To Lead a Meaningful Life, Become Your Own Hero

B. Rogers, K. Gray, & M. Christian

Scientific American

Originally published 30 OCT 23

Here is an excerpt:

With our condensed version of the hero’s journey, we looked at the connection between how people told their life story and their feelings of meaning in life. Across four separate studies, we collected life stories from more than 1,200 people, including online participants and a group of middle-aged adults in Chicago. We also used questionnaires to measure the storytelling participants’ sense of meaning in life, amount of life satisfaction and level of depression.

We then examined these stories for the seven elements of the hero’s journey. We found that people who had more hero’s journey elements in their life stories reported more meaning in life, more flourishing and less depression. These “heroic” people (men and women were equally likely to see their life as a hero’s journey) reported a clearer sense of themselves than other participants did and more new adventures, strong goals, good friends, and so on.

We also found that hero’s journey narratives provided more benefits than other ones, including a basic “redemptive” narrative, where a person’s life story goes from defeat to triumph. Of course, redemption is often a part of the “transformation” part of the hero’s journey, but compared with people whose life story contained only the redemptive narrative, those with a full hero’s journey reported more meaning in life.

We then wondered whether altering one’s life story to be more “heroic” would increase feelings of meaning in life. We developed a “restorying” intervention in which we prompted people to retell their story as a hero’s journey. Participants first identified each of the seven elements in their life, and then we encouraged them to weave these pieces together into a coherent narrative.

In six studies with more than 1,700 participants, we confirmed that this restorying intervention worked: it helped people see their life as a hero’s journey, which in turn made that life feel more meaningful. Intervention recipients also reported higher well-being and became more resilient in the face of personal challenges; these participants saw obstacles more positively and dealt with them more creatively.

The info is here.

Here is a take for clinicians:

Here are some specific ways that therapists can use the hero's journey framework in psychotherapy:

• Help clients to identify their values and goals. This can be done through a variety of exercises, such as writing exercises, role-playing, and journaling.
• Help clients to develop a plan to achieve their goals. This may involve setting realistic goals, developing a timeline, and identifying resources and support systems.
• Help clients to identify and overcome the challenges that are holding them back. This may involve addressing negative beliefs, developing coping skills, and processing past traumas.
• Help clients to explore their purpose and find ways to live a life that is true to themselves. This may involve exploring their interests, values, and strengths.

The hero's journey is a powerful framework that can be used to help people find meaning and purpose in their lives. By framing their lives as hero's journeys, people can develop a greater sense of agency and control over their lives. They can also become more resilient in the face of challenges and setbacks.

Seeing your life story as a Hero's Journey increases meaning in life

B. Rogers, H. Chicas, J. M. Kelly, & E. Kubin

researchgate.com

Originally posted January 2023

Abstract

Meaning in life is tied to the stories people tell about their lives. We explore whether one timeless story—the Hero’s Journey—might make people’s lives feel more meaningful. This enduring story appears across history and cultures, and provides a template for ancient myths (e.g., Beowulf) and blockbuster books and movies (e.g., Harry Potter). Eight studies reveal that the Hero’s Journey predicts and can causally increase people’s experience of meaning in life. We first distill the Hero’s Journey into seven key elements—Protagonist, Shift, Quest, Allies, Challenge, Transformation, Legacy—and then develop a new measure that assesses the perceived presence of the Hero’s Journey narrative in people’s life stories: the Hero’s Journey Scale. Using this scale, we find a positive relationship between the Hero’s Journey and meaning in life with both online participants (Studies 1-2) and older adults in a community sample (Study 3). We then develop a re-storying intervention that leads people to see the events of their life as a Hero’s Journey (Study 4). This intervention causally increases meaning in life (Study 5) by prompting people to reflect on important elements of their lives and connecting them into a coherent and compelling narrative (Study 6). This Hero’s Journey re-storying intervention also increases the extent to which people perceive meaning in an ambiguous grammar task (Study 7) and increases their resilience to life’s challenges (Study 8). These results provide initial evidence that enduring cultural narratives like the Hero’s Journey both reflect meaningful lives and can help to create them.

General Discussion

Humans are natural storytellers. People make sense of their lives using stories and how they tell their stories shapes the way they see and react to the world (McAdams & McLean, 2013). While these stories are drawn from events in their lives, they are inherently subjective and people frame their experiences using common cultural narratives (Hammack, 2008; Meltzoff, 1988, McLean & Syed, 2016). In this paper, we tested whether one of the most enduring culturalnarratives—the Hero’s Journey—is tied to meaning in life.

Across eight studies and six supplementary studies, we found that Hero’s Journey narratives predicted meaning in life. We began by distilling the Hero’s Journey into its basic narrative elements and constructing a psychological measure using these elements (Supplementary Studies 1-3). Next, in Studies 1-3, we tested our first prediction that there is an association between the Hero’s Journey narrative and meaning in life. We found that the perceived presence of the Hero’s Journey in people’s lives correlated with meaning in life (Study 1 and Supplementary Study 4). The connection between the Hero’s Journey and life meaning also manifested in the stories people told to others. Life stories rated by independent coders as more similar to a Hero’s Journey predicted higher levels of meaning in life and a sense of

flourishing in the self-reports of the storytellers (Studies 2-3).

Studies 4-8 confirmed our second prediction that people can use a re-storying intervention to reframe their personal narratives as a Hero’s Journey (Study 4) which can increase meaning and benefit their well-being (Study 5 and Supplementary Studies 5-6). We provided evidence that the intervention increased meaning in life by helping people to identify and connect the important narrative elements in their lives into the culturally resonant Hero’s Journey framework (Study 6). The intervention did not only bring psychological benefits, but it also helped people to see more meaning in their ongoing experiences, from perceiving patterns in letter strings (Study 7) to finding solutions for their personal challenges (Study 8).

The research is here.

Once again, social psychology has significant contributions to clinical psychology.