Share Your Story Through The Hero's Journey Steps To Show Your Authenticity
The hero’s journey steps can be used in marketing your business as it helps tell your story through authenticity to connect with your ideal customer audience.
Hi Trish Davies, here and today I am going to talk about the hero’s journey steps. The hero’s journey is somewhat of a story template to follow when you want to tell your own story.
It involves a hero that embarks on a great adventure, learns valuable lessons, facing huge obstacles. Then the story continues as the hero overcomes those obstacles, slays the dragon, and then receives rewards.
It is a full 360-degree cycle where the hero leaves the ordinary world and enters the unknown world. Here is where the adventure takes place, the hero goes though the steps to find the strength and skills needed to combat thee battle. Then the hero makes a triumphant return to the ordinary world.
Now you may be wondering what this has to do with business and that is a great point. My Build Your AU programs are designed to help you create a strong personal brand and the hero’s journey can from part of your story.
How Can You Use The Hero’s Journey Steps For Your Business?
The hero’s journey is a perfect exercise to go through so that you can incorporate it into your marketing message. What you want to do is leverage the hero’s journey so that you make a lasting impression on your ideal customer.
You want to make an emotional connection, something that people watching your videos resonate with. The same can be said for your articles and blog posts and there is nothing more authentic than your own journey.
It is not limited to just one journey though. I am sure that you have multiple hero journey stories within you. Therefore, I want to give you an overview of each step. Then you can go away and create your own hero journey story and use it within your marketing.
The Hero’s Journey Steps Start With The Ordinary World
You are the hero, so you start with the position you find yourself in at the moment. Therefore, this is where you currently exist, or existed, before your adventure begins, or began. This means that you are oblivious as to the adventure that lies ahead.
You are living your everyday life which is guided by your capabilities and outlook on life. Then something happens to alter your equilibrium, something that alters your physical balance or state of mind.
Call To Adventure
This shift gives you a clear call to action as a result of something that directly threats your way of lie. Something that threatens your family’s safety either physically, financially, or emotional.
It could be tragedy as in my hero’s journey when my daughters father was killed in a motorcycle accident. Maybe it is a simple phone call or email which affects your households financial status. Or it could be a relationship or health issue, really the list is endless and can incorporate thousands of different scenarios. You will know your own call to action, your call to adventure.
Refusal Of The Call Is The Next Step Of The Hero’s Journey Steps
When this call to adventure comes you will naturally want to accept the quest. However human nature always kicks in and you will be fearful as to whether you can rise to the challenge.
Personal doubts will raise their ugly head, you will have second thoughts and you may initially refuse the call. You may feel the challenge is far too much for you to handle, you can’t face the perilous road ahead.
Unfortunately, you will continue to suffer if you decide to stay in the comfort of home and the ordinary world you exist in. Therefore, to continue on the journey you must seek help and guidance.
Meeting The Mentor
The help and guidance you need can be found when meeting a mentor wo will give you what you need. This could be tools, resources, insights, practical training, or just good advice.
This will dispel any fears, self-doubt, and will give you the strength that you need to begin your journey.
Crossing The First Threshold
Armed with the physical and mental strength you are now ready to cross the first threshold. There may still be some resistance for which you will need a final push. Hopefully you will be ready and willingly cross that threshold.
Either way when you cross you leave your ordinary world and enter the unknown, a place you are not familiar with. There can be thousands of different thresholds and you will know your own but crossing it is your commitment to the journey. Regardless to what may be in store for you!
Tests, Allies & Enemies
You have left your ordinary world and comfort zone so there will be consequences. Tests and challenges will be thrown at you, obstacles will block your path. This can happen both with physical objects and through people who are hell bent on thwarting your progress.
What you must do here is overcome every challenge that presents itself. You have no choice if you want to reach your ultimate goal. To accomplish this, you must evaluate who can and can’t be trusted so this means you will gain allies and enemies.
This will be where all your powers, skills and strengths will be tested to the limits. It will give you a true insight as to your character, what you are made of!
Approach To the Inmost Cave
The Inmost Cave is a place where your most terrible fears and inner conflicts are located. Up to this point you have not faced them so this is the moment of truth so you must prepare yourself to take that leap of faith. A leap of faith into the great unknown. Once you do there is no turning back!
As you make that final approach to this threshold some of your initial fears and doubts will resurface. This is a great time to reflect for a moment on the journey you have experienced up to now. Also reflect on what still awaits on your journey but ultimately you will find the courage to continue.
This reflection will give some clarity as to the magnitude of the task you are embarking on. Tension levels will rise in anticipation of the ultimate test you are now going to face.
The Supreme Ordeal
Your supreme ordeal can happen in different ways. Either it will be a physical test or something that connects with a deep inner crisis. You have no choice here as you must face these tests in order to survive.
Drawing on your experiences and the skills you have amassed on your journey is the only way to overcome your challenges. Now this may sound strange, but you will experience some kind of death experience. Not to the extent that you stop breathing I hasten to add.
What I mean is that times will get incredibly tough, but you will through your greater powers resurrect yourself. You will put everything on the line, it can be metaphorically compared to life and death. Have you got the power to fulfil your destiny, to reach your journey’s end?
Reward & Treasure
When you reach this step of the hero’s journey you will have slayed the dragon, defeated the enemy. Your greatest personal challenged has been overcome and you have transformed into a new state. You will emerge from the battlefield a much stronger person an invariably you will be holding a prize for your efforts.
This can be many things such as a physical prize but can also be in the form of greater knowledge. Maybe it is a reconciliation with someone who is dear to you or feeling a greater physical power.
The reward you receive will help you when you get back to the ordinary world, the place where the adventure began. It is not a time to rest on your laurels though and become complacent as there is still work to be done. You must prepare yourself for the final legs of your hero’s journey and find the road back to your ordinary world.
The Road Back
Now the road back to the ordinary world is a complete reverse to the call to adventure step. Then you had the fear of what the future had instore, now the future is completely different.
You will be returning to the ordinary world to face acclaim for what you have achieved. Depending on your reasons leaving the ordinary world you may feel you deserve vindication or absolution form your peers.
Therefore, your journey is not quite complete, and it requires you to give one final almighty push. Depending on your beliefs you may have to choose between your own personal objective over something of a higher cause.
Resurrection or Redemption
This is your final and most dangerous encounter. It is your final battle, one which will represent something far greater than your own existence. The outcome of this battle will have far-reaching consequences to the life and people you left behind.
The simple fact is that if you fail other people will suffer and the result of that is you will feel much more weight on your shoulders. Ultimately you will succeed and e-emerge cleaner and in a way re-born.
Returning With The Elixir Is The Climax To The Hero’s Journey Steps
This is the final step of the hero’s journey as you get to return to the ordinary world with your elixir. You will be a changed person having learned many things. Also, you will have grown as a person by overcoming many challenges.
You are ready to start your new life but also in a position to help the people that you initially left behind. What you have achieved could be the solution that many people are looking for, make them think differently.
You will have time to celebrate your achievements, enjoy a period of self-realisation. What you must appreciate is that your successful journey represents a number of things. It represents that any doubters that you once had will be ostracized, any enemies you had have been punished.
Your allies will be rewarded and that you have changed and succeeded in your quest. A full 360-degree journey has been successfully achieved bring you to the same place where you started. Only this time your life will never be the same as it once was.
Your Next Step
These are the hero’s journey steps which I want you to go through and create your own journey. Apply the steps to times and experiences you have had in your life. From a marketing perspective this is gold, it is so powerful because no one else has had the same journey. I have asked my current Build Your AU members to do this exercise so they can show their true authentic self.
This is how you show your authenticity to your customers, so they know you are real and transparent. Then you will attract them to your business. To learn more about the Build Your AU program and creating a personal brand through authenticity and authority click the button below.
Helping you build your authenticity, authority and audience.
Trish Davies
Build Your AU
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