#1128 The Heroic Compass

As I was preparing for our Mastery Series Module on Hero-ology (aka: The Study of a Good Hero), I was having fun thinking about how to operationalize Joseph Campbell’s wisdom on the hero’s journey.

One of the things I decided to do was give our heroes (that would be all of us) the necessary supplies for our quests.

As part of that, I realized we all needed a good compass for those times when we inevitably get a little disoriented.

As I sketched out the potential Heroic compass, it all kinda sorta fit perfectly. It was almost weird.

I started by drawing a little circle. Then I drew a vertical line across the middle and another horizontal line across the midpoint as well. Then I put some arrows on the end of each of those points—giving us our four cardinal points on the compass.

At the top, pointing North, we have Wisdom.
At the bottom, pointing South, we have Self-Mastery.
At the left, pointing West, we have Courage.
At the right, pointing East, we have Love.

Yep. That’s about right. The four cardinal virtues for the four cardinal directional points.

Then it got fun.

I wanted to integrate the Top 5 virtues science says are most highly correlated with our well-being by dropping them as sub-points between our cardinal points.

As it turns out, if you blend our adjacent cardinal virtues with one another, you get our sub-virtues.

What’s Wisdom + Courage? Hope.
How about Wisdom + Love? Gratitude.
Then blend Self-Mastery + Love and you get Curiosity.
And blend Self-Mastery + Courage to get Zest.

Love? Well, that’s already a cardinal virtue.

And…

That’s Today’s +1.

I hereby introduce you to the Heroic Compass.

I’ve been journaling it every morning. Quickly reflecting on how I can embody each of those virtues a little more.

Here’s to having the Wisdom to know the game we’re playing, the Self-Mastery to play it well, the Courage to do what needs to get done whether we feel like it or not and the Love to remember what it’s all about.

Plus the Hope to see a better future (knowing we’ve got what it takes and the willingness to explore multiple pathways to get there), the Gratitude to appreciate all that’s awesome RIGHT NOW, the Curiosity to see how we can Optimize a little more and the Zest to go out and rock it.

Today.