Ep #8: Hero’s Journey Series 5 of 11: Tests, Allies, and Enemies 

Welcome, my friends. So we are about to talk about the next phase of your Hero’s Journey. You’ve already crossed the threshold. You have walked out the door. Congratulations. Now comes all the stuff you got to do to get the result that you want.

And so there are some things that might be happening now. There might be some, some different stories that your brain is deciding to produce at the moment and those stories might start to feel a little bit daunting but this is a totally normal part of the process because that’s exactly the phase that you’re in.You are in the next phase of your Hero’s Journey, which is literally called tests, allies and enemies. This is the work.

So once you’ve crossed the threshold, you’re now on the adventure, you are doing the work, you know the result you want to get. Now comes overcoming all the obstacles between you and what you want. And so this is when feelings might start to bubble up to the surface. Some of those feelings might be labeled as things like “I feel overwhelmed” or “I have a lot of self-doubt all of a sudden,” “Can I really do all these things that I can see unfolding before me between me and the future self that I want to become, the hero that I’m trying to become?” Imposter syndrome: that label might pop up as well. You might think, “Who am I to be on this journey? Oh, my gosh, what’s going on?” These are all perfectly normal things to be feeling. This absolutely means you’re in the right place. You’re doing the work and it can seem daunting or overwhelming. Imposter syndrome, a very real thing that so many entrepreneurs and people that are trying to get to the next level of their career, or the next version of their business, or the next version of themselves and their own personal life are going to feel, are going to need to push through and overcome in order to become the hero that they want to be of their own life, of their own storied life.

So congratulations, you’re doing the work, you’re starting to do the work now. What I’m going to do is I’m going to give you a very powerful way to reframe some of the things I just said, to reframe obstacles, things that might seem like brick walls, seems that things that might feel daunting to you a way to reframe it so that they actually start to become hopeful to you, so you know that you’re on the right path to getting the result that you want to, moving towards that future version of yourself of your story of life. So I’m gonna give you that in just a moment but I wanted to, as I do connect this to something that has happened to me in my own life, in fact, very, very recently. So getting to the point where I was going to start this podcast—gonna get super meta for you, right here for a moment, this very thing that I’m doing right now and talking to a microphone for, took me a long time to get to the point where I crossed the threshold.

It took me, embarrassingly, two years to get to the point where I was finally brave enough to walk out my door, to walk out my version of the door towards the future self I wanted to be, that was brave enough to come on and start talking to you. Crazy, right? Because these are the very things that I coach other people on so you’d think that it wouldn’t be a problem for me? Wrong. coaches go through the exact same thing that you’re going through. We’re all humans. We’re all messy in our own brains and that’s why coaching can really help with things like that. But it took me two years to decide to cross the threshold and I would seemingly have less excuses than most people to do something like this. I have a postgraduate degree in performance! So you’d think that I would have less drag, less of an anchor-like feeling dragging me down or keeping me from gaining momentum and moving towards something like this, but that wasn’t the case at all. It took me the better part of two years to decide to do this. I mean, I had all kinds of stories that my lizard brain that that, you know, I talked about Frank the parrot before in an earlier episode, that my self-doubt little creature that sits on my shoulder wanted to tell me. There were all kinds of things that would be better if I just stayed safe in the cave. “You know everyone’s already doing a podcast. It’s over Aaron, you missed the wave, you missed the wave, everyone’s got a podcast now, what could you possibly offer other people that hasn’t been set already? What if no one listens to you? You’ll feel super foolish. It’ll just be a failure. People will secretly laugh at you.” I don’t know who these people are but like, in my head, there are people like at a lunchroom table or something at the pool table, they’re laughing at me if my podcast doesn’t do well, and isn’t helpful to people in some way.

Silly, right? When you say it out loud, and you drag these, these stories that your brain starts to operate on by default, and you drag them out into the light, they’re kind of ridiculous and kind of funny. But the thing is, we play these stories in our own heads, these default stories and they can seem really real, like real tangible things that should keep you from continuing on your journey and overcoming obstacles. So what if you spend, what if I spent all this time and money and production wasted other people’s time too, and it didn’t do well? Or I didn’t do a good job, I didn’t serve my audience in the way that I wanted to—that was another story that I had in there—that so maybe I just didn’t start.

So I just want to say this to illustrate to you that it’s not just you who once you decide to cross that threshold and go on your adventure, it’s not just you, who has these drags, these boulders that can seem like you’re pulling them uphill, of self-doubt, of imposter syndrome, of “Maybe we shouldn’t have walked through the threshold because look at all these obstacles in front of us, between us and the future self we want to become.” Perfectly normal for you to be feeling this way. So they do, will take up residence in your brain, but through the tools I’m teaching you, you should be able to get curious about them and be able to identify them early so that you can go “You know what, I see what my brain is doing right now.” If you have a frank the parent like I do, who’s my self-doubt, little animus that I like to imagine, then you can give them a cracker, give him some juice and tell him to sit in the backseat because you’ve got this. And yes, you’re a little bit afraid. Yes, you have some impostor syndrome. Yes, you feel like it, there’s risk involved, but that it’s worth it.

So tests, allies and enemies: you’re finally out of your comfort zone. You are uncomfortable. No growth happens when you’re perfectly comfortable. So you are doing the work now, you’re, as a hero, you’re going to be confronted with more obstacles, some of them bigger than the last one, that are going to test you to see if you really want to become that future version of yourself. We see this in Hero’s Journeys all the time and it really does resonate in our own individual lives. So you have obstacles thrown across your path. They can be physical hurdles, they can be, you feel so busy because your calendar was already packed, and you have obligations as a parent and so it can just seem really, really easy for you to deprioritize the new version of yourself that you want it to do and to make time for things like that because other things are popping up.

And that becomes a convenient excuse, right? Those can be obstacles, your own calendar can become an obstacle, things that are bent on thwarting your forward progress, and they can be very small, but they can add up over time. So you have to overcome each of these challenges in order to become that future self that you want to be and move towards your ultimate goal. So you need to find out what stories serve you can be trusted and which ones can’t and you can do that by being curious about some of those stories that are playing in your head as far as self-doubts and reasons why you might not want to do that thing you said you were going to do on your calendar today that moves you even if a small infants decimal step towards that future self that you want to become.

So here is the thing that I want to give you so you might start to see these obstacles in front of you, and I’ve talked a lot about obstacles so far and you might be taking a deep breath and going “Okay, yeah, I say I want to do this thing, now I decided to start doing it. I’ve taken the first couple steps, but I see so many more steps in front of me, so many more obstacles, small brick walls, that I’m gonna have to climb over each one in order to make progress towards where I’m gonna get.” So here’s something that’s really helped me and really helped some of my students to be able to reframe the way you look at obstacles on your journey on this part of the Hero’s Journey, the test allies and enemies part of your journey. And that is a quote from one of the stoics. So Marcus Aurelius, in his book, Meditations, had a very famous quote. Some of you may have already heard a version of it. It’s become quite popular. But it really helps to reframe the way you look at obstacles that are in your path when you’re at this stage of the journey and so, the quote is:

“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting, the impediment to action, advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way”

And again, that’s Marcus, are really is one very famous stoic, from stoic philosophy, from his book Meditations, the collection of a lot of his thoughts and so “The obstacle is the way” is what this boils down to. Those obstacles that are in front of you are actually way finders. They are a compass, stepping stones that get you across the body of water that you wouldn’t be able to cross otherwise, in order to get to the other shore. Each of those obstacles can be reframed as the thing that needs to get done, and that very, very clearly show you what you need to do to stay on the path to get what you want. Reframing the way you think about this can be such a powerful way for you to say, “You know what? Okay, what obstacles do I see right now? And which ones might pop up, I can even list those and now I have an operating instruction for exactly what needs to get done between now where I am right now and the future heroes self I want to become in order to step into my Storied Life?”

This is a very powerful way to reframe the work because there’s going to be a lot of it in between anything that you want from your current self to the future version of yourself that you want. It’s going to take that strength and toughness of mind to get through these obstacles, these tests, allies that you meet along the way, and even enemies. And some of those enemies are going to be you: your own prioritization of the things that you want to get in your day done in your day, your feelings and stories in your head about what other people are going to think because you’ve decided to become a different version of yourself. Some of them might inadvertently thwart you. You might have a spouse or a significant other or a good friend that likes the old version of yourself and you’ve decided you want to become a different version. Some of those friendships may or may not be sturdy enough to hold up to you transforming into a new version of yourself that you want to become, and that’s not going to be unfaithful. You may have thoughts about that; that’s perfectly normal.

So the obstacle becomes the way. I’s a great way to remember that quote from Marcus Aurelius. Line those things up. They are the stepping stones towards where you want to go. They are, they are the way for you to achieve what you want to achieve. They are those way finders pointing you to the hero you want to become as you create your Storied Life.

So that’s what I wanted to leave you with today, that once you’re in this phase, it can seem daunting once you’ve crossed the threshold and now you’re like, “Okay, and now there’s all the things that things can be taken one at a time.” They can be mapped, and they can actually be one of your greatest assets. They can be the way finders, the stepping stones. The obstacle becomes the way, the clear path towards the future self you want to become.

Aalright my friends, I’ll talk to you next week. Bye for now.