and a time they had succeeded. Half were asked to just write the details. The other half, however, were told to describe in detail how failure had changed them for the better, and how they made their successes a reality by dint of their own effort. Eight weeks later, the second group, the group who wrote a narrative, still had higher grades and improved persistence with schoolwork.
So, simply adding a sense of redemption to the way they perceived their struggles, and applying the narrative of a rags to riches perspective to their successes, gave them a sense of reflection and agency, and that improved their levels of educational attainment and effort.
Take a minute to take in just how amazing this is. You, too, have the power to see your struggles as the furnace where your heroic self is forged, and to see your successes as great tales of triumph. And simply thinking like this will make you a happier and more successful person.
Giving structure to your experience in a narrative way gives you a stronger sense of identity, meaning and purpose and improves your overall satisfaction with life. And, of course, a person who lacks a sense of identity, meaning and purpose in life, who lacks a sense of redemption in tough times and agency in good times is, in the most extreme cases, suffering from depression.
We all instinctively know this stuff to be true, but studies such as these remind us just how powerful our minds are, and just how much power we have over our own experience and existence.
This kind of knowledge allows us to break free from the strictures of society and become fully self-actualised beings; both fully independent from the restraints of society and, simultaneously, fully integrated into society.
Independence and integration: that is the whole point of the Hero’s Journey narrative.
My Own Journey
I lived a Hero’s Journey when I was stabbed, mugged, imprisoned and, finally, forced to flee Jamaica in 1993. It is now the subject of my first book, LOCKS.
And sat here now, in April 2023, I am prompted to embark on a yet another Hero’s Journey – to promote myself as an author, to dare to speak about these things that I am so passionate about on YouTube and social media and to share this, my first ever blog post, with you.
Will I dare to venture into new realms, to leave old, tired patterns of behaviour behind, to shed my skin and emerge with a power great enough to change my world, and yours?
You Choose
The likes of Joseph Campbell and I may be wrong, of course. Maybe there is no such universal narrative, and we are just seeing similarities in the stories because we choose to. But that is our choice, and the one thing we definitely do have is choice in how we interpret the world around us. To quote Negus, a character from LOCKS:
“Some people say all story are different. But I suppose it just depend on perspective – some are always seeking difference; some are always seeking the unity in all tings.”
I, for one, have chosen the path of unity.
For more advice on writing and mindset, please download the FREE PDF How to Write Your Best Book & Be The Best You from my website ashleighnugent.com now.
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See you in the world of the adventure . . .