PNTV: The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (#423)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, a classic, the Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. This is the fourth note on one of Joseph Campbell's books that we have featured as a Philosopher's Note and PNTV episode. We started with a Joseph Campbell companion, then we went on to the Power of Myth, which is the wisdom from his interview series with Bill Moyers. And we have a note on Pathways to Bliss. All of those are awesome, but this is his classic seminal text that's influenced people like George Lucas. Every aspiring film student, because every hero story we read about or watch on the big screen is based on the Hero with a thousand faces. Before we jump in though, I want to make sure you know about a documentary called Finding Joe. A guy named Pat Solomon was actually inspired by my philosopher's notes on Joseph Campbell to create a modern take on kind of Bill Moyer's interview series. And he reached out to me. I became the first person he interviewed for this documentary that now features Deepak Chopra, Laird Hamilton, Tony Hawk, Robin Sharma, a bunch of other great teachers. And he did a beautiful job with it. And it's now available for free in its entirety on YouTube. Just Google finding Joe the movie free. You'll find it on YouTube. I hope you enjoy all about the Hero's Journey. Really taking the wisdom from this book and Joseph Campbell's other books and having modern thinkers reflect on how we all can live our most heroic lives. So as always, we've got a six page philosopher's note, 20 minute MP3. Check out the apps go to optimize me to get access to 600 philosopher's notes, 50 optimal living 101 classes, etcetera, etc, etcetera. Now, five big ideas. We'll start at the top. Campbell studied mythology since he was a child. He fell in love with this. And he constantly studied what different cultures had to say about the hero's journey. What he called the hero's journey, he said it's a monomyth. What we have is one hero story with a thousand faces. All cultures across all time talked about the hero becoming the best version of themselves in service to the world. And he called that the monomyth, the Hero's journey. And he said it had three parts. The way he described it was, first, we have a separation. We leave our familiar realm. We answer the call. Then we have an initiation. We go on our quest and Then the third stage is we return. Now, I like to think about it in three aspects that I'd summarize as this. There's the call. You're called to more. You're sitting here in your comfortable, ordinary world, and you're called to more. Whether that's Luke Skywalker sitting there on his planet, boom. Tragedy strikes, and he's called to go live his hero's journey. We're each called. When we slow down long enough to listen to our daimon to go past, and we'll talk about this, the threshold of our current reality, and do more. Then we go on the quest, provided we answer the call. If you don't answer the call, well, Joseph Campbell and a lot of other great teachers say you're going to be unhappy. You need to answer the call, you need to go on the quest. Then you face demons, you face dragons, you get some mentorship, etc. You get initiated, right? Separation, initiation, call, quest. And then you return, and you return transformed, and you return with. With what Campbell calls the boon. You give your gifts back in service to the world. That's the true hero's journey. You leave the familiar known, you go on a quest, you transform yourself, and you come back and you give your gifts to the world. That's what a hero does. A hero is willing to lead. A hero is willing to have the strength for two and come back and protect us and serve us, et cetera. That's the mono myth George Lucas, deeply inspired by Joseph Campbell. In fact, the Bill Moyers interview was filmed at Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas place. Look at Star wars, look at Harry Potter, look at Iron Man. Look at any great hero story. And they've been deeply influenced by Joseph Campbell. And the reason why all of these stories resonate so deeply is that they're showing us what we're capable of being, who we're capable of being, and what we're capable of doing, which we'll talk about at the end here, because the ultimate hero, by the way, you're looking at him every morning in the mirror or her, boom. We got to step up, take the path, and live our heroic lives, Campbell tells us in no uncertain terms. And, of course, that's what we're all about. Optimize equals optimist equals best equals eudaimon equals hero. First step, you got to go over the threshold. So Campbell says you need to go beyond the veil of the known. We live in this little comfortable world, comfort zone style, but we got to know that the hero's call is right. On the other side of that, right, we draw this image all the time, which is you can't you see yourself in that? Boom. There you go. There's your comfort zone. Ow. In there, right outside that comfort zone, right outside the veil of your known, is your infinite potential, your heroic potential. We need to discipline ourselves to get comfortable being uncomfortable, whether it's David Goggins telling us this or Marie Forleo telling us this or any great teacher across all time, we need to be willing to die to the old self, be born to the new, right? And that requires us moving past our current comfort zone. Now, to be clear, again, that doesn't mean. And in the note, I actually talk about George Mumford, who is the mental toughness mindfulness coach and coached Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, and he talks about greatness in these heroes on the basketball court and how they incrementally push themselves.

Beyond their comfort zone.

That's how they got great, right? But it wasn't a huge stretch. It was, as Steven Kotler says in the rise of Superman, 4% by 4% by 4%. You incrementally increase your potential. And pretty soon, Kotler tells us, the impossible is what's for breakfast. You naturally do it, but you don't want to snap so far on your first step that you break yourself. Just get a little better today, then just get a little better the next day. But that requires discipline, that requires patience, that requires a consistency to see what happens when we aggregate and compound those gains. But you got to move past, what, the threshold, the veil of the known. Then you do that, you go on your quest, and we actually spend a whole month on this in the Mastery.

Series for our coach program, as I've.

Mentioned, we have something called Hero ology, where I operationalize all of this wisdom. Talk about, well, how do you go successfully on your quest? We share some ideas there. Now, let's assume you go on your quest, you do it successfully, then what? Then it's time to bring the boon back. The boon, the gifts that you get now, when you are able to battle the dragons or the demons or whatever that are really metaphorically, you know, they're outside of you, but they're really representing your own challenges inside you, then the gods bless you and say, what do you want? We'll give you whatever you want. And the Greek said, and Campbell says, that most people choose the wrong gift. They go after the wrong boon, the wrong reward. And the Greeks captured this in the story of King Midas. You might know the story. Can you recall the story of King Midas. King Midas did some heroic things. He's a tough guy, achieved some renown. And the gods said, congratulations. You can pick whatever you want. What do you want? What boon would you like? And he said, you know what? I want everything I touch to turn into gold. God said, fantastic. Was that a wise choice? Well, he's cruising down. He's going back home. He looks at an oak tree, and he pulls off a twig. Sure enough, boom, it becomes gold. Wow. That's pretty exciting. He picks up a stone, turns into pure gold. He's on a roll, right? He gets home, he has this huge celebratory feast. He goes to take his first bite out of whatever he had prepared. And, oh, right, when he touches it, it turns into gold. He goes to sip the wine, right? When he's going to drink it, it turns into gold. This may not be so cool. And then his daughter comes up to him, his cherished, beloved daughter, to console him. The moment he embraces her, she turns into gold. The Greeks tell us again, choose wisely. He chose hedonic pleasure. Give me gold. Let me turn everything into gold. The Greek philosophers tell us, no, no, no, no, no. Wrong choice. Choose wisely. Campbell tells us, choose perfect illumination. That would be the choice of a wise individual on their hero's journey. Choose virtue. Choose eudaimonia. Choose to be the best version of yourself. More and more consistently. Go for wisdom. That's the summum bonum. That's your boon. Choose wisely. Then go bring it back to us again. Hedonic, eudaimonic, extrinsic, intrinsic. All of these ideas come back again.

And again and again.

Now, the next idea is the makers of legend. Campbell tells us that the makers of legend tend to take their heroes and then they embellish their story, and they say that they must have had some divine natural gift that made them special. This is what most of the legend makers do. Now, I say in the note, I think that's a mistake. I think it's a mistake. When I went and saw the last Jedi. Then Luke Skywalker says about Rey, she's got the most natural talent I've ever seen in anyone. Then she spends a little bit of time cultivating her skills, and boom, she's the best Jedi ever. Now, we want to pay attention because these storytellers are creating our culture, right? Myths can be told in a powerful way and in a less than empowering way. And the idea that one either has the gift or doesn't have the gift is a Toxic idea. It's very closely related to Carol Dweck's idea of the fixed mindset. If you think that some people have it and some people don't have it, and you decide you don't have it, then what happens? Then you give up on all your potential. Now, clearly, all of us have different gifts. We all have different capacities and constraints in our reality. We all have different talents. But we want to remember Angela Duckworth's equation, which I come back to often, which I will now find a spot on our little board to write down. She says, yeah, talent matters. We're not going to pretend that talent doesn't matter, because it does. You start with talent, but then you got to put in effort. You can have the most talented person in the world who doesn't put any effort. It won't amount to anything. They'll never cultivate skills. Then those skills need to be cultivated. It's not enough to cultivate a little skill. And by the way, again, she defines talent as the speed with which you can pick up skill. So some people unquestionably have an ability to pick up skills. Skill faster. That's a talent. Fantastic. Find what your talents, where your talents are, then put in the effort to build skills. Then you have the skill set, and you put even, even more effort to become great. But she says, look, effort counts twice. And when myth makers who are creating our culture say it's all about talent, just wave the magic wand and boom. Or you had a divine, you know, birth and you were just born this way, it diminishes the power within all of us to grow into our best selves. So I'd reflect on that in the note. I think it's worth shining a bright light on. I wish Star wars had a sort of talented person who worked really hard to become extraordinary. The best Jedi out there. Then call return, taught us all how to show up. Because the greatest creators who. Hasselt, Picasso, just extraordinary artist, right?

He must have been born that way.

Well, yeah, that and maybe the fact that he produced 50,000 pieces of art in the course of his life influenced his greatness. 50,000 pieces of art, that's two per day for a very long life to produce 100 masterpieces. We'll talk about this as we discuss.

Some other notes in the next few days.

You got to create a ton if you want to create the stuff of legend. And we often skip the steps. We think that someone like Michael Jordan.

Was just born that way.

Kobe Bryant, these guys hustled. Usain Bolt worked so Hard. Yes, he had talent. And he also had scoliosis. What? Yeah. Fastest guy on the planet has scoliosis. That's crazy. We need to put in the effort to achieve our highest goal. Which brings us back to Anders Ericsson, the guy who studied greatness, Said he's never met anybody that qualified as great in any field, who didn't put in an extraordinary amount of effort, just hasn't seen it sustaining that high level of peak performance. And he also, more importantly, says, we all have the gift. We all have the gift of adaptability. We all, as we discover our own strengths and. And get good at putting in the effort, can do extraordinary heroic things again. However, we idiosyncratically best express ourselves. Which leads us back to you. You are the modern hero. And that brings us back to Joseph Campbell. We're going to read directly from him for this one.

Two thoughts, actually.

Chalk down. Here we go. So two separate thoughts. These are both on page six. Wrapping it up, he says, furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known, it's mapped out.

We know what needs to happen on this heroic quest.

We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a God. Where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. Where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. Cue the choir of angels. Then he says, the modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice and sanctified misunderstanding. Live. Nietzsche says as though the day were here. It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal, carries the cross of the redeemer, not in the bright moments of his tribe's great victories, but in the silence of his personal despair. As I always say, our world needs heroes today more than ever before. A vicious culture needs virtuous heroes. We need you to be a hero today. You are the potential makers of legends. Show us what's possible in your own life. Bring back the boon. After crossing the threshold and being the radiant face of what a modern hero looks like, that is a quick look at this classic book. Let's go live heroically today.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optimize with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.

Hey guys, this is Bry.

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