The characters come before the story. Once you figure them out and set them loose, the story unfolds on its own.
Sheree Rehema, The Art of Character Development
This is what life is truly about. Understanding ourselves at a deeper level, so we can set ourselves truly free, and let our innate story emerge and unfold on its own.
Leadership on a life level is about being nobody-but-yourself. This is the Hero’s Journey. This is what my Be Real Creative mantra, as The Adventure of Your Life, embodies as an integration of leadership, authenticity, and creativity.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.
E.E. Cummings
The hero’s will is not that of his ancestors nor of his society, but his own. This will to be oneself is heroism.
Jose Ortega Y Gassett
This relates to The Future of Work because we have to understand ourselves at a much deeper level within it because no one will be telling us what to do. We have to chart our own course. This requires us to be proactive and self-managing.
This is about figuring out our own inner hidden narrative, what drives us, and then bringing it out into the light of day. Once we’ve done that, we can decide if we want to live by this narrative, considering it’s often constructed by societal pressures and expectations, or author our own.
We’re entering a new world that requires a new worldview.
All these patterns in my life are now guiding me forward like quest givers in an MMORPG. They’re trying to help me find and see a larger narrative of life, a universal truth.
Such an understanding will also make it clear that finding a guide for your journey isn’t a question of finding a special person. It is a question of becoming a special person: a traveller, a pilgrim, a person on a journey. When you have done that, the whole world turns out to be full of guides.
William Bridges, JobShift
