The Weekly Reframe: This is Your Turning Point
Supporting you to free your mind so you can live from your heart!
“The hero’s journey begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come and say, ‘Look, you’re in Sleepy Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well, there’s not enough of you there.’ And so it starts.”
— Joseph Campbell
What comes up for you when you imagine that each of us is living a heroic journey, one that takes us through trials and initiations meant to grow us into who we’re here to become?
Part of the challenge of being human is facing adversity. It's also part of the adventure. Those on the path of conscious evolution learn to ask: What is this here to teach me? In coaching, we call this a point of mastery, the moment when life invites you to live from your hero’s heart instead of your old fear.
I spent much of my twenties in “Sleepy Land,” exhausting myself trying to find validation in all the wrong places. I didn't have much of an internal sense of who I was. I believed if my outsides looked good enough - if I was thin enough and wore the right clothes and said the right things - I’d finally feel whole. But inside, I was falling apart.
My nervous system lived in survival mode, my mind full of fear-based thinking I didn’t understand was creating my anxiety. I didn't yet know how to give myself compassion or love. I was my own worst enemy and biggest critic. I turned to addiction to cope, but it only buried what was actually calling to be healed: my relationship with myself.
Around age thirty I saw clearly in a moment I now describe as grace, that if I didn’t change, I was headed somewhere dark. That realization marked a major turning point, and one of many on my hero’s path. Then, my first guide appeared - my acting teacher. He lived differently. He introduced me to people who were also waking up, learning to live another way. With their support, I began to make real, lasting change.
Since then, many more guides have appeared. Some as mentors, coaches and therapists, and others as books that found me at the exact right time (sometimes literally on the sidewalk). Each one nudged me to touch a new aspect of consciousness inside myself and pushed me out of a comfort zone I’d been holding on to with claw marks.
Have you ever had that happen to you?
I invite you to reflect on your own journey. Can you identify a moment when you faced a great obstacle and found your way through? Perhaps you made a life-changing decision, kept going when you wanted to give up, or created something your mind insisted you could not create, but you did it anyway. Maybe you got through illness or made a big change later in life. What is heroic looks completely different to each of us. Sometimes what looks like the smallest step to someone else is a heroic act for a different person.
Below are four signs to look for in your own journey as you watch the YouTube videos I’m including below, each showing a very different hero’s path, yet both following a familiar arc.
Answering a specific call
Persevering when it gets really hard
Being willing to iterate again and again
Calling in and receiving support
Each of these is a marker on the hero’s path. The one you’ve been walking all along.
Reflection Prompt:
Think of one chapter in your own hero’s journey. A moment when you faced something that felt impossible, but kept going. What helped you rise to meet it? And how might the wisdom you gained serve someone else now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcWnQ7fYzwI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELu5lIfp4ng
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjZvFY6__qw
Step By Step,
Jessie