Find the Hero in You

By Wynne Marie Lacey

This book contains self-development tools that will guide you toward realizing the totality of who you really are. You are always greater and wiser than you appear to be, and the Heros Journey is a wonderful pathway toward seeing that in yourself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jan 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504348713

Wynne Marie Lacey

Wynne Lacey has transformed herself from professional NBA cheerleader to a Universal Cheerleader for Human Potential. Owner of Wynning Teams, certified life coach, pageant director, regional consultant and expo-producer, Wynne has trained hundreds of young women seeking to develop themselves from the inside out. Wynne currently lives in Oak Park, Illinois with her husband and two children.

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Copyright © 2016 Wynne Marie Lacey.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-4870-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-4871-3 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 01/12/2016

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Hero’s Journey As A Handbook For Life

Chapter 2 An (Almost) Enlightened Hero

Chapter 3 Hearing Your Hero Call In The Ordinary World

Chapter 4 The Distraction Attraction

Chapter 5 The Value Of Pain

Chapter 6 The Female Collective Pain Body

Chapter 7 Hero We Go!

Chapter 8 Help For The Hero

Chapter 9 When A Hero Goes Deep

Chapter 10 Every Hero Casts A Shadow

Chapter 11 Shadows, Gremlins, And Teen Wolves, Oh My!

Chapter 1 Return To The Ordinary World

Epilogue

References

As long as I have…

Life in my body

Love in my heart

Wisdom in my soul

Truth in my intentions

…there is reason to share

Thanks for helping me share, Heather!

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this book is to give you a self-analysis tool that will guide you toward the totality of who you really are. You are always greater and wiser than you appear to be, and the Hero’s Journey is a wonderful pathway toward seeing that in yourself.

I really do believe that each one of us can relate to the Hero’s Journey and implement the principles into our everyday lives. Once you read more about the Hero’s Journey, you will find that it is not only possible but probable that you have these Hero traits inside yourself. You will also find that it isn’t such a stretch to put these core values to work in your everyday life.

The Hero’s Journey is equally as painful as it is remarkable. This book spends quite a lot of time questioning what triggers emotional pain in you so that you truly understand the depth of your being. Without understanding your Shadow Self (the complete you—which includes the self-perceived good and the bad), you will only know yourself superficially, and certain powers will remain unconscious and out of your control. Being honest with your self leads to both understanding your highest human potential and the transformation you might be looking for from this book.

To me, the most intriguing part of anyone’s Hero Journey is the countless choices that we have at any defining moment of our life. We just need to be aware that we have choices. As Peter Parker reminds us as the Hero in the Spiderman 3 movie, there is always a battle raging inside each of us. And each of us always has a choice in how we react to it.

The Heroes of the past mostly use their energy to establish dominance. Heroes never surrender; it is a sign of weakness in our culture. Imagine a professional sports player or a military officer who must constantly establish dominance in order to achieve victory.

There is another way to use your energy for good and that is to establish a living connection to yourself, others, and our shared home, the earth. Ironically, the first step to establishing connection with another is to surrender. But this type of surrender is not a weakness; actually, it takes a tremendous amount of courage and strength to stand unarmed with kindness and compassion versus armed with swords. This type of surrender is dropping your need to be right and, more importantly, wanting to be peacefully connected with others. Dominance always breaks down and must be reestablished in a sometimes horrible repeating and exhausting pattern. Connection gets stronger and stronger as it is maintained with less effort.

The Hero of today can use the exact same Journey as documented by our historical, fictional, and current Heroes. All good Hero stories include a moment where the Hero experiences the act of surrendering by another’s force; the difference in today’s Heroes is that they choose to surrender first and work on sustaining that energy in order to make a connection, if and when it’s possible. There may be people in your life with whom you will never connect, and that is OK; however, it might be you who has to take the first step.

I hope this book takes you a long time to read and that you spend time journaling with the questions at the end of each chapter. I also hope this book inspires you toward a life of self-analysis because it truly is the best gift you can give yourself and the world.

Thank you to Heather Ruffalo, who spent countless hours editing this book so that it could become the best that it could be. In the Hero’s Journey, all of us need to surrender to a mentor, guide, advisor, or teacher, and on this Journey, Heather has been just that for me. This act of surrender to another who wants the best for you is a power that cannot be described in words … even for a writer!

Wynne Marie Lacey

August 2015

Chapter One

THE HERO’S JOURNEY AS A HANDBOOK FOR LIFE

I came to believe that the Hero’s Journey is nothing less than a handbook for life, a complete instruction manual in the art of being human.

– Christopher Vogler, international best seller and

veteran story consultant for major Hollywood film companies

H eroes are timeless, full of visual imagery, thoroughly documented, consistent, and part of the Archetypal System. Archetypes are universal and impersonal descriptions for the very personal and singular parts of what makes us emotional, complicated, and ever-evolving human beings. Archetypes are the principle molds in which others are copied; a pattern of behavior available for anyone, anywhere to assimilate into the self. Examples of Archetypes include the Hero, the Shadow, the Rebel, the Child, the Genius, the Trickster, the Mother, and the Wise Old Man. We will be focusing on the Hero Archetype first and then introduce the Shadow Archetype in the second half of the book.

Archetypes are contradictory in nature—impersonal yet used to describe the personal and restrictive yet somehow unbounded. The Hero Archetype is restrictive in the way that there are certain boundaries in its definitions; we all know what it means when someone uses the word Hero and can instantly relate to one another when talking about it. Hero is commonly defined in our American dictionaries as a remarkably brave person with strength and good character. Real-life Hero examples include an astronaut taking the first step on the moon or a Navy Seal entering Bin Laden’s hideout. Fantasy-fiction fanatics know their favorite Hero through comics like Superman and Spiderman or movies like Star Wars or the Avengers. I think 99% of us would agree that all these Heroes display enormous amounts of courage. In fact, courage would be the singular defining word for Hero, if I had to use only one.

The Hero Archetype is also unbounded in the way that there are countless Heroes, over countless centuries, and there are countless more to come in our lifetime alone. Each Hero has his or her own unique Journey in an extraordinary circumstance and then returns to the Ordinary World. Yet this definition is restrictive when we only consider events which occur during extraordinary circumstances.

Right now, in this moment, explore the possibility that you could be a Hero to yourself, to a few who are close to you, or on a wider public scale. But the size of your impact won’t matter, and most likely you will not receive public recognition for this act that defines you as a Hero. On the other hand, it would be impossible to measure your impact as it ripples from person to place to thing. Are you willing to take a risk? Can you step outside your comfort zone? Just thinking like a Hero will very likely open your eyes to see the fleeting moments of opportunity you might not normally recognize. These opportunities will be more obvious if you are open to the idea that you could be a Hero in the first place.

The word Hero appears historically in the Greek and Latin forms of language and means to protect and to serve. However, we must first protect and serve ourselves before we can do so for others. Joseph Campbell, famous author and teacher, expanded, and close to perfected, the description of the Hero and his or her Journey. Campbell calls the Hero among many things, a man of self-achieved submission. Submission means an act of surrendering which at first sounds like admitting defeat, something you don’t think of when the word Hero is discussed.

But self-achieved submission is a beautiful way of saying that only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new … a continuous recurrence of birth (Campbell 1949). Campbell believes even going from child to adult is a death and rebirth of sorts. Giving birth itself is heroic, certainly for the mother who must submit to the process in which she is not in control. We must die to our old ways of thinking about something to truly go on a Hero’s Journey. This is how we first protect and serve ourself. We protect our core, our inherent self-value, and let all other outer superficial validations die and fall away.

Submission then could be synonymous with transformation. An example in nature of this heroic transformation is the Butterfly. I like the Butterfly because every caterpillar has the capacity to become a Butterfly, even if some don’t complete the change. It is innate for them to become a Butterfly, even if they aren’t consciously aware of it. Just like us—we all have the capacity to be Heroes even before we become aware of it. I believe every human has the capacity to take his or her own Hero’s Journey. And just like a Hero, a caterpillar seems ordinary and then faces something extraordinary before returning to the Ordinary World and bringing back its new self to make the world a better place, if only to bring more beauty.

The first stage of the caterpillar is to consume and grow with all the food that its little body can take in. This caterpillar crawls along with minimal awareness and can only take in what is in its immediate environment. The second stage is the chrysalis in the cocoon. There is no outward change at all; in fact, it looks like it is stagnant, even dying to the outside viewer. But inside it’s a different story entirely. The caterpillar is completely liquefying and transforming … from the inside out … so it will look nothing like its former self.

The last stage, when it slowly emerges from its cocoon, the