Week 2 - The Heroine’s Journey + (Re)Telling

Circle Discussion Topics:

  • Check in. How is everything going?

  • The Heroine’s Journey -- Changing the perspective of your story

  • Vision Boards -- How to create one

  • 5 Pillars + 3 Buckets

  • WOOP -- Wish. Outcome. Obstacles. Plan.

The Heroine’s Journey

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The original concept is borrowed from the book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. The re-framing concept is borrowed from the presentation materials of the Executive Mentor, Charles Scott.

During times of stress and anxiety, it is often helpful to re-frame what’s going on in your life by stepping back and changing your perspective.

Myths from around the world share a common structure: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are encountered there and a decisive victory is won. The hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

As an example to apply towards your own life: think back to the beginning of this pandemic. Who have been your allies? Your helpers and mentors? Who or what has held you back from moving forward? What revelation has been or will be revealed after your most challenging hardship? How do you envision your return from your adventure, and how will you share your story with others?

Vision Boards

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I struggled with creating vision boards for my own personal use until I put on my User-Experience consulting hat. I then pretended that I was the client who needed a persona to figure out a plan for the future.

Creating personas is a common strategic practice. Personas help create the context of a customer when interacting with a product. For example: “Robin is required to use specific accounting software to complete her work. She also has different wants, information needs and challenges in getting her job done.” Writing out her actions as a snippet of a story is useful in making her persona come to life. In the real case scenario of my creation of this particular persona, Robin’s story (as well as highlighting her challenges) helped provide the context of why making changes to her interactions with the software would be beneficial to my client.

I’m explaining the use of personas because it is very useful to distance yourself from writing about your own vision of how you want to be in the world. Your pen, like mine, might hover over the paper indefinitely after simply writing, “In the future, I want…” By using a very tiny modification it is actually much easier to start journaling a vision for yourself by replacing the “Robin” persona with someone called “My future self...”

Here is what I wrote as a vision summary for My Future Self:

 “My future self is more thoughtful and curious. She has a loving relationship with her husband, and a tender and communicative relationship with all of her children.”

Notice how this vision summary is rather vague. It’s purposefully aspirational and focuses on how I want to BE in the world. It is a vision that I would like to act upon in the next 5 minutes, tomorrow, in a year, in 15 years...

We will continue the work on vision boards by breaking it down and using “5 Pillars and 3 buckets” discussed below.

5 Pillars and 3 Buckets

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The concept of 5 pillars is borrowed from the book, Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements by James K. Harter, Jim Harter, and Tom Rath.

From the Wellbeing book description: “Much of what we think will improve our wellbeing is either misguided or just plain wrong. Contrary to what many people believe, wellbeing isn't just about being happy. Nor is it only about being wealthy or successful. And it's certainly not limited to physical health and wellness. In fact, focusing on any of these elements in isolation may drive us to frustration and even a sense of failure… Gallup's comprehensive study of people in more than 150 countries revealed five universal, interconnected elements that shape our lives:

The Five Essential Elements:

  • Career Wellbeing

  • Social Wellbeing

  • Financial Wellbeing

  • Physical Wellbeing

  • Community Wellbeing

I renamed these elements as “pillars” because they help me hold up the overall vision I have for myself. 

The concept of “3 Buckets” is borrowed from the presentation materials of the Executive Mentor, Charles Scott. One of his homework assignments was to write out the following list of reflections:

  • 3 things that you want to START doing

  • 3 things that you want to CONTINUE doing

  • 3 things that you want to STOP doing

By using the writing prompt of “My future self,” as well as combining and using the 5 Pillars and 3 Buckets, you now have the keys to write an actionable vision board! 

Here is what I wrote for the vision of my pillar of Financial Health:

 “My future self prioritizes buying memory making experiences with friends and family over buying a house full of things that simply collect dust.”

I then used post-it notes to write out my actionable buckets for this pillar. When I feel like I’m ready to make a change, I can then make a new post-it note.

  • START - Tracking my online shopping habits (besides groceries)

  • START - Planning trips or events with different people. Variety!

  • CONTINUE - Planning an Omba trip for Autumn 2021

  • STOP - Buying so much online. :(

WOOP!

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Vision Boards are great for making broad changes to your life, or making changes to how you want to act and go about in the world. However, there might also be times that you have more specific desires that you wish could be reality.

As a society, we are told that we can think our wishes/goals/desires into existence! Unfortunately, it hinders you from prioritizing and accomplishing your goals, and can muddy the waters of your life’s journey. Worst case scenario, you might feel anxious about having a pile of regrets of “things-that-could-have-been.” A solution to try is WOOP!

W - Wish 

O - Outcome

O - Obstacles

P - Plan! (and Proceed?)

An example scenario is wanting to learn how to speak Spanish. The wishful thinking is speaking Spanish fluently. The Outcome that would be open to you speaking Spanish fluently is living in Costa Rica for 3 months like a local. Most individuals leave it at that last thought. They stop at the Wishes and Outcome steps. The actionable phase starts to happen, however, when you spell out the Obstacles. Obstacles: I don’t have time to learn a new language. I don’t know anyone who speaks Spanish that I can practice with, etc. 

The “P!” step occurs when you make plans to tackle the Obstacles. Examples: I’ll use my periodization techniques to find 10 minutes to practice using Duolingo. I’ll volunteer with an organization where I know that there will be a diverse community of volunteers, etc.

The last small step of planning also incorporates a “P” word. Should I PROCEED with this wish based on the plan to tackle the obstacles? This is a simple but super helpful question to ask yourself. It helps place your wish in the context of the rest of your life. It forces you to face the prioritizations and the choices that you actively make every day.

You can quickly listen to a couple of podcasts about WOOP to dive deeper:

15 minute podcast:

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/02/867905101/want-to-be-happier-evidence-based-tricks-to-get-you-there

21 minute podcast:

https://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/477379965/woop-there-it-is-four-steps-to-achieve-your-goals

Omba Workshop Week 2 Recap

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Here are some links that I wanted to share with you to recap our discussion:

  1. The Heroine’s Journey. 

    Try to put some distance and view yourself as the heroine of the story. You might not know how your journey ends quite yet, but through storytelling, you can better recognize the helpers and the temptations and the guides. You can also re-frame the dark and difficult moments of your life through the lens of the Abyss / Revelation process.
    The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

  2. Vision Boards. Some tips: 

    • Don't forget to use "My Future Self" to start out your sentences of how you want to envision the best version of you in the future.

    • Try keeping the statements vague enough (while also being aspirational) that the statement can be applied to your future self in 3 minutes, or 3 hours, or 3 days, or 3 years, etc...  Example: "My future self prioritizes buying memory-making experiences with friends and family over buying a house full of things that simply collect dust."

  3. 5 Pillars + 3 Buckets

    • Make a full vision statement for yourself.

    • Then make 5 separate statements using the tips above. The 5 pillars to address are: Physical Health, Social Connections, Community, Career, and Financial.

    • Then use post-it notes for each pillar. What are actionable items that you can do right now to support and get you closer to your "future self" vision? For each pillar, write out what you can STOP, START or CONTINUE doing. When you use post-it notes, you can remove and replace them as needed.

      Example: START: Track Online shopping habits (besides groceries), CONTINUE: Plan an Omba trip for the Spring, STOP: Buying so much online

  4. WOOP -- Wish. Outcome. Obstacles. Plan.

    You can quickly listen to a couple of podcasts about WOOP to dive deeper:

    15 minute podcast:
    https://www.npr.org/2020/06/02/867905101/want-to-be-happier-evidence-based-tricks-to-get-you-there

    21 minute podcast:
    https://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/477379965/woop-there-it-is-four-steps-to-achieve-your-goals

  5. Lastly, (same reminder as last time) you don't need to spend a lot of time and every single day to journal. This is a gift of time for yourself. Even 2 minutes to write down a partial thought, cut a single cool-looking letter from a magazine, tear an interesting background design from the newspaper... all of these small things are like the nano-goals of the Sierpinski Triangle. :)
    https://thepracticeofpractice.com/2014/09/21/the-fractal-nature-of-goals-and-music-practice/  

    See you next week, Melissa