{"id":30683,"date":"2023-02-01T21:42:18","date_gmt":"2023-02-02T05:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=30683"},"modified":"2023-02-01T21:42:18","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T05:42:18","slug":"you-shouldnt-be-the-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/you-shouldnt-be-the-hero\/","title":{"rendered":"You shouldn’t be the hero"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was excited to tackle the reading this week. I’m a StoryBrand[1]<\/a> Guide and use the hero’s journey as one of the introductory workshops we take clients through at my marketing and communications company, Leading With Nice<\/a>., when we onboard them. I was familiar with Joseph Campbell’s[2]<\/a> work the same way a lifelong Christian might be familiar with Habakkuk – knowledgable of it but probably haven’t read it despite it not being that hard to digest.<\/p>\n

So let’s discuss the hero, shall we? Campbell’s work and Kristie Winslow’s website[3]<\/a> suggest the reader, the first person, you are the hero which I believe is a critical error when approaching this work. While not always explicit stated, other authors have stood on the shoulders of Campbell’s work to present their own theories. Malcolm Gladwell’s, Outliers<\/em>[4]<\/a>, brought back into popular culture the same take as Campbell that one must put in hard work to achieve any sort of greatness. The hard work must involve some sort of trial and tribulation in order to go beyond the veil and be known as the hero. Gladwell says The Beatles had to put 10,000 hours of practice in playing clubs in Germany before they could achieve fame, heck even Seattle-based rapper, Macklemore[5]<\/a>, acknowledges in one of his songs:<\/p>\n

I observed Escher, I love Basquiat
\nI watched Keith Haring, you see I study art
\nThe greats weren’t great because at birth they could paint
\nThe greats were great because they’d paint a lot<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To codify the hard work you’re putting in you need to assign yourself a series of self-affirmations. Not Jack Handy-esque[6]<\/a> (“I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!) but you need to start thinking of yourself as the hero because the mind believes what you tell it.<\/p>\n

No.<\/p>\n

Well not no, but no. This is all true but it is built at the core to create our wildest dreams regardless of what they are.<\/p>\n

The hero’s journey should have been developed with someone else being the hero. Not you. Robert Greenleaf[7]<\/a> is the founder of the modern servant leadership movement and his philosophy outlined in his essay “Essentials of Servant Leadership,” was developed having had success as a fiction writer and making use of the hero’s journey himself. He saw the errors in putting yourself on the path for success by aiming squarely for the spotlight.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this blog post isn’t the appropriate soapbox to stand on but we have gotten it all wrong. Okay, okay, okay, but Jesus himself took part in a hero’s journey of sorts. It’s safe to surmise Jesus spent a lot of those first 30 years doing some prep work for his three-year mission. It’s clear he stepped through a threshold while praying in the Garden of Gethsemane[8]<\/a> he fully realized his purpose and fully accepted it. But his journey was to serve others. He said as much! And then later, James puts it more plainly, “Faith without Works Is Dead.”[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

So what do we do with this deep-rooted, culture monomyth Campbell has given us. Well I think Winslow is on the write (sic intended) track. Use it as a measuring tool. Is the framework full and complete? Can you identify where the person you’re serving is on the journey and help them identify why they are there. But personally, it will serve best as a tool for self-reflection during the doctorate journey.<\/p>\n

Questions to ask myself:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Admiral William H. McRaven\u2019s, The Hero Code[10]<\/a>, says giving other’s hope is an act of heroism, how can I use self-talk to give myself and others hope when school gets hard?<\/li>\n
  2. Shoutout to Michael Simmons<\/a> for introducing me to the Heroine’s Journey. I’m a straight, white, middle-age male. How can I appropriately encourage people who aren’t like me as described in Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be by Rachel Hollis[11]<\/a>?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    [1] Miller, Donald. Building a Storybrand: Clarify Your Message so Customers Will Listen<\/em>. HarperCollins Leadership, an Imprint of HarperCollins, 2017.<\/p>\n

    [2] Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces<\/em>. Joseph Campbell Foundation, 2020.<\/p>\n

    [3] \u201cSubject Guides: The Monomyth (the Hero’s Journey): The Hero’s Journey.\u201d The Hero’s Journey – The Monomyth (The Hero’s Journey) – Subject Guides At<\/em>, https:\/\/libguides.gvsu.edu\/c.php?g=948085&amp;p=6857311.<\/p>\n

    [4] Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers<\/em>. Little, Brown and Co., 2008.<\/p>\n

    [5] \u201cMacklemore & Ryan Lewis \u2013 Ten Thousand Hours.\u201d Genius<\/em>, https:\/\/genius.com\/Macklemore-and-ryan-lewis-ten-thousand-hours-lyrics.<\/p>\n

    [6] Franken, Al, and Melody Beattie. I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People like Me!<\/em>: Daily Affirmations by Stuart Smalley. Dell, 1992.<\/p>\n

    [7] \u201cWhat Is Servant Leadership?\u201d Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership<\/em>, https:\/\/www.greenleaf.org\/what-is-servant-leadership\/.<\/p>\n

    [8] Matthew 26:39<\/p>\n

    [9] James 2:26<\/p>\n

    [10] McRaven, William H. The Hero Code: Lessons Learned from Lives Well Lived<\/em>. Grand Central Publishing, 2021.<\/p>\n

    [11] Hollis, Rachel. Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies about Who You Are so You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be<\/em>. Nelson Books, an Imprint of Thomas Nelson, 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I was excited to tackle the reading this week. I’m a StoryBrand[1] Guide and use the hero’s journey as one of the introductory workshops we take clients through at my marketing and communications company, Leading With Nice., when we onboard them. I was familiar with Joseph Campbell’s[2] work the same way a lifelong Christian might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[2489,789],"class_list":["post-30683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-dlgp02","tag-campbell","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30683"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30702,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30683\/revisions\/30702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}