a hero's journey article

Mental Health

Want to Give Your Life More Meaning? Think of It As a ‘Hero’s Journey’

Y ou might not think you have much in common with Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, or Katniss Everdeen. But imagining yourself as the main character of a heroic adventure could help you achieve a more meaningful life.

Research published earlier this year in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology touts the benefits of reframing your life as a Hero’s Journey—a common story structure popularized by the mythologist Joseph Campbell that provides a template for ancient myths and recent blockbusters. In his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces , Campbell details the structure of the journey, which he describes as a monomyth. In its most elementary form, a hero goes on an adventure, emerges victorious from a defining crisis, and then returns home changed for the better.

“The idea is that there’s a hero of some sort who experiences a change of setting, which could mean being sent off to a magical realm or entering a new thing they’re not used to,” says study author Benjamin A. Rogers, an assistant professor of management and organization at Boston College. “That sets them off on a quest where they encounter friends and mentors, face challenges, and return home to benefit their community with what they’ve learned.”

According to Rogers’ findings, perceiving your life as a Hero’s Journey is associated with psychological benefits such as enhanced well-being, greater life satisfaction, feeling like you’re flourishing, and reduced depression. “The way that people tell their life story shapes how meaningful their lives feel,” he says. “And you don’t have to live a super heroic life or be a person of adventure—virtually anyone can rewrite their story as a Hero’s Journey.”

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The human brain is wired for stories, Rogers notes, and we respond to them in powerful ways. Previous research suggests that by the time we’re in our early 20s, most of us have constructed a narrative identity—an internalized and evolving life story—that explains how we became the person we are, and where our life might go in the future. “This is how we've been communicating and understanding ourselves for thousands of years,” he says. Rogers’ research suggests that if people view their own story as following a Hero’s Journey trajectory, it increases meaning regardless of how they initially perceived their lives; even those who thought their lives had little meaning are able to benefit.

While Rogers describes a “re-storying intervention” in his research, some psychologists have used the Hero’s Journey structure as part of their practice for years. Lou Ursa, a licensed psychotherapist in California, attended Pacifica Graduate Institute, which is the only doctoral program in the country focused on mythology. The university even, she notes, houses Campbell’s personal library. As a result, mythology was heavily integrated into her psychology grad program. In addition to reflecting on what the Hero’s Journey means to her personally, she often brings it up with clients. “The way I talk about it is almost like an eagle-eye view versus a snake-eye view of our lives,” she says. “So often we’re just seeing what’s in front of us. I think that connecting with a myth or a story, whether it’s the Hero’s Journey or something else, can help us see the whole picture, especially when we’re feeling lost or stuck.”

As Rogers’ research suggests, changing the way you think about the events of your life can help you move toward a more positive attitude. With that in mind, we asked experts how to start reframing your life story as a Hero’s Journey.

Practice reflective journaling

Campbell described more than a dozen key elements of a Hero’s Journey, seven of which Rogers explored in his research: protagonist, shift, quest, allies, challenge, transformation, and legacy. He says reflecting on these aspects of your story—even if it’s just writing a few sentences down—can be an ideal first step to reframe your circumstances. Rogers offers a handful of prompts that relate back to the seven key elements of a Hero’s Journey. To drill in on “protagonist,” for example, ask yourself: What makes you you ? Spend time reflecting on your identity, personality, and core values. When you turn to “shift,” consider: What change or new experience prompted your journey to become who you are today? Then ponder what challenges stand in your way, and which allies can support or help you in your journey. You can also meditate on the legacy your journey might leave.

Ask yourself who would star in the movie of your life

One way to assess your inner voice is to figure out who would star in a movie about your life, says Nancy Irwin, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles who employs the Hero’s Journey concept personally and professionally. Doing so can help us “sufficiently dissociate and see ourselves objectively rather than subjectively,” she says. Pay attention to what appeals to you about that person: What traits do they embody that you identify with? You might, for example, admire the person’s passion, resilience, or commitment to excellence. “They inspire us because there’s some quality that we identify with,” Irwin says. “Remember, you chose them because you have that quality yourself.” Keeping that in mind can help you begin to see yourself as the hero of your own story.

Go on more heroic adventures—or just try something new

In classic Hero’s Journey stories, the protagonist starts off afraid and refuses a call to adventure before overcoming his fears and committing to the journey. Think of Odysseus being called to fight the Trojans, but refusing the call because he doesn’t want to leave his family. Or consider Rocky Balboa: When he was given the chance to fight the world’s reigning heavyweight champion, he immediately said no—before ultimately, of course, accepting the challenge. The narrative has proven timeless because it “reflects the values of society,” Rogers says. “We like people who have new experiences and grow from their challenges.”

He suggests asking yourself: “If I want to have a more meaningful life, what are the kinds of things I could do?” One possible avenue is seeking out novelty, whether that’s as simple as driving a new way home from work or as dramatic as finally selling your car entirely and committing to public transportation.

Be open to redirection

The Hero’s Journey typically starts with a mission, which prompts the protagonist to set off on a quest. “But often the road isn’t linear,” says Kristal DeSantis, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Austin. “There are twists, turns, unexpected obstacles, and side quests that get in the way. The lesson is to be open to possibility.”

That perspective can also help you flip the way you see obstacles. Say you’re going through a tough time: You just got laid off, or you were diagnosed with a chronic illness. Instead of dwelling on how unfortunate these hurdles are, consider them opportunities for growth and learning. Think to yourself: What would Harry do? Reframe the challenges you encounter as a chance to develop resilience and perseverance, and to be the hero of your own story.

When you need a boost, map out where you are on your journey

Once you find a narrative hero you can relate to, keep their journey in mind as you face new challenges. “If you feel stuck or lost, you can look to that story and be like, ‘Which part do I feel like I’m in right now?’” Ursa says. Maybe you’re in the midst of a test that feels so awful that you’ve lost perspective on its overall importance—i.e., the fact that it’s only part of your journey. (See: When Katniss was upset about the costume that Snow forced her to wear—before she then had to go fight off a pack of ferocious wolves to save her life.) Referencing a familiar story “can help you have that eagle-eye view of what might be next for you, or what you should be paying attention to,” Ursa says. “Stories become this map that we can always turn to.” Think of them as reassurance that a new chapter almost certainly awaits.

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The Art of Narrative

Learn to write.

A Complete Guide to The Hero’s Journey (or The Monomyth)

Learn how to use the 12 steps of the Hero’s Journey to structure plot, develop characters, and write riveting stories that will keep readers engaged!

Before I start this post I would like to acknowledged the tragedy that occurred in my country this past month. George Floyd, an innocent man, was murdered by a police officer while three other officers witnessed that murder and remained silent.

To remain silent, in the face of injustice, violen ce, and murder is to be complicit . I acknowledge that as a white man I have benefited from a centuries old system of privilege and abuse against black people, women, American Indians, immigrants, and many, many more.

This systemic abuse is what lead to the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Treyvon Martin, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice and many more. Too many.

Whether I like it or not I’ve been complicit in this injustice. We can’t afford to be silent anymore. If you’re disturbed by the violence we’ve wit nessed over, and over again please vote this November, hold your local governments accountable, peacefully protest, and listen. Hopefully, together we can bring positive change. And, together, we can heal .

In this post, we’ll go over the stages of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, also known as the Monomyth. We’ll talk about how to use it to structure your story. You’ll also find some guided questions for each section of the Hero’s Journey. These questions are designed to help guide your thinking during the writing process. Finally, we’ll go through an example of the Hero’s Journey from 1997’s Men In Black.

Down at the bottom, we’ll go over reasons you shouldn’t rely on the Monomyth. And we’ll talk about a few alternatives for you to consider if the Hero’s Journey isn’t right for your story.

But, before we do all that let’s answer the obvious question-

What is the Hero’s Journey?

The Hero’s Journey was first described by Joseph Campbell. Campbell was an American professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College. He wrote about the Hero’s Journey in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces . More than a guide, this book was a study on the fundamental structure of myths throughout history.

Through his study, Campbell identified seventeen stages that make up what he called the Monomyth or Hero’s Journey. We’ll go over these stages in the next section. Here’s how Campbell describes the Monomyth in his book:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Something important to note is that the Monomyth was not conceived as a tool for writers to develop a plot. Rather, Campbell identified it as a narrative pattern that was common in mythology.

George Lucas used Campbell’s Monomyth to structure his original Star Wars film. Thanks to Star Wars ’ success, filmmakers have adopted the Hero’s Journey as a common plot structure in movies.

We see it in films like The Matrix , Spider-man , The Lion King , and many more. But, keep in mind, this is not the only way to structure a story. We’ll talk about some alternatives at the end of this post.

With that out of the way, let’s go over the twelve stages of the Hero’s Journey, or Monomyth. We’ll use the original Men In Black film as an example (because why not?). And, we’ll look at some questions to help guide your thinking, as a writer, at each stage.

Quick note – The original Hero’s Journey is seventeen stages. But, Christopher Vogler, an executive working for Disney, condensed Campbell’s work. Vogler’s version has twelve stages, and it’s the version we’re talking about today. Vogler wrote a guide to use the Monomyth and I’ll link to it at the bottom.)

The 12 Stages of The Hero’s Journey

The ordinary world .

This is where the hero’s story begins. We meet our hero in a down-to-earth, or humble setting. We establish the hero as an ordinary citizen in this world, not necessarily “special” in any way.

Think exposition .

We get to know our hero at this stage of the story. We learn about the hero’s life, struggles, inner or outer demons. This an opportunity for readers to identify with the hero. A good idea since the story will be told from the hero’s perspective.

Read more about perspective and POV here.

In Men In Black, we meet our hero, James, who will become Agent J, chasing someone down the streets of a large city. The story reveals some important details through the action of the plo t. Let’s go over these details and how they’re shown through action.

Agent J’s job: He’s a cop. We know this because he’s chasing a criminal. He waves a badge and yells, “NYPD! Stop!”

The setting: The line “NYPD!” tells us that J is a New York City cop. The chase sequence also culminates on the roof of the Guggenheim Museum. Another clue to the setting.

J’s Personality: J is a dedicated cop. We know this because of his relentless pursuit of the suspect he’s chasing. J is also brave. He jumps off a bridge onto a moving bus. He also chases a man after witnessing him climb vertically, several stories, up a wall. This is an inhuman feat that would have most people noping out of there. J continues his pursuit, though.

Guided Questions

What is your story’s ordinary world setting?
How is this ordinary world different from the special world that your hero will enter later in the story?
What action in this story will reveal the setting?
Describe your hero and their personality.
What action in the story will reveal details about your hero?

The Call of Adventure

The Call of Adventure is an event in the story that forces the hero to take action. The hero will move out of their comfort zone, aka the ordinary world. Does this sound familiar? It should, because, in practice, The Call of Adventure is an Inciting Event.

Refusal of the Call

This is an important stage in the Monomyth. It communicates with the audience the risks that come with Call to Adventure. Every Hero’s Journey should include risks to the main characters and a conflict. This is the stage where your hero contemplates those risks. They will be tempted to remain in the safety of the ordinary world.

In Men in Black, the Refusal of the Call is subtle. It consists of a single scene. Agent K offers J membership to the Men In Black. With that comes a life of secret knowledge and adventure. But, J will sever all ties to his former life. No one anywhere will ever know that J existed. Agent K tells J that he has until sunrise to make his decision.

J does not immediately say, “I’m in,” or “When’s our first mission.” Instead, he sits on the park bench all night contemplating his decision. In this scene, the audience understands that this is not an easy choice for him. Again, this is an excellent use of action to demonstrate a plot point.

It’s also important to note that J only asks K one question before he makes his decision, “is it worth it?” K responds that it is, but only, “if you’re strong enough.” This line of dialogue becomes one of two dramatic questions in the movie. Is J strong enough to be a man in black?

What will your character have to sacrifice to answer the call of adventure?
What fears does your character have about leaving the ordinary world?
What risks or dangers await them in the special world?

Meeting the Mentor

At this point in the story, the hero is seeking wisdom after initially refusing the call of adventure. The mentor fulfills this need for your hero.

The mentor is usually a character who has been to the special world and knows how to navigate it. Mentor’s provides your hero with tools and resources to aid them in their journey. It’s important to note that the mentor doesn’t always have to be a character. The mentor could be a guide, map, or sacred texts.

If you’ve seen Men In Black then you can guess who acts as J’s mentor. Agent K, who recruited J, steps into the mentor role once J accepts the call to adventure.

Agent K gives J a tour of the MIB headquarters. He introduces him to key characters and explains to him how the special world of the MIB works. Agent K also gives J his signature weapon, the Noisy Cricket.

Who is your hero’s mentor?
How will your character find and encounter with their mentor?
What tools and resources will your mentor provide?
Why/how does your mentor know the special world?

Crossing the Threshold

This is the point where your hero finally crosses over from the ordinary world into the special one. At this point, there is no turning back for your hero.

Your hero may not cross into the special world on their own. Or, they may need a dramatic event that forces them to act.

At this point, you’ll want to establish the dramatic question of your story. This is the question will your reader wants to answer by the end of your story. A dramatic question is what will keep your audience reading.

Once J decides to commit to the MIB Agent K starts the process of deleting J’s identity. The filmmakers do a great job communicating the drastic nature of J’s decision. This is done through, again, action and an effective voice-over. J’s social security number is deleted, and his fingerprints are burned off. He dons a nondescript black suit, sunglasses, and a sick-ass Hamilton watch .

This scene is immediately followed by a threatening message sent by aliens called the Arquillians. They tell the MIB they will destroy the Earth unless J and K can deliver a galaxy. The only problem is no one knows what the galaxy is. So, we get our story question. Can J and K find and deliver the MacGuffin before the Earth is destroyed?

Tests, Allies, Enemies

This is stage is exactly what it sounds like. Once they’ve entered the special world, your hero will be tested. They will learn the rules of this new world. Your hero’s mentor may have to further teach your hero.

The hero will also begin collecting allies. Characters whose goals align with those of your hero’s. People who will help your hero achieve their goal. These characters may even join your hero on their quest.

And this is also the point where your hero’s enemy will reveal themselves. Now, you’ve may have hinted at, or even introduced the villain in the earlier stages. But, this is where the audience discovers how much of a threat this villain is to your hero.

Approach to the Inmost Cave

The inmost cave is the path towards the central conflict of your story. In this section, your hero is preparing for battle. They may be regrouping with allies, going over important information, or taking a needed rest. This is also a part of the story where you may want to inject some humor.

The approach is also a moment for your audience to regroup. This is an important aspect of pacing. A fast-paced story can be very exciting for the audience, but at some point, the writer needs to tap the breaks.

This approach section gives your audience time to process the plot and consider the stakes of your conflict. This is also a good time to introduce a ticking clock, and it’s perfect for character development.

In Men, In Black the Approach the Inmost Cave involves an interview with a character called Frank the Pug. Frank is a Pug breed of dog. He’s an alien in disguise.

Frank knows important details about the conflict between the Arquillians and Edgar. This is one of the funnier scenes in an overall funny film.

Read more about alliteration here… jk.

Frank also gives J a vital clue to determine the location of the Arquillian’s galaxy. They also discover that the galaxy is an energy source and not an actual galaxy.

Finally, we have the arrival of the Arquillian battleship come to destroy Earth. They give the MIB a warning. If the galaxy is not returned in one hour the will fire on the planet. So, we have a literal ticking clock.

Where and how will your hero slow down and regroup?
What information or resources will they need to go into the final battle?
How can you introduce some humor or character development into this section?
What kind of “ticking clock” will you introduce to increase the stakes of your final act?

The Ordeal

The Ordeal is about one thing, and that’s death. Your hero must go through a life-altering challenge. This will be a conflict where the hero faces their greatest fears.

It’s essential that your audience feels as if the hero is really in danger. Make the audience question whether the hero will make it out alive. But, your story’s stakes may not be life or death, such as in a comedy or romance.

In that case the death your character experiences will be symbolic. And, your audience will believe that there’s a chance the hero won’t achieve their goal.

Through the ordeal, your hero will experience death whether that be real or symbolic. With this death, the hero will be reborn with greater powers or insight. Overall, the ordeal should be the point in which your character hits rock bottom.

The Ordeal in Men In Black comes the moment when J and K confront Edgar at the site of the World’s Fair. In the confrontation with Edgar, K is eaten alive by Edgar. At this moment J is left alone to confront death. The audience is left to wonder if J can defeat Edgar on his own.

Guided Questions

What death will your hero confront?
What does “rock bottom” mean for your character?
How will your hero be changed on the other side of this death event?

Reward or Seizing the Sword

At this point in the story, your hero will earn some tangible treasure for all their trouble. This can be a physical treasure. In the context of the monomyth, this is often referred to as the elixir or sword.

However, the reward can be inwardly focused. Your hero might discover hidden knowledge or insight that helps them vanquish their foe. Or, your hero can find their confidence or some self-actualization. This reward, whatever it is, is the thing that they will take with them. It is what they earn from all their hard-fought struggles.

Once K is eaten J seems to be on his own with a massive alien cockroach. This is a pretty bad spot for the rookie agent. What’s worse is the Arquillian clock is still ticking. Edgar, the cockroach, is about to escape Earth, with the galaxy, sealing the planet’s fate.

All seems lost until J claims his reward. In this case, that reward comes in the form of an insight J has about Edgar. Being a giant cockroach, J realizes that Edgar may have a weakness for his Earth-bound counterparts. So, J kicks out a dumpster and starts to smash all the scurrying bugs under his foot.

J guesses correctly, and Edgar is momentarily distracted by J’s actions. Edgar climbs down from his ship to confront J. Agent K, who is still alive in Edgar’s stomach, can activate a gun, and blow Edgar in two. J’s reward is the knowledge that he is no longer a rookie, and he is strong enough for this job. J also captures a physical treasure. After Edgar has exploded, J finds the galaxy which Edgar had swallowed earlier in the film. In this scene, both dramatic questions are answered. The MIB can save the world. And, J is strong enough for the MIB.

What reward will your hero win?
A physical treasure, hidden knowledge, inner wisdom, or all of the above?

The Road Back

At this point, your hero has had some success in their quest and is close to returning to the ordinary world. Your hero has experienced a change from their time in the special world. This change might make your hero’s return difficult. Similar to when your hero crossed the threshold, your hero may need an event that forces them to return.

The road back must be a dramatic turning point that heightens stakes and changes the direction of your story. This event will also re-establish the dramatic question of your story. This act may present a final challenge for your hero before they can return home.

In Men In Black, the road backstage gets a little tricky. The film establishes that when J crosses the threshold he is not able to go back to the ordinary world. His entire identity is erased. Having J go back to his life as a detective would also undo his character growth and leave the audience feeling cheated. Luckily, the filmmakers work around this by having K return to the ordinary world rather than J.

After Edgar is defeated, K tells J that he is retiring from the MIB and that J will step in as K’s replacement. The movie establishes early that agents can retire, but only after having their memory wiped. So, K asks J to wipe his memory so that he can return to a normal life. Once again, J has to grapple with the question of whether he is strong enough for this job. Can he bring himself to wipe K’s memory and lose his mentor forever? Can he fill K’s shoes as an MIB agent?

How will your hero have to recommit to their journey?
What event will push your hero through their final test?
What final test will your hero face before they return to the ordinary world?

Resurrection

This is the final act of your story. The hero will have one last glorious encounter with the forces that are set against them. This is the culminating event for your hero. Everything that has happened to your hero has prepared them for this moment.

This can also be thought of as a rebirth for your hero. A moment when they shed all the things that have held them back throughout the story. The resurrection is when your hero applies all the things they’ve learned through their journey.

The final moment can be a physical battle, or again, it can be metaphorical. This is also a moment when allies return to lend a last-minute hand. But, as with any ending of a story, you need to make sure your hero is the one who saves the day.

So, here’s where things start to get a little clumsy. There are a couple of moments that could be a resurrection for our hero J. It could be the moment he faces off with Edgar. This is right before Edgar is killed. But, it’s K that pulls the trigger and kills Edgar. Based on our explanation J needs to be the one who saves the day. Maybe by stalling for time J is the one responsible for saving the day? It’s hard to say what the filmmakers’ intention was here.

The second moment that could represent a resurrection for J might be when he wipes K’s memory. It is the final dramatic hurdle that J faces before he can become a true Man in Black. But, this moment doesn’t resolve the conflict of the film.

Notice that the Hero’s Journey framework isn’t always followed to the letter by all storytellers. We’ll get back to this point at the end of the article.

What final challenge will your hero face?
How will your hero use the skills they’ve used to overcome their last challenge?
How will your hero’s allies help save the day?

Return with the Elixir

The ending of your story. Your hero returns to the ordinary world, but this time they carry with them the rewards earned during their journey. They may share these rewards with others who inhabit the ordinary world. But most important, is that you show that your hero has changed for the better.

The elixir represents whatever your hero gained on their journey. Remember, the elixir can be an actual physical reward like a treasure. But, the elixir can also be a metaphorical prize like knowledge or a feeling of fulfillment. This is a moment where your hero will return some sort of balance to the ordinary world.

Be sure to show that the journey has had a permanent effect on your hero.

In the final scene of the movie, we see that J has taken on a mentor role for Dr. Weaver, an MIB recruit now. He has physically changed- his clothes are more representative of his personality. This physical transformation is meant to show that J has fully embraced his new life and journey. No longer a rookie, J has stepped into his mentor, K’s, role.

How will you show that your character has changed from their journey?
What reward will they bring back to the ordinary world?
In what way will they change the ordinary world when they return?

Should I Use the Hero’s Journey for My Story?

This is a question you should ask yourself before embarking on your journey. The Monomyth works well as a framework. This is pretty obvious when you realize how many films have used it as a plotting device.

But there’s a downside to the popularity of the Monomyth. And that’s that audiences are very familiar with the beats of this kind of story. Sure, they may not be able to describe each of the twelve sections in detail. But, audiences know, intuitively, what is going to happen in these stories. At the very least, audiences, or readers, know how these stories are going to end.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If your story is exciting, well-paced, and the stakes are high, people aren’t going to mind some predictability. But, if you want to shock your readers-

(And if you’re interested in how to shock readers with a plot twist, click here. )

this might not be the best story structure. And, despite how popular it is, the hero’s journey ain’t the only game in town when it comes to story structure. And, you can always take artistic liberty with the Hero’s Journey. The fact that audiences are expecting certain beats means you have an opportunity to subvert expectations.

You can skip parts of the hero’s journey if they don’t fit your plot. With my example, Men In Black it was difficult to fit the story neatly into the hero’s journey framework. This is because aspects of the movie, like the fact that it’s a buddy comedy, don’t always jive with a hero’s journey. Agent K has an important character arch, and so he ends up killing the villain rather than J. But, K’s arch isn’t at all a hero’s journey.

The point is, don’t feel locked in by any single structure. Allow yourself some freedom to tell your story. If there’s no purpose to a resurrection stage in your story then skip it! No one is going to deduct your points.

With that said, here are a few resources on the Hero’s Journey, and some alternate plot structures you’ll want to check out!

This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links

Further Reading on Plot Structure and the Hero’s Journey

The Hero With 1000 Faces by Joseph Campbell

If you’d like to learn more about the Hero’s Journey, or Monomyth, why not go straight to the source? The Hero With 1000 Faces is a collection of work written by Joseph Campbell. His version of the hero’s journey has 17 stages. This is less of a writing manual and more of an exploration of the evolution of myth and storytelling through the ages.

The Seven Basic Plots , by Christopher Booker, is another academic study of storytelling by Christopher Booker. Booker identifies seven basic plots that all stories fit into. They are:

Overcoming the Monster
Rags to Riches
Voyage and Return

How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method

The Snowflake Method is a teaching tool designed by Randy Ingermanson that will take you through a step-by-step process of writing a novel. The Snowflake Method boils down the novel-writing process six-step process. You will start with a single sentence and with each step you build on that sentence until you have a full-fledged novel! If you’re love processes then pick up a copy of this book today.

In The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Hollywood consultant, Christopher Vogler teaches writers how to use the Hero’s Journey to write riveting stories.

Resources:

Wikipedia- Joseph Campbell

Wikipedia- Hero With 1000 Faces

Published by John

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I don’t understand the use of all those pictures/graphics you threw in as I was reading. They were extremely distracting and seriously detracted from whatever message you were trying to convey.

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Hero's Journey 101: How to Use the Hero's Journey to Plot Your Story

Dan Schriever

How many times have you heard this story? A protagonist is suddenly whisked away from their ordinary life and embarks on a grand adventure. Along the way they make new friends, confront perils, and face tests of character. In the end, evil is defeated, and the hero returns home a changed person.

That’s the Hero’s Journey in a nutshell. It probably sounds very familiar—and rightly so: the Hero’s Journey aspires to be the universal story, or monomyth, a narrative pattern deeply ingrained in literature and culture. Whether in books, movies, television, or folklore, chances are you’ve encountered many examples of the Hero’s Journey in the wild.

In this post, we’ll walk through the elements of the Hero’s Journey step by step. We’ll also study an archetypal example from the movie The Matrix (1999). Once you have mastered the beats of this narrative template, you’ll be ready to put your very own spin on it.

Sound good? Then let’s cross the threshold and let the journey begin.

What Is the Hero’s Journey?

The 12 stages of the hero’s journey, writing your own hero’s journey.

The Hero’s Journey is a common story structure for modeling both plot points and character development. A protagonist embarks on an adventure into the unknown. They learn lessons, overcome adversity, defeat evil, and return home transformed.

Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949)

Joseph Campbell , a scholar of literature, popularized the monomyth in his influential work The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949). Looking for common patterns in mythological narratives, Campbell described a character arc with 17 total stages, overlaid on a more traditional three-act structure. Not all need be present in every myth or in the same order.

The three stages, or acts, of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey are as follows:

1. Departure. The hero leaves the ordinary world behind.

2. Initiation. The hero ventures into the unknown ("the Special World") and overcomes various obstacles and challenges.

3. Return. The hero returns in triumph to the familiar world.

Hollywood has embraced Campbell’s structure, most famously in George Lucas’s Star Wars movies. There are countless examples in books, music, and video games, from fantasy epics and Disney films to sports movies.

In The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers (1992), screenwriter Christopher Vogler adapted Campbell’s three phases into the "12 Stages of the Hero’s Journey." This is the version we’ll analyze in the next section.

The three stages of Campbell's Hero's Journey

For writers, the purpose of the Hero’s Journey is to act as a template and guide. It’s not a rigid formula that your plot must follow beat by beat. Indeed, there are good reasons to deviate—not least of which is that this structure has become so ubiquitous.

Still, it’s helpful to master the rules before deciding when and how to break them. The 12 steps of the Hero's Journey are as follows :

The Ordinary World
The Call of Adventure
Refusal of the Call
Meeting the Mentor
Crossing the First Threshold
Tests, Allies, and Enemies
Approach to the Inmost Cave
Reward (Seizing the Sword)
The Road Back
Resurrection
Return with the Elixir

Let’s take a look at each stage in more detail. To show you how the Hero’s Journey works in practice, we’ll also consider an example from the movie The Matrix (1999). After all, what blog has not been improved by a little Keanu Reeves?

#1: The Ordinary World

This is where we meet our hero, although the journey has not yet begun: first, we need to establish the status quo by showing the hero living their ordinary, mundane life.

It’s important to lay the groundwork in this opening stage, before the journey begins. It lets readers identify with the hero as just a regular person, “normal” like the rest of us. Yes, there may be a big problem somewhere out there, but the hero at this stage has very limited awareness of it.

The Ordinary World in The Matrix :

We are introduced to Thomas A. Anderson, aka Neo, programmer by day, hacker by night. While Neo runs a side operation selling illicit software, Thomas Anderson lives the most mundane life imaginable: he works at his cubicle, pays his taxes, and helps the landlady carry out her garbage.

#2: The Call to Adventure

The journey proper begins with a call to adventure—something that disrupts the hero’s ordinary life and confronts them with a problem or challenge they can’t ignore. This can take many different forms.

While readers may already understand the stakes, the hero is realizing them for the first time. They must make a choice: will they shrink from the call, or rise to the challenge?

The Call to Adventure in The Matrix :

A mysterious message arrives in Neo’s computer, warning him that things are not as they seem. He is urged to “follow the white rabbit.” At a nightclub, he meets Trinity, who tells him to seek Morpheus.

#3: Refusal of the Call

Oops! The hero chooses option A and attempts to refuse the call to adventure. This could be for any number of reasons: fear, disbelief, a sense of inadequacy, or plain unwillingness to make the sacrifices that are required.

A little reluctance here is understandable. If you were asked to trade the comforts of home for a life-and-death journey fraught with peril, wouldn’t you give pause?

Refusal of the Call in The Matrix :

Agents arrive at Neo’s office to arrest him. Morpheus urges Neo to escape by climbing out a skyscraper window. “I can’t do this… This is crazy!” Neo protests as he backs off the ledge.

#4: Meeting the Mentor

Okay, so the hero got cold feet. Nothing a little pep talk can’t fix! The mentor figure appears at this point to give the hero some much needed counsel, coaching, and perhaps a kick out the door.

After all, the hero is very inexperienced at this point. They’re going to need help to avoid disaster or, worse, death. The mentor’s role is to overcome the hero’s reluctance and prepare them for what lies ahead.

Meeting the Mentor in The Matrix :

Neo meets with Morpheus, who reveals a terrifying truth: that the ordinary world as we know it is a computer simulation designed to enslave humanity to machines.

#5: Crossing the First Threshold

At this juncture, the hero is ready to leave their ordinary world for the first time. With the mentor’s help, they are committed to the journey and ready to step across the threshold into the special world . This marks the end of the departure act and the beginning of the adventure in earnest.

This may seem inevitable, but for the hero it represents an important choice. Once the threshold is crossed, there’s no going back. Bilbo Baggins put it nicely: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Crossing the First Threshold in The Matrix :

Neo is offered a stark choice: take the blue pill and return to his ordinary life none the wiser, or take the red pill and “see how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Neo takes the red pill and is extracted from the Matrix, entering the real world .

#6: Tests, Allies, and Enemies

Now we are getting into the meat of the adventure. The hero steps into the special world and must learn the new rules of an unfamiliar setting while navigating trials, tribulations, and tests of will. New characters are often introduced here, and the hero must navigate their relationships with them. Will they be friend, foe, or something in between?

Broadly speaking, this is a time of experimentation and growth. It is also one of the longest stages of the journey, as the hero learns the lay of the land and defines their relationship to other characters.

Wondering how to create captivating characters? Read our guide , which explains how to shape characters that readers will love—or hate.

Tests, Allies, and Enemies in The Matrix :

Neo is introduced to the vagabond crew of the Nebuchadnezzar . Morpheus informs Neo that he is The One , a savior destined to liberate humanity. He learns jiu jitsu and other useful skills.

#7: Approach to the Inmost Cave

Time to get a little metaphorical. The inmost cave isn’t a physical cave, but rather a place of great danger—indeed, the most dangerous place in the special world . It could be a villain’s lair, an impending battle, or even a mental barrier. No spelunking required.

Broadly speaking, the approach is marked by a setback in the quest. It becomes a lesson in persistence, where the hero must reckon with failure, change their mindset, or try new ideas.

Note that the hero hasn’t entered the cave just yet. This stage is about the approach itself, which the hero must navigate to get closer to their ultimate goal. The stakes are rising, and failure is no longer an option.

Approach to the Inmost Cave in The Matrix :

Neo pays a visit to The Oracle. She challenges Neo to “know thyself”—does he believe, deep down, that he is The One ? Or does he fear that he is “just another guy”? She warns him that the fate of humanity hangs in the balance.

#8: The Ordeal

The ordeal marks the hero’s greatest test thus far. This is a dark time for them: indeed, Campbell refers to it as the “belly of the whale.” The hero experiences a major hurdle or obstacle, which causes them to hit rock bottom.

This is a pivotal moment in the story, the main event of the second act. It is time for the hero to come face to face with their greatest fear. It will take all their skills to survive this life-or-death crisis. Should they succeed, they will emerge from the ordeal transformed.

Keep in mind: the story isn’t over yet! Rather, the ordeal is the moment when the protagonist overcomes their weaknesses and truly steps into the title of hero .

The Ordeal in The Matrix :

When Cipher betrays the crew to the agents, Morpheus sacrifices himself to protect Neo. In turn, Neo makes his own choice: to risk his life in a daring rescue attempt.

#9: Reward (Seizing the Sword)

The ordeal was a major level-up moment for the hero. Now that it's been overcome, the hero can reap the reward of success. This reward could be an object, a skill, or knowledge—whatever it is that the hero has been struggling toward. At last, the sword is within their grasp.

From this moment on, the hero is a changed person. They are now equipped for the final conflict, even if they don’t fully realize it yet.

Reward (Seizing the Sword) in The Matrix :

Neo’s reward is helpfully narrated by Morpheus during the rescue effort: “He is beginning to believe.” Neo has gained confidence that he can fight the machines, and he won’t back down from his destiny.

#10: The Road Back

We’re now at the beginning of act three, the return . With the reward in hand, it’s time to exit the inmost cave and head home. But the story isn’t over yet.

In this stage, the hero reckons with the consequences of act two. The ordeal was a success, but things have changed now. Perhaps the dragon, robbed of his treasure, sets off for revenge. Perhaps there are more enemies to fight. Whatever the obstacle, the hero must face them before their journey is complete.

The Road Back in The Matrix :

The rescue of Morpheus has enraged Agent Smith, who intercepts Neo before he can return to the Nebuchadnezzar . The two foes battle in a subway station, where Neo’s skills are pushed to their limit.

#11: Resurrection

Now comes the true climax of the story. This is the hero’s final test, when everything is at stake: the battle for the soul of Gotham, the final chance for evil to triumph. The hero is also at the peak of their powers. A happy ending is within sight, should they succeed.

Vogler calls the resurrection stage the hero’s “final exam.” They must draw on everything they have learned and prove again that they have really internalized the lessons of the ordeal . Near-death escapes are not uncommon here, or even literal deaths and resurrections.

Resurrection in The Matrix :

Despite fighting valiantly, Neo is defeated by Agent Smith and killed. But with Trinity’s help, he is resurrected, activating his full powers as The One . Isn’t it wonderful how literal The Matrix can be?

#12: Return with the Elixir

Hooray! Evil has been defeated and the hero is transformed. It’s time for the protagonist to return home in triumph, and share their hard-won prize with the ordinary world . This prize is the elixir —the object, skill, or insight that was the hero’s true reward for their journey and transformation.

Return with the Elixir in The Matrix :

Neo has defeated the agents and embraced his destiny. He returns to the simulated world of the Matrix, this time armed with god-like powers and a resolve to open humanity’s eyes to the truth.

If you’re writing your own adventure, you may be wondering: should I follow the Hero’s Journey structure?

The good news is, it’s totally up to you. Joseph Campbell conceived of the monomyth as a way to understand universal story structure, but there are many ways to outline a novel. Feel free to play around within its confines, adapt it across different media, and disrupt reader expectations. It’s like Morpheus says: “Some of these rules can be bent. Others can be broken.”

Think of the Hero’s Journey as a tool. If you’re not sure where your story should go next, it can help to refer back to the basics. From there, you’re free to choose your own adventure.

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Last updated on Aug 10, 2023

The Hero's Journey: 12 Steps to a Classic Story Structure

The Hero's Journey is a timeless story structure which follows a protagonist on an unforeseen quest, where they face challenges, gain insights, and return home transformed. From Theseus and the Minotaur to The Lion King , so many narratives follow this pattern that it’s become ingrained into our cultural DNA.

In this post, we'll show you how to make this classic plot structure work for you — and if you’re pressed for time, download our cheat sheet below for everything you need to know.

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Hero's Journey Template

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What is the Hero’s Journey?

The Hero's Journey, also known as the monomyth, is a story structure where a hero goes on a quest or adventure to achieve a goal, and has to overcome obstacles and fears, before ultimately returning home transformed.

This narrative arc has been present in various forms across cultures for centuries, if not longer, but gained popularity through Joseph Campbell's mythology book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces . While Campbell identified 17 story beats in his monomyth definition, this post will concentrate on a 12-step framework popularized in 2007 by screenwriter Christopher Vogler in his book The Writer’s Journey .

The 12 Steps of the Hero’s Journey

The Hero's Journey is a model for both plot points and character arc development : as the Hero traverses the world, they'll undergo inner and outer transformation at each stage of the journey. The 12 steps of the hero's journey are:

The Ordinary World. We meet our hero.
Call to Adventure. Will they meet the challenge?
Refusal of the Call. They resist the adventure.
Meeting the Mentor. A teacher arrives.
Crossing the First Threshold. The hero leaves their comfort zone.
Tests, Allies, Enemies. Making friends and facing roadblocks.
Approach to the Inmost Cave. Getting closer to our goal.
Ordeal. The hero’s biggest test yet!
Reward (Seizing the Sword). Light at the end of the tunnel
The Road Back. We aren’t safe yet.
Resurrection. The final hurdle is reached.
Return with the Elixir. The hero heads home, triumphant.

Believe it or not, this story structure also applies across mediums and genres (and also works when your protagonist is an anti-hero! ). Let's dive into it.

1. Ordinary World

In which we meet our Hero.

The journey has yet to start. Before our Hero discovers a strange new world, we must first understand the status quo: their ordinary, mundane reality.

It’s up to this opening leg to set the stage, introducing the Hero to readers. Importantly, it lets readers identify with the Hero as a “normal” person in a “normal” setting, before the journey begins.

2. Call to Adventure

In which an adventure starts.

The call to adventure is all about booting the Hero out of their comfort zone. In this stage, they are generally confronted with a problem or challenge they can't ignore. This catalyst can take many forms, as Campbell points out in Hero with a Thousand Faces . The Hero can, for instance:

Decide to go forth of their own volition;
Theseus upon arriving in Athens.
Be sent abroad by a benign or malignant agent;
Odysseus setting off on his ship in The Odyssey .
Stumble upon the adventure as a result of a mere blunder;
Dorothy when she’s swept up in a tornado in The Wizard of Oz .
Be casually strolling when some passing phenomenon catches the wandering eye and lures one away from the frequented paths of man.
Elliot in E.T. upon discovering a lost alien in the tool shed.

The stakes of the adventure and the Hero's goals become clear. The only question: will he rise to the challenge?

3. Refusal of the Call

In which the Hero digs in their feet.

Great, so the Hero’s received their summons. Now they’re all set to be whisked off to defeat evil, right?

Not so fast. The Hero might first refuse the call to action. It’s risky and there are perils — like spiders, trolls, or perhaps a creepy uncle waiting back at Pride Rock . It’s enough to give anyone pause.

In Star Wars , for instance, Luke Skywalker initially refuses to join Obi-Wan on his mission to rescue the princess. It’s only when he discovers that his aunt and uncle have been killed by stormtroopers that he changes his mind.

4. Meeting the Mentor

In which the Hero acquires a personal trainer.

The Hero's decided to go on the adventure — but they’re not ready to spread their wings yet. They're much too inexperienced at this point and we don't want them to do a fabulous belly-flop off the cliff.

Enter the mentor: someone who helps the Hero, so that they don't make a total fool of themselves (or get themselves killed). The mentor provides practical training, profound wisdom, a kick up the posterior, or something abstract like grit and self-confidence.

Harry holding the Marauder's Map with the twins

Wise old wizards seem to like being mentors. But mentors take many forms, from witches to hermits and suburban karate instructors. They might literally give weapons to prepare for the trials ahead, like Q in the James Bond series. Or perhaps the mentor is an object, such as a map. In all cases, they prepare the Hero for the next step.

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5. Crossing the First Threshold

In which the Hero enters the other world in earnest.

Now the Hero is ready — and committed — to the journey. This marks the end of the Departure stage and is when the adventure really kicks into the next gear. As Vogler writes: “This is the moment that the balloon goes up, the ship sails, the romance begins, the wagon gets rolling.”

From this point on, there’s no turning back.

Like our Hero, you should think of this stage as a checkpoint for your story. Pause and re-assess your bearings before you continue into unfamiliar territory. Have you:

Launched the central conflict? If not, here’s a post on types of conflict to help you out.
Established the theme of your book? If not, check out this post that’s all about creating theme and motifs .
Made headway into your character development? If not, this author-approved template may be useful:

Reedsy’s Character Profile Template

A story is only as strong as its characters. Fill this out to develop yours.

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies

In which the Hero faces new challenges and gets a squad.

When we step into the Special World, we notice a definite shift. The Hero might be discombobulated by this unfamiliar reality and its new rules. This is generally one of the longest stages in the story , as our protagonist gets to grips with this new world.

This makes a prime hunting ground for the series of tests to pass! Luckily, there are many ways for the Hero to get into trouble:

In Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle , Spencer, Bethany, “Fridge,” and Martha get off to a bad start when they bump into a herd of bloodthirsty hippos.
In his first few months at Hogwarts, Harry Potter manages to fight a troll, almost fall from a broomstick and die, and get horribly lost in the Forbidden Forest.
Marlin and Dory encounter three “reformed” sharks, get shocked by jellyfish, and are swallowed by a blue whale en route to finding Nemo.

The shark scares Marlin and Dory in Finding Nemo

This stage often expands the cast of characters. Once the protagonist is in the Special World, he will meet allies and enemies — or foes that turn out to be friends and vice versa. He will learn a new set of rules from them. Saloons and seedy bars are popular places for these transactions, as Vogler points out (so long as the Hero survives them).

7. Approach to the Inmost Cave

In which the Hero gets closer to his goal.

This isn’t a physical cave. Instead, the “inmost cave” refers to the most dangerous spot in the other realm — whether that’s the villain’s chambers, the lair of the fearsome dragon, or the Death Star. Almost always, it is where the ultimate goal of the quest is located.

Note that the protagonist hasn’t entered the Inmost Cave just yet. This stage is all about the approach to it. It covers all the prep work that's needed in order to defeat the villain.

In which the Hero faces his biggest test of all thus far.

Of all the tests the Hero has faced, none have made them hit rock bottom — until now. Vogler describes this phase as a “black moment.” Campbell refers to it as the “belly of the whale.” Both indicate some grim news for the Hero.

The protagonist must now confront their greatest fear. If they survive it, they will emerge transformed. This is a critical moment in the story, as Vogler explains that it will “inform every decision that the Hero makes from this point forward.”

The Ordeal is sometimes not the climax of the story. There’s more to come. But you can think of it as the main event of the second act — the one in which the Hero actually earns the title of “Hero.”

9. Reward (Seizing the Sword)

In which the Hero sees light at the end of the tunnel.

Our Hero’s been through a lot. However, the fruits of their labor are now at hand — if they can just reach out and grab them! The “reward” is the object or knowledge the Hero has fought throughout the entire journey to hold.

Once the protagonist has it in their possession, it generally has greater ramifications for the story. Vogler offers a few examples of it in action:

Luke rescues Princess Leia and captures the plans of the Death Star — keys to defeating Darth Vader.
Dorothy escapes from the Wicked Witch’s castle with the broomstick and the ruby slippers — keys to getting back home.

10. The Road Back

In which the light at the end of the tunnel might be a little further than the Hero thought.

The story's not over just yet, as this phase marks the beginning of Act Three. Now that he's seized the reward, the Hero tries to return to the Ordinary World, but more dangers (inconveniently) arise on the road back from the Inmost Cave.

More precisely, the Hero must deal with the consequences and aftermath of the previous act: the dragon, enraged by the Hero who’s just stolen a treasure from under his nose, starts the hunt. Or perhaps the opposing army gathers to pursue the Hero across a crowded battlefield. All further obstacles for the Hero, who must face them down before they can return home.

11. Resurrection

In which the last test is met.

Here is the true climax of the story. Everything that happened prior to this stage culminates in a crowning test for the Hero, as the Dark Side gets one last chance to triumph over the Hero.

Vogler refers to this as a “final exam” for the Hero — they must be “tested once more to see if they have really learned the lessons of the Ordeal.” It’s in this Final Battle that the protagonist goes through one more “resurrection.” As a result, this is where you’ll get most of your miraculous near-death escapes, à la James Bond's dashing deliverances. If the Hero survives, they can start looking forward to a sweet ending.

12. Return with the Elixir

In which our Hero has a triumphant homecoming.

Finally, the Hero gets to return home. However, they go back a different person than when they started out: they’ve grown and matured as a result of the journey they’ve taken.

But we’ve got to see them bring home the bacon, right? That’s why the protagonist must return with the “Elixir,” or the prize won during the journey, whether that’s an object or knowledge and insight gained.

Of course, it’s possible for a story to end on an Elixir-less note — but then the Hero would be doomed to repeat the entire adventure.

Examples of The Hero’s Journey in Action

To better understand this story template beyond the typical sword-and-sorcery genre, let's analyze three examples, from both screenplay and literature, and examine how they implement each of the twelve steps.

The 1976 film Rocky is acclaimed as one of the most iconic sports films because of Stallone’s performance and the heroic journey his character embarks on.

Ordinary World. Rocky Balboa is a mediocre boxer and loan collector — just doing his best to live day-to-day in a poor part of Philadelphia.
Call to Adventure. Heavyweight champ Apollo Creed decides to make a big fight interesting by giving a no-name loser a chance to challenge him. That loser: Rocky Balboa.
Refusal of the Call. Rocky says, “Thanks, but no thanks,” given that he has no trainer and is incredibly out of shape.
Meeting the Mentor. In steps former boxer Mickey “Mighty Mick” Goldmill, who sees potential in Rocky and starts training him physically and mentally for the fight.
Crossing the First Threshold. Rocky crosses the threshold of no return when he accepts the fight on live TV, and 一 in parallel 一 when he crosses the threshold into his love interest Adrian’s house and asks her out on a date.
Tests, Allies, Enemies. Rocky continues to try and win Adrian over and maintains a dubious friendship with her brother, Paulie, who provides him with raw meat to train with.
Approach to the Inmost Cave. The Inmost Cave in Rocky is Rocky’s own mind. He fears that he’ll never amount to anything — something that he reveals when he butts heads with his trainer, Mickey, in his apartment.
Ordeal. The start of the training montage marks the beginning of Rocky’s Ordeal. He pushes through it until he glimpses hope ahead while running up the museum steps.
Reward (Seizing the Sword). Rocky's reward is the restoration of his self-belief, as he recognizes he can try to “go the distance” with Apollo Creed and prove he's more than "just another bum from the neighborhood."
The Road Back. On New Year's Day, the fight takes place. Rocky capitalizes on Creed's overconfidence to start strong, yet Apollo makes a comeback, resulting in a balanced match.
Resurrection. The fight inflicts multiple injuries and pushes both men to the brink of exhaustion, with Rocky being knocked down numerous times. But he consistently rises to his feet, enduring through 15 grueling rounds.
Return with the Elixir. Rocky loses the fight — but it doesn’t matter. He’s won back his confidence and he’s got Adrian, who tells him that she loves him.

Moving outside of the ring, let’s see how this story structure holds on a completely different planet and with a character in complete isolation.

The Martian

In Andy Weir’s self-published bestseller (better known for its big screen adaptation) we follow astronaut Mark Watney as he endures the challenges of surviving on Mars and working out a way to get back home.

The Ordinary World. Botanist Mark and other astronauts are on a mission on Mars to study the planet and gather samples. They live harmoniously in a structure known as "the Hab.”
Call to Adventure. The mission is scrapped due to a violent dust storm. As they rush to launch, Mark is flung out of sight and the team believes him to be dead. He is, however, very much alive — stranded on Mars with no way of communicating with anyone back home.
Refusal of the Call. With limited supplies and grim odds of survival, Mark concludes that he will likely perish on the desolate planet.
Meeting the Mentor. Thanks to his resourcefulness and scientific knowledge he starts to figure out how to survive until the next Mars mission arrives.
Crossing the First Threshold. Mark crosses the mental threshold of even trying to survive 一 he successfully creates a greenhouse to cultivate a potato crop, creating a food supply that will last long enough.
Tests, Allies, Enemies. Loneliness and other difficulties test his spirit, pushing him to establish contact with Earth and the people at NASA, who devise a plan to help.
Approach to the Inmost Cave. Mark faces starvation once again after an explosion destroys his potato crop.
Ordeal. A NASA rocket destined to deliver supplies to Mark disintegrates after liftoff and all hope seems lost.
Reward (Seizing the Sword). Mark’s efforts to survive are rewarded with a new possibility to leave the planet. His team 一 now aware that he’s alive 一 defies orders from NASA and heads back to Mars to rescue their comrade.
The Road Back. Executing the new plan is immensely difficult 一 Mark has to travel far to locate the spaceship for his escape, and almost dies along the way.
Resurrection. Mark is unable to get close enough to his teammates' ship but finds a way to propel himself in empty space towards them, and gets aboard safely.
Return with the Elixir. Now a survival instructor for aspiring astronauts, Mark teaches students that space is indifferent and that survival hinges on solving one problem after another, as well as the importance of other people’s help.

Coming back to Earth, let’s now examine a heroine’s journey through the wilderness of the Pacific Crest Trail and her… humanity.

The memoir Wild narrates the three-month-long hiking adventure of Cheryl Strayed across the Pacific coast, as she grapples with her turbulent past and rediscovers her inner strength.

The Ordinary World. Cheryl shares her strong bond with her mother who was her strength during a tough childhood with an abusive father.
Call to Adventure. As her mother succumbs to lung cancer, Cheryl faces the heart-wrenching reality to confront life's challenges on her own.
Refusal of the Call. Cheryl spirals down into a destructive path of substance abuse and infidelity, which leads to hit rock bottom with a divorce and unwanted pregnancy.
Meeting the Mentor. Her best friend Lisa supports her during her darkest time. One day she notices the Pacific Trail guidebook, which gives her hope to find her way back to her inner strength.
Crossing the First Threshold. She quits her job, sells her belongings, and visits her mother’s grave before traveling to Mojave, where the trek begins.
Tests, Allies, Enemies. Cheryl is tested by her heavy bag, blisters, rattlesnakes, and exhaustion, but many strangers help her along the trail with a warm meal or hiking tips.
Approach to the Inmost Cave. As Cheryl goes through particularly tough and snowy parts of the trail her emotional baggage starts to catch up with her.
Ordeal. She inadvertently drops one of her shoes off a cliff, and the incident unearths the helplessness she's been evading since her mother's passing.
Reward (Seizing the Sword). Cheryl soldiers on, trekking an impressive 50 miles in duct-taped sandals before finally securing a new pair of shoes. This small victory amplifies her self-confidence.
The Road Back. On the last stretch, she battles thirst, sketchy hunters, and a storm, but more importantly, she revisits her most poignant and painful memories.
Resurrection. Cheryl forgives herself for damaging her marriage and her sense of worth, owning up to her mistakes. A pivotal moment happens at Crater Lake, where she lets go of her frustration at her mother for passing away.
Return with the Elixir. Cheryl reaches the Bridge of the Gods and completes the trail. She has found her inner strength and determination for life's next steps.

There are countless other stories that could align with this template, but it's not always the perfect fit. So, let's look into when authors should consider it or not.

When should writers use The Hero’s Journey?

The Hero’s Journey is just one way to outline a novel and dissect a plot. For more longstanding theories on the topic, you can go this way to read about the ever-popular Three-Act Structure or here to discover Dan Harmon's Story Circle and three more prevalent structures .

So when is it best to use the Hero’s Journey? There are a couple of circumstances which might make this a good choice.

When you need more specific story guidance than simple structures can offer

Simply put, the Hero’s Journey structure is far more detailed and closely defined than other story structure theories. If you want a fairly specific framework for your work than a thee-act structure, the Hero’s Journey can be a great place to start.

Of course, rules are made to be broken . There’s plenty of room to play within the confines of the Hero’s Journey, despite it appearing fairly prescriptive at first glance. Do you want to experiment with an abbreviated “Resurrection” stage, as J.K. Rowling did in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone? Are you more interested in exploring the journey of an anti-hero? It’s all possible.

Once you understand the basics of this universal story structure, you can use and bend it in ways that disrupt reader expectations.

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When your focus is on a single protagonist

No matter how sprawling or epic the world you’re writing is, if your story is, at its core, focused on a single character’s journey, then this is a good story structure for you. It’s kind of in the name! If you’re dealing with an entire ensemble, the Hero’s Journey may not give you the scope to explore all of your characters’ plots and subplot — a broader three-act structure may give you more freedom to weave a greater number story threads.

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Whether you're a reader or writer, we hope our guide has helped you understand this universal story arc. Want to know more about story structure? We explain 6 more in our guide — read on!

6 responses

PJ Reece says:

25/07/2018 – 19:41

Nice vid, good intro to story structure. Typically, though, the 'hero's journey' misses the all-important point of the Act II crisis. There, where the hero faces his/her/its existential crisis, they must DIE. The old character is largely destroyed -- which is the absolute pre-condition to 'waking up' to what must be done. It's not more clever thinking; it's not thinking at all. Its SEEING. So many writing texts miss this point. It's tantamount to a religions experience, and nobody grows up without it. STORY STRUCTURE TO DIE FOR examines this dramatic necessity.

↪️ C.T. Cheek replied:

13/11/2019 – 21:01

Okay, but wouldn't the Act II crisis find itself in the Ordeal? The Hero is tested and arguably looses his/her/its past-self for the new one. Typically, the Hero is not fully "reborn" until the Resurrection, in which they defeat the hypothetical dragon and overcome the conflict of the story. It's kind of this process of rebirth beginning in the earlier sections of the Hero's Journey and ending in the Resurrection and affirmed in the Return with the Elixir.

Lexi Mize says:

25/07/2018 – 22:33

Great article. Odd how one can take nearly every story and somewhat plug it into such a pattern.

Bailey Koch says:

11/06/2019 – 02:16

This was totally lit fam!!!!

↪️ Bailey Koch replied:

11/09/2019 – 03:46

where is my dad?

Frank says:

12/04/2020 – 12:40

Great article, thanks! :) But Vogler didn't expand Campbell's theory. Campbell had seventeen stages, not twelve.

Comments are currently closed.

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Hero's Journey: A Guide to Becoming The Hero Of Your Story

What will your story be.

Be the hero of your story . It’s common advice from motivational speakers and life coaches, a call to arms to take centre stage and tackle life’s challenges head-on, to emerge victorious in the face of adversity, to transform through hardship.

As humans, hardwired to view the world and share experiences through the medium of stories, myths often act as powerful motivators of change. From ancient cave paintings to the Star Wars and its Death Star to Harry Potter and his battle against evil, the hero’s journey structure is a familiar one. It’s also one you need to know if you want to know how to write a book , but I digress.

This article will outline the stages, and psychological meaning, of the 12 steps of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey. So, are you ready to become the hero of your story? Then let the adventure begin...

Who is Joseph Campbell?

Joseph Campbell was an American professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College, and an expert of mythology that once spent five years in a rented shack, buried in books for nine hours each day. His greatest contribution is the hero’s journey, outlined in his book The Hero with A Thousand Faces . Campbell was able to synthesise huge volumes of heroic stories, distilling a common structure amongst them.

Near the end of his life, Campbell was interviewed by Bill Moyers in a documentary series exploring his work, The Power of Myth .

Throughout their discussion, Campbell highlighted the importance of myth not just in stories, but in our lives, as symbols to inspire us to flourish and grow to our full potential.

How is the hero’s journey connected to self development?

You might be wondering what storytelling has to do with self-development. Before we dive into the hero’s journey (whether that is a male or a female hero’s journey), context will be useful. Joseph Cambell was heavily inspired by the work of Carl Jung, the groundbreaking psychologist who throughout his life worked on theories such as the shadow, collective unconscious, archetypes, and synchronicity.

Jung’s greatest insight was that the unconscious is a vast, vibrant landscape, yet out sight from the ordinary conscious experience. Jung didn’t only theorize about the unconscious; he provided a huge body of work explaining the language of the unconscious, and the way in which it communicates with the conscious mind.

The nature of the unconscious

Due to its vast nature, the unconscious doesn’t operate like the conscious mind, which is based in language, logic, and rationality. The unconscious instead operates in the imaginal realm — using symbols and meaning that take time to be deciphered and understood consciously. Such symbols surface in dreams, visualizations, daydreams, or fantasies.

For Jung, the creative process is one in which contents of the unconscious mind are brought to light. Enter storytelling and character development — a process of myth-making that somehow captures the truth of deep psychological processes.

Campbell saw the power of myth in igniting the unconscious will to grow and live a meaningful life. With that in mind, his structure offers a tool of transformation and a way to inspire the unconscious to work towards your own hero’s journey.

The 12 steps of the hero’s journey

The hero’s journey ends where it begins, back at the beginning after a quest of epic proportions. The 12 steps are separated into three acts:

departure (1-5)
initiation (5-10)
return (10-1)

The hero journeys through the 12 steps in a clockwise fashion. As Campbell explains:

“The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a coming and a returning.”

Let’s take a closer look at each of the steps below. Plus, under each is a psychological symbol that describes how the hero’s journey unfolds, and how when the hero ventures forth, he undergoes an inner process of awakening and transformation.

1. The ordinary world

The calm before the storm. The hero is living a standard, mundane life, going about their business unaware of the impending call to adventure. At this point, the hero is portrayed as very, very human. There could be glimpses of their potential, but these circumstances restrict the hero from fulfilling them. Although well within the hero’s comfort zone, at this stage, it’s clear something significant is lacking from their life.

Psychological symbol

This is represented as a stage of ignorance, pre-awakening. Living life by the status quo, on other people’s terms, or simply without questioning if this is what you want. At this point life is lived, but not deeply satisfying.

2. Call to adventure

Next is a disruption, a significant event that threatens the ways things were. This is a challenge that the hero knows deep down will lead to transformation and change, and that the days of normality, “the way things are,” are numbered. The hero confronts the question of being asked to step into their deeper potential, to awaken the power within, and to enter a new, special world.

Many of us embark on inner-journeys following hardship in life — the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, physical or mental illness. This stage occurs when it becomes apparent that, to move through suffering, one has to look within, to adventure into the soul.

3. Refusal of the call

No compelling story would be complete without friction. The hero often resists this call to adventure, as fear and self-doubt surface at full force, and the purpose of this new life direction is questioned. Can the reluctant hero journey forth? Do they have the courage?

The only way to grow and live a deeply fulfilling life is to face the discomfort of suffering. Campbell himself once said: “ The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek .” At this stage, fears, and anxieties about delving deep into the psyche arise. The temptation is to remain blissfully ignorant, to avoid discomfort, and to stay in your familiar world.

4. Meeting a mentor

As the hero faces a crisis of confidence, a wise mentor figure appears.

This character offers inspiration, guidance, or understanding that encourages the hero to have the self-belief to start this new adventure. In many stories, a mentor is someone else who has embarked on the hero’s journey, or someone who attempted, and failed. This person reflects the importance of this mission, reminding the hero their calling far exceeds their fear.

When the journey of exploration has to begin, people or situations enter your life at just the right time, guiding you in the right direction. This could be a close friend, a peer, a professional, such as a coach or therapist, or even a fictional character in a film or book. In most cases, these are chance encounters that contain a sense of knowing before the hero leaves on his or her adventure.

5. Crossing the threshold

This is a pivotal moment in the hero’s journey, as the initiation begins. This occurs when the hero fully commits to their quest, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual. This is the point of no return, where the reluctant hero embarks on their adventure, and has accepted that the way things were must change. The hero enters a new zone, one in which the call to adventure must be accepted. The hero’s resolve is hardened, and they understand they have a responsibility to confront what is ahead of them.

Whatever your life was before the call to action, this is a crossroads which is accepted, knowing your life may never be the same. This is a point of empowerment, where you realize that journeying within will lead you to greater self-understanding, even if those insights will dramatically change your life direction.

6. Test, allies, enemies

Now the hero has ventured outside of their comfort zone, the true test begins. This is a stage of acclimatizing to unknown lands. Unknown forces work against them, as they form bonds with allies who join them along the way, or face formidable enemies or encounters that have to be conquered. Throughout this testing time, the hero will be shaped and molded through adversity, finding deeper meaning in their life and mission.

Once the journey of self-discovery is underway, the initial burst of inspiration might be tested by the difficulty of the task. You might meet people who are able to offer advice or guide you, or those who reflect areas of yourself you have to work on.

Often, these are inner experiences, in the forms of memories, emotions, or outward tests, such as difficult circumstances that challenge your resolve and commitment to your new life direction.

7. Approach to the inmost cave

Having already crossed the threshold into the unknown and the uncertain, having faced obstacles and enemies, and having begun to utilize their qualities along the way, the next stage is another threshold.

This is the beating heart of the hero’s challenge, where again self-doubt and fear can arise, as another threshold has to be crossed. This is often a period of respite, giving the hero time to pause and reflect. Will the hero make the leap?

The hero’s journey has ups and downs. There may be quick wins in the beginning — your new life direction may go well, or inner-work may lead you to a new place of calm or confidence. But then, out of nowhere, comes an even bigger challenge, surfacing as a question mark to the person you’ve become. Life often has a way of presenting the right challenges at the right time…

This is the life-or-death moment. This can be a meeting with an ultimate enemy or facing the hero’s deepest fear. There is an awareness that if the hero fails, their new world, or their life, could be destroyed.

Everything the hero has fought for up to this point, all the lessons learned along the journey, all the hidden potentials actualized, will have to be utilized to survive this supreme ordeal, for the hero to be victorious. Either way, the hero will undergo a form of death, and leave the ordeal forever changed.

There are inner challenges that have to be confronted on the journey of self-discovery. This might be in the form of trauma that has to be confronted and healed, people with whom you have to have difficult conversations, or fears you have to face, actions that in the past you never thought you’d be capable of. But, with the skills you’ve learned along the way, this time you’ll be ready. But it won’t be easy.

9. Reward (seizing the sword)

Through great adversity comes triumph. Having confronted their greatest fear, and survived annihilation, the hero learns a valuable lesson, and is now fully transformed and reborn — with a prize as a reward.

This object is often symbolized as a treasure, a token, secret knowledge, or reconciliation, such as the return of an old friend or lover. This prize can assist in the return to the ordinary world — but there are still a few steps to come.

When confronting deep inner fears or challenges, you are rewarded with deep insights or breakthroughs. That might be in the form of achieving a significant goal or inwardly having a sense of peace or reconciliation with your past, or moments that have previously felt unresolved. As a spiritual process, this may also be the realization that behind suffering and pain lies freedom or inner peace.

10. The road back

Having traveled into distant, foreign lands and slain the dragon, now it’s time for the hero to make their return journey. This stage mirrors the original call to adventure and represents another threshold.

The hero may be understanding their new responsibility and the consequences of their actions, and require a catalyst to make the journey back to the ordinary world with their prize.

The hard work has been done, the ultimate fear confronted, new knowledge found. Now, what’s the next step? For many, the initial stages of growth come with a period of renunciation or are symbolized by an outward journey away from home, or away from familiarity.

Then comes the stage of returning to familiarity, or the things left behind — be it family, friends, locations, or even behaviors that were once loved and sacrificed during the journey.

11. Resurrection

When it appears the hero is out of the woods, there comes a final confrontation — an encounter with death itself. Transformed inwardly and with a personal victory complete, the hero faces a battle that transcends their individual quest, with its consequences far-reaching, for entire communities or even humanity itself.

This purification solidifies the hero’s rebirth, as their new identity fully emerges just in time to return to the ordinary world.

In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualization is secondary to self-transcendence. In other words, once inner battles have been faced, and the alchemy of psychological transformation is underway, the next stage is to apply the newfound insights and knowledge to a bigger cause — supporting others, or standing up a mission that will benefit the wider world.

12. Return with the elixir

Following the final battle, the hero finally returns home. By now, personal transformation is complete, they’re returning home a different person. Having faced indescribable hardship, the hero returns with added wisdom and maturity. The elixir is the treasure they’ve returned with, ready to share with the ordinary world. This could be a sense of hope, freedom, or even a new perspective to assist those originally left behind.

The hero has a new level of self-awareness, seeing the ordinary world through fresh eyes. They’ve left internal conflict behind. There’s an understanding that things will never be the same, but that the hero’s journey was part of their destiny.

Then comes the ultimate prize: a final reconciliation, acceptance from the community, celebration, redemption. Whatever the prize, there are three elements: change , success , and proof of the journey .

Following a transformative psychic process, there’s an understanding of what is within your control. The “ordinary world” may have many elements that remain the same, but this is accompanied by a realization that when you change, so does your reality. Previously modes of thinking may be replaced, as bridges are built with your past, giving opportunity for a renewed approach to life.

What can we learn from the hero's journey?

At the time of writing this article, I’m in the UK visiting my family for the first time in 18 months. As I walked down paths I’d walked throughout my childhood, I was struck by how much I’ve changed over the years. A passage from T.S Eliot’s poem Little Gidding came to mind:

“We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring. Will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time.”

I reflected on the notion of coming full circle — to begin a journey, outwardly or inwardly, before finding yourself back at the beginning, transformed. In spiritual traditions, the circle is a powerful symbol of timelessness, death and rebirth, totality, and wholeness. Aptly, the 12 steps of the hero’s journey are depicted as a circle. It’s not a coincidence.

What can we learn from the hero’s journey? In a way, it is similar to the writer’s journey. Above all else, it’s a reminder that we each within us have a purpose, a quest and a mission in this life that can and will invoke our truest potential. The path isn’t easy — there are many, many challenges along the way. But at the right time, people and situations will come to our aid.

If you’re able to confront the mission head-on and take bold steps along the way — just like all the heroes of fiction before you, from Shakespeare’s characters to Luke Skywalker and Rey from the universe brought to us by George Lucas — then you will be transformed, and then you can return to where you started, reborn, ready to share your gifts and your lessons with the world.

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UPS Driver Makes This Special Delivery Every Single Day

We give and receive many gifts throughout the year, on special occasions, birthdays, holidays, and just because. But how often do we stop and think about gifting something that truly matters? One UPS driver delivers many packages throughout his day, but he always makes the time for this one extra special stop.

A Special Stop During the Daily Grind

Big Tim and Tim hang out every day on Tim's lunch break

YouTube/WOOD TV8

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a man named Tim Westfall makes several stops throughout his day. As a UPS driver he delivers many packages along his route, some of them gifts, others necessities. But the most important stop he makes every single day has nothing to do with the items on his truck. In fact, this stop isn't even on the clock.

That’s because the most important stop Tim makes is during his lunch break, when he visits and hangs out with his dad, Big Tim. Every day Tim and his dad sit in the garage, lounging on chairs six feet apart (something they started during the pandemic), and just chat and hang out.

“My mom passed away in 2017, and this route became available in 2018, so I took it,” Tim explained to WOOD TV8 . “I get to hear all his stories. He likes to talk, so I hear all his stories. Now he’s getting older so I hear the same stories over and over.”

Making the Time

For Big Tim, having his son there is an opportunity to learn more about his child and grandchild, but it’s also a nice moment that alleviates some of the loneliness he’s felt since his wife, Donna, passed away.

“She worked for the bank some 40 years and then retired. She got to retire for two years before she died; that’s the hard part,” Big Tim told the publication through tears.

Tim is happy to show up for his dad and provide some company, but he also gets a lot out of it. He added that if it weren’t for the route, he would only be able to see his dad on the weekends or every other weekend.

“He means the world to me; he does everything for us,” Tim said before turning to his dad. “Thank you for raising me with morals and hard work ethic.”

“I want to thank you for being fantastic kids,” Big Tim added.

The Delivery of Time

This story is so heartwarming because it reminds us that the most important gift we could ever give anyone who means something to us is the gift of time. Sure, presents are nice, but spending time together and making the time to see each other is far more important.

No one knows how long they have on Earth, so it’s important to seize the day and not put things off. That includes, above all, making time for loved ones. So, if you’ve been on the fence about making that call, sending that text, or planning the next get-together, do it now.

After all, as Tim and Big Tim’s story reminds us, time is a very precious thing.

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Jennifer Garner Gives Her Shoes to Homeless Man

You don’t often witness moments of celebrities and paparazzi working together for the greater good, but then again Jennifer Garner isn’t like most celebrities. The actor is known for her charitable work and doing what it takes to help others, but this might be one of her most inspiring stories yet.

A Day of Kindness

Jennifer Garner caught on camera helping a homeless man.

YouTube/ X17onlineVideo

Recently, photographers captured Jennifer Garner helping people out in Santa Monica, California. The actor, dressed down in a white T-shirt and a trucker’s cap, was handing out supplies to homeless people by the beach.

One outlet recorded a video of her handing out the items, and the videographer happened to catch the moment when Garner realized the man in a wheelchair she was helping needed new shoes.

Wanting to assist, she got out of the car, removed the man's old shoes, and put fresh socks on his feet. She tried to put her own shoes on the man, but they didn’t fit. Garner then spotted the videographer following her and approached him with a simple request: could she buy his shoes?

Inspiring Good Acts

In the video, the man refused payment for his shoes and gave them to the man instead. Furthermore, Garner’s acts of kindness inspired him to go above and beyond as well: he added several items to the pile, including a blanket, some pants, and a fresh t-shirt.

“Jennifer Garner's selflessness reminds us all of the power of compassion and the positive impact one person can have on another's life,” the outlet wrote in its video caption.

In the video’s comments, people added their own thoughts, calling Garner a “real-life angel” and saying it was the nicest gesture they’ve ever seen from a celebrity.

“Anyone here who is doubtful of her actions, get a life, seriously,” one person wrote. “Would any other celebrity touch a homeless person’s feet and help change their pants at all? Would YOU do it?”

“There should be more movie stars helping people in need,” added someone else. “Jennifer is such a wholesome and kind person.”

“Usually, I'm skeptical about recorded good deeds of celebs or influencers since it's too often about their narcissistic need for attention. However, this here, is clearly a woman who acted out of concern and empathy. Well done, Jennifer. Well done,” wrote someone else.

We Are All the Same

One of the most touching parts of this story is that, at the end of the day, we are all human. And sometimes, we all need help. Some people have more than others, whether that be health, money , status, privilege, or something else. But having more doesn’t make one person better than another, and it doesn’t mean we can’t stop to help a fellow human being in need.

Garner, who on the surface seems to have been given a pretty decent hand in life, knows that. Her actions with that homeless man prove it. More importantly, by showcasing her kindness and empathy, she inspired others to help in their own ways.

At the end of the day, kindness is what makes the world go round, no matter who you are. Lead with it and remember it when you’re in a position to help someone else. One day, when you need it most, it will also show up for you.

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October 30, 2023

To Lead a Meaningful Life, Become Your Own Hero

From Gilgamesh to Star Wars, the narrative blueprint underpinning many heroic tales can offer a powerful way to reframe experiences

By Ben Rogers , Kurt Gray & Mike Christian

woman standing in front of an open door with a superhero shadow on the floor

lerbank/Getty Images

What do Beowulf, Batman and Barbie all have in common? Many ancient legends, comic book sagas and blockbuster movies share a storytelling blueprint called the hero's journey. This timeless narrative structure, first described by mythologist Joseph Campbell in 1949, is found in ancient epics, such as the Odyssey and the Epic of Gilgamesh , and modern favorites, including the Harry Potter, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings series. Many such stories have become cultural touchstones that influence how people think about their world and themselves.

Our research reveals that the hero's journey is not just for legends and superheroes. In a recent study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , we show that people who frame their own life as a hero's journey find more significance in it . This insight led us to develop a “restorying” intervention to enrich individuals' sense of meaning and well-being. When people start to see their own lives as heroic quests, we discovered, they report less depression and can cope better with challenges.

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The human brain seems hardwired to make sense of the world through stories . Over millennia of evolution, Homo sapiens has spent countless hours sitting around fires and telling tales of challenge and triumph. Our interest in storytelling explains why we read magazine articles that open with an anecdote and why we naturally frame our lives in story form. These life tales stitch together different events into an overarching narrative with the storyteller as the protagonist. They help people define themselves and make existence more coherent .

Of course, some stories are better than others—some evoke awe and excitement, whereas others make people yawn. We wondered whether the hero's journey provides a template for telling a more compelling version of one's own history. After all, the hero's journey lies at the heart of the most culturally significant stories around the world.

To explore the connection between people's life stories and the hero's journey, we first had to simplify the storytelling arc from Campbell's original formulation, which features 17 steps. Some of the steps in the original set are very specific, such as undertaking a “magic flight” after completing a quest. Think of Dorothy, in the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , being carried by flying monkeys to the Emerald City after vanquishing the Wicked Witch of the West. Others are out of touch with contemporary culture, such as encountering “women as temptresses.” We abridged and condensed the 17 steps into seven elements that can be found in both legends and everyday life: a lead protagonist, a shift of circumstances, a quest, allies, a challenge, a personal transformation and a resulting legacy.

Credit: Matteo Farinella; Source: Reference figure by Kevin House in “Seeing Your Life Story as a Hero’s Journey Increases Meaning in Life,” by Benjamin A. Rogers et al., in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 125, No. 4; October 2023

For example, in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings , Frodo (the protagonist) leaves his home in the Shire (a shift) to destroy the Ring (a quest). Sam and Gandalf (his allies) help him face the enemy forces of Sauron (a challenge). He discovers unexpected inner strength (a transformation) and eventually returns home to help the friends he left behind (a legacy). In an everyday-life parallel, a young woman (the protagonist) might move to Los Angeles (a shift), develop an idea for a new business (a quest), get support from her family and friends (her allies), overcome self-doubt after initial failure (a challenge), grow into a confident and successful leader (a transformation), and ultimately help her community (a legacy).

With our condensed version of the hero's journey, we looked at the connection between how people told their life stories and their feelings of meaning in life. Across four separate studies, we collected life stories from more than 1,200 people, including online participants and a group of middle-aged adults in Chicago. We also used questionnaires to measure the participants' sense of meaning in life, amount of life satisfaction and level of depression.

We then examined their stories for the seven elements of the hero's journey. We found that people who had more of the elements in their life stories reported more meaning in life, more flourishing and less depression. These “heroic” people (men and women were equally likely to see their life as a hero's journey) reported a clearer sense of self than other participants did, as well as more new adventures, strong goals, good friends, and so on.

We also found that narratives in line with the hero's journey provided more benefits than other kinds, including a basic “redemptive” arc, in which a person's life story goes from defeat to triumph. Of course, redemption is often a part of the “transformation” aspect of the hero's journey, but compared with people whose life story contained only the redemptive narrative, those with a full hero's journey reported more meaning in life.

We then wondered whether making one's story more “heroic” would increase feelings of meaningfulness. We developed a “restorying” intervention in which we prompted people to retell their story as a hero's journey. Participants identified each of the seven elements in their life, and then we encouraged them to weave these pieces together into a coherent narrative.

In six studies with more than 1,700 participants, we confirmed that this restorying intervention worked: it helped people see their life as a hero's journey, which in turn made that life feel more meaningful. Intervention recipients also reported greater well-being and became more resilient in the face of personal challenges; these participants saw obstacles more positively and dealt with them more creatively.

Critically, our intervention required two steps: identifying the seven elements and connecting them in a coherent story. In other studies, we found that doing only one or the other—such as describing aspects of one's life that resembled the hero's journey without linking them together—had a much more modest effect on feelings of meaning in life than doing both.

Furthermore, the intervention increased participants' tendency to perceive more meaning in general. For instance, after retelling their stories according to our prompts, people were more likely to perceive patterns in seemingly random strings of letters on a computer screen.

Anyone can frame their life as a hero's journey—and we suspect that people can also benefit from taking small steps toward a more heroic life. You can see yourself as a heroic protagonist, for example, by identifying your values and keeping them top of mind in your day-to-day. You can lean into friendships and new experiences. You can set goals much like those of classic quests to stay motivated and challenge yourself to improve your skills. You can also take stock of lessons learned and ways you might leave a positive legacy for your community or loved ones.

Although you might never save the world on a massive scale, you could save yourself. You can become a hero in the context of your own life, which, at the very least, will make for a better story.

Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about for Mind Matters? Please send suggestions to  Scientific American’s Mind Matters editor Daisy Yuhas at  [email protected] .

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

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The Hero’s Journey

What is the Hero's Journey in Literature?

Crafting a heroic character is a crucial aspect of storytelling, and it involves much more than simply sketching out a brave and virtuous figure. The hero's journey definition is not the typical linear narrative but rather a cyclical pattern that encompasses the hero's transformation, trials, and ultimate return, reflecting the profound and timeless aspects of human experience. The writer's journey in this endeavor goes beyond the external actions of the hero and delves into the character's inner world. The hero arc is the heart of the narrative, depicting the character's evolution from an ordinary person to a true hero.

Narratology and Writing Instructions for Heroic Characters

Related to both plot diagram and types of literary conflict , the ”Hero’s Journey” structure is a recurring pattern of stages many heroes undergo over the course of their stories. Joseph Campbell, an American mythologist, writer, and lecturer, articulated this cycle after researching and reviewing numerous myths and stories from a variety of time periods and regions of the world. He found that different writers take us on different journeys, however, they all share fundamental principles. Through the hero's trials, growth, and ultimate triumph, the narrative comes full circle, embodying the timeless pattern of the hero cycle. Literature abounds with examples of the hero cycle, illustrating how this narrative structure transcends cultural boundaries and remains a fundamental element of storytelling. This hero cycle in literature is also known as the Monomyth, archetype . The most basic version of Joseph Campbell's Monomyth has 12 steps, while more detailed versions can have up to 17 steps. His type of hero's journey diagram provides a visual roadmap for understanding the various stages and archetypal elements that protagonists typically encounter in their transformative quests. The wheel to the right is an excellent visual to share with students of how these steps occur. Hero's journey diagram examples provide a visual roadmap for understanding the various stages and archetypal elements that protagonists typically encounter in their transformative quests. Exploring the monomyth steps outlined by Joseph Campbell, we can see how these universal narrative elements have shaped countless stories across cultures and time periods.

Which Story Structure is Right for You?

The choice of story structure depends on various factors, including the type of story you want to tell, your intended audience, and your personal creative style. Here are some popular story structures and when they might be suitable:

The Hero's Journey: Use this structure when you want to tell a story of personal growth, transformation, and adventure. It works well for epic tales, fantasy, and science fiction, but it can be adapted to other genres as well.
Three-Act Structure: This is a versatile structure suitable for a wide range of genres, from drama to comedy to action. It's ideal for stories that have a clear beginning, middle, and end, with well-defined turning points.
Episodic or Serial Structure: If you're creating a long-running series or a story with multiple interconnected arcs, this structure is a good choice. It allows for flexibility in storytelling and can keep audiences engaged over the long term.
Nonlinear Structure: Experiment with this structure if you want to challenge traditional narrative conventions. It's suitable for stories where timelines are fragmented, revealing information gradually to build intrigue and suspense.
Circular or Cyclical Structure: This structure is great for stories with recurring themes or for tales that come full circle. It can be particularly effective in literary fiction and philosophical narratives.

Ultimately, the right story structure for you depends on your creative vision, the genre you're working in, and the narrative you want to convey. You may also choose to blend or adapt different structures to suit your story's unique needs. The key is to select a structure that serves your storytelling goals and engages your target audience effectively.

What is a Common Theme in the Hero's Journey?

A common theme in the hero's journey is the concept of personal transformation and growth. Throughout the hero's journey, the protagonist typically undergoes significant change, evolving from an ordinary or flawed individual into a more heroic, self-realized, or enlightened character. This theme of transformation is often accompanied by challenges, trials, and self-discovery, making it a central and universal element of hero's journey narratives.

Structure of the Monomyth: The Hero's Journey Summary

This summary of the different elements of the archetypal hero's journey outlines the main four parts along with the different stages within each part. This can be shared with students and used as a reference along with the hero's journey wheel to analyze literature.

Part One - Call to Adventure

During the exposition, the hero is in the ordinary world , usually the hero’s home or natural habitat. Conflict arises in their everyday life, which calls the hero to adventure , where they are beckoned to leave their familiar world in search of something. They may refuse the call at first, but eventually leave, knowing that something important hangs in the balance and refusal of the call is simply not an option.

Part Two - Supreme Ordeal or Initiation

Once the hero makes the decision to leave the normal world, venture into the unfamiliar world, and has officially begun their mysterious adventure, they will meet a mentor figure (a sidekick in some genres) and together these two will cross the first threshold . This is the point where turning back is not an option, and where the hero must encounter tests, allies and enemies . Obstacles like tests and enemies must be overcome to continue. Helpers aid the hero in their journey.

Part Three - Unification or Transformation

Having overcome initial obstacles, in this part of the heroic cycle, the hero and their allies reach the approach . Here they will prepare for the major challenge in this new or special world. During the approach, the hero undergoes an ordeal , testing them to point near death. Their greatest fear is sometimes exposed, and from the ordeal comes a new life or revival for the hero. This transformation is the final separation from their old life to their new life. For their efforts in overcoming the ordeal, the hero reaches the reward . The hero receives the reward for facing death. There may be a celebration, but there is also danger of losing the reward.

Part Four - Road Back or Hero's Return

Once the hero achieves their goal and the reward is won, the hero and companions start on the road back . The hero wants to complete the adventure and return to their ordinary world with their treasure. This stage is often referred to as either the resurrections or atonement . Hero's journey examples that showcase the atonement stage often highlight the protagonist's inner turmoil and the difficult decisions they must make to reconcile with their past and fully embrace their heroic destiny. The hero becomes "at one" with themselves. As the hero crosses the threshold (returning from the unknown to their ordinary world), the reader arrives at the climax of the story. Here, the hero is severely tested one last time. This test is an attempt to undo their previous achievements. At this point, the hero has come full circle, and the major conflict at the beginning of the journey is finally resolved. In the return home, the hero has now resumed life in his/her original world, and things are restored to ordinary.

Popular Hero's Journey Examples

Monomyth example: homer's odyssey.

Monomyth examples typically involve a hero who embarks on an adventure, faces trials and challenges, undergoes personal transformation, and returns home or to society with newfound wisdom or a significant achievement, making this storytelling structure a powerful and timeless tool for crafting compelling narratives.

The hero's journey chart below for Homer’s Odyssey uses the abridged ninth grade version of the epic. The Heroic Journey in the original story of the Odyssey is not linear, beginning in media res , Latin for “in the middle of things”.)

The Odyssey Heroic Journey - Examples of hero's journey

To Kill a Mockingbird Heroic Journey

Did you know that many popular movies have heroes that follow this type of journey? It is true! In the "Star Wars" movies, Hollywood film producer George Lucas creates a journey for Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. In "The Lion King", Simba goes on quite the adventure that ends in a final battle with his uncle Scar, a major turning point in the film before the hero returns to save his land. In "The Wizard of Oz", Dorothy takes on the role of the epic hero as she teeters between the two worlds of Kansas and Oz. These are just a few of the many examples of Campbell's theory in the cinematic realm.

Classroom Applications and Uses

Example exercises.

Create your own hero's journey examples using the Storyboard That Creator! Customize the level of detail and number of cells required for projects based on available class time and resources.

Students identify the stages of the heroic journey in a piece of literature by creating one cell depicting each of the twelve steps.
Students create storyboards that show and explain each stage found in the work of literature, using specific quotes from the text which highlight each part of the journey.
Students create an outline of their own original story that follows the monomyth stages.

Common Core

ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.3 : Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme
ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.7 : Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment (e.g., Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” and Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus)
ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.6 : Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically
ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.2 : Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source
ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.3 : Analyze the impact of the author’s choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed)
ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.7 : Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text. (Include at least one play by Shakespeare and one play by an American dramatist.)
ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.6 : Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information
ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.2 : Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) in order to make informed decisions and solve problems, evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source and noting any discrepancies among the data

Related Resources

Plot Diagram and Narrative Arc
Types of Conflict In Literature
What is an Archetype?
The Odyssey Teacher Guide
Types of Heroes in Literature

How Teachers Can Use The Concept of The Heroic Journey To Help Students Better Understand Character Development In Literature

Introduce the concept of the heroic journey.

Teachers can introduce the concept of the heroic journey to students and explain the different stages involved in the journey. This will provide a framework for students to better understand how characters develop throughout the story.

Analyze Characters Using the Heroic Journey

Teachers can guide students through the stages of the heroic journey and ask them to identify where the character is in the journey. This will help students to understand the character's development and how their actions and decisions are influenced by the different stages of the journey.

Compare and Contrast Character Journeys

Teachers can ask students to compare and contrast the journeys of different characters within a story or across multiple stories. This will help students to gain a deeper understanding of how the heroic journey is used to develop characters in literature and how it can be applied across different genres and cultures.

Discuss the Role of Character Motivation

Teachers can encourage students to think critically about the motivations of characters at each stage of the journey. This will help students to understand why characters make certain decisions and how their motivations contribute to their development.

Apply the Concept to Real-Life Situations

Teachers can encourage students to apply the concept of the heroic journey to real-life situations. This will help students to see how the journey applies not only to literature, but also to their own lives and experiences.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Hero's Journey

What is a "monomyth" or the "hero's journey" in literature.

In comparative mythology, the monomyth, or the hero's journey, is the series of stages that can be applied to a variety of stories from all genres. It involves a hero who is called to pursue an adventure, undergoes an ordeal, achieves their goal and returns home transformed.

What are the 12 Stages of the Hero's Journey in literature?

Ordinary World
Call to Adventure
Meeting the Mentor / Helper
Crossing the Threshold
Test / Allies / Enemies

What is a common theme in the hero's journey?

The Hero's Journey usually follows the path of the main character from childhood or young adulthood through maturity. It is about the common human experiences of growth, challenges and change that are relatable to us all.

Why should students learn about the hero's journey?

The hero's journey is relevant for students in that it demonstrates the possibility of overcoming adversity and the potential for growth and change that is within us all. It is a common theme of literature and movies that once students understand, they will be able to identify over and over again. It is helpful for students to make the text-to-self connection and apply this thinking to their own life as a "growth mindset" . They can see that they are on their own hero's journey and that everyone has the ability to overcome obstacles to achieve their goals and affect positive change in their lives and the lives of others.

What are some of the best examples of the hero's journey?

The hero's journey stages appear in more books than students may realize! Here are just a few examples of popular books that contain the monomyth structure:

The Graveyard Book
The Hunger Games
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Odyssey
The Lions of Little Rock
Wednesday Wars
One Crazy Summer
Out of My Mind
Brown Girl Dreaming
The Lightning Thief
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
The Stars Beneath Our Feet
Fish in a Tree

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Story Writing Guides

12 Hero’s Journey Stages Explained (+ Free Templates)

From zero to hero, the hero’s journey is a popular character development arc used in many stories. In today’s post, we will explain the 12 hero’s journey stages, along with the simple example of Cinderella.

The Hero’s Journey was originally formulated by American writer Joseph Campbell to describe the typical character arc of many classic stories, particularly in the context of mythology and folklore. The original hero’s journey contained 17 steps. Although the hero’s journey has been adapted since then for use in modern fiction, the concept is not limited to literature. It can be applied to any story, video game, film or even music that features an archetypal hero who undergoes a transformation. Common examples of the hero’s journey in popular works include Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

What is the hero's journey?

Stage 1: The Ordinary World

Stage 2: call of adventure, stage 3: refusal of the call, stage 4: meeting the mentor, stage 5: crossing the threshold, stage 6: tests, allies, enemies, stage 7: the approach, stage 8: the ordeal, stage 9: reward, stage 10: the road back, stage 11: resurrection, stage 12: return with the elixir, cinderella example, campbell’s 17-step journey, leeming’s 8-step journey, cousineau’s 8-step journey.

Free Hero's Journey Templates

What is the hero’s journey?

The hero’s journey, also known as the monomyth, is a character arc used in many stories. The idea behind it is that heroes undergo a journey that leads them to find their true selves. This is often represented in a series of stages. There are typically 12 stages to the hero’s journey. Each stage represents a change in the hero’s mindset or attitude, which is triggered by an external or internal event. These events cause the hero to overcome a challenge, reach a threshold, and then return to a normal life.

The hero’s journey is a powerful tool for understanding your characters. It can help you decide who they are, what they want, where they came from, and how they will change over time. It can be used to

Understand the challenges your characters will face
Understand how your characters react to those challenges
Help develop your characters’ traits and relationships

In this post, we will explain each stage of the hero’s journey, using the example of Cinderella.

You might also be interested in our post on the story mountain or this guide on how to outline a book .

12 Hero’s Journey Stages

The archetypal hero’s journey contains 12 stages and was created by Christopher Vogler. These steps take your main character through an epic struggle that leads to their ultimate triumph or demise. While these steps may seem formulaic at first glance, they actually form a very flexible structure. The hero’s journey is about transformation, not perfection.

Your hero starts out in the ordinary world. He or she is just like every other person in their environment, doing things that are normal for them and experiencing the same struggles and challenges as everyone else. In the ordinary world, the hero feels stuck and confused, so he or she goes on a quest to find a way out of this predicament.

Example: Cinderella’s father passes away and she is now stuck doing chores and taking abuse from her stepsisters and stepmother.

The hero gets his or her first taste of adventure when the call comes. This could be in the form of an encounter with a stranger or someone they know who encourages them to take a leap of faith. This encounter is typically an accident, a series of coincidences that put the hero in the right place at the right time.

Example: An invite arrives inviting the family to a royal ball where the Prince will choose a wife.

Some people will refuse to leave their safe surroundings and live by their own rules. The hero has to overcome the negative influences in order to hear the call again. They also have to deal with any personal doubts that arise from thinking too much about the potential dangers involved in the quest. It is common for the hero to deny their own abilities in this stage and to lack confidence in themselves.

Example: Cinderella accepts the call by making her own dress for the ball. However, her stepmother refuses the call for her by not letting her go to the ball. And her step-sisters ruin her dress, so she can not go.

After hearing the call, the hero begins a relationship with a mentor who helps them learn about themselves and the world. In some cases, the mentor may be someone the hero already knows. The mentor is usually someone who is well-versed in the knowledge that the hero needs to acquire, but who does not judge the hero for their lack of experience.

Example: Cinderella meets her fairy godmother who equips her with everything she needs for the ball, including a dress and a carriage.

The hero leaves their old life behind and enters the unfamiliar new world. The crossing of the threshold symbolises leaving their old self behind and becoming a new person. Sometimes this can include learning a new skill or changing their physical appearance. It can also include a time of wandering, which is an essential part of the hero’s journey.

Example: Cinderella hops into the carriage and heads off to the ball. She has transformed from a servant into an elegant young lady.

As the hero goes on this journey, they will meet both allies (people who help the hero) and enemies (people who try to stop the hero). There will also be tests, where the hero is tempted to quit, turn back, or become discouraged. The hero must be persistent and resilient to overcome challenges.

Example: At the ball, Cinderella meets the prince, and even see’s her stepmother and stepsister. She dances with Prince all night long making her step-sisters extremely jealous.

The hero now reaches the destination of their journey, in some cases, this is a literal location, such as a cave or castle. It could also be metaphorical, such as the hero having an internal conflict or having to make a difficult decision. In either case, the hero has to confront their deepest fears in this stage with bravery. In some ways, this stage can mark the end of the hero’s journey because the hero must now face their darkest fears and bring them under control. If they do not do this, the hero could be defeated in the final battle and will fail the story.

Example: Cinderella is having a great time at the ball and nearly forgets about the midnight rule. As she runs away in a hurry, her glass slipper falls off outside the palace.

The hero has made it to the final challenge of their journey and now must face all odds and defeat their greatest adversary. Consider this the climax of the story. This could be in the form of a physical battle, a moral dilemma or even an emotional challenge. The hero will look to their allies or mentor for further support and guidance in this ordeal. Whatever happens in this stage could change the rest of the story, either for good or bad.

Example: Prince Charming looks all over the kingdom for the mysterious girl he met at the ball. He finally visits Cinderella’s house and tries the slippers on the step-sisters. The prince is about to leave and then he sees Cinderella in the corner cleaning.

When the hero has defeated the most powerful and dangerous of adversaries, they will receive their reward. This reward could be an object, a new relationship or even a new piece of knowledge. The reward, which typically comes as a result of the hero’s perseverance and hard work, signifies the end of their journey. Given that the hero has accomplished their goal and served their purpose, it is a time of great success and accomplishment.

Example: The prince tries the glass slipper on Cinderella. The glass slipper fits Cinderella perfectly, and they fall in love.

The journey is now complete, and the hero is now heading back home. As the hero considers their journey and reflects on the lessons they learned along the way, the road back is sometimes marked by a sense of nostalgia or even regret. As they must find their way back to the normal world and reintegrate into their former life, the hero may encounter additional difficulties or tests along the way. It is common for the hero to run into previous adversaries or challenges they believed they had overcome.

Example: Cinderella and Prince Charming head back to the Prince’s castle to get married.

The hero has one final battle to face. At this stage, the hero might have to fight to the death against a much more powerful foe. The hero might even be confronted with their own mortality or their greatest fear. This is usually when the hero’s true personality emerges. This stage is normally symbolised by the hero rising from the dark place and fighting back. This dark place could again be a physical location, such as the underground or a dark cave. It might even be a dark, mental state, such as depression. As the hero rises again, they might change physically or even experience an emotional transformation.

Example: Cinderella is reborn as a princess. She once again feels the love and happiness that she felt when she was a little girl living with her father.

At the end of the story, the hero returns to the ordinary world and shares the knowledge gained in their journey with their fellow man. This can be done by imparting some form of wisdom, an object of great value or by bringing about a social revolution. In all cases, the hero returns changed and often wiser.

Example: Cinderella and Prince Charming live happily ever after. She uses her new role to punish her stepmother and stepsisters and to revitalise the kingdom.

We have used the example of Cinderella in Vogler’s hero’s journey model below:

Below we have briefly explained the other variations of the hero’s journey arc.

The very first hero’s journey arc was created by Joseph Campbell in 1949. It contained the following 17 steps:

The Call to Adventure: The hero receives a call or a reason to go on a journey.
Refusal of the Call: The hero does not accept the quest. They worry about their own abilities or fear the journey itself.
Supernatural Aid: Someone (the mentor) comes to help the hero and they have supernatural powers, which are usually magical.
The Crossing of the First Threshold: A symbolic boundary is crossed by the hero, often after a test.
Belly of the Whale: The point where the hero has the most difficulty making it through.
The Road of Trials: In this step, the hero will be tempted and tested by the outside world, with a number of negative experiences.
The Meeting with the Goddess: The hero meets someone who can give them the knowledge, power or even items for the journey ahead.
Woman as the Temptress: The hero is tempted to go back home or return to their old ways.
Atonement with the Father: The hero has to make amends for any wrongdoings they may have done in the past. They need to confront whatever holds them back.
Apotheosis: The hero gains some powerful knowledge or grows to a higher level.
The Ultimate Boon: The ultimate boon is the reward for completing all the trials of the quest. The hero achieves their ultimate goal and feels powerful.
Refusal of the Return: After collecting their reward, the hero refuses to return to normal life. They want to continue living like gods.
The Magic Flight: The hero escapes with the reward in hand.
Rescue from Without: The hero has been hurt and needs help from their allies or guides.
The Crossing of the Return Threshold: The hero must come back and learn to integrate with the ordinary world once again.
Master of the Two Worlds: The hero shares their wisdom or gifts with the ordinary world. Learning to live in both worlds.
Freedom to Live: The hero accepts the new version of themselves and lives happily without fear.

David Adams Leeming later adapted the hero’s journey based on his research of legendary heroes found in mythology. He noted the following steps as a pattern that all heroes in stories follow:

Miraculous conception and birth: This is the first trauma that the hero has to deal with. The Hero is often an orphan or abandoned child and therefore faces many hardships early on in life.
Initiation of the hero-child: The child faces their first major challenge. At this point, the challenge is normally won with assistance from someone else.
Withdrawal from family or community: The hero runs away and is tempted by negative forces.
Trial and quest: A quest finds the hero giving them an opportunity to prove themselves.
Death: The hero fails and is left near death or actually does die.
Descent into the underworld: The hero rises again from death or their near-death experience.
Resurrection and rebirth: The hero learns from the errors of their way and is reborn into a better, wiser being.
Ascension, apotheosis, and atonement: The hero gains some powerful knowledge or grows to a higher level (sometimes a god-like level).

In 1990, Phil Cousineau further adapted the hero’s journey by simplifying the steps from Campbell’s model and rearranging them slightly to suit his own findings of heroes in literature. Again Cousineau’s hero’s journey included 8 steps:

The call to adventure: The hero must have a reason to go on an adventure.
The road of trials: The hero undergoes a number of tests that help them to transform.
The vision quest: Through the quest, the hero learns the errors of their ways and has a realisation of something.
The meeting with the goddess: To help the hero someone helps them by giving them some knowledge, power or even items for the journey ahead.
The boon: This is the reward for completing the journey.
The magic flight: The hero must escape, as the reward is attached to something terrible.
The return threshold: The hero must learn to live back in the ordinary world.
The master of two worlds: The hero shares their knowledge with the ordinary world and learns to live in both worlds.

As you can see, every version of the hero’s journey is about the main character showing great levels of transformation. Their journey may start and end at the same location, but they have personally evolved as a character in your story. Once a weakling, they now possess the knowledge and skill set to protect their world if needed.

Free Hero’s Journey Templates

Use the free Hero’s journey templates below to practice the skills you learned in this guide! You can either draw or write notes in each of the scene boxes. Once the template is complete, you will have a better idea of how your main character or the hero of your story develops over time:

The storyboard template below is a great way to develop your main character and organise your story:

Did you find this guide on the hero’s journey stages useful? Let us know in the comments below.

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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Home / Book Writing / The Hero’s Journey: The 12 Steps of Mythic Structure

The Hero’s Journey: The 12 Steps of Mythic Structure

The Hero’s Journey plot structure is a common template for writing a compelling story. It also has a built-in character arc for the hero or heroine. Whether you write detailed outlines before getting into any prose, or you think writing is best done without an outline, the Hero’s Journey can help. Many writers fall somewhere in between, keeping in mind the broad strokes of a plot structure like the Hero’s Journey as they write.

Now, before you roll up your sleeves and get started with plotting your brand new idea, make sure it's viable to become a bestseller. Take just a few minutes to use book idea validation – without it, your book risks obscurity after it's published. If you have already written your book with a structure like the Hero's Journey and are looking to increase your sales, read how to make your book #1 on Amazon so you don't miss out on new readers.

One thing’s for sure: learning the twelve steps of the Hero’s Journey can only help your writing. This is why I recommend Plottr as an excellent tool to strengthen your writing. They have the Hero’s Journey and other well-known story archetypes to choose from so you can find one that best fits your particular story.

More on Plottr later. For now, let’s go on an adventure through the Hero’s Journey!

The origins of the Hero’s Journey
The 12 Steps of the Journey
Examples of the Hero’s Journey
How to incorporate this story structure into your writing

What is the Hero’s Journey?
The Hero’s Journey: An Overview
1. The Ordinary World
2. The Call to Adventure
3. Refusing the Call to Adventure
4. Meeting the Mentor
5. Crossing the Threshold
6. Test, Allies, and Enemies
7. Approach to the Inmost Cave
8. The Ordeal
9. The Reward
10. The Road Back
11. Resurrection
12. Return With the Elixir
Star Wars: A New Hope
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The Hunger Games
Bonus Option: Use the Hero's Journey in a Series
What Stories Work With the Hero’s Journey?

Get it for FREE here: Get the PDF Here

Popularized by mythologist Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces , the Hero’s Journey is a story structure that has been used to tell exciting and captivating stories for centuries. Campbell, a literature professor, found that this was a common mythic structure. It’s widely known by the moniker the Hero’s Journey, but this name didn’t come around until well after Campbell’s 1949 book.

Campbell’s name for it was the monomyth.

Other scholars and storytellers have made tweaks to Campbell’s original monomyth structure, which has seventeen steps instead of the twelve I’ll be discussing today. The version of the Hero’s Journey widely used by screenwriters, authors, and playwrights today was popularized by screenwriter and producer Christopher Vogler .

You can apply this story structure to mythology, films, books, and even short stories.

There are three overall stages to the Hero’s Journey, each with individual story beats. These are 1) Departure, 2) Initiation, and 3) Return.

The Ordinary World
The Call to Adventure
Refusing the Call to Adventure
Meeting the Mentor
Crossing the Threshold
Test, Allies, and Enemies
Approach to the Inmost Cave
The Road Back
Resurrection
Return With the Elixir

Format Beautiful Professional Books

Easy to use, and and full of amazing features, you can quickly turn your book into a professional book.

The Twelve Stages of the Hero’s Journey

Each of the twelve steps has its own story beats that happen. As we finish each stage, we’ll reflect on each story beat with an example from a famous movie.

The first step in the Hero’s Journey is your chance to familiarize the reader with the known world in which your story happens. This means giving the reader what they need to know to make sense of the world (otherwise known as exposition ). If your story takes place in a reality much like our own, you won’t have a lot to do. But if magic and mythical beasts are normal, or it’s far into the future and interstellar travel is possible, you’ll have a bit more work to do here. If you're having trouble picking which type of world is best for your book, research popular keywords in your genre to reveal settings that readers find interesting.

While you introduce the world, you’ll want to introduce the main character(s) as well. And in doing so, it’s important to give the reader a reason to like him, her, or them . While the protagonist is in their normal, ordinary world, they should want something more or different. And this want or need should dovetail nicely with the primary conflict of the story.

Introduce the world and the character in an interesting way. Readers will give you some leeway at the beginning of the book, but if it reads like a textbook, you’ll lose them pretty quickly!
Give the character personality and dimension . Needs, wants, flaws, and characteristics don’t all have to come out right away, but there should be enough for the reader to want to follow the hero through the story.

Tip: This first step should take the first 10-12% of the story.

Step two, the call to adventure, is also called the inciting incident. This is something disruptive that pulls the hero out of their ordinary world and toward a journey that will ultimately change their life . . . if they survive.

This call propels the rest of the story forward , so it should be exciting enough for the reader to want to continue with the story. This will change from genre to genre, so it’s important to know the tropes of whatever genre you’re writing in. On Amazon, there are thousands of genre categories to choose from, so research potential category options to better understand your market.

Most heroes will resist this initial call to action. The stakes should be very real and clear to the reader at this point. In many stories, the stakes will be life or death.
Remember that your story needs to grow in intensity until it peaks at the climax. So the call to action should be dramatic, but things will get worse for the protagonist from here.

Tip: The Call To Adventure should happen around the 12% mark.

Not every protagonist will refuse the call. Some may be ready to go. But if you pay attention to some of your favorite stories, you’ll likely see that most heroes ‌resist initially until ‌they have no choice.

Something should happen to make a refusing hero realize that they have no choice but to take on the challenge presented to them. For every refusal, some incident or information should come out that will raise the stakes and make the hero realize they must face the challenge . The hero ventures forth at the end of this section.

It’s good to have the character refuse the call for a reason that ties in with the need or want established in the first step of the Hero’s Journey.
Give them a good reason to refuse — and an even better reason to finally heed the call to adventure.

Tip: The refusal section starts around the 15% mark of the story.

At this point in the story, the protagonist has responded to the call to adventure. But their initial unease is still there. They don’t yet have the skills, items, or knowledge to succeed against such a challenge. This is where the mentor comes in.

The mentor helps the protagonist gain the confidence needed to continue on the journey. This is usually done in a multifaceted manner, with both physical and mental help. Much of the time, the mentor provides tough love, kicking the protagonist’s butt into action, so to speak. While mentors are often people, they can also take the form of information, like a map, a magic scepter, or any other number of things that help the hero along.

Make it clear that, without the mentor, the protagonist would likely fall flat were they to continue on unaided.
The hero’s time with the mentor should ultimately result in a revelation , giving the hero exactly what they need (or at least what they think they need) to face the antagonist or challenge.

Tip: Have this section start around the 20% mark of the story.

Step five of the Hero’s Journey is often called the point of no return. While the protagonist has learned from the mentor and gained confidence, this story beat forces them to engage fully with the challenge. Usually, this dramatic turning point is orchestrated by the antagonist, giving both the reader and the protagonist an idea of how powerful the villain really is.

One common tactic is to have the mentor killed in this section. Whatever you choose to do, make it pivotal and have it reinforce the central theme and conflict of the story . This is also the end of the Departure section, otherwise known as the first act.

Until this point, the hero has had one foot in their ordinary world. Now, there’s no choice but to go forward into unknown territory, otherwise called the special world.
The hero’s reaction to this pivotal story beat should be in line with what the reader knows about them. They need to work for any major changes that come about in this section.

Tip: Crossing the Threshold usually starts around the 25% mark.

This section marks the beginning of the second act. Building on everything that has come before, the protagonist should be challenged, putting their new abilities and knowledge to the test. It will become clear that the hero still needs help to resolve the main conflict of the story. This is where allies come into play. By teaming up with allies, the hero should continue to grow, playing off the other characters and working to overcome the tests or setbacks in the Special World.

Enemies are those that put the tests in their place, working actively against the hero and allies. The reader should learn to care about the allies, which ‌means making them multifaceted characters. By the time this section is done, not all allies will have made it. Some may have even betrayed the hero. Likewise, enemies can also transform in this section, turning into allies.

While the allies may want the same thing as the hero, they may have conflicting views on how to get it. Everyone in agreement all the time makes for a boring story.
The hero’s abilities should be in doubt — both by the hero and the reader.

Tip: This section occurs around the 30% mark.

The approach to the inmost cave section gives the characters (and reader) a chance to reflect on the challenges of the previous section. Remember that the stakes and tension need to continue rising, so the previous section should have been the hardest challenge yet. The hero and allies are beaten and bruised — maybe one or more has died along the way — but the protagonist is still alive. The journey continues.

The group is closer to the goal — and to the place or time of ultimate danger. They’re regrouping and gathering their wits as they prepare to face the antagonist or some of the villain’s formidable forces.

This is a good place for the characters to formulate a plan of attack, clarifying the price of failure and the prize for success.
At this point, the hero has redoubled his effort and believes he is ready to face the challenge, despite his setbacks. The ordinary world is now far behind and impossible to get back to. The only way out is through.

Tip: This section happens around the 40% mark.

The ordeal is the biggest test yet and a transformative event that affects how the hero goes forward on their journey. This confrontation has the highest stakes so far, and it’s part of the central conflict. It brings the hero to their darkest point yet, and results in a metamorphosis of sorts that allows them to push through to the other side.

Campbell spoke of the ordeal in terms of death and rebirth for the protagonist. The hero uses all they have learned up to this point to push through the ordeal. A character close to the hero is often killed in this section, whether it be the mentor, a close ally, or a loved one. However, it’s not always a death. It could involve facing fears, going up against the biggest foe, or breaking through some seemingly insurmountable mental barrier. Whatever form the ordeal takes, the hero is broken down and comes out the other side stronger than before .

This section is a long one, taking nearly a fifth of the story. It should be dramatic, compelling, and speak directly to the heart of both the external and internal conflicts of the story.
Don’t be afraid to make things hard on your characters in this section. Even though the reader knows the hero will prevail, they should be left wondering in this section.

Tip: The Ordeal takes place from around the 50% mark.

Also called seizing the sword, this is the section in which the hero gets whatever they were searching for during the story. They’ve made it through the ordeal, and this is the reward. It can be an object, clarity, knowledge, or new skills/abilities. Whatever the reward is, it needs to be important in defeating the antagonist at the coming climax .

After the action and emotion of the ordeal, this section is a place for the reader and characters to regroup and catch their breath again. It can be a good place for a celebration of sorts, something to show for the sacrifices made so far. The hero may even reflect on all it took to get here.

It should be clear to the reader how the reward will help the hero to finish the journey.
This is a major milestone in the journey and should be treated as such. It also marks the end of act two.

Tip: The Reward section takes place around the 70% mark of the story.

Reward firmly in hand, the hero starts the journey back to the ordinary world. But every action has consequences, and those of claiming the reward block the hero’s road back. It becomes clear that things aren’t so simple, and the hero’s tribulations aren’t yet over.

The unforeseen consequences of claiming the reward make the hero realize they’re in more danger than ever before, and they must face the antagonist head-on before returning to the ordinary world. The hero prepares for the ultimate battle — the climax.

It should be clear to the reader why the hero must face the antagonist once and for all. There should be no choice, given who the hero has become and the stakes they now face.
This is a good place to re-establish the central conflict of the story and make clear the results of failure.

Tip: This section happens around the 75% mark.

This is the climax of the story — the ultimate showdown between hero and villain . The tension and the stakes are higher than they’ve been throughout the story. If the hero fails, the world as they know it will be forever changed for the worst. The hero uses all they have learned on the journey to defeat the antagonist.

The hero comes out of the confrontation changed, transformed into a true hero. This should be a dramatic transformation, completing the resurrection started earlier in the story.

Like every other challenge, the hero needs to earn this victory by sacrificing something for it. In some stories, the hero may even sacrifice him or herself.
By vanquishing the antagonist, the hero should find the strength or gain the knowledge to address their internal conflict in a satisfactory manner.

Tip: This section happens around the 85% mark .

The last section of the story details the hero’s return from the special world to the ordinary world. Sometimes called the magic flight, the hero now has changed for the better. Show what new skills, items, knowledge, or understanding of the world the hero brings with them (the elixir). This “elixir” can often be used to help those the hero left behind in the ordinary world.

In most stories, the hero will return to celebration. They’ve risked it all, saved lives, and learned important lessons. The people in the ordinary world are happy to have them back. The hero may decide to settle back into this world to use their newfound abilities. Or they may find they’ve outgrown it and have a taste for adventure.

Re-establish the hero’s internal conflict and show how solving it has changed their view and life, completing the character arc .
If you’re writing a series, provide a hook for the next story here by hinting at another conflict the hero will need to deal with.

Tip: This section happens around the 95% mark and finishes out the story!

Examples of the Hero’s Journey from Famous Works

In George Lucas's Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope , we can see the Hero's Journey in action. We also see it in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Hunger Games . Let’s take a look now.

Luke Skywalker — an archetypal hero — in his Ordinary World, living with his aunt and uncle, hoping for adventure.
Luke’s Call to Adventure comes when he activates a hidden message from Princess Leia that R2D2 is carrying for Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Luke initially Refuses the Call — until he returns home to discover his aunt and uncle have been killed by Imperial forces.
While Luke has already met his Mentor (Obi-Wan), the active mentoring really starts after Luke's home has been destroyed and the only family he's ever known killed.
When Luke, Obi-Wan, and the droids step into the dangerous Mos Eisley Spaceport, it signifies the beginning of Luke's heroic journey and the Crossing of the Threshold.
Luke and Obi-Wan hire a couple of Allies, Han Solo and Chewbacca, to transport them off the planet. Once on the Millennium Falcon, Luke's Tests begin.
The Approach to the Inmost Cave happens when the Death Star captures the Falcon in a tractor beam and pulls them in.
The Ordeal happens while Obi-Wan goes off to try and disengage the tractor beam. Luke, Han, and the others rescue Princess Leia. Obi-Wan confronts Darth Vader and sacrifices himself so the others can get away.
With the Rewards (the Death Star plans and the princess), Luke thinks he should be able to defeat the Empire. And while Obi-Wan's death weighs on him, he can see success ahead.
The Road Back is interrupted as the Falcon is attacked. They have no choice but to go to the Rebel base to deliver the Death Star plans, even though they’re being tracked.
As the Rebels are attacking the Death Star, Obi-Wan's voice speaks to Luke, telling him to use the Force. Luke does, using all that he's learned and finally “sacrificing” his old self, embracing the Force and “Resurrecting” as a true hero. He fires and blows up the Death Star.
Luke Returns to the Rebel base triumphant. Both he and Han Solo receive medals and accolades for delivering the (temporary) blow to the evil Empire.
We get to see Frodo’s idyllic Ordinary World in the Shire. The idea of adventure is attractive to him, but not overly so.
Frodo’s Call to Adventure begins after Bilbo disappears, leaving behind the Ring, which Gandalf entrusts to young Frodo.
Frodo Refuses the Call not just once, but repeatedly throughout the story. He feels he is not the one to be entrusted with such a job of carrying and disposing of the Ring.
Gandalf acts as Frodo’s Mentor, instructing him on what he must do to protect the Ring and, in so doing, protecting the Shire.
Frodo and Sam quite literally Cross the Threshold as they leave the Shire after splitting from Gandalf.
Frodo and Sam run into Allies Merry and Pippin on their way toward Bree. They are also Tested by Enemies as they’re pursued by the Nazgûl. These tests continue until the group gets to Rivendell.
The Approach to the Inmost Cave is the group’s approach to the Mines of Moria — literal caves.
The Ordeal happens inside the Mines of Moria as the group is attacked by orcs and then Balrog, which Gandalf fights off, falling down into the depths and presumed dead.
The Reward is sparse in The Fellowship of the Rings. Gandalf is gone, and the group escapes with their lives.
The Road Back isn’t signified in this story by a turn back to the Ordinary World. Instead, it’s Frodo’s stay in Lothlórien, where he sees the stakes of his failure in a vision.
The Resurrection is the climax of the story, where the Uruk-hai catch up with the group and Boromir betrays Frodo, trying to take the ring from him. Frodo realizes he must travel alone to Mordor.
The Return with the Elixir portion is Sam’s refusal to let Frodo journey alone. Frodo pulls him into the boat and they cross the river together. Meanwhile, the rest of the Fellowship are determined to save Merry and Pippin. To be continued . . .
We see Katniss Everdeen living in her Ordinary World (District 12) with her mother and sister. It’s a bleak, depressing world, but it’s her Ordinary World nonetheless.
After Prim, Katniss’s sister is called for Tribute, Katniss volunteers in her stead. This is the Call to Adventure.
This is one example of a story with no real Refusal of the Call. She may not want to take part in the Hunger Games, but she makes the decision and sticks with it to save her sister.
Katniss meets Haymitch, her Mentor. Though a drunk, he guides her on the politics and gives her tips on surviving the Games.
Katniss Crosses the Threshold when she’s put on the train to the capital, leaving her Ordinary World behind.
The Tests, Enemies, and Allies section starts when she has to navigate the preparation for the Games. She meets Rue and has Peeta as an ally, as well. The Careers are clearly enemies to contend with later.
Katniss Approaches the Inmost Cave when the Hunger Games begin.
The Ordeal is plain to see as the Games commence, and Katniss struggles to stay alive amid the chaos.
The Reward comes when only Katniss and Peeta are left alive in the arena. They don’t have to fight, thanks to a rule change; they can both claim victory.
It looks good for Katniss and Peeta until the Capital changes the rules again, putting an obstacle in the path of the Road Back. Suddenly, they’re forced to decide which of them gets to live.
The Resurrection portion of the story plays out as Katniss and Peeta threaten to kill themselves, leaving no winner and possibly sowing the seeds of revolution. The Capital changes the rules again, allowing both of them to claim victory.
Katniss gets to live, Returning from the Games as a hero. One who just may be able to make some real change to her Ordinary World.

Let's say you want to think big. Like a 12 book series big. One little fun way that I use the Hero's Journey is to use each of the 12 steps to represent an entire book as a whole. You could also condense this into 6 books, 3 books, etc.

For example, the original Star Wars trilogy does a fantastic job of fitting the hero's journey not only into the first movie (A New Hope) but also into the trilogy as a whole. The first movie could easily represent the first four steps of the hero's journey from a macro-perspective (as well as covering all 12 within its self-contained plot), with The Empire Strikes Back covering steps 5-8, and Return of the Jedi covering steps 9-12.

Seriously though, the OG Star Wars trilogy is a masterclass in plotting, you guys.

In other words, the Hero's Journey doesn't have to be used just for a single novel, it can be a great way to progress your character from a more zoomed out perspective through an entire series.

Now that you know what to look for, think about some of your favorite stories. See if you can see the beats of the Hero's Journey in them. From Harry Potter and Toy Story to the Lion King and The Hunger Games , you'll find evidence of this story structure.

Its uses aren't just for adventure stories, though. With a little tweaking, a sweet romance story could also follow this template pretty closely. The point of the Hero’s Journey plot template isn’t to lock you into a formula that you can’t deviate from. Instead, it’s a tool that can guide you along. When you know the tropes of your genre, you can marry them with the major beats of the Hero’s Journey to come up with a novel readers will love . Remember, however, that writing an incredible novel is only part of the battle to find loyal readers- it's also important to have a strong marketing strategy so people can actually discover your book, as outlined in my free e-book on how to become an Amazon bestseller.

To make story beats easier, I recommend giving Plottr a try. It’s a great storytelling tool for writers that can help keep you on track using structures like the Hero’s Journey, Dan Harmon’s Story Circle , the Three Act Structure , and more.

Dave Chesson

When I’m not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, I’m a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, I created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. I’ve even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly, and I’m here to help you with your author journey.

Author vs writer: what’s the difference, how to write an adventure story, parts of a book [from cover to cover], sell more books on amazon, amazon kindle rankings e-book.

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The Ordinary World: The First Step in the Hero’s Journey

by David Safford | 0 comments

From The Odyssey to Star Wars to Toy Story , the Hero's Journey is the foundation of millennia of storytelling. But before any hero can embark on their journey, they must start in the ordinary world.

How can you leverage this world and the hero's journey in your own writing?

In storytelling, the hero's journey has to do with the stages of the hero as researched by Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler. Decades ago, these two storytelling experts identified several common trends that appear in great works from every generation and every culture.

One of those trends is structure.

Thankfully this structure has a proven track record of success. This successful record is so long, in fact, that we don't know when it started.

And it all begins with a person living an ordinary life.

What Is the Hero's Journey?

The Hero's Journey is a timeless combination of characters, events, and symbols frequently structured as a sequence of twelve steps. It is a storytelling structure that anyone can study and utilize to tell a story that readers will love.

You can learn all about the twelve steps that make up the universal structure of great stories in this article . Today, I'd like to take you even further into the first of those steps.

Let's take a look at the beginning: The Ordinary World.

Hero's Journey Step #1: Start Ordinary

We have Hollywood screenwriter and executive Christopher Vogler to thank for our condensed version of the Hero's Journey. If you're curious, his most notable credit is a film that makes explicit use of the Hero's Journey: The Lion King.

In Vogler's simplification of Campbell's theory, there are twelve steps to the Hero's Journey (I cover each one in-depth in a detailed Hero's Journey blog series, this article being one of those special articles).

The first step of the Hero's Journey involves establishing your hero's day-to-day ordinary life, all so it can be disrupted by the impending Inciting Incident. This is the Ordinary World.

This is when you establish the hero's day-to-day life, all so it can be disrupted by the impending Inciting Incident. Tweet this

David Safford

You deserve a great book. That's why David Safford writes adventure stories that you won't be able to put down. Read his latest story at his website. David is a Language Arts teacher, novelist, blogger, hiker, Legend of Zelda fanatic, puzzle-doer, husband, and father of two awesome children.

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A Practical Guide to Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey

OVERVIEW: What are the hero’s journey steps? That is, what’s the psychological process we go through that can lead to inner transformation? This guide answers these questions.

______________

Treasure, love, reward, approval, honor, status, freedom, and survival … these are some of the many things associated with the hero’s journey.

However, we don’t find the meaning of the hero’s journey in slaying the dragon or saving the princess.

These are but colorful metaphors and symbols for a more significant purpose.

Battling inner and outer demons, confronting bullies, and courting your ideal mate symbolize a passage through the often treacherous path of self-discovery toward adulthood.

If you complete one of these “adventures,” you’re different. Sometimes visually, but always internally.

Here, we’ll explore the meaning of the hero’s journey steps and see how it applies to psychological development and our ability to actualize our potential.

Let’s dive in …

What is the Hero’s Journey?

The hero’s journey refers to a common motif, or set of patterns, found in many ancient mythologies around the world.

The hero’s journey steps are said to be universal and found throughout recorded history.

These stages lead an individual (the would-be hero) through a challenging process of change that often includes great hardships.

This well-known story structure is used in many modern films and storytelling. However, the true meaning of the hero’s journey motif is psychological in origin.

What is the Monomyth?

Joseph Campbell was a curious mythologist. In the field of comparative mythology, most scholars examine how one culture’s myths are different than another.

Instead of focusing on the many differences between cultural myths and religious stories, however, Campbell did the opposite: He looked for the similarities.

His studies resulted in what’s called the monomyth . The monomyth is a universal story structure.

Essentially, it’s a story template that takes a character through a sequence of stages. Campbell began identifying the patterns of this monomyth (the hero’s journey steps).

Over and over again, he was amazed to find this structure in the cultures he studied. He also observed the same sequence in many religions including the stories of Gautama Buddha, Moses, and Jesus Christ.

Campbell outlined the stages of the monomyth in his classic book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).

What is the Hero?

The main character in the monomyth is the hero .

The hero isn’t a person, but an archetype —a set of universal images combined with specific patterns of behavior.

Think of a protagonist from your favorite film. He or she represents the hero.

The storyline of the film enacts the hero’s journey.

The Hero archetype resides in the psyche of every individual, which is one of the primary reasons we love hearing and watching stories.

What is a Myth?

We might ask, why explore the hero’s journey steps?

Sure, Hollywood uses it as their dominant story structure for its films (more on that later). But what relevance does it have for us as individuals?

Today, when we speak of “myth,” we refer to something that’s commonly believed, but untrue.

Myth, for minds like Campbell and Carl Jung however, had a much deeper meaning. Myths, for them, represent dreams of the collective psyche .

That is, in understanding the symbolic meaning of a myth, you come to know the psychological undercurrent—including hidden motivations , tensions, and desires—of the people and culture.

What is the Power of Myth?

Campbell explains to Bill Moyer in The Power of Myth : 1 Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth , 1991, 193.

Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth–penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.

As Campbell eloquently puts it in The Hero with a Thousand Faces ,

Mythology is psychology misread as biography, history, and cosmology.

Because the hero’s journey steps represent a monomyth that we can observe in most, if not all, cultures, it represents a process that is relevant to the entire human family .

hero's journey steps joseph campbell quote

What is this Process Within the Hero’s Journey?

It’s the process of personal transformation from an innocent child into a mature adult.

The child is born into a set of rules and beliefs of a group of people.

Through the child’s heroic efforts, he must break free from these conventions (transcend them) to discover himself.

In the process, the individual returns to his soul.

If we think of the hero’s journey as a roadmap for self-development, it can hold a lot of value for us.

A Quick Note About Gender: Masculine vs Feminine

This psychological decoding is based on a “Jungian” understanding of the psyche.

The hero is ultimately a masculine archetype. The female counterpart would be the heroine. While the hero and the heroine certainly share many attributes, they are not the same.

However, note that “masculine” and “feminine” are not the same as “man” and “woman.” The psyche of a man has a feminine counterpart—what Jung called the anima . The psyche of a woman has a masculine archetype called the animus . For this reason, the hero’s journey does have universal relevance.

While Western culture seems riddled with gender confusion, there are distinct differences between the masculine and the feminine psyche.

Okay, now back to our story …

The 3 Main Stages of the Hero’s Journey

Okay, so now let’s begin to break down the structure and sequence of the hero’s journey.

As Campbell explains:

The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels there is something lacking in the normal experience available or permitted to the members of society. The person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a coming and a returning.

This cycle of coming and returning has 3 clear stages:

Stage 1: Departure

Campbell called the initial stage departure or the call to adventure . The hero departs from the world he knows.

Luke Skywalker leaves his home planet to join Obi-Wan to save the princess. Neo gets unplugged from The Matrix with the help of Morpheus and his crew.

In the Departure stage, you leave the safety of the world you know and enter the unknown.

Campbell writes of this stage in The Hero with a Thousand Faces :

This first step of the mythological journey—which we have designated the “call to adventure”—signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown.

That is, the hero must leave the known “conventional world” and enter a “special world” that is foreign.

Stage 2: Initiation

Now the hero must face a series of trials and tribulations. The hero’s journey isn’t safe.

The hero is tested in battle, skill, and conflict. He may not succeed in each action but must press on.

The protagonist will meet allies, enemies, and mentors with supernatural aid throughout the initiation stage.

Stage 3: Return

Having endured the trials and hardships of the adventure, the hero returns home.

But the hero is no longer the same. An internal transformation has taken place through the maturation process of the experience.

Luke is now a Jedi and has come to peace with his past. Neo embraces his destiny and liberates himself from the conventions of The Matrix.

The Hero’s Journey in Drama

In Three Uses of a Knife , famed playwright David Mamet suggests a similar three-act structure for plays and dramas: 2 David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama , 2000.

Act 1: Thesis . The drama presents life as it is for the protagonist. The ordinary world.

Act 2: Antithesis . The protagonist faces opposing forces that send him into an upheaval (disharmony).

Act 3: Synthesis . The protagonist attempts to integrate the old life with the new one.

We note that problems, challenges, and upheavals are the defining characteristic of this journey.

Without problems, the path toward growth is usually left behind. (More on this topic below.)

Assessing Your Place in the Hero’s Journey

Before we explore the stages of the monomyth more closely, let’s look at what these three phases reveal about self-mastery and psychological development.

Stage 1 represents our comfort zone. We feel safe here because it is known to us.

Stages 2 and 3, however, represent the unknown . Embracing the unknown means letting go of safety.

Abraham Maslow points out that we are confronted with an ongoing series of choices throughout life between safety and growth, dependence and independence, regression and progression, immaturity and maturity.

Maslow writes in Toward a Psychology of Being : 3 Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being , 2014.

We grow forward when the delights of growth and anxieties of safety are greater than the anxieties of growth and the delights of safety.

Is it now clear why so many of us refuse the call to adventure?

We cling to the safety of the known instead of embracing the “delight of growth” that only comes from the unknown.

Campbell’s 17 Stages of the Hero’s Journey

Joseph Campbell didn’t just outline three stages of the monomyth. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces , he deconstructs every step along the journey.

The stages of the hero’s journey are the common sequence of events that occurred in the monomyth motif.

Technically speaking, Campbell outlined 17 stages in his The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

These 17 stages or hero’s journey steps can be found globally in the myths and legends throughout recorded history.

The Modified 12 Hero’s Journey Steps

Now, let’s review these stages of the hero’s journey in more detail.

I’m going to outline these steps below using a slightly simplified version from Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers .

Vogler’s model, which is used throughout Hollywood, only has 12 steps (compared to 17), and I think it does a solid job of keeping the essence of Campbell’s monomyth structure intact.

As you read these hero’s journey steps, see if you can determine how they apply to your development.

Step 1: The Ordinary World

Before a would-be hero can enter the special world, he must first live in the ordinary world.

The ordinary world is different for each of us—it represents our norms, customs, conditioned beliefs, and behaviors. The ordinary world is sometimes referred to as the “conventional world.”

In The Hobbit , the ordinary world is the Shire where Bilbo Baggins lives with all the other Hobbits—gardening, eating and celebrating—living a simple life.

Novelist J.R.R. Tolkien contrasts this life in the Shire with the special world of wizards, warriors, men, elves, dwarfs, and evil forces on the brink of world war.

Step 2: The Call to Adventure

The first hero’s journey step is the call to adventure.

The call to adventure marks a transition from the ordinary world to the special world. The hero is introduced to his quest of great consequence.

Obi-Wan said to Luke, “You must come with me to Alderaan.” That is, Luke is invited to leave the ordinary world of his aunt and uncle’s farm life and go on an adventure with a Jedi knight.

Joseph Campbell explains: 4 Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell On His Life And Work , 1990.

The call to adventure signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of this society to a zone unknown.

Step 3: Refusal of the Call

Fear of change as well as death, however, often leads the hero to refuse the call to adventure .

The ordinary world represents our comfort zone; the special world signifies the unknown.

Luke Skywalker immediately responds to Obi-Wan, “I can’t go with you,” citing his chores and responsibilities at home.

Step 4: Meeting the Mentor

Campbell called this archetype the “mentor with supernatural aid.”

Generally, at an early stage of the adventure, the hero is graced by the presence of a wise sage . Personified in stories as a magical counselor , a reclusive hermit, or a wise leader, the mentor’s role is to help guide the hero.

Think Obi-Wan, Yoda, Gandalf, Morpheus, or Dumbledore. Sometimes cloaked in mystery and secret language, a mentor manifests when the hero is ready.

Sadly, our modern world is depleted of wise elders or shamans who can effectively bless the younger generation. (A topic for a different day.) For most of us, it is best to seek wise counsel from your inner guide , the Self within.

Step 5: Cross the First Threshold

The hero resists change initially but is ultimately forced to make a critical decision: embark on the adventure or forever remain in the ordinary world with its illusion of security.

Although Luke refuses the call to adventure initially, when he returns home to see his aunt and uncle dead, he immediately agrees to go with Obi-Wan. He crossed the first threshold.

In one sense, the first threshold is the point of no return. Once the hero shoots across the unstable suspension bridge, it bursts into flames.

There’s no turning back, at least, not how he came.

The first threshold can mark a major decision in our personal lives:

This first breakthrough is a feat within itself; however, it is only the first of many turning points.

Step 6: Tests, Allies, Enemies

Along the hero’s journey, the main character encounters many obstacles and allies.

Luke meets Obiwan (mentor), Han Solo, Princess Leia, and the rebel alliance while fighting many foes. Neo meets Morpheus (mentor), Trinity, and the rest of the Nebuchadnezzar crew while having to fight Agents in a strange world.

Some people may try to stop you along your quest—possibly saying you’re unreasonable or unrealistic. These “dream-stoppers” are often cleverly masked as friends and family who appear to have positive intentions but hinder your development nonetheless.

Your ability to identify obstructions on your path and align with support along your adventure is critical to your adventure.

Unfortunately, because few complete their hero’s journey to mature adulthood, most people will unconsciously attempt to sabotage yours.

Step 7: Approach to the Inmost Cave

The next significant threshold is often more treacherous than the first.

Entering the villain’s castle or the evil billionaire’s mansion, this second major decision usually puts the hero at significant physical and psychological risks.

Neo decides to go save Morpheus who’s being held in a building filled with Agents.

Within the walls of the innermost cave lies the cornerstone of the special world where the hero closes in on his objective.

For a man, the innermost cave represents the Mother Complex, a regressive part of him that seeks to return to the safety of the mother. 5 Robert Johnson, He: Understanding Masculine Psychology, 1989. When a man seeks safety and comfort—when he demands pampering—it means he’s engulfed within the innermost cave.

For a woman, the innermost cave often represents learning how to surrender to the healing power of nurturance—to heal the handless maiden. 6 Robert Johnson, The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden: Understanding the Wounded Feeling Function in Masculine and Feminine Psychology , 1995.

Step 8: Ordeal

No worthwhile adventure is easy. There are many perils on the path to growth, self-discovery , and self-realization.

A major obstacle confronts the hero, and the future begins to look dim: a trap, a mental imprisonment, or imminent defeat on the battlefield.

It seems like the adventure will come to a sad conclusion, as all hope appears lost. But hope remains and it is in these moments of despair when the hero must access a hidden part of himself—one more micron of energy, strength, faith, or creativity to find his way out of the belly of the beast.

Neo confronts Agent Smith in the subway station—something that was never done before. The hero must call on an inner power he doesn’t know he possesses.

Step 9: Reward

Having defeated the enemy and slain the dragon, the hero receives the prize. Pulling the metaphorical sword from the stone, the hero achieves the objective he set out to complete.

Whether the reward is monetary, physical, romantic, or spiritual, the hero transforms. Usually, the initial prize sought by the hero is physical—the sword in the stone or a physical treasure of some kind.

Step 10: The Road Back

Alas, the adventure isn’t over yet. There usually needs to be one last push to return home. Now the hero must return to the world from which he came with the sacred elixir.

Challenges still lie ahead in the form of villains, roadblocks, and inner demons. The hero must deal with whatever issues were left unresolved at this stage of the journey.

Taking moral inventory, examining the Shadow , and performing constant self-inquiry help the hero identify weaknesses and blindspots that will later play against him.

Step 11: Resurrection

Before returning home—before the adventure is over—there’s often one more unsuspected, unforeseen ordeal.

This final threshold, which may be more difficult than the prior moment of despair, provides one last test to solidify the growth of the hero. This threshold represents the final climax.

Neo is shot and killed by Agent Smith. And, he literally resurrects to confront the enemy one last time following his transformation.

The uncertain Luke Skywalker takes that “one in a million” shot from his X-Wing to destroy the Death Star.

Step 12: Return with the Elixir

Often, the prize the hero initially sought (in Step 9) becomes secondary as a result of the personal transformation he undergoes.

Perhaps the original quest was financially driven , but now the hero takes greater satisfaction in serving others in need. The real change is always internal .

In this final stage, the hero can become the master of both worlds , with the freedom to live and grow, impacting all of humanity.

Returning with the prize, the hero’s experience of reality is different. The person is no longer an innocent child or adolescent seeking excitement or adventure.

Comfortable in his own skin, he has evolved and is now capable of handling the demands and challenges of everyday life.

The Hero’s Journey in Films

Are you now more aware of how these hero’s journey steps play out in popular films and television series?

George Lucas was friends with Joseph Campbell. Lucas used these hero’s journey steps from Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces to produce the original Star Wars film. 7 https://billmoyers.com/content/mythology-of-star-wars-george-lucas/

It’s difficult to appreciate the impact Star Wars still has on American culture and around the world. It’s even more difficult to articulate how much of that impact is attributed to Campbell’s insights.

However, one challenge our culture faces is that many popular film franchises produce movies that, most often, never complete the hero’s journey.

These characters stay in the adolescent stage of development (and we tend to celebrate that reality).

These heroes don’t evolve into the warm, vulnerable, generative adults who no longer seek adventure and excitement.

That said, since I originally published this guide in early 2018, this has begun to change.

For example, in the final Bond film, No Time to Die (2021), James Bond did demonstrate some generative growth.

The same goes for Tony Stark’s character (Ironman) in Avengers: Endgame (2019).

Where Are You On Your Hero’s Journey?

More importantly, do you see how these hero’s journey steps are unfolding in your life?

Although each of our stories is unique, they have common threads—elements of this universal structure we all share.

Returning from the moment of despair—from inside the dragon’s lair—without the reward (or lesson), you are presented with a similar adventure repeated ad infinitum —until you either learn the lesson or give up.

In the beginning, the hero’s journey is about achievement.

Whether you’re trying to build a successful business, raise a family, write a screenplay, travel to a distant land, or become a skilled artist, these all represent external achievements that often launch us into our hero’s journey.

But through this external quest—if we become more conscious—the journey transitions to an emphasis on internal growth that leads to transformation.

The Hero isn’t an expression of mature adulthood. This archetype is a by-product of adolescence. The archetypes of adulthood are different, but to access them, we must complete the hero’s journey first .

The Primary Ingredient in Every Hero’s Journey

Compelling stories and real life comes down to one thing: problems .

The protagonist faces a problem and tries to overcome it. Problems represent the essence of drama and the key to good storytelling. Without problems, there’s no story. Problems engage us, tantalizing the human mind.

The hero must face his problems, surmount his fears, resolve his tensions, or fail.

The same is true for our development: without problems and tensions, there can be no growth.

Psychological development is the process of overcoming setbacks, limitations, and conditioned behavior to reach maturity.

Refusing the Call to Adventure

Few people ever fully embrace the Hero’s Journey, a psychological odyssey that leads the individual to wholeness .

Because of our fear of the unknown, many refuse the call to adventure. We delay our journey in many ways:

But something brews inside of us. An internal tension builds. The tension may be small at first, but it grows stronger in the darkness. Tensions are those opposing forces at play within us. This internal conflict creates disharmony.

Humans don’t like disharmony when it bubbles into consciousness, and so these internal tensions can catapult us out of the familiar. The feeling of discord can lead to action and ultimately, some resolution.

Maybe you’re currently embracing your hero’s journey. Or perhaps you’ve been refusing the call. It matters not. What matters is what you do today— right now .

How to Embrace Your Hero’s Journey, Step by Step

The main thing you need to do to embrace your hero’s journey is stay present.

Remember, as Campbell explained, “You are the hero of your own story.”

Psychological development is supposed to be a natural process. But we aren’t currently in a world that supports healthy development.

As such, it’s vital to listen within .

Here are a few guides that may serve you:

Ultimately, be mindful of your fears and aspirations.

Left unchecked, your fears can subconsciously lead you to endlessly refuse the call to adventure.

In contrast, your aspirations can help you embrace your adventure.

As Joseph Campbell often said,

Follow your bliss!

Videos Related to the Hero’s Journey Steps

The hero’s journey steps are outlined in the books referenced throughout this guide:

joseph campbell the hero with a thousand faces

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell’s Mythos Lecture Series (DVD)

The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler

How to Be an Adult by David Richo

What Do You Think?

Are you going through the hero’s journey steps?

About the Author

Scott Jeffrey is the founder of CEOsage, a self-leadership resource publishing in-depth guides read by millions of self-actualizing individuals. He writes about self-development, practical psychology, Eastern philosophy, and integrated practices. For 25 years, Scott was a business coach to high-performing entrepreneurs, CEOs, and best-selling authors. He's the author of four books including Creativity Revealed .

Learn more >

I would like to understand the Hero’s journey. Joseph Campbell describes it as something that has been taken/lost or life giving. How do I know if my hero’s journey has been done?

If you’re examining the hero’s journey from the perspective of individuation — that is, the journey to mature adulthood — it takes many years to come to wholeness within oneself.

Psychologically speaking, the hero’s journey is inward. The characters you meet (like the Mentor) are within yourself. So it involves active imagination in bringing the archetype into some form of harmony within yourself.

You have mentioned a choice to stay in the comfort of safety or the unknow for growth. I am wondering if this is done in a Psychological manner where your life’s circumstances stay as they are or you physically live in a different environment, leaving your surroundings, people and material responsibilities etc.. Hope you can answer this for me.

If you’re a young adult, there’s often an external aspect to the hero’s journey — for example, leaving home and separating from one’s parents. But what Campbell was highlighting with the monomyth is ultimately a psychological process akin to Jungian individuation: https://scottjeffrey.com/individuation-process/

I want to share my thoughts on the heroes journey. After reading the twelve steps, and what you said- I quote “Step 12: Return with the Elixir Often, the prize the hero initially sought (in Step 9) becomes secondary as a result of the personal transformation he undergoes.

Perhaps the original quest was financially driven, but now the hero takes greater satisfaction in serving others in need.

The real change is always internal.

In this final stage, the hero can become the master of both worlds, with the freedom to live and grow, impacting all of humanity.”

My favorite movie for a while now has been The Peaceful Warrior, I have just watched Coach Carter. They seem to tell the same story and I think the story of The Heroes Journey. You have mentioned Star Wars, James Bond and the Matrix.

In the movies The Peaceful Warrior, and Coach Carter, the achievement earned is an inward spiritualism that is, I quote” impacting all of humanity.” Thank-you.

If The Peaceful Warrior is your favorite movie, read Dan Millman’s “The Way of the Peaceful Warrior” — the book the film is based on. Much deeper insights. It’s a magical book — especially when you’re just setting out on your self-discovery journey.

I have read about 25% so far, I am not a good reader. I give myself three pages each day, yet often I’m reading more. It is as if the movie is replaying and I’m able to go with it, imaging the main characters. There is more information from reading than watching the movie, though I am thinking there is a lot of fiction, as it has been described on the net. Though I just need to adhere to the believable parts. I don’t know if it is possible to remember the day’s events that happened during college. For example, what people said, what they were doing throughout the day. My college day’s I can only remember situations that happened all dispersed from one another, with only a few minutes recalled. Does someone like yourself able to recall conversations and put them as dialogs for a book? Or is it a writer’s privilege to invent these for the book?

“The Peaceful Warrior” is a work of fiction. The genre is technically called “visionary fiction.”

There is a passage in the book where Socrates say’s “Mind is an illusory reflection of cerebral fidgeting. It comprises all the random uncontrolled thoughts that bubble into awareness from the subconscious. Consciousness is not the mind; awareness is not mind; attention is not mind. Mind is an obstruction, an aggravation, a primal weakness in the human experiment. It is a kind of evolutionary mistake in the human being. I have no use for the mind.” I don’t think think this way because what we have as humans is natural and so it has a purpose. I am interested if you would give an opinion on this statement Socrates said.

For the most part, I agree with Millman’s statements. They are also consistent with much of the Eastern traditions. An essential aspect of the meditative traditions is to “pacify the mind”. They sometimes even use stronger longer of “killing the mind.” But at other times, they make the distinction between the “aware mind” versus the “monkey mind” or the “shining mind” versus the “stirring mind.” But in terms of the untrained mind (which is the mind of over 99% of people), I agree with Millman. I just wouldn’t call it “evolutionary.”

Millman would have already made ethical judgment towards any begger, so, he should not have thought twice about ignoring him. But because his story, is going through a transformation, he had these menacing mind talks. Do you think if you were in the same situation as him, would you give the begger money or use your self-consciousness to clear negative mind noise? I am wondering if a second time in the same situation would make one change their reaction…

This is quoted from the book; “A scrawny young teenager came up to me. “Spare some change, can’t you?” “No, sorry,” I said, not feeling sorry at all. As I walked away I thought, “Get a job.” Then vague guilts came into my mind; I’d said no to a penniless beggar. Angry thoughts arose. “He shouldn’t walk up to people like that!” I was halfway down the block before I realized all the mental noise i had tuned in to, and the tension it was causing – just because some guy had asked me for money and I’d said no. In that instant I let it go.”

I finished the peaceful warrior and found it enjoyable. The preview of Dan’s second book (Sacred Journey of the peaceful warrior) sums up what he was expressing through his life.

There was one part I have heard before where the dialog between Dan and Soc was flat, with no meaning. Thank-you.

I would like to balance the four functions Jung describes (thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition) in your Individuation Process page. How do I know when feeling and sensation are active in everyday events? Could you give me an example? Thank-you.

Brett, please use the related guide page to address your questions.

The Individuation process page has not got a comments section.

I was walking in the bush on a moonlit windy night. The moving branches displayed a moving shadow, I was startled at first thought someone was behind me. Then I put the moonlight and the moving branches together and summed up what had happened without turning around. Was my thinking a Feeling, thinking, intuition or sensation? Thank-you.

I didn’t realize the comment sections weren’t open on that other guide. The psychological types represent our dominant orientations for processing information. When you were startled, was your attention on your body or the fear itself? Was your mind focused on “what could that be”? No need to answer here.

But the main thing about psychological types, from a Jungian perspective, is to understand what your dominant and inferior types are so you can develop your weakest side. Taking an Enneagram assessment test can help you determine your dominant type. In that system, it’s either thinking, feeling, or sensing.

Thank-you for your reply. You gave me an example of what I believe would be my dominant (being the first impression of the event) type. The second instance you described, is that too my dominant type? I do already know what it was that brings me fear. Can you follow up with this scenario? I have done enneagram questions before, and I am hopeless in giving a true response as all multiple question apply to equally.

“I have done enneagram questions before, and I am hopeless in giving a true response as all multiple question apply to equally.”

In my experience, when people say things like this, it’s often because they are “out of center” and analyzing things in their heads. If, for example, you read detailed descriptions of each Type, there’s no way you’re going to relate equally to all of them. Only one (sometimes a few) will strike a deep cord within you. It may leave you feeling “raw” and exposed.

Using the example you provided isn’t really going to help in this context. Do you mostly live in your head (mind/thoughts/analysis), your body (gut/sensations/sensory perception), or feelings? We all use all of them, but one tends to be more dominant than the others.

Thank-you. I agree with you Quote “If, for example, you read detailed descriptions of each Type, there’s no way you’re going to relate equally to all of them”. You might think I’m procrastinating as I want to work this out. Quote” Superior Function versus Inferior Function We like to do things we’re good at and avoid doing things in which we feel inadequate. Thus, we develop specific skills while undeveloped capacities remain in the unconscious. Jung grouped these four functions into pairs: thinking and feeling, sensing and intuiting”. Follow me for a sec, I have determined my superior function is Thinking, that would leave my inferior function to feeling. I assume sensing and intuition would be in the middle. I’m going to give the answer that you will give to my question, how do I bring the four functions to the middle? Answer ; center yourself. Do you agree or tell me what I should be doing?

Brett, I can’t really speak to what you should be doing. From a Jungian perspective (as well as transpersonal psychology), you would develop your inferior function and grow in that line of intelligence. I borrow the concept of the Center from the Taoist tradition. Western psychology mainly seeks to build a healthy ego while Eastern traditions mainly focus on transcending the ego.

Is the answer to “center yourself”? Sure. But most likely you’ll only be able to do this temporarily (representing a “state” of consciousness), while if you develop via various practices, you establish different structural changes that become more stable.

How to Center Yourself.

I like this article and want to learn more. I’m sending you my questions in this article as there isn’t a comments section.

I have so many questions, do I really need these answered to be comfortable with learning? Or should I take a calming with acceptance approach, that will eventually find the answers I seek? Should I go ahead and ask… ok I will ask. In the four centers, take in information via the physical center, interpret experience via the emotional center, evaluate the world via the mental center. Could all be take in information? Thank-you.

Brett, I just opened the comment section on that centering guide. Please post your question there and then I’ll reply.

Is it always a Heroes journey to take on what seems an insurmountable task? I see this at the beginning of inspirational films. Thank-you.

Always be careful with the term “always.”

Remember that what Campbell was ultimately highlighting with his monomyth structure was a psychological process of development. So it’s best to keep that in context.

Insurmountable tasks can sometimes be a catalyst for one’s journey, but this is not always the case.

In films and storytelling, you need major a problem for the hero/protagonist to face. Otherwise, there’s no story.

With what you said in keeping the psychological process in context. I was thinking of the film where a football coach leaves a successful career in the city, to coach no-hoper orphans in the country. My first impression was that the coach is on a hero’s journey with much to lose but great inward comfort to gain. Now I think it is the orphan footballers who are on a hero’s journey, (by leading as an example of being an orphan and becoming successful to inspire them to do the same) to stand up with confidence to be equal to the rest of the world. The movie is twelve mighty orphans. Is this reasonable thinking and do you see different interpretation? Thank-you

I can’t really comment as I haven’t seen the film. In any decent film, multiple characters have “arcs.” In many cases, the coach in sports films plays the mentor/sage role but then has his own transformation as well. This is the case with Gandalf the Gray who has to “die” and be resurrected, transforming into Gandalf the White.

Merry Christmas Scott digital guide. Type to you soon:)

Does the hero’s journey have the same thoughts and feelings for a woman as a man?

From a Jungian perspective, the process would be different.

As Jungian Robert A. Johnson highlights in many of his books, the myths related to the feminine psyche are different than the myths related to the masculine. As such, they follow a different structure and aim.

That said, because there’s an anima in each male psyche and an animus in each female psyche, a part of us can relate to the hero’s journey in its totality. Hence, a heroine can go on a similar hero’s journey as a man.

What an excellent and thorough treatment. Thanks for these invaluable insights for my writing class.

Thank you for the feedback, Craig!

I love this observation about modern cinematic heroes: “Many popular characters in action films like Marvel and DC Comics superheroes, James Bond, Ethan Hunt (Mission Impossible), Indiana Jones, etc. never actually transform.”

Have you written elsewhere at greater length on this topic? I thought I read an article on this topic a few years back but don’t remember where! Certainly the weightiness of the observation was such a lightbulb moment.

Thanks and kind regards M.

You can find a more detailed archetypal decoding of the hero here:

https://scottjeffrey.com/hero-archetype/

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The Metamorphosis of the Hero: Principles, Processes, and Purpose

This article examines the phenomenon of heroic metamorphosis: what it is, how it unfolds, and why it is important. First, we describe six types of transformation of the hero: mental, moral, emotional, spiritual, physical, and motivational. We then argue that these metamorphoses serve five functions: they foster developmental growth, promote healing, cultivate social unity, advance society, and deepen cosmic understanding. Internal and external sources of transformation are discussed, with emphasis on the importance of mentorship in producing metamorphic growth. Next we describe the three arcs of heroic transformation: egocentricity to sociocentricity, dependence to autonomy, and stagnation to growth. We then discuss three activities that promote heroic metamorphosis as well as those that hinder it. Implications for research on human growth and development are discussed.

Introduction

One of the most revered deities in Hinduism is Ganesha, a god symbolizing great wisdom and enlightenment. Ganesha’s most striking attribute is his unusual appearance. In images throughout India and southeast Asia, he is shown to be a man with an ordinary human body and the head of an elephant. According to legend, when Ganesha was a boy, he behaved foolishly in preventing his father Shiva from entering his own home. Shiva realized that his son needed an entirely new way of thinking, a fresh way of seeing the world. To achieve this aim, Shiva cut off Ganesha’s human head and replaced it with that of an elephant, an animal representing unmatched wisdom, intelligence, reflection, and listening. Ganesha was transformed from a naïve boy operating with little conscious awareness into a strong, wise, and fully awakened individual.

This article is about how people undergo dramatic, positive change. We focus on heroic metamorphosis – what it is, how it comes about, and why it’s important. Unlike Ganesha, one need not undergo dramatic physical change to experience heroic transformation. One must engage in any of three types of activities that we describe in this article: (1) training regimens, (2) spiritual practices, and (3) the hero’s journey. Anyone who transforms as a result of these activities emerges a brand-new person, a much-improved version of one’s previous self. Metamorphosis and transformation are both defined as “changing form,” a process that precisely describes the massive alteration undergone by Ganesha. Having undergone the hero’s journey as the pathway to transformation, Ganesha sees the world with greater clarity and insight. The hero’s journey inevitably involves setback, suffering, and a death of some type. What dies is usually the former self, the untransformed version of oneself that sees the world “through a glass darkly” ( Bergman, 1961 ). Ganesha’s decapitation happens to us all metaphorically; the journey marks the death of a narrow, immature way of seeing the world and the birth of a wider, more enlightened way of viewing life.

Overview of Heroic Metamorphosis

Metamorphic change pervades the natural world, from the changing of the seasons to biological growth and decay ( Wade, 1998 ; Allison, 2015 ; Efthimiou, 2015 ). The universe itself is subject to immense transformation on both a microscopic scale as well as a trans -universal scale. Biological cells grow, mutate, and die, and on a much grander scale the galaxies of the universe are in a constant state of flux. Darwinian theory portrays all of life as engaged in an inescapable struggle to survive in response to ever-changing circumstances. Life presents an ultimatum to all organisms: change as all phenomena in the universe must change, or fall.

Heroic transformation appears to be a prized and universal phenomenon that is cherished and encouraged in all human societies ( Allison and Goethals, 2017 ; Efthimiou and Franco, 2017 ; Efthimiou et al., 2018a , b ). Surprisingly, until the past decade there has been almost no scholarship on the topic of heroic transformation. Two early seminal works in psychology offered hints about the processes involved in dramatic change and growth in human beings. In 1902, William James addressed the topic of spiritual conversion in his classic volume, The Varieties of Religious Experience . These conversion experiences bear a striking similarity to descriptions of the hero’s transformation as reported by famed mythologist Campbell (1949) . These experiences included feelings of peace, clarity, union with all of humanity, newness, happiness, generosity, and being part of something bigger than oneself. James emphasized the pragmatic side of religious conversion, noting that the mere belief and trust in a deity could bring about significant positive change independent of whether the deity actually exists. This pragmatic side of spirituality is emphasized today by Thich Nhat Hanh, who observes that transformation as a result of following Buddhist practices can occur in the absence of a belief in a supreme being. Millions of Buddhists have enjoyed the transformative benefits of religion described by James simply by practicing the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path ( Hanh, 1999 , p. 170).

The second early psychological treatment of human transformation was published in 1905 by Sigmund Freud. His Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality described life-altering transformative stages in childhood involving oral, anal, phallic, and latent developmental patterns. None of these changes were particularly “heroic” but they did underscore Freud’s belief in the inevitability of immense psychological change. Although Freud suggested that people tend to resist change in adulthood, several subsequent schools of psychological thought have since proposed mechanisms for transformative change throughout the human lifespan. Humanistic theories, in particular, have embraced the idea that humans are capable of a long-term transformation into self-actualized individuals (e.g., Maslow, 1943 ). Developmental psychologists have also proposed models of transformative growth throughout human life (e.g., Erikson, 1994 ). Recent theories of self-processes portray humans as open to change and growth under some conditions ( Sedikides and Hepper, 2009 ) but resistant under others ( Swann, 2012 ). In the present day, positive psychologists are uncovering key mechanisms underlying healthy transformative growth in humans ( Lopez and Snyder, 2011 ; Seligman, 2011 ).

An important source of transformation resides in tales of heroism told and re-told to countless generations throughout the ages. These mythologies reflect humanity’s longing for transformative growth, and they are packed with wisdom and inspiration ( Allison and Goethals, 2014 ). Just reading, hearing, or observing stories of heroism can stir us and transform us.

According to Campbell (2004 , p. xvi), these hero tales “provide a field in which you can locate yourself” and they “carry the individual through the stages of life” (p. 9). The resultant transformations seen in heroic stories “are infinite in their revelation” ( Campbell, 1988 , p. 183). Rank (1909 , p. 153) observed that “everyone is a hero in birth, where he undergoes a tremendous psychological as well as physical transformation, from the condition of a little water creature living in a realm of amniotic fluid into an air-breathing mammal.” This transformation at birth foreshadows a lifetime of transformative journeys for human beings.

According to Allison and Goethals (2013 , 2017 ), hero stories reveal three different targets of heroic transformation: setting, self , and society . These three loci of transformations parallel Campbell’s (1949) three major stages of the hero’s journey: departure (or separation), initiation, and return. The departure from the hero’s familiar world represents a transformation of one’s normal, safe environment; the initiation stage is awash with challenge, suffering, mentoring, and transformative growth; and the final stage of return represents the hero’s opportunity to use her newfound gifts to transform the world. The sequence of these stages is critical, with each transformation essential for producing the next one.

Without a change in setting, the hero cannot change herself, and without a change in herself, the hero cannot change the world. Our focus here is on the hero’s transformation of the self, but this link in the chain necessarily requires some consideration of the links preceding and following it. The mythic hero must be cast out of her familiar world and into a different world, otherwise there can be no departure from her status quo. Once transformed, the hero must use her newly enriched state to better the world, otherwise the hero’s transformation lacks social significance.

The hero’s transformation plays a pivotal role in her ability to achieve her objectives on the journey. During the quest, “ineffable realizations are experienced” and “things that before had been mysterious are now fully understood” ( Campbell, 1972 , p. 219). The ineffability of these new insights stems from their unconscious origins. Jungian principles of the collective unconscious form the basis of Campbell’s theorizing about hero mythology. Le Grice (2013 , p. 153) notes that “myths are expressions of the imagination, shaped by the archetypal dynamics of the psyche.” As such, the many recurring elements of the mythic hero’s journey have their “inner, psychological correlates” ( Campbell, 1972 , p. 153). The hero’s journey is packed with social symbols and motifs that connect the hero to her deeper self, and these unconscious images must be encountered, and conflicts with them must be resolved, to bring about transformation ( Campbell, 2004 ). Overall, the hero’s outer journey is a representation of an inner, psychological journey that involves “leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition” ( Campbell, 1988 , p. 152).

Allison and Smith (2015) identified five types of heroic transformation: physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, and moral. A sixth type, motivational transformation, was later proposed by Allison and Goethals (2017) . These six transformation types span two broad categories: physical transformation, which we call transmutation , and psychological transformation, which we call enlightenment . Physical transmutations are endemic to ancient mythologies that featured transforming humans into stars, statues, and animals. Today, transmutation pervades superhero tales of ordinary people succumbing to industrial accidents and spider bites that physically transform them into superheroes and supervillains. These ancient and modern tales of transmutation offer symbolism of the hidden powers residing within each of us, powers that emerge only after dramatic situations coax them out of hibernation. Efthimiou (2015 , 2017 ), Franco et al. (2016) , and Efthimiou and Allison (2017) have written at length about the power and potential of biological transmutation to change the world. The phenomenon of neurogenesis refers to the development of new brain cells in the hippocampus through exercise, diet, meditation, and learning. This transmutative healing and growing can occur even after catastrophic brain trauma. Efthimiou (2017) describes many examples of transmutation occurring as a result of regeneration or restoration processes that refer to an organism’s ability to grow, heal, and re-create itself.

Epigenetic changes in DNA and the science of human limb regeneration are two examples of modern day heroic transmutations ( Efthimiou, 2015 ).

The other five types of heroic transformation – moral, mental, emotional, spiritual, and motivational – comprise the second broad category of transformation that we call enlightenment. Emotional transformations refer to “changes of the heart” ( Allison and Smith, 2015 , p. 23) involving growth in empathic concern for others; we call this transformation compassion .

Spiritual transformations refer to changes in belief systems about the spiritual world and about the workings of life, the world, and the universe; we call this change transcendence . Mental transformations refer to leaps in intellectual growth and significant increases in illuminating insights about oneself and others; we label this wisdom . Moral transformations occur when heroes undergo a dramatic shift from immorality to morality; we call this redemption . Finally, a motivational transformation refers to a complete shift in one’s purpose or perceived direction in life; we label this change a calling (see also Dik et al., 2017 ).

Purpose of the Hero’s Transformation

The purpose of the hero’s journey is to provide a context or blueprint for human metamorphosis. Why do we need such life-changing growth? Allison and Setterberg (2016) argue that people are born “incomplete” psychologically and will remain incomplete until they encounter challenges that produce suffering and require sacrifice to resolve. Transcending life’s challenges enables the hero to “undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness,” requiring them “to think a different way” ( Campbell, 1988 , p. 155). This shift offers a new “map or picture of the universe and allows us to see ourselves in relationship to nature” ( Campbell, 1991 , p. 56). Buddhist traditions and twelve-step programs of recovery refer to transformation as an awakening. Using similar language, Campbell (2004 , p. 12) described the function of the journey as a necessary voyage designed to “wake you up.” The long-term survival of the human race may depend on such an awakening, as it becomes increasingly clear that the unawakened, pre-transformed state is unsustainable at the collective level. As individuals, transformation is necessary for our psychological, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being. Collectively, the survival of our planet may depend on broader, enlightened thinking from leaders who must be transformed themselves if they are to make wise decisions about human rights, climate change, peace and war, healthcare, education, and myriad other pressing issues. Nearly 50 years ago, Heschel (1973) opined that “the predicament of contemporary man is grave. We seem to be destined either for a new mutation or for destruction” (p. 176, italics added).

Allison and Goethals (2017) propose five reasons why transformation is such a key element in the hero’s journey, and why it is essential for promoting our own and others’ welfare. First, transformations foster developmental growth. Early human societies understood the usefulness of initiation rituals in promoting the transition from childhood to adulthood ( van Gennep, 1909 ). A number of scholars, including Campbell, have pointed to the failure of our postmodern society to appreciate the psychological value of rites and rituals ( Campbell, 1988 ; Rohr, 2011b ; Le Grice, 2013 ). Stories of young people “coming-of-age” are common in mythic hero tales about children “awakening to the new world that opens at adolescence” ( Campbell, 1988 , p. 167). The hero’s journey “helps us pass through and deal with the various stages of life from birth to death” ( Campbell, 1991 , p. 56).

The second function of heroic transformation is that it promotes healing. Allison and Goethals (2016) argue that sharing stories about hero transformations can offer many of the same benefits as group therapy ( Yalom and Leszcz, 2005 ). These benefits include the promotion of hope; the benefit of knowing that others share one’s emotional experiences; the fostering of self-awareness; the relief of stress; and the development of a sense of meaning about life. A growing number of clinical psychologists invoke hero transformations to help their clients acquire the heroic attributes of strength, resilience, and courage ( Grace, 2016 ). Recent research on post-traumatic growth demonstrates that people can overcome severe trauma and even use it to transform themselves into stronger, healthier persons than they were before the trauma ( Ramos and Leal, 2013 ).

The third function of transformations focuses on their ability to promote social unity.

According to Campbell (1972 , p. 57), hero transformations “drop or lift [heroes] out of themselves, so that their conduct is not their own but of the species, the society.” The transformed hero is “selfless, boundless, without ego.” The most meaningful transformations are a journey from egocentricity to sociocentricity, from elitism to egalitarianism ( Campbell, 1949 ; Wilber, 2007a , b ; Rohr, 2011b ). No longer psychologically isolated from the world, the transformed person enjoys a sense of communion with others. In his description of the hero’s journey, Campbell (1949 , p. 25) wrote, “where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” Friedman (2017) has introduced the construct of self-expansiveness describing how boundaries between ourselves and others, and even between ourselves and the world, can be seen as permeable. As Friedman puts it, “viewing others as an alternate manifestation of oneself can promote heroism, as one’s individual life is not viewed as separate” (p. 15).

Fourth, transformations also advance society in meaningful ways. The apex of the hero’s journey is the hero’s boon, or gift, to society. It is this gift that separates the hero’s journey from simply being a test of personal survival. For the quest to be heroic, the classic heroic protagonist must put her newly acquired insights and gifts to use in order to better the world ( Campbell, 1949 ; Rohr, 2011b ). The heroic boon to society follows the successful completion of the individual journey, and so we can say that the social boon is entirely dependent upon the hero’s personal transformation that made the individual quest a success. Hero mythology, according to Campbell (1972 , p. 48), is designed to teach us that society is not a “perfectly static organization” but represents a “movement of the species forward.”

Finally, transformations contribute to a deepening of our spiritual and cosmic understanding of the universe. According to Campbell (1988 , p. 152), the hero’s transformation involves learning “to experience the supernormal range of human spiritual life.” Myths, he said, “bring us into a level of consciousness that is spiritual” (p. 19). In every hero tale, the hero must “die spiritually” and then be “reborn to a larger way of living” (p. 141), a process that is the enactment of a universal spiritual theme of death being the necessary experience for producing new life ( Campbell, 1991 , p. 102). Hero transformations supply cosmic wisdom. van Gennep (1909) observed that transformative rituals in early human tribes have “been linked to the celestial passages, the revolutions of the planets, and the phases of the moon. It is indeed a cosmic conception that relates the stages of human existence to those of plant and animal life and, by a sort of pre- scientific divination, joins them to the great rhythms of the universe” (p. 194).

Internal and External Sources of Transformation

Allison and Goethals (2017) distinguished between sources of transformative change that come from within the individual and sources that originate from outside the individual. There are several types of internal sources of transformation. For example, transformation can arise as a result of natural human development. An initial transformative event, a sperm cell fertilizing an egg, leads to a zygote transforming into an embryo, which then becomes a fetus, a baby, a toddler, a child, an adolescent, a young adult, a mid-life adult, and an elderly adult. Another internal source of change resides in people’s needs and goals. According to Maslow’s (1943) pyramid of needs, an individual is motivated to fulfill the needs at a particular level once lower level needs are satisfied. Once the needs at the four lower levels are satisfied, one is no longer concerned with them or driven by them. In effect, one transitions to higher levels and eventually achieves self-actualization, during which one might enjoy peak experiences of having discovered meaning, beauty, truth, and a sense of oneness with the world – a transformative state reminiscent of James’ (1902) description of the religiously converted individual.

A third internal source of transformative change is human transgression and failure. People often undergo significant change after being humbled by their “fallings and failings” ( Rohr, 2011b , p. xv). Campbell (2004 , p. 133) cautioned that not all heroic quests conclude with heroic triumph. “There is always the possibility for a fiasco,” he said. These occasional fiascos can inspire heroic transformations by producing the kind of suffering needed as impetus for a greater hero journey. It is a general truth that for substance abusers to be sufficiently motivated to seek recovery from their addictions, they must reach a profound level of pain and suffering, commonly referred to as “hitting rock bottom.” Suffering, according to Rohr (2011b , p. 68), “doesn’t accomplish anything tangible but creates space for learning and love.” This space has been called liminal space ( Turner, 1966 ; van Gennep, 1909 ), defined as the transitional time and space between one state of being and an entirely different state of being. In liminal space, one has been stripped of one’s previous life, humbled, and silenced.

Transgressions, and the liminal space that follows them, are the fertile soil from which heroic transformations bloom.

Another internal source of transformation is what Allison and Goethals (2017) call an enlightened dawning of responsibility. This dawning is captured in a simple phrase, composed of 10 two-letter words, “If it is to be, it is up to me” ( Phipps, 2011 ). There is a long history of social psychological work devoted to studying the forces at work that promote the dawning of responsibility in emergency settings ( Latane and Darley, 1969 ). Research has shown that in a crisis a small but courageous minority of people do step up to do the right thing even when there are strong pressures to avoid assuming responsibility. These fearless social aberrants, most of whom are ordinary citizens, are able to transcend their circumstances and transform from ordinary to extraordinary. For example, about one-third of the participants in Milgram’s (1963) obedience study defied the authority’s command to continue applying painful electric shocks to another participant. Whistleblowers are another notable example; they have the mettle to step up and do right thing at great potential cost to themselves ( Brown, 2017 ). Bystander training is now available to cultivate this dawning of responsibility in situations where transformative leadership is needed ( Heroic Imagination Project, 2018 ).

External situational forces can also evoke transformative change. Situations, for example, can trigger emotional responses that transform us. This idea is consistent with the wisdom of James (1902 , p. 77), who observed that “emotional occasions……are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements.” Emotions need not be negative to induce change. Feelings of elevation can transform people psychologically and behaviorally ( Haidt, 2003 ). People become elevated after witnessing a morally beautiful act, and this elevated feeling has been shown to produce altruistic acts ( Thomson and Siegel, 2013 ). A second external source of transformation is the series of trials that all heroes must undergo during their journey. Suffering can be an internal cause of transformation when it results from self-destructive actions, but suffering caused by outside forces can serve as an external source of transformation. Campbell (1988 , p. 154) argued that “trials are designed to see to it that the intending hero should be really a hero. Is he really a match for this task?” The time of greatest peril for the hero occurs when she enters the belly of the whale ( Campbell, 1949 ). In stories of Jonah and Pinocchio, the belly can be entered literally, but typically the belly is symbolic of the hero’s deepest inner-demons which must be “disempowered, overcome, and controlled” (p. 180). According to Campbell (1988) , the hero’s journey consists of the psychological task of overcoming one’s fears and slaying one’s dragons. This transformative process has been explored by positive psychologists who refer to it as part of the journey of post-traumatic growth, during which people are able to transform tragedy into triumph ( Rendon, 2015 ).

A third external source of transformation is the vast hero literature and mythology to which we are exposed throughout our lives. Allison and Goethals (2014 , 2016 , 2017 ) have long argued that narratives about heroes, pervasive in all of storytelling from Gilgamesh to the present day, serve as a nourishing catalyst for transformative change. The central premise of the heroic leadership dynamic (HLD) is that our consumption of heroic tales takes place within an interactive system that is energetically in motion, and drawing us toward rising heroes and repelling us from falling ones. The HLD framework proposes two transformative functions of hero stories: an epistemic function and an energizing function. Hero narratives supply epistemic growth by offering mental schemas that describe prosocial action, reveal basic truths about human existence, unpack life paradoxes, and cultivate emotional intelligence. The epistemic value of hero tales is revealed in Campbell’s (1988) observation that hero mythology offers insights into “what can be known but not told” (p. 206) and that “mythology is the womb of mankind’s initiation to life and death” ( Campbell, 2002 , p. 34). Hero tales also offer energizing benefits, providing people with agency and efficacy. Narratives of heroism bring about moral elevation, repair psychic wounds, and promote psychological growth ( Kinsella et al., 2015 , 2017 ; Allison and Goethals, 2016 ).

The fourth external source of transformation is the social environment of the hero. In hero narratives and classic mythology, the hero’s journey is populated by numerous friends, companions, lovers, parent figures, and mentors who assist the hero on her quest ( Campbell, 1949 ). The hero is always helped along the journey by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Campbell also discussed the importance of encounters with parental figures; male heroes seek atonement with father figures, and female heroes seek it with mother figures.

Campbell also described the hero’s brush with lovers and temptresses, who can either assist, distract, or do harm to the hero. Most people who are asked to identify their heroes describe a mentor or coach who exerted a transformative effect on them ( Allison and Goethals, 2011 ; Goethals and Allison, 2012 , 2014 ).

Campbell (1949) argued that the appearance of a mentor during the initiation stage of the hero’s journey is a critically important component of the quest. Mentors help heroes become transformed, and later, having succeeded on their journeys, these transformed heroes then assume the role of mentor for others who are at earlier stages of their quests. In short, “transformed people transform people” ( Rohr, 2014 , p. 263). Mentors can have a transformative effect with their words of advice, with their actions, or both. Words can fall on deaf ears but one’s actions, attitudes, and lifestyle can leave a lasting imprint. St. Francis of Assisi expressed it this way: “You must preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary use words” ( Rohr, 2014 , p. 263). A mentor can be viewed as a type of hero who enhances the lives of others ( Kinsella et al., 2015 ).

The hero’s journey offers a transformative experience toward wisdom that can be shared later with others. In short, the journey prepares people for leadership roles. According to Burns (1978) , transforming leaders strive to satisfy followers’ lower needs (e.g., survival and safety) in preparation for elevating them to work together to produce significant higher-level changes. Burns portrayed transforming leadership as collaborative engagement “in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality” (p. 20). Followers are thus “elevated,” creating a “new cadre of leaders” (p. 20). This conceptualization is consistent with Campbell’s (1949) emphasis on the role of mentorship during the hero’s journey. The mentor elevates the hero and prepares her for her future role as a mentor to others. Burns’ framework also makes explicit a notion that is largely implicit in Maslow’s (1943) model, namely, that the self-actualized person has become an elder, a mentor figure, and a moral actor who wields transformative influence over others. Erikson’s (1994) theory of lifelong development makes the similar claim that older generative individuals, having been given so much early in life, are now in a position to give back to younger people.

Other theories also point to the transformative effect of mentoring and leadership.

Hollander (1995) proposed a two-way influence relationship between a leader and followers aimed primarily at attaining mutual goals. Hollander defined leadership as “a shared experience, a voyage through time” with the leader in partnership with followers to pursue common interests.

For Hollander, “a major component of the leader–follower relationship is the leader’s perception of his or herself relative to followers, and how they in turn perceive the leader” (p. 55). Tyler and Lind (1992) have shown that these perceptions are crucially important in cementing good follower loyalty. Followers will perceive a leader as a “legitimate” authority when she adheres to basic principles of procedural justice. Leaders who show fairness, respect, and concern for the needs of followers are able to build followers’ self-esteem, a central step in Maslow’s (1943) pyramid, thereby fostering followers’ transformative movement toward meeting higher-level needs.

Three Transformative Arcs of Heroism

Allison and Goethals (2017) identified three deficits of the hero at the initial stage of her journey. The untransformed hero is lacking (1) a sociocentric view of life; (2) an autonomy from societal norms that discourage transformation; and (3) a mindset of growth and change. Below we explain how the arc of heroic metamorphosis bends toward sociocentricity, autonomy, and growth.

Egocentricity to Sociocentricity

Campbell (2004 , p. 55) believed that one of the central functions of hero mythology is to “get a sense of everything – yourself, your society, the universe, and the mystery beyond – as one great unit.” He claimed that “when we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness” ( Campbell, 1988 , p. 155). In most hero narratives, the hero begins the journey disconnected from the world. She is a self-centered, prideful individual whose sole preoccupation is establishing her identity, her career, and her material world. The entire point of her hero journey is to awaken her to the broader goal of thinking beyond herself in achieving communion with the entire world and universe ( Friedman, 2017 ). To the extent that we spend the first stages of our lives selfishly building our personal identities and careers, we may be designed to awaken in later stages to our original predisposition toward sociocentricity ( Rohr, 2011b ). Campbell (2001) urged us all to cultivate this greater purpose of forming compassionate unification with all of humanity. He believed this awakening is the central function of hero mythology.

Dependency to Autonomy

A person’s willingness to deviate from the dominant cultural pattern is essential for heroic transformation. Heroes do the right thing, and do what they must do, regardless of authority, tradition, and consequence. Maslow (1943) called this characteristic autonomy . “There are the ‘strong’ people,” wrote Maslow, “who can easily weather disagreement or opposition, who can swim against the stream of public opinion and who can stand up for the truth at great personal cost” (p. 379). Fulfillment of the lower needs in the pyramid is essential for autonomy to develop in individuals. “People who have been made secure and strong in the earliest years tend to remain secure and strong thereafter in the face of whatever threatens” (p. 380). Zimbardo (2008) has championed the idea that heroes are people with the ability to resist social pressures that promote evil, and that such resistance requires the moral courage to be guided by one’s heart rather than by social cues. Zimbardo and other hero activists drive home the point that “the opposite of a hero isn’t a villain; it’s a bystander” ( Chakrabortty, 2010 ; Langdon, 2018 ). While the transformed hero enjoys “union with the world,” she remains an autonomous individual who can establish her own path in the world that is unfettered by pressures to conform to social pressures.

Stagnation to Growth

One can be autonomous but not necessarily growing and stretching toward realizing one’s full potential. The pre-transformed hero naturally resists change, and thus severe setbacks may be her only impetus to budge. Without a prod, she will remain comfortable in her stagnation, oblivious to the idea that anything needs changing. The hero’s journey marks the death of pretense and inauthenticity, and the birth of the person one is meant to be. Campbell (1988 , p. 168) described the process as “killing the infantile ego and bringing forth an adult.” Sperry (2011) has argued that people are so attached to their false selves that they fear the death of the false self even more than they fear the death of their physical self. Our growth can also be inhibited by a phenomenon called the crab bucket syndrome ( Simmons, 2012 ). This syndrome describes the consequences of our entrenchment with our families, our friends, and our communities, and they with us. Any attempt we make to crawl up and out of the bucket is met with failure as the crabs below us pull us back down. For most of us, the hero’s journey represents the best way, and perhaps the only way, to escape the bucket and discover our true selves. Campbell (1991) argued that a healthy, transformed individual accepts and embraces her growth and contradictions. “The psychological transformation,” wrote Campbell, “would be that whatever was formerly endured is now known, loved, and served” (p. 207).

Three Activities Promoting Transformation

Can anything be done to promote heroic transformation? We noted earlier that one cannot be in charge of one’s own heroic transformation. According to Rohr (2011a) , engineering our own personal metamorphosis on our own “is by definition not transformation. If we try to change our ego with the help of our ego, we only have a better-disguised ego” (p. 5). There are things we can do, however, to make transformation more likely. From our review of theory and research on heroism, developmental processes, leadership, and spiritual growth, we can identify three broad categories of activities that encourage transformation. These activities include participation in training and developmental programs, spiritual practices, and (of course) the hero’s journey. On the surface these activities appear dissimilar, yet engaging in these practices produces similar transformative results.

Training and Development Practices

In examining the characteristics of people who risked their lives to save others, Kohen et al. (2017) discovered several important commonalities. They found that these heroes “imagined situations where help was needed and considered how they would act; they had an expansive sense of empathy, not simply with those who might be considered ‘like them’ but also those who might be thought of as ‘other’ in some decisive respect; they regularly took action to help people, often in small ways; and they had some experience or skill that made them confident about undertaking the heroic action in question” (p. 1). With this observation, Kohen et al. (2017) raise four points about preparation for heroism. First, they note the importance of imagining oneself as ready and capable of heroic action when it is needed. This imagination component involves the development of mental scripts for helping, an idea central to Zimbardo’s Heroic Imagination Project (2018) hero training programs. Established a decade ago, the Heroic Imagination Project aims to encourage people to envision themselves as heroes and to “prepare heroes in training for everyday heroic action.” The group achieves this goal by training ordinary people to “master social and situational forces as well as their automatic human tendencies in order to act in ways that are kind, prosocial, and even heroic.” Participants are trained to improve their situational awareness, leadership skills, moral courage, and sense of efficacy in situations that require action to save or improve lives.

Second, Kohen et al. (2017) emphasize the importance of empathy, observing that heroes show empathic concern for both similar and dissimilar others. A growing body of research supports the idea that empathy can be enhanced through training, an idea corroborated by the proliferation of empathy training programs around the world ( Tenney, 2017 ). Svoboda (2013) even argues that empathy and compassion are muscles that can be strengthened with repeated use. Third, Kohen et al. (2017) note that heroes regularly take action to help people, often in small ways. Doing so may promote the self-perception that one has heroic attributes, thereby increasing one’s chances of intervening when a true emergency arises. Finally, Kohen et al. (2017) observe that heroes often have either formal or informal training in saving lives. These skills and experiences may be acquired from training for the military, law enforcement, or firefighting, or they may derive from emergency medical training, lifeguard training, and CPR classes ( Svoboda, 2013 ).

Another example of training practices can be found in initial rituals and rites of passages found in many cultures throughout the world. Although modern Western cultures have eliminated the majority of these practices, most cultures throughout history did deem it necessary to require adolescents, particularly boys, to undergo rituals that signaled their transformation into maturity and adulthood ( Turner, 1966 ; van Gennep, 1909 ). In many African and Australian tribes, initiation requires initiates to experience pain, often involving circumcision or genital mutilation, and it is also not uncommon for rituals to include a challenging survival test in nature. These initiation tests are considered necessary for individuals to become full members of the tribe, allowing them participate in ceremonies or social rituals such as marriage. Initiations are often culminated with large elaborate ceremonies for adolescents to be recognized publicly as full-fledged adult members of their society.

Child-rearing can serve as another type of transformative training practice. A striking example can be seen in Fagin-Jones’s (2017) research on how parents raised the rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. Fagin-Jones found that the parenting practices of rescuers differed significantly from the parenting of passive bystanders. Rescuers reported having loving, supportive relationships with parents, whereas bystanders reported relationships with parents as cold, negative, and avoidant. More rescuers than bystanders recalled their parents as affectionate and engaged in praising, hugging, kissing, joking, and smiling. These early cohesive family bonds encouraged other-oriented relationships based on tolerance, inclusion, and openness.

Rescuers reported that their family unit engendered traits of independence, potency, risk-taking, decisiveness, and tolerance. Bystanders, in contrast, recalled a lack of familial closeness that engendered impotence, indecisiveness, and passivity. Rescuers’ parents were less likely than bystanders’ parents to express negative Jewish stereotypes such as “dishonest,” “untrustworthy,” and “too powerful.” Overall, rescuers were raised to practice involvement in community, commitment to others’ welfare, and responsibility for the greater good. In contrast, bystanders’ parents assigned demonic qualities to Jews and promoted the idea that Jews deserved their fate.

Spiritual Practices

For millennia, spiritual gurus have extolled the benefits of engaging in a variety of spiritual practices aimed at improving one’s mental and emotional states. Recent research findings in cognitive neuroscience and positive psychology are now beginning to corroborate these benefits. Mindfulness in particular has attracted widespread popularity as well as considerable research about its implications for mental health. The key component of mindfulness as a mental state is its emphasis on focusing one’s awareness solely on the present moment. People who practice mindful meditation show significant decreases in stress, better coping skills, less depression, improved emotional regulation, and higher levels of resilience ( Hofmann et al., 2010 ). Mindful meditation quiets the mind and thus “wakes us up to what is happening,” allowing “contact with life” ( Hanh, 1999 , p. 81). Tolle (2005) argues that living in the present moment is a transformative experience avoided by most people because they habitually choose to clutter their minds with regrets about the past or fears about the future. He claims that “our entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself” (p. 99). Basking in the present moment is the basis of the psychological phenomenon of “flow” described by Csikszentmihalyi (2008) . When experiencing flow, people are “in the zone,” fully present, and completely “immersed in a feeling of energized focus” (p. 45).

The spiritual attribute of humility can also be transformative. When asked to name four cardinal virtues, St. Bernard is reported to have answered: “Humility, humility, humility, and humility” ( Kurtz and Ketcham, 1992 ). Humility has been shown to be linked to increased altruism, forgiveness, generosity, and self-control ( Worthington et al., 2017 ). One can argue that humility cannot be practiced, as the idea of getting better at humility runs contrary to being humble. However, we suspect that one can practice humility by adopting the habit of admitting mistakes, acknowledging personal faults, avoiding bragging, and being generous in assigning credit to others.

Gratitude is another transformative spiritual practice validated by recent research. Algoe (2012) found that gratitude improves sleep, patience, depression, energy, optimism, and relationship quality. Practitioners have developed gratitude therapy as a way of helping clients become happier, more agreeable, more open, and less neurotic. Moreover, neuroscientists have found that gratitude is associated with activity in areas of the brain associated with morality, reward, and value judgment ( Emmons and Stern, 2013 ). Closely related to gratitude are experiences with wonder and awe, which have been shown to increase generosity and a greater sense of connection with the world ( Piff et al., 2015 ). Enjoying regular doses of wonder is a telltale trait of the self-actualized individual ( Maslow, 1943 ).

Another transformative spiritual practice is forgiveness. Research shows that people who are able to forgive others have improved relationships, better mental health, lower stress and hostility, improved blood pressure, less depression, and a healthier immune system ( Worthington, 2013 ). “Letting go” is another spiritual practice that can produce transformation. It has also been called release, acceptance, or surrender. Buddhist teach Hanh (1999 , p. 78) claims that “letting go give us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness.” James (1902) also described the beneficial practice of letting go among religiously converted individuals: “Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all, and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing” (p. 110).

Finally, we turn to the complex emotion of love as a transformative agent. In addition to starring in Casablanca , Humphrey Bogart played the lead role in Sabrina , another film demonstrating the transformative power of love. In Sabrina , Bogart played the role of Linus, a workaholic CEO who has no time for love. His underachieving brother David begins a romance with a young woman named Sabrina, and it becomes clear that this budding relationship jeopardizes a multi-million-dollar deal that the company is about to consummate. To undermine the relationship, Linus pretends to show romantic interest in Sabrina, and he succeeds in winning her heart. Despite the pretense, Linus falls in love for the first time in his life, resigns as CEO, and runs away with Sabrina to Paris. Love has completely transformed him from a cold, greedy businessman into a warm, enlightened individual. Similar transformations in film and literature are seen in Ebenezer Scrooge (in A Christmas Carol ), the Grinch (in How the Grinch Stole Christmas ), Phil Connors (in Groundhog Day ), and George Banks (in Mary Poppins ).

In Man’s Search for Meaning , Frankl (1946 , p. 37) wrote, “The salvation of man is through love and in love.” Hanh (1999 , p. 170), moreover, weighs in that “love, compassion, joy, and equanimity are the very nature of an enlightened person.” Loving kindness also transforms us biologically ( Keltner, 2009 ). People who make kindness a habit have significantly lower levels of stress hormones such as cortisol. Making an effort to help others can lead to decreased levels of anxiety in individuals who normally avoid social situations. Being kind and even witnessing kindness have also been found to increase levels of oxytocin, a hormone associated with lower blood pressure, more sound sleep, and reduced cravings for drugs such as alcohol and cocaine. Loving others lights up the motivation and reward circuits of the limbic system in the brain ( Esch and Stefano, 2011 ). Research also reveals that people who routinely show acts of love live longer compared to people who perform fewer loving actions ( Vaillant, 2012 ).

The Hero’s Journey

We opened this article by noting that the only way most of us undergo transformation is to embark on the hero’s journey. While we have complete control over whether we receive training that can facilitate a heroic metamorphosis, and over whether we engage in spiritual practices, we have far less control over our participation in the classic hero’s journey. We can only remain open and receptive to the ride that awaits us. As we have noted, our departure on the journey can be jarring – we often experience an accident, illness, transgression, death, divorce, or disaster. The best we can do is fasten our seatbelts and trust that the darkness of our lot will eventually transform into lightness. But we cannot remain passive. During the journey we must be diligent in doing our part to secure allies and mentors, and to take actions that cultivate strengths such as resilience, courage, and resourcefulness ( Williams, 2018 ). After being transformed ourselves, we feel the obligation to transform others in the role of mentor. Having traversed the heroic path, we may use our heroism to craft a newfound purpose for our existence, a purpose that drives us to spend our remaining years making a positive difference in people’s lives. Bronk and Riches (2017) call this process heroism-guided purpose .

Additional Issues Worth Pondering

Several unexplored issues involving heroic transformation deserve more thorough treatment than we can devote to them here. These issues focus on education, religion, gender, inclusive transcendence, and barriers to transformation. We give brief attention to these topics below.

Education and Transformation

On July 16, 2003, legendary President of South Africa Nelson Mandela delivered a speech in support of the Mindset Network, a non-profit organization designed to improve educational opportunities for children of all ages. “Education,” he said, “is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” This statement attracted widespread media attention and remains a highly recurring internet meme today. A Google search of “education can change the world” yields thousands of hits echoing Mandela’s claim and extending the idea to include education being the key “to success,” “to happiness,” “to freedom,” “to the world,” and “to the future.” Summing up our supreme collective confidence in education, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock declared that “Education is the key to everything” ( Theirworld, 2017 ).

Are these claims true? We believe it is a mistake and perhaps even dangerous to equate education with transformation. Consider, for example, the link between education and crime. Some studies suggest that education mitigates crime ( Buonanno and Leonida, 2006 ; Machin et al., 2011 ) while other studies find that education either plays little or no role in preventing violence. Bergen and Pandey (2005) report that the vast majority of terrorists who perform violent acts are college educated. For example, all 12 men involved in the 1993 World Trade Center attack had a college education. All the pilots in the September 11 th terrorist attacks and their collaborators, as identified by the 9/11 commission, attended universities. The lead pilot, Mohamed Atta, was college-educated, and the operational planner, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, studied engineering in North Carolina. The chilling masked figure on many ISIS beheading videos was Mohammed Emwazi, who had a college degree in computer programming. In the same vein, Ramsland (2015) has found that some of the most notorious serial killers of our time were highly educated, including Ted Bundy and the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski.

We do not wish to undersell education’s positive consequences for individuals and societies. Improving educational opportunities for citizens no doubt helps people satisfy needs in Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy, especially those at the lower levels of the pyramid. Nelson Mandela was no doubt correct about education improving the quality of life for communities operating near subsistence levels. Our claim is that education is insufficient for meeting higher level needs of esteem and for cultivating social belongingness, self-transcendence, union with the world, and self-actualization. In short, education is a beginning step toward transformation but falls short in fully producing a truly awakened individual.

Religion and Transformation

As noted earlier, James (1902) described the psychological consequences of religious conversion as including feelings of peace, the ability to see clearly, the sense of union with all of humanity, a feeling of newness, the experience of happiness, the desire for generosity, and the sense of being part of something bigger than oneself. While these results of conversion are all signs of healthy religion, many of us are very well aware of “religious” individuals who preach war instead of peace, who exclude rather than include, who display anger in lieu of joy, and who show greed instead of generosity. In short, being “religious” and even engaging in religious practices such as attending church does not guarantee the kind of religious conversion experiences described by James. In fact, going through the motions of religion can heighten one’s sense of righteousness and arrogance, setting in motion a dark transformation toward principles that are antithetical to James’ observation of mature religion. Many people who are “holier than thou” end up holier than no one. Rohr (2010) argues that the litmus test for healthy spiritual transformation is whether one shows “a movement toward the edge, the outside, the lower, the suffering, and the simple. It’s never about climbing.”

Women as Transformers

In his studies of initiation rituals worldwide, Rohr (2005) observed that non-western cultures throughout history have been more likely to require males to participate in these rites of passage as compared to females. Underlying this gender difference is the widespread belief that young males require initiation rituals to transform them into men, whereas young females tend to be naturally capable of transforming into womanhood without formal rituals. Differences in biology and culturally assigned gender roles have been posited to explain this difference ( Rohr, 2005 ; Formica, 2009 ). For women, transformation is corporeal. Women personally undergo biological transformations in processes such as menstruation, pregnancy, labor, and breastfeeding. Throughout most of human history, women have also been assigned culturally mandated activities involving transformation. For example, child-rearing traditionally involved women transforming children into adults. Moreover, most human cultures have historically assigned women the task of preparing food for the family, during which women transformed wheat into bread and cream into butter.

If, as we have argued, transformation involves promoting unity and adopting a sociocentric mindset, then women may be agents of transformation. Throughout history, men have built things, fixed things, and defended us from things ( Rohr, 2005 ) – all in the service of satisfying lower level needs. True transformation, however, occurs at higher levels where women may have the advantage. Rohr has even boldly claimed that “transformation is deeply embedded in feminine consciousness” (see also Ross, 2017 ). In her review of research on gender differences in leadership effectiveness, Hoyt (2014) found convincing evidence that women may be more transformative as political leaders. Compared to men, women leaders are more likely to improve standards of living, education, and healthcare. They enjoy more success in peace negotiations and are more likely to reach across party lines. Women more so than men are likely to adopt democratic and participatory styles of leadership. Moreover, women are more likely to follow ethical guidelines, engage in philanthropy, and promote the welfare of women, children, and families. With all their accomplishments as leaders, women may also show more humility than men ( Fumham et al., 2001 ; Perry, 2017 ). Over 2500 years ago, the Tao Te Ching offered this wise description of women as humble, transformative leaders:

Can you play the role of woman? Understanding and being open to all things… Giving birth and nourishing, Bearing but not possessing, Working yet not taking credit, Leading yet not dominating, This is the Primal Virtue.

Transcend and Include

Central to the phenomenon of transformation is the principle of transcend and include ( Wilber, 2001 ). Higher stages of transformation do not discard the values of the lower stages; they include them. When we are young, we hold strong opinions that later seem naïve to us, yet we are not necessarily “wrong” at the time; we are merely incomplete. An illustration of this idea can be found in our musings about our childhood baseball heroes, Willie Mays (for George Goethals) and Willie Stargell (for Scott Allison). We both freely admit that our taste in heroes has evolved and matured since the 1950s and 1960s, yet if you ask us if that means that Mays and Stargell are no longer our heroes, we will quickly tell you that they remain our heroes to this very day. Maintaining this preference exemplifies the principle of transcend and include.

Transformation to a higher level of consciousness always transcends but also includes the lower levels ( Rohr, 2011b ). This does not mean that we equate Mays and Stargell with Gandhi and Mandela. It means that we appreciate their heroic influence on us during a crucial time in our development.

Campbell’s (1949) understanding of the transform and include principle is seen in his description of the transformed hero as the “master of both worlds.” At the end of their transformative journey, heroes are as comfortable navigating in their original world as in the new world that they now inhabit. There are implications of this principle for gender roles. Male- oriented activities of making, fixing, and protecting must be transcended by female-oriented activities of inclusion, participation, and harmony. But with transcendence must come inclusion, as we cannot expect to survive as a society without always leaving room for those so-called male activities.

Transformation Toward Psychopathology

Heroic transformation does not always lead to improvement in an individual’s well-being. Recent research has revealed that adopting a heroic self-concept can at times produce significant psychological maladjustment ( Shahar, 2013 ; Israeli et al., 2018 ). From this perspective, a heroic self-representation may develop when people experience personal threat, stress, and challenge, either in themselves or in others to whom they are close. These heroic self-representations can assume the form as the self-as-savior , the self-as-conqueror , or heroic identification . When confronting these psychological challenges, people may identify with the ideal heroic image of the person who can conquer any difficult obstacle or who can heroically remove those obstacles for suffering others. The consequences of taking on this role of a hero can be significant increases in perceived stress, self-criticism, lack of a sense of coherence, general psychopathology, maternal overprotection, dissociative depersonalization and absorption, transliminality, PTSD severity, and attachment anxiety.

Shahar (2013) and Israeli et al. (2018) have uncovered convincing evidence for this type of pathological heroic transformation. These scholars studied adults during a prolonged exposure ‘Operation Protective Edge,’ which occurred in Israel between July 8, 2014 and August 26, 2014 ( Israeli et al., 2018 ). The operation measured Israeli citizens’ emotional states while they were exposed to extensive air strikes, ground fighting in Gaza, and continuous large-scale rocket fire from Gaza to Israel. The results showed that participants’ heroic identification predicted increased anxious mood and negative affect. Moreover, participants who viewed themselves as self-as-savior showed an increased anxious mood under high levels of perceived-stress related to the missile attacks. Israeli et al. (2018 , p. 23) concluded that “under stress, heroic identification increases characterological self-blame/self-criticism and experiential avoidance, and decreases help-seeking.” These findings are fascinating in pointing toward the potential harm associated with undergoing a heroic transformation. Whereas we argue that heroic transformation is a necessary and positive step toward mature growth and achieving one’s full potential, it seems clear that taking one’s heroism to an extreme under stressful circumstances can lead to psychological harm. We believe that the research reported by Shahar (2013) and Israeli et al. (2018) is extremely important in identifying boundary or delimiting conditions of positive heroic transformation effects. Future research might productively be directed toward further establishing the circumstances under which adopting a heroic self-representation yields favorable versus unfavorable consequences for people.

Barriers to Transformation

We now turn to factors that can stand in the way of people undergoing a positive transformative experience in life. The largest barrier, of course, is a person’s unwillingness to heed the call to go on the hero’s journey. We all know people, including prominent world leaders, who are “stuck” in early stages of development. It would behoove the world to understand why so many people are stuck and what can be done to nudge more of us along the transformative journey. Earlier we reviewed activities that promote transformation, and one might argue that any barriers to change are merely the inverse of these promotional activities. While there may be some truth in this idea, it is also true that some barriers are less intuitive or obvious than one might suspect. The great Islamic poet Rumi once offered this advice to those seeking enlightenment: the task is sometimes not to pursue a transformative loving experience “but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it” ( Barks, 2005 , p. 18).

A major source of arrested development is the problem of self-ignorance. A recurring theme in psychological research is that people are unaware of much of their own psychological functioning ( Nisbett and Wilson, 1977 ; Wegner, 2002 ; Bargh and Morsella, 2008 ; Alicke, 2017 ). This lack of self-awareness may explain people’s resistance to transformative growth. Early psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Adler, and Horney were the first to point to the destructive effects of behaving unconsciously. Jung (1956) described the shadow as the dark, unknown aspects of our personalities that prevent us from transforming into our full potential. Building on Jung’s work, Campbell observed that all “the images of [hero] mythology are referring to something in you,” and that our shadow impedes our ability to make the best use of these images (p. 68).

A second barrier is found in impoverished environments that deny people opportunities for transformation. Maslow’s (1943) model of hierarchical needs suggests that people can get stuck at lower stages of the hierarchy that focus on satisfying basic biological and security needs. Heroic potential may be suppressed when individuals are afflicted by poverty or safety concerns that hinder their ability to progress upward in the hierarchy toward higher-level goals. Resolving this problem is easy in theory but extremely difficult in practice, as most world societies either lack the will or the means to eliminate poverty. Related to this idea is another barrier – exposure to traumatic events that can impede people’s ability to undergo transformative growth. Trauma disrupts people’s sense of safety and their ability to cope with the overwhelming threat and danger, damaging their physical, emotional, and cognitive functioning processes ( Keck et al., 2017 ). Safety and security needs become paramount to the traumatized individual, rendering higher level needs unimportant. The good news is that most people can show great progress in recovering from the deleterious effects of trauma. This healing is the basis of the hopeful phenomenon of post-traumatic growth ( Rendon, 2015 ).

A fourth barrier to transformation is people’s strong tendency to self-identify as victims.

Individuals who have been harmed and who derive their entire personal identity from being wronged by someone else, or by society, may find it difficult to grow and transcend their victimhood. We are not making the claim that there are no legitimate victims; there most certainly are people who have been harmed and have real grievances. Our argument is that adopting a strong and permanent victim identity is a sure way of avoiding growth and moving beyond the pain of having been harmed. A highly unfortunate consequence of harboring a victim mindset is the need to scapegoat. People tend to reason that if someone has harmed them, then that perpetrator must be punished. There is no doubt that scapegoating others has been the primary cause of most violence and warfare throughout human history. Until people learn to take individual responsibility for their lives and for their anger, the deadly duo of victimhood and scapegoating will continue to work in concert to thwart heroic transformation.

Another barrier to transformation lies in the absence of good mentorship. Social sources of wisdom, inspiration, and change are critical elements of the hero monomyth as described by Campbell (1949) . These social sources appear in the form of friends, mentors, peers, and allies, all of whom represent rich and essential sources of transformation. There are times, moreover, when people encounter the wrong mentor whose advice does more harm than good. Allison and Smith (2015) used the term dark mentors to describe these damaging guides who not only undermine people’s ability to walk the heroic path; they encourage us down the wrong path.

Severe mental and physical illness can also impede people’s ability to undergo heroic transformation. Most individuals facing severe mental or physical disability are unable to reap the benefits of the hero’s journey because they are preoccupied with managing their condition. Related to this problem is the prevalence of narcissism. Psychologists believe that roughly 6% of US adults are afflicted with narcissistic personality disorder ( Bressert, 2018 ), which means that at least 15 million Americans may be narcissists. The characteristics of narcissism are a heightened sense of importance, a drive for unlimited success, a belief in one’s special nature, exploitation of people, little empathy, and an arrogant attitude. Narcissists are unlikely to undergo heroic transformation because they don’t believe they need one and thus avoid it entirely ( Worthington and Allison, 2018 ). The narcissist assigns blame for his problems to others, leading the him to believe that other people need to change rather than the narcissist himself.

Finally, people may avoid heroic transformation because they lack psychological flexibility, defined as an individual’s ability to adapt to fluctuating situational demands. Those classified as low in psychological flexibility have been shown to experience less growth and development ( Kashdan and Rottenberg, 2010 ). To help people overcome inflexibility, Hayes et al. (2011) developed a therapeutic approach called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). The goal of ACT is to increase people’s ability to remain in the present moment as a conscious human being, and to learn new behaviors that serve desired goals. Psychological flexibility can be achieved through six core ACT processes, several of which sound like mindful pathways to Buddhist enlightenment. The six elements of ACT are acceptance, cognitive defusion, presence, seeing the self in context, values, and committed action. All of these processes reflect positive psychological and spiritual skills that enable people to grow and evolve into healthy adaptive human beings. They also resemble Franco et al. (2016) skillset of heroic eudaimonia, which includes mindfulness, autonomy, and efficacy (see also Jones, 2017 ).

This article has reviewed the functions, processes, and consequences of the hero’s transformation. William James once observed, “Whenever one aim grows so stable as to expel definitively its previous rivals from an individual’s life, we tend to speak of the phenomenon, and even wonder at it, as a transformation” ( James, 1902 , p. 70, italics added). James’ use of the word “wonder” implies that people are moved by the transformations they see in people, and also that these transformations are a rare occurrence. As did James, we suspect that many people spend their entire lives resisting change, denying the need for it, and suffering as a result of avoiding it. As Jung (1945) observed, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious” (p. 335).

The transformed hero exemplifies the zenith of human development. Psychologists have called this state self-actualization ( Maslow, 1943 ), the condition of well-being that allows people to flourish ( Seligman, 2011 ), the achievement of “bliss” ( Campbell, 1988 ), and the experience eudaimonia ( Franco et al., 2016 ). From their journey, heroes accumulate wisdom about their place in the world; they acquire the courage to face their deepest fears; they connect with all of humanity; they seek justice no matter the cost to themselves; they show humility; and they embark on a journey that “opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyond speech, beyond words, in short, to what we call transcendence” ( Campbell, 2014 , p. 40; see also Friedman, 2017 ). The wisdom of writers and philosophers, from Homer in 800 BCE to Phil Zimbardo today, informs us that we are all called to lead a heroic life. Yet most people are unaware of this fact, or they face impediments that impede the realization of their heroic potential. If the ultimate goal of the hero’s journey is for the hero to bestow the world with transformative gifts, then one would think that the world would be doing everything possible to promote the hero’s journey for everyone. We hope that this article represents progress toward shedding light on why transformation is elusive and what can be done to promote it.

Author Contributions

All authors contributed equally to the development and expression of the ideas in this article.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. This research was supported by Summer Research Fellowships awarded to SA, AM, SS, and MS.

How To Reclaim Your Life With The 'Hero’s Journey' Method, According To Research

Here’s why viewing your life as a hero’s journey can be a catalyst for meaningful change..

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | November 21, 2023

A new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology examined the connection between adopting the timeless narrative of "the hero's journey" in one's personal life and experiencing greater meaning in life.

I recently spoke to lead author Benjamin Rogers and co-authors Michael Christian and Kurt Gray of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to discuss the benefits of viewing oneself as a heroic protagonist living out their story and how to incorporate this narrative into one's daily life experiences. Here is a summary of our conversation.

Could you briefly describe the "Hero's Journey" and the seven elements of this narrative mentioned in your research?

The concept of the Hero's Journey was originally developed by mythologist Joseph Campbell and popularized in his book, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." Campbell had found when studying myths and legends that, while aspects of a given story may vary, most heroic tales were variations of the same basic plotline, which he called the monomyth or the Hero's Journey.

This story has been told going back at least to Beowulf or Gilgamesh in 2000 BC and is as prevalent as ever, seen in the current superhero blockbuster and fantasy movies of today, such as Star Wars, Marvel, and Harry Potter.

Campbell's original Hero's Journey formulation had 17 steps, but in our paper, we sought to translate it for everyday modern life. For example, everyday people may not literally be thrown into unknown magical realms that set them off on new journeys, but we all encounter events and moments that shift our perspective towards our jobs, other people, or our lives.

We were able to distill the Hero's Journey into seven key elements: protagonist (a clear and defined character or identity), shift (a change in setting or circumstances), quest (a goal or purpose), allies (others who support the protagonist), challenges (obstacles or rivals), transformation (personal and/or moral growth), and legacy (positive impact on others).

The hero (protagonist) experiences a change in setting or life circumstances (shift) that sets them off toward a goal (quest) during which they encounter friends and mentors (allies), as well as obstacles (challenges), but eventually triumphs and grows from the experience (transformation), enabling them to return home and benefit their community (legacy).

What inspired you to study the connection between the narrative of the Hero's Journey and meaning in life?

A lot of my own research is concerned with helping people to find more meaning in their lives and their careers. This is important given that many believe we are facing a crisis of meaninglessness in the modern era with traditional sources of meaning like religion or community bonds decreasing in prominence.

One primary way in which people find meaning in their lives is through the narratives they develop to explain and give context to their experiences. People's life stories are based on their experiences obviously, but people choose to tell their stories in different ways; they emphasize or omit parts, they make certain connections between events.

Stories shape our understanding of the world and ourselves, so telling a more meaningful life story should spill over into perceptions that life itself is more meaningful.

My coauthors and I were curious what might be the "best" story for people to tell about their lives and we began discussing the concept of the Hero's Journey. If you read a book or article on screenwriting, the advice often given to writers is to use frameworks that are just variations of the Hero's Journey, because it is a structure to tell a really satisfying story.

The idea then became to apply the advice for screenwriters to people's life stories. We thought that life stories that were more similar to this enduring, popular narrative would feel more meaningful because they would contain many of the same themes and would be more culturally resonant.

What was your methodology and what were your key findings?

In the paper we conducted 14 studies which used a variety of approaches to test our predictions. The paper was generally broken up into three sections:

How does the restorying intervention in your research enhance meaning and resilience and is there anyone in particular who would benefit from it?

We designed the restorying intervention to match the key mechanisms in our theory as to how the Hero's Journey is related to meaning in life. Essentially, we think there are two mechanisms by which seeing life as a Hero's Journey enhances life meaning:

Thus, our restorying intervention consists of steps that match these mechanisms. People first identify the seven elements of the Hero's Journey as they already exist in their lives. Then, they weave those elements together into a coherent narrative united by the theme of seeing life as a heroic journey. In this way, we help to rewrite people's stories in an authentic way, resulting in more life meaning. Feeling life to be more meaningful, people are then able to be more resilient in the face of challenges because they have that meaning as a resource to draw from and because they have the knowledge that they have successfully faced and grown from challenges in the past.

Can anyone be a hero on a journey? Could you provide real-life examples of how an individual can adapt this narrative into their own life?

This is a great question and was a central motivator as we approached this research. If we discovered that only people who had lived fantastically heroic lives could see themselves as heroes on a journey to experience more life meaning, our work would have had minimal benefit to the broader population.

Fortunately, we both believe and found in the paper that anyone can be a hero on a journey. This was built into how we translated the steps in Campbell's original formulation of the Hero's Journey into seven elements. We focused on identifying how those narrative elements could manifest in the lives of everyday people.

We trace parallel Hero's Journeys—one mythical and one modern—that shows what this could look like.

In the modern version, the protagonist sets off to a new city to start a business, facing challenges of self-doubt while supported by her family and friends, and is transformed and able to return home to use her new skills to improve her community.

Results from our studies supported our view that anyone could be a hero on a journey. For example, in our studies employing the Hero's Journey Scale, we found no difference between men and women in terms of seeing life as a Hero's Journey.

But to the broader point, through the studies in which we conducted the restorying intervention, participants from a range of backgrounds and life experiences were able to retell their personal narratives as a Hero's Journey and subsequently experienced the benefits to life meaning and well-being.

We even tested if the restorying intervention had floor or ceiling effects such that it only worked for people who did not feel life was meaningful (and thus had ample room to increase meaning) or only worked for people who felt their life was meaningful (since they might be more amenable to a positive frame of their life). We found that the effects of the intervention did not depend on prior views of life meaning. In other words, it boosted the meaning and well-being of all our participants in the same way.

What wisdom does your research offer for individuals seeking more meaning in their lives?

We would point to two pieces of wisdom stemming from our research.

Could you provide insight into the practical applications of your research? How might individuals, educators, or therapists use the knowledge of the Hero's Journey to enhance personal development and well-being?

Certainly! We see three general buckets of practical applications arising from our research.

Do you have plans for follow-up research? Where would you like to see research on this topic go in the future?

Yes! We are hoping to explore these ideas in a variety of ways. Most directly stemming from this is a project where we take the central idea of our intervention a step further and use generative AI to help people instantly craft compelling Hero's Journeys that integrate their own experiences. We're also curious about what other downstream effects that telling personal narratives as a Hero's Journey might have. For example, would telling your story as a Hero's Journey make others more likely to help you by getting them invested in your story?

Does telling your story as a Hero's Journey help quell anxiety about mortality by connecting your story into a tradition of stories told for thousands of years? There are many ways in which we think the Hero's Journey might apply to people's life and we are excited to explore some applications in follow-up research.

The Man Behind the Myth: Should We Question the Hero’s Journey?

By sarah e. bond , joel christensen august 12, 2021.

Campbell passingly cites the stories of Buddhism, Aztec myth, and Ovid's Metamorphoses as examples of virgin birth, then goes on to recount in detail a Tongan folk tale he calls “queer” about a mother giving birth to a clam, which in tum becomes pregnant from eating a coconut husk and gives birth to a human boy. Campbell never specifically explains exactly how the image of virgin birth fits into the heroic cycle as he sets it up.

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Max Norman reviews "Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem" by Michael Schmidt and "Reading Old Books" by Peter Mack.

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Can You Have the Hero Without the Journey?

Alex Luppens-Dale

Alex Luppens-Dale won the “Enthusiastic Reader Award” all four years of high school. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School. Her favorite genres are memoir, witches, and anything with cults. She lives in New Jersey. You can keep up with Alex's latest work at her website.

View All posts by Alex Luppens-Dale

Featuring gorgeous designed edges, dazzling metallic foil designs on the jacket and case, and an exclusive endpaper map that reveals new unexplored territories, Tomi Adeyemi’s #1 bestselling Legacy of Orïsha series comes to an earth-shaking conclusion.

The hero’s journey, also called the monomyth, was first described by writer and academic Joseph Campbell in his 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces . George Lucas credited this book with influencing the first Star Wars saga. Stories, from The Lord of the Rings to, (arguably) Jane Eyre , follow the path of the hero’s journey

Campbell believed that all stories could be placed into this structure. Later scholars agree that this theory did not take into account many non-European story structures and that it also cited only stories that fit within the determined structure.

The hero’s journey Campbell cites classically has seventeen stages and can be broken up into three acts, which are referred to as the departure, the initiation, and the return. Within these acts are familiar moments like the “call to adventure” and the “refusal of the call.” The hero must cross the threshold into an “unknown or special world” to eventually reach the “innermost cave,” or the climax of their adventure. There is a reward, or “elixir,” once their enemy has been defeated. The hero will then return to the ordinary world with their reward, transformed by the adventure. This structure can be clearly seen in many works of high fantasy, but it’s also present in other works of fiction.

What are some alternatives to the hero’s journey structure?

While different genres have specific beats that are hit to make the stories what they are, some of the fun in creative writing is in breaking the rules. The Fichtean Curve is probably the most basic story structure and the one you were most likely taught in school — its three-part structure consists of rising action, a climax, and falling action.

Romance novels tend to follow a three-act structure in which the beginning quarter introduces the characters and brings them together in an inciting incident. The middle will be half of the book and contain some test for the romantic pair and their relationship. The last quarter includes the crisis/climax/resolution, since a happily ever after (or happily for now) is an integral part of the genre . Mysteries also often hit certain beats — there’s the setup, discovery, funnel, and the reveal, with the middle two taking up 80% of the story. That’s not to say that some mysteries don’t follow this format to the letter. However, you probably can’t call your book a mystery if there isn’t at least some investigation and resolution.

Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey (which was written as a self-help book) argues that the hero’s journey does not work for women. The Heroine’s journey begins with a rejection of feminine ideals and a move towards patriarchal values. The heroine will then experience a spiritual death and will turn inward to reclaim her own power. The ending will contain a union of both the masculine and the feminine. Other versions of this story require that the heroine prove herself to herself. This pattern can be seen in Tamora Pierce’s The Song of the Lioness , which can also be put into the hero’s journey framework. Pierce’s book also contains a supernatural event that is actually called “The Ordeal of Knighthood.”

Then there’s In medias res (Latin for “in the middle of things”), which drops you right into the action with an explanation of what, precisely, is going on and tells you why later in the story. One frequently cited example of this technique is The Iliad , but one could also look at something like Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere , in which the titular fire has begun and the reader will learn why later.

There are also novels that follow a flat or static arc in which the character(s) do not change or transform. The protagonist in My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh comes to mind, since she is very much the same person on the last page as she is on the first.

Meanwhile, in Japan, Kishōtenketsu is a popular storytelling format that consists of the introduction, development, twist, and conclusion — the twist is where conflict would be in Western-style storytelling, and takes the story in a different direction. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata is one such story.

Oral traditions contain their own storytellers who use their own structures, like the Arab hakawati — or stories within stories, as in 1001 Nights — and the West African griot . The latter incorporates jokes and songs into folktales, which include stories about figures like Anansi the trickster.

What about the villain’s journey?

You can explore the inverse of a hero’s journey and create a kind of villain’s journey. This is a descending character arc in which a character’s flaws are exploited and amplified over the course of a story. Jonathan Abernathy, You Are Kind by Molly McGhee features a character who means well but becomes a tool of a system he knows that he really should be fighting against. His desire to be what is a pretty rigid definition of a successful person drives him to do things that he knows are wrong.

There are as many ways to tell a story as there are to be a hero — and that is just one reason why experiencing stories across cultures and genres is so much fun.

Also In This Story Stream

The Thriller Writer Outselling James Patterson and John Grisham

'Why do we just put up plaques?' How this school is doing more to remember Canadian military heroes

The Cpl. François (Franck) Dupéré Legacy Memorial is soon start what is intended to be a 100-year journey around high schools in Canada, gaining a new soldier’s name at each

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This story is part of Heroes Among Us , a special National Post series on Canadian military valour, celebrating courage in the presence of the enemy.

'Why do we just put up plaques?' How this school is doing more to remember Canadian military heroes Back to video

It is unusual for a war memorial to look to the future.

Military tributes and honours normally look back to the past, whether they are grand installations such as cenotaphs or Ottawa’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, or more personal awards like Canada’s military valour distinctions.

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So the students of the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board in Laval, Que., were in unfamiliar territory when they built their memorial to Canadian military heroes, in special honour of one especially inspiring soldier. With an eye out for others, they have also been reading the National Post’s series Heroes Among Us , describing the brave actions in Afghanistan of several plausible candidates for the Canadian Victoria Cross, struck in bronze but never yet awarded.

The Corporal François (Franck) Dupéré Legacy Memorial, built of wood with metal accents ambitiously engraved “11 November 2023 — November 11, 2123,” is soon to be shipped to the King’s-Edgehill School in Nova Scotia on the first leg of what is intended to be a 100-year journey around high schools in Canada, gaining a new soldier’s name to remember at each one.

These students, under the guidance of Daniel Johnson, whose title is “Spiritual Care and Guidance, and Community Involvement Animator,” have a history of being unsatisfied with perfunctory displays of remembrance that are soon forgotten.

More than a decade ago, for example, the late National Post journalist and celebrated military chronicler Christie Blatchford took note of their “absolutely remarkable” efforts to memorialize Sergeant Chris Karigiannis, an alumnus of their school, a committed Air Cadet who became a pilot, and a member of the Canadian Forces SkyHawks parachute team.

Get a dash of perspective along with the trending news of the day in a very readable format.

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Serving with the 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry from Edmonton, Karigiannis, then 31, became briefly famous in 2007 for writing a letter from Afghanistan to Maclean’s magazine in enthusiastic but modest praise of the beauty of the young woman, Kinga Ilyes, seated at a lecture hall desk on the cover of their university ranking issue. A round of newspaper reports presented her as the Darling of Kandahar, and Karigiannis wrote back to clarify, as Blatchford put it, “his noble intentions.”

The next morning, he was killed in a roadside bomb explosion. Two other soldiers died in the same strike, Cpl. Stephen Bouzane, 26, and Pte. Joel Wiebe, 22. Karigiannis’s charming crush became the most poignant detail of a brutal tragedy.

The following Remembrance Day, in Laval, the students planted a tree for him. “It could have stopped there,” Blatchford wrote in 2013. “Such well-meant tributes, born in the emotion of tragedy, often do. But in the years that followed, something absolutely remarkable happened.”

Karigiannis’s death “just made the world smaller,” Johnson said in an interview. So they thought about what to do next. He remembers them saying: “Why do we just plant trees and put up plaques and walk away and no one remembers? Why don’t we do more?”

They came up with an unusual idea. His students asked the 3PPCLI if they could adopt the regiment. Both sides of this unusual new family, the soldiers in Alberta and students in Quebec, took to it enthusiastically.

“Everything connected,” Johnson said. Soldiers started showing up to work with the soccer team, to join the summer camp trips to the Laurentians, to run the hockey days. A student leadership program developed out of this adoption, which continues to this day.

Corporal Dupéré, although he was with local Royal 22nd Regiment, known in English as the Vandoos, became an important figure in this program, helping to share his own instructional experiences with adversity.

He was luckier than Karigiannis. On a patrol in an Afghanistan marketplace in 2011, Dupéré was about two metres from a suicide bomber at the moment of detonation. He lost an eye and some function in his left side, but survived, indeed thrived, pursuing volunteer work after retiring from the military in 2015, which put him in touch with the students at Laval. After he died in an accidental fall in 2021 aged 40, they wrote about his optimism, took inspiration from his feats of endurance despite his serious injuries, and eventually chose him as the centrepiece of a memorial to soldiers that they fully intend will outlast even themselves.

“It’s never going to be finished until it’s finished,” Johnson said.

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The human brain is hardwired to recognize faces. But what if you can't?

Emily Kwong

Rachel Carlson

Rebecca Ramirez

Freelance science writer Sadie Dingfelder is the author of the new book Do I Know You? , which explores human sight, memory and imagination. Little, Brown Spark, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company hide caption

Freelance science writer Sadie Dingfelder is the author of the new book Do I Know You? , which explores human sight, memory and imagination.

Humans are hardwired to see faces, even in inanimate objects. We have a lima bean-shaped part of our brains dedicated to facial recognition. But this process of seeing a face and recognizing it isn't always straightforward.

Science journalist Sadie Dingfelder is one of 10 million Americans who are face blind, or prosopagnosic . For Dingfelder, that means she struggles to recognize the faces of people she knows and to recall rich memories of who people are.

She was also diagnosed with: aphantasia , which makes it hard to form mental images; severely deficient autobiographical memory, which makes it hard to remember things about her life; and stereoblindness, which means she can't perceive depth with both eyes.

"My memory is very different from neurotypical memories and I have no ability to do that sort of mental time travel," Dingfelder says. "Everything in my life is just a story I may have read... And so in some ways, that makes being a writer the perfect job for me."

Her new book, Do I Know You? came out Tuesday. In the book, she dives into the science of sight, memory and imagination.

Want more episodes on the wonder of the human brain? Email us at [email protected] .

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify , Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts .

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave .

Today's episode was produced and fact-checked by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Kwesi Lee was the audio engineer.

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Artyom Levshunov’s journey to NHL draft has him projected as a top-five pick

FILE - Western Michigan forward Wyatt Schingoethe (18) is pressured by Michigan State defenseman Artyom Levshunov (5) during the second period of an NCAA college hockey game in Maryland Heights, Mo., March 29, 2024. Levshunov is expected to be selected No. 2 by the Chicago Blackhawks in the upcoming NHL draft. (AP Photo/Colin E. Braley, File)

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Artyom Levshunov hoped to play juniors in the Canadian Hockey League, knowing it could lead to his dreams of becoming a professional hockey player.

However, because of CHL rules restricting Belarussians and Russians from competing because of the war in Ukraine, he had no other choice but to go the USHL and U.S. college route, if he wanted to develop his game in North America.

All leagues aside, Levshunov’s Plan B proved a success. The 18-year-old Michigan State defenseman enters the NHL draft on Friday projected to be a top-five pick, with the chance to be taken as early as second overall by the Chicago Blackhawks.

“I think we’ll see,” Levshunov said when asked where he might be selected. “I mean, I think, for me, actually, just to be drafted in the NHL would be really like pretty cool for me. Yeah. Any team will be good for me.”

At 6-foot-2 and 205 pounds, the smooth-skating, playmaking defenseman has the chance of becoming the fourth player from Belarus chosen in the first round, and first since Montreal selected forward Andrei Kostitsyn 10th in 2003. No player from Belarus has been selected higher than defenseman Ruslan Salei, who went ninth to Anaheim in 1996.

Levshunov is ranked second among North American skaters by the NHL Central Scouting bureau, and made his mark in his North American debut with USHL Green Bay in 2022-23 by finishing eighth among league rookies with 42 points (13 goals, 29 assists) in 62 games.

At Michigan State, he’s coming off a freshman season in which he scored nine goals, and finished second on the Spartans with 26 assists and 35 points. He finished tied for ninth among NCAA defensemen in points while also being selected as the Big Ten Rookie of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year.

He helped the Spartans win Big Ten regular-season and postseason titles.

“I came here to the U.S. because, yeah, it’s just my dream to be in NHL,” Levshunov said. “I spent one season there (in the USHL) and went to college and I think, yeah, it worked for me.”

The dual threat of swift skating and high-end puck skills combine nicely with his size and strength, all of which have many believing he is ready to make an immediate jump into the NHL.

He wasn’t ready to commit to the NHL this season, or being definitive about returning to college, as he said, “I think first I should be drafted. Then we’ll see.” He also acknowledged it may take time to prepare for the NHL and he won’t know until he speaks to his camp.

“Of course, I would like to be there as soon as possible, as soon as I’m ready,” said Levshunov, who was selected to the USHL All-Rookie team in 2022-23. “Because, yeah, it’s dream. It’s a dream to be there, to play there.”

Levshunov, who has proven he brings efficiency in the defensive zone with an excellent grasp of positioning and coverage, attributes his aggressiveness as someone who won’t hesitate to jump into plays or challenge forwards with a steady backward stride to defend against rushes to his dedication in the gym.

Whether it’s conditioning, stretching, mobility, weightlifting, or speed workouts, Levshunov is a self-proclaimed gym rat.

“I like to work out,” he said. “I like to be in the gym, because hockey is a tough sport and I gotta stay strong on the ice. I love to be in the gym.”

And the first player he would like to “stuff one-on-one” by putting his toughness to the test during his debut season?

“I think you know the answer,” he said. “Yeah, I think is the best forward in the league, at this point right now, is Connor McDavid. There’s a lot of good players in the NHL.”

And Levshunov’s journey to becoming one of them continues Friday night at the Sphere, which will host its first sports-related event since its opening.

“It feels more real now, it feels more like a dream,” he said. “I saw the videos how (the Sphere is) gonna look like inside and outside. My face will be around Las Vegas.”

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

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