Have you ever wondered how you got to where you are today?

In your work, your relationships, your health?

Whether you're happy with where you are or not, you'll admit it's been quite the JOURNEY, right?

And whether you felt like it along the way, or whether you feel like one now, you have been and continue to be the HERO of your own JOURNEY.

The HERO'S JOURNEY is a storytelling framework first recorded in ancient Greek author Homer's epic poem “Odyssey,” written around 750 B.C.E.

Odysseus, King of Ithaca, had spent ten years fighting in the Trojan War. The poem follows his epic ten-year journey home through all his trials and tribulations.

At the time, Homer's work was as important a guide for how to live one's life as the Bible later became to Christians. 

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle later analyzed the storytelling system prevalent in the tragedies staged at the time... simply, that a story has a beginning, middle and end: three acts, if you will. 

Act 1:

Set up the HERO and their GOAL. At first, she is reluctant to accept the challenge. But she realizes she must act now and act big to achieve her Goal. This act ends when the Hero decides to accept the challenge. 

Act 2:

The action and consequences escalate as an ANTAGONIST tries to stop the Hero from reaching her goal. Towards the end of this act, the Hero achieves good FORTUNE – it looks like she will achieve her Goal – but this is quickly followed by a REVERSAL, which takes the Hero to the pits of despair.

Act 3:

After the despair at the end of Act 2, we build to the CLIMAX where the Hero and the Antagonist have their big showdown. This leads to the Resolution, which shows us how the Hero, and the world around her, has changed.

Sound familiar? Probably applicable to every Hollywood movie you've ever seen, right? But why do these stories resonate so deeply with us? Why do we essentially watch the same film over and over again?

The three-act structure is more familiar to you than you might think. 

Act 1: You're born.

Act 2: You live.

Act 3: You die. 

How those events play out is unique to each of us. The duration, quality and experiences may vary wildly, but none of us can escape any of those three stages.

If we dive deeper still, each act is made up of lots of Mini-Stories. Birth is the first act of your Life Story, but it's the third act of your Conception Story. 

Act 1: Conception.

Act 2: Gestation. 

Act 3: Birth.

The crucial thing to recognize is that a strong action is needed to drive from one stage to the next.

→ The Passion of Conception. 

→ The Struggle and Growth of Pregnancy. 

→ The Agony and Beauty of Birth.

It might sound obvious, but when change happens, things will never be the same.... 

… Unless...

… Through fear, inexperience, or complacency we try to resist change, or in storytelling terms... 

… If after our Fortune, we don't accept the inevitable Reversal. 

The screenshot above is from the opening credits of the first feature film I edited in 1999. To say I was proud of this achievement would be an understatement.

I had a GOAL to be a Film Editor. 

I had talked endlessly about it. I turned down other opportunities which would have taken me off this path.

I suffered hardship.

My faith was tested.

My desire to achieve my Goal was questioned at every turn. 

I persisted through it all. 

And there it was after 2 ½ years of 12–16-hour days, night shifts, swing shifts, mistakes, arguments, exhaustion and personality clashes: proof on the screen for all to see that I had edited a movie. 

It was the CLIMAX of my career so far. Nothing would ever be the same again. No-one could take that away from me.

I had made it. 

What I didn't realize at the time was that though this achievement unlocked the door to my career, it was up to me to turn the handle and open it.

But first, the parties. I was due a celebration, no doubt. I lapped up the kind indulgences of my friends and family. And then I celebrated some more just to be sure. 

During this time, I made the mistake of thinking that the door would open all by itself. Directors and producers would flock to me and beg me to work with them, such was my genius. 

They didn't come. It was clear I would have to go to them. I lived in Galway on the west coast of Ireland – a small city that had only recently emerged as a center for film when Roger Corman built a studio there in the mid '90s. 

Roger Corman was the legendary producer and director who gave Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola and James Cameron their big breaks. 

And I had just edited one of his movies. 

So I had already reached the top of the Galway film editing world. If I wanted to progress, I would have to move to Dublin on the east coast, where the international industry was much more established.

I would have to accept that my first movie was over, and I would have to start a new one. 

But I didn't want to move Dublin. I was living with my girlfriend in the house I had just built.

I also didn't really like Dublin.

I stayed put in Galway, and my film editing career stayed put too. I had to take a step sideways and down to start at the bottom of the TV editing world. Which would have been fine if that's what I wanted. But I was all about the movies. 

What I didn't want to admit was that - for my career goals at least - I had already outgrown the place where I had just built a home.

I had expanded, but unless I moved to a bigger city which could nurture that expansion and encourage further growth, the gains would quickly fade. 

And fade they did. I was frustrated in the TV world, which seemed much more regimented by broadcast schedules and less creatively rewarding to me. 

I tested the water by temporarily moving to Dublin to edit two further films – one of which garnered me a Best Editing Nomination at the Irish Film & Television Academy Awards – but I resented my time there because I felt torn between two worlds: the world of comfort, familiarity and sporadic further growth, and the world of discomfort and rapid and powerful growth. 

I rejected the Challenge. 

For when we achieve something, that is when we must work the hardest. It is when we are at our most vulnerable. We think we have it licked. We won big and from now on it's easy street. 

Well 27-year-old me, that wasn't the case, was it? You had to work just as hard at something you weren't as passionate about. And you festered a growing resentment that you weren't being recognized for the work you wanted to do.

You chose comfort over discomfort, but you ended up with resentment. 

You thought you were already a master storyteller and should be recognized as such. But you forgot one of the fundamentals of storytelling, of the three-act structure of life:

After the Fortune, comes a Reversal.

The Reversal will come. Be ready to act when it does.

Tomorrow: Fortune & Reversal Part 2... Oops, I Did It Again.