The Chapter You Didn’t Choose

For those of you who have been following my work for a while, you may know that one of my lifelong intellectual and spiritual influences is Joseph Campbell, the scholar and mythologist whose work explored the universal patterns woven through the myths and stories of cultures around the world. In fact, I wrote my college thesis on Campbell’s work. Decades later, I still find myself returning to his ideas.

I use the Hero’s Journey regularly in my coaching and Circles because I’ve come to see it as more than a framework for understanding mythology. It is a powerful lens through which we can understand our own lives—particularly the moments when the life we knew is no longer the life we have.

So when I recently listened to a Hidden Brain episode exploring the stories we tell about our lives, it immediately resonated with me. It brought together two ideas I have been fascinated by for much of my life: We are meaning-making creatures, and the stories we tell about our experiences can shape how we move forward.

We Don’t Just Live Our Lives. We Interpret Them.

The Hidden Brain episode begins with a fascinating experiment from the early days of Soviet cinema. A filmmaker showed an audience the same neutral expression on an actor’s face, but paired it with different images—a bowl of soup, a child in a coffin, a woman reclining on a sofa. The actor’s expression never changed, but the audience perceived hunger, grief, or desire depending on the image that preceded it.

The experiment reveals something fundamental about how our minds work: We don’t simply observe what happens. We create meaning from what happens. Our brains are constantly connecting dots, interpreting events, and constructing narratives that help us understand our experiences. In a sense, we are all editors of our own personal documentaries.

And that raises a question I find myself asking often in coaching: What story are you creating from the footage you have been given?

Campbell and the Hero’s Journey

This is where Joseph Campbell’s work becomes so relevant. After studying myths and stories from cultures around the world, Campbell identified a recurring pattern. The details varied, but again and again, a person would leave the familiar, enter an unfamiliar world, encounter challenges, experience transformation, and eventually return with something of value—often wisdom —back into everyday life.

Campbell called this the monomyth. Today, we more commonly know it as the Hero’s Journey. At its heart is a deeply human pattern: separation, initiation, and return. We leave what is familiar. We enter a period of uncertainty, challenge, or transformation. And eventually, we return—but we are not the same person who left.

I see this pattern everywhere in our lives. A diagnosis. The death of someone we love. A divorce. A child leaving home. Retirement. A career transition. An unexpected failure. A dream that doesn’t unfold as we imagined. An aging body that can no longer do what it once did. Sometimes we choose the journey. Often, we don’t.

And when the familiar world suddenly changes, our first response is often remarkably human: No. I don’t want this. I didn’t ask for this. I want my old life back.

The Refusal of the Call

Campbell called this early resistance the refusal of the call. In the Hidden Brain episode, researcher Ben Rogers describes this refusal as an authentic part of the human experience.

Think about some of our most beloved stories. Luke Skywalker doesn’t immediately want to leave his familiar life. Frodo doesn’t want to leave the Shire. Harry Potter doesn’t initially embrace the enormous change being thrust upon him when he is called to enter the wizarding world. Why would they? The familiar may not be perfect, but at least we know how to navigate it.

I see this frequently in my coaching practice, particularly when people are navigating grief, illness, or major life transitions. Sometimes people believe that because they are struggling to accept what has happened, they are somehow failing. I don’t believe that. Resistance is part of the journey.

There is something deeply human about longing for the life we had before. But sometimes the door behind us has closed. And eventually, the question begins to shift. Not How do I get my old life back? but Who am I becoming now?

The Hero Doesn’t Walk Alone

Another reason the Hero’s Journey has remained so meaningful to me is that the hero rarely travels alone. Frodo has Sam. Luke has Obi-Wan. Harry has his friends and mentors. The journey includes allies.

This matters because we sometimes misunderstand resilience as something we are supposed to develop entirely on our own. We imagine the resilient person as someone who can handle anything without needing anyone else. But humans aren’t wired that way.

The Hidden Brain research points toward the profound importance of social connection, particularly during difficult experiences. We don’t simply fight or flee under stress. We also tend and befriend. We turn toward one another. And the researchers discussed in the episode found that social support was one of the strongest predictors of meaning in life.

This is one reason I believe coaching can be so powerful. Sometimes we don’t need someone to fix our problem. We need someone willing to sit beside us long enough to help us see the path.

The Challenge Changes Us

There is another important distinction in Campbell’s Hero’s Journey: The point isn’t simply that the hero encounters a challenge and defeats it. The challenge changes the hero.

This distinction matters enormously in real life. I would never tell someone experiencing profound grief, illness, divorce, or another painful life event that it happened “for a reason.” Sometimes terrible things happen. Sometimes there is no satisfying explanation.

But over time, we may be able to ask a different question: Given what has happened, what might I make of it and how have I grown?

That is very different from saying, Everything happens for a reason. It doesn’t romanticize suffering or erase the pain. It simply recognizes something deeply human: We have the capacity to create meaning and grow from our experiences, even when we did not choose them.

From What Happened to Me to What Is Part of My Story

This may be the part of the Hidden Brain episode that stayed with me most. The researchers explored how people tell the stories of their lives. Some people described their lives primarily as a series of disconnected events: This happened. Then this happened. Then this happened.

Others told what researchers call contamination narratives—stories that begin positively but progressively become worse, with the sense that something important has been lost and cannot be recovered.

But some people naturally tell their stories as redemptive arcs. Their stories contain difficulty, but also growth, connection, purpose, or forward movement.

Interestingly, the people who described their lives using elements of the Hero’s Journey tended to report greater meaning, purpose, coherence, and resilience. And when researchers guided people through an intervention designed to help them re-story their lives using elements of the Hero’s Journey, participants subsequently reported greater meaning and flourishing, fewer depressive symptoms, and greater resilience.

This doesn’t mean we can simply “think positive” and rewrite our lives. It means something more subtle: The meaning we make from our experiences can influence how we engage with what comes next.

Becoming the Author, Not Just the Character

This is where I think coaching and the Hero’s Journey intersect so beautifully. When we are in the middle of a difficult transition, it can feel as though life is simply happening to us. The diagnosis happened. The relationship ended. The job disappeared. The child left. The body changed. The dream didn’t work out.

Sometimes the first step is simply acknowledging that reality. But eventually, we can begin to explore another layer:

What do I want this chapter to mean?

What have I learned? What strengths have I discovered? Who has walked beside me? What matters to me now that didn’t matter before? What am I being called toward? What part of myself is emerging? And perhaps most importantly: What do I want to carry forward?

These aren’t questions designed to force a silver lining onto a painful experience. They are questions of agency. They move us from being only the recipient of our circumstances toward becoming an active participant in the story that comes next.

And Then We Return

Perhaps the most overlooked part of the Hero’s Journey is the return. The hero doesn’t simply complete the quest and live happily ever after. They come home carrying something. Campbell described this as bringing back a boon—something gained through the journey that can ultimately be offered to others.

This idea has always resonated deeply with me. Sometimes the greatest legacy of a difficult experience isn’t that we conquered it. It is what we eventually become capable of offering because we lived through it.

The person who has experienced profound grief may develop extraordinary compassion for another person’s loss. The person who has navigated illness may develop a deeper appreciation for ordinary moments. The person who has endured a difficult transition may eventually become a guide for someone standing at a similar crossroads. The person who has learned to care for themselves may finally understand what it means to help others do the same.

The wound doesn’t have to become our identity. But what we learn from tending to it can become part of what we give back.

What Chapter Are You In?

This is one of the reasons I continue to return to Campbell’s work after all these years. The Hero’s Journey gives us a way to look at our lives that is both honest about suffering and hopeful about possibility. It reminds us that the chapter we are living right now is not necessarily the whole story.

You may be at the beginning of a journey, standing at the edge of something unfamiliar. You may be refusing the call, wishing desperately for your old life back. You may be deep in the wilderness, wondering whether you will ever find your way out. You may be discovering strengths you didn’t know you possessed. Or perhaps you are beginning to return—to a life that looks familiar on the outside but feels very different on the inside.

Wherever you are, perhaps it is worth asking: What chapter am I in? What is this chapter asking of me? Who are my allies? What am I learning about myself? What is changing within me? And what might I eventually carry home from this journey that could be of value to someone else?

Because perhaps the goal isn’t to have a life without difficult chapters. Perhaps the goal is to become increasingly capable of meeting those chapters with curiosity, courage, connection, and meaning.

And maybe the most meaningful part of the Hero’s Journey is not simply who we become on the other side, but what we are able to bring with us. The wisdom, compassion, courage, and perspective we gather along the way can become part of what we offer to the people and communities around us.

There is rarely just one Hero’s Journey. There are many. Again and again, life asks us to step beyond what is familiar, enter the unknown, and discover who we are becoming. And perhaps, over time, we come to understand that our journey is not only about finding our way forward. It is also about what we carry home—and what we can offer because we have been there.