Two Worlds 1: The Meaning

Hello hero,

We begin by answering the most frequently asked question about this newsletter so far; “what does Two Worlds mean?”

Last year I journeyed within myself, patiently and gently asking for the truth about my purpose in life. I practiced healthy, grounding habits with the idea that making space was all I could really do; the answers would have to come in time. My job was to was get out of my way, and make myself a more clear channel for messages to transmit through.

I didn’t go anywhere, foreign or remote to do this. I did this publicly in this world where I am a son, father, husband, entrepreneur, board member, advisor, public speaker, investor, writer, and athlete.

I did not leave the modern world, the world of business and achievement, responsibility and competing priorities, success and celebration, difficulty and tragedy. Instead, I brought that world with me into a new uncharted world. There was a great deal of uncertainty early on, but mentors I will always be grateful for appeared at every courageous step I said yes to.

Have you ever noticed the shared root of the words journey and journal?

As I journaled in The Grind* each week last year, I looked to the wisdom of the world for ways to make sense of what I was experiencing. The one thing that kept coming up was Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. For those of you who have been reading The Grind, this will not surprise you.

The more I journaled, the more I could not deny my own hero’s journey. The more I couldn’t deny my journey, the more I looked to the model of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey to better understand what I was experiencing.

In February of last year, I resolved to be vulnerable in The Grind and share things that my understanding of the world told me were too risky to share. Things like quitting alcohol, going to therapy, failing in business, childhood issues, and more.

As I overcame the fear of talking about things someone in my position “should not” talk about, I realized that the fear was but a signal of a brilliant truth I could only discover if I stepped through it.

People are desperately seeking signs of their own hero’s journey, but the fear of disrupting the world they already know imprisons them. This fear is reinforced by the unrelenting messages of the modern world to project a particular image of oneself; Professional, polished and perfect.

Journaling in The Grind helped me break out of that prison.

In December of last year, after almost a year of finding a version of myself I always thought was there, I had a moment of clarity.

The Grind was approaching its end because that fear was gone. I burned it out through journaling week after week and putting parts of myself out to the world.

I walked through that fear and came out on the other side a more integrated version of myself. I felt more pure happiness and alignment in who I am in my inner world with who I am in the outer world.

In Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, when the hero has completed their adventure, they return to the ordinary world with a gift for humanity that was their reward. Upon returning, the hero finds that they now no longer only have mastery of the world they knew, but also the new world they journeyed through. That stage of the Hero’s Journey is called “Master of Two Worlds.”

Our stories are all intertwined. We play different roles depending on the perspective of the observer of the story. While I am the hero in my own story, my return casts me as a mentor in yours.

In The Grind, I was finding my inner hero. In Two Worlds, you are the hero.

There is a world that we don’t acknowledge enough that supports the world we interact with every day. It is an inner world that myths have been written about for centuries.

Modern times have so rapidly accelerated change in how humans experience the outer world, that the myths, religions, and wisdom of past times feel outdated and perhaps even irrelevant to many. The fastest-growing religion in the world is no religion.

In this growing void, there is a vacuum that threatens to erase our awareness of the inner world that we can’t see but hasn’t gone anywhere.

This is dangerous.

Forgetting about the inner world does not make the modern, science-driven, economic-focused world work better. In fact, it has the opposite effect.

Simultaneously, acknowledging the other world does not somehow mean you are not living in reality and can’t function well or be successful in this world.

The question is, how? How do you get everything out of this life that you genuinely believe you should have?

This newsletter sets out to provide a path to do just that for those that resonate with it.

Resonance is critical. There are more than 7 billion people on Earth. Plenty of people will take many paths to arrive at a similar destination. The path that this newsletter charts is the one I know from experience — the path of Creative Power.

The purpose of Two Worlds is to inspire those who resonate with it to cultivate the observer within. The observer who sees you as the hero on a beautiful journey and finds the courage to accept the call to your unique adventure.

A habit to develop that will bring this about is journaling.

Journaling reveals the journey.

Tell your own story, if only to yourself.

That is the message for today.

Have a grateful day, hero.

• If you are haven’t read The Grind prior to reading this, all 91 issues are archived on my site and the journey I mentioned really starts with issue 44.