Entrepreneur and Heroic Stories

I bet that all of us have known the stories of Hercules or Odysseus. And I have bet again that all of you known about Luke Skywalker in Starwars, Frodo in The Lord of The Rings, or Harry Potter. Those stories set on different theme and time. While Hercules and Odysseus represent “old” heroic stories, Luke Skywalker or Frodo, or Harry Potter is latest heroes stories. They are all different, but yet there’s similarity among all of heroic stories, where in Joseph Campbell’s terminology called “ Hero’s Journey”

According Joseph Campbell, Hero’s Journey consist of 6 important stage where heroes must passed. Those stages are: Innocence, The call, Initiation, Allies, Breakthrough, and Celebration. All of heroes stories will passed those six stages; started when heroes still as common person (Innocence) and then they got strong hunch to solve big problems (The call). Those call brings the heroes to start the adventure where they have to pass so many test to undergo (Initiation). Usually they will get favour from their friends (Allies) to pass the test. When heroes can pass the test, they get breakthrough and finally he got success (Celebration).

Those hero’s journey seems like only happen in the fiction stories. But truly not !! Since we are born through we are getting old and old, all of us will pass those six stages. Some may argue it, but it just matter of perspective wheter we realize or not that we are passing those stage. And so with entrepreneur’s journey ! A successful businessmen will passed through all that hero’s journey. An entrepreneurship is a long way road, a process which usually takes a time following hero’s journey.

Starting as common person, we’re just an employee, work for company (innocence). Suddenly we fell that we need more result or money or anything that lead us to think of doing business (The calling). Entrepreneurship is growing inside us. We start to do the best, work harder and harder to run our business. But sometime it’s not like what we imagine before because in fact, so many failures we got in starting our business ( Initiation). Then we try to expand networking by finding partners or friends to support our business, to make our business run well (Allies). With more colleagues, we get more power so that we can handle many obstacles ( Breakthrough). By handling obstacles we reach success ( Celebration).

Journey to pass those 6 stages definitely take a time and mostly a very long time. Many peoples are impatient and rush to get successfulness. But that’s impossible! You must undergo step by step carefully and cheerfully because each of steps will offering you a prize. Innocence stage give us a time for self reflection. The call will motivating us to work harder. Initiation will make us mature and growth. And this is the hardest stage where usually full with fears and pain. This stage where we fell failures. But don’t give up because failures make us more stronger, more mature, and more understand about what we are doing. Allies will support us to keep fighting and give us a wider perspective toward the problems we faced. Breakthrough will bring us to the new experience and a new sensation where we never felt before. And finally, Celebration will give us satisfaction, tears of joys.

So, when you heroic movies of those fiction stories, you might think that those stories not only happen in a movies, but rather it happen too in us for real. All entrepreneur and innovator will always pass these hero’s journey before they become success. Nothing is easy, but process will make us understand how to become a successman.