Your Hero’s Journey

Who has a why to live, can bear with almost any how.

When you have a great quest, it dramatically changes your willingness to spend energy and take risk.  When the stakes are a large sum of money people don’t take great risks. When the stakes are love and life and that which has incalculable value, people go the extra mile.

A great quest is the epicenter of everyone’s hero’s journey story. The Quest is one of the three foundations of good storytelling  

Without quest, no character in a book, or movie or in art would do anything interesting, meaningful, memorable, worthwhile. Without quest, our hero’s journey story has no meaning. It has no coherence, no direction, no inexorable momentum. Without quest, our life still ‘moves’ along – whatever that means, but it lacks an organizing principle. Without quest, it is all but impossible to be fully engaged. To be extraordinary.

With a quest on the other hand, people do amazing things: good, smart, productive things, often heroic things, unprecedented things. Quest is the thing in your hero’s journey you will fight for. It is the ground you will defend at any cost. Your quest is not the same as ‘incentive’, but rather the motor behind it, the end that drives why you have energy for some things and not for others.

I have seen many seen articulate their quest to themselves and to others. But articulation is not nearly enough; in fact it is really not even worth of a pat on the back, so long as one continues to live one’s life in a way that does very little, if anything, to support that quest. Indeed, to say you have a quest and then to do nothing about it is, first, a sham, and, last, a tragedy.

Most people who have been living in this way, when inspired to be passionate, will quickly identify what they claim to be their true quest in life. 

To find one’s true quest sometimes takes work. Fortunately, the skill it requires is one that every person is blessed with.

For a few people, naming one’s quest comes with remarkable ease. The individual feels it in the deepest part of his or her soul; the quest has always been there, even if it got lost for a very long while, remaining unexpressed to oneself and to those who are the objects of one’s quest. A deep enduring quest is virtually always motivated by a desire for the well-being of others.

You know a quest when you see it.

To author a workable, fulfilling new story, you will need to ask yourself many questions and then answer them, none more important than those that concern your quest. Your quest is the sail on the boat, the yeast in the bread. Once you know your quest – that is, what matters – then everything else can fall into place. Getting your quest clear is your defining truth. What is the quest of your life? Whatever it is, it had better be something for which you will move mountains, cross deserts, seven days a week, no questions asked.

Once you find your quest, you have a chance to live a story that moves you and those around you. A story that make them live happily ever after.

The Hero’s Journey in Rome – The Power of your Story

In this journey in Rome you will examine with Peter de Kuster, founder of The Hero’s Journey the way we tell stories about ourselves to ourselves — and, most important, the way we can change those stories to transform our business and personal lives.

“Your story is your life,” says Peter. As human beings, we continually tell ourselves stories — of success or failure; of power or victimhood; stories that endure for an hour, or a day, or an entire lifetime. We have stories about ourselves, our creative business, our customers ; about what we want and what we’re capable of achieving. Yet, while our stories profoundly affect how others see us and we see ourselves, too few of us even recognize that we’re telling stories, or what they are, or that we can change them — and, in turn, transform our very destinies.

Telling ourselves stories provides structure and direction as we navigate life’s challenges and opportunities, and helps us interpret our goals and skills. Stories make sense of chaos; they organize our many divergent experiences into a coherent thread; they shape our entire reality. And far too many of our stories, says Peter, are dysfunctional, in need of serious editing. First, he asks you to answer the question, “In which areas of my life is it clear that I cannot achieve my goals with the story I’ve got?” He then shows you how to create new, reality-based stories that inspire you to action, and take you where you want to go both in your work and personal life.

Our capacity to tell stories is one of our profoundest gifts. Peter’s approach to creating deeply engaging stories will give you the tools to wield the power of storytelling and forever change your business and personal life.