Ever feel stuck? Do you dream of a life filled with purpose and fulfillment? Join hosts Barbara and Joan Perry as they delve deeper into the Heroine’s Journey, a powerful framework designed specifically to empower women to conquer challenges, discover their inner strength, and create a lasting impact on the world. Today, they focus on steps 8 to 10. Tune in to start embracing your inner heroine and embark on a journey of self-discovery and empowerment.
This series shows you exactly how to:
- Navigate your way out of the darkness, of worrying and stressing.
- Ignite the Courage and Strength that propels you forward.
- Live a life of True Wealth, full of Joy, Freedom, and Prosperity.
- Fire up your Self-Worth and Voice to serve.
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Uncovering the Secrets of the Walk The Journey Roadmap: Empowered Action, Wind Currents, And Crescendo
Steps 8 – 10
How are you doing?
I am doing great. I remember when we were doing our recording, there were two rainbows that touched down on either side of the ground, and it was absolutely incredible. Now, it’s beautiful, the sun is shiny and fresh, and we’re truly into spring. It’s wonderful.
I love it. It’s such a beautiful time. It’s the heroine’s voice that has courage, strength, excitement, and freedom. Knowing that that is all your abundance, your birthright, prosperity, all those things. It’s an amazing journey and I want to be nothing but a heroine. Sometimes, I hear that victim’s voice in my head and I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” It’s like a computer keyboard, “Delete.” I’m not having that.
It feels so much better to live in the power and to have that strength in us.
We truly have it. It’s there all the time. Now we think sometimes not because we get knocked hard in life or something happens that we don’t like, but the truth is deep within us is this heroine’s voice that wishes to express itself to show our glory, mightiness, and perfectness that we were born. The challenge for us is to believe the heroine’s voice and not the victim’s voice.
I wanted to take a moment. You awaken to the world in new ways is one of the statements you have in the 13 Steps book as you outline what is a heroine, who is a heroine, and you state a heroine, overcomes being lost in confusion or derailed by fear, has hurt to pass through prices and talent, fly and blue skies we’re going to touch base with that on, step number eight. I’m excited, then possess strength that propels her forward to have that wind beneath our wings that helps us slide. Be resourceful, prosperous, and purposeful, which is key. Many of us feel at different times in our lives that we don’t know our purpose or that we’re living our purpose. Gratefully live a life you love. What are your comments on those?
When you stop and think for a minute about that list you read, imagine the feeling inside of you. When you read that, you’re like, “This feels good. I want to live in that space,” then we can say, “I’m not skinny enough. I don’t have enough money. Nobody loves me.” When we resort to that victim voice, feel how bad that makes you feel. I want to jump right out of that and over to the heroine. What we teach is that. It’s how to be the heroine of your own life because that’s where happiness, glory, and pleasure are. Our days are numbered. They don’t go on forever. When you get to be older, you don’t want to look back and say, “I wasted them in misery.” Sometimes I think, “I’m worrying today. “I don’t want to look back and think I worried. I want to look back and think that I accepted what’s happened to me as a gift that’s making me bigger and better and more myself. That’s the practice of heroine.
Many years ago, I was in a minor accident, but it had medical repercussions for me. I had bought my first home. I could not, not pay my mortgage. I got up and went to work every day with an excruciating migraine. I had to drive over two hours each way to work. The whole situation was not optimal, but I was not a quitter. I was going to continue. Somebody gave me a piece of advice that allowed me to get through it so that we can feel bad. There are moments when we need to be on the sofa or stay in bed, or we don’t want to get out of bed that day, or whatever that looks like. The advice to me was, “That’s okay. Honor that, but honor it for half an hour each morning before you get out and do anything else. When the timer goes off, that’s it.” You have to do that again the next day for half an hour. But the rest of the day is not going to be allocated to that. You got to get up and do it, which is what we’re talking about.
I have my sister used to say, “If you’re going to be miserable, then be miserable. Close all the shutters and draw a hot bath. Be an angry child. Be all of it for 2 or 3 hours and over it.” It’s the same thing you’re saying.
The best of it.
So many in life stay in that same position their whole life. I mean people like that. I know people like that. I think, “You’re missing so much. Go out and look at the blue sky. Look at the flowers that are blooming right now.” There is much to be grateful for around us. That is the heroine. The heroine changes her perspective you have to do that in your head. Changes her perspective to see through a different lens. You can call them rose-colored lenses if you want, but I prefer rose-colored lenses.
There is so much to be grateful for around us. To cultivate gratitude, a heroine in a story often changes her perspective. Similarly, we too can shift our own perspective to see the world through a different lens.
What is Step 8? We are going to go over 8, 9, and 10. 11, 12, and 13, we’re going to very briefly have you touch upon, but the heart of the discussion is of four steps, 8, 9, and 10. It feels good to say. It’s amazing literally to spread our wings and fly again.
Steps 1 – 7: A Recap
As we’ve been discussing up until now, the whole process of the heroine’s journey is to fly, not to stumble along in the ground. As we’ve said, Step 1) Status quo, where you were sitting thinking everything was, “Fine, what could possibly happen?” Step 2) “Crisis appears.” Some crisis in your life. It’s the unthinkable. It comes out of the blue. You’re like, “Ah.” Step 3) The challenge. That was a hard one for us because that could be your darkest moment. All your fears rise up because you’re like, “I don’t know how to handle this. What am I going to do?” Step 4) Character revelation. That’s when the heroine shows up inside of you and says, “We got this.”
It’s a proclamation from inside of some sort that says, “You are not going to fall off the plan but here you are going to go forward.” Step 5) The crusade. That’s when you realize you’re confronting new realities and you got to get with it. You have to source what you need to do that because you have an instinct for preservation, for survival and now is the time to stir that up. Step 6) We love that angel showed up. You think you can’t do this on your own. You are all alone in this craziness that’s going on. The truth is you’re not.
People show up to help you that you never know. You might even not have known them before this happened, but they come with new resources, skills, and tools to help you because you need some help here you get more human and you get a little humbled right in here because you’re there to receive help from others. Step 7) To bring us up to date, is gathering your provisions. That’s when you say to yourself, “What do I need on this journey?” The money is going to be a big part of that. We will discuss that at greater length as we go on. It’s other things. You get resourceful to go gather them so that you have the fuel for your flight.
Step 8: Taking Empowered Action
Now, we’re up to Step 8. It’s called Taking Empowered Action. This is when you have assessed what you need, assessed where you need to go, you’ve considered good options to go forward. You’ve picked some, you are picking the strategies that you need and you ask a big question, “What is the beauty of The Heroine’s Journey?” The Heroine’s Journey invites you to ask new questions about yourself. Not just, I’m here to sit on the couch and eat bonbons. Although that could be lovely or to hang out in your garden. We came to this life to grow, to blossom, to become bigger selves here. In this step, you get to ask yourself, “What do I truly want my life to be?” That’s huge, “Who am I? What do I truly want my life to be?”
When I asked that question in this step, I had to be honest and say, “It was not what I had in the status quo. In the status quo, I was trying to make my life secure and safe, but it wasn’t the fullness of the life that I felt like I came here to live and the gifts I had to deliver. In this step, you are making strategic moves to shore up your foundation and you don’t look back because you’re not going that way. You’re going forward now and you get to say, “What do I want it to look like?”
I’m going to tell a quick story. At this stage of my own heroine’s journey, I don’t know whether it was a dream or some of those communications you sometimes get from the painters. I had this vision that I was sitting on this huge white painter’s canvas. I had this little three-legged stool that I was sitting on with these big long paint brushes in my hand. The message I got was I painted my life before. I can paint it again. Only this time I can paint it the way I want because what I realized about myself in the status quo is that it looked good on the outside. It looks good to everybody else in step number one of my journey. It didn’t feel good to me. At this stage, I could say, “How do I want to repaint my life so that it feels good on the inside? I can look at this picture and go, ‘I like it.’
That’s a beautiful image as well, to be able to paint your life. This is where we talk about you’re reinventing yourself, but who you are because we’ve already done that and mastered it and something came along and knocked us off our path. Now we get to redesign and redefine what’s beautiful from an artistic perspective. I liken it that for many at this point, maybe they’re on steps 1, 2, or 3 or have identified that a different step is where they’re at and to understand that at some point, they’ll be in this step of taking empowered action, spreading their wings and flying again.
For so many, it’s out of reach where hope is gone and faith is lacking. There are a lot of challenges around that. Yet I like something as simple as driving by an airport and seeing any one of those Dumbo jets lift off the ground. You have to wonder and marvel that if that plane can get off the ground with all that luggage, all those people, and then land again safely, we can learn to spread our wings and fly as well. We don’t have to get much mass off the ground.
We know from heroines who’ve gone before us, I’m going to pick a couple we know, whether it’s Oprah, Marilyn Monroe, or many others, Eleanor Roosevelt, we know because they have disclosed their stories that they went through tough times, but then they found their courage and strength and rose again. That’s The Heroine’s Journey. I have a great quote from Marilyn Monroe, “Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can come together.” That has hung next to my computer for many years to remind myself that I shouldn’t hold too tightly to the things in my life.
Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can come together.
Maybe there’s someone or something, God, that has a bigger and better plan for me than what I know for myself. I like to believe that I can control it, make it all up and I know best, but as I look back, what I have to tell you is the things I thought were the worst in my life, i.e., divorce turned out to be some of the best things in my life because it opened doors to new things, people and opportunities. I started to take big paintbrushes and paint a new picture all around me. Not only was it fun, but I liked it.
From a business perspective, in addition to an individual artist level of coming from your heart and soul and out in the world, from a business of process engineering, we will have the concept of an individual at this level that might be in the weeds, grass or cubicle, but the real decisions are made at the 20-foot views way up above where you can see everything at once. By lifting ourselves off the ground and allowing the wind to lift us higher, we can then have that whole vantage point like you’re mentioning. You can see that those instances in our life that quite honestly I don’t think I signed up for, have benefited not only myself and my family looking back, but it took rising above that in order to see that once again.
Some of the things that made you angry or frustrated or upset a few years ago, you can’t even remember them.
You asked me about something on Tuesday, and I couldn’t remember.
That can give us a different perspective on what’s going on currently, to keep your sense of humor, keep your sense that you are a heroine, that you’re moving forward. I want to revisit Step 4 and point out. Step 4 is where we talked about claiming your self-worth. That’s your most precious asset. Never want to let that go through any trials, tribulation, anger, or whatever because it’s that sense that you have of your own worth that will carry you higher.
In Step 5, we talked about resourcing your life force energy. I got up this morning thinking, “I feel good. In fact, I feel better than I felt in the last couple of weeks. I’m doing some things consciously that I think are helping and adding to that.” Step 6, the one we love is angels show up and we talk there about surrounding yourself with your circle of love, with people who love and support you, who are going to have hope for you, believe in you, and invite you to go to higher levels. Step 7, we talked about living within your means. In those four, I outlined the big pieces of keeping your heroine’s journey moving. Step 7, when you’ve done those steps that I outlined, you have the foundation for your stability.
The foundation once again.
Stability is the whole foundation for building your heroine’s journey. I used to laugh if people would say, “You need a facelift or whatever.” I’m like, “No, if you have money in your checkbook when you’re older, your face will be happy or you can tell your face.” Those are some of the elements of stability that we’re going to be diving much more deeply into. Step 8 is a culmination state where you’ve now come to the point that you’ve built your foundation of stability and life is from a 30-foot view and you start to get a much more panoramic understanding of what’s going on.
Stability is the whole foundation for building your heroine’s journey.
I’d like to leave everybody with the thought before we go on to Step 9, is what you open this conversation with is, “What do I truly want my life to look like?” Tat’s something that o matter where somebody is at on the journey, to sit and start out your morning or close their day with, “What do I truly want my life to look like?” By asking that question, the quality of that question will guide different results in either the thoughts that come to you in the evening or the way that the day flows by me asking such a powerful quality question.
One Japanese woman wrote in and said, “If I owned my own life, what would it be?” That is the unveiling question we have been taught in our culture that our fathers, brothers, or somebody else, our employer owns our life. If you sit back and say, “I own my life, now what?” It’s a scary thought I’ll admit because it’s much easier to think that everybody else will do it for you. The truth is a heroine owns her own life and she’s very proud that she does.
Step 9, what are you finding in this one?
Step 9: Wind Currents That Test You
We’ve come so far. Step 9) Win currents that test you.
Not a test. I don’t like exams.
A quiz, to see if you got it. Is your stability in place? If it is, you’ll handle that pop quiz with much more ease, resilience, courage, confidence, and strength, and it won’t seem as big a mountain. If your self-worth and your stability are not in place yet you might need to circle back because that’s what happens if you don’t hit each step, you can’t skip over it, it will send you back. If it’s not when the wind current that tests you comes along, you may realize, “I haven’t done the work on gathering the resources that I needed to do.” I’ve been sent back because I didn’t complete my circle of love completely. The joy of this step is that when you think you have come far, and when you think it could take you out, you have these new resources, this self-worth this, these internal capabilities that move you through this one much more easily than the past.
Can I read Page 31 to everybody?
Yes.
I think it is amazing, didn’t you open with the Wind Currents test you? You navigate another challenge. In flight, you have a panoramic view and life looks better. Suddenly another challenge comes along in the form of a big win that whips you around. Stairs often have imbalances. You wonder, “Will this be what takes me out when I have finally come so far?” This time you hear your inner voice, “I’m a heroine.” You respond more steadily than before. Navigating these challenges with your new compass that points you to the glorious horizons. This is the secret of Step 9 that you’ve outlined. Looking ahead, seeing the horizon in front of you, and feeling much stronger subtly another challenge comes along that whips you around, stares, and imbalances you because you have survived the narrows before. This time you hear reassurance as your inner voice calls out, ‘I am a heroine.’ You navigate these challenges with your new compass deep inside your self-Worth is intact and it’s pointing you to the glorious horizons.” It’s beautifully written.
It’s where I want to live. She was reading from our 13 Steps ebook, which you can get. You can go to WalkTheJourney.com. It will invite you to enter your email address. Then we will be able to send you The 4 Biggest Mistakes That Women Make, as well as the 13 Steps on the heroine’s journey, which we’ve been covering in this episode. You’ll want to go back and read them because the 13 Steps do something marvelous. The 13 Steps help you put your past into perspective. In other words, to live with the story that maybe has you all upset right now, “Do I know what steps to take next so that you can move forward and to give you hope for your future?” This is the path of the heroine. Go to our website at WalkTheJourney.com, and go find our 4 Mistakes eBook and the 13 Steps on the Heroine’s Journey, which you’ll get the complete description of as we’ve been talking about on this.
What a gift it is. As we decide that we’re truly the protagonist of our own life and an antagonist is going to step up to challenge us. This is a pivotal point where we stand in who we are, and knowing that, like you mentioned, we’re here as one of those examples to help guide people and not only the material you’ve written, but the shows that are being produced now and the phenomenal courses you put together are there to help guide other women as you shine the light. Thank you so much.
Step 10: Crescendo
Personally, it’s been quite a journey in self-growth. I certainly was in that first step where my whole life fell apart and I was like, “I don’t know what to do here, how to go forward and how am I going to handle this?” The heroine’s journey was the blessing that came out of it because there is a path forward and that’s what we’re here to teach. That is bound to Step 10. Step 9 was those wind currents to test you. Here’s the good news, you’re lifted fast. I went through much, you seem to go on and on, then when I was lifted out of it, I came out fast. Did you have that same experience?
It was a long road to get there, but in an instant thing, same.
I love this part, you are out of survival and struggle mode and into the freedom of soaring through the air because that’s what it is. Your journey has brought you to new heights, which include wisdom. If we think of those women I mentioned earlier, whether it was Oprah or Eleanor Roosevelt or many heroines that we all know. In our course, we have pages and pages of quotes from heroines that I love. As we think about those women, they embody wisdom for us. They’ve gone before us. They can teach us the path. They know what it looks like. When you know that, you know there’s a light that shines ahead of you.
It’s a good reminder because often through this journey we do feel alone and we feel that we’ve been abandoned in different ways, if not taken advantage of. There are a lot of attachments we can have to that, yet when we open our eyfes and look outside, we can see that literally the road has already been paved for our car to ride on. The home we built in. Most of us didn’t build ourselves, the building we go to for work, somebody else built that for us. There are all these phenomenal resources that somebody else has had a dream and completed their dream so that we can continue our dream. It seems we can start to recognize all the assistance we have, even if they didn’t particularly have Barbara in mind as they created it. Barbara gets to take advantage of having a car to drive somebody else created and drive it on a nice smooth road as a simple example of stepping outside of the woe is me.
You might even as you step out of the woe-as-me start to think that there’s a Susie that needs your help.
Someone who’s a couple of rungs down the ladder from you also needs your wisdom and how you’ve gotten as far as you’ve gotten. That’s an important part that’s going to start to develop. I’m going to read you this part because I should memorize it because I find it beautiful. See how this resonates with you, then Barbara, give me your thoughts. This journey brought you the gift of wisdom that roots you deeply in your power as a woman. You are no longer wrapped in fear, broke without resources, numbed to your sense of what is good for you, neglectful of your inner voice, led by your former impaired beliefs, tied to external things for your security, wedded to familiarity, impaired by rules of what to be or armored in your heart. That is big to be all of those things in the status quo and then move all the way down the path to Step 10 where you have liberated yourself, I almost don’t have words.
Every time you read that, it hits me right in the heart. There’s something about the vibration of those words that are what we’re meant to hear.
You are free. Now your heart is open and you see love in yourself in the world. You have conviction, determination, and focus. Your powers and wholeness. You proclaim your stability and so it is. You know those women that can look at you and they’re like, “So it is.” All you can do is go, “So it is,” because they have a grounding, a sense of purpose, and a confirmation of their own being that you can’t deny. Now we’ve covered the first ten steps of the heroine’s journey. These are the steps I cover in my book as well. My new book coming out shortly called The Heroine’s Journey. These are the steps that you take to create your stability. That’s the most important thing because the first portion of the heroine’s journey is to create stability.
The next step is to awaken your authenticity. But here’s the thing, if you’re not stable, you can’t be authentic. The next step is to light up your expression. If you’re not authentic, pretty hard to light up your expression then the fourth portion of it is to make your contribution. I’m going to outline the next three steps. They include the authenticity, expression, and contribution that I mentioned. We’re not covering them because we’re working most importantly on the first ten steps. Step 11 is called Celebration. I love this because once you’ve built your stability, you’re not wrapped in fear, you’re not all those things that we mentioned, you’re not giving your life away to somebody else. You are not bound to what other people think or materialize. Step 11) Celebration is when your dreams apply higher than your fears. Isn’t that beautiful? Don’t you want to live a life where your dreams are much bigger and better than your fears than you?
If you’re not stable, you can’t be authentic.
It’s super meant to be. You don’t stay wounded like a little bird on the ground where you didn’t pursue your dreams. Step 11 is where you awaken your authenticity because now you’re in your dreams. Step 12 is thriving in life. Again, glorious. In thriving in life, you are living your dreams. In that case, you can light up your expression. whatever skills, tools, or gifts God gave you as you came roaring down the birth canal fully complete, you are now in the process of using them. That person who is a couple of rungs down the ladder from you is benefiting from your wisdom. That’s the glory.
Step 13) Heroine’s Homecoming is when you’re creating a legacy of your uniqueness when you’re living fully that you are contributing to the rest of the world in a way that you are providing transformation now. I’m going to point to Oprah because we all know her. Think of the transformation she’s inspired in other people’s lives because she was willing to be a heroine, because she was willing to go through the trials, the tribulations to blossom herself. She was born a tight bud too, and she had to awaken her inner being to the point that she blossomed out like a full rose. That is what we’re all after.
What a beautiful journey. I am blessed to walk this literally with you as we open up the possibilities for the world. I want to let the audience know that this is the conclusion of our five-part show, our intro to the world of what we’re creating. It will be launched on all major podcasts and YouTube will be our home as we move forward. This is the beginning. This was one little cap of all the good conversations, laughter, and lessons that we’re going to continue to discuss week after week. As the outro kicks on, once you wrap up this conversation, people can know no matter where you are at in life, whether you’re at the point where you’re shining that light for the next person, or you’re in the dark looking for the light, here we are with our arms open, ready to share the information and the journey that we’ve all been on.
We’re going to have some fascinating discussions. We have many ideas because these are conversations that there hasn’t necessarily been a platform for women to talk about. How does a woman exercise and fulfill her strength and courage? We’re going to talk about that and how that goes out into the world. As Barbara said, please join us. We welcome you wholeheartedly. Go to our web page, WalkTheJourney.com where you’ll find The 4 Mistakes as well as the 13 Steps eBook. Please comment, and give us some feedback. You can also find us on LinkedIn. We love to hear from you. Until next week, journey onward.
Have a wonderful week, everybody. See you later, Joan.
Bye.
Important Links
- 13 Steps
- 4 Biggest Mistakes That Women Make
- YouTube -The Heroine’s Journey
- LinkedIn -The Heroine’s Journey
- TheHeroinesJourneyLLC – Facebook
