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Joseph Campbell's Heroes Journey
for Career Development
Your Career is a Story
Suddenly you find yourself in a new and unknown world - facing challenges you've never encountered, using tools you've not previously known. With the help of guides in this new environment, and driven by your determination to survive and thrive, you will face even the greatest of these obstacles. Returning from your adventure you are a new self, a hero transformed and triumphant over the hazards which your old self had never faced.
This is the pattern of the 'hero's journey' a path of self-development which leads you out of the known, comfortable world or familiar life, and into the unknown world of life outside the familiar. As described at length by the late, great Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey is a motif followed by every heroic figure from the Stone Age to the Space Age, from Gilgamesh to Moana.
We see this motif in stories and myths, and we also see this motif in our career, at times when professional progress takes an unexpected turn of direction. Unexpected career changes can be a cripplingly discouraging experience, but by viewing such challenges as your own parallel story following the pattern of your greatest heroes, then a professional crisis can begin to feel more like a thrilling challenge and opportunity.
In Joseph Campbell's model of the Hero's Journey, the story begins with familiar and normal life - which is soon threatened by an unknown outside threat. This may be the hero's village or home town being threatened by a monster, or by a mysterious blight on the crops. In your career this could mean a massive wave of lay-offs at your company or a decline in the industry you've know for years, for others this could mean retirement from the military and return into civilian life, for some people the hero journey of their career begins when they complete high school and leave the familiar home of their parents charge, while others might see their hero journey begin when released from prison, and they must learn to navigate legal employment on the outside.
When your financial security, your food, your shelter, your way of providing for yourself and others is no longer able to be relied on in the ways you are familiar with; then is the start of the hero journey of your career. Upon this even you enter the unknown world of civilian life, or explore new industries, or adulthood, or a life staying out of trouble; here you will face new challenges and build new skills to meet and overcome those challenges.
Sometimes those trials and tribulations will involve new job training, sometimes it means taking a pay cut while you work your way up from entry level. The trials and challenges might include understanding yourself in new ways as you provide for yourself and others, and you might learn to rely on or trust in the kindness and charity of loved ones.
After facing many challenges, and gaining sufficient new skill, and once the unfamiliar new world is now familiar to you; your journey is complete, and you return home transformed, even if the word HOME has come to gain a new meaning.
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