Have you ever made a mistake or hit a roadblock? Of course, you have, but did you know how to fix or overcome it?
In this episode of The Heroine’s Journey, hosts Barbara and Joan Perry dive into the heroine’s journey—a path of self-discovery and growth for women. They also break down the four biggest mistakes that can trip you up and how to deal with them. The bottom line? Life throws punches, but you don’t have to stay down for the count. The Heroine’s Journey is your chance to grab your metaphorical sword, embrace hope, and become the best version of yourself. So ditch the drama, find your fire, and choose to be the heroine of your own life!
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Find Your Fire And Walk The Journey: The 4 Biggest Mistakes Women Make
Joan, how are you doing?
Good, how are you doing?
It’s great to see you.
You too.
A funny story I wanted to share with you. I took my son on an amazing adventure. Even though we’re here in Silicon Valley, we went through the clouds and down a two-lane road and around it. We ended up at the ocean to go horseback riding. It brought joy to my son and me to be in nature. It reminds us how easy it is to get off our regular journey day to day and read, catch our breath, and spend time with family. Often, it’s easy to find ourselves not breathing or enjoying time with our family, pets, or loved ones. As we’re talking about the biggest mistakes, I thought that was an interesting contrast to start the day.
The thing about it is not that the world is against you or everything is wrong, but when it appears that everything is wrong, it’s because your focus is narrowed that you’re looking at that one thing. In all of our lives, there’s the blue sky. We’re fortunate because we’re in California. There’s the ocean or the beauty that you are witnessing. It’s that our focus narrows so much. When it does, and we only feel victimized, it hurts us.
I wanted to ask you, do heroines feel fear? Do they experience that? I want you to pause there. I don’t want you to answer that yet because, through this conversation, we’ll get a hit on that from multiple perspectives and can maybe wrap up the conversation with that. Let me back up a little bit. If we’re going to talk about the four biggest mistakes, I googled them and took a general look at them.
I told you earlier that even though I typed in the four biggest mistakes, first of all, the computer assumed I wanted to know the four biggest mistakes that women made. Second of all, I wanted to know the four biggest mistakes that women make in love. It polls in a specific direction. I thought you might have a comment on that.
As if only women make mistakes. Heaven forbid we know that the culture feels that way. There is a bias towards that. Women tend to look within and say, “What mistake am I making?” Sometimes, you’re not making a mistake. Maybe the other person has the problem, but we assume it quickly. How can I fix it?
Women tend to look within and take the blame, saying “What mistake am I making?” But sometimes, the other person might be the one with the problem.
As we look deeper, we can see this through the images of love, marriage, relationships, or careers themselves. When you decided that there were going to be four key mistakes that you were going to focus on, how did you narrow it down? From what perspective were you looking?
I was looking from the perspective that I was in one big freaking mess that was going to get myself out of it. As we now know, the heroine’s journey does include a big hiccup that in some way affects your life. That’s most likely in a relationship, money, physical health, how you feel about yourself, or what you’re saying to yourself in your head.
I looked back over what had happened. I like to think of it like I’m going down the middle of the road. I get thrown into this gutter and get back. When I looked at what threw me into the gutter, I asked myself, “Where were those points where I lost it?” It was these four things that we outlined in our free eBook called The 4 Biggest Mistakes Women Make. Those four things that we’ve included are the ones that tripped me up the most.
I’m glad you mentioned that because, as a reminder, anybody can go to WalkTheJourney.com and request a free copy. It’s simple for them to look at. What is the first mistake that you listed?
BS Beliefs
The first one is what we call BS beliefs. That’s the conversation we’re having in our head about ourselves. Have you ever noticed you’re like, “My hair is not perfect.” The five people standing in front of you are not saying your hair is not perfect. I have a story to tell you, and that’s it. I was at the chiropractor. I was listening to him talking to one of his patients. He was talking about the experience that he had at a growth event where they had these 50-foot telephone poles planted on the beach. You had to crawl to the top of the telephone pole and stand on top. Once you were on top, you had to leap out for a trapeze.
I will tell you that we all have harnesses on, but when we’re talking about our brains, we quickly forget that you have a harness on. He made a comment that I thought was interesting. As he was trying to figure out how to get both feet on top of this 50-foot telephone pole, he said, “We make the biggest horror stories up in our brains. We’re the only ones that watch scary movie.” I was profound when he said it because it’s true. I can picture myself at the top of that pole, trying to get both feet on the top because that’s what I needed to do next, thinking, “How are both of my feet going to fit there?”
All the stuff my brain was making up, like, “I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough.” I don’t know how to do it.” It’s an incredible string of things that your brain has to tell you. That’s true when we’re in situations that are difficult, we get our life upset, or we have to manage in some way. We do have this protective mechanism in our brain that starts to make up all this stuff.
Part of it is real. We can see that one of the first things we learned as an infant is that we fear heights. It’s realistic to look down 50 feet and not want to fall. The safety harness is there. We seem to forget about the nets that we have in our lives.
The thing about it is that, yes, it’s a survival mechanism. Your brain is telling you, “Something could happen here.” However, you don’t have any choice but to go forward. In life, we generally don’t get to climb back down the pole or back into the womb. We have to come up with a strategy that does get you on top. Once I got up, it was a panoramic, gorgeous view of the ocean. The waves are coming in. I didn’t wanna look down too much. I wanted to keep my focus up like a bird. I have to tell you to finish this story. I was amazed that I was solid on the top of the pole.
What our brain forgets is that when we move forward, it’s not necessarily going to be a disaster. We might still be in a place where we can stand firmly, but we have to deal with the beliefs that are going on in our heads. At least for me, when life got rough, I was like, “I’m going to fall off the planet. It’s not going to work. I don’t know how to do this. Nobody loves me.” All of these may have seemed real at the time, but truthfully, they didn’t help me move forward. I had to figure out how to recreate the messages I was telling myself in a way that would allow me to put the next step forward.
Sometimes our brain forgets that moving forward often leads to a positive outcome, not necessarily disaster.
When I was in my younger days before having my child, I also loved those adventure experiences and team building. Some chemistry changed in my body when I gave birth. All of a sudden, I started experiencing a vertigo where I couldn’t even go on a merry-go-round. At different points in our lives, we’re going to have different foundations on what tools we bring forward to tackle different issues.
In our first mistake, what we’re telling ourselves, and particularly anything that’s interrupting even a small step forward, we have to reframe in some fashion because if you sit in the middle of the road, the next car is going to come and hit you. As we have all kinds of challenges, you might have a health challenge to deal with or a financial challenge. Its life presents these obstacles to us, which are part of the heroine’s journey. In some fashion, we have to be listening to what’s going on in our heads and modify any BS beliefs.
I have a chicken that came into my house. This day couldn’t get any crazier. I’m trying to stay focused here and concerned about how that happened. What I wanted to do is ask you more about each one of the three additional beliefs and move into what we can do once we are aware of them, how we can move past them, and what one step is that we can take to overcome that particular belief. What is your second mistake?
Broken People Picker
This was my biggest one. I didn’t see it. I didn’t know that I was deficient in this area, which is a big word to use. As the life circumstances played out, this was the most difficult one for me. The second one is a broken people picker. I grew up in the Midwest, where everybody was supposed to like you. You were supposed to be nice and kind to everybody. You were supposed to welcome.
I didn’t have any filter for who came into my life or did not come into my life. I also didn’t understand that there are some good people who will want to support, love, and care for you. By contrast, there are some people who will want to see your demise. I had no clue about that. Sometimes, someone is not even that obvious, but from what they do, they hurt you in the process.
The thing is, on a heroine’s journey, you need all the support and momentum you can get. In the early stages of the heroine’s journey, where you’re perhaps recovering, or there has been some major upset in your life, you have to discern between these types of people and make sure that the ones that are around you support you.
Once I started to get this, these were the people who helped me out of the mess. You’ve heard the expression throw you under the bus. The other people wanted to help me be in the mess. I couldn’t afford that at that time. I had to wake up to the fact that my people picker was broken. I needed to ask myself how I felt about various people in my life. Were they there to support me, be kind, and help me on the journey? Were there people I needed to dismiss out of my life because there were some I did?
I’ve learned there are a lot of generally amazing people out there who have sincere hearts. In different cycles of my life, people are in different cycles or seasons of their lives. Sometimes, they may be the best friend and the resource that you need. Although it’s still the same person when they have an open heart, they can’t do that, or they can’t comprehend what you’re going through at that moment. That’s okay as part of this discernment or people picker to back around you, the individuals that are right for you for that season, and to be the right person for their season when you have the strengths to share.
I remember one woman. Three days after the ex-husband left with a girlfriend, she came to me and said, “He is gone. You should get over it.” She was trying to tell me the truth, but it didn’t help me at that moment. I needed more nurturing, tenderness, and kindness. Sometimes, it’s not that the person is necessarily bad, but they are not helping you on the path.
It’s okay to not even have that conversation with the person but not reach out to them in that period of time to reach out to somebody else. In our last conversation, you talked about the angels that come up alongside us. Those are great people to pick during this time. The discernment may not be there.
What I found in my own life was that my people picker was broken. That’s why I included it as the second mistake.
What is the third mistake?
Not Having Oomph
The third mistake is not having an oomph. What is oomph? It is everything that makes you together, energetic, happy, and capable. If you have no money in your checking account, that diminishes your oomph. If you don’t feel well, your oomph wasn’t even enough to get out of bed.
The fever outweighed any other possibility.
If you don’t eat well and nurture your body, your oomph is going to be compromised. If you have people in your life who don’t say good things about you, your oomph is going to be compromised. It’s all about taking a look at everything around you and saying, “Does this all add up for my life force energy?” That’s a word I love because it’s not health or love only. How does it all add up so that you are as fully resourced with oomph as you possibly can be?
We all need that. It’s like a blanket or a hug with us all the time.
I’ve been saying to myself, “Joan, you need to think about what you’re eating.” What I’m eating right now isn’t necessarily oomph-producing. In one or another of these, we all have to make adjustments. When you go through that rocky stage, which is the start of the heroine’s journey, that’s when you need oomph the most.
If you’re sailing along, as you get down onto the further steps, you can have a little less oomph for a day or two or a week. Last week was not your greatest week. When you’re in the early stages, and you’ve hit the first and second steps of the heroine’s journey, and you are trying to get yourself out of a mess like I was and like you were, you need all the help you can get.
Wandering Around The Wilds
What is the fourth mistake you listed?
I wandered around in the wilds for so long. I did not realize that there were wise women before me who had determined how to get themselves out of messes and go on to a better life. When you’re in a mess, you look around, and you think, “This is all there is. It’s not going to improve. I’m going to pick one that we all know, which is Oprah. She’s told us her stories about going through difficult times. At the same time, every time she goes through a difficult time, she tells us about how we got better once she got through that.
What I saw as I went through all this was the heroine’s journey. It was the blessing that was bestowed upon me. The thirteen steps that we need to take to start the journey of me and you. It’s a process that we all take, that all women must take to become their best selves. As you go through it, and I say this now, looking back on my life, I wouldn’t trade where I am now to go back to where I was before all the messiness. First of all, I look back, and I know one thing distinctly. In the messiness, I got my freedom.
As we discussed the other day, the messiness isn’t necessarily when we realize we got our freedom.
No, we don’t realize it at the time. When you look back, you see it caused me to not cling to lots of things. It caused me to make a change, be flexible, and think I’m not who I think I am or everything I think I am. There was newfound freedom in that messiness. What I came to understand is that we all have different stories. Each of our stories is unique, but we have the same plot line and steps to take.
We all have different stories. Each of our stories is unique, but we have the same plot line of the steps to take
That was a long way to say that the fourth mistake is not understanding that there’s a heroine’s journey. I didn’t get to know that when I was in all that. I had to look back and figure it out. Once we know it, whether it’s Oprah, Eleanor Roosevelt, or other heroines that we can point to, it’s a different story in what they went through. If I’d known that process back then, like I do now, it would have been so much easier.
I see that as the core foundation of the family is being disrupted. You’re used to being able to go to your grandparents’ house, spend time with your parents, and have family dinners together. You’d have little cousins around with you. Generation support is what gave us hope because we could look to the generation before us and see that at 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100, life still continues, and it can be awesome.
At 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100, you can look back at 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, and 15 and see all that energy coming up, guide, and share the list. Both sides of this help show that there is something over that horizon. Whatever we’re in the middle of now, this too shall pass. We know it will pass because it is a journey. In this case, it’s a heroine journey. There are many people who have come before us who have paid for that path and laid the foundation so that we can take one step at a time as well and know that it will be okay.
If I had a magic wand, I might use it to make my life perfect because it would be easier. I could sit on the couch, eat BomBombs, and linger in my rose garden. That’s not the way it works. Each one of us, from time to time, is challenged. The question is, how do we deal with those challenges? How do we resource ourselves so that we have the oomph, the knowledge, and the skills to get ourselves to go onward?
Hope
You said something important. The heroine’s journey has to include hope. When I got into the worst part of my life, and I thought I was going to fall off the planet, there was this big, cavernous, boiling, something that was going to take me. My hope got diminished. The heroine journey will give you the next step. Embracing hope on that is important.
I always say that the one thing I’m most grateful for is that I have something for which I can see gratitude. It isn’t gratitude for this, that, or anything else, but at the beginning of each day, I know I can feel that gratitude, which is hope.
It’s the ability to see that blue sky you’re talking about. Even if your day was funky, or let’s say last week, it was funky for you because you didn’t feel well. However, your hope and belief caused you to look at the beauty that surrounds you now and say, “Whatever, there is still beauty, love, kindness, and generosity.”
When I went through the worst part of life for me, I got so narrowly focused that I thought there was none of that. I lived ten minutes from the beach when I could have, but I didn’t know how to do it until later. I got in my car, went for a walk on the beach, and played with a dog. A number of things that will bring you back to that sense of hope and joy in life.
It’s an easy way to reset our minds. When our minds are weighed down with fear, overwhelm, hurt, or pain, that sofa is a safety zone. Stepping outside of a front door becomes challenging. I’ve gone through a few strokes in my life. There have been points where I have stood by the front door for hours and not been able to go outside because it was hard for me to figure out how to turn the handle. Did I have everything I needed? It was the normal thought that we take for granted. We’ll get from here to the car and go. It was running slow for me. It was an absolute paralysis that I was dealing with.
What I would say as one of the four mistakes was that your mistake at the time was not enough oomph. You were not resourced enough to have the oomph that you needed to do the day. That meant crawling back into bed for a nap, or there was somebody in your life who was not saying nice and kind things to you and needed to go, but it was that up.
We’ve gone through each one of the four mistakes. We both have points where they’ve affected our lives, as if they’ve affected many individuals. We want to spend some time on BS beliefs. You’ve talked about the people picker and having discernment in that area. You talked about not having the oomph and understanding the heroine’s journey and that there are women who have gone through this before us.
The One Step You Can Do Today
What I’d like to do is offer myself and anybody reading a chance to understand beyond the recognition of where we are or how it attaches to or affects us in our lives. What is one step we can take to get past that so we can be aware of it? What’s one step we can suggest to each one? Let’s start with the first one.
This is something I feel strongly about. That is, find yourself, whether it’s on your own bookshelf, at the local stationary store, or at Target. Buy yourself a beautiful book that you dedicate to your own writings or a journal. Open that journal and put a date on it. For the next week, write down as best you can everything you hear yourself say about yourself that is not supportive. That might mean you’re putting your jeans on, and you go, “I’m too fat.” That might mean, “I am not loved.” It might mean, “I’m grateful.”
Write down the negative ones. It’s the negative ones that are the BS beliefs. Who came up with the notion that you had to be a certain weight? I loved it. I went to South Africa. The women there have these lovely, unbelievably voluptuous boobs and these big butts. I was amazed to watch them because they were proud of their bodies.
Joan, I remember they would share recipes with you because they were proud of how they created the beautiful state that they lived in.
I was sitting and having breakfast when I saw this one woman walking by. I thought, “You’re large.” I was looking at it from my own standards. It made me laugh because the woman who walked by behind her was larger. She was voluptuous. If you write down in your journal everything that you are saying to yourself that handicaps you and create some awareness around that, that would be the first step.
Journaling your self-limiting thoughts creates awareness, the crucial first step toward overcoming them.
In BS beliefs, we need to pause and recognize what the beliefs are. You and I have had conversations. I need to go deeper because the surface beliefs have a core belief behind them that I’m not even realizing is behind that because I’m still at the surface of gathering data and trying to figure out how it applies.
In this case, if I take a journal for one week and write down all the thoughts pertaining to myself, my self-thoughts related to my own identity, how I’m showing up, how I feel about myself, and everything that comes up. Even though we don’t want to focus our lives on the negative, in this case, write down the negative so I can see it as a reflection. I can be aware of the self-talk I am heeding myself.
That’s the whole point. It is the beginning step of hearing the self-talk that you’re doing with yourself. If you’re in a mess and you’re saying to yourself, “I’m not strong enough. I’m not capable enough.” We all know that’s the first step in understanding that BS belief, which is what you’re telling yourself, is not going to help you take the next step. What is the next part where we begin to deal with that?
That’s part A. Is there part B of that one?
No, that’s good for now. We teach in the heroine’s journey how to change those BS beliefs because the heroine says good things to herself about herself. When I hear myself do that, I have a delete key like a delete key on a keyboard. I’m like, “Delete.” That is a quick mechanism for being able to undo that. It makes me laugh. Sometimes, I even yell it out loud. If I’m in the middle of a grocery store, I’ll be like, “Delete.” Everybody turns around and looks at me. I laugh, and it completely changes things.
We’ll blame other people for upsetting our moods or putting us on, but a lot of it is ingrained at this point, and we can see the reflection in that activity. Onto the next one, people picker. What is a recognition and an activity somebody can do around that?
That one is the same as the first one. That’s to become aware. When you’re with people, start to become aware of how they make you feel. If you are with somebody and you feel more energetic, you have more oomph when you walk away from them. That’s a good choice. If you’re with somebody who continually takes you into their drama or has unkind things to say about you, that diminishes you. Start to develop that internal radar.
If you’re with someone who continually takes you into their drama or says unkind things about you, that diminishes you and it starts to develop that internal radar.
From my childhood, that had been dismantled. That’s another discussion that we’ll have at some point. I’m aware of my need to pay attention to who makes me feel good and who does it. It’s caused me to make something entirely different to hang around people I probably wouldn’t have hung around with before. I don’t look at it from the outside, like how you look or where you go. I look at it from the inside, which is when I’m in your company, how does it feel? If you’re brave, you can note those experiences in your journal.
How do people make you feel when they’re around you or when they’ve left you? A lot of times, there’s a loss or a logging because a logging because that connection wasn’t complete. We think that’s love, relationship, or friendship. When, in fact, that person wasn’t fully giving, and the missing was knowing that there wasn’t something there. We’re misunderstanding the signal.
Is this a person I can have a heart connection with? A heart connection person will have more commitment to you. They’ll want to reach out and be more compassionate. They’ll want to help you more. You shouldn’t be surprised if it’s a person that doesn’t connect to the heart that when you need something, they’re not there. They’re not connected that way.
What about the next one, not having oomph? What do we do to recognize that? Specifically, around 3:00 every afternoon, how do we push through that?
The number one thing for oomph, and there’s so much publicity about it now, is sleep. Women need 8 to 9 hours of sleep. It’s the number one thing that you can do for your body. When you sleep, your brain cleanses, your clarity comes sharper, and your logic is better. The point is that not getting enough sleep can have a severe impact on your ability to function, control your emotions, and come up with the next step.
Women need eight to nine hours of sleep – it’s the single most important thing you can do for your body. During sleep, your brain cleanses itself, leading to sharper clarity.
It affects us in many ways. If nothing else, our emotional strength is how we’re able to look at something in the moment when the unknown pops up, or the unexpected pops up.
That’s good sleep. That’s not putting your cell phone under your pillow, making your brain get agitated with the news or something else before you go to sleep. That’s making your bed cozy and comfortable. You sink into it and feel like, “Thank you, I’m here.” It’s all that stuff that leads to our good sleep.
It’s simple and free. I’m loving the conversation we’re having. That brings us back to the reality of what we all face. We’re all going through it on one level or another. When we started this conversation, not only did I share the amazing adventure I had, going through a cloud and a windy road, opening up to the ocean and listening to the birds and the waves, and enjoying nature and all the gifts that are there. I also asked you a question. Do you feel fear? I want to get more on the activity from you before for each one of the mistakes. I’m going to ask you again as we wrap this up.
We talked about the BS beliefs and a way to write a journal about them. We also talked about being a better people-taker and even journaling to relate and identify how people make us feel when we’re with them and when there’s a distance or a separation there. We didn’t use this word, but in society, we know codependency and dependency around that. Is it natural, fun, and joyful? Is there something there that maybe isn’t a fit?
The next one I wanted to look at was the third belief, having the oomph. We talked about life force energy. It’s beautiful terminology that we’re describing, but it isn’t health or love. It’s everything wrapped up in one. What can somebody do to move through this a bit or grab onto that arm, especially when they don’t even know they don’t have it?
Sleep is the key.
I mentioned that it was 3:00 in the afternoon. What time are we recording? It’s 3:00 in the afternoon. People filled that little bit of lag. They often don’t realize that some people will have a cup of coffee or go for another stimulant. Some people will go for a walk around this period of time. As we’re journaling or looking at the other activities by looking at different times of their day, is there any way to also look at possibly seeing when their own may be triggered? We know we have biorhythms. Is there any talk about that on Zoom?
That’s why I love a journal. You can record your life force energy and ask yourself, “Am I trying to run my life at 2 or 4? If I had stepped back and looked at what I could do to improve my life, I might have lived my life at 8 or 9. That’s why I mentioned to you that as I look at my own situation, I have to say to myself, “You have to improve your diet.” I generally get around to that at the first of the year, but for some reason, I am ignoring it.
If I want to do the things I want to do, it’s imperative that I get my oomph level up to 8 or 9. One thing I’m doing that I’m enjoying is taking Pilates classes. I can feel that I’m getting stronger. That’s adding to my oomph. In your journal, it’s great to record where you are on all of these things. Be the police, how you’re picking the people in your life, the oomph. We’re going to go to number four.
Thank you for digging deeper into that one. Sometimes, sleep gets set aside, or the food we eat, we think, is not necessarily a resource but something we do. It’s amazing how much it fuels us. Number four, you talked about the heroine’s journey in this film. What can somebody do to recognize where they’re at, and what activity can they do to take one step?
The mistake is not knowing the path. When I didn’t know what the next step was, I didn’t realize I hadn’t completed the last step, and I didn’t see this universal plot line that everybody from Oprah to Eleanor Roosevelt, to you and me go through, I was wandering around in the wilds blind. The step on that one is we want to tell you all about it. It’s not understanding the path.
We’ve outlined for you the four mistakes that women make. The fourth mistake invites you to start to discover the path. Start to discover the heroine’s journey. Start to discover that you’re on it. Start to acknowledge that whatever crisis or upset caused you to be on it. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I know it’s hard to grasp that early on, but if you start to understand the heroine’s journey and the path that you’re on, it’ll put it in perspective.
Your past will make more sense. In the present, you’ll know what steps to take next. Your future will have hope. These are all the things we want for you. The heroine journey is about finding your courage and your strength and having the resources you need to get through. It’s why I’ve done this work. It’s why I’m passionate about it. It’s why, when I learned it, I had to share it because I don’t want women to wander around in the wilds. I want us to be strong and to contribute. The world needs our voices.
Mistake number four is not understanding the path. We’ve prepared The 4 Biggest Mistakes book for you, which you can get for free on our website. You go to WalkTheJourney.com. You’ll see it right in the middle of the page. You can put your email in right there. We’ll send you directly to your email. You can download it and take a walk-through.
Fear
The WalkTheJourney.com site is where you have the journey map. That’s where I saw it. Anybody can grab an image there and see visually what each step looks like along the path. Understanding that unless we know what the destination is going to look like, we can pass it by. We may not know when we’ve arrived, but the heroine journey map you created is a great visual to go along with. I want to go back, Joan. It’s ridiculous to think that we don’t feel fear. Everybody feels fear at some level, but the heroine’s journey is about overcoming that fear. The question is genuine. Does heroine feel fear?
I would not even use the word overcome. Fear, anger, and other emotions are valid human emotions. The real question is, does fear stop you in your tracks? Therefore, you sit in the middle of the road, potentially getting hit by the next car that comes up. The heroine’s journey is to develop your inner resources and your self-worth. The next time something comes up, and you feel that fear because fear is a warning signal, it’s saying pay attention. There’s something going on. It could be potentially problematic.
Fear, anger, and other emotions are valid human emotions. The real question is does fear stop you in your tracks?
Once you’re on the heroin’s journey and you’re going through the steps and developing the inner structure, you come to that fear with new internal resources, a stronger sense of self-worth, you’re able to deal with whatever the circumstances are more effectively, and you don’t sit in the middle of the road. You continue to take a step forward. You know that it’s okay even to take a small step forward.
In your journal, when you’re looking at where you are with a certain circumstance, and you ask yourself, “Am I making progress?” Your fear’s not stopping you. We’ll have more discussions as we go forward on all the things we’re going to talk about and how fear can help you. It seems like a striking concept, but we talk about this in all the material for the heroine’s journey. I’m going to have a new book out. We talk about how fear can be a motivator. It can help you. It can teach you.
I wouldn’t want to disable fear in any of us. Heroines have fear. After all, you feel when you’re on heroine and when life has come along and upset you, sometimes you feel like you’re standing on the top of a cliff and you have to decide what’s your next step. You are fearful. You can’t stay at the top of the cliff. You have to decide to put your wings on and fly, which is the heroine’s journey. You certainly don’t want to roll off that cliff and onto the crashing rocks of the sea. That’s what we want to avoid. Fear can motivate you to put your wings on.
We went through each one of the four mistakes that you’ve identified. We’ve talked about not only what they mean and how they practice, but we’ve given some quick steps or opportunities using a basic journal. Somebody can start to be more aware of the way that they’re relating to themselves, the world around them, or the people in their lives, and start to notice patterns as they engage and start moving through the heroine’s journey. Is there anything else you want to add?
There’s so much to talk about. Thanks for joining us. Barbara and I are looking forward to many more because not only do we want to have this conversation with you, but we have fun doing it. There’s so much that we learn in the process. We are choosing to be heroines of our own life. I can tell you that makes for a much better, happier, more joyful, and freer life with prosperity and all the things that we dream of. We need to take the heroine’s journey. Thanks for being with us. We’ll be back in the next episode, where we’ll be talking about the steps of the heroine’s journey.
