Heroism: 101
A Philosophy Founded on Ancient Wisdom and First Principles Thinking
Be the hero of your own journey. Focus on sharing your unique gift. Surround yourself with a community who supports your quest, then step into the arena, and leave it all out on the field. Never surrender.
The purpose of practicing a philosophy is to set one’s priorities in a way that promotes human thriving. Your thriving is aligned with your conscience, so learn to unleash your potential by following your conscience. Your conscience is the voice that calls you to be your most courageous, most authentic, most excellent self. Since your aim is to unleash your true potential, you must develop the skills you need to get the result you want: courage, authenticity, accountability, discipline, and sacrifice.
You will be tempted to sacrifice everything for acceptance. You will be tempted to sacrifice everything for comfort and safety. You will be tempted to sacrifice everything for pleasure: food, drink, drugs, sex, etc.
You must structure your life so your conscience can keep the upper hand on your ego and your fear. In order to do that, you must confront mortality and villainy and their relationship to human potential. Your lifetime is finite, and that is scary, but there is such a thing as a fate worse than death. One day you will be too old and too sick to begin your quest to unleash your potential, and then you will be overwhelmed by regret, despair, and shame. That’s why so many people experience a midlife crisis. Your midlife crisis is “last call” for beginning your quest to unleash human potential before it’s too late. The tragic irony is that most people double-down on the quest for pleasure or acceptance or safety. That is the path to villainy. Because they can no longer pursue their own potential, a villain becomes the enemy of human potential. They punish courage and authenticity everywhere they see it. Think of the villains you know. Why do they behave that way?
Once you understand mortality and villainy, you can structure your life in a way that favors your conscience. Your ego is the voice that invites you to sacrifice everything for status and acceptance. Your fear is the voice that invites you to sacrifice everything for comfort and safety. Your conscience is the voice that calls you to seek out the adventure that will unleash your potential. Fear and ego are always present, and always fighting for control of your life, but you can set your conscience up for success by aiming to unleash your true potential, then focusing on skill acquisition and high standards.
Mythology Becomes Philosophy
We need a philosophy because attention is the input that yields results, but life is complex, and human beings are easily distracted. Your philosophy keeps your attention focused where you want it.
The point of philosophy is to become a better person. Which philosophy is most effective in helping us do that? Probably the one handed down to us through the millennia by our ancestors. The foundational ideas of this project are based on insights handed down from our ancestors through our storytelling traditions.
Joseph Campbell was the world’s foremost authority on humanity’s tradition of heroic myths and legends. In his groundbreaking book “The Hero With A Thousand Faces,” he outlined an archetypal narrative pattern that was consistent in myths and legends from all over the world and throughout history. He called that narrative pattern “The Hero’s Journey Monomyth.”
The steps that narrative pattern follows are:
The Call to Adventure
Refusing the Call
Meeting the Mentor
Crossing the Threshold
The Road of Trials
The Ordeal
Apotheosis
Return with The Elixir
The pattern is cyclical. The completion of one cycle leads into the beginning of the next cycle. Upon receiving a new call to a new adventure, the protagonist begins a new Hero’s Journey.
If you’re looking for proof that The Hero’s Journey contains clues to human potential, you need look no further than the popularity of stories that follow that pattern. Hero stories have been retold, reimagined, and revivified for thousands of years. Hero stories have generated billions of dollars in global box office: “The Wizard Of Oz,” “The Lord Of The Rings,” “Rocky,” “Star Wars,” “The Matrix,” “Harry Potter,” “The Devil Wears Prada,” The MCU, and “Avatar,” are only a few examples of Hero’s Journeys that have captivated audiences around the world.
The reason these stories are so universally loved is precisely because they contain clues to our potential. Audience members imagine themselves as the hero, and walk away from the stories inspired by their own vision of courage, authenticity, and excellence.
Our philosophy is called “Heroism” because it is derived from the clues embedded in “The Hero’s Journey.” The practice of this philosophy is summarized most simply as…“Be the hero of your own journey. Focus on sharing your unique gift, and find a community who supports your quest. Then step into the arena, and leave it all out on the field. Never Surrender to fear, self-doubt, or second guessing.”
The objective of our philosophical practice is to create a framework that allows you to align your decisions and actions with your conscience so you can develop the skills you need to unleash your potential for excellence.
Myths are clues to your potential. The clues contain the following insights...
The Call to Adventure
This is your invitation to be the hero of your own journey.
A hero is born with the limitless potential for courage, authenticity, and excellence, and the desire to unleash that potential. The mission of the hero is to unleash their potential by embodying their conscience. Your conscience is the voice that invites you to be your most courageous, most authentic, most excellent self, and it is the voice that torments you when you don’t answer the call.
The questions that the hero must answer are:
Who are you? And what do you want to do about it?
When you are your most courageous, most authentic, most excellent self, are you an artist, a warrior, an engineer, an entrepreneur, a craftsperson, a healer, a leader?
What is the biggest, most important problem you can solve with your gifts and skills? And what’s your plan to solve it?”
Refusing the Call
Your life is a wrestling match between your conscience, your ego, and your fear. Your conscience is the voice that calls you to unleash your potential by embodying courage, authenticity, and excellence. Your ego is the voice that invites you to sacrifice everything for acceptance. Your fear is the voice that invites you to sacrifice everything for safety
When your ego has the upper hand, you will sacrifice your potential for acceptance. When your fear has the upper hand, you will sacrifice your potential for safety. The saddest thing in life is wasted talent.
Meeting the Mentor
Everyone needs someone who treats them like they have the potential to achieve excellence, someone who says “I believe in your potential, and I can’t wait to see what you become. How can I help you develop the skills you need to get the result you want?”
If you are very lucky, you were raised by parents who treated you that way, you are surrounded by friends who treat you that way, you have a spouse who treats you that way, and you have a professional mentor who treats you that way.
We need a community focused on these principles because the most important thing in life is human potential. We need a community focused on these principles because the people you know who are burdened by regret or overwhelmed by despair never had anyone who treated them this way. We need a community focused on these principles because the saddest thing in life is wasted talent, and nobody wants to live the wrong life and then die filled with regret.
Crossing the Threshold
When you make the decision to align your decisions and actions with your conscience, you will sacrifice acceptance and you will sacrifice safety for your potential. You will cross the threshold from the ordinary world to the path at the edge of uncertainty.
The Road of Trials
In order to complete the mission, the hero must develop the skills they need to get the result they want.
Develop authenticity by creating a plan that aligns your daily decisions and actions with your vision for your life and your career.
Develop courage by focusing your attention and effort on the achievement of a meaningful goal.
Develop strong, personal accountability by focusing on skill acquisition and high standards.
Develop discipline by reviewing your goals and priorities on a daily basis.
Sacrifice appropriately by letting go of something meaningful so you can reach for that which is most meaningful.
Master your craft so you can contribute something excellent to your community.
The Ordeal
The ethos of the hero is: “Life is beautiful, and I love being alive, and it’s my soul that makes my life worth living. I want to enjoy my life for as long as I can, but I’d rather trade my life to save my soul than trade my soul to save my life, so I will never surrender to fear, self-doubt, or second-guessing”
The Ordeal forces the hero to confront their greatest fear, and that confrontation unleashes the hero’s true courage. This is an archetypal confrontation with mortality, and that confrontation poses a question to the hero - “Will you trade your life to save your soul, or will you trade your soul to save your life?”
This allows the hero to recognize that there is such as thing as “a fate worse than death.” If you surrender to fear of failure, fear of rejection, and fear of embarrassment, you will waste your potential. Once you realize you’ve wasted your potential, you will sink into a pit of despair, and that pit is bottomless. If you trade your soul to save your life, you will become a villain who punishes everyone around you. You will do everything you can to drag them into Hell with you because the saddest thing in life is wasted talent, and their striving will become daily reminder of your of your cowardice.
Apotheosis
Once you let go of everything, you are free to do anything. Confronting your greatest fear unleashes your greatest courage. When you free yourself from the fear of death, you are free to truly live your life. Now you are willing to sacrifice everything to embody your conscience. Now you are a hero.
That understanding truly liberates the hero from fear, self-doubt, and second guessing, and that is the moment the ordinary protagonist becomes the hero. That is the moment when they truly embody the courage and authenticity that unleashes their potential to achieve excellence.
Return with the Elixir
Everyone needs someone who treats them like they have the potential to achieve excellence. Mentor others so that you may further develop your mastery by contributing to theirs. Find the others and liberate them by serving them - “I believe in your potential, and I can’t wait to see what you become. How can I help you develop the skills you need to get the results you want?”
Building a Community That is United by a Philosophy.
The fundamental story of the community is sacrifice because human beings will sacrifice everything for their highest priority. A community is a group of people united by the same priority because they can trust each other to make the same necessary sacrifices.
When you have a community united by the same priorities, focused on developing the same skills, and willing to make the same sacrifices, there is no obstacle to success that cannot be overcome, and there is no achievement that is beyond your capabilities.
The quest to unleash your potential is cyclical. There will always be a new call to adventure, and you must answer the call. After completing a cycle that leaves all of your effort on the field back in the arena, you will feel totally spent. You will need your community to reinvigorate you. You will need someone who treats you like your potential still has meaning. You will need to treat someone like their potential still has meaning.
The quest to unleash human potential is what James P. Carse defined as an “infinite game.” The objectives of the game are to play for as long as possible and to perpetuate the game. Players drop out of the game when they run out of the will or the resources to continue, so we need to effectively manage will and resources because we do not want people to drop out of this game. People who drop out of this game become villains who fight against human potential by punishing courage and authenticity anytime they see it. You see these people every day in the form of “haters.”
Effectively managing resources means practicing courage, authenticity, accountability, discipline, and sacrifice. Effectively managing will means building a community of people focused on the same priority. If we share the same priority, then we can trust each other to make the same sacrifices. That is the foundation of a shared ethic, and a shared ethic is the foundation of any community. Our ethic is…
“Everyone is born with the potential to achieve excellence and the desire to unleash that potential. I believe in your talent, and I can’t wait to see what you become. How can I help you embody your most courageous, most authentic, most excellent self? How can I help you develop the skills you need to follow your conscience so you can unleash your potential?”
The most important thing in this community is human potential because the saddest thing in life is wasted talent. Wasted talent leads to regret and despair, and that is the path to villainy. You have the opportunity to become a hero, and you have the duty to avoid becoming a villain, so be the hero of your own journey. Focus on sharing your gift with the world, and surround yourself with a community who supports your quest. Enter the arena, and leave it all out on the field.
This is your call to adventure. This is the human struggle, and we will never surrender.