Entrepreneur’s Guide: Teach Your Kids about “The Hero’s Journey”

Our children need heroes. As entrepreneurial parents, we can inspire them and offer a moral compass. Our work ethic, risk-taking is a powerful role-model. We are a character who shows that life is an adventure that comes with troubles and hardships, enemies, and danger, but always ends well. 

As long as we (the hero) doesn’t give up, victory is possible.

Every good movie, book, or story typically has one myth in the middle – a tale called “The Hero’s Journey” introduced by Joseph Campbell in his book “The Hero with A Thousand Faces.”

The author aims to show that the adventures world-famous heroes are facing aren’t far from what we’re going through in our present life, each day. There is no doubt that the entrepreneur’s journey is a hero’s journey. 

The hero’s journey usually consists of 3 major stages:

The first stage. This stage starts with the hero’s separation from his ordinary life. This separation happens because a call or invitation has challenged the hero’s boring life to adventure.

As entrepreneurs, we stepped out of our comfort zone to start our business while managing our personal lives. It was not easy. I am sure most of us hesitated at first and then decided to refuse the invitation. Soon enough, we came across someone wise and inspiring who drove us to move forward.

Once a hero feels supported and guided, he is ready to take the journey.

Sharing this will help you and your child be more persistent, patient, and resilient, just like Simba, Hercules, Luke Skywalker, and Batman. 

The second stage. As the journey unfolds, trials, challenges, and difficulties are rising. One is more complicated than the other.

This part carries the most significance for learning that resilience is necessary for any successful adventure and life in general.

When we endure uncomfortable and painful tests and face the most potent enemies, we find ways to solve challenges and adopt many shifts in mindset. Our ability to pivot, adapt, and innovate is a crown we should wear with pride. 

The third and final stage. In this stage, steps include reward, the road back home, the final test, and return home.

After many battles and obstacles, the hero finally returns to their former life. From the outside, everything seems to be the same, yet it all feels very different.

The hero has changed and transformed through the journey. 

Helping your child understand the hero’s journey within a movie, cartoon, or fairytale is a fantastic way to help them develop a moral compass of integrity, resilience, and compassion. You can share your own hero story in words or thru videos. These tools build your legacy to help educate your generations to come.

Hero Storytelling contains central resilience-forming ideas:

• Helps children understand the importance of individual strengths
• Introduces the benefits of learning from mistakes
• Empowers children to make decisions
• Recognizes the importance of being open to support 
• Promotes qualities such as integrity, persistence, and kindness
• Demonstrates how behaviors affect others
• Stresses the importance of generosity
• Helps kids understand that life’s events aren’t random 
• Teaches the importance of discipline in life 

Your children will face massive change throughout their life, just like you did. Through that change, they will gain greater insight into their identity and capabilities.

The sooner they find out that life carries trials, tests, and difficulties, the better equipped they will be to face them. 

With morally balanced and highly accountable heroes in your child’s immediate surroundings, your child learns to embrace change in life as they embark on their beautiful journeys and adventures. Including you, the biggest hero of all.

Are you ready to become that hero for your child?

Start by identifying your current reality, recognizing the changes you need to make, and then make them become a better version of yourself and a greater role-model of resilience for your child. Share your story. 

Show them that their hero’s story is evolving and beginning. But you will be there for them every step of the way.