The Return Home

Hi, 

To this point, my entire career to this point has been within spitting distance of this idea of The Hero’s Journey. Not just because I started a company that was inspired by the hero arc, but because of what that hero arc teaches us about ourselves when we try something new. 

If you aren’t aware of the pattern, here is a graphic: 

Today, I am going to talk about the latter part of this process – the return. 

A while back, I wrote about “living the life” and the premise is simply, if you want your life to look a certain way block out any amount of time every single day and cosplay that life. 

If you want to be an entrepreneur – spend 30 minutes a day trying to build a business. 

If you want to be a teacher – make short form videos of you talking about a topic. 

If you want to be a writer – publish a weekly newsletter. 

Editorial Note: this advice doesn’t work for aspiring F1 drivers – drive the speed limit kids. 

The whole idea is if you want to live a certain way, try to find a way to start living that way. 

The part two of that idea is centered around what happens after you start to emulate your dream life. 

Every time you set out to insert a new thing into your life you are going through a transformation. One that looks a lot like the wheel above. You are changing your normal world into a whole new one, fortunately that world is both in this scenario the fantasy world and in your life your fantasy world. 

But here is what happens. It isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. You may not want to spend 30 minutes working on a business, or make a video on a topic, or write a newsletter after a big Seahawks Super Bowl win. 

But something even more painful can happen. You can be successful. Your 30 minutes of business could turn into 2 hours, your online presence could explode, or (okay, I am going to stop using the newsletter as an example). 

To the business example, everyday you start working 2 hours, but it is not just doing the stuff that got you excited about the business in the first place. Now you have to do all of the other things that surround the business. 

Let’s say that you start a candle making business. Once you get to a place where you are selling a lot of candles, the business is more than making candles. It is being the logistics team packing and shipping the candles, being the marketing team telling the world about the candles, the finance team making sure there is enough money coming in for the candles, the other finance team in charge of making sure the IRS makes their money from your candles. 

So your side hustle to start selling candles that you make in your free time is now a living breathing thing that needs maintenance. You do an audit of your time and you find that you spend way more time doing everything that isn’t making candles. 

The reason I want to talk about the latter part of the wheel is because that is the return home. The purpose of this part of the story is to show that the hero returns home a new version of themselves. 

They set out on an adventure, charted unfamiliar territory in their land and themselves, failed in some way, overcame it, and returned new. 

This return is the moment where you have to take inventory. I wanted to be a Candle Magnate, but now that I am actually doing this, and I see what it is actually like, do I still want this? 

One of the hardest lessons that I have tried to learn is that just because you wanted something before, doesn’t mean you will always want that thing. 

And that is okay. 

For example, in Middle School I wanted to be in the NBA, I played a lot of basketball and realized it would be better if I got my MBA. 

The only version of that story that would be sad is if I never played enough basketball to realize that the NBA wasn’t my dream. 

We all have dreams. They could be things like living in a certain type of house, having a certain type of job, or having a certain type of family. 

Every goal or dream is a beautiful thing, but they can become terrible nightmares if we cannot let go of them when they stop serving the present version of ourselves. 

After 7 years and over 100,000 journals sold, I have learned something that has profoundly changed my perspective on goal setting and achievement. 

A Goal’s only value is the growth that you experience by trying. 

I will give you a list of goals that can transform into lives you don’t want: 

• You want to run marathons, you do one and you realize you spend more time doing injury prevention than running. 

• You want to be a woodworker, but you find that you hate cleaning up saw dust. 

• You want to be a public speaker, but you find that you hate traveling. 

• You love traveling, but you find you prefer sleeping in your bed. 

• You love making people coffee, but you find that you hate getting up early. 

Just a few ideas to help you get the gist. 

Final Advice:

• Set out on adventures. 

• Learn more about who you are and what you want.

• Step away from the ones that don’t align with the life that you want.

• Start new adventures that align with your new self.  

Kyle