Adventure, Courage and the Hero's Journey

Everyone wants to be a hero, nobody wants to take the journey

How do you know who you are? The journey outward in life is also the journey inward. Every external challenge you face reveals something about your psychology, character, temperament, and makeup. And facing challenges changes you psychologically. If you are successful you become not only more self-aware, but more skilled and self-confident. This process of self-understanding and psychological growth can be called an adventure, a journey, or a process.

Hercules is our archetypal hero. Driven mad by Hera, he was forced to accomplish 12 tasks, or labors—what we now know as the Labors of Hercules. There are 12, just like the 12 houses of the zodiac (see Alice Bailey for an astrological take). Some of Hercules’ tasks required sheer courage, like slaying the Nemean lion. Others demanded cleverness and wisdom, like capturing the Ceryneian Hind. Still, others were grueling and monotonous, like cleaning the Augean stables. Even the mighty Hercules faced the humbling task of shoveling horse manure.

In performing these labors, Hercules was transformed from a madman to a hero. And this is a key point: you don’t start out as a hero and then have a journey. Instead, you have a journey and that adventure transforms you into a hero.

Hercules’ journey is mythical and archetypal. In Jungian terms, this means the hero’s journey is a template or archetype embedded in our collective unconscious—a pattern for growth, self-discovery, and becoming who we are meant to be as humans.

The term "hero’s journey" as a psychological concept was first used by Otto Rank, a brilliant but largely forgotten psychoanalyst. Rank was also very interested in birth trauma, and human birth is really the first hero’s journey we all partake in. We start out in the safety and security of the womb, but then through a rough transition we find ourselves air breathing creatures living independently in the sun. This is huge growth. In the movie The Matrix (derived from “womb”), the symbolic birth scene of Neo disconnecting from the pod and dropping into the water below is a major part of his hero’s journey.

In Freud’s system, the hero’s journey is embedded in the Oedipus complex (Oedipus is a hero with a pretty tragic ending—see Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex). A young boy desires his mother but realizes that to possess her would provoke his father’s wrath in the form of castration. Instead of marrying his mother like the mythical Oedipus, the boy identifies with his father—essentially growing into the strong man his father is so that he can find a wife like his mother. The boy’s identification with the father, or wanting to be an adult man instead of a boy, is a psychological hero’s journey. (And, yes, talk of castration sounds a bit wacky to modern ears, but castration is remarkably common in myth and there is a reason we have a giant obelisk in Washington, DC).

Carl Jung extended these ideas, observing that the hero’s journey occurs throughout life, with birth and the oedipal conflict being only two early examples. Life is really a series of journeys nested within a larger journey. Jung called the process of psychological growth individuation—the journey to become our own individual self.

Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist, studied this heroic pattern and found it repeated across cultures and time. In his famous book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell argued that the hero’s journey, or "monomyth," exists in countless forms. Beneath these stories lies a singular narrative: the story of each of us taking the adventure to discover who we are meant to be. The hero’s journey is the story of psychological growth written across time and place. I can’t go through the full cycle here, but I will instead focus on starting the journey.

Two psychological ingredients help kickstart the hero’s journey: a call to adventure and courage.

Campbell noted that the hero’s journey often begins with a call to adventure. In Moby Dick, for instance, Ishmael feels drawn to the sea, following the streams until they become an ocean. Harry Potter keeps getting letters delivered by an owl. Sometimes, however, adventures begin when life goes haywire, and you find yourself blown off course. The word “serendipity” originates from an old Persian adventure tale about being lost around Serendip, now called Sri Lanka.

The word “adventure” has various origins, but I like its description in Le Morte d’Arthur, where it’s associated with a spiritual calling. In Latin, "ad" means "to," and "venire" means “coming.” So, adventure is about coming to or finding yourself but also coming together with God (this bit I stole from Arthur). Again, the external journey brings you inward toward yourself and your spiritual center. Milarepa, the great saint of Tibet, started as a dark magician/shaman but was transformed into a saint through many challenges including years of hard physical labor.

And you can’t have an adventure without courage. Courage is an unusual virtue in the modern world. Most virtues today involve restraint—saying “no” to temptation: don’t eat too much (gluttony), don’t sleep too much (sloth), don’t get angry or lash out at others when things aren’t going your way (wrath). Courage, by contrast, demands action: making yourself do something scary, risky, or out of your comfort zone. Courage is about saying Yes rather than No.

Aristotle wrote that courage exists at the “golden mean” between cowardice and recklessness. Being foolhardy or a crazy risk taker isn’t courageous; it’s foolish. But avoiding all risk isn’t wise—it’s cowardly. The courageous person can move forward with intention and intelligence despite their fear. Indeed, without a little fear and trepidation you can’t really have courage.

We see the hero’s journey in countless stories, from Harry Potter and the Hunger Games to the life of Christ or Buddha. But does this mythical pattern reflect a real psychological process?

A recent study explored whether some people perceive their lives as heroic journeys. While we can’t objectively measure someone’s life as heroic, we can assess whether individuals see their lives as a hero’s journey. And it turns out this heroic self-perception is psychologically pretty positive. People who see their lives as a hero’s journey report higher levels of meaning in life and well-being. It’s not that the hero’s journey is fun — it can be challenging and even leave some scars — but it is meaningful and fosters psychological growth.

So, I think of the hero’s journey as a process of psychological growth or transformation. Heroes don’t start as extraordinary—they become extraordinary by facing tests and challenges with courage and a sense of adventure. As the saying goes (note, I might have just made this up):

“Everyone wants to be a hero, but nobody wants to take the journey.”

The archetypal hero’s journey provides a template or road map for psychological growth. It involves stepping out of comfort zones, facing challenges with courage and wisdom, and growing stronger both outwardly and inwardly. The process also involves aligning with something greater—what Jung called the capital-S Self, the center of the collective unconscious, source, or Godhead. So while you might not be a young Luke Skywalker, Katniss Everdeen, Hercules, or Milarepa, you can follow the path of transformation that those heroes walked.

And here’s where I get a little “woo.” I think the psychological realm is a little bigger than most psychologists do, and have a fondness for Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. My sense is that when you seek adventure with courage and good intention, the gods will occasionally lend you a hand. And even if I am wrong and we do live in a tiny materialistic world, approaching life like a great adventure can still pay off psychologically. So, to everyone out there going for it and living an adventure: Godspeed, you have my respect and well wishes.

If you are interested in Peterson Academy, I have two courses online and one (on the self) in process

Some Citations

Baumeister, R. F., & Juola Exline, J. (1999). Virtue, personality, and social relations: Self‐control as the moral muscle. Journal of personality, 67(6), 1165-1194.

Rogers, B. A., Chicas, H., Kelly, J. M., Kubin, E., Christian, M. S., Kachanoff, F. J., ... & Gray, K. (2023). Seeing your life story as a Hero’s Journey increases meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 125, 752–778.

Campbell, J. (1949). The hero with 1,000 faces. Bollingen, Princeton.

Rank, Otto (2004). The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth. Translated by Richter, Gregory C.; Lieberman, E. James (Expanded and updated ed.). Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Bailey, A.A., (1974). The Labours of Hercules: An Astrological Interpretation. Lucis Publishing, NY.