The Heroine's Journey; Lessons From Leaping

Leap Stories

This blog isn’t about skydiving (unless that's your thing!). It's about those moments when you listen to your gut, face your fears, and take a chance on yourself. When I look back on my life, I see a pattern of bold choices, courageous decisions, and transformative experiences.  What was the catalyst that led me in that direction? A leap. They hold the key to unlocking your full potential.

“There are two kinds of people…One kind, you can tell just by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves.  It might be a very nice self, but you know you can expect no more surprises from it.  Whereas, the other kind keeps moving, changing.  With these people, you can never say ‘X stops here,’ or ‘Now I know all there is to know about Y.’ That doesn’t mean they’re unstable.  Ah, no, far from it.  They are fluid.  They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young.  In my opinion, they are the only people who are still alive.”

Gail Godwin, The Finishing School

“A bit of advice

Given to a young Native American

At the time of his initiation:

‘As you go the way of life,

You will see a great chasm.

Jump.

It is not as wide as you think.’”

A Joseph Campbell Companion, Reflections on the Art of Living,

Selected and edited by Diane K. Osbon p.298

Plant Seeds When Writing A Book

I hired a writing coach to help me break through my seemingly impenetrable barrier to writing my book. This was back in 2012. I had put a temporary end to my women’s empowerment business, Ruby Slippers, because I knew something was coming up in me that I needed to get out and more specifically, down. I was called to write.

Jack Barnard was just the writing coach that I needed. He had the perfect way to get me going. Without Jack, I would have begun it “my way.”  You could call it the organized “facilitator approach” …what’s the agenda; what’s the structure; OK, now, fill it in.  I would have planned it all, with my left brain, and then written it …according to some left-brained plan as to what I should say. Boring.

What made it even more challenging - I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to write about. I had a lot of ideas.

So, Jack stepped in to my mental morass and had me “plant seeds”:

“Just write down possibilities of what you might want to write about…in no sequence…whatever comes to mind…stream-of-consciousness.  And then we’ll look at it and see.  We’ll see what the field is that encompasses those seeds.”

There were oh so many seeds and fields!  They poured out of me… seeds about gaining confidence, (I’ve worked with so many women around confidence.)  There were seeds about intuition and stepping up and speaking up and a new women’s style of leadership coming to the fore and how it’s so needed in the world.  I was full of seeds, but what stood out and gave me the most enjoyment as I was stream-of-consciousness writing was writing my own stories.  They kept coming up and I let them come up.

Lessons From Leaping

My seeds turned out to be “leap” stories.  Times in my life when I listened to my intuition and went for it. So many leaps, involving loss, grief, great happiness, trials, meeting dragons, collecting the gifts and then sharing, as a coach, friend, mother, and consultant, the lessons learned from the leaps.

But then, I purposely pushed those stories aside. Yes, they were great examples of responding to the call to go on a Heroine’s Journey, which requires a leap out of one’s comfort zone. But, I didn’t want the book that eventually became, You Are a Heroine: A Retelling of the Hero’s Journey, to be about me. I wanted to encourage women to remember their own leap stories. I especially wanted them to see that their leaps are what make them heroines.

Yup, after putting them in my manuscript, I took them out, (but I didn’t get rid of them!)

Compiling Leap Stories Is A Worthy Pasttime

Through leaps, we learn so much about ourselves.

I encourage you to do it, too. I learned a lot from getting those leaps down and reflecting on them. You’ll see the common themes. The stories held messages that I continue to apply, teach and share with others. The stories spoke about:

How the way through my fear was confronting it. Realizing that doing the thing that I most feared doing took away its power over me and the less it had the upper hand.

How sometimes I had to walk with or manage my fear.  I’d have to watch the negative thoughts that would only heighten my fear.  I learned to redirect my thinking and have words at the ready to keep me positive.

How I learned that my intuition knew what was best for me… take the course at Hudson; leaving the consulting firm; starting Ruby Slippers; ending Ruby Slippers; going to Camden and learning about the Hero’s Journey are only some of the messages that came through.  With me, my intuition only sometimes comes across as “clear as a bell.” Other times my intuition is a thought that just won’t go away… take a sabbatical, a long one, for God’s sake!!

I Learned That I Had To Speak Up For Myself

Sooner rather than later; I had to speak up, I couldn’t please everyone, and what I wanted was important.

I learned to ask for what I want.  Then I learned had to pay attention for it would come. 

Also, visualization and trust got me what I wanted.

Likewise, complaining and dwelling on what I didn’t want, kept me getting what I didn’t want.  I’d have to catch myself; stop doing it and put my thoughts on creating what I wanted. 

Learning when it’s time to end something is just as important as starting something. I’d hang on tightly to things only to find out that when I let go things got even better.

And I learned time and time again, that I am always teaching what I need to learn.

Writers, Take Note

Writers take note! What did I learn from the leap of writing my book?

You need to have sufficient, lengthy, quiet time for the thoughts to come through.

You need to commit to the book, so it knows you’re taking it seriously.  It’s like when you decide to write down your dreams and then you start remembering your dreams more.  What’s inside of you needs to believe that you care enough for the thoughts to surface.

If you truly give yourself over to the journey of writing, then there is no set path laid out and you don’t know what will come up.  You may be surprised.  I didn’t know that writing would lead me to exploring more around the relationship I had with my mom and how that still affects me today.

See Things Differently

If you want to have new insights, see things differently, it helps to clear the decks – clean out on all levels…in your home, in your life, relationships, duties…. just let some of those spinning plates drop.  Or…nicely slow them down and stack them up somewhere.  Better yet, maybe someone else wants one to spin.

You must believe in the value of what you’re doing as the people closest to you might not see the value.  Honestly, why should they?  The urge to write came from deep within me.  Why would anyone else get that?  Well, probably many of you do.

It really helps to have a coach, an honest coach, who will tell you when you’re bullshitting yourself.  Find someone who will tell you that you might not know it, but you’re stuck, and you’d better dig deep to find out why.

There Will Be Dragons

They will surface.  I don’t know if there are statistics on this, but nothing brings dragons forward better than prolonged periods of writing – about yourself and your life.  Well, prolonged periods of avoiding writing about yourself and your life also brings them forward.

What I learned big time is that to be a heroine you must leap. The calls arrive on our doorstep, and they have meaning, soul-level meaning. They will grow you. The leap propels her into the unknown, an area of her life that is new to her.  The leap initiates a new adventure. A heroine leaps to expand her life and herself and becomes her more actualized, complete, fulfilled, “big” self. 

Our journeys are different but, in many ways, the same – we struggle to see ourselves in a positive light, all our mistakes, our dealings with fear, shame, whatever… are not what defines us.  We define ourselves by our leaps. We create ourselves by our leaps …our courageous and brave leaps that acknowledge our true selves, who we really are… Looking at our leaps we can say – I have power.  I am not my fear.  I am brave.

What's Next?

Maybe you guessed this was coming. I’m going to share some of my leap stories with you in future blogs. My hope is that they will open the door of possibilities for you. I want you to see how following your intuition can get you to exactly where you need to go.

And I’ll ask you to share what resonates with you. Have you also had a moment of visceral fear like I did in front of the eighth-grade classroom? Did you have to exert your power to get someone to do something – like sit down during a contentious public meeting? Did a walk in the dark help you hear an important message that you needed to act on? Call this guy, Susanna!

So, please stay tuned. We’re moving into Leap Story mode!!

“There’s a certain amount of rumination, and then you just have to jump.”

Toni Collette as told to Michael Schulman for The New Yorker 4-21-14