The Character’s Journey

You’re The Storyteller

David Goggins

The most beautiful stories always start with a wreckage – Jack London

David Goggins retired navy seal and ultramarathon athlete says, “If you are a storyteller you suffer.”  Just as a journalist finds stories to cover in his line of work, the storyteller’s job is to find challenges and conquer them.  The storyteller knows that to create amazing stories he must learn the skill of growing and conquering challenges.  If the storyteller can’t take suffering and overcoming obstacles, then he does not truly know the hero’s journey.  

Stories that resonate with people are made by storyteller’s who put themselves at rock bottom and learn to climb up; they enroll in the class of the hero’s journey.  Sylvester Stallone was 30 years old, broke and lonely when he created Rocky.  James Cameron was living in his car when he was trying to create the Terminator, and Jack London became a famous writer as he tested himself as a sailor, gold hunter, and vagabond. 

A storyteller puts himself in stressful environments because he is looking for answers.  Where others are too scared to go, he ventures out.  A storyteller creates stories from the lessons that he learned.  He knows that their is a prize, strength in the suffering that we encounter.

It’s your story so love the suffering you are in. If you are suffering it means there are answers to discover.  The hero’s journey is finding those answers and becoming a light for others.  By knowing how to suffer the storyteller discovers what gives a character his depth.

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Make Yourself Laugh

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The post I wrote a couple days ago Learn To Smile reminded me of a quote I was trying to ingrain into my subconscious. The quote is “A warrior knows how to entertain himself.” Back in Alexander the Great’s time, armies had to travel thousands of miles to reach the battleground. The journey consisted of many days of walking and a few days of proving their strength and courage.

This 1,000-mile journey is like our lives, 90% is walking towards the place that will define our lives and the 10% is the climax ( meeting our next love, getting the dream job, buying a house.) But many of us take for granted 90% of the journey and we fail to reach the dreams we had.  Josh Waitzkin in his book The Art of Learning says this about the 90% of the journey,

Not only do we have to be good at waiting, we have to love it. Because waiting is not waiting, it is life. Too many of us live without fully engaging our minds, waiting for that moment when our real lives begin. Years pass in boredom, but that is okay becuase when our true love comes around, or we discover our real calling, we will begin. Of course the sad truth is that if we are not present to the moment, our true love could come and go and we wouldn’t even notice.

Real warriors know how to make the 90% of the journey count. They have fun, they celebrate it, they sing songs, develop their strengths and get stronger. They are masters at not getting bored, they know how to laugh and keep moving.

Those who can’t make the journey get sad because they don’t have everything they want right away. They don’t know how to have fun waiting or make themselves laugh when things get boring so they become depressed.

This skill of being able to have fun with ourselves allows one to control the energy when things are tough or boring. When I am out with a girl I am not trying to entertain her and keep her smiling. I am trying to entertain myself. If it things get boring it is up to me to have fun, “I’m like let’s kiss her, let’s see what happens if anything it is going to make things interesting.

Because for me it is making my journey fun and entertaining. You can try to make other people happy but it may never work.

If I can be fun and tough when things are mundane, then watch out when situations arrive that are wild and hot.

It all happens with not taking for granted the boring. 90% of our life will be boring if we let it.

 

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Learn To Smile

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Is humor the skill all mentally strong people need to have? Since I heard the phrase “The hero is a fool” by Jordan Peterson, I have been diving deeper into the comedy world. Chappelle, Chris Rock, and Joe Rogan bring thousands of people just so the audience can hear what they think about life.

These comedians share these views about life. We are all f*cked up and we want to become better people, so they ask questions about how they can grow. Joke telling is figuring out what it means to grow up.  It’s making meaning out of the gifts life throws at us. Humor uses those scenarios to find the good in everything.

When other people fall to the ground because of life’s obstacles, comedians have an acceptance, a certain grace about life. They know it sucks and that is why they laugh about.  The fool can become a hero because he can transform his mess into joy for others.

In school I didn’t want to be a clown because I thought people were just laughing at me. But the hero doesn’t see others laughing at him, he sees them laughing with him

The difference in how you see laughter determines if you will rise or fall. Laugh with me and I rise, laugh at me and I fall.

The hero only sees people laughing with him. When the hero makes mistakes he is growing, when others humiliate him his courage grows, and when he is confused jokes will be his answers. The fool rises through his misery, while others fall down never to get back in front of an audience.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Lee, and Conor McGregor are all great joke tellers.

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Story is Transformation

I use the pre-workout Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Of all the pre-workouts out there I find it funny I stuck with the one about a guy turning into a monster. But monsters are like heroes, they are both on the road to transforming themselves. In a sense, the hero is learning to become the monster.

A domesticated mouse cannot defeat an unruly snake.  If a mouse wishes to fight predators he has to learn to grow bigger fangs. The only way Peter Parker can defeat other monsters is by becoming a giant spider who doesn’t eat people. Good thing Spiderman doesn’t have a taste for human blood because New York would be a different place.

To fight evil, you must know what evil is capable of.  The hero on his journey is tearing down naive thinking that no one wants to hurt him.  He discovers that there is evil wishing the worst for him, but he develops the paradigm that the world is still good.  That there is evil so he can become stronger to defeat it.

I want to grow fangs and wings so I can help others. A tame man who is taught to be soft and polite will only be fodder for the monsters who will take advantage of his harmless thinking.

To be a hero he must be capable of aggression.

 

 

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The Protective Mother – Archetype

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My mom was always on me for playing too rough, getting in trouble, and getting hurt.  I would come home with a stitched up head from striking it on a post, a bloodied face from boxing, or a dislocated finger from playing soccer.

If my mom could have it she would be perfectly fine with me never moving out of the house and being at my side to always take care of me.  I can’t see myself as a 40-year-old man living with my mom and still washing my clothes, but mothers are protective creatures.  As long as we are alive they are doing their biological duty.

The dynamic between mother and son presented in mythology, fairy tales, and movies has always shown the necessity of a tearing apart from the umbilical cord for one to become an independent human being.

In her Article Esther Perel, relationship expert, psychologist and speaker of a popular Ted Talk explores how one can create a boy into a modern masculine man.  She say’s,

“Only with thoughtful support will our boys have a chance to break out of the outdated gender norms that cause so much trouble today by demanding stoicism, fearlessness, competition, invulnerability, and aggression.”

Esther Perel’s article and my mom seem to be bouncing off the same maternal instincts.  Don’t play too rough, be nice to others, stay inside or you are going to get sick.  In Fairy Tales, the mother traps the princess in the highest tower, puts them to sleep, or prevents them from going to the ball.  The hero is put into a passive state for fear that if they go after their goal or highest potential they risk getting hurt.

In Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent traps the prince in a cell to prevent him his goal of rescuing Aurora. Robert Bly author of Iron John says the way to escape this cell our mothers put us in is by stealing the key under her pillow.  Only by disobeying the mother can we set free the Wild Man (Masculine Energy) and pursue difficult challenges.

This can be seen with boys with skateboards risking injury and embarrassment so they can learn a new trick, boys joining the military so they can discover more about themselves and become disciplined or a boy joining football to practice fearlessness and see what he is capable of.  Only by being brave will we escape the comforts of our cell for the suffering to grow stronger and the joy to know we can overcome it.

For my experience, if I listened to my mom I would have never left my home to venture out into the unknown. But as I have gotten older, made closer ties to my dad and made more male friends I feel more happy and supported.  But what makes me the happiest is having the bravery to take on difficult tasks other men might not do.  Only with goals and a sense of recklessness can we do what so many other rebels have been able to accomplish. Because no good boy has ever accomplished something worthwhile.

 

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