What Willa Cather, Hallmark movies, and your career have in common
Can it really be this simple?
Nebraska’s most celebrated author, Willa Cather, is famously quoted as saying, “There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”
I’m a storyteller so it was easy to fall head over heels with the idea of life as a story. But isn’t every one as unique and unpredictable as the people who live them?
A few decades after Cather, Joseph Campbell widely shared his theory of a foundational story framework with his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Even if you’ve never heard of Campbell or his work, you know it.
The Hero’s Journey
Campbell’s influential book explores the theory that mythological narratives share a structure he called “The Hero’s Adventure” also known as “The Hero’s Journey.”
See if it sounds familiar:
Hero is happily living in their ordinary world when they
receive a call to adventure.
Hero refuses the call to adventure because their current world is safe/easy/familiar and the other one is scary/hard/unknown.
Hero then meets a mentor who helps them
cross the threshold to fully commit to the journey.
Now Hero is on the road of trials, and
ultimately faces an ordeal.
Hero adapts/pivots/rises to the occasion and receives a reward.
Reward in hand, Hero journeys back to the ordinary world, which comes with its own challenges.
Having returned, Hero has been changed for good and can share the reward to improve their ordinary world.
What you just read is the plot of nearly every novel you’ve read or movie you’ve seen, but that’s not the only reason you’re an expert at this framework.
The stages of the Hero’s Journey are familiar, predictable and satisfying to us because each of us is a hero.
Let that sink in: You are the hero in your own life story.
Unsurprisingly the Hero’s Journey has become a powerful tool for understanding our individual, overarching life stories, and the chapters within.
Let’s test it out by pretending you’ve been given an opportunity for an internal promotion.
Ordinary world: You’re coasting along in your familiar job.
Called to adventure: Someone sends you an internal job posting for a promotion.
Refuses of the call: You come up with 27 reasons why you shouldn’t go for it, or wouldn’t get it if you tried.
Meets a mentor: Your boss brings the job up in your one-on-one and gives you the insight and confidence you need to move forward.
Crosses the threshold: You apply—no turning back now.
Road of trials:
HR forgets to mark your interview as private on the shared calendar and your staff panics;
Your internal competition becomes uncooperative on a joint project;
You realize too late your lucky suit doesn’t fit;
You face questions you didn’t expect during the interview.
The ordeal: You get the offer, but the pay increase is lower than it would be for an outside candidate. You must negotiate with people who know your whole hand.
Receives the Reward: You get the job!
The road back: You tell your staff, prepare for the transition, train your replacement and get new business cards.
Shares the reward: Your new position helps you make an even greater impact.
Applying the hero’s journey to our own situations is deceptively easy. The truth is, it’s hard to see the picture from inside the frame, and it’s hard to recognize a story when you’re living it.
That’s where the mentor comes in.
As a coach (mentor), I help people own their main character role and move toward their desired reward with clarity and confidence.
The reason we never tire of hearing stories or watching similar ones (consider those Hallmark Christmas movies) is because no two are the same.
It’s the nuance, the detail, the individuality of each hero and their unique circumstances that leads us to keep repeating our human stories “as fiercely as if they’ve never happened before.”
The middle of any story is hard, but it’s also the very best part.
Cather also famously said, “Success if never so interesting as struggle—not even to the successful, not even to the most mercenary forms of ambition.”
Your very interesting story is in progress, and I’m rooting for you. Keep going!
This post was originally written for RISE & Empower, a program by the Lincoln, Nebraska chamber of commerce which empowers local business woman to support one another and grow into their potential. Learn more about the RISE coaching community and the power of professional coaching here.
