The Hero's Journey in Modern Life: Finding Meaning in Your Personal Transformation
Jan 29, 2026Want to go deeper?🎙️ Listen to the Journey Mindfulness Podcast — streaming now on YouTube, Spotify, & Apple.
You can't see the next step.
You've looked. You've searched. You've done everything you were supposed to do. And still—darkness.
Maybe it's financial. Maybe it's relational. Maybe it's a quiet unraveling that doesn't have a name yet. But something has brought you to your knees, and the hardest part isn't the pain. It's the confusion. Wasn't I past this? Haven't I grown? What did I miss?
You didn't miss anything.
You're not lost.
You're in the Ordeal—the part of the journey that doesn't get posted on Instagram. The part the books describe in a paragraph but takes months, sometimes years, to live through.
Joseph Campbell called it the belly of the whale. The mystics called it the dark night of the soul. I call it the place where transformation actually happens—not because you figured something out, but because you kept climbing a staircase you couldn't see the top of.
And here's what I know from inside my own climb: God didn't make a staircase to nowhere.
What is the Hero's Journey?
Campbell identified a pattern woven through every culture's myths: someone leaves the familiar, enters the unknown, faces what terrifies them, and returns changed.
But here's what gets lost in the summaries: the journey isn't a self-improvement project. It's an undoing. The hero doesn't collect skills and return stronger. The hero gets dismantled and returns different.
In modern life, this looks like the career that collapses. The relationship that ends. The identity that stops fitting. The moment when everything you built stops working and you're left asking who you are without it.
That's not failure. That's the call.
The Call to Adventure: Recognizing Your Moment
The call rarely arrives as inspiration. More often, it arrives as disruption.
A diagnosis. A catastrophe. A loss. A restlessness you can't explain. Something that says this isn't working anymore, even if 'this' looked fine from the outside.
Most people I work with don't recognize the call at first. They think something went wrong. Or they beat themselves up. They try to fix it, optimize it, push through it.
The call isn't a problem to solve. It's an invitation to stop solving and start listening.
Refusal of the Call: Why You Resist
Of course you resist. Your nervous system is designed to resist.
This is where the Somatic Lock comes in—the body's ancient veto power over change. You can know the old life isn't working. You can see the door. But when you reach for the handle, something in your chest tightens. Something says not safe.
That's not weakness. That's protection. Your nervous system learned a long time ago to avoid certain doors, and it doesn't care that you've changed your mind. Something I write about often.
Refusal isn't the opposite of courage. It's the threshold where courage becomes necessary.
Meeting the Mentor: Who Can Guide You?
The mentor isn't someone who has all the answers. The mentor is someone who has walked the path and survived—and can sit with you in the not-knowing without rushing you through it.
Sometimes it's a therapist like me. Sometimes it's a book that finds you at the right moment. Sometimes it's a friend who doesn't try to fix you.
The mentor's job isn't to carry you. It's to remind you that the path continues, even when you can't see it.
Ordeals, Allies, and Enemies: The Real Work
This is the belly of the whale. The part no one warns you about.
Your enemies aren't outside you. They're the voices that say you're not strong enough for this. The patterns that kept you safe but now keep you small. The Somatic Lock gripping tighter the closer you get to the edge.
Your allies aren't always who you expect. Sometimes they're the people who challenge you. Sometimes they're the parts of yourself you abandoned years ago, waiting to be reclaimed.
The ordeal asks one thing: Will you feel what you've been managing?
Not think about it. Feel it. Allow it to pass or channel that energy to greater use.
The Reward and The Road Back
The reward isn't a trophy. It's a knowing.
You emerge from the ordeal carrying something you couldn't have found any other way—not because you earned it, but because you survived it.
You let something die so something else could live.
But the road back is tricky. You've changed. Your world hasn't. The people who knew the old you may not recognize—or welcome—who you're becoming.
Integration isn't automatic. It's a practice. Bringing the new self into the old life, one choice at a time.
Resurrection and Return: Becoming What You Couldn't Imagine
Campbell called the final stage 'return with the elixir.' But you don't know what the elixir is until you're holding it.
It's not a lesson you can summarize. It's a becoming. The person who started the journey is not the person who returns.
And what you bring back isn't just for you. It's for everyone still on the staircase behind you—proof that the climb leads somewhere.
The Collective Dark Night
One more thing.
Zoom out for a moment. Look around.
The ground is shaking everywhere. The old certainties are dissolving. Collectively, we're in an Ordeal too—an unraveling that no single leader or system can resolve.
Your personal dark night isn't separate from this. It's a thread in something larger. You're not broken. You're synchronized with a world that's also mid-collapse, mid-becoming.
That's not meant to comfort. It's meant to contextualize. You're not alone on this staircase.
A friend of mine, Reuben Langdon, recently reminded me on the Journey Mindfulness podcast of this famous Buckminster Fuller quote: "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." He is correct, that is what is happening now and we all play a part.
Quick FAQs
Is the Hero's Journey linear?
No. You'll circle back. You'll revisit stages you thought you'd completed. That's not regression—it's depth.
Can I be on multiple journeys at once?
Yes. Career, relationships, health, identity—each can have its own arc, its own timing.
Is this just a metaphor?
It's a map. Maps don't walk the territory for you, but they help you recognize where you are.
Practitioner Insight
The dark night isn't a detour. It's the curriculum.
I've sat with hundreds of people in the Ordeal—high-achievers who did everything right and still found themselves in the fog. What I've learned: the ones who make it through aren't the ones who figured it out faster. They're the ones who stopped trying to skip the feeling.
Safety Considerations
This framework is a lens, not a replacement for professional support. If you're overwhelmed, reach out. The hero's journey includes knowing when to ask for help.
Who This Isn't For
If you're looking for a quick fix or a way to bypass the hard parts, this won't land. The journey asks for presence, not optimization.
Key Takeaway
The staircase goes somewhere. Even when you can't see it. Especially when you can't see it.
Next Step
If you're in your own dark night and want a guide who's walking the path too, reach out. I offer individual therapy, coaching, and mindfulness-based support for people navigating transformation—not from the summit, but from the stairs.
About James O'Neill
James O'Neill, LCPC, is a licensed therapist, MBSR instructor, and the founder of Journey Mindfulness in Ellicott City, Maryland. He brings over twenty years of clinical experience—and his own ongoing journey—to his work with high-achievers navigating the space between who they've been and who they're becoming.
Sources
Campbell, J. (2008). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton University Press.
American Psychological Association. Building Your Resilience. apa.org/topics/resilience
Pearson, C.S. (1991). Awakening the Heroes Within. HarperSanFrancisco.
