Jung, Campbell, and the Hero's Journey: Recognise the story you're living

Carl Jung and his work has had a big impact on me over many years and over the last couple of weeks I've been writing a series of posts on my blog applying Carl Jung's psychological concepts to leadership and the development of a leader. And the second post of that talks about the persona and the persona for Carl Jung is the role we learn to play in society. And what he talks about is there's a developmental phase of our life when we're young where we need to learn to play a role in society. But there's a dangerous point where you become over identified with that role and forget that you are not that role. And in my own case probably the moment of greatest identification with the role the persona when I first had the opportunity to teach here in the ESA business school it was so important to me and yet I felt so unready an impostor someone that what did I have to actually teach leaders. I was sometimes younger than the groups of classmates that all the students that I had in the room. They often had many years more experience than me. And with that fear that sense that I wasn't enough the question I asked myself over and over again was what would a good ESA professor do at this moment? How start this class? handle this discussion with a student this moment? And for four years that was the question that the dominated my approach to finding how I would show up in the classroom. It was not thinking how would Connor respond how would I respond in this moment but thinking taking some of my examples of the people that I felt were good ESA professors thinking how would they respond? And I became unable to react spontaneously to interaction because I was so fixated on playing this role of a good ESA professor. And after four years of constantly asking what a good professor do how would a good professor handle this? I finally was able to let go of some of that and begin to teach as myself. I'm still very interested in making sure I do the things that a good ESA professor would do but create a space where I understand what that is but I don't just be that and that there's space for me to react as me as Connor in the moment. And for Carl Jung this development of the persona is a natural part of our development to play a role in society. As a child you learn how to be a student in class. When you start work you start to learn how to be an employee how to be something. But there comes a point where you're playing the role rather than living your role. And for Carl Jung this point of over identification with the mask and losing the essence of who you are behind is a very dangerous point. So anyway I just wanted to share a video saying I've been writing now four posts on the blog just looking at different elements [snorts] of Carl Jung's work and how they apply to our development as human beings. And as we say here in ESA to be a great leader first you need human being and that journey of becoming a good a great human being is the best thing you can the best path you can take to move towards being a great leader for others. So I hope you'll have a look at some of the posts on the blog and I hope you'll continue to read as I develop further that the next post coming up is on the hero's journey. And the hero's journey Joseph Campbell took a lot of the underlying work of Carl Jung and developed the concept of the hero's journey. And the hero's journey anyone who's seen Star Wars this is a classic example of the hero journey. Someone who is called to do something big with their life resists the call a mentor appears and encourages them and they take a step into what appears to be

a fun and great adventure. But as they take that first step they realize that challenges appear difficulties appear a whole bunch of things get in the way of them making progress to what they thought would be an easy goal. And as the challenges get greater their despair gets greater and they're on the edge of giving up. And often in the hero's journey the final challenge is the one that truly tests the greatness weakness in you and you come so close to being broken before you move to the next step which is achieving the what you set out to. So in the case of Star Wars killing the Death Star overcoming the evil empire and the emperor and Darth Vader. But now comes the moment where you have to return and you return back but you are no longer the same person that left and often returning to your home village returning to your family when you are no longer the same person that set out on that adventure that can be a challenge. And the power of the hero journey concepts from Carl Jung is as you live life if you're surprised by how life happens it can leave you unprepared for how life really works. And the hero journey as a concept can give meaning to the stages in your life difficulties that arise in your life. If you expect big goals like building a company forming a family to just happen without any adversity any challenge you're in for a very difficult suffering experience. If you expect that anything any goal that is in any worthwhile you're going to face a lot of adversity a lot of obstacles a lot of things that get in the way a lot of people that throw stones and and try and tell you that it's not worthwhile. If you know about the hero's journey you know that anything meaningful is going to hit some obstacles along the way and you're going to need mentors and supporters and people on the journey with you. When you know that you can handle the adversity in a much more powerful way. And as they say pain is guaranteed suffering is optional. Suffering is to hold the expectation that you could live a life achieve great things without ever having to suffer confront pain. And you know for me when I run a long way if you run a marathon your legs will hurt you will feel pain there will be blisters. To go into running a marathon imagining that you're never going to feel that pain and then you hit the pain at mile 20 you're going to really suffer a lot but to expect the pain to know that pain is part of the journey can allow that pain almost to become meaningful in that it is a necessary price. And because you understand the hero journey you understand that anything worthwhile will have this adversity it changes that adversity into something positive. So Jung's concept the hero's journey the work of Joseph Campbell can often help us to give meaning to our own journey through life and have a sense of what is the project that is to come as we move through the adventures of our life. So anyway have a good one I hope you read the blog look at the concepts from Jung. Thank you for your likes your comments your subscribes your sharing of these videos. Had a few coffees this week with people who have reached out because they've seen these videos and it's wonderful to hear stories of how some of you have taken the ideas in these videos used them to motivate you to go and create bigger things than you might have done without some of these ideas. Have a good one.