You Are Living The Hero’s Journey

All that doubt is the battleground for your bold goal. Learn how to fight, and you’ll reap the rewards.

I offer this story as food for thought when you feel lost in the messy and confusing stage of achieving any bold goal. You might think nothing’s working, you’re incompetent, or progress is impossible. It’s the stage in your Journey where you’re most likely to give up.

All that doubt is the battleground for your bold goal. Learn how to fight, and you’ll reap the rewards.

You’ve begun a bold goal.

Your bold goal might be a business, a book, or another fantastic feat.

The early plans looked straightforward. Tick the boxes and do the 5-step method. How hard can it be? Plenty of people have done it before.

But then your mind fired the what-if questions.

What if I’m not good enough?

What if I get hurt?

What if so-and-so lets me down?

What if I get embarrassed?

What if people laugh at me?

What if people don’t laugh at me?!

Anxiety, sleepless nights and pounding questions have become hallmarks of your daily routine. The worry has you so distracted you put salt in your coffee this morning.

Those questions are your Kryptonite.

Kryptonite sucks the power from Superman, and right now, those questions are doing the same to you, and while you’re weak, the inner critic is ambushing you with insults.

Stop being a wimp!

You’re hopeless!

There’s no way you can do that!

What the heck were you thinking?!

You suck at this stuff!

If the inner critic gets the upper hand, you can kiss goodbye to that bold goal. You’ve lost the battle.

You are living the Hero’s Journey.

In 1949 writer Joseph Campbell created the Hero’s Journey story curve that underwrites any Marvel or DC Comic character and 1000s of other mythological heroes. The 12 phases of the Journey start with the call to adventure, then plummet the protagonist into The Ordeal, from which they resurrect with new answers – and superpowers.

You’re living the same Journey. Yes you, my favourite new superhero.

The Ordeal stage begins when self-doubt floods your mind. To survive, you must delve deep into your soul, battle the demons that block your path and unlock the power to persist until you see daylight again. Or, as Joseph Campbell described it:

The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding . . . It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal — carries the cross of the redeemer — not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.

Joseph Campbell in The Hero’s Journey

Let me put that in plainer words.  

Tackle those what-if questions head-on, and they will make you stronger. If you believe they are your weakness, you will fall to the ground, and your quest will end.

A woman connected with me yesterday. She’s 12 months into a new business venture and seriously doubts her ability to succeed.

She said she had made lots of false starts and little progress.

She was barely making money.

She wished she had built a website earlier and learned more about marketing.

She had hired and fired contractors repeatedly.

She found it hard to talk to people.

Yet there she was, talking with me, a stranger.

In her eyes, I could see the fear and silent questions.

• What if I’m not good enough?
• What if I fail?
• What if people discover I don’t know what I’m doing?
• Why is everyone else so good at this, and I’m not?

When she finished sharing, I gave her room for pause and then said.

Those early steps are not false starts or wrongs; they are the Journey. They are moments you must live to gain the wisdom to move through to the next stage.

Keep looking where doubt is shining its torch and embrace its lessons.

When you hear the words “What if I’m not good enough?” probe deeper and ask, “What do I need to be good at right now? What are my gaps? How do I fix those gaps with what’s around me?”

(Well done, you’ve just unlocked your MacGyver superpower)

When you mutter, “What if so-and-so lets me down?” map out what could go wrong and plan your alternate routes.

(The power of foresight is now yours.)

When you lament, “I made a wrong decision!” reflect on what you learned along that path. Nothing happens purely by chance.

You can do it. You can find the power within you, and then, when you’re ready, your big, bold goal will live.