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Study shows how reframing your life as a Hero's Journey can change it for the better

Researchers shared 7 keys that can help you become the hero of your own life.

Be the hero of your own life.

When you think about your life, do you ever imagine it's a movie or a book with yourself as the main character? And not just any main character, but an actual hero? If not, you may want to start.

Research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that making yourself the hero of your own story, with all the elements of a classic “hero’s journey,” can make your life feel more meaningful and significant and may even increase your resilience in the face of challenges.

How does looking at your life as a hero's journey help?

Study author and assistant professor of management and organization at Boston College, Benjamin A. Rogers, tells TIME that human brains are wired for stories and respond to them in powerful ways. "This is how we've been communicating and understanding ourselves for thousands of years,” he said. Think of how many stories we have of heroes, from Hercules to Harry Potter.

That doesn’t mean you need to go out and slay dragons or take down bad guys or rescue someone from the brink of disaster. It simply means that the story you tell yourself about your life matters, and seeing yourself as the hero in your own life story makes a difference. But how do you do that? How do you make yourself into a hero, especially if you don’t see yourself as one?

caped hero standing on a mountainYou are the protagonist in your life story. Photo credit: Canva

What makes your life a Hero's Journey?

The researchers created identified seven key Hero’s Journey elements that people can reflect on to see their lives in a new light:

Protagonist: The main character of the story—you. The protagonist is the person people are rooting for, so reflect on who you are in your life story. What is your identity? What do you stand for? What values do you hold most dear?

Shifts: New things or circumstances that push your life in different directions. What changes in your life have led you to where and who you are today?

Quests: Something you're working toward. What do you want in life? What are your goals?

Allies: People who are on your side. Who do you have in your life to support you on your journey?

Challenges: Could be situations or other people that are obstacles pursuing your quest. What or who is getting in your way?

Transformation: How you grow as you take your journey. What lessons have you learned? How have you become better, stronger, wiser, healthier, etc?

Legacy: What you leave behind for others. What will you share from what you've gained? How with the community benefit from your life's journey?

The study authors shared in Scientific American how they used these elements in the study to help people develop this hero's journey lens for their life story:

"We developed a 'restorying' intervention in which we prompted people to retell their story as a hero's journey. Participants identified each of the seven elements in their life, and then we encouraged them to weave these pieces together into a coherent narrative.

In six studies with more than 1,700 participants, we confirmed that this restorying intervention worked: it helped people see their life as a hero's journey, which in turn made that life feel more meaningful. Intervention recipients also reported greater well-being and became more resilient in the face of personal challenges; these participants saw obstacles more positively and dealt with them more creatively."

According to the researchers, it didn't matter how meaningful the participants had felt their lives were before. All participants got a boost in meaning and well-being from the exercise. However, there were two key components of the intervention that made it effective. Not only did participants identify the seven elements of the hero's journey but they wove them together into a coherent narrative—literally telling their life story as a narrative. "In other studies, we found that doing only one or the other—such as describing aspects of one's life that resembled the hero's journey without linking them together—had a much more modest effect on feelings of meaning in life than doing both," the researchers wrote.

It's definitely worth a try. As Rogers told TIME, “The way that people tell their life story shapes how meaningful their lives feel. And you don’t have to live a super heroic life or be a person of adventure—virtually anyone can rewrite their story as a Hero’s Journey.”

“When are we gonna start the discussions?” Nichelle asks impatiently as the rest of us stuff our faces with chocolate-filled crescent rolls and blue Sour Patch kids.

All bras are off for the night, and all hair is securely fastened in bonnets. Everyone is talking at once, and even though our bedtime isn’t until the sun begins to rise, each of us has already claimed her sleeping territory.

We are at a sleepover. We are grown-ass women.


Looking back, I never minded being the token black kid at an elementary school filled with mostly white and Chinese students.

At times, I think I even preferred it — it was just one more thing that made me feel special. This isn’t to say that I was exempt from typical 9-year-old token black girl frustrations (like not being able to wet my hair at slumber parties and feeling uncomfortable when my peers would ask me if I was related to MLK), but overall, I was fine. I thrived both socially and academically.

In 1996 or 1997, I started dancing on a praise team at a small black Pentecostal church, and I made a new group of friends.

This began sleepovers every summer and winter with the other dancers in the group, a tradition that we continue to this day. During the early years of our sleepover tradition, since we saw each other four or five times during any given week, our sleepovers always felt like a capstone of sorts, celebrating another successful few months of being friends, of dancing, of going to middle school, to high school, to college.

All photos by Kenzie Kate Photography, used with permission.

These days, we’re lucky if we even see each other every other month. Our sleepovers have shifted into something equally fun but more intentional, weighted with a more tangible significance: a time to celebrate weddings, babies, and career moves. A time to cry about failures, losses, and relationship mishaps.

"Discussions" are inevitable these days, too — lengthy and usually heated conversations about everything from relationships and dating to politics and corporate America. These discussions have become a highlight of our adult sleepovers, second only to quoting "Mean Girls" in its entirety.

All of this is to say: Having black friends is important, y’all.

This may seem like a given, but it’s something I didn’t realize until fairly recently during our last sleepover, when we were time-traveling and laughing about stories from our almost two decades of knowing each other.

Growing up with a solid group of black women as friends has empowered me in ways that I am still discovering. Here are a few.

1. It is important that black women have a space where they can be angry black women without being labeled and written off as an angry black woman.

I am afraid of being a stereotype. In non-black circles, I overcompensate often: I speak of my love of country music and swimming, I enunciate well and emphasize my i-n-g’s. I limit saying anything that could be interpreted as me using the (non-existent) race card. I fear being labeled an angry black woman.

But at our sleepovers, the subject matter is always candid and nothing is off limits. We make our disapproval for someone’s significant other known, we debate the perks and downfalls of going to a historically black college, we talk about black men dating white women, we talk about why we should move to Atlanta, we talk about why we should not move to Atlanta. We don’t have sidebar conversations. If two people are arguing, we are all there. If someone is crying, we are all there. And we know that no amount of yelling or arguing or ranting or tears could ever make anyone else in the room doubt our intelligence. We know that we are all smart.

2. It is important to have a space where you don’t feel like you are speaking for the entire African-American population.

Whether in corporate America or in a university classroom, as a black woman voicing an opinion, you are speaking for all black women (and sometimes black people) everywhere. People will take your opinion as truth: as "the black perspective." I have been asked to give "the black perspective" on multiple occasions. That is a LOT of pressure. I do not know all of the black people in America. Yes, I have insight into a black perspective, but too often, people mistake it as the only black perspective.

On many past occasions, as a result of being the sole black perspective, I have failed black people. When given the mic, I have been quick to say the easiest thing, to make the people around me comfortable, to manipulate the truth, to not be the downer in the room. When I’m with my girls, I am only required to speak for myself. My opinion only belongs to me. There’s so much freedom that comes with that.

3. It is important to have a space where you don’t ever feel like you’re talking about race "too much." It is also important to be in a place where wearing a scarf to sleep is the norm and ain’t nobody wettin’ their hair.

Whether we like it or not, hair is a big part of young girls’ lives in America, no matter what race they are. Your hair feels like your beauty, and your hair feels like your identity. As a little girl with barrettes, as a preteen with cornrows, and as a high-schooler with braids, it was my truth. It was all of our truth.

On the playground, I remember the envy I felt watching all the little white girls put their hair up in ponytails to play soccer and then taking the ponytails back down and splashing some water in their hair to go back to class. It was magic. My hair had to stay in its four ponytails, hair balls hanging on ends, lest I receive a beating when I got home. My hair was not magic.

But on Saturdays, as we’d prepare to dance at church on Sunday morning, my mom ran a pressing comb through all of our heads, gelling down our kitchens, changing afro puffs into curly ponytails and loose edges into defined twists. Our hair was magic.

Even still, as adults, we revel in each other’s hairstyles: the bobs, the braids, the afros, the twists, the locks, the ongoing discovery of how our hair can shape shift into something else. Our hair is magic.

We are magic.

Growing up with black girlfriends meant growing up surrounded by mirrors: reflections that looked just like me and constantly showed me who I was and who I could be. They were mirrors that knew me for me and constantly reminded me that I was magic.

We don’t see each other four times a week like we used to, and our phone calls and text messages are sometimes far and few between, but we hold on tightly to our bi-annual sleepovers, because we know that we need each other to survive in this world.

Black women need each other in this world.