PNTV: The Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell

Every book, great book, has a bunch of great, potentially life-changing big ideas, but they're only life-changing if you live them. You have to leave your known world. You have to answer the call to adventure. Almost all heroes refuse the call in the beginning, right? The most important thing you need to know is the fact that you are the hero we've been waiting for. Quit looking outside yourself for someone to change your life or to change the world. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV. Today we've got another great book, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work. It's basically a biography slash autobiography all about Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey, and how his life was the heroic journey. I love Joseph Campbell. I should say before I forget, get the Philosopher's Note on this great book for free Check out the link in the info, uh, in the description for this video. So this is the 5th note that I've done on one of Joseph Campbell's great books. We started with Pathways to Bliss. We have a Joseph Campbell Companion, The Power of Myth, which is based on his interview series with Bill Moyers. If you haven't seen that yet, check it out. And of course, we have his classic, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Check out all those notes in the Philosopher's Notes. 750 notes now, working my way to 1,000. Let's see how far I go past that. So this idea is packed with big ideas. We're gonna explore 5 of my favorites. As always, the intention is to help you move from theory to practice to mastery so you can show up as your best self. Every book, great book, has a bunch of great, potentially life-changing big ideas, but they're only life-changing if you live them. So let's again move from theory to practice together today, help you show up as your best self. One other thing before we get to work, uh, if you haven't seen the documentary called Finding Joe, which is all about Joseph Campbell, I happen to be in it. I'm proud of the fact that I inspired the director and producer Pat Solomon to create it. You can check that out, that's linked in the, uh, show notes as well, or just Google Finding Joe free YouTube. You can watch the whole thing for free. I'm in it with, uh, Deepak Chopra, Laird Hamilton, Tony Hawk, Sir Ken Robinson, some other great, great teachers, Robin Sharma, etc. I hope you enjoyed that. Now let's get to work. My hope is you get at least one big idea you can apply to your life today. So be thinking about that. How can you actually apply this wisdom today? The hero's journey. Here's what you need to know. First and foremost, you got to answer the call. When you look at the heroic quest, the hero's journey, what you see is 3 parts. 1, you have the departure. The hero, you have to leave your known world. You have to answer the call to adventure. Almost all heroes refuse the call in the beginning, right? But you got to answer it or nothing happens. 2, you have an initiation where you, the hero, need to face your dragons, your demons. And then 3, and you win, you learn, you get some dragon scars in the process. And then 3— You get a girlfriend. There's the return, right? You can map this out like that. You can kind of think about it as a spiraling up evolution because your life is— a good life is one hero's journey after another. But you need to know this: nothing happens unless you answer the call, right? You can have all these inclinations that you need to change something in your life, but unless you answer the call, nothing happens. So my question for you right now is Do you feel a call to express the best version of yourself? My hunch is if you're watching this, you do. If you're a human, you're alive, your heart is beating, you do. The question is, what is it for you? And then you want to remember our last PNTV was on Phil Stutz's True and False Magic. You may recall I had good news and I had bad news. The good news is you have infinite potential, right? So I talked about the fact that boom, there's your infinite potential right there. But then I said Bad news is your infinite potential exists outside of your comfort zone. If you want to tap into your infinite potential, if you want to live your best, most heroic and noble life, then you have to move outside of your comfort zone by definition. How does it feel when you leave your comfort zone? It feels uncomfortable, right? You feel the pain, the uncertainty, the need to work hard. Most of us resist that. We avoid those challenges. We want to approach them as we discussed in the last episode. The other, other, other, other thing I want you to know is a good life isn't one hero's journey and you're done. It's not even 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 10. Yeah, you're gonna have big macro hero's journey where you step forward and you do something new with your life, but the reality is— and Steven Pressfield captures this brilliantly in one of his great books, I think he calls it The Artist's Journey, check out those notes and PNTV episode— He says a good life is 1,000 hero's journeys, micro little hero's journeys every single day. The reality is every moment of every day you are being asked to step up and be your best self. The way I frame that up is— we're getting crowded over here, let's go— is, uh, this is what you're capable of being in any given moment. And if this is where you're actually being and there's a gap between who you could have been and who you're actually being, it's in that gap where regret, anxiety, disillusionment exists. So moment to moment to moment in your relationships and your health and nutrition and movement and sleep choices, how you're consuming digital technology, there's always a call, there's always a whisper from that best, most heroic version of yourself to be that best version of you. The question is, are you answering the call? Are you paying attention? Close the gap. Live with arete, live with virtue, live with excellence. And the moment you do, You are heroic. Longer chat, this is supposed to be tight. So we're gonna keep on going. But there you go, the call, first step in the hero's journey. You need to answer it. My question for you is what call are you feeling in your life? Think about that on the high level, macro level, and think about that moment to moment to moment all day, every day, especially today. Second thing is your path. You have a unique idiosyncratic path. In the book, we learn about Joseph Campbell's. Campbell's story is phenomenal. He was getting his PhD at Columbia. He was a world-class or national-class athlete— no, world-class. He almost qualified for the Olympics, right, as a track star at Columbia University. Was in the process of getting his PhD, went to Europe, studied some stuff. His mind expanded and opened. He came back to the US 2 weeks before the Great Depression, and he went to his advisors in his PhD program and said, hey, everything opened up for me. I have goosebumps right now. Everything opened up for me. What I was doing before isn't quite what I feel called to do now. I want to do this. And they basically told him, no, no, you can't do that. You need to do what you said you were going to do, or you— period. And he said, no, to hell with that, is what he said. And instead, he dropped out of his PhD program. The hero had a call to adventure, dropped out of his PhD program, and spent 5 years reading during the Great Depression. He saved up a little bit of money. He was a jazz musician in college, saved up a little bit of money, And he read literally all day, every day. This book features some reflections he shared in his 80s, and he talked about 50 years before what he did— 50, 60 years before— what he did as a young man living in Woodstock, the forest, literally reading for 9 hours a day. And he playfully says, you can get a lot of reading done in 9 hours a day. And that was his lifetime practice. Alan Watts said, hey, Do you have a spiritual practice? And Campbell said, yeah, I underline books. To which I say, yeah, me too, let's go. That's Campbell's path. The question is, what's your path? And in the note, I reflect on some other authors, including Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the great positive psychologist who co-founded the positive psychology movement with Martin Seligman. He coined the word flow. We've got a note on that book, and we've got another note on a book called Creativity. Where he studies some of the world's greatest creators. And what he said was, one of the most powerful things you can do with these individuals— yeah, yeah, what they created was awesome, but the lives that they created, how they structured their days, their weeks, their months, how they structured their lives was actually the most creative act. So my question for you is, when you look at that call to adventure, your heroic quest, Who do you need to be and what path you need to walk? How do you need to structure your days? Joseph Campbell literally would read for I think it was two hours, take a break for an hour, then read for two hours, take a break for an hour, read for two hours, take a break for an hour. As I'm sitting here in philosopher mode hammering these PNTVs, I've got a hundred of these episodes I've I've kind of mapped out that I'm going to execute. Well, what's my day look like in order to share this wisdom with you? and have fun getting in flow and doing that. What's your path on the high level and on a day-to-day basis? Think about that. Go crush it. Oh, other fun fact, Joseph Campbell and Abraham Maslow were— they didn't know one another, but they basically grew up and taught and contributed to the world in the same era. Born in the early 1900s, lived for their— well, Maslow passed away way too young. Campbell lived a little bit longer, but Campbell dropped out of his PhD program And Abraham Maslow, who was a great humanistic psychologist, PhD in psychology, dropped out of both law school and med school as a young man. To which I say, let's go! I only dropped out of law school, but that was an important step for me. All right, that's the call, your path. Third thing here is relationships. And Campbell makes the point that most of us are naive and we think that our relationships should be easy, to which he says, no, no, no, no, no, no. relationships, whether it's with your significant other and/or your kids or whoever else is in your life, that is also an opportunity for you to practice your philosophy and be your best self. Uh, one of the references I make in the note is on a book by Leo Buscaglia called Love. Alexandra, my wife, we've been together over 19 years now. So when we met 19 years ago, one of the things I most loved about her was she had read this book called Love by Leo Buscaglia. And one of the big ideas in that book is it's easy to fall in love, it's much harder to stand in love. Easy to fall in love, much harder to stand and to grow in love. That is also an opportunity to practice, again, your philosophy and live the hero's journey. Again, moment to moment to moment, you're getting a call to be your best self within your relationships. Answer that call. Move through your challenges. Be your best. Let's go. Other fun little thing here, briefly. Joseph Campbell is known for follow your bliss, right? Follow your bliss. Follow that joy. There's a whole Sanskrit deep spiritual truth to that. The ancient yogic Vedas told us that there are 3 jumping-off points into enlightenment: Sat-Chit-Ananda— your beingness, your consciousness, and your bliss. You want to follow your bliss. Follow your joy. What makes you feel alive? Campbell's known for that. But he wished he had emphasized that you also got to follow your blisters. You got to do the hard work. Yeah, find that joy, but then also do the hard work to craft great relationships, to live your hero's journey, etc. Fourth thing here is a longer chat we're not going to get into, so I'm going to keep this brief. But I go off in, in this note and others in more depth. Campbell makes the point that someone asks him a question In one of his talks, hey, what about the relationship between your ego and your higher self? The Self, right, with a capital S. He said, look, this is a nuanced conversation, and a lot of spiritual aspirants get it wrong. They try to get rid of the ego when what they need to do is move it from being the dictator of their life to being a servant of their higher self, which is connected to the ultimate highest self depending on how you orient religiously and spiritually, etc. But Campbell, Richard Rohr is another great teacher I admire, Ken Wilber, Nathaniel Branden. These individuals talk about the importance of having a strong ego. And the ego, from a Western psychotherapy perspective, is basically what keeps you in the game. You've got the id, which is your impulsive self. You got the superego, which is your conditioning, what your parents say you should do, what society says you should do. And an unhealthy ego is one in which those 2 things are winning. You're impulsive, and then you're ashamed because you're not doing what other people expect of you. You need a strong ego to discipline your impulses and your conditioning such that you can show up powerfully. That's that daimon, that guiding spirit within you needs that strong ego in order to connect to something bigger than yourself. Again, longer chat. Richard Rohr quotes Desmond Tutu, who says, look, We're just this little light bulb, but our job is to stay screwed in. If you want to connect to the ultimate power of the universe, however you frame it, that ultimate self, your little self needs to be strong and it needs to be screwed into that bigger self. You do that through discipline on the most basic things: the eating, the moving, the sleeping, the breathing, the focusing your energy, managing yourself well such that you have that strong ego and you can move beyond that to connect to something bigger than yourself, then express yourself most authentically. That was the Quick Take. Let's go. All right, transcendent and clear. The 5th idea here is goats and tigers. So there's a story in Finding Joe that the former executive director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation shares that's phenomenal. Yogananda shares the same story. We got a bunch of notes on Yogananda as well. But it's this basic idea that there's a tiger or a lion, right? It kind of varies between the stories, right? And the tiger is orphaned and he's adopted by a bunch of goats or a bunch of sheep, right? We'll make it the lion and the sheep for now, or we could do the goats and the tigers. We'll do the goats and tigers. So this little tiger is adopted by these goats and it grows up thinking it's a goat, right? Can't see itself. I'm a goat. And it eats grass and it bleats and it does all this stuff. That a goat does, because everyone around him is a goat. Then one day a tiger's cruising through town or cruising through the forest, right? And he sees this little tiger that's acting like a goat, and he cruises over to it. He's like, what are you doing? He's like, what do you mean what am I doing? Right? He's like, what are you— you're a tiger, right? And he tries to teach him how to roar, and little tiger can't do it. That's never even thought about doing that. Then he takes him over to a pond or a lake or whatever, and he shows him his own reflection and says, look, you're a tiger. You're capable of more than this. Let out your roar. Goosebumps, right? And the idea here is we each have forgotten who we are. We've forgotten the essence of who we are in the process of conforming to a, as Krishnamurti would say, profoundly sick society. It is no measure of well-being. Krishnamurti once said in the 20th century, it is no measure of well-being to be profound— to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. So the reality is, if you want to live your best, most heroic life, you're going to need to move outside of your normal current life. You're going to need to go on that adventure and to figure out who you really are, to figure out your tiger, your lion essence, learn how to roar again. And in the process of doing that, you're going to need to get comfortable with being, uh, shall we say, criticized. As Ralph Waldo Emerson says in Self-Reliance, for your non-conformity, society will whip you with its displeasure. But you got to be willing to endure that pain, that uncertainty, that hard work. As you make the departure, answer the call, get initiated, become your best self, battle your dragons to become stronger, then what do you do? You return. The ultimate point of the hero's journey is to return transformed. You come back with a boon, but the ultimate boon is you and your consciousness. And I forgot to mention in, in the answer— answering the call, perfect timing, I'll do it at the end here— the most important thing you need to know is the fact that you are the hero we've been waiting for. Quit looking outside yourself for someone to change your life or to change the world. You are the hero we've been waiting for, and it is time for you to answer the call, figure out what your path is, optimize your relationships, get that discipline such that you have a strong sense of self and you can express that best version of yourself more and more consistently, and quit. Is that is that a goat or a sheep? I don't know, but whatever that is, become that lion, become that tiger, become that best, most heroic version of yourself. I added a little plus one here. Let's go. That represents the idea that I hope most landed. I hope you had at least one idea today that landed for you. What was it for you? Take a deep breath. You just got a fire hydrant, hopefully of goodness. What's one idea that jumped out and landed for you? And how can you apply that wisdom to your life today? I repeat, we got to go from theory to practice to mastery so we can close that gap. Show up as our best today. Get on that. I look forward to sharing more with you soon. I'll be back tomorrow. Hope to see you as well. And, let's go. It is day 1. We are all in. Let's go. Hey, this is Brian. Thanks for spending a few minutes with me today. If you enjoyed it, please hit subscribe so that the best of the show keeps landing in your feed. Then head over to heroic.us. That's heroic.us, where you'll find the full library of wisdom I've created over the last 20 years, as well as the app, advanced training programs, coaching, and everything else we've built to help you optimize your life, actualize your potential, and live heroically. It is day 1. We are all in. Let's go.