"We have to be willing to get rid of the life we have planned so that we can have the life that is waiting for us," Joseph Campbell told us. Once we do that, we really embark on our hero's journey.
Then we have not only heard the call, but also understood it. We set out, are open, moved from within. We set ourselves in motion, set out on the path to ourselves.
TOO LAZY TO READ ON? THEN LISTEN TO ME:
In the blogcast, I read this recent blog article to you. With emphasis, of course!
Again and again we embark on this journey - in varying lengths, adventures and magnitudes of meaning. On the one hand, our whole life is such a journey, divided into a multitude of chapters. On the other hand, each chapter is a hero's journey in itself. Each one follows the small ABC of hero's journeys:
Departure.
Probation.
Comeback.
Get out of the comfort zone.
Into the adventure.
Return as a little bit of ourselves.
We ask ourselves in the comfort zone, or something asks there in us:
What kind of life do I want?
What partner do I want to have?
What profession do I pursue?
Do I paint pictures from now on - for myself, for everyone?
Do I want to bake?
What if I prefer to photograph rock stars at concerts in the future?
Am I better off as a top athlete or as a trainer?
And what if I myself start the company I would like to work for?
Am I The Voice that everyone is looking for?
Profession or children, or both?
Do I want to be a mother with all my heart?
Shouldn't I be the best father I can be?
Is my important message exactly the one that wants to get out, needs to get out?
Is humanity really waiting for this app?
Can I make a difference on my own - can I make that happen?
Our world needs leaders, but: why should it be me?!?
Yes, I have sold 50 million albums, but will I blow the concert this time?
What does this girl who sits in front of the school every Friday want to tell me?
Etc. Etc. Etc.
In the comfort zone, in our familiar life, we ask ourselves such things, and at the moment of the question, the walls are already shaking because the good room is about to collapse. Because the question is just a sugar-glazed call that goes, "Come on ahead!" and already our comfort zone turns into a come-before zone.
There we first turn a deaf ear. Because we don't want to hear this call out into the unknown land. Even the most burning desire in us gets a big bucket of extinguishing water poured over it as a precaution, laced with doubts, hesitation and procrastination.
Resistance is futile.
This doubt-zöger-zauder cocktail has a name: Resistance. The wise Steven Pressfield christened it that and, God knows, drank more than enough of it himself. He wrote down what he learned in the process in five books, naturally from an author's perspective. In every line - between some of them Steven Pressfield addresses this directly - there is universal truth for all of us stuck in our comfort zones.
If you can only read two of these books, it's "The War of Art" and "Nobody wants to read your Sh*t". You'll polish off those two books in one sitting and the others afterwards anyway. Over and over again, big inner pig-dog word of honour, because these are perfectly crafted non-fiction books, chock-full of life-saving reading material for every one of us who wants to bring something into the world. So: for every one of us.
That's what we humans are there for: to bring something into the world, even if it really does look like our job is to take everything out of the world with Butz and Stingel until nothing and no one is left. Why do we do this? Because for gazillions of years we humans have resisted accepting our damned reputation, preferring to tell ourselves the upside-down stories about how someone always has to dominate something and someone, preferably the others, because you yourself are better than them. Who else?
Wait a minute!
Outside this bed of decay, isn't it the case that humans are the only living beings on this planet who can create things without them being of direct use to them, art for example - unlike birds, pigs or beavers, who just build their homes? Isn't it true that humans are the only living beings that can improve something - and yet they are constantly destroying something, their habitat for example? Isn't it true that humans are the only creatures that can heal - yet they constantly eat things that kill them?
Do you hear that too? Is that something calling us, or is that just 15 million minks in Denmark... Resistance, baby, in the collective comfort zone!
The bastard does not give up.
The inner pig constantly drags on more resistance, again and again. Too much for many of us. Until finally the inner desire to burn stops, until the flame goes out, until the sound falls silent.
Think nothing of it!
The call will come back at some point. At some point. Maybe not for decades, but at some point, guaranteed: in variable volume, pitch and orchestration. It comes back as a memory, as aggressiveness, as melancholy, as disappointment, as a new attempt, as a frustration purchase, as a second bottle of red wine every evening, as tinnitus, as a natural disaster ...
At the end of your life, you regret that you should have at that time but then didn't.
In the middle of your successful life, you ask yourself ... what is the real meaning ...?
Suddenly you feel existential fear in your actually secure existence. (And rightly so.)
More and more often you hear yourself saying: "Actually, I wanted ...".
One day, out of the blue, a burn-out hits you, but you have no idea why, because actually ...
While you are looking for something in the attic, your old guitar finds you and asks you: "Why not?
Your daughter insists because it's Friday, and you remember that you used to be a ...
Corona. Climate drama. Refugee flows.
Actually.
You get the idea ...
Stronger than our inner call is only the force with which we acrobatically cover our ears from inside and outside at the same time. Much, much stronger still is the force with which the call returns.
If we are lucky, the call will come again very soon, and just at that moment when our inner bastard briefly turned his ornery back on us.
Then it starts. Then there's no turning back. Then we hear the call and follow it, no ifs, no buts. Then we let go of the planned, so that we discover what is really waiting for us. Not really, but finally. That wasn't so hard, was it?
In every good story we experience the heroine in her resistance through her rejection of the call. Odysseus hesitates before setting off for Troy, Cinderella dithers before attending the prince's ball, Merlin needs all kinds of magical thrust to make little Arthur move towards the stone where the sword Excalibur is waiting for him ...
Your sword is waiting.
Now that we are talking about it: the sword Excalibur - a wonderful symbol for the final acceptance of the call. When Arthur pulls Excalibur from the stone, he knows, feels and accepts: "I am the king, and my task is to bring peace to the kingdom!" If Merlin had not been Merlin, but Bob Dylan, he would have said at this point: "Play it fuckin' loud!"
I was not there at the time, but I suspect that Excalibur always reminded King Arthur what his task was; that a king does not rule, but governs. Arthur's hand on the hilt of the sword reliably and repeatedly triggered the same feeling in him that he had when he pulled it from the stone. We cognitive psychologists call this effect "anchoring". Grasping Excalibur reminded Arthur of his calling in moments of doubt. Yes, Resistance never sleeps, not even for legendary kings.
Following his example, we can also set an anchor for ourselves, get our personal Excalibur ready. Do you have a sword? Mine is my fountain pen. Every morning at my workplace, I pull it not from a stone, but from my pocket, and remind myself what my task is, what I can be of service with in my little kingdom. My task often looks like writing from the outside. In fact, I make myself available as an interpreter between the ideas that are swirling around us and want to enter our world, as positive impulses for what is necessary.
I also share this conviction with Steven Pressfield ("The Artist's Journey") from the bottom of my heart and constant experience. So often I sit down to my work with a clear plan of what to do, and then something completely different, something better emerges! How often do I still have no idea what I want to do, and suddenly something emerges that I lend my hand to? Often I see things that I have done, but I can't remember in the least that I did them. I didn't, I made myself available.
It happened all the time in my time in advertising; it happens when I work with my clients on their inner brand stories; it's on the agenda in my writing.
Free yourself!
I can count Ronny Kokert among my long-time friends, and I am very pleased that he spent a good hour with me in the podcast studio. In it, he talks about why being able to fight means no longer having to fight, and how this creates meaning. It's also about his hero's journey, which Joseph Campbell could hardly have thought up better. Ronny is someone who has truly embraced his reputation and understood that although he works in the sports & fitness industry, his field of work is actually the liberation business. But listen here for yourself.
Ronny Kokert is a Rebel with a Cause who, as a former Open Taekwondo World Champion, knows first-hand what struggle means and what it sounds like when bones break. Ronny also knows what hope means and what it sounds like when it bursts. From his own experience and because he brings a murderous chunk of hope. To the refugee camp in Moria, for example. By the way, you can support Ronny's work there for #WeAreAustria - Help on Lesbos.
If you want to free yourself from your sofa in the second lockdown, Ronny and his team are available to you online and free of charge. On around 170 training videos, we Homebased Rebels will find yoga, Pilates, fitness and martial arts - everything that the inner bastard hates from the bottom of his heart, plus a children's special. Let's go to the Resistance Rebellion!
Are you all right?
Not only do we need to free ourselves from the sofa and from our planned life in order to get the right one that is waiting for us, we also need the right perspective for it. This comes from the story we tell ourselves within ourselves.
Even if we are not young kings in the come-from-before zone, we sometimes need impulses from outside, some tried and tested tools, the sharpened view from the eagle's perspective. Especially in our unsettling times, it is all too easy for us to fall into doubt, procrastination and hesitation, thus losing sight of our task, and the many-voiced howls of frustration of the everyday choir of complainers drown out our inner call with its dissonances. If you feel this way yourself, with your team or your company, then you will probably find what you are looking for here. Many people have already benefited substantially from this!
A daddycated follower of passion.
For some of us, the call comes at times and places you wouldn't believe! Molecular biologist Matthias Hombauer was struck by the thought "I want to be a rock star photographer" on his bike on his way to work. Why he happily followed it and why he has meanwhile found as Dadpreneuer found a new daddycation and about much more I talked to Matthias Hombauer. This latest episode of your favourite podcast "No Story. No Glory.", which you have of course already subscribed to in your favourite player, you can listen to here. If not, I would like to point out that the Krampus is already planning his pick-up route ...
"Follow your bliss."
People like Ronny and Matthias, who have heard and accepted their call, have found their passion and even made it their profession. It doesn't have to be that way, but it doesn't hurt at all, because after all, we spend a broad chunk of our lives in our jobs.
Doris Passler's passion is people and her vocation. For this she has founded a highly official salon, Salon Profession. This is her heart's project for heart's projects, but not her profession. Doris is curious and wants to know: "What moves people who have a vocation? What drives them? Where do the decisions take place that lead them to do what fulfils them and makes them successful?
She invited me into her wonderful salon, yet there it felt as if we were sitting in the guest garden of a Viennese bakery café on a chilly autumn eve, which was because we were doing just that. The tea and our conversation were all the more warming. We agreed on many things, especially that "'More is better' hasn't been true for a long time." You can read what else was talked about here. It's a wonder we didn't freeze to death, but as Katja Ebstein sang to us 50 years ago at the Eurovision Song Contest:
Miracles always happen
Today or tomorrow
They can happen
Miracles always happen
When they meet you
You must see them too
It is the same with the inner call. We encounter it again and again when we hear it, it begins the special story of a person who, through their experienced recognition, can give important impulses for the stories of others. Although we may not know them personally, they are mentors on our own heroic journeys. We ourselves can be that for others as well.
We are supposed to be!
Because our time needs people who give inspiring hope with their story, people who write their story themselves, write a new one and share their stories. People who hear, understand and accept the call and finally fulfil the task that is intended for us humans on earth.
These are the innovators, of whom there cannot be enough, who act from their heart and not driven by their ego, entrenched behind the wall of excuses of their inner resistance fortress called comfort zone.
These are the encouragers, the healers and thread weavers. These are the fear dispersers who wield the sword of truth with a steady hand and recognise that they themselves are always reflected in the brightly polished blade.
More and more often I meet such people. They have heard something, are searching, groping for their sword. They come forward, they get moving, they come together.
Every person, every company, every one of us can set this or that tone with what we do and tell and create this or that resonance. Like-minded people and those who are like-minded hear it, get into a common vibration - and from it something like a new story could emerge, a New Story. This new story, like the old one, is about all of us, but it has a new perspective: it is a story of connectedness and thus itself a call: "Come forward! Come here! Come along!"
I think this is the story my grandmother, old Story Dudette, meant when she embroidered on the young King Arthur's banner with a burning hot needle: "No Story. No Glory."