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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.

Photo credit: Canva

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 mountain You 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.”

life hacks

Education

Ever heard of 'The Tiffany Problem'? Why people think historically accurate things are wrong.

It's a strange but real dilemma for storytellers.

Ali Shaker/VOA, Tylwyth Eldar /Wikimedia Commons

The name Tiffany goes way back to Tiphaine Raguenel, who lived in Mont Saint Michel in the 1300s.

Depending on what generation you belong to, when you hear the name Tiffany, you might think of the famous jewelry store, the teen singer from the 80s or the less-in-the-spotlight daughter of the former president. Most likely, you don't think of a woman who lived in the Middle Ages.

In fact, if you were listening to an audiobook set in medieval times and the narrator introduced a character named Tiffany, you'd probably get yanked right out of the story as your brain would say, "Wait, why is there a Tiffany in this story? Isn't that a much more modern name?"

It's actually not, which is exactly why The Tiffany Problem is called The Tiffany Problem.

The Tiffany Problem refers to the fact that people in modern times will sometimes see something as anachronistic when it's not. It's something writers, filmmakers and other storytellers have to be aware of, as it can feel like there's a historical problem even if there isn't an actual historical problem.

Abraham Piper explains the dilemma and how it was coined:

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As Piper shares, fantasy author Jo Walton coined the term "The Tiffany Problem" and explained it:

"Your readers are modern people and know what they know, which is fine except when what they know isn’t actually right. For instance, the name Tiffany sounds extremely modern to us. It feels jarring when we read it as a character name in a historical setting, where we’d be quite happy with names like Anna and Jane. But our instinct is wrong, because Tiffany is a form of Theophania, and it was fairly common in medieval England and France. It went out of fashion later, and it’s because we don’t have seventeenth to nineteenth century examples that it feels modern. But you still can’t use it in a fantasy novel set in the exact time and place when the name would have been historically accurate, because it will jerk the reader out of their reading trance. They know it’s wrong and you can’t tell them that what they know is wrong."

Piper had also shared that "ha ha," which seems like a casual, modern colloquialism, is actually very old, with the first known use coming from a monk 1,000 years ago. He also mentions "OMG," which was used by a World War I admiral in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1917. And "hubby" as a slang term for husband? That goes way back to the 1680s. Who knew?

It's a bit ironic that writers who strive to ensure their historical fiction works are historically accurate can find themselves stymied by people being just flat-out wrong about what's accurate and what's not. Humans are interesting creatures, aren't we?

For more info about the name Tiffany than you ever thought you wanted to know but will be delighted to learn, CGP Grey created a whole video about the name that has 4.7 million views. Tiffany exploded the 1980s, but CGP Grey goes all the way back to the year 300 to uncover the origins of the name. It's genuinely entertaining. Watch:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

If you're still here and want to take an even deeper dive into the history of Tiffany, this other video from CGP Grey is an incredible rabbit hole that will make you appreciate the work historians do and marvel at how much digging Grey actually did to provide the original Tiffany history video. We're talking trips to the deep dark corners of The British Library, the largest library in the world, and hours and hours of paging through books just to find the original source of this one poem that includes the name "Tiffany." It's a journey, but a fascinating one.

Enjoy "Someone Dead Ruined My Life… Again":

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

This article originally appeared in August

From Your Site Articles

history

Fatherhood

Dad who grew up poor perfectly explains why it’s so hard to shake the poverty mindset

Even when you're doing well, the mindset never seems to go away.

via Blake Kasemeier, used with permission.

Blake Kasemeier and his children.

A video created by Blake Kasemeier has made a lot of people feel seen because it perfectly explains the mindset people develop when they grow up poor. But it’s not just about remembering the hard times of the past. It describes how even though Kasemeier has overcome poverty as an adult, the effects of growing up financially disadvantaged still follow him to this day.

Kasemeier tells stories on social media about parenting, grief, growing up and where they sometimes collide. He documented the loss of his mom in the 2019 podcast series “Good Grief” and has written for some of the world’s leading health and fitness brands.

The video begins with Kasemeier admitting that when he was young, he'd always save half of his food until he got home "just in case." It was a symptom of living in a financially unstable family with a single mother who had him at 23 years old. To help them get by, she occasionally wrote "hot checks" at the grocery store and blasted a Counting Crows tape to cover up any scary sounds coming out of the car.

Even though sometimes it seemed like they wouldn't get by and it was “close most days” — "moms always find a way."

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The video ends with a poignant stanza about the lasting effects of growing up in an economically unstable home.

“It sits inside of you. Kinda like a worry but a lot like a flame,” Kasemeier says. “These days, we are doing alright. Maybe the fire finally went out, but there is a part of me that will always taste the smoke.”

"The thing about being born rich or, rather, not poor, is that when you are broke, it feels like you are a tourist on a bad trip. A place that you don't belong," Kasemeier continues. "The thing about being born the other way around, is that as hard as you work to escape it, it's always gonna kinda feel like home

The post received some emotional reactions from people on Instagram.

"I feel the last sentence is the most profound of this video—and the underlying sense of entitlement many have vs the underlying sense of lack of self-worth others may have," thewitchofportobell0 wrote.

"Tasting the smoke is a great way to put this. Growing up this way really makes you look at some of your frugality and not norm habits in a new light. Hard to relearn," Jakemerten added.

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Even though there were hardships growing up in an economically disadvantaged family, Kasemeier wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I am deeply grateful for the way I was raised,” he told Upworthy. “Unfortunately, everyone experiences some trauma in their upbringing—I wouldn't want to trade mine for someone else's. I grew up to be grateful for what I have and without a feeling of entitlement to success: I expected that everything that came to me was going to come through hard work and being kind to people and that has served me very well. It also allowed me to have a great deal of empathy for what everyone is going through.”

Kasemeier further explained the mindset to help those who weren’t raised in that environment better understand the mentality.

“I can tell you that what I experience is a feeling that the other shoe is going to drop, that when I'm up (financially), I don't expect it to last—that leads to a lot of imposter syndrome,” he told Upworthy. “There are little things—like constant anxiety that your card will decline when you go to check out at a grocery store (knowing full well that you have more than enough money). There are big things, like financial literacy.”

The video talks about economic insecurity, but is also touching tribute to his late mother, who, as he said in the post, found “a way.”

“She came from a tiny farm in rural Arkansas, moved to Hollywood where she met my dad and had me at 23 without a degree or any connections,” Kasemeier told Upworthy. “They had a shotgun wedding and divorced shortly after, my mom was left to navigate parenthood in a pretty challenging way—something I appreciate so much having kids of my own at a totally different place in my life than she was.”

This article originally appeared on 2.8.24

From Your Site Articles

poverty

Wellness

A child's future bedtime story portrays a post-COVID world that learned from its mistakes

While the coronavirus pandemic is undeniably a devastating global crisis, it's also an unprecedented opportunity. A chance for humanity to take a pause. A chance for us to step back and examine the world we've built. A chance to decide if what we have to look back on is really the "normal" we want to return to.

This idea of reimagining normal is explored through a child's bedtime story in the now viral video called "The Great Realisation." Released on YouTube on April 29 by a new channel called Probably Tomfoolery, the video goes through four minutes of rhyming poetry that outlines where we were before the pandemic and where we end up in the future.

The Great Realisationyoutu.be

The story is profound, beautiful, and most importantly, hopeful. It gives fulfilment to the desire so any of us have to not return to the normal that was, but to build a new normal that befits humanity true potential. And it does so in a way that doesn't preach or point fingers, but rather pushes us to think about what we want the world to look like on the other side of this pandemic.

Definitely worth four minutes of your time.

From Your Site Articles

This autistic 10-year-old wrote a short story, and people are loving it.

Libby Scott's mom Kym said her 10-year-old daughter "hardly ever" would chose to read or write.

Libby has autism, and her mom said part of the symptoms include rarely reading or writing.

Photo courtesy Kym Scott.

So when Kym saw that Libby had written a fictional short story, she wanted to rally support for her.

She took to Twitter to share the story, titled "The Life of a Perfectionist."

In just a few hundred words, Libby describes a fictional character's struggle to get through her day and the difficult interactions she has with strangers who aren't aware of her condition or how to interact with her.

"I notice that my candles are in the wrong order; the cleaner must've done it," the character says. "I think to myself I don't want to get up as I am so comfortable. I reluctantly climb out of bed to adjust my candles."

Libby's character finds comfort in a song until she becomes upset by the word count and reaches out to Taylor Swift.

"The next morning I realise my favourite song doesn't have exactly 100 words, it has 98. My heart stops," she writes. "A few hours later I find myself writing to the singer telling her how I felt. I got a reply from her saying 'I am sorry but I cannot change the lyrics of my song, lots of love Taylor Swift.'"

— (@)

Through this fictional character, Libby discovered a way to explain a part of her own experience having autism.

And Twitter users swiftly responded with praise. What started as a simple gesture of support quickly went viral. In less than 48 hours, more than 40,000 people had liked Kym's tweet and nearly 20,000 had retweeted it.

"I had no idea my little bit of writing would go so far, but I’m really excited and pleased," Libby says. "Especially if it helps people see a different viewpoint of autism and if it can help them understand a family member better."

Alan Gardner, a TV presenter in the U.K. with autism, had some simple and poignant praise for how Libby was helping others.

— (@)

Children's author Ann Cleeves chimed in as well with some words of support that would mean a lot to any writer, let alone a 10-year-old putting her work out into the world for the first time.

— (@)

Libby even received praise from the head of Condé Nast International, one of the most powerful publishing operations in the world.

— (@)

Kym posted a second story from Libby and even helped her create her own Twitter account.

— (@)

Storytelling is one of our most powerful tools for better understanding one another.

By sharing her writing, Libby is building bridges of understanding and empathy with others.

"For too long autism has been misunderstood and autistic people made to try to fit in, which adds hugely to their anxiety," Kym says. "The most important thing we can do for autistic people in my opinion is stop trying to make them fit into a neurotypical world and to allow and encourage them to be their very best autistic selves."

Libby on the right. Photo courtesy of Kym Scott.

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Some people who have autism and Asperger's think in pictures. Kinda like Google Images. - Upworthy ›

"I’m a very sad man now that she’s gone," Leroy explained. He'd been at his wife's side the moment she died of a heart attack. "I wish I could have saved her."

Leroy, a U.S. veteran, said he'd been doing well staying sober up until that tragedy struck a few months ago. Now he's back on the streets of New Orleans, once again battling alcoholism and homelessness.