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Hero’s Journey and the Next Level

Steven Barnes
4 min readApr 25, 2023

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If you don’t celebrate your victories, you aren’t rewarding your heart for all the hard work. Why should it try again tomorrow?

If you don’t grasp all you have learned, where will you get the confidence to learn the new thing?

George Leonard said that most people never get REALLY good at anything not for lack of talent, but because they can’t handle the “fallow” periods where it feels nothing is happening, or that they are actually regressing.

And…once you get up on the roof, you don’t need to carry the ladder with you.

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If I look at life, in all three major arenas I’ve finished another cycle of change, and am beginning a new one. After I’ve analyzed what went before, and taught the lessons to others.Applying the Hero’s Journey to the process, some useful questions arise

  1. What IS this next level? Have I recognized and acknowledged the challenge??
  2. What is the fear associated with this moment and the days to come? What part of me must die to enable evolution? What are the risks?
  3. Have I accepted the challenges? They will demand physical, emotional, and mental adjustment.
  4. To the best of my ability, have I defined a daily ritual of action that takes me forward, so that I’m learning something new about life and my own being every day?
  5. Have I clarified the abilities and skills I will need to acquire? The new allies I’ll need? The…

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Steven Barnes
Steven Barnes

Written by Steven Barnes

Steven Barnes is a NY Times bestselling author, ecstatic husband and father, and holder of black belts in three martial arts. www.lifewritingpodcast.com.

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