Hero (19 page)

LAYNE BEACHLEY

Be aware of how you’re feeling, because there are times when you do feel negative, you feel down, or you feel defeated, and the most important thing you can do is accept responsibility, acknowledge that those feelings have emanated from the way you’re thinking, and choose to do something different to alter your current circumstances.

If you’re feeling down, then do something that makes you feel really good and lifts your spirits. Think about the best thing you can do right in this moment that will make you feel as good as you can feel, and do it.

LAYNE BEACHLEY

To make myself feel happy and positive, I first have to do something I love and build a sense of satisfaction within myself. So every day I go surfing, because I know that makes me feel very happy and satisfied.

The mind of a hero is a predominantly positive mind. The attitude of a hero is consistently optimistic. Together, a positive mind and an optimistic attitude are an incredibly powerful tool to realize your dreams, because your thoughts and your attitude become your life!

Courage

LAIRD HAMILTON

Fear is an ever-present emotion in us. It’s part of what made us evolve.

LIZ MURRAY

You can never get rid of fear, because fear is a physiological response. You can hook someone up to a machine and you can see you’re having a fear response. You’re always going to have a fear response.

Although we are each an individual, we are all human, and so every one of us has the full gamut of human emotions, such as fear, uncertainty, doubt, joy, passion, hope, and belief. At different times on the Hero’s Journey you will experience every one of these emotions. Just because someone is successful doesn’t mean they didn’t experience the same feelings of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Fear is the same for them as it is for you. Doubt is the same for them as it is for you. The successful person just decided to continue following their dream despite feeling those emotions. They didn’t allow their fear or doubt to paralyze them or stop them from achieving their dream.

MASTIN KIPP

Whether your dream is big or even if it’s just a small dream, it’s still outside your comfort zone, and stepping outside your comfort zone equates to fear. But fear is perhaps one of the most misunderstood entities in human development. From a biological perspective fear is designed to keep us safe; fear is self-preservation.

We experience two kinds of fear as humans. But it’s important to understand that our physiological instinct that protects our survival is not the same as psychological fear.

Psychological fear is something we create with our own minds when there is no danger to our survival. You may have experienced this kind of fear if you’ve had to take a final exam that you felt your future depended on, or if you took a test for your driver’s license. You may have felt psychological fear if you competed in a sporting event at your school, or if you had to stand up and make a speech in front of a lot of people. In all of these situations there was no threat to your life; the fear you felt was psychological, a fear created by your own mind. Most of us will only face psychological fear on the Hero’s Journey, but some, such as an athlete performing an extreme sport, may experience both kinds of fear at the same time.

LAIRD HAMILTON

People say, “You’re not scared.” Actually, no. I think I’m the most scared. I’m scared of those big waves. But your imagination is always greater than the reality. Subjecting yourself to the thing you fear is probably the most important way of becoming acclimated to it, becoming intimate with it, and all of a sudden it doesn’t have the power that it had.

In fantasy movies you see the hero face dragons or monsters that he or she has to slay to accomplish their quest. In movies, the hero’s quest represents our life and what we have to go through in order to fulfill our dream. The monsters are the doubts and fears of our own mind, and just like in movies we have to overcome them and not let them prevent us from fulfilling our dream.

The very act of doing something that is out of your comfort zone slays the monsters and dragons of fear and doubt on the spot.

MASTIN KIPP

If you want to live a fearless life, never leave your comfort zone, ever, ever. If you want to grow – and ultimately what’s going to make you happy is growth – you will be required to constantly step outside your comfort zone. So what we want to understand is that if I’m afraid, that’s a good thing.

When you push past your comfort zone despite the fear, fear lessens its grip on you, and your courage expands.

The word courage comes from the French word
coeur
, which means “heart.” When you go ahead and do something despite the fear you feel, courage arises from within your heart. This is how you acquire courage. It’s not the other way around, where you have to find the courage before you act. Courage comes from performing fearful acts! As you build courage you’ll find that things you once thought were scary don’t seem as scary at all.

LAYNE BEACHLEY

If you have the courage to set a goal and then the conviction to pursue it and achieve it, you will step outside of your comfort zone every day. So it is a necessary part of success to be willing and courageous enough to step outside of your comfort zone.