I invite you to join me on a Hero’s Journey, a mission of discovery to explore and map the elusive borderlands between myth and modern storytelling. We will be guided by a simple idea: All stories consist of a few common structural elements found universally in myths, fairy tales, dreams, and movies. They are known collectively as The Hero’s Journey or the Heroine’s Journey. Understanding these elements and their use in modern writing is the object of our quest. Used wisely, these ancient tools of the storyteller’s craft still have tremendous power to heal our people and made the world a better place.

My own Hero’s Journey begins with the peculair power storytelling has always had over me. I got hooked on the books of Jules Verne and Karl May my grandfather gave me when I was four years old. Books read out loud by my mother and grandmother. I devoured the series and movies pouring out of TV in the 1960s, from Star Trek to Little House on the Prairie, the lurid comic books and mind-stretching science fiction of the day. Whenever I could I would visit the local library being the only kid who choose stories of Norse and Celtic mythology.

A trail of stories eventually lead me to becoming a business storyteller for a living for companies in Western Europe. I watched movies, read books, explored art and biographies as part of my job. Though I evaluated thousands of stories I never got tired of exploring the labyrinth of story with its stunningly repeated patterns, bewildering variants and puzzling questions.

Where do stories come from? How do they work? What do they tell us about ourselves? What do they mean? Why do we need them? How can we use them to improve the world?

Above all, how do storytellers manage to make the story mean something? Good stories make you feel youe been through a satisfying, complete experience. You’ve cried or laughed or both. You finish the story feeling you’ve learned something about life or about yourself. Perhaps you’ve picked up a new awareness, a new character or attitude to model your life on. How do storytellers manage to pull that off? What are the secrets of this ancient trade? What are its rules and design principles?

Over the years I began to notice some common elements in adventure stories and myths, movies, literature, art plus the 5.000+ biographical stories I gathered from the participants of my Hero’s Journey and Heroine’s Journey project. Certain intriguingly familiar characters, beliefs, values, locations, obstacles, dilemma’s and dramatic situations. I became aware there was a pattern or a template of some sort guiding the design of stories.

In 1999 I was fortunate enough to cross paths with the life and work of the mythologist Joseph Campbell. The encounter with Campbell was for me and many other people, a life-changing experience. A few days of exploring the labyrinth of his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces produces an electrifiying reorganization of my own life and thinking. I worked with Campbell’s idea of the Hero’s Journey to undertand the phenomenal business of movies such as Star Wars and the amazing succes of companies like Amazon, Virgin, Starbucks and Nike. People were going back to see series of Harry Potter and Games of Thrones as if seeking some kind of religious experience. It seemed to me these stories drew people in this special way because they reflected the universally satisfying patterns Campbell found in myths. They had something people needed.

The Hero’s Journey I discovered, is more than just a description of the hidden patterns of mythology. It is a useful guide to life, especially the life of innovative, creative professionals and entrepreneurs. I found the stages of the Hero’s journey showing up just as reliably and usefully as they did in books, myths and movies. In my personal life, I was thankful to have this map to guide my quest and help me anticipate what was around the next bend.

One of the most precious lessons I learned was dealing with the war of ideas in my own head and heart. In every step I took forward with the Hero’s Journey & Heroine’s Journey I was being challenged. To be continued tomorrow.