If you are toying with engaging in a new lifestyle, career, artistic endeavor or life opportunity, I urge you to say yes.
But, if you decide to instigate this process of change in your life,
Burn your boats.
If you have a back up plan, you have the option of falling back on a “back up plan”. It is too easy, when things start to become very challenging to check out and fall back. Don’t give yourself that “safety net.”
Commit as if your life depended on it. Structure it so that it does.
Commitment to new endeavors can, for some, be a terrifying pursuit. However, this is fear speaking. The hero’s journey is, in part, about overcoming fear…and his cousin doubt. Know that the anticipatory fear is always greater than the actual experience usually brings. In brief, we are the makers of our fear and can be the controllers and over-comers.
Expect obstacles.
Expect to be tested.
Expect to be faced with experiences that will cause you to question what you know and what your motivations are.
Expect to have to wrestle, not only with circumstance, but with yourself.
You are the hero of your life story and hero tales are ALWAYS about overcoming obstacles, adapting to the demands of change and persevering in the face of self-generated fear and doubt.
Expect to have to sacrifice and compromise.
Accept that nothing in life is for free. There is a cost for everything.
Expect that the pushback you receive will be in direct proportion to the energy you expend and to the value you seek to manifest.
There is no inspiration like a gun to the head. When you need to make a living, your chances of doing so are infinitely greater. If there is room in your life for slack, for laziness, for procrastination and self-sabotage, cast it out.
Only fierce commitment, a having just burned your transportation home mentality is going to enable to have the resolution, the strength of commitment to achieve your full potential.
If you have never tested yourself on that level, I urge you to do that. Experience how strong you can be. Push and test your limits for strength. Many of us, but not all, will find that we have more strength their ever imagined humanly possible.
It is a process that will change you.
Begin the act today.
Jump out of the plane. If you want to feel greatly, if you seek an opportunity that can give greater depth of experience of what it is to be alive, commit today.
If you are still reading this, if you have not already stopped, I would guess it is because what I am saying, resonates for you, in some capacity.
Consider this writing your call to adventure. The herald has arrived at has put forth the token of change. Now, will you accept it? Will you commit to build the life and career you dream of?
The Hero, on their adventure, typically rejects the call at first. If you find yourself doing that, don’t abandon playing with the thought of “what if?” Following their first choice to say no to the adventure, the hero says, “ Yes.” This saying yes is an embracing of change. The hero goes into the darkness, the unknown land (that which is foreign to their consciousness). They do not know what will happen next. It truly could be, that they could be crushed. In the same, there is the potential for treasure. That treasure is always self-knowledge. That is what the hero journey is all about. Know thyself.
Committing to this call, saying yes to the adventure I present you, will open doors that previously you may have thought closed.
Meet your destiny half way.
Jim Hart is the Director of Arts Entrepreneurship at SMU. In the Spring semester of 2012, Hart will teach three courses at SMU: Entrepreneurship and the Hero Adventure, Creating an Arts Venture Plan and Attracting Capital.
Originally Posted on May 15, 2010 at The Hart Technique.
