All true personal development includes the same steps. The “Hero’s Journey,” popularized by Joseph Campbell, who was influenced by Carl Jung’s analytical psychology), includes the steps needed to create a breakthrough.

The first steps are known—steps you can work through with others. Then there are steps that are unknown—steps you need to work out with yourself.

Known steps include a call to adventure, or that goal you want to achieve and finding a mentor. Then along the path, there are unknowns, like friends who can support you and learning the ropes of what is new. In this process of doing things for the first time, you’re getting your hands dirty, you’re growing, and you’re facing tests. More often than not, you fail many times before you succeed.

Most people focus on the climax of a novel or movie, but as a therapist, I’m most interested in the rising action because this is the make-or-break stage. There’s plenty of adversity and odds aren’t in your favor. This is where…

| despite all your sound investing, some freak thing happens and the profits you’ve made disappear.

| all the grinding with the workouts leads to a freak-ankle-injury.

| months of love and care somehow results in a relational split. Where the grind of sobriety now finds you at the bottom of a bottle.

| after spending months drafting your perfect manuscript, you strike out with every publisher.

| you spent all your budget on products and the merchandise came back flawed.

This is not only your make or break moment, you know what make it more difficult?

Often in this stage, your mentor can no longer help you. Your friends have disappeared. Your resources have dwindled. Almost all your advantages seem to be disadvantages. In fact, it’s often here that you revert to previous tendencies. This is where 99% of people throw in the towel, and at least for a moment, you quit. It’s almost like all the lessons and hard work is tossed out the window.

—But what if I told you that this is EXACTLY where you need to be? That this step right here is the most necessary for change? Because this is the moment you have to decide for yourself whether you’re going to follow your heart, your true call to adventure. Here, you’re tapped into true consciousness.

At this moment, you have a choice. Everything you’ve gained, you’ve lost…so will you have the courage to find it all over again…when you don’t know the next steps forward? Will you press into the unknown when you don’t know how?

This is where dreams

either die

or stay alive.

Now, if you want things to change, sometimes this involves doing the same thing with more intensity and duration. But more often, this is the path: you’ve got to throw away everything you’ve learned and done, start from scratch…then to get over the hill, you’re got to EMBODY everything you’ve learned and done in a brand new way. The difference is that before everything was theory, but theory can only get you so far.

In a way, you’ve got to throw out the script of what your mentor, teachers, friends, and loved ones have told you and make it your own. You’ve got to put yourself on the line. Everything that is not 100% aligned with that purpose is a liability; when you embody something, it’s more than putting in effort…you ARE IT, there’s no other option. IT IS your identity. THIS is the difference between others and yourself.

The price of your new life is your old one. Are you willing to pay that price? And here’s the price: precisely the thing that is the most costly to your soul…the thing that hurts your ego the most. What are you willing to do to get to where you want to get?

Are you willing to take out another loan? Are you willing to fire your old coach and try the new one? Are you willing to toss everything out of the fridge? Are you willing to delete your favorite part of your book to write the book you need to write? Are you willing to wake up early and train on your own? Are you willing to detach from the friend or family member who is draining your resources? Are you willing to forgive and reconnect with that person who hurt you?

The Hero's Journey: Find It, To Lose It, To Find It All Over Again