This post is part of the series: Jung for Leaders — The Inner Work of Moving People to Action
Also in this series: The 12 Jungian Archetypes | A Deep Dive into Jungian Archetypes | Jung’s 5 Pillars of a Happy Life
The hero’s journey is about personal transformation through adversity.
“Nobody ever said: I went to Hawaii and it made me the person I am today” David Brooks
At the age of 10 my favourite movie was Star Wars. I watched it every day… I watched it over and over again. I dreamed of being Luke Skywalker with the power of the force.
At the age of 29 I first became an entrepreneur… buying a 20% stake in an insurance brokerage. By 33 I had 4 businesses including a fast growing and outwardly visible success called Taxijet… and then 2008… 15 September… Lehman brothers declared bankruptcy and the fun adventure turned into a loss making, angry clients, angry employees shit show. Everything fell apart. Crisis after crisis hit me.
This is the pattern of the Hero’s Journey. Something inside us calls us to adventure. Somebody wise encourages us. We begin and at first everything goes to plan. Friends and allies show up to help. We start to feel pretty proud of ourselves. We ignore the first signs of trouble, and then the major crisis start to hit.
Adversity is painful when you’re not expecting it
As we hit crisis the early friends and allies seem to disappear. We descend into darkness, we face our deepest fears alone. If we can stay on our journey and remember why we really began the journey we can get to our destination. We return transformed, with something of value to give back to their community.
This is the Hero’s Journey, mapped by Joseph Campbell from thousands of myths, stories, and religious traditions across every culture in human history. Campbell built directly on Jung’s theory of archetypes. And it maps, with uncomfortable precision, onto the experience of my life, and that of every serious leader I have met.
The Structure of the Journey
The 3 themes and the 17 specific steps along the Hero’s Journey are described below.
Call to Adverture
- The call to adventure: Something, or someone, interrupts the hero’s familiar life to present a problem, threat, or opportunity.
- Refusal of the call: Unwilling to step out of their comfort zone or face their fear, the hero initially hesitates to embark on this journey. The call is dangerous. Leaving the familiar is hard.
- Supernatural aid: A mentor figure gives the hero the tools and inspiration they need to accept the call to adventure.
- Crossing the threshold: The hero embarks on their quest.
- Belly of the whale: The hero crosses the point of no return, and encounters their first major obstacle.
Trials of the Hero
- The road of trials: The hero must go through a series of tests or ordeals to begin his transformation. Often, the hero fails at least one of these tests.
- The meeting with the goddess: The hero meets one or more allies, who pick him up and help him continue his journey.
- Distraction from Purpose: The hero is tempted to abandon or stray from his quest. Traditionally, this temptation is a love interest, but it can manifest itself in other forms as well, including fame or wealth.
- The Innermost Cave: The hero confronts the reason for his journey, facing his doubts and fears and the powers that rule his life. This is a major turning point in the story: every prior step has brought the hero here, and every step forward stems from this moment. The moment of maximum danger and maximum transformation. This is also referred to as “Atonement with the father”. This is a step that the hero must achieve alone. Nobody can help them here.
- Apotheosis: As a result of this confrontation, the hero gains a profound understanding of their purpose or skill. Armed with this new ability, the hero prepares for the most difficult part of the adventure.
- The ultimate boon: The hero achieves the goal he set out to accomplish, fulfilling the call that inspired his journey in the first place.
Return of the Hero
- Refusal of the return: If the hero’s journey has been victorious, he may be reluctant to return to the ordinary world of his prior life.
- The magic flight: The hero must escape with the object of his quest, evading those who would reclaim it.
- Rescue from without: Mirroring the meeting with the goddess, the hero receives help from a guide or rescuer in order to make it home.
- The crossing of the return threshold: The hero makes a successful return to the ordinary world.
- Master of two worlds: We see the hero achieve a balance between who he was before his journey and who he is now. Often, this means balancing the material world with the spiritual enlightenment he’s gained.
- Freedom to live: We leave the hero at peace with his life.
You are Probably in the Middle
Most of the leaders that read this blog are in the middle. You have accepted a call: to build something, to lead something, to change something… and you are now in the difficult middle.
The middle of the journey is where most people quit.
The middle is genuinely hard, and the rewards are not visible, and people around you doubt that it will work.
This is the time when the inner work matters most:
- Who are you under pressure?
- How do you handle failure and obstacles that were not in the plan?
- Can you remember your purpose when all seems to be lost?
The trials of the middle are not obstacles to the journey. They are the journey. They are how the hero becomes who they need to become.
Waiting for the Right Moment
Carl Jung said that most people have an un-lived Hero’s Journey inside them. They have a creative project that is waiting for the right moment, they have a desire for professional change waiting for the right moment, or a dream Adventure waiting for the right moment. (The right moment will never come).
Society encourages us to ignore the call.
When we ignore the call, it turns into restlessness and irritability.
What are you being called toward?
What is the refusal costing you?
The Obstacle is the Way
Campbell’s insight, drawn from Jung, is that the difficulty is not a distraction. It is the point. You cannot shortcut the innermost cave. You cannot outsource the ordeal. The transformation is not gifted to the hero. It must be earned through what they are willing to face.
Leadership development requires real courage. It has to be done under pressure, through actual difficulty. The experience is essential.
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” — Joseph Campbell
A question: What call have you been refusing?
This post is part of the series: Jung for Leaders — The Inner Work of Moving People to Action
Also in this series: The 12 Jungian Archetypes | A Deep Dive into Jungian Archetypes | Jung’s 5 Pillars of a Happy Life
Conor’s Jung for Leaders Series of Blog Posts
Carl Jung spent his life exploring what it means to be human. Most leadership development focuses on skills, strategy, and behaviour. Jung explores something more fundamental: the person behind the leader. The single most-read post on this blog is about Jungian archetypes — which tells me that the readers here are not just looking for tactics, they are looking for self-understanding. This series is an attempt to go deeper into that territory.
- The Shadow: The Part of You That Sabotages Your Leadership — projection, blind spots, why your strongest reactions point inward, the gift hidden in the Shadow
- The Persona: Are You Leading as Yourself, or as a Mask? — inflation of the Persona, the cost of living inside the role, the journey back to self
- Individuation: The Journey From Success to Significance — why midlife restlessness is a call not a crisis, what blocks the journey, why it is not selfishness
- The Anima and Animus: The Hidden Energies Every Leader Needs — one-sided leadership, integrating strength and empathy, what your professional conditioning suppressed
- The Hero’s Journey: Every Leader Must Answer a Call — departure, initiation, return; the call you’re refusing; why the ordeal is the point
- The Wise Old Man: Finding and Becoming a Mentor — the archetype in myths, what mentors do that advisors don’t, the shift from receiving to giving
- The Trickster Archetype: Why Every Great Team Needs a Disruptor — Loki, Coyote, the Fool; why organisations suppress this energy; how to channel it
- Synchronicity: Paying Attention to What Life Is Telling You — meaningful coincidence, intuition as intelligence, the discipline of attention
- The Collective Unconscious: “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast” — culture as organisational unconscious, how it gets formed, making the invisible visible
- Jung’s Psychological Types: The Original Framework Before Myers-Briggs — introversion/extraversion, the four functions, the inferior function as your blind spot
- Active Imagination: A Conversation With the Part of You That Knows More — the practice step by step, why it works, how to use it for decisions
- Your Personal Myth: Living the Story Worth Living — the closing post; the unlived life; rewriting the myth; the test of a worthy story