A Hero's Journey

 This week in class we explored what allows us to gain mastery. Mastery in a skill, mastery in a situation and mastery in a life all come down to perseverance.  Talent helps, education helps, relationships help, but without perseverance, mastery falls apart. 

There are many things we can do to help build our perseverance and a greater level of mastery. First, it helps to know what we are trying to master.  This week we watched a video of a speech given at BYU-Idaho called "A Hero's Journey."  Within this speech I found several golden nuggets that can help each of us on the path to mastery.  

The first golden nugget that I found had to do with finding what sets of skills and talents we have that we should work towards mastering.  It was suggested to find five people that are well known to us and ask them what we do better than anyone else in the world.  Press for concrete examples and evidence that supports why we do that thing better than others.  Then compare the answers.  The speaker mentioned that quite often we will be surprised by what they say.  They will almost always be similar in their answers and it will be something that we had not even considered that we were good at because it came naturally to us and was as automatic as breathing.  We wouldn't even realize that that skills was difficult to others because it is our unique gift. 

Once we have an idea of our special gifts, we can then pair our gifts with the second golden nugget.  That nugget is to really ponder what problem we feel we were put on earth to solve.  When we discover that, we've found our meaning.  Then by combining our special gifts with our meaning, we uncover our purpose.

The third golden nugget that I found in this speech is the idea that our purpose will be all about us, but at the same time not about us at all. This is a profound thought that makes so much sense to me.  A hero's journey pairs the unique skills that only the hero can provide to help rescue others.  A hero is never a hero because they served themselves and their own interests.  A hero is only a hero because they have sacrificed their wants for the needs of others to overcome a great challenge.  A hero needs a great quality to overcome the challenge.  Sometimes that quality is strength, intelligence, wisdom, stealth, or any number of highly magnified skills.  The same is true for us.  When we are on a hero's journey, we become masters in the unique skills and talents that the Lord has given us, not so that we can serve ourselves and indulge in our own interests, but so that we can help others overcome their challenges through using those skills that we have gained. In our journey, we grow in our unique divine natures, making it all about us, so that we can serve, making it not about us at all.  Beautiful. 

In this way we are able to gain ultimate mastery: mastery of our skills and talents, and masters of our natural desires as we turn those skills outward.  This does take perseverance to achieve.  A hero's journey is not an easy one.  It's far easier to waste our talents on our wants than it is to use them to serve sometimes, but as the speaker said, "Using your gifts to change the world will change you in the process." And it's a change that's worth the journey.

Location: Idaho Falls, ID, USA

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