Ep #11: Hero’s Journey Series 8 of 11: The Reward

What if you could write your own life story? How would you spend your time? What would your career or business look like? What kind of parent or partner would you be? Welcome to Storied Life Coaching, the only podcast that will show you how to stop living life by default, and teach you how to build a thriving business that fuels an amazing life on your terms. I’m Aaron J. Jacobs, and as a master coach and CEO of OMH Creative and Storied Coaching, I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to learn what it takes first hand to rewrite your own life story. It’s never too late for a rewrite.

Hello, my friends. So this week, we are going to move on in our Hero’s Journey series sequence to the moment you’ve been waiting for. We’ve talked all along about: you’re going on an adventure, going on journey, because there’s something that you want. There’s a result that you want to get and that result, if we’re doing it right, has something that is externally different about you now, something that you want to get a new kind of result for. So, something on the outside. So, it might be something specific, like professionally, you want to have a career change, or get a new job or start dating more, or get a friend, learn how to be a better friend—like something, a tangible external result. But through this process, you’re having an internal transformation as well and this reward that we’re going to talk about this stage of the Hero’s Journey. The reward is the payoff.

All the work that you’ve done, my friends, up to this point, it’s right within your grasp. It’s right within your reach. And as I was thinking about this episode this week and how I wanted to be able to show you from a personal perspective how this can affect you, I thought about a universal experience that happens to many of us and in my specific instance, you might—when my parents went through a divorce. And this is not an uncommon thing, although those of us that are from, especially if you’re an 80s kid and you had a divorce that your parents went through, you felt a stigma attached to you. You felt like there was something maybe broken about your family or about you, especially if you’re a kid. And processing that and all the things that we have come to realize about how to do that and be much more intentional about it, I feel like there’s some really good things that have happened there. But I remember that the story that I told myself at the time about that divorce was a lot along the lines of: there needed to be black and white, there needed to be right and wrong, there needed to be someone whose fault it was and someone whose fault it wasn’t. And I know that many of you that may have been in such a similar situation and gone through some kind of a divorce or relationships. They begin in the end and we know that there’s more than half of the relationships that specifically are formalized in what can be considered traditional marriage and in a divorce. So it’s actually really not weird. It’s kind of normal but when you’re a kid, you don’t really process it that way. And when you’re going through divorce as well, I’m sure it doesn’t feel that way. But for me, there was that right and wrong, there was that black and white, and a lot of people think along these lines. And it’s been so interesting to me that as I have grown and as I’ve aged, how my perspective on looking backwards—that 2020 hindsight—has changed.

And many of you, this may have happened to you as well, if you take a moment to think about it. For me at first, my dad was definitely the villain. There were definitely some things that happened in the relationship and as far as what was communicated to me, he has done wrong things and now the marriage is ending. And now that super sad, but like definitely, like, it’s just very much that. And that as time went on and I started, you know, went through my own life journey and my own Hero’s Journey, my own adventure as far as my life in the arc is concerned that it’s never that easy, is it? Relationships have two people in them, and things that I faulted my dad for that I ended up on my journey needed to struggle with as well. And maybe I made different choices, or maybe I made the exact same choice, but it allows me to look at my father now as deeply human and flawed, just like I am, just like you are, and how that Hero’s Journey, that lens that we look at things through whether you’re looking at your actual aging process and your life and how things look different from when you’re eight to when you’re in college to when you’re in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, and beyond, how that hindsight, that 2020 hindsight, if you take the time to do it can actually be part of the reward. It can be part of what transforms you from the inside.

And I want to talk about that today, in fact, the results that you’ll get from this episode in particular. I want to help you learn how to view your reward, success, the thing that you’re after, whether that’s professionally, whether it’s personal, as more than just the tangible, more than just transformative in one way for you but that it’s something that happens internally and externally, something that other people can see and something that you can feel on the inside. So that’s number one.

Number two: learn how to, how to fully—and I so want want you if you leave with nothing else today, I want you to learn how to celebrate once you have reached a mile marker, like a reward, with all of the things that go into that and how to celebrate it fully and properly without any sort of embarrassment or disregard for all the hard work that you put into it. That’s number two.

And number three is: learn, like I was just talking about with 2020 hindsight, really learn how the skill and practice it, of how to use your 2020 hindsight goggles, as I call them, like how to use your imagination put on a pair of glasses. And if you’re looking behind you with the journey, the Hero’s Journey that you had to go through in order to achieve what you have just succeeded at achieving, what are all the actual lessons and transformation transfer, transformative experiences that you’ve gone through that now that you look at it, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, look at all these lessons I learned along the way that I didn’t even realize I was going to learn?”

So those are the three things that I want you to take away from this episode so that it’s so much more than just the reward that you thought you were after, more than the one results that you thought you were after. But it can be so much more. You can really suck the marrow out of that experience so that you can enjoy it as fully as possible, but also so that you can help others, which is what the next episodes are about in this Hero’s Journey is about how to take the reward the success that you have achieved, and how to help and serve others. Because that is the highest form of leadership, of growth for yourself personally and professionally, is how learning how to do that. And it feels amazing. From a selfish point of view, I hope once you’ve achieved that and you know that success and then you start helping others, there is no feeling like it in the world at all: lifting others up.

So let’s talk a little bit more about that. Let’s talk about one all the work that you’ve gone through all to this point. So you put in all this work, you’ve gone through crossing the threshold, starting your adventure, meeting your mentor, learning hard learned lessons, finding out, you know, and overcoming obstacles getting all the way to this point where you’ve earned your results. In an actual Hero’s Journey story, they may have overcome very perilous situations where death was involved. Even you’ve overcome the personal challenge. You’ve ultimately transformed into a new person. So the reward can come in so many different forms. So it could be a great importance of power, a new superpower that you’ve developed. Maybe you wanted to get way better at copywriting for your business if you’re in marketing and so you went through all the things, and the hard things, in order to get to the point where you got the result that you’re a better copywriter now. And it comes a lot easier to you. Just one example. It might be a secret that you have learned that is helping you in your life. Maybe you’ve been working with a coach, and you’ve learned about footwork or cognitive behavioral therapy and now that is helping you inform your daily experience. And the way you look at life is completely different now and that’s your reward, that—it’s affecting so many different areas of your life. That was a huge reward for me once I learned about how to how to filter and look through, look at life in a different way and control that narrative, control that story so that I was able to enjoy my life more. It could be greater knowledge or insight. Some of that insight could be that 2020 hindsight.

So whatever that treasure is, whatever that result is that you have gotten, also look at the celebrations that you can take advantage of now that you have gone on that journey. So now number one we just talked about, which is learning how to view the reward that success as more than just the tangible. So I want you to think about the fact that you’ve learned how to do that thing, or you’ve gotten that right is all of what you were looking for, and it feels great, but it can be even more transformative for you if you remember that it’s not just about that thing. What happened to you internally? How are you thinking about things differently now? And how can you apply that to the rest of your life so that leads to thing number two?

So, learn how to fully celebrate and not downplay your reward or success. So what do I mean by that? Okay, here’s some examples of what I have done in the past and what I have seen others do. You work really hard on something—really, really hard. Probably a lot harder than anyone even noticed because you were in the trenches doing the work on yourself, on your business, on whatever you were trying to achieve. You get the success, you have gotten the treasure, you’ve walked across that stage, whatever it is for you and as soon as other people start to congratulate you, or start to say what a great job you’ve done, or how transformation, are you seeing change and all this stuff, you immediately start to deflect. You start to say like, you start to come up with qualifications in your mind, of how “Yeah, but yeah, that was easy for me, but I, you know, I took a course or I got coaching on it so that was really what helped me to do that,” and  though you start to disqualify your own hard work, and not really fully embrace all of the hard work, everything you did to have that success, I want you to own it, to celebrate this moment. It has nothing to do with you having a big ego. It has nothing to do with any thoughts you might have of what other people will think of you if you don’t have a false humility that you start showing. W’ve all done that, right? Or seen people that do it like, oh, no, really, it’s, it’s like, nope, really, yes, I did that, I feel great about it and here’s why I feel great about it and really just step into that success. Enjoy it. You earned it.

And if other people have thoughts about the fact that you’re celebrating successes small and large for yourself personally and professionally, that is their thought work that needs to be done has nothing to do with you. And do not allow that your thoughts about what they might think—you know what I’m talking about. Diminish the work, the hard work that you’ve put in, in order to get to the point where yet now, I want you to fully celebrate that success, that can look so many different ways to you. It could be as small as you taking yourself out for lunch and just really enjoying yourself. It could be large. It could be so many things in between. But I want you to fully embrace and celebrate the success, unabashedly out loud, juicy.

Now, the last thing that I want to talk about that weaves all this together, and this has to do with the in the internal change. So you may have some external form of success that you have just gotten as a reward. Let’s say that you got that job you were working so hard to interview for, and step out of your comfort zone, and put yourself out there and get. Now I want you to think about that 2020 hindsight, just if you were thinking about like, visually, yourself, looking back along the metaphorical trail of all the things you had to do, and the bravery it took to get to the point that you’re at now. What are all those small lessons you learned about yourself along the way? What are those things that happened to you that you didn’t know you were going to have to overcome or you didn’t know that you were going to be your own worst enemy in some cases? Or you met someone that really helped you to be able to polish that part of your resume or that friend that allows you to do a mock presentation to them so that you could practice the interview. It could be so many different things, but in hindsight, how did those things enrich your relationships, enrich the relationship with yourself, with other people? what things did you have to overcome along the way?

That’s the internal transformation that happens and here’s the secret: that’s the most important part. The most important part is how you changed on the inside and how you’re now going to completely look at the world from just a slightly different point of view from now on. Because internally, you are changed. Your brain is not the same anymore, and that’s such a beautiful thing. Now while you’re doing this, I want you to realize that, that 2020 hindsight or as I was calling it, 2020 hindsight goggles. If you can develop the ability, when you’re going through something hard, when you’re not even close to getting the reward yet on that part of the Hero’s Journey, on the many journeys you will go on in your professional and personal life—if you’re able, even mid adventure, to take a look behind you and go look at all the stuff that I’ve gotten done, or we’ve gotten done as a team, or how my team has grown in these different ways, things that they had to overcome, and get frustrated about and then get better at and then we’re in a different place than we were when we started, how can you find time and space to celebrate those? And as a leader, point them out to your teams. Point them out to yourself when it’s hard. How do you develop that ability, that wisdom to be your own mentor, to be your own guide as you’re going through your next adventure as well? And how do you bring other people with you and help point out to them how much progress they’ve made, even though they can’t see it? Because they haven’t developed the same skill set that you have just gone through, and through hard work, for yourself.

Start to look at those things. So that is about the reward. The reward is really just being in the moment. Have I achieved the thing I set out to do, the goal, the result that I wanted? I’m here now. Number one: how do you view your reward ,your success as more than just the tangible? So what internally has changed as well as the thing that you’ve achieved that other people might be able to physically notice or see as a result? Nmber two: learn how to fully celebrate the success unabashedly. It may feel uncomfortable at first. That’s okay. But I want you to fully enjoy and celebrate the success and the reward stage. And number three: those 2020 hindsight goggles, internally, inside, how have you changed now? And if you look back along your journey, what lessons have you learned that you can share with others and with yourself for other adventures that you’re gonna go on that will inform the way that you approach those from now on and the way that you lead?

So those are the things I want to talk about today. That is the reward, otherwise known as Seizing the Sword. Next time, we’re going to talk about the next stage of the Hero’s Journey and about how you can take some of these lessons and pay them forward and reflect upon them on your way back home. to the end of the specific Hero’s Journey.

I’ll talk to you next week, my friends. Until then, enjoy your reward.